We hear all the time that our life could change in an instant. It happened last week to many people. All around the world, people died. All around the world people were going about their lives and suddenly a shot, a heart attack, a lightening bolt, a car accident, a storm, a stroke. And that’s […]

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday) First, let’s look at the 12 guys Jesus chose to spend the most time with… Peter was a hot-headed fisherman. He even denied knowing Jesus when the pressure got too much for him. Matthew was a tax collector – from one of the most hated groups in society […]

There will be many pretenders, Jesus says. Many people will say they are the Christ, the messiah, the one who is to come. Many people will point to someone as the ultimate answer. In fact, Jesus spends most of Matthew 24 talking about all the ways that people will try to convince people that they […]

“Isn’t this an amazing building project, Jesus? Have you ever seen anything like it?” Those sentences don’t appear in the Bible. They are, however, implied in Matthew 24:1. The disciples look at magnificent structures that Herod built to house Jewish worship. They call Jesus’ attention to them in a way most favorable. Jesus’ response? They […]

I used to pay a lot of attention to prophecy. Not so much generic prophecy or popular prophecy, predictions about what will happen today or this week or next year. (That feels pretty random to me.) I’m talking about eschatology, the study of the end times. In the Bible, books like Revelation and Daniel talk […]