Knowing God: God Incarnate

One of the things I marvelled at when reading The Da Vinci Code was author Dan Brown’s claim that the early church, (in a power grab, of course), shrouded Christ’s humanity in a veil of divinity, thus obscuring His humanity.  This created the need for the church as a mediator of Christ’s revelation, otherwise Jesus would be incomprehensible.  Brown’s [...]

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The Feeling in the Upper Room

When I was 27, I had surgery on my left kidney.  On the day of the operation, I was nervous for what lay ahead.  I recall being in the prep room with my father, about an hour or so before they were going to take me away, and the mood was heavy and sober.  Even though we both had [...]

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Jesus’ Healings & the Resurrection of the Dead

In recent weeks, I’ve been reading a lot of the Apostolic Fathers and other early church writers for a paper.  The more time I spend with them, the more I realize that they were a whole lot smarter than I originally thought and far better theologians than many give them credit for.
One of those eye-opening [...]

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What Are We Celebrating on Easter Sunday?

On Easter Sunday, many pastors around this country will preach about new beginnings.  They’ll draw analogies with the coming of Spring; the budding flowers and chirping birds show us that life begins anew and we can start a new phase of life.  Christ’s resurrection will be spiritualized and said to be significant because it shows [...]

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Understanding What’s Behind the Cross

Why did Jesus have to die?  As we observe Good Friday, and enter in to Easter weekend, this is an appropriate question.  The stock answer, of course, is that Christ died for our sins;  Jesus died to forgive us from our sins.  While I find nothing wrong about these common answers, I believe that they often assume [...]

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The Rebuilding of Herod’s Temple

No, this isn’t an eschatological prediction of the Jewish people rebuilding the Temple, reinstituting the sacrificial system or anything like that.  Instead, I’m simply giving you all a link to something I found on Tim Challies’ site today.  A British man has been building a scale model (1:100) of Herod’s Temple for more than 30 [...]

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What Do We Pray For? A Look at the Sermon on the Mount

Prayer is a rather large topic, one I’ve intentionally avoided writing about simply because there’s so much to say.  How in the world do you narrow down the Bible’s teachings on prayer into one post?  Or even a few posts?  That’s a lot to ask.  But last year as I was teaching on the Sermon [...]

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Helpful Books on Jesus & the Gospels

We’re just starting a section on Jesus and the gospels in our missions training school, and much like what Brian did with the Pentateuch, I thought I’d share some good books on this section of Scripture.  After all, it’s about Jesus; you can’t get more important than that!
But let me start with an important point.  [...]

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