Sovereignty and Government
From the very opening pages of Scripture we see God’s sovereign rule over mankind in an authoritative and governmental way. He gives his law to Adam that he is not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good…
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Herod and the Scribes
Families tell stories. Often they tell the same stories over and over again. They elicit the same laughter at just the right moment. They are familiar. I heard one person even quip that instead of retelling the stories they should…
Gi Pung Yi – First Korean Martyr
Gi Pung Yi – First Korean Martyr He was the first Korean Protestant missionary and the first Korean martyr, often remembered as the father of the Korean Protestant church. It all began through a rock and a bout of hot…
Helene Kottanner – A Medieval Thriller
Helene Kottanner – A Medieval Thriller Helene Kottanner had been a loyal friend and adviser to Queen Elisabeth of Hungary. But when the queen asked her to steal the royal crown, her devotion was severely tested. It all started…
Gudina Tumsa – Martyr and Thinker
Gudina Tumsa – Martyr and Thinker On July 28, 1979, Gudina Tumsa led a Bible study at Urael Church in Addis Ababa, one of the congregations of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY). He had barely left the church…
Liang Fa – The First Ordained Chinese Pastor
Liang Fa – The First Chinese Ordained Pastor In 1804, fifteen-year-old Liang Fa moved to the big city of Guangzhou (then known as “Canton”) to find work, first as a brush-maker, then as an apprentice printer. His parents had…
Georgi Vins and the Christian Resistance to Soviet Religious Persecution
Georgi Vins and the Christian Resistance to Soviet Religious Persecution On April 26, 1979, 50-year-old Georgi Petrovich Vins was woken up in his cell in the labor camp where he had been serving sentence for four years. He was asked…
Brothers, It’s Time to Wake Up
I am a pastor in Pennsylvania. And I appreciate my brothers who are laboring hard to understand how to handle the governor’s guidelines. As an aside, guidelines are almost a euphemism for dictatorial power. On March 6th Governor Wolf declared…
Quarantined Discipleship
The apostle Paul spent quite a bit of time in prison. In Acts, Paul is imprisoned in Philippi (Acts 16), and then spends the last quarter of the book in various prisons—Jerusalem, Caesarea—ultimately ending the book under house arrest in…
Jeanette Li and Her Faith in God’s Promises
Jeanette Li and Her Faith in God’s Promises Jeanette’s birth, in 1899, was a disappointment to her family. As most Chinese parents at that time, You Zhong and his wife Taai So wanted a son to carry on the family…