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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In this article Amy Mantravadi give a short but helpful summary of the differences in Lutheran and Reformed thought regarding assurance.
Confession and absolution offer more than assurance, they gift real and genuine Divine promises.
We know that death does not have the last word in Christ.
God comes to us through the flesh and blood and spirit of Christ precisely where he promised to be manifest to us and for us.
This is an excerpt from “Finding God in the Darkness: Hopeful Reflections from the Pits of Depression, Despair, and Disappointment” by Bradley Gray (1517 Publishing, 2023).
Only the resurrection of Jesus guarantees and facilitates divine presence and love to us as divine life for us.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
The resurrection of Jesus encompasses the total and comprehensive glorification of a human being, not merely his restoration.
Jesus is the only answer to the nagging question. He is the only way to make sense of this unsettling story in Exodus 4.
God wants his word of promise to be the only thing we bank on, the only thing we have confidence in.
May you believe, in this thin-line world, that this Jesus is for you, not against you.
Walther’s living legacy is his enduring teaching on how to distinguish the law and the gospel in the Church’s proclamation.