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War in Heaven After the August 1945 surrender of Japan, which ended World War II, a number of Japanese soldiers refused to stop fighting. Some did not believe that the news of the surrender was accurate. Others simply refused to accept it. The last known holdout did not surrender until 1974. In the same way, the announcement of the kingdom...

The Lamb's Victory Before software, newspapers set their type manually, reserving the largest type for momentous events such as the outbreak of war. This style was called the “Second Coming” typeface. The momentous event depicted in today’s passage makes all others pale in comparison. Christ is standing on Mount Zion with the 144,000 who...

The Measure of God's Wrath Many churches today want to give people a good experience. They want visitors to feel at home. The music is catchy and the sermon upbeat. This is understandable—we want visitors to return and members to stay involved. But if this is all we care about, we will rarely talk about God’s wrath. Today’s text offers a...

New Babylon Filmmakers don’t tell stories with words, though dialogue and narration are often included. Film is a visual medium, and one common visual device used by cinematographers is the zoom shot, which offers the viewer a different perspective. The chapters we will study today and tomorrow give us a zoom shot that sheds more light on...

Introduction: A Time for Silence One Square Inch of Silence is a research project in Olympia National Park in Washington State. It’s a small red stone on top of a moss-covered log three miles down a hiking trail, at a spot identified as “the quietest place in the United States.” The purpose is to highlight differences between human noise...

Human Silence: Let All the Earth Be Silent According to Ross W. Muir in Canadian Mennonite: “Silence was a part of biblical worship and was held in high esteem by the early church. . . . Silence needs desperately to be recovered in our worship services if the words that are spoken and sung are to have any depth or ring of truth to them, in...

Human Silence: Aaron and the Silence of Guilt Computer scientists recently used new techniques to read a 1,500-year-old text known as the Ein Gedi scroll. Because it had been badly burned, archaeologists had been afraid to open it lest it crumble into dust. So researchers at the University of Kentucky used X-ray scan data and special software...

Human Silence: A Quiet Child in a Parent’s Arms Ruth Haley Barton wrote in Invitation to Solitude and Silence: Experiencing God’s Transforming Presence: “I believe silence is the most challenging, the most needed and the least experienced spiritual discipline among evangelical Christians today. It is much easier to talk about it and read...

Promise Kept at Mount Sinai Mount Rushmore in South Dakota has been called the “Shrine of Democracy.” The heads of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln were carved out of the mountain in 1941 and restored for the 50th anniversary in 1991. It currently welcomes nearly three million visitors per year.

Aaron’s Death on Mount Hor The English language includes many idiomatic expressions for death and dying. We might say someone “kicked the bucket” or is “pushing up daisies.” More respectful expressions include “passed on” or “departed this life.” Christians might say a fellow believer has been “promoted to glory.” And it’s certainly accurate...