The Joshua Victor Theory

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Gregory the Great, a theologian of the early church, once said the truth is not known unless it is loved. You could be brilliant and know all about the Bible, but if you don’t also love the Truth of God, you don’t really know it. Knowing Christian truth is not so much a test of your Bible knowledge, or your smarts—but rather loving Jesus and His Word. Loving His truth means you recognize it is good; that you want your life to follow that truth, even as you recognize your sins and mistakes, you love what is good and desire it. On the other hand, a person who does not love or keep God’s Word doesn’t truly know it. A twisted view of God or of life, can lead someone to know the facts, but not love God or His truth. Perhaps we mistakenly fear that God is not love; against the witness of the Bible. Maybe a person is captive to the power of sin in their life, and they resent the truth, because they don’t want God’s ...

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Last week in Revelation we focused especially on the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem. Today, in chapter 22, the holy city is still prominent, but new images dominate. One is the Tree of Life. In the midst of the city on either side of the river of the water of life, stands the Tree of Life, bearing twelve kinds of fruit for each month, and having leaves that are for the healing of the nations. The Tree of Life takes us all the way back to the very beginning of the Bible, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where a river flows out of the garden and waters it. Many trees grew in that garden, but two were particularly important—the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So having the Tree of Life appear in the very last chapter of the Bible, is an obvious “bookend” that brings us full circle from the very beginning. To see the saints of God in heaven gaining access to the Tree of ...

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! When we see the resurrection of our Lord Jesus, what do we see? Someone could be a smart aleck, and say “None of us ‘ saw’ the resurrection of Jesus.” But neither did you see the birth or death of George Washington, or Caesar crossing Rubicon River to provoke revolution in the Roman Empire. But of course none of us can “see” anything that happened outside our natural lifetime, except to believe the reports of reliable historians and eyewitnesses. And so today you hear the reliable report of the historian and Gospel writer Luke, who along with hundreds of eyewitnesses, records for us the unmistakable miracle of Jesus rising from death, and walking out of His now empty tomb, in a living, physical body. So what do you “see” or “perceive” about this historical event, that changed world history for the past 2,000 years? Some of what we can see, the first eyewitnesses were unable to perceive on that first Sunday morning. They did not p...