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 ...

“ The Word of the Lord remains forever. And this word is the good news that is preached to you ” (1 Peter 1:25). In Jesus’ Name, Amen. On this historic day, June 25, the year 1530, a group of Lutheran laymen, most of them princes and dukes of Germany, gave a bold confession of the Christian faith before Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in the city of Augsburg, Germany. Martin Luther could not be present, because 9 years earlier he had been condemned as a heretic and sentenced to death. But when he heard about their success in confessing the faith before Emperor Charles, Luther exclaimed: “How I rejoice to see this hour when Christ is publicly proclaimed by such men in such an assembly, by so glorious a confession!” The situation was this: the Emperor feared the growing Lutheran churches, and had revoked their freedom of religion, because he was determined to reunite Germany, by force if needed, under the Roman Catholic faith. The Lutherans and others, issued a protest, thus foreve...

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 ...