Micro-evolution, that is, the changing of characteristics within a species, happens regularly and is biblical. God created plants and animals each “according to its kind” to reproduce each “according to its kind” (Genesis 1). We…
April 25, 2015 will be a day that many of our brothers and sisters in Christ who live in Nepal will never forget. It was a day that brought much pain, suffering, and loss. That…
NOTES FROM THE FIELD In this series, thoseinvolved with CLC foreign missions profile one aspect of our overseas endeavors. Dateline—July, 2015. Pastor Thangavel is a member of the Berea Evangelical Lutheran Church (BELC), in southeastern…
A SLICE OF LIFE IN THE CLC Snapshots of Congregations from Around the Church of the Lutheran Confession “Give unto the LORD the glory due to His name; worship the LORD in the beauty of…
Since its genesis, the ILC Tour Choir has always recorded its songs. Every few years it releases an album in order to make those songs available to a broader audience. In this way, people can…
TLH = The Lutheran Hymnal, 1941; WS = Worship Supplement 2000; [ ] = Biblical Events Noted
Date / Biblical Events Noted / Verse / Reading Comments
May 2 TLH 33 Joshua 4:1-9 It is important to remember from generation to generation what the Lord
has done.
May 3 TLH 167 Luke 23:1-46 Pilate could not find any reason Jesus should die, but in the end the
Heavenly Father did.
May 4 TLH 447 Joshua 6:1-27 Six days of marching while nothing happened. They had to trust that on the
seventh day God would make good, as He said.
May 5 [The Ascension of our Lord] WS 757Luke 24:1-53He is risen and shall reign forever and ever!
Lutheran theologian A.L. Graebner wrote of Christ’s ascension into heaven that it was “the glorious termination of His visible conversation with His church on earth” (Outlines of Doctrinal Theology). Writing in 1898, he was using the word conversation in the older sense of interaction. During His time in this world, especially during His three-year public ministry, Christ interacted visibly with His fellow human beings. Also after His resurrection, He appeared visibly to His disciples and spoke to them during a period of forty days. But then He was taken up into heaven as His disciples watched, and a cloud received Him out of their sight. After that there were only a few extraordinary appearances of Christ such as those to Paul (1 Corinthians 15:8) and John (Revelation 1:10-18).But wasn’t Christ’s time in this world also a conversation in the sense in which we use the word today? In His ministry as recorded in the four Gospels, Christ engaged His people in a three-year conversation. That was a conversation that was truly unique, in which the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father declared to man the unseen God.
DEVOTION – CONFIRMATION
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).
One thing you certainly learn as a parent, if not from other areas of life, is that you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep. I’m not saying promises one doesn’t intend to keep, but promises one simply can’t keep. Often we do this without realizing that we are doing it. Other times we may be living in a bit of denial; we hope to keep the promise, we think maybe we could figure something out so that we might keep the promise, but in actual fact we simply are not able to keep the promise that we made. So it is that we learn a hard lesson in life, and may even warn others who promise to do things for us, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep!”
A HYMN OF GLORY LET US SING
(Fifth in a Series on The Lutheran Hymnal)
Although most Reformed churches today largely ignore the event as a calendar item, we Lutherans do not. Theologians actually have much to say about the doctrine of Christ’s bodily ascension. They use fancy Latin terms like terminus ad quem (“the end to which”), coelum beatorum (“the paradise of the redeemed”) and coelum Dei maiestaticum (“the majestic heaven of God”). The Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord addresses Christ’s ascension at length in Sections VII and VIII.
STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT “For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says: ‘Behold, the days are coming,’…
