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.

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

Pietism was a movement of spiritual revival that took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries mainly in Germany and Bohemia.

When all we have left is God and He remains silent, we need a faith that endures, even when our resources are depleted and we feel as though we have been forgotten.

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

Was the Pax Romana really a time of peace?

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.

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...

The book of Revelation, in chapters 13 and 17, does refer to a world order, but it could hardly be called “new”. It is more of a return to an old historical order, but this time with unprecedented, worldwide success.

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.

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...

“There are no other two churches in the world today that are so similar yet, at the same time, so opposite as the Eastern, or Greek, and the Western, or Roman Church” (Philip Schaff).

In those times when grief accompanies us and we find ourselves alone in the middle of the night, does God shed tears with us?

The expectation of the soon return of Jesus in 19th century Europe and America has left a path for believers and future believers to tread with confidence. Beyond the imperfect theological understanding of the forefathers, of which no one need be ashamed, God has shown that He can use any material, provided it is consecrated to Him.

Courage is easily recognised in a world where cowardice and obedience are the norm—where another person's word, reinforced by intimidation, is accepted without question. At such a time, someone who opposes the status quo, who sees things differently and who has the courage to stand up and speak out becomes visible, like a lighthouse in the darkness.