Francis Chan turns towards a more historical and ancient view of Communion

Luke J. Wilson | 23rd November 2023 | General Interest

The Bible can be a complex thing, with many interwoven connections not always immediately apparent, linking topics and themes together across the ages. One such intriguing relationship lies between Exodus 30:14 and Matthew 17:24–27, offering valuable perspectives on the age dynamics among Jesus’ disciples with a hidden clue in the brief encounter about paying temple tax. Exodus 30:14 — The Age of Accountability Exodus 30:14 establishes a significant criterion for temple tax payment: “Everyone who is numbered, from twenty years old and over, shall give the offering to the Lord.” This biblical guideline sets what might be considered a standard for adulthood in ancient Israel, signifying the age of accountability and responsibility within the community. Matthew 17:24–27 — A Taxing Encounter Turning to the Gospel of Matthew, a peculiar incident involving Jesus and the temple tax unfolds. Verse 24 introduces the narrative with the phrase “When they came to Capernaum.” The subsequent context implies the presence of Jesus and his disciples, yet attention narrows to Jesus and Peter when the temple tax collectors inquire about payment and question Peter about whether Jesus pays the tax. This seemingly ordinary event takes an intriguing turn. Jesus, perceiving the situation, engages Peter in a dialogue. “What do you think, Simon?” he asks, underscoring the financial responsibilities tied to temple worship. Jesus then asks where do kings take their tolls, from their own children or from others? Peter answers the obvious question, “from others”. Jesus responds with, “Then the children are free”, which has implications for his own Sonship which is something that passed me by when reading this story in past times. God is the King, the temple is his, and therefore the tax is being imposed by God on the people (via his Law). But Jesus is the Son of God, and therefore should be free from paying the temple tax, since “the children are free” from this obligation. But to not cause an offence and as a way to prove himself Lord of all creation, Jesus instructs Peter to go to the sea, cast a hook, and retrieve the first fish caught. In its mouth, Peter discovers a coin that covers the temple tax for himself and Jesus only. Unravelling the Connections The discerning reader may now understand the link between Exodus 30:14 and Matthew 17:24–27. If the temple tax applied to those “twenty years old and over,” the specific focus on Jesus and Peter being singled out suggests a thought-provoking possibility — the age of the disciples. The use of the phrase “when they came” in Matthew 17:24 implies the collective presence of Jesus and his disciples. However, the subsequent emphasis on Jesus and Peter for tax payment hints at a more intriguing narrative. Could it be that, among the disciples, only Peter had crossed the threshold of twenty years? The rest could be anywhere between 13–19! Another clue is that it appears only Peter was married, since his mother-in-law is mentioned in Luke 4:38–39, implying that he was possibly older than the others too. Peter, and others, are often depicted as quite old.Saint Peter, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1610 Implications for Discipleship This age dynamic may offer insights into the behavioural nuances observed among the disciples throughout the Gospels. Instances of immaturity, such as the disciples’ arguments about greatness (Mark 9:32–34), the way John and Peter race each other to the tomb (John 20:3–10), and Peter’s impulsiveness (John 18:10–11), could find resonance in their potential youthfulness. The designation of Peter as a leader, entrusted with the care of Jesus’ sheep (John 21:15–17), takes on added significance in this context. If Peter, by virtue of age and experience, stood out among the disciples, it provides a rationale for his prominent role in the early Christian community. Understanding the age dynamics among the di...

Luke J. Wilson | 17th March 2023 | General Interest

I am excited to announce that the brand "That Ancient Faith" will be changing its name to The Sacred Faith.  As the readership of That Ancient Faith has grown, there has been a risk of confusion with the well-known Orthodox Christian publisher and broadcaster “Ancient Faith”. To develop a distinctive look and to avoid any potential confusion, I have decided to rebrand the website as The Sacred Faith.  The Sacred Faith will continue to offer the same great content that readers have come to expect from That Ancient Faith. The website and social media channels will remain the same, with only the name and branding changing.  I'm excited about this new chapter for the brand and am looking forward to the continued growth of The Sacred Faith. This rebranding is a step forward in making the publishing and content I produce stand out in the online world, and in providing readers with even more unique content. The change of the brand name will take effect in the following days to be fully switched over within a month. The website URL will change from thatancientfaith.uk to thesacredfaith.co.uk (it will automatically redirect for a while). I encourage all subscribers and followers to update their bookmarks and follow the brand's new social media handles (I'll send another update later once I've updated all my pages to let you know what the new URLs are). For further information on the rebranding, please contact me here.  Thank you for your continued support and readership.  Sincerely, Luke Wilson...

Luke J. Wilson | 23rd April 2022 | General Interest

I recently saw a video on TikTok from a guy who makes videos about physics and the universe in all its complex wonder, and the video that popped up was one about a supernova that happened 1000 years ago. These things interest me in general, but this one in particular caught my eye for other reasons: it’s a pretty unique event and is known as “the supernova of 1054”. Now for some of you reading this, that year may sound very familiar if you know your church history. This is the year of The Great Schism (also known as the East-West Schism)! Why is this relevant, you might be asking yourself… Well, let me tell you what my thoughts are. My thinking went immediately to the verses throughout the Bible which talk of God making the stars as signs in the heavens for important events. There’s plenty that speak about the stars in various ways and for different reasons signifying things God was doing, or events on the earth. The first main reference happens during the creation narrative: Genesis 1:14And God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years Then also there’s the important one signifying the birth of Christ, which the magi saw and recognised as important: Matthew 2:1–2In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” See also various other references to the stars as signs here: Revelation 6:12–17, Matthew 24:29–30, Isaiah 13:13, Jeremiah 10:2, Joel 2:31, Haggai 2:6, Luke 21:25–26, Ezekiel 32:7–8, Job 38:31–33, Amos 5:8, Psalm 19:1. But what makes this supernova of 1054 even more interesting isn’t just that it happens in the same year, but the same month! The Great Schism is generally dated to 16th July 1054 as the clinching moment of the Eastern and Western church parting ways (with the excommunication of the Patriarch of Constantinople, Michael Cerularius), and this supernova was visible in the northern sky during the day from around the 4th July for over 20 days, which would lead right up to (and slightly beyond) the 16th of July! Crazy, right? You might call all this coincidental or circumstantial, but I just thought it was an interesting link. Maybe the events of the Church broke the universe! What this could mean, if anything, is up for debate of course; and whether the sign in the sky was pointing to the Schism being a good or bad thing is an issue for another day. But it’s an interesting connection, nonetheless. Let me know what you think in the comments below!   Sources/references: Great Schism | National Geographic Society The Crab Nebula | NASA SN 1054 — Wikipedia Supernova of 1054 and its Remnant, the Crab Nebula — NASA/ADS (harvard.edu) If only they knew what they were looking at! 💫💥 #astronomy #astronomytok #physicstok #spacetok (tiktok.com) ...

Luke J. Wilson | 11th May 2020 | General Interest

EXCITING UPDATES! Just a quick update for you about a couple of new and exciting things I am offering now! Firstly, I have now launched a new range of faith-inspired clothing, which you can see some examples of in the image banner above. If you want to proclaim Christ and your faith via what you wear (especially in these dark times where churches are closed), head on over to: https://thatancientfaith.teemill.com     The second thing to mention, as you may gather from the logo above, is that I now have a YouTube channel! I have begun it by doing a read through of my book, 40 Days with the Fathers, through Lent, so you can listen to the whole book for free. I also plan to create videos discussing the topics I write about where I can go into things in more detail or explain some of the thinking behind the various topics which I can't always fit into the blogs. So if you enjoy watching things on YouTube, come on over and subscribe to my channel.   That's right: I have a new book in the works! It draws on some of the series and articles I've written on this site to do with Old Testament prophecy and its links into the New Testament, the Incarnation (briefly) and the Second Coming and what we have to look forward to (or worry about). Stay tuned for updates, I'll post some more information soon when there's something more solid to show. If you want to get some insider previews or maybe some advanced reading or snippets etc. then come on over to my Patreon and sign up. Members will get advanced access to any news and updates before anyone else, plus other bonuses! That's all for now, leave a comment if you have any queries or thoughts! ...

Luke J. Wilson | 25th August 2026 | William Lane Craig

If you’ve been on Christian social media this week, you’ve probably seen it: William Lane Craig — one of the most respected Protestant apologists of our time— flatly denying a core line of the Nicene Creed. In his own words, he does not believe or confess that the Son is eternally begotten from the Father in his divine nature. Human nature, yes. But divine? Nope. For a lot of readers, that’s a jarring sentence. Isn’t “eternally begotten of the Father” literally in the Creed we recite? How can someone who has spent decades defending the resurrection and the existence of God turn around and reject something so central? I want to walk through what’s actually going on here, because it’s more interesting — and older — than a single viral clip suggests. What Craig is actually rejecting The doctrine in question is called eternal generation: the idea that the Son is eternally derived from the Father, “begotten, not made,” sharing the Father’s nature without there ever being a time he didn’t exist. It’s not saying the Son had a beginning; it’s saying the Son’s very being is eternally from the Father, the way light is eternally from the sun. Craig has argued for years, most fully in his paper Is God the Son Begotten in His Divine Nature? (2019), that this idea owes more to Greek philosophical categories borrowed by the second-century Apologists than to anything the biblical writers themselves teach. He calls it a vestige of “Logos Christology” and prefers a model where Father, Son, and Spirit are simply co-equal and co-eternal, without one eternally generating another. William Lane Craig disavows the Nicene Creed Why I think this gets the history backwards Here’s where I’d push back, and where I think this whole debate needs a bit more historical texture than a viral post can give it. Long before Nicaea formalised its language, the earliest post-apostolic Christians were already working with something like what’s called the Monarchy of the Father (or Monarchical Trinitarianism) — a framework that takes the Father’s monarchia (his unique, self-existent source of divinity, or autotheos) seriously as the fountainhead from which the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds. This is worth distinguishing carefully from Monarchianism, the second/third-century heresy that collapsed the persons of the Trinity into one another to protect God’s oneness — the Monarchy of the Father is the orthodox opposite of that, affirming three distinct, co-eternal persons while still honouring the Father as their singular source. On this reading, the Son and Spirit aren’t lesser, but they do find the very source of their divinity in the Father — not as effects of a philosophical system layered onto scripture, but as a way of taking John’s own language (the Word who was with God and was God, yet distinct from “the Father”) with full seriousness. That’s the thing I think gets lost when eternal generation gets dismissed as a “leftover.” Logos Christology isn’t an embarrassing accretion — it’s arguably what John 1 is doing from verse one. The Church didn’t import that idea to explain the text; the text seems to be why the Church needed the idea. None of this makes Craig any less serious a thinker, and it’s worth saying plainly: this isn’t the first time he’s stepped outside Nicene orthodoxy — he’s made similar moves on Christ’s two wills (dyothelitism) in the past. But it is, I think, a real departure, not just a “minor unorthodoxy.” Why it matters beyond the argument It would be easy to turn this into another “gotcha” moment — ‘look, even the great apologist gets it wrong!’ I don’t think that’s the right response. Craig has done more than most to defend the reasonableness of the Christian faith to a sceptical world, and disagreeing with him on this doesn’t erase that. But it is a good reminder that ev...

Luke J. Wilson | 27th July 2026 | Archaeology

In early July 2026, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced something pretty amazing: an entire Byzantine-era city, buried beneath the sands of the Dakhla Oasis, had been uncovered almost intact! Streets, homes, bread ovens, a fortress, and at its heart, a fourth-century basilica church. That might not seem very exciting on first glance. But this find deserves a closer look, because it puts flesh on something we usually only encounter in the abstract: what it actually looked like when Christianity took root, house by house, in an ordinary town far from the centres of imperial power. What Was Found The excavation, carried out by an Egyptian mission under the Supreme Council of Antiquities at the Ain El-Sabil site in the New Valley Governorate, roughly 185 miles west of Luxor, has been underway for several seasons. According to Hisham El Leithy, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the settlement was laid out on a deliberate grid — north-south thoroughfares crossed by east-west streets, forming open squares and public spaces. This wasn’t a huddle of huts; it was a planned town. At the centre of that plan stood a basilica church dating to the mid-fourth century AD, overlooking one of the main streets. Around it, archaeologists found the remains of two watchtowers, a heavily fortified structure with thick defensive walls, and houses with spacious reception halls and vaulted roofs — complete with bread ovens, kitchens, and grinding stones for processing grain. Everyday life, preserved almost exactly as it was left. Two houses stand out that have been identified. One belonged to a man named Tisous,* identified as a church deacon, dating to the second half of the fourth century. The other belonged to a man named Tabibos. Over a thousand years later and we know the name of who owned a house and a home-church; I always find it fascinating! Archaeologists believe Tabibos’s house, which dates to the early fourth century, functioned as a house church before the basilica was ever built. A collection of coins bearing Byzantine emperors, Christian symbols and Latin inscriptions was uncovered during the excavation. (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities via Facebook; Dea Picture Library/De Agostini via Getty Images)   There’s also a documentary find that’s easy to skim past but genuinely significant: nearly 200 ostraca — broken pieces of pottery and limestone used as everyday writing material — inscribed in Coptic and Greek. Diaa Zahran, head of the Islamic, Coptic and Jewish Antiquities Sector, described them as recording sales transactions, correspondence, and other mundane details of daily life. Things we rarely get a glimpse into as the mundane rarely makes history. Alongside these, the mission recovered a substantial haul of bronze coins bearing Byzantine emperors and Christian symbols, plus gold coins from the reign of Constantius II (337–361 AD) — coinage that anchors the site’s prosperity firmly within the fourth century. Before the Basilica: The House Church at Ain El-Sabil What makes Tabibos’s house the most theologically interesting part of this discovery is timing. If it predates the basilica and dates to the early fourth century, it sits right at — or just before — the pivot point of Roman-Egyptian Christian history: the years surrounding Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 AD, when Christianity moved from a persecuted minority faith to a tolerated, and increasingly favoured, one. A time of transition between a house church and a purpose-built basilica when the threat of persecution no longer loomed over the Church. We know from Paul’s letters that the earliest churches met in homes — Romans 16:5 greets “the church in [Prisca and Aquila’s] house,” and similar greetings appear in 1 Corinthians 16:19 and Colossians 4:15. If we were to imagine how a letter from Paul to this house church might...

Luke J. Wilson | 12th March 2026 | Eschatology

Something bizarre happened in the White House Oval Office this week. Photographs circulated on social media showing President Donald Trump seated at his desk, surrounded by approximately twenty Christian pastors from across the country, their hands extended towards him in prayer. The image provoked sharply divided reactions: some saw it as a moving expression of faith; others found it deeply unsettling. Whatever one makes of the optics, it arrived at a charged moment. Trump held a prayer meeting in the Oval Office after his administration admitted the war with Iran will likely last weeks longer than promised | Credit: Dan Scavino's X account Days earlier, reports emerged that a military commander had told troops that the current US war with Iran is “all part of God’s divine plan,” and that President Trump had been “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.” These were not fringe internet rumours. They were filed as formal complaints with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) by an anonymous non-commissioned officer acting on behalf of fifteen service members — the majority of whom were themselves Christians. By Tuesday of that week, MRFF had logged more than two hundred similar complaints across fifty military installations, covering every branch of the armed forces. More than two dozen Democratic members of Congress have since called for a Department of Defense Inspector General investigation, citing what they describe as “glaring Constitutional concerns” and potential violations of DoD regulations on religious neutrality. The political questions about separation of church and state in the US are for others to address. What I want to do here is something more straightforward: examine what Revelation actually says, because the theology driving these claims does not hold up under scrutiny. And that matters here a lot; not as a partisan point, but as a question of biblical faithfulness. First, a Word About Context If you have read my previous article on Revelation some of what follows will be familiar ground. But it bears repeating, because the misunderstanding at the heart of this story is so widespread that it has taken on the feel of settled orthodoxy in many circles. The Book of Revelation is commonly thought to be written in the late first century ~95 AD, during or around the reign of Emperor Domitian. Though there is internal evidence that it was possibly written during Nero’s reign prior to 70 AD. Both of these emperors were most aggressive proponents of the imperial cult in 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 earthly power and name it for what it truly is. The seven-headed beast of Revelation is Rome. The seven heads are the seven hills of Rome, an identification so widely acknowledged in early church scholarship that it barely requires argument. The mark of the beast, calculated through Hebrew gematria to 666 (or 616 in some early manuscripts), points directly to Nero Caesar (transliterated into Hebrew as נרון קסר, “nrwn qsr”) — the Emperor who became the archetype of anti-Christian persecution due to the levels of evilness he enacted. The second beast, which looks like a lamb but speaks for the dragon, performs signs to deceive, enforces the mark, and compels worship of the first beas...

Luke J. Wilson | 22nd November 2025 | Persecution

Every now and then something happens in this country that feels small on the surface but carries a deeper spiritual weight beneath it. In this case it comes from a Labour council just outside of London when in March of this year, Rushmoor Borough Council attempted to criminalise Christian street preaching. The injunction has thankfully been paused (for now) as Christians rallied, prayed, and pushed back. But the implications of what nearly happened, and could still happen, should give all of us pause. Because once one council tries something like this, others start paying attention. A precedent has been set — not necessarily in law, but in what could be. Someone, somewhere, will look at Rushmoor’s attempt and think, perhaps this is the way to make Christianity quiet again. The Quiet Re-emergence of Old Hostilities We tend to imagine persecution as something ancient or foreign. Lions, arenas, emperors, gulags, terror attacks in far off countries. And sure, we here in the UK are not shedding literal blood for the Gospel, but that doesn’t mean persecution has vanished. It has simply changed shape. Instead of swords and prisons, we face restrictions and injunctions. Instead of mobs dragging believers through the streets, councils draft documents that treat prayer, worship, and evangelism as public threats. The methods have changed, but the intent remains strangely familiar: to push the Gospel to the margins, to confine it to the private sphere, and to make public displays of faith something suspicious, weird, and even harmful. If Rushmoor’s injunction had gone through, it would have made praying with someone in town square, even holding out a leaflet, something punishable by fines or prison time. No blood shed, but freedom restricted and removed. No martyrdom, but the same coercive pressure to be silent. Succumb to Caesar (the local council) or face death (prison/fines etc). History Teaches Us Something the Councils Have Forgotten Whenever authorities have attempted to stifle Christianity, something remarkable has happened: the Church has not faded away, but grown. Opposition has never extinguished faith; instead, it has refined it, purified it, strengthened it. Tertullian famously wrote, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” And while no one in Britain today is being asked to spill blood for Christ, the principle still holds. Pressure produces depth. Threats produce courage. Restrictions produce creativity. This is where real faith takes hold and grows! When believers are told to stop preaching, they remember why they preach. When prayer is threatened, prayer increases. When the gospel is pushed out of the public square, Christians step back into it with clarity and resolve. It’s ironic, really. When the world tries to silence the Church, it ends up drawing attention to the very message it wants to suppress. The Real Danger: Not the Injunction Itself, But What Comes Next The paused injunction in Rushmoor is not the end of the story. If anything, it is the prologue. Because we are now entering a season where councils and governments — pressured by secular expectations and political anxieties — may test the boundaries of religious freedom in ways that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Once you try to criminalise prayer in public, the next attempt becomes easier. And we’ve already seen examples of this with the so-called “buffer zones” around abortion clinics. Once preaching is labelled “hateful,” more restrictions feel reasonable. A few street preachers have already been arrested this year already. Once a council decides that worship and prayer is “distressing”, others will wonder if they should follow suit. This is how liberties are lost: not in a single moment, but through a drip-feed of small decisions that gradually reshape what is considered normal. That is why Christians cannot afford to shrug this off as a local issue. It is a signpost...