Religion

Christianity is either historical or not. It claims that “God acted decisively in history, revealing Himself in external, specific events attested in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.”[1] The most important of these events was the coming of Jesus as the Messiah, the saving Christ.

The spontaneous generation of life on Earth is as likely as a whirlwind putting a Boeing 747 together using scattered spare parts in a junkyard.

There are so many versions of the “real meaning” of Christmas—kindness, generosity, neighbourliness; family, food and gifts; and, in our part of the world, end-of-year parties, carols by candlelight, summer holidays and trips to the beach or other outdoor adventures. 

Economic capitalism has a psychological twin, one that is not as bold and brash as its profit-obsessed counterpart, but if we look into the subtle details of our interior universe we find it hidden there.

During the time when the people of Israel were enslaved in Ta Kemet (the Black Land), and Prince Moses, the great scribe, had taken refuge among the northern Arabian tribe of Midian, a captivating story shared by the campfire caught his attention. It was the tale of another prince who, like him, had suddenly lost everything.

The book of Exodus is the second book in the Bible. It follows God’s servant Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery and through the desert towards the hoped-for Promised Land. Along the way, they stop at Mt Sinai. Moses goes up the mountain and receives from God ten commandments carved on a stone tablet. This is one of the most famous sections...

It is the spring of 31 A.D., halfway through the 70th prophetic week of Daniel 9:24. This passage from the book of Daniel predicts that between the command to build the city of Jerusalem—in the autumn of 457 BC—and the appearance of the Anointed One (the Messiah), 69 prophetic weeks or 483 years (a prophetic day corresponding to a calendar year, according to...

The Parable of the Sower appears to be the key to understanding all the other parables told by Jesus. It is neither mysterious nor cryptic; it simply provides a starting point. The apostles and all those who read the parable today are asked by Jesus Christ: "Don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?" (Mark 4:13). The logical conclusion...

I grew up on the border between two different universes, not geographically but spiritually. There, across that fine line, lived more than half of my extended family, with a different worldview.

During the COVID-19 lockdown last year, I lived with some messy people. I’d moved into a house that I shared with a wonderful couple of brothers. They were almost everything you could ask for in a set of housemates. Friendly, funny, respectful of your privacy . . . genuinely great people in almost every respect.

In the first three articles in this series, we examined what Scripture says about the coming of Jesus, and also how the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation remain the foundations of understanding time.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to tour south Te Waipounamu (the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand). Flying first into Invercargill, I made my way north, excitedly anticipating iconic tourist spots such as Queenstown, Milford Sound, Wanaka and more. However, on the way, the sleepy town of Te Anau caught me by surprise, captivating me in a way that I didn’t...

There has been a lot of speculation in the online environment about COVID-19 and the end of the world, but the connection between the two is more subtle than it first appears. It has been suggested that the pandemic is only the tip of the iceberg, that it is one of the seven last plagues of Revelation, or that it is the fourth...

Motto: "Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision." (Winston Churchill)

Renee James was 18 when she decided to stop praying. If God was going to be silent, she thought, she would be silent too. She had been praying for years for the healing of her brothers, Sean and Niall, one suffering from autism and the other from Down syndrome. Yet there had been no answer.