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.

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This is an excerpt from “All Charges Dropped! Devotional Narratives from Earthly Courtrooms to the Throne of Grace,” written by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2022).
God commands we serve only Him. We serve Him with all we have and all we are, including the 90% of our income which does not go in the plates. What does it look like to serve God above money?
“There,” the Queen said, “That’s so much better than talking, isn’t it?”
When God makes promises, he is incapable of not keeping them.
Only by faith in Christ are we truly awake.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
The heart of your sermon is the promise that God, in Jesus, has sought and found each of us. He receives us sinners and invites us to eat with Him at His table.
The smallest amount of Holy Spirit-created faith defeats every antichrist belief we hold.
This is an excerpt from “All Charges Dropped! Devotional Narratives from Earthly Courtrooms to the Throne of Grace,” written by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2022).
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
The reason nothing can come before Jesus is because nothing endures beyond the grave except for Jesus.
There is no true “self” apart from God. Anything so surmised is caught up in the meaninglessness that is death.