Foreshadows that illuminate | How Christ was known before the incarnation

The Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ—or the Christian Easter—stand out distinctly in the crowded landscape of global religious beliefs and ideas. No other religious tradition contains the concept of a divine person offering Himself as the unique and sufficient mediator through whom God draws near to humanity, and humanity draws near to God.

Conversion of an atheist

"God has guided my steps in life, saved me from some wrong decisions, and when I have made mistakes, He has helped me to admit my mistakes and learn from them." (Dumitru Borţun)

How to grow together with God

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.

There are hidden gospels that expose religious manipulation. True or false?

On the basis of ancient, hidden non-canonical gospels, some commercial and half-learned scholars propagate sensational discoveries, which are in fact both old and novel speculations arising from the Bible’s silence on some aspects of Jesus’s life.

Jesus is the argument

Celsus was concerned about the spread of the new sect called Christianity. He felt that Christianity's view of the world and of life was so different from the ancient world order that, if accepted by the majority, it would ruin society. 

Jesus and the Goddess of Reason | Thomas Paine and the trap of contemporary deism

"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life." This is how one of the most famous leaders of the American Revolution and an influential political writer of the late 18th century-Thomas Paine (1737-1809)-begins his testimony of faith. A few lines later in the same book, The Age of Reason, after vehemently rejecting the creed of...

Pray as you can

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 dilemma of unfulfilled Bible prophecies

There are predictions made in the Bible. Have all the predictions of the past been fulfilled? If not, what does the failure of some of them to be fulfilled say about the credibility of the Bible?

Fighting over the West: Orthodoxy, Protestant Reformation, and Catholicism

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.

In the blind spot

A bicycle trip around the world led two young Americans to the mistaken conclusion that "people are good."

The face of a love that waits at the gates of Heaven

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.

The allure of uncertainty

On June 23, 1863, in France, a book was published that would become the literary sensation of the century. Few could have foreseen the impact it would make. This was not a romance novel, thriller, or self-help guide; it was Vie de Jésus (The Life of Jesus) by Ernest Renan. In less than four months, over 60,000 copies were circulating—a record-breaking success in...

Mary Dyer

That fateful day of June 1st, 1660, was not the first time Mary Dyer wound up at the gallows. The previous time, with her hands tied and her face covered by the handkerchief of her former pastor, Reverend John Wilson, she had escaped death by the skin of her teeth, after a death sentence that had already killed two of her dear friends...

Beholding beauty

I’m walking along a remote beach in Hermanus, South Africa. There’s not a single other footprint in the sand. I take off my shoes and let my feet sink deep into the warm, fine powder. Bliss. My friend, a local who drove me here, takes one look at my face and asks with undeniable pride, “What do you think?” But I can’t answer....

Why did Jesus speak in “riddles”?

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.