Religion

In Dante Aligheri's Divine Comedy, written in the early 14th century, hell is described as a "city of woe" and a place of "eternal pain"—metaphors of endless suffering.

At the end of a journey tracing how the belief and hope in the Second Coming of Jesus have manifested themselves in the two-thousand-year history of Christianity, the final part of The Second Coming Files presents the remaining elements that link that history to the present day: the Millerite movement and Adventism.

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.

In the history of salvation, few people have received a more unsettling calling than Joseph of Nazareth. After overcoming his initial hesitation, he made a series of decisions born of obedience. He remains a model of mature faith and authentic manhood.

The controversial story of Baruch Spinoza takes on a fascinating dimension with the explosive excommunication from the Jewish community decreed by the leaders of the Portuguese Sephardic community in Amsterdam—a decision accompanied by one of the most severe anathemas. This document made Spinoza one of the most reviled philosophers by both Jews and Christians, but attitudes towards him began to change after the...

More than a collection of information, beyond its role as a guide, the Bible is where we have a redemptive encounter with the One who holds the keys to eternal life.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the threat of the Ottoman Empire to Eastern Europe was a painful certainty. The last Byzantines, aware of the ensuing disaster, called on Western aid, seeking political union with the Roman Catholic Church.

Broken blade. Shaking hands. Clouded mind. “I could have killed him.”

"Is it not too sadly true that we can recollect anything but Christ, and forget nothing so easy as Him whom we ought to remember?"—Charles Spurgeon

Please, not now! Don’t come right now! Please... I suddenly opened my eyes in the darkness of my bedroom and, all of a sudden, the heat wave building up during the nightmare met the coolness of the night reality. You haven’t come yet... Thank you, God!

Any sacrifice is hard to understand from the outside. But it's even harder to understand how sacrifice can be a choice that brings joy to the person making it. The easiest people to include in this category are, of course, mothers. For them, the sacrifices never seem too many or too hard. Even more amazing are those mothers who raise other people's unwanted...

The smell of burning food filled my tiny kitchen. “What's that smell?” I asked a friend who was sharing my house for the week. Every young man knows the smell, familiar from an early age—your first acquaintance comes from burnt toast and camping trips where, after burning everything you tried to cook, you end up eating your baked beans straight from the can.

They say that "all roads lead to Rome". This famous saying originated in ancient times with the extensive network of roads built by the Romans to facilitate communication and travel throughout their empire.

The mix of emotions a family goes through when expecting a baby is both wonderful and terrifying. When everything seems to be in order, the...

"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5:17).