Blog Search Results

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...

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...

Why do bad things happen to 'good' people?

...l that he has, and he will curse you to your face" and then lots of really bad things happened to him (like his house collapsing and killing his family etc.) - you can read about all the sudden calamities in Job 1. But at the end of the first chapter describing all the bad things happening, verse 22 simply says, "In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing." Though there is debate about whether Job is a historical account, or simply an allegorical story to try and give an answer to a similar question, I think the principle of the story is that despite the circumstances of life, we should still praise God and keep ourselves righteous in his sight...

The Coming of Jesus: Daniel's 70 Weeks

...re. What has this got to do with Jesus? Now you may be asking, what has all this got to do with the "Second Coming?" Well, in order to fully understand when the return and "the end" is to take place, we must first understand the timing of Daniel's prophecy about the Messiah as his first coming and death, and then what's oftern thought to be his return are all wrapped up in this 70 weeks. "From the time the word went out" is often related to King Cyrus, who gave the initial decree that allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to begin rebuilding their temple (cf. 2 Chron. 36:23; Ezra 1:2-5). This is assumed because Cyrus was prophesied about by Isaiah 15...

Lent: Day 17 - Justin Martyr: First Apology: Chaps. 60-68

...y read it has been! These final chapters move on from prophecies about Christ, and cover a few other areas of Christian doctrine and belief, such as: baptism, the Eucharist and weekly worship among other things. Plato and The Trinity The first chapter of this reading today concludes from the previous few about the prophetic announcement of Jesus and how even “heathens” recognise the things God has put in place, even without realising it. Case in point here, Plato. As touched on yesterday, Plato mentions in his work, Timoeus of Plato, about “the Son of God” being placed “crosswise” in the universe, which Justin goes on to say that although Pla...

Lent Day 36: Ambrose of Milan: Concerning the Mysteries: 5-9

...Day Thirty-six: St. Ambrose of Milan: Concerning the Mysteries: 5-9 Who: Bishop of Milan from 374 to 397; born probably 340, at Trier, Arles, or Lyons; died 4 April, 397. He was one of the most illustrious Fathers and Doctors of the Church. What: The treatise was composed for use during the latter part of Lent, for the benefit of those about to be baptised, the rites and meaning of that Sacrament, as well as of Confirmation and the Holy Eucharist. For all these matters were treated with the greatest reserve in the Early Church, for fear of being misused by unbelievers. Why: Ambrose states that after the explanations he has already given of holy living (in pre...