Gethsemane– a word almost universally recognized and filled with meaning like few others—is the subject of the February video and blog. Although mentioned only once each in Mark (14:32) and Matthew (26:36), Christians know it well as the place of Jesus’ difficult prayer prior to Judas’ betrayal and the Master’s arrest. […]
Archive | New Testament
Debate over Jesus’ burial and resurrection site: The Holy Sepulchre or The Garden Tomb?
Visiting Jerusalem as a Christian pilgrim and searching for the site where Jesus was buried and arose can be a conundrum. Why? Because tour guides take you to two sites, not one! First is The Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the second is known simply as ‘The Garden Tomb’. Both are beautiful and moving […]
Masada: Herod, Heroes and Sacrifice
Masada, the Hebrew word for “fortress,” is a perfect description of the Biblical site where Herod the Great had one of his summer palaces. If you’ve traveled to Israel to stand on this dusty summit and know what’s behind the historical mountaintop, the site grips your imagination like few others. Located in the East Judean […]
Why Jesus’ baptism is told differently
The fact that our New Testament contains four Gospels by four writers with four viewpoints can sometimes be tricky to navigate when some events of Jesus’ life are told differently. Yet there are substantial blessings in having these four accounts for Bible students twenty centuries later: we gain a fuller picture and understanding of Christ […]
How the Beatitudes come alive on a Galilean Hill
There are few places in Israel more ‘ground zero’ to Christianity than the Mt. of Beatitudes on the shores of the Galilean Sea, the subject of this month’s video blog. It is in this beauty-filled place that historians think Christ Jesus gave a sermon that included the core teachings of what it is to be […]