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Before The Pumpkins: The Road To The Lions

...after the apostles, serving as bishop of Antioch in Syria. Tradition says that Ignatius was the small child whom Jesus held in his arms in Matt. 18:2, though this cannot be verified as Ignatius himself never states it. A more trustworthy tradition 4tells us that he was a disciple of the Apostle John, and this lineage can be felt in his writings. His letters echo the same themes and emphasis on Christ as John does in his Gospel around the incarnation, never failing to highlight the physical nature of Jesus as well as his divine which can be seen with such statements like “Jesus Christ our God” (Epistle to the Ephesians). During the reign of Emperor Trajan (a...

Will the Real Heretics Please Stand Up (Book Review)

...Straight off, this book will challenge you in your thinking and quite possibly in your practice and outworking of life as a Christian—especially if you are from an evangelical/Baptist/non-denominational background. Will the Real HereticsPlease Stand Up The book starts of taking you carefully through some of the practices and beliefs of the early church and those who knew the apostles personally. It all feels very hopeful and like you're being led onward in a journey towards a certain goal, much of which I'm sure you'll find agreeable in what Bercot points out as discrepancies between early Christianity and today. Then we get to a few points about the Re...

Lent, Lament and Lockdown

...Lent is a time of self denial and of giving things up, and also a period of lament in the lead up to Easter where we remember the Passion and death of Christ before we celebrated the glorious resurrection.  Often this is a personal affair on the discipline side of things, even if it's a practice shared within your church community, but this year has been so very different. With the outbreak of the coronavirus, or COVID-19, the whole world has slowly gone into lockdown country by country, creating a strange sort of global “Lent” where everyone is having to practice self control and self denial. This has been underpinned with a sense of lament at the way thi...

Coffee With Jesus: Luke 24

...Brief thoughts from daily devotions The road to Emmaus. A familiar story from the Gospel to many, though today as I read it, I noticed some things which I probably glossed over in previous times. At the start of this chapter we see that some of the women who followed Jesus had gone to the tomb with spices to prepare the body of Jesus, and yet were met with a few surprises: an open, empty tomb and some angels! They ran back to the group of apostles and other disciples to tell the exciting news, and what was their response? “[T]hese words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” (v.11). They thought it was nonsense! Probably not the react...

Was Jesus worshipped in the New Testament?

...When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting, “People, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you... In the city of Lystra, amidst mistaken identity, Paul and Barnabas adamantly rejected worship, tearing their clothes to redirect attention to the living God. This episode serves as a strong reminder of the exclusivity of divine worship and that it should never be directed towards other humans. 3. Revelation 22:8-9 - The Angel's Directive And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, “You must not do t...

The Coming of Jesus: Coming on the clouds

...disciples/apostles understood this about Jesus also, which is what they preached and wrote about and also why they worshipped him (cf. Ps 110:1, Jn 5:18; Matt 26:64, Acts 2:33, Acts 5:31, Rom 8:34, Col 3:1, Heb 1:3, Heb 12:2).   'Jesus is coming soon' by Nakedpastor But what's all this got to do with Jesus coming on the clouds? If Jesus is making a reference to a vision in Daniel, which describes something that happens in a purely spiritual realm, then why all of a sudden, does it become a literal, physical event when it concerns Jesus? Daniel's vision is about the Son of Man coming before the "Ancient One" (ie. God the Father) and being presented wi...