What Is Unity in the Bible? (It’s Far More Important Than I Thought.)
And the first prize for most unifying religion goes to… Easy answer, right? Obviously, the answer is supposed to be Christianity, isn’t it? And yet the church isn’t always very unified—at all. At last count, there are over 45,000 Christian denominations globally. Narrow it down to just one denomination, and chances are that even that […]
Summary of Titus: Understanding the Basics of Titus in the Bible
Here is a short summary of the book of Titus: Titus is a personal letter from Paul to Titus, a long-time partner in ministry. Paul and Titus had begun making disciples and starting churches on the island of Crete, and Paul left Titus there to finish setting things in order in the churches. Titus needed […]
Beatitudes: The Path of the Kingdom
Jesus’ original audience often misunderstood him because they filtered his teachings through their preconceived worldview and the skewed questions that flowed from it. We have a different worldview with different questions, but we basically do the same thing. In the Sermon on the Mount, where we see a bunch of rules, Jesus is trying to […]
Singing the Song of the Lamb: A Review of Jonathan Young’s Commentary on Revelation
Sitting on the back deck of my home one afternoon, my young teenage son, Jonathan, told me that he no longer believed in God. I cannot say I was surprised. Yes, he grew up in a Christian home, often at a Christian school, in a great Christian youth ministry, with parents who had daily devotionals […]
God Can Do Anything? What God Can’t Do & Why It’s Good News
Tennis can be fun unless you’re playing against someone way better than you are. When you’re playing against someone quite a bit better, they can hit the ball in ways that have you running all over the court. They might hit the ball way to your right so you have to sprint to make the […]
10 Biblical Truths About God, Life, and You
In times of chaos and confusion, it’s wise to look for biblical truths to hang onto. Maybe, for you, life is just really, really busy and you feel like you’re speeding through the calendar at speeds that should get you pulled over. Or maybe life is really stressful. Or maybe painful: maybe you or your […]
What Is the Kingdom of Heaven?
We see throughout the Gospel of Matthew that the kingdom of God is a major theme in Jesus’ message. Kingdom can be thought of as a word made up of two parts: king (a sovereign ruler) and “dom” (a domain or territory). Christ’s victory over death ushered in his kingdom, and he is elevated as […]
Review of Sandra L. Glahn’s ‘Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament’
*Editor’s Note: Rick Oster (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary), Professor Emeritus of New Testament at Harding School of Theology, spent a year doing postdoctoral research on ancient Ephesus and the Artemis Cult. Sandra L. Glahn, Professor of Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary, has written a book on a timely issue, namely 1 Timothy […]
