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.
Christ does not hide his wounds. He offers them.
The church does not await a verdict; she proclaims one.

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God is used to working with colorful figures. One of the most colorful in the Bible is Balaam. Hailing from Mesopotamia, Balaam was what we might call a shaman or a soothsayer.
Holding to Jesus’ teaching while denying His divinity presents a host of complications that make it difficult to take one and leave the other.
Your eternal salvation isn’t dependent on performance or effort. Well, not your performance anyway...
The following is an excerpt from Law and Gospel in Action written by Mark Mattes (1517 Publishing, 2019).
Like the Pharisees, as well-meaning, contemporary Christians we too can often add fences to God’s Law.
To be human is to be preoccupied with averting pain and despair. But despair gets a bad rap.
The history of the early Reformation in the New World is both a tale of pirates and the battle of catechisms.
Pergamum! Oh, Pergamum! Behold the glory of Pergamum! It was not at this time the greatest provincial power, nor was it the most favored in the Roman Empire.
You have heard it said that "Dead men tell no tales." “Ah, but they do tell tales!” says I.
The prophet Jonah longed for one thing: to see the Assyrian city of Nineveh utterly destroyed by the wrath of God. His wish eventually came true
And so, when you preach the Law, you are also instructing the conscience and thereby forming it. For some of your hearers, this will result in activating their consciences, making them more sensitive, so they become more aware of their sin and more urgently seek the Gospel. For others, it is a re-instruction.
We all know that Jesus can save sinners, unbelievers, pagans and heathens, all of them great or small; sinners who have been very good at being sinners. You’ve likely seen it yourself or at least heard of it happening.