Religion

In writing this article, I asked a handful of people what the worst thing they had ever received for Christmas was. The answers I received were interesting, to say the least.

This question is asked by critics who want to point out the social, cultural and contextual nature of the Christian religion, and its relativism, presenting it as a product of society rather than of revelation.

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

Five hundred years ago, Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral. How are the motives that led to the Reformation viewed today?

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

We’d been married only a few weeks when we discovered that growing our spirituality as a couple was going to be much more complicated than the instructions on the packet suggested.

I sat slouched on the edge of my bed, blue light illuminating my face in the dark. It was the tenth time I’d checked my phone in the space of five minutes. I grimaced. Was something wrong with me?

While the historic churches remained at least disinterested in millenarianism, the Apocalypse, and the Parousia—that is to say, when they were not hostile to them—Protestant pluralism allowed for both reluctance[1] and increasingly significant preoccupations with the research and publication of the themes regarding the end of the world.

As a media and communications graduate, I love stories in all their forms, but I’ve always held a special place in my heart for science fiction. Exotic planets, alien races, unique extrapolations of scientific theory and bizarre visions of the future of our world—no other genre captures my imagination in quite the same way.

“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).

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.

“It was as if I were living in a fairy tale. And the most wonderful part was that I knew—hard as it may be to believe—that the story was true. None of the hardships of imprisonment touched me. The fear of the unknown no longer unsettled me, nor did the fact that, three days after my arrest, no one had yet called me...

“All  need  Thee,  even those  who  are  unaware  of  their  need—these  most  of  all.  He  who  hungers  goes  in  search  of  bread  and  knows  not  that  his  hunger  is  for  Thee;  he  who  thirsts  imagines  that  his  longing  is  for  water,  but  his  thirst  is  for  Thee;  he  who  is  sick  believes  he  is  seeking  health  by  many  means,  and  his  sickness  is ...

In order to communicate effectively, our speech must be clear and unambiguous. That is why believers tend to view the language of the Bible as a report: black and white, exact, without embellishments; just a dry sequence of facts.

“For men’s religion to God is between God and themselves. The king shall not answer for it. Neither may the king be judge between God and man. Let them be heretics, Turks, Jews, or whatsoever, it appertains not to the earthly power to punish them in the least measure. This is made evident to our lord the king by the scriptures.” These are...