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.
Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
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.

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The monsters we fight against and the monsters we become are drowned in the blood of the Lamb. Jesus' death, and the power of his resurrection, restore our humanity.
Christ has forgiven you, and all of your worship, all of your prayers, all of your offerings are accepted because they are built on the foundation of Christ’s forgiveness.
When we pray, “Thy will be done,” we are praying a cosmic, grand and mighty prayer.
Into our world of sin, broken hearts, physical ailments, and psychological suffering, our Lord of grace descended.
Sometimes we have to strain hard to hear words deeper than our hearts. Words not from inside, but outside. Words from God, not our own self-spun narratives.
What a person quickly realizes when sin, death, and Satan attack in concrete reality is how inadequate and ill-equipped they are to fight them off.
There is true help in the midst of our pain. Someone who suffered as we suffer, who embraced all our pain in his suffering and death on a cross.
His resurrection reveals that Jonah, and all of us, even the evilest people, are salvageable, even from suicide, in Jesus' death and resurrection.
The following is an excerpt from "Finding Christ in the Straw," written by Robert M. Hiller (1517 Publishing, 2020).
It would do us well to expand what we mean when we say catechesis and consequently broaden the reach of theological education into daily life.
This is our frontier religion: God is waiting to shower blessings upon us if only we will unlock those blessings with the right kind of works, and a sufficient quantity of the same.