Philip Friesen

Mary’s Diary: A Christmas Play for the Advent Season

  Mary’s Diary A Christmas play for the Advent Season   by Philip E. Friesen   The intimate details of Mary’s pregnancy and Jesus birth are narrated in the Gospel of Luke.  It seems most likely that Luke would have interviewed Mary during his two year visit to Palestine in about AD 60 when he accompanied Paul to Jerusalem.   This reading is my attempt to describe what feelings Mary...

Philip Friesen

INTERPRETING JESUS FOR POLITICS AND WAR

Copyright 2015 INTERPRETING JESUS FOR POLITICS AND WAR PRIESTS AND KINGS In an earlier article we noted that the lens through which one views the text limits what one can see in the Biblical text. If we make the cross our lens for looking at history, the cross event informs the past, the present, and even the future so that we can see the whole, though not in detail or perfectly in focus.  The experience...

Philip Friesen

A Modern Myth

There is an economic myth that fierce competition in providing more goods and services at lower cost improves people’s lives. This is a mirage. The reality is that people are assaulted with messages that more stuff for less money is the most important thing in life, and as the Nazis said, if people hear the message often enough, they will believe it. People who theoretically deny they believe this still...

Philip Friesen

INTERPRETING JESUS IN ORDER TO SERVE HIM BETTER

A couple of years ago a highly educated and successful Muslim apologist invited me to an Iftar meal at his Masjid during Ramadan. After the prayers and eating the meal I spent almost three hours in Bible study with him as my teacher. We went through the entire Gospel of John in three hours as he pointed out all the places in John that clearly demonstrate Jesus humanity. At the end of the exercise he said...

Philip Friesen

A GOVERNMENT GOD APPROVES:THE KING AFTER GOD’S OWN HEART

            On the day we call Palm Sunday, Jesus led an army of peasants to occupy the city of Jerusalem. Like the actors in the Gideon drama from the previous article, Jesus’ army was essentially defenseless, and its advantage was precisely in that fact. In both cases the winning side was not dressed like an army nor equipped as an army, and in no way looked like an army. Still it acted...