The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia to address some very important issues which they had forgotten – Christian freedom chief among them. Along with that, he also laid out some obligations of the Christian life. As I considered the celebration of the birth of our nation and our freedom earlier this month I was reminded anew of the above letter, written in 49 AD, just prior to the Jerusalem Council. (Acts 15) … Continue reading
Category Archives: Gospel
As weird as it may seem, life’s ultimate questions are often posed in rock-and-roll lyrics. Consider, for example, the 1969 hit, “And When I Die,” by the band, Blood, Sweat and Tears. Like so many other poets, story-tellers, and just average human beings have questioned, “And When I Die” is all about the question of what happens when I die? As is often the case with the young, they can’t even imagine they will actually … Continue reading
On the way back from speaking at Wheatland Congregational Church in Wheatland, Michigan, the 1969 Norman Greenbaum song, “Spirit in the Sky,” kept popping into my head. As it happens, my friend Fred Slagle (who is the pastor of Wheatland) and I have similar personalities and share some common experiences. We are both part of the cry-baby boomer generation; we were not believers until we were married adults with children; and we both loved … Continue reading
“Honest questions deserve honest answers, but dishonest questions don’t deserve any answers” is a bit of advice passed on to us by our friend and co-founder of Jews for Jesus, the late Jahn Moskowitz. It came at the end of a story he was relaying about a conversation he had with a Jewish atheist who raised an objection to Christianity. Would God reject the man’s “good” mother when she died if she didn’t receive the … Continue reading
The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, popularly known as Jehovah’s Witnesses, teach there is a two-class system of the faithful. There is the elite “anointed class,” 144,000 people who are going to heaven to rule and reign with Jesus when they die. The lower class “other sheep” never make it to heaven but are left behind on Earth. They will be busy cleaning up the mess of Armageddon – and it promises to be a … Continue reading
The old saying is “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.” That is true when kids are rough housing and things go dangerously awry. But life can be that way too. Quite often, it seems, human beings go through life with little thought to what happens when we breathe our last. Life is all fun and games for lots of people, until the music stops and there is no chair to grab onto. … Continue reading