Luther neither removed the Apocrypha from the Bible nor discouraged its use. Rather, he received and preserved the ancient distinction inherited from the fathers: the Apocrypha is valuable, edifying, and worthy of reading, but it is not Holy Scripture and therefore cannot serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
The confessors at Augsburg remind us that every generation of Christians is called to bear witness to the gospel amid the challenges and pressures of its own age. As they confessed Christ before emperors and kingdoms, so the Church continues to confess Him before the world today.
When Jesus washes you with baptismal water, you can rest assured that the Lion of Judah is on the move.

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God will not repent. He will not repent of His promises. He will not change His mind regarding His selfless, self-sacrificing, inconceivable love for sinners.
Abraham knew that this was a God who kept his promises.
Isaiah’s beautiful prophetic language describing the, “Coming of the Promised One,” is very familiar to us, but the challenge is always to determine to which coming of the Messiah Isaiah’s prophecy is pointing towards.
James takes the Jewish expectation and thoroughly baptizes it in the light of the fact of the Incarnation. Messiah has come.
There he sat, awaiting his executioner. John looked around at what God and His Messiah were not doing, and even the greatest among those born of woman had his doubts. “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”
God does not combat the impending armies of Satan with might and power, but with the weakness of a babe.
The Son of Eve disarmed Satan’s hold on humanity, not with an earthquake, atomic bomb, or brilliant essay, but with his dead body and final words, “It is finished.”
Isaiah 11:1-10 provides us with an Advent text capturing the beauty, excitement and reality of both the first coming of the Messiah and the second coming.
Paul argues that now as the Messiah has come and has achieved what the entire Hebrew Bible (i.e., the Old Testament) has been moving toward, the Scriptures can be read as an open book.
The problem is not that we are unrepentant. The problem is our contrition is too small.
Advent draws us to the Lord who comes. We might even say that Advent really does begin in creation as the Father through His Eternal Word breathes His Spirit over the depths of darkness and calls into existence that the culmination of things that are not.
Isaiah 2:1-5... is a beautiful eschatological prophecy focusing on the era of peace that comes along with the coming of the LORD.