This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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We begin in ignorance and we end in ignorance. But, in the midst of our ignorance, Jesus is walking with us.
This story of despair met with the hope of the gospel is rightly told by many during the holiday season.
As Simeon sang, you might lead your hearers in a song of defiant and hopeful confidence to close out a year characterized by death and despair.
At the center of this gospel reading is a conversation. It was of the memorable variety. It involved a peasant girl from a small town and a mighty messenger from God.
Whatever else may come, however worse it may get, the light has come and will come again.
To a world enslaved to time (because it has no future), the Church's disregard for clocks and calendars is ridiculous.
We at 1517 are utterly committed to keeping the main thing, the main thing.
Mark makes no effort to impress listeners or win votes. His voice aims only to prepare those who hear it for the coming of the Lord.
Jesus desires for us to watch. The question, however, is, “How do we watch for the return of Jesus?”
Heaven is Miller Time. Heaven is the party in the streaming sunlight of the world’s final afternoon.
What does the return of the Lord Jesus in judgment mean for me now in the face of all the real-life verdicts that I have to face?
In this context where death looms large, Jesus reveals a kingdom where life looms even larger.