The Gospel of Jeffrey Dahmer

Luke J. Wilson | 3 hours ago | Archaeology

In early July 2026, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced something pretty amazing: an entire Byzantine-era city, buried beneath the sands of the Dakhla Oasis, had been uncovered almost intact! Streets, homes, bread ovens, a fortress, and at its heart, a fourth-century basilica church. That might not seem very exciting on first glance. But this find deserves a closer look, because it puts flesh on something we usually only encounter in the abstract: what it actually looked like when Christianity took root, house by house, in an ordinary town far from the centres of imperial power. What Was Found The excavation, carried out by an Egyptian mission under the Supreme Council of Antiquities at the Ain El-Sabil site in the New Valley Governorate, roughly 185 miles west of Luxor, has been underway for several seasons. According to Hisham El Leithy, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the settlement was laid out on a deliberate grid — north-south thoroughfares crossed by east-west streets, forming open squares and public spaces. This wasn’t a huddle of huts; it was a planned town. At the centre of that plan stood a basilica church dating to the mid-fourth century AD, overlooking one of the main streets. Around it, archaeologists found the remains of two watchtowers, a heavily fortified structure with thick defensive walls, and houses with spacious reception halls and vaulted roofs — complete with bread ovens, kitchens, and grinding stones for processing grain. Everyday life, preserved almost exactly as it was left. Two houses stand out that have been identified. One belonged to a man named Tisous,* identified as a church deacon, dating to the second half of the fourth century. The other belonged to a man named Tabibos. Over a thousand years later and we know the name of who owned a house and a home-church; I always find it fascinating! Archaeologists believe Tabibos’s house, which dates to the early fourth century, functioned as a house church before the basilica was ever built. A collection of coins bearing Byzantine emperors, Christian symbols and Latin inscriptions was uncovered during the excavation. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities via Facebook; Dea Picture Library/De Agostini via Getty Images)   There’s also a documentary find that’s easy to skim past but genuinely significant: nearly 200 ostraca — broken pieces of pottery and limestone used as everyday writing material — inscribed in Coptic and Greek. Diaa Zahran, head of the Islamic, Coptic and Jewish Antiquities Sector, described them as recording sales transactions, correspondence, and other mundane details of daily life. Things we rarely get a glimpse into as the mundane rarely makes history. Alongside these, the mission recovered a substantial haul of bronze coins bearing Byzantine emperors and Christian symbols, plus gold coins from the reign of Constantius II (337–361 AD) — coinage that anchors the site’s prosperity firmly within the fourth century. Before the Basilica: The House Church at Ain El-Sabil What makes Tabibos’s house the most theologically interesting part of this discovery is timing. If it predates the basilica and dates to the early fourth century, it sits right at — or just before — the pivot point of Roman-Egyptian Christian history: the years surrounding Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 AD, when Christianity moved from a persecuted minority faith to a tolerated, and increasingly favoured, one. A time of transition between a house church and a purpose-built basilica when the threat of persecution no longer loomed over the Church. We know from Paul’s letters that the earliest churches met in homes — Romans 16:5 greets “the church in [Prisca and Aquila’s] house,” and similar greetings appear in 1 Corinthians 16:19 and Colossians 4:15. If we were to imagine how a letter from Paul to this house church might...

Luke J. Wilson | 12th March 2026 | Eschatology

Something bizarre happened in the White House Oval Office this week. Photographs circulated on social media showing President Donald Trump seated at his desk, surrounded by approximately twenty Christian pastors from across the country, their hands extended towards him in prayer. The image provoked sharply divided reactions: some saw it as a moving expression of faith; others found it deeply unsettling. Whatever one makes of the optics, it arrived at a charged moment. Trump held a prayer meeting in the Oval Office after his administration admitted the war with Iran will likely last weeks longer than promised | Credit: Dan Scavino's X account Days earlier, reports emerged that a military commander had told troops that the current US war with Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” and that President Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These were not fringe internet rumours. They were filed as formal complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) by an anonymous non-commissioned officer acting on behalf of fifteen service members — the majority of whom were themselves Christians. By Tuesday of that week, MRFF had logged more than two hundred similar complaints across fifty military installations, covering every branch of the armed forces. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have since called for a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation, citing what they describe as “glaring Constitutional concerns” and potential violations of DoD regulations on religious neutrality. The political questions about separation of church and state in the US are for others to address. What I want to do here is something more straightforward: examine what Revelation actually says, because the theology driving these claims does not hold up under scrutiny. And that matters here a lot; not as a partisan point, but as a question of biblical faithfulness. First, a Word About Context If you have read my previous article on Revelation some of what follows will be familiar ground. But it bears repeating, because the misunderstanding at the heart of this story is so widespread that it has taken on the feel of settled orthodoxy in many circles. The Book of Revelation is commonly thought to be written in the late first century ~95 AD, during or around the reign of Emperor Domitian. Though there is internal evidence that it was possibly written during Nero’s reign prior to 70 AD. Both of these emperors were most aggressive proponents of the imperial cult in Rome’s history. Domitian required that he be addressed as “lord and god,” had this title printed on coinage, and expected acts of religious reverence towards the Emperor as a demonstration of political loyalty. To refuse was to invite economic exclusion, marginalisation, and worse. Rome on seven hills It is into that precise context that John of Patmos writes. He is not composing a coded forecast of twenty-first century geopolitics. He is writing resistance literature — what scholars call apocalyptic literature — a well-established Jewish and early Christian genre which uses vivid symbolic imagery to pull back the curtain on earthly power and name it for what it truly is. The seven-headed beast of Revelation is Rome. The seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, an identification so widely acknowledged in early church scholarship that it barely requires argument. The mark of the beast, calculated through Hebrew gematria to 666 (or 616 in some early manuscripts), points directly to Nero Caesar (transliterated into Hebrew as נרון קסר, “nrwn qsr”) — the Emperor who became the archetype of anti-Christian persecution due to the levels of evilness he enacted. The second beast, which looks like a lamb but speaks for the dragon, performs signs to deceive, enforces the mark, and compels worship of the first beas...

Luke J. Wilson | 22nd November 2025 | Persecution

Every now and then something happens in this country that feels small on the surface but carries a deeper spiritual weight beneath it. In this case it comes from a Labour council just outside of London when in March of this year, Rushmoor Borough Council attempted to criminalise Christian street preaching. The injunction has thankfully been paused (for now) as Christians rallied, prayed, and pushed back. But the implications of what nearly happened, and could still happen, should give all of us pause. Because once one council tries something like this, others start paying attention. A precedent has been set — not necessarily in law, but in what could be. Someone, somewhere, will look at Rushmoor’s attempt and think, perhaps this is the way to make Christianity quiet again. The Quiet Re-emergence of Old Hostilities We tend to imagine persecution as something ancient or foreign. Lions, arenas, emperors, gulags, terror attacks in far off countries. And sure, we here in the UK are not shedding literal blood for the Gospel, but that doesn’t mean persecution has vanished. It has simply changed shape. Instead of swords and prisons, we face restrictions and injunctions. Instead of mobs dragging believers through the streets, councils draft documents that treat prayer, worship, and evangelism as public threats. The methods have changed, but the intent remains strangely familiar: to push the Gospel to the margins, to confine it to the private sphere, and to make public displays of faith something suspicious, weird, and even harmful. If Rushmoor’s injunction had gone through, it would have made praying with someone in town square, even holding out a leaflet, something punishable by fines or prison time. No blood shed, but freedom restricted and removed. No martyrdom, but the same coercive pressure to be silent. Succumb to Caesar (the local council) or face death (prison/fines etc). History Teaches Us Something the Councils Have Forgotten Whenever authorities have attempted to stifle Christianity, something remarkable has happened: the Church has not faded away, but grown. Opposition has never extinguished faith; instead, it has refined it, purified it, strengthened it. Tertullian famously wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” And while no one in Britain today is being asked to spill blood for Christ, the principle still holds. Pressure produces depth. Threats produce courage. Restrictions produce creativity. This is where real faith takes hold and grows! When believers are told to stop preaching, they remember why they preach. When prayer is threatened, prayer increases. When the gospel is pushed out of the public square, Christians step back into it with clarity and resolve. It’s ironic, really. When the world tries to silence the Church, it ends up drawing attention to the very message it wants to suppress. The Real Danger: Not the Injunction Itself, But What Comes Next The paused injunction in Rushmoor is not the end of the story. If anything, it is the prologue. Because we are now entering a season where councils and governments — pressured by secular expectations and political anxieties — may test the boundaries of religious freedom in ways that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Once you try to criminalise prayer in public, the next attempt becomes easier. And we’ve already seen examples of this with the so-called “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Once preaching is labelled “hateful,” more restrictions feel reasonable. A few street preachers have already been arrested this year already. Once a council decides that worship and prayer is “distressing”, others will wonder if they should follow suit. This is how liberties are lost: not in a single moment, but through a drip-feed of small decisions that gradually reshape what is considered normal. That is why Christians cannot afford to shrug this off as a local issue. It is a signpost...

Luke J. Wilson | 29th January 2025 | Easter

Pope Francis has recently expressed the Catholic Church’s willingness to accept a unified date for Easter, a move aimed at fostering greater Christian unity, particularly with the Orthodox Church. This long-standing issue arises from the different calendars used by Western and Eastern Christian traditions — the Gregorian and Julian calendars — leading to discrepancies in Easter celebrations. Talks between Catholic and Orthodox leaders have intensified, hoping a common date could be agreed upon. However, this raises important questions for Protestant denominations regarding whether they would adopt the unified date or risk falling out of alignment with these historic branches of Christianity. Celebrating the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity recently, Pope Francis noted that this year the Easter date coincides with the West’s Gregorian calendar and the East’s Julian calendar. The Pope said, “I renew my appeal that this coincidence may serve as an appeal to all Christians to take a decisive step forward toward unity around a common date for Easter.” “The Catholic Church is open to accepting the date that everyone wants: a date of unity” — Pope Francis The recent discussions between the Catholic and Orthodox churches regarding the unification of the Easter celebration date have some significant implications for Protestant denominations and as an Anglican, the wider Anglican Communion. Historically, the disparity in Easter dates has been a visible manifestation of Christian disunity, and efforts to establish a common date have been ongoing. Previous Attempts  In 2016, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby expressed support for a fixed date for Easter, engaging in dialogues with leaders from various Christian traditions, including Pope Francis and Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew. He emphasised the importance of unity in celebrating the resurrection of Christ and hoped for an agreement within a decade, or at least before he retired. Recently uncovered scandals forced him to retire earlier than planned, so that dream isn’t happening for him anymore. A long time ago here in the UK, an act of Parliament was passed in 1928 which allowed for Easter Sunday to be fixed on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. But this Act has never been activated and so Easter has remained a variable date, determined by the moon’s cycle. From an Anglican perspective, aligning the date of Easter with Catholic and Orthodox churches would be a significant ecumenical step, reflecting a commitment to Christian unity. The Anglican Communion, known for its via media (middle way) approach, often seeks to bridge differences between traditions. Therefore, it is plausible that the Anglican Church would support and adopt a unified Easter date, should an agreement be reached between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. I would at least expect the leadership to discuss it at Synod, and personally, I hope it would be accepted as a step towards global unity on our most important and significant celebration: the resurrection of Christ! For other Protestant denominations though, reactions may vary. Some may view the unification of the Easter date as a positive move towards greater Christian unity and choose to follow suit. Others, valuing their own traditions and independence (or anti-Catholic bias), might prefer to maintain their current practices as a variable date. The impact on Protestant denominations largely depends on their theological perspectives and openness to ecumenical initiatives. Ancient Controversies Before the Council of Nicaea in 325, different Christian communities celebrated Easter on different dates; the council decided that for the unity of the Christian community and its witness, Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. This is known as the Quartodeciman (lit. Fourteenth) controversy. It’s called this due to the issue being over w...