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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Jesus Christ is relentless. He does not give up. And with him comes the certainty of redemption.
Below is the Thinking Fellows Essential Reading List with contributions from each of the Thinking Fellows hosts.
Dr. Montgomery spent his life—even into his final year at the age of 92—contending for the whole Christian faith once and for all delivered to the saints.
The central message of Christianity is not a worldview, a way of life, or a program for personal or societal change; it is a person and the message of the cross.
What a small thing in the big picture to give his head for the Head of the Church who would give his life for John and all sinners.
The gospel is his weapon that beats back the darkness — “I AM the Resurrection and the Life. Bow your head, bend the knee when I walk by.”
When the historical importance of revivalism is understood, one can appreciate that the question, “Could America experience another revival?” is also a question about the fate of Christianity in America.
The Lion of Judah, Christ the King, Jesus of Nazareth, will not be away from us for one night.
This great victory, the true defeat of death, I receive not by my thinking, willing, or working, but simply by believing.
In Christ, this world’s never-children are his always-children, because he isn’t a God of death, after all.
With the Spirit we will get lost in the world. We are on a new track.
Moltmann is gone now, but his theology will continue to provoke and provide.