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.
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.
The word of assurance given to Moses at Sinai echoes through eternity on the lips of the Savior, untroubling troubled souls with the good news that there is one who walks the paths of life with you, and soon he’s coming to bring you to himself.

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To Live Well is therefore not a general advice book, but a message suffused with the gospel.
May we, as preachers, rise and proclaim that Jesus Christ is sufficient for all our spiritual hunger.
The Church’s unity is not uniformity in every matter of her well-being. It is faithfulness in what constitutes her being.
For many years, I held piety as my god.
A rightly-oriented heart and a rightly-oriented love will consistently do what is best for God and best for our neighbor, which is why St. Augustine speaks of sin as a disordered love.
The Scriptures consistently speak about sanctification as a sure gift for the Christian.
We can lay down our sledgehammers of moralistic performance, which aren’t effective anyway, and we can trust that we are his and his life is ours.
He doesn’t consume us, even though that is what we deserve. Instead, Jesus comes down to us and consumes all our sin by taking it on himself.
The Antichrist offers another continual presence. It is every whisper that tempts us toward autonomy, that tells us to carry it alone, that insists suffering is meaningless.
Instead of offering more details or more information, he does something even better: he promises his very presence.
The Church speaks not with the cleverness of men, but with the breath of God.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not so much the story of a “who-dunnit” as it is the story of the “who-is-it.”