Christmas

Don’t miss the Christmas messages on The Bible Study Hour this month. On December 17, James Boice takes us to Genesis 3:15 and points to the source where we find the true joy of the season in his message “Christmas in Eden.” And on Christmas Eve, join Dr. Boice as he looks at a passage not often...

When I was in college I took a class on various religious traditions. My class visited a Jewish synagogue and while there the priest said this in response to a question asked of him that I no longer remember, “You Christians claim to have Jesus but we Jews have something better. We have the law.” I...

Christmas is the time of year we remember and celebrate the birth of the long-awaited Son of the David, who would (and has) saved us from our sins. But did you know that the first Christmas almost didn’t happen? The virgin birth (or better virgin conception) produced a significant problem that...

The holidays are a wonderful time of year. However, for some they are a time of guilt. The season reminds them of things they said and did or did not say or do and those thoughts bring guilty. Strikingly, man is able to pull the galaxies close through a telescope and a microscope can enlarge a...

Advent season has begun. Pastors all around the world are desperately looking for texts and angles on the theme that will enable them to bring fresh light on the light of the ancient story that I known so well, yet which can so easily lose its lustre. The essence of the message is majestic and...

Ann Griffiths and Her Sea of Wonders “O to spend my life in a sea of wonders!” [1] Ann wrote in one of her poems. And her life, spent in a Welsh farm in the small village of Dolwar-Fach, was lived in the constant and exciting discovery of God’s revelation. A Short and Intense Life Born in 1776 to a...

Rowan Williams. Christ the Heart of Creation. Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018. Hardback. 304 pp. $42.99. Advent has given us room for much needed reflection on Christ’s miraculous birth. To that end, I'm happy to recommend Rowan Williams' Christ the Heart of Creation this holiday season. Williams’ book...

Have you ever wondered why Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14? Perhaps the ready answer is that the quote substantiates the virgin conception and birth of Christ, which is true enough. However, the text raises a number of questions. For instance, why did God promise a virgin conceived and virgin born...

Many things in life fill us with wonder. Our world is full of profound mysteries, but the greatest mystery of all is the mystery of the incarnation. One of the profoundest statements of this mystery is 1 Timothy 3:16 : "And by common confession great is the mystery of godliness: He who was revealed...

While rereading Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol I recently read something I had forgotten. When Jacob Marley appeared to Scrooge his body was transparent, so that Scrooge could see not only the front of his long deceased partner’s waistcoat but the back of it too! But then this line appears, “...