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HERE'S A GREAT WAY TO START 2021.  ATTEND MY WEEKLY EVENING CLASSES! 
​SPECIAL HALF PRICE INTRODUCTORY OFFER!

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IT'S THE ADVENT SEASON!

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OUR STUDENTS WILL BE WRITING DEVOTIONS FOR YOU AND YOUR FAMILY TO ENJOY
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THE ADVENT CALENDAR
My students are I have created a countdown-to-Christmas daily devotional for you!


DAY 1 - MONDAY NOVEMBER 9
by Brad Zockoll, instructor

PSALM 145:3-7

Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.
One generation will commend your works to another; they will tell of your mighty acts.
They will speak of the glorious splendor of your majesty, and I will meditate on your wonderful works. 
They will tell of the power of your awesome works, and I will proclaim your great deeds.


This wonderful season of tender emotions and great excitement.
It's also a time of the year that I most enjoy because I spend extra time in Bible reading and doing some thinking, just like it says in Psalm 145.  This psalm is an acrostic poem, the verses of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. I especially like verse 5:

...I will meditate on your wonderful works... 

The word for "wondrous is pala' and it means "extraordinary, to be beyond one's power to do."  Isn't THAT the truth!

I often consider how I have seen God work in miraculous ways, right before my eyes.  Let me share one with you:

Years ago I was speaking for a week in a small church in South Dakota.  During the course of the week Pastor Daniels nudged me and pointed out the short, stocky young man who sat in the front of the auditorium every night.
“ I want you to pay special attention to Neal,” said the pastor. “He’s been a Christian for only about, oh, two months or so, and he’s really digging in, wanting to learn how to serve, how to pray, and how to read the Bible in a way to help him grow.” 
“Certainly,“ I replied.  “How did you happen to meet him?” 
“He came to church, stumbling in one Sunday morning,” said the pastor.  “He’d been a drug dealer over near Pierre for a number of years and was physically falling apart from a cocaine addiction.  He was spiraling downward until at a bookstore he met a girl –  a Christian girl named Carol – who lived here in Hot Springs.  He was intrigued by her character, how she stood up to him when he made advances to her, and how she let him know of her convictions.  Carol was never impolite, he told me, but she never wavered either.” 
“Neal was intrigued by someone who had strength, because he said that nobody he knew had any kind of backbone or convictions.  Carol did, though, and he was enamored.  She really didn’t have any romantic feelings for him, but she did befriend him.  Stunned that anyone would ever consider him to be a friend with no strings attached, he dropped everything and moved down here.   He dropped everything, that is, except his cocaine habit – he brought that to Hot Springs.”
 
I looked at Neal.  He was barely over five feet tall, dressed in a suit coat and tie,  which was unusual for this rural community in the late summer.  I could tell Neal had a hard life.  His eyes were dreary, with dark bags underneath.  His hands shook at times.
 
“Neal,” I said, “Pastor tells me you’ve been a Christian for about two months.” 
“Yes, sir,” he said.  “I climbed out of bed one Sunday and decided that I was done with a life of indecision.  I knew drugs were killing me, sir. I wanted some firm answers, and I wanted them before I finished out the day.  There was a friend named Carol that I knew who had given me some direction on how to become a Christian, but she had moved away from Hot Springs, and I didn’t feel that I should hang on one person to get me the answers I needed.” 
“I picked up a phone and started calling area churches and asking the person who answered the phone one simple question:  ‘how can I get to Heaven?’”  Neal looked down at his plate and chuckled quietly.  “Would you believe this, sir?  Four successive phone calls – they hung up on me.”
 
“What?”  I was amazed.  “Did they say that they were Bible-believing churches?”
 
“As far as what they put in the Yellow Pages,” answered Neal.  “And I began wondering: why does a church exist if it can’t answer questions about Heaven?" 
“So I looked at the fifth ad in the Yellow Pages, and it was Pastor Daniel’s church.  I looked at the Sunday morning service time and knew I could make it, figuring I wouldn’t let the man go until I got some answers.  However, Pastor here gave a clear message and I made a decision that day.I chucked all the coke and the rest of the narcotics.  Went clean and have been that way.  Jesus made it possible, man.”
 
“Amazing,” I said. But Neal - and the Lord above - had some more amazing things in store for me that week.
 
 On Thursday night as I concluded my message, I made a call to action. “Tomorrow night is the final night of our meetings.  I want you to try to bring someone to tomorrow night’s meeting because I’m going to give a plain, clear John-chapter-three approach to salvation and how to get to Heaven.  How many of you will try to bring a friend, an acquaintance, or even a stranger?" 
Virtually every hand went up in the room.  Neal’s hand was raised, and I could see on his face that this was a deeply serious commitment he was making.
 
Friday night was the final night of the meetings.  The service started at 7 p.m.  I was standing in the empty main auditorium at that exact time, totally puzzled at the lack of people, when Pastor Daniels burst through the door and yelled to me.
 
“You’re wondering why nobody’s come in yet, huh, Bradley?  Well, I’ve been holding them all back in the parking lot.  I want you to meet someone first!”  With that, he slammed the door shut and then re-opened it grandly.  Neal came in alongside a tall, mop-haired man with a day’s growth of beard on his face.
 
“Sir,” Neal said to me, gripping his Bible and gesturing to the man, “ I want you to meet Mike.”  Mike smiled warmly and even gave me a short bow. Neal turned to look at him.  “Mike accepted Jesus as his savior five minutes ago.”  Neal turned to look at me.  “I was able to lead him to Christ myself.”
 
I shook hands with Mike, then took a step back and sat down on the front step of the stage.
 
“Neal, you’d better tell me all about it.”  Mike was grinning ear to ear.  Pastorand other people quietly slipped in the back of the auditorium, unknown to Neal, so that they could hear. Neal stepped forward, cleared his throat and told us the story:
 
“Last night I was in the service, as you know, and heard you talking about reaching out to bring a lost person to the service so that they could hear about Christ.  I raised my hand and made a promise to Jesus Himself that I would bring someone.  I mean it – I promised that I would do so, since this was the last day you’d be here.  And I prayed this to Jesus Himself so I wasn’t taking this lightly.”
 
“So this morning I got up and jumped in my pickup and went downtown into Hot Springs. They’re having that Black Hills Gold festival and since there were thousands of people here, I pulled up into the big parking lot – it was a big field, actually – and made my way through the festival, inviting people.  I figured I could get ten or twenty people to come.  The morning went by and some people listened, other people ignored me, but nobody said they’d come.  Well, I was a bit frustrated but not discouraged.  I kept praying.  Maybe seven or eight people would be fine, I thought.  Noontime came and went, and I kept inviting people all through the festival, but still nobody wanted to come.  Now I was at the point that I would settle on two or three to come to the service.  Some people even openly mocked me, but still nobody agreed to come.  Now I was praying hard, asking for just one person to come with me.“
 
“The late afternoon was no better.  Not a person, not a one.  Well, I knew the service would start at seven o’clock and I knew I had to make it back here to the church on time.  I was seriously hurtin’ though.  I had spent over eight, nine hours asking people and trying to get them to understand how important this was. Nothing.”
 
“There was nobody in the field where the cars were parked, so I had just about given up.  I wandered back to my pickup truck in the middle of those hundreds of cars and slumped in the seat, leaving the door open and praying a heartbroken prayer:  Lord, you know I want to bring someone so they can see Your Kingdom.  Wouldn’t You send me just one person?”
 
“I reached out to grab my door and slam it shut when a man out of nowhere grabbed the door by the handle and asked me with an urgent voice:  ‘Mister, could you tell me how to get to Heaven?’  Well, I looked up, pretty stunned, sir.  The man told me:  ‘I went through the hell of being in the military in Viet Nam, seeing people die, and I haven’t had peace in years.  I need peace in my life and in my soul, mister.  I know I’m gonna die one day and I need to know.  Mister, could you tell me how to get to Heaven?”
 
He pointed to Mike, who was grinning ear to ear.
 
“I said to him,” continued Neal, “Brother, get yourself in the truck and I’ll take you to a man who’s going to talk about that very thing in five minutes. Well, he sure enough jumped in the cab but he said, ‘I can’t wait that long.  I need to know now.  I can’t wait five minutes.’”
 
Neal grinned widely.
 
“And so while we were driving over here, I was able to show him how to become a Christian and let Jesus take over. Can you beat that?”
 
Mike stood up and thumped his chest.  “I’m a new man,” he said.  “I’m a new person.”
 
“And you know, in another sense,” said Neal, “I am too.”
 
I knew what Neal meant.
 
As we sat on the carpet at the front of that small church with the people of the church piling in, crying and hugging, I was reminded once again that God is a wonder-working God.  He can take someone who seemed to have no hope, and give them an amazing future, in this life and beyond.

"...I will meditate on your wonderful works...." 

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DAY 2 - TUESDAY NOVEMBER 10
by Sarah Leab, senior

Psalm 34:15-18 (NASB)

The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous, And His ears are toward their cry for help.  The face of the LORD is against evildoers, To eliminate the memory of them from the earth. The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears And rescues them from all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.



Christmas is a time of joy, laughter, and remembrance on what our Savior did for us in “taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7).

I’d like to highlight verses 17-18 in this beautiful psalm:

17 The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears And rescues them from all their troubles. 18 The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit.


In most cases, Christmas is also a time of reunion with family; sons and daughters return to the homes of their empty-nester parents and grandparents come to see their children’s children to have sweet fellowship. These verses reminded me of some memorizing I had done in the past in James 4 and 5, specifically verses 5:15-16 and 4:8, respectively:
15 and the prayer offered in faith will restore the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. 16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.


I saw a connection between Psalm 34:17 and James 5:17, in God’s attentive ear to prayer; interestingly, both verses make it clear that the effective prayer of the righteous man and the cry of the righteous will be heard. You may be thinking: “even though we are saved and made righteous in God’s eyes, we still fail in our battle with the flesh. We are still sinners and will be until we are glorified in heaven. How could we be considered righteous enough for our prayers to be answered if that is a necessary qualification?”

The answer is found in James 4:18. We are to “draw near to God” in order that He may draw near to us. For this step, how are we to draw near to God? God cannot bear the presence of evil, so we rely on Christ’s righteousness to intercede for us as we do so. We come broken, utterly in despair over our sin, as we should. Sin is a transgression of the perfect law of a perfect God, and it should crush us that we have broken that law.

This is where it ties back to Psalm 34:18. The “brokenhearted” and the “crushed in spirit” are those to which the Lord is near. We are being reconciled to God through our brokenness.

I have experienced this countless times, but one time in particular launched me into a period of closeness with the Lord that I strive to maintain even today. I participate in bible quizzing at my church, which is where our youth group memorizes a New Testament book and then answers questions about it in a kind of tournament. It is very competitive and a couple years ago I, in the whirlwind of wanting so badly to win, had given the wrong answer enough times to get myself disqualified for the round. I was inordinately angry about it and stormed out of the room. I had sinned by memorizing God’s word for my own merit, not for His glory, and it showed.

My team’s coach met me outside and challenged me directly. “Sarah,” she began. “This competition is not about you. Your goal should be the glory of God, not the glory of Sarah.” That hit me hard. I realized that it was true. I went to the bathroom and shut myself in a stall, utterly broken. I wept as I prayed for forgiveness and the ability to see past my own success or failure in the meet and instead see the work that the Holy Spirit was doing in me because of the words I had hidden in my heart.
For the rest of the meet, I wasn’t put into the rounds. I requested not to be so that I could meditate on the scripture as I practiced it for the next meet instead. In the following hours, God showed me favor by giving me a new layer of understanding of the verses I had repeated hundreds of times before because the Holy Spirit changed my focus from myself to the glory of God. I had drawn near to Him, so He had drawn near to me. I cried out, brokenhearted and crushed in spirit, so He heard my cry.

The joy that accompanied this was astronomically better than that of reuniting with family, but it connects all the same. How glorious it is to return to the bosom of the Father! Pray that in this Christmas season, God would be near to you.

Click HERE
​to go to more of our students' Advent season Psalm devotions!

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THIS IS IT, SCHOLARS:
​
​8 MESSIANIC PROPHECIES everyone should know


1. Messiah would be heir to King David's throne.    2 Samuel 7:12-13​
2. The Messiah will be born in Bethlehem. Micah 5:2
3. The Messiah will be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver.  Zechariah 11:12
4. The Messiah would be born of a virgin.  Isaiah 7:14
5. The Messiah would be called out of Egypt.  Hosea 11:1
6. The Messiah would come riding on a colt.  Zechariah 9:9
7. The Messiah would be pierced.  Zechariah 12:10   Psalm 22:16
8. The Messiah would bring in a new covenant.  Jeremiah 31:31


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​​TWELVE CHAPTERS EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD KNOW

1. Where can I find the Ten Commandments?    Exodus 20
2. Where does Jesus Himself explain how a person gets to heaven?  John 3
3. Where do I find the teaching about the Rapture?  1 Thessalonians 4
4. Where does it say that sin is so bad?  Romans 3
5.  Where can I read about an explanation of Heaven?  Rev. 20
6.  Where can I read some Old Testament prophecies that tell about Jesus and His suffering?  Psalm 22
7.  Where can I read about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus? John 19-21 
8. Where do I  find the first teaching about the Holy Spirit, and where He started
       the first church?
  Acts 2
9. Where do I read about Jesus ascending into Heaven?  Acts 1
10. Where does Jesus Himself talk about the reality of Hell?  Mark 9
11. Where does Jesus specifically talk about marriage being between man and woman?  Matthew 19
12. Where is a key chapter on prayer, taught by Jesus Himself?  Luke 11
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Here's Dr. Zockoll trying to understand how you do a Mobile Order for Chik Fil A.
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GET READY FOR DR. ZOCKOLL'S HOLY LAND
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Here are some candid shots of students' reactions as Dr. Zockoll teaches.
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                                                                                  ...and yet, he remains humble. 


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NOTE:  TO THE BEST OF OUR KNOWLEDGE, EVERY PHOTO ON THIS WEBSITE IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN.  IF WE ARE WRONG PLEASE CONTACT US AT bzockoll@gcarams.org AND I WILL CORRECT IT IMMEDIATELY.
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You - yes, you - have been looking for reliable and powerful websites to enhance your Christian walk and make your Bible study more powerful.  

HERE ARE Z.U.'S TOP WEB SITE RECOMENDATIONS
In no particular order but with high recommendations, here you are:

 1. BLUE LETTER BIBLE - From Greek definitions to audio sermons to Hebrew word studies to numerous translations, this is one of the best sites you can get.  ​www.blueletterbible.org/   .

2. GOT QUESTIONS - Thousands and thousands of Bible questions answered.  Just go up to "search" and try it!   https://www.gotquestions.org/            .

3.  BRICKYARD BIBLE COMMENTARY - Written by teens, edited by spiritual leaders.  "It's amazing - for the first time in Christian publishing history, we have a Bible commentary written for teens by teens!  Every youth group in the country can benefit from this literary ministry!"  http://www.brickyardbible.com/   .

4. OUR DAILY BREAD - When it comes to a student wanting a regular, responsible yet powerful devotional reading time, this website is probably the best on the planet.   https://odb.org/   .  

​5. STUDY LIGHT - A superb collection of online Bible study tools and resources that every serious student should have.  If you are willing to take the next step in your Christian growth, you definitely want to bookmark this page.  https://www.studylight.org/   .

​6.  GRACE TO YOU - One of the most gifted Bible scholars alive today.  Be sure to click on "sermons" and choose a book of the Bible.  Get ready - you'll get teaching like you've never received before.  In print and in audio, all free. https://www.gty.org/   .

7. ANSWERS IN GENESIS - "Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively. We focus on providing answers to questions about the Bible—particularly the book of Genesis—regarding key issues such as creation, evolution, science, and the age of the earth."  https://answersingenesis.org/​   .
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HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT ZOCKOLL UNIVERSITY!  
Actual unedited quotes as far as we know:


"Incredible!  My I.Q. increased by ten points while on the Z.U. campus - and I'm not even a student!" - L. Pine -  Oxbow, Nebraska

"The spring session exceeded my greatest expectations.  Plus, I like the cafeteria's deep-fried zucchini!" - T. Pointer - Emphasis, Oklahoma

"Of all of my educational experiences, this might well be another." - J. Kiser - Mummers, Arkansas

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 As you can see, our teaching staff is so full of knowledge that sometimes it makes their head explode.

 
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The world of academia loves the prestige a Z.U. mug brings.






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OUR UNIVERSITY COAT OF ARMS
It's a great feeling to realize you are not completely brainless,  and there truly is no better way to increase your knowledge, self-esteem and position in society than by enrolling in the internationally famous (well, kind of well-known) Zockoll University.  For more years than we care to admit, Z.U. has been in the forefront of scholastic endeavors and creative ideas, not to mention having the best-looking administration staff anywhere in the country.  Tradition is honored here, as is heritage and a good meal of Cheez-Its and Yoo-Hoo. 
Wander across our virtual campus and you'll soon fall in love with good ol' Z.U. 


Latest update on accreditation:
In answer to your many inquiries about our accreditation, yes, we are getting around to it.  We're currently looking at two highly regarded organizations who expressed an interest in helping us achieve that elevated status of being nationally accredited.  One is the Eastern Seaboard Diploma Mill and the other is Manny's Accreditation Corporation and Muffler Repair Shop.  We'll get back to you on this. Just be patient.

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ZOCKOLL UNIVERSITY ALMA MATER

To the tune of "Scotland the Brave." Click here to hear the tune.

Look out, we're big and hairy
Most find us awful scary
Fear us, the Woolly Mammoths. Rah! Rah! and Rah!
All tremble at our coming,
Most start right into running
Fear us, the Woolly Mammoths. Rah! Rah! and Rah!
Though we can't win a game
We're rugged just the same
Chastise all those fools who dare to call us foes,
Cheer for the black and gray
We'll win a game some day
Fear us, the Woolly Mammoths. Rah! Rah! and Rah!
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FORMAL SHOT OF THE LATEST ZOCKOLL UNIVERSITY BOARD MEETING


                                                                                             **********************

This is my teacher's page and I really enjoy putting it together.  If you use something on this page for your use, would you please reference me as a source?  I have a very low self esteem.  
Thanks.
​- Brad Zockoll

P.S. ...and by the way.  Every picture on this website is what we believe to be in the public domain.  If you see a photo that might not be, please contact me.  I'll get it fixed asap.
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