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The pandemic with its numbers of new cases and rising death toll seems to dominate the news. I find it gives Easter a reality check. Essentially, the meaning of Easter is that there is no real life without death. And when I consider other core symbols of the Christian faith, I find the same...

Pacha, or Easter, this year will be profoundly different for many of us than most years. The 40 day fasting period, or lent, before Easter, has been a period when whole nations have had to give up their normal way of life. It hasn't been so much a question of voluntarily giving up a cherished...

All we hear these days are frightening reports of number of new cases of covid-19, number of deaths, lockdowns, and stockmarket crashes, huge increases in unemployed. Crisis every way we look or listen. We hear people saying that this is punishment from God. Yet in John 9 Jesus had a completely...

Could someone in the know explain the Eastern Orthodox view of the apparent incompatability of the doctrines of man's free will on one side and predestination on the other? Please give scriptures for arguments, and clear indication of ways in which the EO differs from either RC or protestant...

We're in Advent now, and one of the common texts preached on is Luke 3:1-18. Isaiah 40:3-5 is quoted by Luke in this passage, with the clear implication that John is this preparatory "voice." Malachi 3:1-5 is another passage that is used in this connection. I would really like to hear some...

John 19:28-30 After this Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfil the scripture), “I thirst.” A bowl full of vinegar stood there; so they put a sponge full of the vinegar on hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he...

I was recently deceived by a salesperson, and called the company service department to try to fix the problem. When I described the situation, and both of us had heard the recording made by the salesperson, the service functionary told me "I agree that the salesperson did wrong, but this does...

In many psalms and other parts of the Old Testament we are encouraged to remember the great deeds that God performed for the Jewish nation and in the lives of its founders (Abram, Isaac, and Jacob). Part of the New Covenant in Christ is that we participate together in the "Lord's Table," the...

Who are the 4 living creatures/beings and 24 elders of Revelation 4, 5 and 19? (The KJV uses the word 'beasts' but many other translations use 'living creatures' or 'living beings' (including both the Complete Jewish Bible and the Orthodox Jewish Bible). 'Beast' has a connotation of animalistic...

The background to this question is that I am currently reading Jacques Ellul "The Presence of the Kingdom." This builds on the unavoidable tensions caused by Christians being "in the world but not of it." It is a thought provoking book even if it was originally written (in French) in 1948. The...

In another thread, two things were said to be important to agree on before marriage: having children and pets. For all those who have had long and "successful" i.e. happy lives together, what do you think are the most important things to agree on before committing to a "life-long" marriage? And...

I would greatly like to hear some people's understanding of the concept of holiness, in terms of both the holiness of God and our being called to perfect our holiness (2 Cor 7:1). What is the "splendour of God's holiness,"(1 Chronicles 16:29; Psalm 29:2; Psalm 96:9), what is the significance of...

If you look up fear in the thesaurus you will find an amazing number of words that are synonyms. This suggests that this emotion is not only universal, but very complex and difficult to pin down. At one level the emotion of fear is similar in purpose to pain, it is there in us to keep us alive...

In another thread... DamianWarS said: ↑ I want him [my son] to be impacted not by my world view or by a church's world view but instead by Christ's world view. In the sciptures the word "world" means different things in different contexts. "God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten...

What is the difference between shame and guilt? Are there commonalities? Do different religions and "faiths" within those religions treat the two as different or the same. In the Christian Bible, when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "they both saw...

I wonder if anyone else on CF is addicted, or in danger of becoming addicted, to spending time on CF. I come onto the forums at different times of the day, (more or less whenever I get the chance) and I notice some others seem always to be there. I admit that I enjoy reading various threads...

I recently re-read the book of Ecclesiastes and came away (again) almost depressed. Yes, there are many individual verses and portions that are enlightening, but for anyone who wants to believe that the whole Bible is directly and literally true, there are parts that leave me wanting an...

Whatever you may think about the causes of climate change there is no doubt that the world is getting warmer. The world is also getting more populated and in some parts of the world the upper and middle classes are expanding rapidly (already the size of the middle class in China is larger than...

Ephesians 3: 14-19 reads as follows (RSV - but not significantly different from KJV) "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his...

In Genesis 1: 26 we read So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. Then, after the Fall, in Genesis 3:22 we find And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be...