This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 in Sinner Saint: A Surprising Primer to the Christian Life (1517 Publishing, 2025). Sinner Saint is available today from 1517 Publishing.
On its journey from Byzantium to Constantinople to Istanbul, this special place helps us understand the broader arc of Christian history, which goes on until Christ's return.
We needn’t fear statistics and studies as palm readings into a certain future. God is God, and his Spirit is alive through his Word.

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This is an excerpt from Faith in the Face of Tyranny: An Examination of the Bethel Confession Proposed by Dietrich Bonhoeffer & Hermann Sasse in August 1933, written by Torbjörn Johansson and translated by Bror Erickson (1517 Publishing, 2023).
It is of the utmost importance that pastors teach their congregation that through faith in Jesus Christ, they are fortified against the machinations of the adversary.
Prior sees much of evangelicalism’s imaginary trouble arising from the fact that it emphasizes quick and dramatic conversion experiences and a personally directed relationship with God.
I’ve experienced firsthand the promise that God never leaves a congregation empty-handed.
A pastor is sent to proclaim the unconditional grace of God, reminding us again and again that it is our Heavenly Father who reaches out to us in love through his Christ-won forgiveness, and not the other way around.
Only the resurrection of Jesus guarantees and facilitates divine presence and love to us as divine life for us.
God’s published will offers us anchorage, the anchorage of Jesus Christ, in the midst of chaos, reminding us that there is a greater purpose to our lives than the pursuit of worldly success or fleeting pleasures.
If Jesus did not rise, then religion is just religion — a mere anthropological phenomenon.
The Holy Spirit unleashes his power through us, his vines, and we then get to watch as his fruits blossom and ripen.
Everything in Scripture is God revealing himself to his people, you and me.
Christ Jesus brings his word and presence to where you are and he is even willing to do so through the likes of your personally present pastor.
It’s not our eloquence or persuasive rhetoric that changes hearts, but the Word of God that pierces through the hardened shells of unbelief and breathes life into the dead bones of sinners.