Revelation Is the Story of the End of the World The universe, too, it seems. “Earth and sky were gone . . . Both had served their purpose” (Revelation 20:11). A mysterious man named John, exiled to an island, sees it all happen in a graphic and violent stream of unconsciousness: visions, trances, and perhaps …
These three short letters of 1, 2, and 3 John are the kind of letters you write when you don’t want to write letters. Which could explain why they’re so short. Clearly, there was a problem that generated those letters. But John doesn’t give the problem a name. Many scholars speculate it was a heresy …
All three letters of 1 and 2 Peter and Jude target troubles in the church. Christians are facing frauds passing themselves off as church leaders. And they’re facing persecution from people outside their community of faith, perhaps including some former relatives and friends who don’t like the changes Christianity is making in these new believers. …
James, the Gospel of Do Something James, whoever he was, writes a little like a man frustrated at getting appointed pastor of the First Church of No Volunteers. He writes an open letter to “The 12 tribes scattered everywhere. . . . to all of you out there” (James 1:1). Maybe he’s writing to the …
Good Jews belong in church. That’s the letter of Hebrews in a sentence. Scholars can only guess who wrote this elegant letter, when they wrote it, and to whom they wrote it. But why was it written? That’s easy enough, most scholars seem to agree. Jewish Christians somewhere in the Mediterranean world were apparently leaving …
Paul is somewhere in prison, possibly Rome, when he meets a runaway slave named Onesimus (oh-NESS-uh-muhs), from what is now Turkey. The two become good friends. Paul says he thinks of Onesimus as a son. Paul loves him so much that he sends Onesimus back to his slave master, Philemon (fi-LEE-muhn)—at a time when Roman law …
Paul’s three-chapter letter to his colleague, Titus, reads like a short version of the six-chapter letter of 1 Timothy, which Paul seems to have written about the same time, to another associate and dear friend: Timothy. Reading between the lines, it seems as though Paul and Titus had gone to the island of Crete sometime …
Paul had itchy feet when he wrote 1 Timothy. He didn’t seem to stick around towns very long. He usually seemed to stay just long enough to tell the story of Jesus, and to convince some folks that Jesus was the Messiah that prophets said God would send as a savior. In a few days …
1 and 2 Thessalonians weren’t on Paul’s to-do list. He hadn’t planned to take the story of Jesus on the road to Europe. He was busy starting churches all over what is now Turkey when he had a vision of a man pleading with him to come to what is now northern Greece, a territory …
Here’s the big question about Colossians: Why would Paul write to a group of Christians in the town he had never come within 100 miles (160 km) of visiting? The most common guess—and it is just a guess—is that a man who seems to have been the founding pastor, Epaphras, somehow got word to Paul …
In all of Paul’s travels—some 10,000 miles (16,000 km), over a stretch of nearly two decades—there’s only one church that donated to his ministry. Philippi. Plenty of churches gave him donations to take back to needy people in Jerusalem. But Paul didn’t seem to take donations for himself, except from the church at Philippi. In …
If you’re looking for Paul’s happiest letter, Ephesians, you’ve found it. What’s odd about his cheerfulness is that he’s writing while under arrest, possibly in Rome, shortly before his trial—which early Christian writers say was followed by his execution. This letter reads like a warm sermon to a lovable congregation. Paul gives the people practical …
Paul is mad when he writes this letter. He gets mad plenty of times during his ministry. His anger shows up in some of his letters—especially in his two letters to the troublesome church of Corinth, Greece. But if we want to see Paul at his angriest, Galatians is the letter to read. How angry …
If Corinth had been Paul’s girlfriend, Paul’s buddies would have called her high maintenance. There’s no indication Paul would have disagreed. Based on what we read in his two surviving letters to Corinth, and on what he says about one “painful letter” that seems lost, this is a girlfriend that would have needed: Flowers, chocolates, …
Paul is close to the end of his ministry by the time he writes this letter to Christians in Rome. For the past 20 years he has been planting churches throughout what is now Turkey and Greece. He’s on his way back to Jerusalem after his third mission trip. He says his work in the …
Dr. Luke A medical doc wrote this anonymous book, if early Christian writers in the AD 100s got the story right. They say Acts is Part Two of a two-part history of how the Christian religion started. The Gospel of Luke is Part One. The story started with Jesus. And the Gospel of Luke is …
John’s Gospel about Jesus is the redhead in a family of four. The other three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—look so much alike that scholars call them the Synoptic Gospels. That comes from a Greek word meaning “seen together.” These three Gospels read so much alike, with many of the same stories, that it’s easy to …
A medical doc wrote this anonymous book, if early Christian writers in the AD 100s got the story right. They say the Gospel of Luke is Part One of a two-part history of how the Christian religion started. Acts is Part Two. It started with Jesus. And the Gospel of Luke is a well-written account …
Visual Mark Mark is the go-to story of Jesus for visual readers with a short attention span. That doesn’t mean the Gospel of Mark is for readers who want everything spelled out for them. If we don’t stay alert, we’re going to miss some of the subtleties Mark weaves into the story of Jesus. For …
Intro to Matthew Most Jewish Story of Jesus If we’ve got the chutzpah to add extra books to the Jewish Bible, creating a Christian Bible, Matthew is probably the best place to start. It’s the most Jewish-friendly story of Jesus. It’s more Jewish than any of the other three Gospels—Mark, Luke, and John. Matthew works …
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