Christian trials

1 Cor 15:12 - “If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?” While you may not be using words to say that there is no resurrection of the dead, your lives actually reflect that you think it’s true. The choices we make are...

Antonius Hambroeck’s Sacrifice The moving story of Antonius Hambroeck is well-known in the Netherlands, where he is considered a national hero, and in Taiwan, where he was executed. It was popularized in the 1775 play Anthonius Hambroek, or the Siege of Formosa, by the Dutch author Joannes Nomsz...

Dorothy Carey and Her Struggle With Mental Illness When, in 1781, 25-year-old Dorothy (Dolly) Plackett married William Carey, five years her junior, she might have imagined the same type of quiet family life her parents and most people lived in her small town of Hackleton, West Northamptonshire...

Your teen-age daughter wants to start dating a young man who is quite nice, very likeable, professes faith in Jesus for salvation, but his dad is an adulterer, even while remaining married, and is verbally abusive toward women. What do you say to her, and why? Someone on pastoral staff at your...

Egeria’s Travels One day in the fourth century, a woman with time and means left for a three-year tour of Biblical places. In her accurately detailed account, she says nothing about herself. We only know that her name was Egeria and that she was writing for her “revered sisters” at home. This...

Radegund of Thuringia – Giving Refuge to Women in Violent Times In 531, an army of Frankish soldiers invaded the Kingdom of Thuringia (in today’s France), sacked the palace, killed the royal family, and took the royal children back to the Frankish capital, Athies. Among these children was Radegund...

As a mother of four children I well remember many nights that were anything but silent. The cries of a newborn suddenly awakened by pangs of hunger. The moans of a sick child who needed another dose of acetaminophen. More recently, the voices of teenagers telling me about their day when they arrive...

Alopen and the Missionary Monks of the Church of the East In 635, Emperor Taitsung (598–649) of China found Christianity so impressive that he wrote: “The meaning of the teaching has been carefully examined; it is mysterious, wonderful, calm; it fixes the essentials of life and perfection; it is...

Behari Lal Singh and His Vision for Missionary Training Only one representative from Asia appeared in 1860 at the overwhelmingly British Conference on Missions in Liverpool. It was Behari Lal Singh, who had become a Christian under the guidance of the Scottish missionary Alexander Duff. By then,...

Pablo Besson - For the Gospel and Religious Freedom When Pablo (then Paul) Besson received a request from Mathieu Floris, a Belgian emigrant to Argentina, to help him find an evangelist to spread the gospel in that country, he did his best to promote the cause. When no one answered, he understood...