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The Historic Practice of Abortion and How Ancient Christians Responded

It’s no secret that the majority of Christians are against abortion, no matter where you look in the world. But nowhere has the issue come to more of a head than in the US recently with the overturning of Roe v Wade, which had made abortion legal across the country. Now abortion is no longer a federal constitutional right, but individual states now have the authority to determine the legality and rulings around abortion. Christian opposition to abortion in America has always been a heated topic, especially in recent decades, but this isn’t a novelty within the Church in America, or globally, and has been a position of the faithful for about 2000 years. Even...

26 Differences Between Muhammad and Jesus

If you’ve ever spent any time online, either in random Facebook comment threads or reading the news, I’m sure you’ve come across the claim that Islam and Christianity are basically the same and that “we all worship the same God”, getting lumped together as an “Abrahamic religion” along with Judaism. Muslims claim Islam “is the completed final version of the previous messages originally revealed to Moses and Jesus” which came to “correct the deviations of Christianity”, which had apparently become corrupt by the seventh century when Muhammad came along. But for something which is meant to come from the same God at its core, it would sugges...

Is fasting an expectation for Christians?

...d on into Christianity quite naturally. During Second Temple Judaism, biweekly fasts were a common practice amongst Jews (see Luke 18:12 for a brief mention of it), and this is what Jesus would have been targeting in his teaching in Matt. 6. A late first century text from the early church, called The Didache (which was a sort of “church handbook”), expands on this teaching of Jesus and demonstrates to us how the earliest believers understood this and carried on the practice of fasting, taking the familiar model they were used to in Judaism, and reshaping it: But let not your fasts be with the hypocrites; for they fast on the second and fifth day of the w...

Lent: Day 12 - Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 1-11

...Day Twelve: St. Justin Martyr: First Apology, Chaps. 1-11 Who: Justin Martyr was a Philosopher who converted to Christianity and became a tireless evangelist and apologist. Justin wrote more Christianity than any other person prior to his time. He is classified herein as Eastern, since he a native of Samaria and his thought patterns were Eastern. However, he spent the last years of his life in Rome, where he was executed as a martyr (c. 165). What: An apologetic (defence) essay to explain what Christians believe and do. Why: Justin is demanding the Emperor to investigate accusations and unjust persecution against Christians so that they at least may face a f...

An Examination of Conditional Immortality (Part Two)

...to see. Christopher Date explains the latter view well in his book, Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism: The background to Rev 14:11 is to be found in this picture of Sodom’s destruction and to the oracle of Edom’s destruction in Isa 34:10ff. “Isaiah says ‘its smoke will rise forever,’ telling us that Edom’s destruction is not only certain (not quenched) and complete (smoke rising) but also irreversible. The desolation will be unending.” The torment experienced in the presence of the angels and of the Lamb refers to the moment of judgment, not to the eternal state. What continues after their tormenting judgment and destructio...

My new book, available now! Take a journey through the first 400 years of Church History in only 40 days!

...Take a journey through the first 400 years of Church History in only 40 days! "40 Days with the Fathers" is a daily reading plan/devotional spread out over forty days; and over the course of this reading plan you will read extracts and commentary on 23 different early Church texts from a selection of some of the most influential Church Fathers, such as: Didache, Diognetus, Polycarp, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose of Milan, and Leo the Great. These people who came before us, those great men of faith, many of whom suffered persecution and martyrdom to preserve the Church and Christ's mission, bridge the gap between th...