As we approach December the world has gotten darker and darker. There is less daylight each day and more darkness, and the sky has turned a dull gray. When I was in college, I used to go hiking and camping a lot in North Georgia in the mountains north of Ellijay. The trail head was about a 30 minute drive …
Monthly Archives: November 2016
I want to tell you about a guy I know of. I don’t know him personally; I know of him. But, it’s a true story. This man was from a good, respectable middle-class family. His mother was a Christian, his father was not; this seems to be a fairly common pattern in our time. Often one or the other parent …
The book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament takes place right before the people of Israel are to enter into the land of Canaan. Deuteronomy 8:1-10, in particular, is a reminder of what the Lord had done and is doing for Israel: They had previously been held captive in Egypt, without a land of their own, living as strangers in a …
In his Epistle to the Colossians, Paul calls Christ the firstborn of all creation. This does not mean that the Son is the first of God’s creations. That becomes apparent in the context of the rest of the epistle where Paul says that by the Son all things were created through him and for him. So, to be the firstborn is …
St. Paul wrote a letter to the congregation in Colossae to counter false teachers who had tried to ply the people away from Christ to instead worship other things or beings. In this letter (the Epistle to the Colossians), Paul emphasizes the pre-eminence of Christ in all things. Paul begins by greeting the church in the name of Jesus Christ. He then speaks of the inheritance …
Jesus’s words as recorded in Luke 21:5-28 contain some pretty heavy stuff. Jesus is dealing with three different events in these verses: he speaks of the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem, the last days, and then finally the end when he returns. We could easily get confused if we misunderstand what he’s saying and interpret these events as all occurring at …
I took this post’s picture earlier this year while in Rome. It’s a statue of the Roman emperor Nerva. You can see the copper in the statue has been tarnished with time; in addition, Nerva’s head serves as a convenient perch for the local pigeons. Nerva ruled the Roman empire from 96 to 98 AD. He ascended the throne after the …
Sometimes you have to take a step back from a Biblical passage and ask yourself what the main point really is. The reading from chapter 20 of Luke’s Gospel is like that, I think. The Sadducees come to Jesus. They were a group of secular Jews who did not believe in the resurrection. Oftentimes, we think of the Pharisees as the …
Last week I posted a small article about the Colosseum in Rome and promised a follow-up where I talked about Tertullian and his views. Tertullian was an austere Christian writer from Carthage who lived from about 155 to 240 AD. He wrote an “Apology” around 197 AD, during the reign of the emperor Septimius Severus where he defended the Christian …
Today, November 1st, is All Saints’ Day where we remember all those who have gone before us in the faith. We follow in the footsteps of the Church since Christ’s ascension and therefore are here today with our ancestors in the faith behind us and with our descendants yet before us in the future. The Church is not only the collection of …