The Winepress

 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia. (Revelation 14:20)

"Outside the city" brings remembrance that Jesus suffered outside the city as He trod alone the winepress of God's wrath for us. He bore what we could never bear and did it to save us from that wrath forever. But if anyone rejects what Jesus did outside the city, if they persist in their rebellion against the true king well, then the horrible picture of this passage comes into play. The blood is depicted spread in a 184-mile radius around the holy city and as high up as a horse's bridle. That horrible image suggests the complete and utter torment that awaits those who persist in refusing Jesus as their king.

People always like to image gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and yet the Jesus you meet in the pages of the New Testament has more than a little bit of an edge about Him. After all, He bluntly said in Luke 19:27, "But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me." That is exactly what this verse from Revelation depicts.

So people loved by God; there really are two ways this whole thing ends. Jesus makes that so clear in His parables of the end. Just read through Matthew 25 one more time. On the one hand, there is the joyful gathering of the saints to the Lamb carried home by the angles, welcomed into the kingdom to heaven to blessedness. But then there is the fearful, frightful, terrifying judgment that awaits without any doubt all who continue in revolt against King Jesus to their last earthly breath. They want nothing to do with Him; they want nothing from Him. Even though in love for them, He too has born the fullness of divine wrath which their sins demanded that they might be all atoned. Heaven or hell, folks, there is not a middle ground.

- Pr. Will Weedon

Vlad III Dracula

 "We will not flee before their savagery but stand by all the Christians, and by all means, we will fight them."

"When a Muhammadan shall have a dispute with a Moldavian, the case shall be judged by the Royal Council according to the traditions of the land, that is, according to Christian, not Muslum notion of justice. Turkish merchants shall not have the right to take with them Moldavian servants of either sex nor shall they be allowed a special place for their prayers."

-Vlad III Dracula

Vlad Dracula laid the foundations of the modern state of Romania. Just like Skanderbeg, Vlad would not only go on to be honored in his homeland of Romania, but his fame would spread around the world, indeed much more so than the Albanian warlord. That is where their similarities end, for whatever fame Skanderbeg currently enjoyed in the West still revolved around his heroic resistance against the Turks. Today Dracula is best remembered as an undead bloodsucker. With the publication of Bram Stocker's novel Dracula in 1897, it was deja vu all over again. For if the fifteenth-century Saxons had transformed Vlad into a maniacal but still human sadist, the twentieth-century Irish novelist transformed him into a vampire, a citizen of the night, fluttering about in the darkness in search of his latest victim before retiring for the day in a coffin.

From the Court of Matthias Corvinus began history's earliest propaganda campaigns or, in modern parlance, "fake news," with the aid of his Transavania Saxons. The first set of stories against Vlad detailing his diabolical cruelties appeared on December 1462, complete with fantastical lurid engravings; thanks to the new movable printing press invented a few years earlier by Johannes Gutenberg, these tracks quickly dissimulated all over Europe. Appearing under titles such as The Frightening and Truly Extraordinary Story of a Wicked Blood-Drinking Tyrant Called Prince Dracula, these pamphlets became instant best sellers.

No depravity was speared Vlad; the stories discussed in graphic detail how he boiled people alive and shredded others like cabbage. Force parents to eat their children [and the list goes on and even worsens, which I don't care to mention]. Most historians dismiss these early stories to emulate from Matthias Court as obvious propaganda. Reading the first German set, one can see why. From beginning to end, line after line, the entirety of the text depicts Dracula engaging in one vile or bizarre act after another, with nary a word of explanation or context. He supposedly did it all because he was a sadist, an immoral monster, in short, the devil's son, as the name Dracula, originally "Dragon's Son." came to mean following the publication of these stories.

In short, Dracula did resort to cruel punishments though the lurid early description in the German publication stories is largely fictitious. It can't be emphasized enough that although impalement has now been synonymous with Vlad III Dracula, most of his contemporaries, not just the Turks, practiced it. Stephen the Great and in the legal written codes of the Saxon of Transavania, they who first cried foul, impalement prescribed suitable punishment for a variety of crimes. Ironically these accounts would be sensationalized to cast Vlad as a sadistic terrorist, which is often left out.

- Raymond Ibrahim

The Two Reformations

October is Reformation Month, and October 31 is Reformation Day ( a Protestant Christian religious holiday celebrated on October 31, alongside All Hallows' Eve (Halloween) during the triduum of Allhallowtide, in remembrance of the onset of the Reformation).

A lot of Christians are not aware of the fact that there were two Reformations: the conservative Reformation and the radical Reformation. The default position of the Lutheran (conservative) Reformation was we kept any tradition that didn't contradict the Gospel. In contrast, the radical Protestant Reformation took the position if a tradition wasn't commanded in the Scripture, they wouldn't do it in worship, aka nuda scripture.

For example, the Bible says, "sing to the Lord, and make a joyful noise." So the Protestant (radical) Reformation said, we are going to sing, but the Bible never said to use a pipe organ. They literally tore out the pipe organs in their churches and threw them on the front lawns. The Bible never said anything about stained glass windows, so they smashed out the stained glass windows, painted over the murals, and only kept those things specifically commanded to be used in worship.

Still today, you will see the remnants of the two Reformations. On the one hand, you'll see beautiful Lutheran churches with all sorts of artwork, such as stained glass windows, paintings, crucifixes, and statues. On the other hand, many Protestant churches will only have bare, whitewashed walls, with the exception of an empty cross.

- Pr. Evan Scamman

The Baptism Of Jesus

Christians have wondered through the centuries why Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, for John's baptism was a baptism of repentance, but Jesus, the Son of God, had nothing to repent of. It even puzzled John, who said to Jesus, you should be baptizing me. The early Church Fathers pondered this and wrote some very insightful commentary.

John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, writes: In truth, Christ needed not baptism, neither His nor any other, but instead baptism needed the power of Christ. For that which was wanting was the crowning blessing of all. That he who is baptized should be deemed worthy of the Holy Spirit. He added this free gift of the Spirit when He came to the water. So John testifies, for this purpose, I came baptizing with water that He might be reviled to Israel, and John bore witness, I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on Him. I myself did not know Him, but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain; this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have bore witness that this is the Son of God. John baptized with water precisely that Christ may be reviled and reviled as the repository of the Spirit on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain and the giver of the Spirit. This is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist poured water with his baptism and, by implication, does not pour out the Holy Spirit, and you can see why. The Holy Spirit isn't John's to give, but not so with the mightier One. He will pour out in His baptism the Holy Spirit and fire. You can't help but think about what happened on the day of Pentecost when the ascended Christ poured out His Spirit upon the gathered disciples with tongues of fire appearing upon them. Jesus can do this because the Spirit is indeed His to give.

So what is the connection between the baptism Jesus receives from John and Him being the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world? Remember, John's was a sinners baptism, yet the One and only One who had no sin of His own, He gets down with John in that water to receive it. And John gets that that makes no sense, but Jesus insists this is how we will fulfill all righteousness. Said another way - this is how the holy, innocent Lamb of God will accomplish the salvation of the world. He comes to stand with us in our sins. St Paul later goes on to put it most boldly; He made Him who had no sin to be sin for us. That in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5).

Do you not see how beautiful it corresponds to the baptism that Jesus commands? He steps down in the water to stand in solidarity with us sinners, that when we get in the water with Him at His bidding, we get to stand in solidarity with Him, the alone righteous One, the only all-holy One. By wadding into the water, He is already heading to the cross, and by pulling us out of the water with Him, He delivers to us the priceless gift that His cross has achieved. He pulls us from His own grave to share His resurrected life.

Finally, the sweet words of the Father, "You are my beloved Son, with You I'm well pleased." These words weren't merely spoken for Christ, for He has from eternity known them to be true of Himself. But the Father speaks these words over Jesus at His baptism to show us for when we stand in the waters of Jesus' baptism, the Father declares to us that we are His children, and He not only declares it to us as in Luke's Gospel but about us as in St. Matthew's Gospel. To His angels, to the demons, to all the world. He marks us as His and pleasing to Him because we are standing there with Jesus, and Jesus puts to that water everything that is His in order to bless and save us.

- Pr. Will Weedon

Last Supper And The Passover

The context of the Last Supper is the connection made with the Passover. The Last Supper happens during the Passover. Jesus and the disciples are sharing a Passover meal, and the Lord's Supper is the new Passover, or fulfillment of the original purpose of the Passover meal. Now, if we look at the parallels with the Passover meal, what happens during the Passover? We have an act of redemption that occurs in the Passover, which is that the lamb was slaughtered, and the blood of the lamb was placed over the doorpost of those who are in households of faith, and death passed over those households. This clearly points to the death and blood of Jesus Christ, where Christ's blood covers us so we escape the realities of death brought about by Adam's fall into sin.

The other part is that this is then commemorated and celebrated through the symbolic eating of a lamb, right? No! Do they eat a picture of a lamb? No, they actually eat the lamb, so they eat the instrument of redemption. A lamb is the thing that's sacrificed, and an actual lamb is the thing eaten. There is a connection between the one who was sacrificed and then the one who is eating. This is the case in all the Old Testament sacrifices; is that in those sacrifices where the animal is actually eaten. The instrument of redemption, when it is an animal that is killed that animal is eaten. There is not just a picture of the animal that's eaten; that animal is actually eaten. Part of receiving the blessing of that sacrifice is the whole act, including the sacrifice itself. The partaking of that sacrifice or eating of that sacrifice is very much part of it.

This is what's going on in the Lord's Supper. That's the context there in which Jesus institutes the Lord's Supper. Then why would we believe that anything different is happening? It's pretty; clearly, he's just using a language of sacrifice to say, well, I'm the one that is going to be sacrificed, and you are going to actually eat my body and take my blood instead of just eating the body of the lamb now you're going to receive the true body and blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

- Dr. Jordan Cooper