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.
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.
The word of assurance given to Moses at Sinai echoes through eternity on the lips of the Savior, untroubling troubled souls with the good news that there is one who walks the paths of life with you, and soon he’s coming to bring you to himself.

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Only in Christ has God taken upon himself the worst that could ever happen between God and man: he has allowed himself to be rejected.
Maybe it was because I read this book to put myself to sleep. But maybe the lack of any Christian references was part of my sadness.
I finally watched the film “Encanto” with my kids. I had heard many people say the subtext of this movie was deeper than most. So, we snuggled up on the couch and watched it to see what everyone was talking about.
Excerpt #1 from the new book “Withertongue Emails" by Donavon Riley.
If God ever forgives you, it is not just allowing you to start over and try harder the second time, but it is a whole, new, complete justification that is given as a free gift and without any work of our own—outside the law.
The language of faith speaks promise and persecution, hope and trial, victory and pain. The language of the world may well speak the former, but rarely the latter.
God’s design in the Law is to enable man to know himself; to perceive the false and unjustified state of his heart; to discover how far he is from God and to disdain his own goodness.
Mephibosheth’s story is a living parable of the gospel. It reeks of redemption, demonstrating precisely what Christ does for even the chiefest of sinners.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
Starting March 7th, 1517 Academy is partnering with Grand View University to offer the first course of its kind: A college-level course for those ready to dig deeper and earn real college credit.
Rest doesn’t come cheap. Perhaps there’s no scarcer commodity in our time. Plenty sell it, but there’s no warranty, and it seldom lasts.
The sword of the spirit in Holy Scripture does indeed show us our sin, but thanks be to God, it also shows us our Savior.