When you look at the amount of persecution and martyrdom of Christians around the world, the statistics tell a sobering story. According to Open Doors’ World Watch List, 4,476 Christian were killed for faith-related reasons in 2024, and some 380 million Christians today suffer high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.[1] A martyr is literally a …
The test of true discipleship
Romanian Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) was a great twentieth-century scholar of religious history and religious experience. He is perhaps best known for his work on seeking to identify universal patterns in human history and experience, and for his theory of hierophanies, or “manifestations of the sacred.” For Eliade, persons and objects “acquire their reality, their identity, only …
A grain of wheat
John 12:23-24; Luke 9:23 Sprouted shoots of barley and wheat. Walk into almost any church, and you will see one of two realities – either the predictable machinations of moralistic therapeutic deism and passive consumer religion, or the beauty, mystery and enthusiasm of a gathered community of Jesus followers, experimentally living out their faith. One reality …
Come and see
John 1:35-39 If you were a young Christian in the 1990s, you may have seen, or you may even have worn, a wrist band with the letters “WWJD.” It’s an acronym for the question, “What would Jesus do?” For the nerds among us, the phrase is drawn from the subtitle of a novel by Charles …
What is the mission of God?
Rod Benson, Moore College staff devotion, 6 February 2023 Opening of a new building at Moore Theological College, 1 King St, Newtown, Sydney, in 2017. We all face challenges and uncertainties in life. We feel the impact of our past, our family of origin, our environment, the choices we make, and a range of events …
