Will Vaus

In his book  The Kingdom of God Is a Party , Tony Campolo relates an experience he had late one night in Hawaii after arriving from a long plane trip…   Tony was hungry and went in search of a restaurant. Up a side street he found a little place that was still open. He went in, took a seat on one of the stools at the counter, and waited to be served. The owner, wearing a name tag that said, “Harry”, asked for Tony’s order. He ordered a donut and coffee.    As Tony sat there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30 in the morning, the door of the diner suddenly swung open and, to his discomfort, in marched eight or nine provocative and boisterous prostitutes.   It was a small place, and so the prostitutes sat on either side of Tony at the counter. Their talk was loud and crude. Tony felt completely out of place and was just about to make his getaway when he overheard the woman beside him say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m going to be 39.”   Her “f...

Last Sunday, we finished our sixty-six Sunday overview of the sixty-six books of the Bible, conveniently titled Route 66. Before we move into Thanksgiving and Advent, I thought I might pause for one Sunday and try to summarize what the Bible is all about in one sermon. That’s a big task, I know. But many years ago, I read an analogy provided by Bible scholar, Tom Wright, that I think will greatly help us in our task for today. Wright compares the Bible to a five-act play. Using Wright’s idea as my starting point, I have expanded his idea of the five-act play into one with six acts. I think you will see why when we get to the final act…    Act I: Creation   Act I is Creation. In Genesis 1:1 we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  The Apostles’ Creed begins with the same truth emphasized in Genesis 1… “I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.”  The debate continues to rage in our day between creationists, th...

  AUTHOR   Four times the author identifies himself as John (1:1, 4, 9; 22:8) Four persons are mentioned in the New Testament who bore this name: John the Baptist, the Apostle John, John the Elder (who may have written the letters that bear his name in the New Testament), and John Mark who was a traveling companion of Paul, a nephew of Peter, and possibly the author of the Gospel of Mark. John the Baptist did not write anything so far as we know. And the author of Revelation does not clarify whether he might be John the Elder or John Mark. That leaves us with the Apostle John as a possibility.   From the mid-second century on, this book was widely, though not universally, ascribed to the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee by the Early Church. Justin Martyr, who lived in Ephesus a mere 40 years after the writing of Revelation believed that the Apostle John was the author. Apostolic authorship was accepted by Irenaeus of Gaul in 180, and Tertullian of North Africa in 200. But...