SOME FOLK think that the Lord’s Prayer is a Sunday thing. They think it’s not normally something you say at home. But have you ever pondered what praying the Lord’s Prayer day by day can do for you? It’s an important question. Let’s take it from the beginning.
THE CHERUBIM are one of several orders of angelic beings that we meet in the Bible. Others include the Seraphim, the Ofanim, and the Hayyot. But the cherubim, or more accurately keruvim, are more mysterious than most.
THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS have provided the greatest source of new insights into biblical studies in the last hundred years. The story is well known now. A Bedouin shepherd boy discovered the first scrolls in 1946. Later, other scrolls were discovered, making a total of thousands of documents which originated from the Judean state in the years 200 BC to AD 70.
THE RAPTURE OF THE SAINTS. This picture by the great Bruxelloise painter René Magritte shows a large number of really ordinary looking people floating, or soaring, upward into the air. Such a thing doesn’t normally happen. Not even in Brussels. But could it happen? How would it happen? And why? And when?
THE SATOR SQUARE is an ancient “rebus” or word-square. Similar word-squares are known to us from ancient times. But, among them all, the SATOR square is an especially ingenious little construction. Yet more ingenious still is what is concealed within it. Once we decipher it, it will teach us something very significant about the earliest creeds of the Christian faith.
Jesus said: “For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”
My wife’s a doctor. One day they brought a man in for treatment. He was in a coma. Like a dead man. In fact, she could see that if he didn’t get treatment quick, he really would be a dead man.
The Bible tells us that the name of Jesus is the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9–10). Is this just enthusiastic rhetoric? Or is this there really something special in this name?
The 19th of March is the Feast of Saint Joseph, the adoptive father of the son of God. He is remembered as a righteous man, Joseph the just. Yet he lived a humble and obscure life. And perhaps he struggled with his conscience too…
Recently, my good friend P**** asked me for some spiritual guidance. (He is an amazing Brussels-based musician, who can play everything from early Baroque harpsichord to Bossa Nova with a 2-3 clave.) After thinking about it a bit, this is what I had to say to him…
If you ever visit Brussels, and drive out past Zaventem Airport, then you will come to the pleasant Flemish town of Vilvoorde. The town maintains a Tyndale Museum. It also has a little patch of green called Tyndale Park. There football pitches jostle with a monument erected in honour of the English Reformer William Tyndale, who was martyred at the town’s south gate on 6 October 1536. This is the tale of Tyndale and his triumph in translating the Bible into English.