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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The obvious evangelist

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       “He always stands head and shoulders above everyone else”, I muse as I recognize the familiar fedora rising above the stream of pedestrians being funnelled into the “de l’Église” Metro station.   If Jean-Christophe was ever standing in your line of sight, it was quite easy for you to get him in your cross-hairs before this gentle giant glimpsed you.   If “Jean” had been a character in the literary Middle-earth, he would have been numbered among those Big People which residents of the Shire sought to avoid whenever possible.   Jean is one of those rare individuals who is always completely himself.   His unabashed authenticity is one of the reasons many inhabitants of our Middle-earth avoid him whenever possible.   Jean, you see, defies categorization.   He lives alone in a basement apartment, and many of the good people of the city find him rather odd.      “He’s at it again”, I say to myself as I watch Jean, ...
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