Tag persecution

church

A Game Day Decision

On his first missionary journey Paul said something startling to the believers in Derbe. He said, “[through] many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”[1] Nearly twenty years later, toward the end of Paul’s life, while in his last…

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The Karen Pence Rule

Recently it was announced that Karen Pence – a private citizen who is not even occupying an elected office in the United States of America – is going to resume her teaching career at a Christian school. Part of this…

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The Persecution Driven Life

John Hooper, the English Reformer and pastor, was burned at the stake for his unwavering stand upon the truth of Scripture. In 1555, just three weeks prior to his martyrdom, John Hooper gave the following charge in a letter: “You…

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Conflict, Comfort and the Cross

Last week, a gunman entered First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas and killed 26 people, wounding 20 others. The massacre was brutal and left what will surely be scars on all of those who survived, many of whom were…

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Time to Bury the Bibles?

Few things bring out the hysteria in all of us like a presidential election. Perhaps only the close of a millennium (anyone remember Y2K?) can compete for catapulting Americans into a posture of fear and anxiety about their nation’s collective…

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The Myth of Persecution

Candida Moss, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (New York: HarperOne 2013), 320 pp., $25.99  This is an entertaining, at times thought-provoking, but deeply flawed book. For all of its underlying scholarship, it is…