TELLING THE STORY: SHARING THE GOOD NEWS OF JESUS




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Detention diary, day 2: “Good Friday behind bars”

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       Lent 2025, day 39.   It wasn’t your typical Good Friday service.   The 15 detainees arrived in the visiting area in waves.   Finally, everyone was assembled and a motley crew began to (ostensibly) commemorate the death of Jesus of Nazareth – Muslims, Sikhs and Christians together, from all around the globe.   Indeed, during this time of prayer and recollection, each individual had a very different experience and understood something uniquely personal.   Isaiah 53 was read in French, the Psalm in English and St. John’s passion narrative in Spanish.   During the “Laments of Christ against his faithless church” [1] , we sung the refrain, “Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom”.   We ended this liturgical moment by forming a circle, joining hands and offering spontaneous prayers of gratitude to Christ and supplications for each other, each pray-er addressing his God in his language.      Follow...
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Does the New Testament teach a doctrine of Hell?

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  INTRODUCTION      Until more recent times, it had long been a commonplace in Christian thought that the New Testament teaches unequivocally that there exists a place of eternal, conscious bodily/spiritual torment where the lost will spend eternity, a.k.a. Hell. [1]   However, there are many scholars who, albeit out of no desire to belittle the testimony of Scripture, now question whether the New Testament actually does affirm this traditional view of Hell.   In this brief paper, I will examine two NT expressions – “the Gehenna of fire” found in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, and “the lake of fire” of the book of Revelation – with the goal of determining whether they do indeed teach what they have traditionally been understood to teach, or whether a close examination of their language in its canonical, historical and cultural context might reveal a different referent for their “fiery imagery”. MATTHEW & MARK: “THE GEHENNA OF FIRE”  ...
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“Can dreams come true?” a sermon for PENTECOST 2025 (JUNE 08)

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  “When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,     we were like those who dream . Then our mouth was filled with laughter     and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations,    “The Lord has done great things for them.” (Ps. 126.1-2; cf. Ac. 2.11)      Have you ever woken up into a dream?   That’s the feeling expressed in this psalm.   Perhaps it refers to the return of the people of God from exile in Babylon.   The understanding was that the exile had been the result of the people’s sin (cf. Is. 40.1-2).   Have you ever been so happy that all you could do was laugh?   God had restored the fortunes of his people in a totally unexpected way .   The appropriate response was to shout for joy!   The dreamer of this psalm is laughing and cheering, and probably crying.   God came through!     As they say, “sometimes dreams do come true”. ...
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