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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Repentance means to turn or change your mind. It is not a turn from sin to righteousness. It is a turn from sin to the righteous Son of God who has defeated all sin.
God makes all things new. He refashions us from those turned in upon ourselves, turned to idols of our own choice and making, to experience the freedom He gives by pronouncing us His righteous children.
The proclamation of Christ's coming is for all people, at all times.
To a world enslaved to time (because it has no future), the Church's disregard for clocks and calendars is ridiculous.
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?
The resurrection of Jesus was the moment when the one true God appointed the Man through whom the whole cosmos would be brought back into its proper order. A man got us into this mess; the Man would get it out again.
Faithful preachers should remain steadfast in the biblical categories and terminology and preach the reality of death.
God's city is beautiful because God has constructed it to offer eternal safety to all weary sinners.
From mountain to mountain, from meal to meal the LORD God points us to His banquet, already prepared; the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom which shall have no end!
Everyone dreads what might happen if political control is captured by the enemy. Paranoia is the characteristic feature of this kind of under-realized eschatology.