Blog Search Results

John Chau, missionary to the Sentinelese: Martyr or madness?

You've probably seen it in the news lately: John Chau, the American guy who tried to evangelise the secluded Sentinelese tribe off the coast of India. Much of the debate in secular media has centered around the grief of his friends and family; how he could have brought outside disease to the tribespeople and potentially killed them all (despite this not being their first contact with outsiders, with no known ill effect), or that he ventured there completely in ignorance with no preparation or wisdom — something which the missionary agency, All Nations, has recently debunked. But the question I want to look at is this: was Chau's mission total madness or is...

A Historic Easter Change Is Coming — But Will Protestants Get On Board?

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 w...

Creedal Christians: The Apostle's Creed

...found in Justin Martyr’s First Apology (around 165 AD) to Irenaeus’ Against Heresies (around 200 AD) and beyond, showing that this “rule of faith” had been passed on for centuries before taking being formalised, which has now survived millennia to this day! Conclusion This creed is really just a summary of Biblical principles and doctrines which make up the Gospel message, as handed on to us by the Apostles. This is their teaching which was memorised and recited before much of the New Testament had been written, and we'd do well to also commit it to memory as the rule of faith for ourselves so we've always got the Gospel in mind to tell others about...

The Eighth Day

... such as Justin Martyr, who wrote saying that the eighth day “possessed a certain mysterious significance, which the seventh day did not”; and Cyprian who wrote that this was also the fulfilment of the Jewish practice of circumcision on the eighth day after birth (Genesis 17:12) which was a shadow of Christ rising from the dead to give us “the circumcision of the Spirit”. This symbolism and spiritual fulfillment carries on throughout various early authors too, and is also sometimes referred to as the “Lord’s Day”, which is a phrase you might recognise from Revelation 1:10 too. But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, an...

The Resurrection as a historical event

...ul says! Justin Martyr gives a good analogy in his great work, First Apology, when trying to explain this concept of the resurrection to a Roman emperor, and contrasts it with “human seed” (ie. sperm); [If I] were to show you human seed and a picture of a man, and were to say with confidence that from such a substance such a being could be produced, would you believe before you saw the actual production? – St. Justin Martyr: First Apology Basically, if you’d never known human growth, and someone showed you a drop of fluid and a photo of an adult and said one produced the other, would you believe it if you hadn’t already witnessed it to be true?...

Lent: Day 11 - Ignatius to Polycarp

...Day Eleven: St. Ignatius of Antioch: Letter to Polycarp (full text) Who: Ignatius converted at a young age and later became Bishop of Antioch. A friend of Polycarp and fellow disciple of John, there is a long standing tradition that Ignatius was the child that Jesus held in his arms and blessed in Mark 10:13-16 What: A letter addressed personally to Polycarp giving him advice and encouragement as a bishop, plus some instructions on marriage to the church, which are reminiscent of Paul’s epistles. Why: Ignatius wrote a series of letters to the churches in Asia Minor whilst en route to Rome to face Martyrdom by wild beasts in the Colosseum around 108 AD. Wh...