Baptism by fire

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

An unexpected return, the premise for missing the meeting with Christ

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

The Protestant Reformation: Between obstinacy and necessity

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?

The monk who made the modern world

Why Western thought—and your own beliefs—owe a debt to one German monk.

Misunderstanding a “memorable misunderstanding”

The spontaneous generation of life on Earth is as likely as a whirlwind putting a Boeing 747 together using scattered spare parts in a junkyard.

The wingless angel

No scene depicting the birth of Jesus is complete without angels.

Criticism of Daniel: Arguments of destructive criticism and their counterarguments

The biblical prophet Daniel was treated with hostility during his lifetime and has been attacked throughout history by sceptical or apostate Jews and Christians. At the same time, he has been cherished and defended by people of all generations, including faithful Jews, Jesus Christ, and modern researchers, who have systematically responded to criticisms and objections raised against his book and prophecies.

Judge and jury

I once served on a jury and, to my surprise, was voted foreman. The accused was charged with manslaughter, a serious crime with quite a harsh penalty; while driving an aged-care minivan filled with pensioners, he’d hit and killed a pedestrian. The defendant was a facility volunteer who had been taking a group of pensioners shopping. His vehicle collided with the deceased in...

An unusual preacher

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.

Gethsemane, the garden of the divine sighs

As soon as the tourists leave the land of the silent agony of Gethsemane, their lives return to normal, and the garden where the Son of God sobbed in indescribable pain, misunderstood and unsupported even by His closest disciples, sinks back into oblivion.

Never forgotten by His heart

The sermons. My mother’s stories. The little sand table and Sabbath School for children. Adults’ conversations about religion. All the information I absorbed in childhood helped me sketch an image of Jesus with one major flaw: it was rendered in far too many shades of grey.

The final days of history

Virtually every civilization has been characterised by religious beliefs about the end of all things, not least about the timing and the conditions that precede the end, and signs of its imminence. There are many differences between these beliefs across civilisations, but many similarities too.

Christians do not understand unconditional forgiveness

Forgiveness is the central idea in Christianity that sets it apart from other religions.

The Protestant Reformation: The river that runs through the whole earth

The Protestant Reformation was a tumultuous river, the flow of which began to become visible in 1517. A significant contribution to this eruption was made by its tributaries, the (pre-) Reformation movements: the Waldenses, Albigensians, Lollards, Hussites, etc.—true springs of the main Protestant current, which took over their force in its flow through history.

Pietism within the Protestant Reformation

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