To Him Be Glory Forever
Read: Revelation 1:4-6; 5:1-14 . . . to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. (Rev. 1:6) In Greek, doxology means a “word of glory.” Doxologies are brief ascriptions of praise that Christians have used in worship since the very beginning. The salutation of Revelation 1:4-5 is Trinitarian: John offers his readers grace and […]
Blessed Reading, Blessed Hearing
Read: Revelation 1:1-3 Blessed is the one who reads . . . this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it. (v. 3) Jesus didn’t just rise from the dead; he is risen. He’s alive right now, and he’s still speaking to his disciples. The opening chapters of […]
Who Moved the Stone?
Read: John 20:1-10 Who will roll away the stone for us? (v. 3) More than eighty years ago an English skeptic named Frank Morison set out to explain Jesus’s resurrection in non-supernatural terms. His study led him to call that project “the book that refused to be written.” The book Morison did actually write, which […]
On the Third Day
Read: Matthew 28:1-10 He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. (Matt. 28:6) What a story! Several of the women who were closest to Jesus went out to the garden tomb early Sunday morning to finish the job they had not had time to complete on Friday afternoon. As they reached the […]
Dead and Buried
Read: John 19:31-42 Since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there. (v. 42) On Saturday, Jesus was dead. Christians call this day, the day when life itself stopped and Jesus’s body lay in the tomb, Holy Saturday. After Jesus died, he was buried. It’s a simple statement that we repeat, perhaps unthinkingly, […]
Beneath the Cross of Jesus
Read: John 19:17-30 And I, when I am lifted up . . . will draw all people to myself. (John 12:32) Beneath the cross of Jesus was not a nice place to be. The sights and sounds and smells of that place on that day would have been utterly revolting. None of us would really […]
The Person Who Carried His Cross
Read: Luke 23:26-33 They seized one Simon of Cyrene . . . and laid on him the cross. (v. 26) There is a street in Jerusalem known as the Via Dolorosa, the “Way of Sorrows.” It is the route Christ is believed to have followed when he carried his cross—actually the patibulum, or crossbeam—to the […]
The Judge Who Condemned Him
Read: John 18:28-19:16 So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. (v. 16) The Apostles’ Creed mentions three names among its 100 or so words. The first, of course, is Jesus; the second is Mary; the third is Pontius Pilate. Pilate would have been totally forgotten, just another minor official from a long-dead […]
Yemi’s Journey to Faith
When you support Words of Hope, you are helping people around the world encounter God’s life-changing love in real and personal ways. In a village in Niger, a man named Yemi tuned in to one of our radio broadcasts. Something about the message stirred his heart. He listened intently, and felt drawn to learn more. […]