Religion

On the night when heaven descended among mortals, it was not the high priests or scholars who were the first to see God, but some lowly shepherds.

"History shows how surpassingly difficult it is for Christians not to forget Christ," says Professor Chris Green. Forgetting does not mean losing sight of His existence, but rather losing sight of His way of being, His values, and His way of relating to those around Him.

“We need a Bible like this,” said Reverend Richard Cizik, Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals in America, at the launch of the first Green Bible in 2010. Current environmental issues demand an ecological Bible, where passages about the quality of divine creation and care for nature entrusted to us by God are highlighted in green, Cizik says.

The word sacrifice is not really a pleasant word. When you hear it, you may think of weird archaic rituals involving blood and animals. You may think of giving up something you love or like to save money or to save your waistline. Sacrifice is not a word we use often, and it’s often used with negative associations. But in a strange twist, the action...

On the pedestal of history, holding the flame of freedom—that's how the Book of Daniel has stood since it first appeared, more than 2500 years ago, and how it continues to stand today. It is a divinely inspired introduction to the book of Revelation, and together they represent the extension of the gospel beyond the apostolic generation up until the return of Christ,...

Jesus's words could not have been foreign to the Jewish people of His day. In an eminently oral culture, narratives, stories, parables and metaphors occupied an important place.

For ten years Luther read the Bible twice a year. His first Bible was so thoroughly read that he "knew what was on every page and where every passage was found." Martin Luther is the most prominent name among those who brought about the Reformation and took Bible study to a new level.

Two thousand years ago, Jesus asked us to remember the Lord's supper. What made it so special?

Probably no group in Christian history has been so unfairly judged as the Anabaptists.

How far is too far? Is there a point of no return?

One reason, if not the reason why the story of humanity's first wrong choice, the original failure, is vehemently denounced is the brutality with which this event—a seemingly trivial "dietary" decision that turned out to be the most costly ever made by a human being—reminds us more powerfully than any other story how painful the consequences of our mistakes can be. We do...

For many years, Dr Jonathan Ward was a military chaplain. When I talked to Dr Ward about his long career, we touched upon some sensitive topics: Does the presence of a Christian chaplain in the military mean God’s approval of military operations? How does a military chaplain serve in the context of a conflict?

Let's go back in time to the day when Jesus spoke His apocalyptic words. At that time, rather than giving a revelation about the future, He was more concerned with warning about the dangers of deception.

"If I were tortured, I would confess to anything. I would confess to being the Sultan of Turkey," says Goya in a film by Milos Forman. "No, you wouldn't!" Father Lorenzo contradicts him, but Goya insists: "I would confess anything to avoid torment."

The stories of gods and their vengeance permeated the ancient world—but one culture changed the story to introduce a better way to relate to the divine.