The Roman Emperor Constantine had a problem—how to maintain unity across his far-flung empire. Despite centuries of persecution, Christianity was still growing. Admittedly, Christians were peaceable citizens who worked an honest day and paid their taxes. Who wouldn’t want an empire filled with such good people? But the pagans feared that the growing Christian population […]

You’ve probably heard it many times before. It’s a standard reply when someone is asked why he or she doesn’t worship on the Bible Sabbath—Saturday.  “Saturday? Why, that’s the Jewish Sabbath! God gave it to the Jews on Mount Sinai along with the Ten Commandments. But we worship on Sunday, the Lord’s day.” Then the subject is […]

Bang, bang! The wooden door creaked at its hinges. “Who could it be?” fearful whispers passed among the men huddled in the upper room. Did their fate await them outside the door? Had soldiers found their hiding place? Someone blew out the candles lighting the room, while another—perhaps John—crept to the door. Pushing it ever […]

During the French Revolution, freedom from tyranny was sought apart from God—a knee-jerk reaction to bad religion which had been promoted by the papacy and the monarchy. But instead of abandoning religion, French revolutionaries reinvented it. The historian Walter Scott describes how the revolutionaries inaugurated their new religion of “reason.” They made a grand procession […]

“And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child.” Rev. 12:13. The book of Revelation depicts a period of history when God’s people were to be persecuted by the enemies of God and His truth. It also specifies the exact length of […]

While the Second Advent message was beginning in America, there was a most remarkable Christian movement going on in the heart of China led by a man unacquainted with Christianity. The story is documented in The History of the Taiping Revolution, by Augustus Lindley (Lin-Le), a former British naval officer turned adventurer who traveled and […]

In 1625, a remarkable monument was unearthed near Chang’an, China, a city about 1,500 miles inland from the coast. The monument praised God for the glorious success of the early Assyrian Apostolic Church and was erected in the year AD 781 by order of the Chinese Emperor, a ruler of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618–907). […]

Far from being an abstract spiritual story, the Bible provides the names of myriads of characters (not only the heroes of the stories, but also minor players), places, weights, years and time spans, plants and animals, customs, and traditions. Take for example how the Gospel of Luke (3:1, 2) prefaces the story about John the […]

The Bible claims to predict events centuries and millennia ahead, all the way to the end of time. Of course, anyone can make predictions. The crucial question is: Do those predictions come true? The Bible sets up its own validation process: “How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a […]

As the world’s best-selling and most widely distributed book of all times,1 it would be impossible for the Bible not to make a global impact in human society.

The Development of Language and Learning
Just 70 years before Shakespeare put pen to paper, there was no viable written English language. The educated communicated in Latin. […]