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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Oliver was a friend, chaplain, professor, author, and loyal church reformer. This Gnesio-Lutheran giant will be missed.
For English speakers, no Reformer comes close to Tyndale in terms of measurable impact.
Instead of offering more details or more information, he does something even better: he promises his very presence.
This is an excerpt from Remembering Your Baptism: A Sinner Saint Devotional (1517 Publishing, 2025) by Kathy Morales, pgs 74-77.
Wisdom and strength require bootstrap-pulling and the placing of noses to grindstones.
“If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36).
How do the words “The righteous shall live by his faith” go from a context of hope in hopelessness to the cornerstone declaration of the chief doctrine of the Christian faith?
The Church speaks not with the cleverness of men, but with the breath of God.
This is the second installment in the 1517 articles series, “What Makes a Saint?”
Few couples faced the kind of pressures they endured in their two decades of marriage prior to Martin’s death in 1546.
The doctrine of the Trinity is not so much the story of a “who-dunnit” as it is the story of the “who-is-it.”
Though several generations removed from Luther’s generation, Francke came of age right on time for a new wave of spirituality to collide with the Reformation in the movement known as Pietism.