Religion

I’m going to be honest with you. I find prayer really hard. If I had to give reasons for all my tears over the past few years, most of them have come during conversations with God.

For those who accept the biblical account of Jesus's life as true, the most important thing is deciding how to respond to the Savior’s act of offering His life. What does it mean to accept Jesus's sacrifice? How does it apply to us? How does it become part of our lives?

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

Trying to describe a dying church like the one he was called to serve, Pastor Chris Lewis uses the image of a car "turned over, in a ditch, covered by weeds and beer cans, with a rusted out engine, and a couple of bodies in the trunk."

The idea of hell takes up a dark corner in most of our minds, whether we think about it or not.

How can we protect ourselves against expecting too much of our friendships? Can we do something to prepare for the disappointment? And what does one do to deal with it?

Celsus was concerned about the spread of the new sect called Christianity. He felt that Christianity's view of the world and of life was so different from the ancient world order that, if accepted by the majority, it would ruin society. 

I still remember May 21, 2011, like it was yesterday. Thousands of kilometres away in Boulder, USA, an evangelist named Harold Camping, president of the popular ministry Family Radio, was in the news spotlight. He had predicted that on May 21, more than 200 million Christians all around the world would be raptured away to heaven and that five months later, the world would end.

On May 19th, 1780, a strange phenomenon turned a sunny morning into an unexpected night. The event, known as the Dark Day, was seen as a sign of divine judgment by contemporaries and as a means of ridiculing apocalyptic expectations by sceptics.

In November 2014, Smithsonian Magazine included Ellen White, the co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in the top 100 most significant American personalities of all time.

For the crowds gathered around the casket containing the relics of Saint Paraskeva, everything is just dream and faith. Amazingly much faith. There is also something else. There is the hope of a miracle, a miracle that will cure diseases, cover debts, and make life happy.

The Unitarian Movement was defined as a significant minority movement under the influence of Humanism. The name “Unitarians” comes from the belief in one divine Person, a belief also common to Judaism and Islam, as opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity.

A black basalt stone found in the desert of Jordan has an inscription with the earliest known use of the name of Yahweh (one of the many names for the Old Testament God). It is one of many ancient items which confirm biblical history.

The “poor of Christ”, the “poor of Lyon” or, simply, the “brothers” never called themselves “Waldenses” until they joined the Reformation. The derisive appellative was given to them by their persecutors, after the name of the man who consolidated the doctrine of the community.

Dr Kendra Haloviak-Valentine, Professor of New Testament at La Sierra University in Redlands, California, comes from a family with a tradition of theology and research.