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.

All Articles

In truth, forgetting transgressions has little to do with forgiving others who wrong us.
These three: to judge, to avenge, and to glory, have been taken from us, and no person should share in them.
Only the ministry of the Gospel can forgive sins, even while civil government rightly carries out retribution for lawlessness and disobedience.
We can’t all afford to travel the world, but the more we read from outside our own context, the bigger we see the world.
Three of the most profound truths embedded in the fabric of the universe are that blood has a voice, blood cries out to God, and blood is heard by heaven.
Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. It can get ahold of a person and turn him all the way in on himself. What seemed a brief reflection lingers for hours, days, weeks, even years.
Our righteousness and the righteousness of our neighbor have nothing to do with what we eat or do not eat.
The whole Reformation, and the reason for Lutheran theology at all, is to improve preaching.
Happiness is a slippery term. We all want it. We're all supposed to pursue it. But nobody seems to know how to obtain it.
Our past, present, and future receive healing from Jesus’ wounds.
I’d like to offer a short reflection on the theme of “worldliness” as it appears in his later work and how that’s connected to an item of his Lutheran heritage: the theology of the cross.
They cannot know that I am already a father, but, this side of eternity, I won’t ever meet my child because of a miscarriage.