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Jesus, Mithras and Ancient Roman Cults: Separating Fact from Fiction

Welcome to the next instalment of my series looking at the ancient mythological gods and how they compare to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Mithras is yet another popular ancient god that people like to compare with Jesus and make wild claims about, proposing that they are the same deities with different names. But is this even remotely true? This article has ended up being a bit longer than anticipated as it’s one of the few ancient religions that was contemporary to the birth of Christianity which was seen as somewhat of a rival belief system, so there’s a lot of interesting things to cover! The Origins Mithras has his roots in ancient Persi...

7 Ways Jesus Reverses the Curse From Eden

...shameful death to conquer it, while Adam hides in his shame. Genesis 3:9,10But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” He said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” Hebrews 12:2…looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame… 3. Jesus dies outside of the gates of the city to make a way for people to enter paradise and have forgiveness of sin; Adam and Eve were forced outside of paradise because of their sin. Genesis 3:23,24…therefore the Lord God se...

Who is the New Jerusalem?

...defeating death and ushering in the New Covenant!   This is God showing that things work differently now. No longer is he only found in a temple, or a specific holy place (a lá John 4:21) – now he lives with us and in us!   This is why everything is new! Heaven will never be the same again, and neither will the Earth! God has set up a new temple where he dwells permanently now: in us, the Church!   Everything is New! If we go back to Paul’s letters for a moment and read 2 Corinthians, we can see that this is what Paul was getting at too. He had grasped this and was desperately trying to get it across to the Corinthian church. Oh, how slow are we o...

The Coming Kingdom of the Son of Man

...ut you to death"). The parallel account in Luke 21 words this persecution almost word-for-word with Matt 10:23 – "But before all this [the signs and destruction] occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name." Luke 21:12   Now, Jesus goes further with his explanation and shows how this ties in with Daniel's prophecy (Daniel 9:20-27), which his Jewish audience would have understood. Matthew's Gospel was written to a Jewish community, and so keeps this language: "So when you see the desolating sacrilege standing in the holy pla...

Understanding the Ultimate Ransom

...decay of death. Human riches, no matter how vast, are powerless in the face of the ultimate cost of redemption. As Christians, this message resonates deeply with our understanding of salvation through Christ’s sacrifice. The Cost of Redemption The Psalmist’s lament about the futility of relying on wealth for redemption points to a universal human condition: the insufficiency of human efforts to secure eternal life. The idea that “no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it.” (v.7) highlights that redemption is beyond human capacity and ability. The price is too high, and no payment is ever enough to achieve eternal...

Lent: Day 8 - Ignatius to the Romans

...event his death! From the way he writes, it sounds like the church in Rome had great influence and could have probably changed his sentence to have Ignatius set free. But he writes to them saying that he is “afraid” of their love, “lest it should do me an injury” because it was easy for the Roman church to “accomplish what [they] please” which, in his mind, would make it difficult for him to “attain to God” if they show their love to his flesh and thus cause him to have to run his race once again from the start. This letter is overall different in its tone and I found the things Ignatius said quite a challenge. Ignatius repeatedly says he will...