Category: Isaiah
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A Californian ruin and the the church that renews
In a music video for the song Lamb Of God, there’s a curious background. It’s a (partly) ruined stone building that looks like it’s from the Old World. At first glance, I guessed it must be from Europe – but is actually from Orange County, California. The building is the Mission San Juan Capistrano, established…
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Romans 8 v1: ‘there is now no condemnation’
I was at a big church in the centre of a major town. The preacher was speaking about Romans 8 and kept repeating its opening, when a someone interrupted from the back. The text in question says (NIV): Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus…
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From Isaiah to Revelation: the scripture behind Handel’s Messiah
Nearly 300 years after George Frideric Handel, the German-British composer, completed Messiah, it remains one of the most popular pieces of baroque music, attracting audiences whether they have faith or not. Writing in the 1950s, Percy Scholes in The Oxford Companion to Music describes the work as the “most imperishable” of Handel’s oratorios. It is…