The Great Awakening is a name given to a distinctly American religious movement. Actually, three different spiritual outbreaks are given this title. The First Great Awakening (1730-55) was a time of religious revival in the Colonies before the Revolutionary War, associated with names like Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley and George Whitefield. The Second Great Awakening […]
We’ve come to the last of the nine New Testament books written during the Pressure Cooker days of extreme persecution endured by the struggling congregations of Christian believers during the last decades of the first Christian century. It’s the Book commonly referred to as “Revelations,” but which is more properly called “The Revelation of St. […]
A person may deal with a minor setback in their dating life by shedding a few tears and going off their diet with a dish of ice cream, but the breakup of a marriage is a deeper hurt that needs much deeper healing. If at my annual checkup the doctor uses the words high cholesterol, […]
As I was reading through Third John, the brief New Testament Book that will be the focus of this week’s Pressure Cooker sermon series, I was surprised to find a very familiar phrase from one of our most reassuring hymns: Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be […]
This is the profound question the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate put to Jesus as the two stood face to face (depicted above in the classic 1890 painting by Ukrainian artist Nikolai Ge). Here’s the conversation that led up to that moment: Pilate summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, […]
I was studying for Sunday’s sermon on the next New Testament book in our Pressure Cooker series, First John, and I came across this provocative passage: Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; for all that is in the […]
As if we didn’t have enough trouble with the COVID19 virus itself, we constantly hear stories questioning how serious the current outbreak is and what precautions should be taken to deal with it. I’m pretty much settled on trusting the information coming from proven professionals in the field, but I’m amazed at what some of […]
Finally! Play ball! It was both exciting and weird watching the first Dodger game of the 2020 season last Thursday. Those cardboard cutouts of actual fans who paid at least $149 to be virtually present seemed like smiling zombies, and the artificial sounds of cheering crowds were never quite coordinated with actual events in the […]
Six months ago today, this article appeared in the Smithsonian Magazine: “A mysterious respiratory virus that has infected hundreds in China has now officially made landfall in the United States, bringing the total number of countries afflicted by the newly described Wuhan coronavirus up to at least six. For now, the Center for Disease Control […]
The early church met opposition right from the beginning. At first, it came from the leaders of the Jewish establishment, as in Stephen’s martyrdom in AD 35 (Acts 7:58-60) or from the puppet King Herod when he executed the Apostle James in AD 42 (Acts 12:2). A few years later, the Emperor Claudius expelled the Jewish […]