Remarkably, this year the dates of Easter week coincide exactly with those of the final week of Jesus, according to most likely estimates, as follows. Justin Taylor and I include a rationale for the original dates in our book The Final Days of Jesus: The Most Important Week of the Most Important Person Who Ever Lived… Read More
Failure, the Backdoor to Success
Many years ago, I read Chicago pastor Erwin Lutzer’s little book Failure, the Back Door to Success. The title sums up the underlying message perfectly: while none of us welcomes failure, many times we must fail before we can succeed. In God’s terms, suffering and testing will often precede glory and success. No passage in the… Read More
Do You and I Walk Our Talk?
There are, in the end, only two kinds of people: people who do what they say and those who don’t. Do you and I walk our talk? Jesus called the former group of people “hypocrites,” play-actors who wore a mask that hid the true self underneath. God desires that we be genuine, unhypocritical, and real—the… Read More
Speaking The Truth In Love
Interesting, isn’t it, that the apostle of love—the apostle John—is also the one who has several very stern passages warning believers against false teachers. I once went to a church that was going through a nasty split and that was divided into two parties: the “love party” and the “truth party.” Those in the “love… Read More
What Goes Around Comes Around
Many of us can identify with the experience of the psalmist who wrote, “But as for me, my feet almost slipped; my steps nearly went astray. For I envied the arrogant; I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (Ps 73:2–3). Indeed, when we look at this world, hard-working teachers (such as the one writing these… Read More