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Is the Reformation “Over” as Pope Frances declared? Many evangelical Christians think so. To know for sure, solid knowledge is needed of what happened back then and why, if only to show respect for those brothers and sisters in the faith who gave their lives to uphold their consciences.

Oh, grant that in Thy holy Word, We here may live and die, dear Lord; And when our journey endeth here, Receive us into glory there. And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.

Car­o­line M. No­el wrote the words to this hymn in 1870 as part of a collection entitled, The Name of Je­sus, and Other Vers­es for the Sick and Lone­ly. It was published in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1875, and has been a comfort to saints for more than 140 years.

Christian Scriver was a Minister in Magdeburg. In 1671 he published Invisible Things Understood by Things That Are Made, also known as Gotthold’s Emblems. The short book has been beloved for centuries.

The legalistic attitude, through which Church discipline is put theoretically on the same level as the preaching of the Gospel is one that cannot but result in the end in the subverting of the Gospel and the prevalence of Pharisaism.

“In our own country, George Washington has been written down to the level of a common, coarse, and unworthy humanity. Cheap side-lights thrown upon the framing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States…”

Creeds are born, not made. They are wrung in the agony and anxiety of a Confession at an epoch fraught with the possibility of perilous consequences to the confessors. The Apostles' Creed, the Athanasian Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Sixteenth Century Confessions of our Church are each and every one of them the product of the greatest upheavals and the most intense crises in the Church of Christ.

In this passage from great Christian teacher Theodore Schmauk, we see a large part of the underlying conflict going on around us in America. The false choice between authoritarianism or romanticism is no choice at all.

Some of you will remember this song from 1983. The times were hard in the Eighties, and for many are tough today. But here’s the thing: you and I are witnesses to the good news Anne Murray is asking to hear.

A friend with many years involvement in witchcraft now seeking a better way asked, ‘What’s the real history of Satan? I tried to find it in the Bible but couldn’t find a clear account.