In the seventh “woe” that Jesus pronounced on the Pharisees, he told them he was sending them prophets, teachers, and sages, of whom the key characteristic was that they should speak the truth.  We are speaking of the truth as the revered product of information, data, and knowledge. We seem to possess, deeply in our…

The day I prepared this week’s talk—October 22, 2021—was the 177th anniversary of the day in 1844 when a small band of truth-seeking believers waited with their prophet William Miller for the second coming of Jesus. They had studied, they had calculated, they had weighed the data, and had (they believed) arrived at the truth.…

In his seventh “woe” to the Pharisees, Jesus accuses them of the same crimes as their ancestors, which were disrespecting, abusing, even killing the prophets who had been sent by God with special messages. Jesus promises to continue to send messages by “prophets, teachers and sages.”  Each of these instruments of God has, I think,…

Today we move on from our lengthy (almost four months) discussion of grace. We have taken as our curriculum the Book of Matthew, which we’ve been studying for the last 21 years. We’ve reached the 23rd chapter. We have talked about the “woes” of Jesus to the Pharisees, including his admonition that they should take…

We have been talking about grace and obedience and our role in our own salvation. It seems that although we cannot save ourselves, we can shut out the grace, or fall from grace (as Paul says in the book of Galatians) by substituting our own law-keeping for God’s grace.  Grace and free will seem, on…

Grace is a uniquely Christian concept but one which is difficult, apparently, to understand. We speak as if we embrace the concept, but then live as if we don’t. The core of the problem is that we want to control it, we want to manage it. We really cannot let grace simply be grace.  Central…