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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The reason that anyone would choose a heaven without Jesus, or happiness without Jesus, or healing without Jesus, is because he doesn’t mean that much to them to begin with.
Imagine a church's mission statement is: "You Don't Have to Fake It Till You Make It." That is, you walk into church and an usher hands you a bulletin
That is the way of our Lord, the way of grace. He doesn’t abandon Thomas to drown in a sea of doubt.
The following conversation occurred between one of 1517's readers/listeners and Dr. Rosenbladt via email in February of 2016.
For many, there are days when they’re as excited about going to work on Sunday morning as you are about going to work on Monday morning.
The only thing Hobbits love more than a good meal, is good company with whom they can share it.
When God is at work, oftentimes the best activity is non-activity, the best speech is non-speech. Sometimes God wants us to shut up.
We chase after status, wealth, luxury, glory, honor, youth, beauty, and pleasure. We work ourselves to death. For what?
It's a January day in New York City and the building I work in is just off the water. What this means is that it's cold out and not just cold but cold with a biting wind. As the phrase goes, "you can feel it in your bones."
They may also be fellow sufferers who’ve hit their own bottom with you. Whoever they are, they wear the mask of Jesus the crucified. In them and through them the Lord is at work to love you.
During my many journeys to Japan, I discovered that more than a quarter millennium after his death Bach is now playing a key role in evangelizing that country, one of the most secularized nations in the developed world.
O bloody town of Bethlehem, How shrill we hear thee cry. Your mothers shriek while fathers weep The graveyard lullaby.