Suffering

Mary Rowlandson - Seizing God in the Wilderness Mary Rowlandson’s account of her experience as prisoner of war became an immediate best-seller. In fact, it was the first best-seller in America, and the first of what became a popular genre: accounts of captivity among Native American tribes. Her...
Johannes Maccovius, in his Theological Distinctions, treated the subject of the Divine providence toward the righteous and toward the wicked with the maxim, "In this life, what happens to good people is never bad and what happens to bad people is never good." He then appealed to the 14th Century...
On the surface, Paul's observation in Philippians 1:14 that "most of the brothers" in Rome--where Paul was chained to a member of the imperial guard awaiting the outcome of his judicial appeal to the emperor Nero--had become "more confident in the Lord" and "more bold to speak the word without fear...
For the better part of my Christian life, I've had a visceral reaction--driven by internal disapproval--whenever I've heard someone describe the hardships he or she experienced in life in the following ways: "It was like hell on earth," or "I feel like I've been through hell." I am sure that part...
Recently, my pastor has started a Men's Bible Study series on discipleship by examining a classic passage for discipleship: In Luke 9:22-24, Jesus said, "The Son of Man must suffer many things; He must be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and He must be killed and on the third day...
When Samuel Miller married Sarah Sergeant, he didn’t know the extent of her pain. Emotional anguish and religious skepticism were not a proper topic of discussion. At least, that’s what her mother had taught her. She had told her doubting was normal, and “especially that [Sarah] should avoid making...
In ages past, Christian leaders wrote treatises with titles like On Dying Well or The Art of Dying fairly often. Life was short and people died at home, surrounded by family, so everyone witnessed death. And since medicine had few cures, people knew they could die any time. Many wanted to die well...
Who Goes to Hell? The simplest answer to the question “who goes to hell?” is to answer: “unrepentant sinners who do not have saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will go to hell.” In fact, when the Philippian jailer asked the most basic question: “what must I do to be saved?”, Paul and Silas...
Hell Podcast We managed to catch Jonathan and James in their offices having a conversation about hell. The topic might not be a very popular one, but—if Scripture addresses it—we should pay attention to it. The Bible uses a few different words referring to hell, describing it as a place of...
Brian Mesimer
One of the most difficult things for a Christian worker to do is to wade into the midst of grief with a congregant. There we sit, feeling helpless and disarmed, watching the person across the table from us fall into pieces over their loss. When they gain the composure to speak, almost certainly...