A Knight's Blog

Most of us know the raising of Lazarus (John 11:1-44) from the dead by Our Lord Jesus Christ. The scene is engraved in our minds since Sunday School and watching films depicting the scene as in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” starring Max Von Sydow. Less known is the raising of Jairus’ Daughter (Luke 8:40-56), in which Christ tells the unbelieving mourners to leave, and only He, Jairus and his Wife, Peter, and John his disciples, are permitted to remain as Jesus raises the young girl back life.   More obscure than Jairus’ Daughter is another resurrection that takes place at Nain:  “Soon afterward c he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came u...

Often when we think of loving our neighbor it consists of doing some sct of kindness, ranging from offering help to sharing the evangelion. Never do we consider bearing with  a neighbor’s eccentricities and even negative traits to enter our hearts. Surely, Christ does not want me to put up with their dog’s barking or to let them blast loud music. Our normal motive is to put an end to the suffering. But what if God is using your neighbor to teach you grace and mercy? Does The Lord have to put up with your behaviors? If the roles where reversed, and you had the barking dog would you want a threat or cranky response?    I am not saying we should become doormats and spineless, nor am I declaring we should never confront.  What I am suggesting is that our default be gratia, grace and our disposition understanding rather than disgruntled. Too often we charge into the fray, certain our neighbor’s intent is malicious, that they have a personal vendetta against us wi...

I often inwardly chuckle when I read agnostic-atheistic philosophers who try to decontruct the Bible with their reason. For instance Diarmaid MacCulloch, wrote a book on Church History, and he makes claims in his book Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Part II:  One Church, One Faith, and One Lord?: The Crucified Messiah to Crucifixion and Resurrection , that the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John disagree on the reason Jesus was crucified.  He states that Luke puts blame on the Jews, Matthew on Rome, and John on the Jewish leaders. Mcculoch is unable to fathom, much like Bill O’Rilley in “Killing Jesus”, that the answer is holistic: all of them combined, Christ was rounded up by the Jewish leaders (Matthew 26:57-67), was condemned by the Jewish crowd “crucify him!” (Luke 23:21) and Rome did the actual crucifying via Pilate’s order and the Roman Centurions (John 19:1-42). The true answer to why Jesus was crucified is two pronged: spiritually, to die f...

In the West most churches have adopted a prosperity principle, an ideology called “the prosperity doctrine” that Christ will give you an abundance of riches if you live righteously. Recently, a pastor wad chastised on social media for having 4,000 USD shoes (he has more than one pair). This display of vanity and decadence was contrasted with the reality that the congregation typically lives on lower means. The Church of the West, particularly the Evangelical and Charismata Churches are beginning to look like the Cardinals of the Middle Ages with their twenty pound golden crosses, silk outfits, lavish halls, and carriages. The corruption is evident to all.  St. Clement of Alexandria confronted prosperity ideology when he said, “If God rewarded the righteousness immediately, we would soon be engaged in business, not godliness, we would be pursuing not piety but profit.” Those words perfectly sum up the churches of America, which in the 20th century sought out secular busines...

Starring: James Mason, Sam Neil, Rhys-Davies, Olivia Hussey, Anthony Andrews, Romald Pickup, Juilian Glover, and Michael Horden Ivanhoe the 1982 TV movie is one of the greatest Medieval Movies of all time.  It has it all: romances, sieges, fidel (faith), pageantry, and great acting. More than this Ivanhoe is the only movie I’ve seen that addresses the truth about interfaith love and marriage. Wilfred of Ivanhoe is exemplary Christian and knight, he saves the life of Isaac of York (James Mason), a Jew and later His daughter, Rebecca (Olivia Hussey) from the pyre. Ivanhoe risks life ans limb for his neighbor, showing how to love your neighbor, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31). When Rebecca falls in love with Ivanhoe, he tells her he cannot be with her because “their faiths will n...

Constantine was hero and villian, hero in that he called for The Council of Nicea , villan by re-erecting the curtain Christ tore down (Matthew 27:50-51, Hebrews 10:19-20), and ressurecting the old temple system with trillis and castes:  “But I will say this: after completed the great building I have described, he finished it with thrones high up, to accord with dignity of the prelates (bishops, priests), and also with benches arranged conveniently throughout. In addition to all this, he placed in the middle the Holy of Holies -the altar- excluding, the general public from this part too by surrounding it with wooden trellis ..," (The History of the Church, Eusebius, Penguin Classics, pg 315) There is no caste system, all Christians are priests and prelates, “But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God's very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness in...