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The World's Oldest Anti-Christian Meme

I first came across the Alexamenos graffito back in Bible college in the early 2000s. It was one of those “fun facts” that gets dropped into a church history lecture and sticks with you — the ancient Roman equivalent of someone spray-painting an insult on a wall. I filed it away, thought it was fascinating, and largely forgot about it for two decades. Then, recently, I discovered something about it I had never known. There’s a response to it. Scratched in a different room, in a different hand. So I started digging into this more to verify the information and discovered more historical curiosities surrounding the graffiti than I ever knew existed wh...

Armageddon Is Not A Battle Plan: What Revelation Actually Says — And Why It Matters Right Now

...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 earth...

What was so good about Good Friday?

...day. And history would tell us this as well, as celebrating birthdays were a pagan/Roman tradition, the Christians had nothing to do with it. It wasn't until around the 4th Century when Pope Julius declared December 25th as the date in order to corresponded with the Roman feast of Saturnalia. But the real celebration, and the main thrust and focus in the New Testament is the death of Jesus and his subsequent resurrection. While there does seem to be some evidence to suggest that by the 2nd Century, early Christians were celebrating Easter, it sometimes feels like the Modern Church has placed more emphasis on Jesus's birth in terms of celebrations and event...

The Coming of Jesus: Daniel's 70 Weeks

...of Jewish history (Antiquities 11:1,2) when he recounts that King Cyrus didn't realise this was written but when it was shown to him, he then had a desire to go about and fulfil it - despite being a Persian king who didn't even know nor worship the God of the Jews (Isa 45:5)! So when did the seventy week clock begin ticking, if not with Cyrus? There are four decrees by three kings to the Jews concerning the rebuilding of the temple and the city, over a period of time: Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes (twice, although there is some dispute over whether there was a second king with the same name later on). But is it the decree of Artaxerxes (Ezra 7:11-26) in which...

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

...john-chau-history-pandit-india-news/ https://www.thebetterindia.com/165650/sentinelese-first-woman-madhumala-john-allen-chau-news/ http://www.dennyburk.com/mission-agency-clears-away-some-false-assumptions-about-john-chaus-mission-to-remote-tribe/?fbclid=IwAR2mi_Ii9FrK8MD_iV_m82KAEcSOU2m7Rz3tNCFHJeEGJfhMIzJGLVc_xeY https://www.instagram.com/johnachau/ ...

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...