Religion

Professor Bailey V. Gillespie, from La Sierra University's Department of Theology and Christian Character in California, impressed me with both the diversity of his interests and his prestigious achievements, particularly in the field of young people's religious experience.

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.

Mass evangelism “campaigns” have become a common phenomenon in contemporary religious culture. However, few people ask how it all started and what are its long-term effects.

The end of the world has been an enduring human preoccupation and, paradoxically, has existed since the dawn of civilisation.

How important is the second coming of Jesus Christ in traditional Christianity?

With Jesus, it was always different. For most of my life, I could only see God the Father through a legalistic filter. But with Jesus, it was always different.

In ancient Israel, the high priests wore a vest that had two stones on it called the Urim and Thummim. Whenever a question about God’s will was brought to the priest, he would ask God to give the answer. If the stone on the left glowed, it indicated divine approval. If the stone on the right glowed instead, it indicated God’s disapproval.

The troubled centuries that followed the Great Schism of 1054 and the corresponding climate inside the Christian church gradually gave way to profound shifts in the thinking and spirituality of Europeans.

How do the Christian Scriptures differ from non-Christian sacred writings (the Quran, Vedas, Dharmas, Book of Mormon, etc.)?

On a number of occasions during his writing life, Nobel Prize winner and author Elie Wiesel tried to re-tell the story of a profound experience he’d had as a young boy in the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. He wrote a play, a novel, and even a cantata to try to re-create his memory of this event, each of which remained unpublished. Finally,...

“The newest religious sect has started in Los Angeles. Meetings are held in a tumble-down shack on Azusa Street...and the devotees of the weird doctrine... work themselves into a state of mad excitement...They claim to have the ‘gift of tongues’ and to be able to understand the babel”.

Jim Elliot was 25 years old when he headed to Ecuador as a result of the answer he sought from God regarding his future.

"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).

Contemplating a God who forgives any sin, no matter how monstrous, can be a stumbling block to those who believe there must be some reasonable limits to forgiveness. But it is also a reason for hope for those who might otherwise feel too sinful to seek Him.

This article addresses the two often conflicting aspects of the parousia: its imminence and its delay.