Wade Johnston, Life Under the Cross: A Biography of the Reformer Matthias Flacius Illyricus, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis: MO, 2025.
This ancient “tale of two mothers” concerns far more than theological semantics—it is the difference between a God who sends and a God who comes.
This story points us from our unlikely heroes to the even more unlikely, and joyous, good news that Jesus’ birth for us was just as unlikely and unexpected.

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This is an edited excerpt from the conclusion of The Resurrection Fact: Responding to Modern Critics, edited by John Bombaro and Adam Francisco. (1517 Publishing, 2016).
Jesus weeps because his heart pulses with furious rage and fierce love.
Christ shows up in the middle of our storms and our nightmares. That’s where he sets up shop.
Is salvation by the law or not? Moses or Jesus? Indeed, we find a fundamental parting of the ways put forward here, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Prior sees much of evangelicalism’s imaginary trouble arising from the fact that it emphasizes quick and dramatic conversion experiences and a personally directed relationship with God.
In the tumultuous sea of information, opinions, and ideologies that break over us each day, we hold fast to the anchor of our faith—Jesus, the true prophet.
God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
The existence of aliens can not negate the promise given to us by God courtesy of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The resurrection of Jesus encompasses the total and comprehensive glorification of a human being, not merely his restoration.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
Caesar boasted: “I came. I saw. I conquered.” Christ can rightly say: “I came. I saved. I ascended.”
What I desperately needed was not to preach to myself, but to listen to a preacher—not to take myself in hand, but to be taken in the hands of the Almighty.