Category Church History

The Calling of the Chosen

The New Testament warns that distortion can arise from within the community itself, and history shows how easily faith can be reshaped into a tool of human power, offering surface-level comfort while quietly training fear, rivalry, and distrust. Across the centuries, these patterns have appeared in different forms: in long institutional eras, in reform movements that corrected some abuses while repeating other control patterns, and in modern spiritual “technologies” that can still divide people while sounding deeply reassuring. That is why many churches today carry a mixture of teachings, some faithful, some distorted, that can pull people away from the relational heart of original Christianity. So what is a true biblical believer to do in such a time, not to become another faction, but to rebuild trust, heal relationships, and practice a love that is strong enough to make community possible again?

Prosperity Theology

In many places, prosperity preaching sounds like a survival promise: “God wants you to succeed, to be well, to have enough.” People are invited to repeat selected Bible promises aloud, to answer with “Amen,” and to speak as if blessing is already guaranteed. Often the message includes an appeal to give—sometimes framed as a tithe or a “seed”—with expectation that God will return it in measurable ways. For those carrying sickness, debt, or social shame, that language can feel like comfort with handles, even if the comfort is temporary. But is this how Scripture is meant to be used? And what did Jesus actually teach about wealth, security, and the kind of life God’s Kingdom is bringing?

Morality Police

Many young people feel that church has become less like a place of healing and more like a moral checkpoint, where belonging is guarded by reputation and rule-keeping. But is that the shape of Jesus’ own ministry? Did he train his followers to rank people as “clean” and “unclean,” or did he cross those lines, sharing tables with the socially suspect and describing his mission as a doctor for the sick? In the Gospels, the tension is clear: will we imitate boundary-policing religion, or will we follow the restoring welcome of Christ?

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is a modern movement that rose in the early 20th century and has become one of the most influential forms of Christian worship worldwide. It is often marked by deep expectancy of God’s nearness and a strong emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially speaking in tongues. Many people today associate “tongues” with unintelligible speech because that is what they often encounter in contemporary worship settings. But in the New Testament’s first “tongues” moment at Pentecost, the emphasis falls on intelligible witness: people from many places hearing the message in their own languages. This raises careful questions worth exploring: what did the early church understand spiritual gifts to be for, why were signs and healings so closely tied to the gospel’s public witness, and how did Paul guide believers to value what lasts most - faith, hope, and love?

Daughters of Babylon

The Reformation is often remembered as a brave return to Scripture. But it also unfolded in a world where faith and government were tightly bound together. So what should we make of the churches that emerged during that era? What did they renew, and where did political pressures pull faith communities back into old patterns of power and rivalry? And when Revelation warns about religion becoming entangled with rulers, does it offer a lens for reading that period of history with both honesty and hope?

The Man of Lawlessness

2 Thessalonians warns that a “man of lawlessness” will arise as the day of the Lord approaches, exalting himself within God’s “temple.” Many today read that warning as a single future end-time ruler, while others locate its main horizon in the first-century Roman world. This article follows a historicist line of reading that treats the image as a recurring pattern: when political power and religious authority fuse, faith can be remade into court religion, and communities can be pressured to give ultimate loyalty where it belongs to Christ alone. Do these prophecies invite us less to guess a name, and more to test where our allegiance is being trained?

The Great Apostasy

The New Testament gives serious warnings about drift after the Apostles. Paul cautions that “savage wolves” can arise even “from among your own selves,” drawing disciples after themselves. This article explores one way Christians have described that long drift: a “Great Apostasy” (2 Thessalonians 2:3) in which the Jesus movement, once a minority faith, learned to speak in the categories of public institutions and philosophical schools as it moved into the orbit of Roman power. The aim is not to question the sincerity of believers, but to trace how those pressures reshaped Christian language over time, and to invite a return to Scripture’s own horizon of resurrection, restored creation, and God’s Kingdom on earth.

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Image Credits - Council of Nicea: By Fresco in Capella Sistina, Vatican [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Papal Council (Council of Constance): By: Václav Brožík [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Luther and Calvin: 103II at the German language Wikipedia [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons; Holy Spirit at the Pentecost: Anthony van Dyck [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Pharisees and Jesus: Peter Paul Rubens [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Christ and the Rich Man: Heinrich Hofmann [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons; Jesus choosing his disciples: By Travis (www.flickr.com/photos/baggis/) [CC BY-NC 2.0], via flickr