Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.

All Articles

The Lord is your Shepherd, your Good Shepherd. And all He wants is you.
We do not, as followers of Jesus, put any hope or place any trust in “princes, in mortal man, in whom there is no salvation” (Ps. 146:3).
Some of the last words our Lord spoke were addressed to a man who stood on the precipice of eternity.
Infamy allows us the opportunity to hone one of our favorite skills: to shrink a 343-page life story down to a single paragraph that narrates what happened on one day, at a certain hour, and in a certain location. We can whittle an entire biography down to a single Tweet.
There is no perfect, divinely chosen, just-waiting-for-you-to-figure-it-out job for you. The Lord will use you to serve others in whatever vocation you choose. You’re not only his child but his priest. So, wherever you work, there is your altar.
Jesus didn’t simply vacate the tomb to end death. He brought up from that grave the seeds of a brand new start at life. Genesis 1 all over again, with no chance of Genesis 3.
When Lamech named his newborn son Noah—which means “rest”—he said, “This one shall give us comfort from our work and from the toil of our hands arising from the ground which the Lord has cursed”
Since God is most high, He can only look down. Nothing is above Him. No one is more exalted than He is.
The prophets of old were right: we do resemble what we revere. Our anthropology is hijacked by materialism. We become just stuff who consume stuff and hope to have enough stuff to make life worth it.
One of my jobs in high school was helping local ranchers work cattle. We’d vaccinate, cut off horns, castrate, mark their ears, and brand them.
Pastors are built from the same stuff as everyone else. That’s good, and that’s bad.
I finally climbed all 109 mountains. My journey began out of desperation, fueled by anger, fear, resentment.