Teaching Resources International

Thankful … in 2020? (December 2020 Update) 

How can we be thankful in 2020? For everyone, this has been a very difficult year: children doing school from home, restaurants going out of business because of restrictions, friends and family hospitalized from Covid, jobs lost and now election uncertainty. It is hard to remember a year with more difficulty. Yet Thanksgiving is upon us and how can we be thankful with all that we have been through and with all that is going on now? 

In Philippians 4, the Apostle Paul admonishes the Philippian believers to “Rejoice in the Lord always!” And so that they see the importance of this, he repeats it, “And again, I say, Rejoice!”  

“Fake News … in the Church!” (November 2020 Update) 

We hear a lot about “fake news” today and the news and social media seem to be rife with it! Sometimes it is hard to know what or who to believe. But this problem is not unique to the modern world (even though it is compounded by the “freedom” of social media). It is not even unique to the secular world – “Fake news” can even be found in the church.  

Let me give you an interesting example from church history. Athanasius was the primary defender of the deity of Jesus are the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. When the council was convened, three different groups were represented. One group represented Arius who was accused of heresy for saying that Jesus was not God. He claimed that God the Father and Jesus were different in essence.  Eusebius of Caesarea led the second group. He suggested a compromise – Jesus and the Father were not the same essence as Arius claimed but they were similar. Jesus might not be God but at least he was divine. The followers of Eusebius comprised the largest group at the beginning of the council. The final group, the smallest group of bishops, was led by Athanasius. He argued that Jesus was God – he was the same substance or essence as the Father because they were both God!