How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord is laid for your faith in his excellent word.

Welcome to Through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

I'm Steve Schwetz, and in just a moment, the Bible bus is going to take us to Hebrews Chapter 9, where we're going to take an in-depth look at Jesus from a different angle, from the picture of the Old Testament tabernacle.

How appropriate that on the week we celebrate Jesus' birth, the day he took on the form of a man to live with us,

we would be studying the tabernacle, which also means to live with for a while.

Before we dive in, though, Greg and I have got a quick update on what's new at Through the Bible.

And this is something that we are just so excited to share with our listening family,

and both of us have had a personal

experience with this brand new ministry. We call them home groups, and they're in Ethiopia.

You want to talk about your first visit? Yeah, I kind of went in phase one of this program,

which was launching the ministry, and we thought we'd have 20 to 25 pastors come into Otis and do two or three days of training.

And we ended up having like 60 or 65.

And it was done in three different languages.

And we trained up about 60 plus pastors.

And they made a commitment, a number that I thought was pretty high, that they were going to go start

X number of home groups, and it was over a couple of thousand. I thought, well, we'll see.

Maybe they're overly exuberant, like a mountaintop experience. But then I went home, and we

continue to pray, and we continue to receive good reports, and then you went for a follow-up.

Yeah, we just saw the Holy Spirit doing something incredible,

so I wanted to go and see it with my own eyes. And just six months after you were there with this

training, they essentially met the goal that they set for one year that we all thought,

no, that's not going to happen. Yeah. So I want all of us just to be encouraged that God is at work.

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