Hello! I am Jon Paulien and I’m glad you came to this page to check out my work. I am a New Testament scholar and Professor of Religion at Loma Linda University. On this website you will find a collection of my articles, commentary on Revelation, and links to my blog, videos, and other resources. Make sure you check the articles link above regularly to see the latest postings. In my hand above is an exact replica of p52, the earliest extant New Testament manuscript fragment, containing portions of John, chapter 18. Centered above my head is a replica of ancient Greek pottery. At either end above are two sets of books from, and about, my favorite spiritual author, Ellen G. White. I hope you enjoy the site.

Daily Devotional For February 23, 2026

View in the Daily Devotional Index

But I have a few things against you, namely that you have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place an occasion for sin before the sons of Israel, to eat food offered to idols and to commit fornication. Rev 2:14.

           Eating food offered to an idol may seem like a rather small issue to complain about. And young people often ask, “What could possibly be wrong with ‘a little harmless sex?’” The actions that Balaam and Balak led Israel into must not have seemed so wrong to many Israelites. But when temptation leads to sin, we often discover that the consequences of sin vastly outweigh any pleasure that may have occurred. The end result of Baal-Peor, the event in the Old Testament that our text refers to, was the death of 24,000 Israelites.
           Recent discoveries give us a new understanding of the complexities of outer space. Long predicted by a theory, but never confirmed, scientists now know that so called “black holes” are massive fields of gravity that can literally rip a star apart. Invisible to the naked eye their presence can be detected by X-ray telescopes like those at the Chandra X-ray Observatory Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
           Photographs made at Chandra are the first strong evidence for this phenomenon. They show a star disintegrating from the pull of a black hole. “Stars can survive being stretched a small amount, as they are in binary star systems, but this star was stretched beyond its breaking point,” said Stefanie Komossa of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany. “This unlucky star just wandered into the wrong neighborhood.”
           The interesting part is that the star was not swallowed up by the black hole. Only one per cent of its total mass was consumed. But the momentum and energy triggered by the consumption process actually flung most of the star’s gas away from the black hole. All the black hole did was initiate the process by eroding the star’s critical mass. Once the star was disrupted in this way its destruction took on a life of its own and it disintegrated from there.
           Sin is like this black hole. Its attraction on our lives is as powerful as gravity. It is pulling at our being all the time. Attractive and seductive temptations draw us steadily into the hold of its gravitational pull. And like the black hole that destroys the star by just breaking apart its vital structure, yielding to sin can damage us just enough to set a process of ultimate destruction into motion. The Word of God is clear, even small sins can lead to destruction and eventually death!¹

           Lord, help me to take sin very seriously. I know that salvation is by grace, yet sin attracts me away from You and Your grace, leading in dangerous and destructive directions. I therefore choose to yield my body and mind to Your complete control today.

¹ Based on an email from Samuel Thomas, Jr. on February 19, 2004.