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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When we cry to the Lord in our trouble, he will send us a preacher with words that deliver us from destruction.
One of the primary reasons we do not have to fear the future is because the future is certain in Christ.
Lord, today we remember...
St. Paul extends to us the call to arms. In particular, there is one weapon which is effective against so elusive an enemy. The weapon is prayer.
Only by faith in Christ are we truly awake.
Increasingly, to forgive is seen as winking at evil, as shrugging one’s moral shoulders, and as being complicit.
A group of unassuming apostles was given a graphic illustration of how the Lord would use them to turn the world right-side-up through the upside-down logic of grace.
Being the baptized just may be the last, great resistance.
There is only one antidote to the venom of sin and death: the Savior who becomes the serpent so that every snake-bitten-sinner might live.
Our comfort in this seemingly endless age of crisis after crisis is the inexhaustible hope of Jesus’s reversal.
Finding the balance between indifferentism and obsessiveness has never been easy, and it’s especially difficult in our environment.
Sometimes I think we should be more tempted to laugh at the gospel than we are, not in derision but in sheer surprise and awe.