Series: Advent 2021

12-19-21 Rorate Coeli

December 19, 2021
The Lord is at hand, St. Paul says. The Greek is literally, the Lord is near. We can think of this in two ways. First, that Jesus will soon return to judge the living and the dead, as we confess every Sunday. He is near, He is coming, we will see him soon with our own eyes. Second, it means that Jesus is now near to us, He is with us always, even to the…

12-15-21 The Millennium (Advent Midweek 3)

December 15, 2021
As we near the end of the season of Advent and prepare to receive our King at Christmas, we do well to consider what our King’s reign is like. There are many misunderstandings about the reign of Christ. There’s the misguided idea that the Church is responsible for paving the political way for Jesus to come and reign on earth. There’s the push from many so-called evangelicals to provide funding for the country of Israel,…

12-12-21 Gaudete

December 12, 2021
John the Baptist was the greatest preacher the world had ever seen. Unlike so many popular preachers today, he refused to pander to the crowds or cower before the elite: he was totally uncorruptible – no money would change what he preached, no political considerations decided what he said, no praise of men determined his words. He spoke the truth to power, called out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, condemned the immorality of Herod. Jesus…

12-8-21 The Great Tribulation (Advent Midweek 2)

December 8, 2021
Unlike the rapture, which is a completely made-up event found nowhere in the Bible, the Great Tribulation is real and explicitly taught in the Bible. We just heard it from Revelation: “these are they who are coming out of the Great Tribulation.” And Jesus says, “for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until now.” The question is what is this tribulation? There are all…

12-5-21 Populus Zion

December 5, 2021
We’ll know when judgment day comes. It’ll be obvious. The sun will stop shining, the stars will fall from the sky, and we’ll see the Son of Man coming on the clouds. We’ll know when judgment day comes, but we don’t know when it’ll come. The signs of its coming Jesus gives, but these signs are not so specific that we can say they’re only happening in our time. We have crazy weather events; so…

12-1-21 The Rapture (Advent Midweek 1)

December 1, 2021
The teaching of a rapture, that before Jesus comes to judge the earth he will first snatch up the true believers into heaven for seven years as a great tribulation racks everyone else on the earth, seems custom made for the big screen. Since Hal Lindsey’s 1970 book, “The Late Great Planet Earth,” the idea of a rapture has become extremely popular in the United States, especially amongst the evangelical and fundamentalist crowd. The reason…

11-28-21 Ad Te Levavi

November 28, 2021
Another Church year begins, and we hear once more how Christ came to Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Certainly this was not the only time Jesus has come to man. Jesus was gracious enough to come to us this whole last year: bringing us his Gospel, pronouncing the forgiveness of sins, baptizing our children, feeding us with his very body and blood. But will Christ come to us this year also? The world has become…
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