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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Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
Don't lose hope. Don't avoid church on Sunday morning.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
Faith is like a horse with blinders because it only beholds God’s promise. It is obsessed with what God has already said.
Whatever body part you are, the body of Christ is no pod person. Together, we’re a living, breathing, deathless whole.
FLAME uses Scripture and church history to argue that baptism is a gospel gift, not our work.
God has a plan for this world that he put into place from eternity, a plan that is carried out in Jesus Christ and promises unimaginably great blessings for believers.
In the face of abject evil, these two faithfully cling to the words and truths of he alone who is Good, Jehovah God.
To give us God’s name, the name that is above every name, Christ gave us the exact words to say at baptism: the name of the triune God who is three persons, one God: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Free-range Christ is fearful Christ because he is present, speaking, and I just crucified him.
Sometimes loss is gain. Sometimes defeat is victory. Sometimes weakness is strength. Sometimes death is life. Sometimes, that is, when Christ is at the center, on his cross and not in his tomb.
Who we are buried with matters. But there is no need to go out and find a dead prophet so you can join him six feet under.