“Peter, answering for the others, affirms their conviction that Jesus was ‘the Christ’—that is, the Messiah, or the coming King of the Jews. This affirmation became the bedrock upon which the Jesus movement was formed. This story, like the ‘good confession’, served to highlight the central conviction that bound Jesus’s earliest followers together: Jesus of Nazareth was the coming King of Israel.”

“I’m not antisemitic; I’m anti-Zionist.” We hear that disclaimer from the progressive political left, the radical alt-right, Muslim apologists, Hollywood stars, mainstream politicians, and even Christian theologians and pastors. “I’m not against Jews, it’s the political ideology of Zionism that I oppose.”

“Back in the 1980s, broadcasters would occasionally break into a television program with the startling words, 'We interrupt this broadcast to bring you the following important announcement.' The broadcast interruptions not only startled the viewer, but they also shattered the comfortable entertainment illusion the viewer was trying to enjoy. That’s sort of what it was like when God stepped down onto Mount Sinai and spoke the Ten Commandments on the first Pentecost.”

No one rejects Leviticus outright, but it’s hard for modern readers to engage. It just sits there, forgotten… Leviticus is not a description of a world that passed away. It's a vision of a world that is still yet to come. Leviticus is eschatology.

“The message of the Bible has an explicitly eschatological thrust centered on the future redemption of Israel. There is simply no way around it. This message was not only handed down to the Jewish people; it hinges on their own redemption. That is, ‘if their rejection brings reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?’”

“Humility permeates the teachings of Jesus as a conviction of the certainty of God’s coming Day. The table will most certainly be reorganized one day.”

“Jesus tells us that ‘The eye is the lamp of the body.’ He says this right after warning us ‘not to lay up treasures on earth but in heaven,’ and right before saying we ‘cannot serve God and money.’ Is there a direct connection between what we set our eyes on and what becomes our desire, attracts us, and eventually becomes our drive in life?”

If you have raced with runners and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a peaceful land, what will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?

“The warning is clear and so relevant for our days: it is possible to be so engaged in normal, daily activities; to be so distracted by news and events; so busy pursuing hobbies and inoffensive passions, that we become numb to the prophecies, careless about the times we are living… and That Day of Judgement catches us surprise.”

“A cheaply won, ‘personal-escape-route-to-Cloud-Heaven’ Gospel will never be attractive to Gen Z. They want solutions that work on a global and communal scale. My generation is crying out for justice and a half-baked Gospel just won’t cut it.”