One of those days Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God. When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles: Simon (whom he named Peter), his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon who was called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor.

• Luke 6:12-16

Last week, I did a number sequence quiz, and I suggested that a person’s name could be repeated to form a letter sequence.  This is another sequence quiz, but it involves a repeated name.  A sequence is something like: boy, girl, boy, girl, or a, b, c, a, b, c.  Use the first letter of the answers to the questions as the letter in the sequence.  When you get enough of the answers correct, you will hopefully see the sequence, which gives away the first letter of the other answers for the questions that you might have skipped.  A few of the questions are more obscure than the others, but there should be enough easy answers to establish the pattern.

Note the number of questions.  I would not steer you wrong by leaving the sequence halfway through the last wo(rd).  You can then do a little bit of math to figure out how long the person’s name is, at least reduce the options.

Hint: One of the answers is a woman, the rest are men in the Bible, although one answer is better known as a place.  In the case of the place and person, both the person and place will be part of the question.  In three other instances, there were multiple people by that name (maybe a lot more than those three), and the question mentions at least two of them in each case.  Hey, I could have simply used the one that was lesser known, but I really wanted success this week, even though searching the Bible is success any day of the week.

The Bible Reference Section will give the Bible Verse(s) containing the name, but maybe not everything mentioned in the questions.

The Questions:

1. Which two people of the same name are mentioned in a single chapter of the book of Acts?  The first is killed and then the latter is greeted.  The first became a martyr, early in the development of the church, while the other wrote a letter that is part of the Bible.  And they both had famous brothers (or half-brothers if you want to get technical for one of them).
2. Who was the third son of Aaron, the high priest?  He became the high priest when Aaron died because his two older brothers, Nadab and Abihu, were consumed by fire when they offered the burning of incense improperly.
3. Who was the first Christian martyr, being stoned to death, and one of the first deacons?
4. Who was a great warrior and military leader whose wife was Bathsheba?  He was killed to cover up an illicit liaison.
5. Who was a wise king and a son of King David?
6. Who wrestled with God?  The Scriptures say he wrestled with a man until daybreak, but then his name was changed because he had “wrestled with God.”  The answer is the name before the name change.
7. Who was the priest and judge when Hannah presented her son, Samuel, for service to the Lord?  Two of his sons were killed in battle and died when he fell upon hearing the Arc of the Covenant had been captured.
8. Who was the disciple who only has a two-word description, “The zealot”?  There was another disciple of the same name, but Jesus gave him a different name.
9. Who was a good king of Judah who is also known as Azariah?  He reigned for 52 years, the second longest reign in Judah of any king (with Saul, David, and Solomon about 40 years each). The longest reigning king was Manasseh, son of Hezekiah, who was an evil king, but he repented late in life.
10. Who met Jesus in Jerusalem, being promised by the Holy Spirit that he would meet the promised One before he died?  And another by the same name is the second son of the answer to question 6.
11. Who killed the family line of King Ahab, along with Jehoram, the king of Judah, and Jezebel, Ahab’s wicked wife?  He was anointed for his task and to become king.
12. Who became queen of Persia and saved the Jewish people who were exiled in Persia?
13. Who accompanied Paul on his second missionary journey after Paul and Barnabas split due to a disagreement over whether John Mark should go with them?  He shared the prison cell with Paul during the earthquake.
14. Who was the father of Eliphal, one of the mighty warriors of King David?  Too obscure?  Then, where did Abram and his father come from, a place of the Chaldeans?
15. Who was a son of Noah who was the father of the Semites?  If you compare his offspring with the eventual emerging nations, he was the ancestor of Persia, Assyria, Chaldea, Lydia, and Syria.

Okay, to figure out the length of the name, I will give you a different number of questions to calculate: twelve.  Twelve is divisible by one, two, three, four, six, and twelve.  Have a person’s name that is one or two letters long is not that reasonable.  A twelve-letter name would not yield a sequence.  Thus, the sequence might be a person’s name that is three, four, or six letters long.  That way you get the name repeated four, three, or two times respectively.

Here, there are fifteen questions.  Figure out the possibilities, and then answer as many questions as you can.  Remember that sometimes, a person’s name has more than one use of a single letter, like David.  But David is not the name.

Bible References:

1. Acts 12:2 and Acts 12:17
2. Exodus 6:23
3. Acts 6:5
4. 2 Samuel 11:3
5. 1 Kings 3:9
6. Genesis 32:25-28
7. 1 Samuel 1:3
8. Matthew 10:4 and Matthew 10:2
9. 2 Kings 14:21
10. Luke 2:25 and Genesis 29:33
11. 1 Kings 19:16
12. The book of the Bible is named for her, chapter and verse 2:7
13. Acts 15:22
14. 1 Chronicles 11:35
15. Genesis 5:32

I promise to use a different style of quiz next week, but after last week’s quiz, the idea of a letter sequence was bouncing around in my head a bit too much.

I write these quizzes to make Bible searches more interesting, if you did not know the answers to begin with.  To be honest, that is why many of the questions stem from Bible stories that are not told that often.  I was tempted to use the woman who killed the commander of the enemy’s army by driving a tent peg into his skull, but I refrained.  Another choice that I rejected was Job’s fourth friend that shows up late to the party.  There are better-known answers that start with the letter of the woman who killed the enemy commander, but even then, one of the questions that I did choose was more obscure than say two sons of the answer to question 6 or a brother of either of the people with the answer to question 1.  In that last example, the name would start with the same letter, but a different name based upon which person mentioned in question 1 is being referenced.

   …

   …

   …

The Answers:

1. James – J
2. Eleazar – E
3. Stephen – S
4. Uriah – U
5. Solomon S
6. Jacob – J
7. Eli – E
8. Simon – S
9. Uzziah – U
10. Simeon – S
11. Jehu – J
12. Esther – E
13. Silas – S
14. Ur – U
15. Shem – S

The sequence is Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Hmmm.  That reminds me of a song by Bill and Gloria Gaither.  After all, those are the first three words in the song, There’s Something about that Name.

And sticking with Gaither tunes, here is a solo by Bill Gaither, until everyone joins in, including solos by Mark Lowry and Guy Penrod.  Because He Lives.

And here is another Gaither song, sung by the Gaither Vocal Band The King is Coming.

And what do you get when you wonder what was going through the minds and hearts of those who loved Jesus on the Saturday between that first Good Friday and the first Easter?  Gloria Gaither came up with Then Came the Morning.  Guy Penrod sings, and I cannot help but get a bit misty eyed.

I could go on, but I will save some for another quiz.  There are so many.

If you like these Saturday morning Bible quizzes, but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Saturday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.