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Pentecost

Be A Prophet: Pentecost

Prophesy

Acts 2: 1-21

What does “prophesy” mean? We tend to use it to mean “predict the future.” But actually that’s not what it means at all. The ancient prophets sometimes got their predictions wrong. Remember the story of Jonah? He predicts “Yet thirty days, and Nineveh will be destroyed.” He gets angry because in the end God doesn’t do what was predicted. Why? Because the people of Nineveh repented of their evil and turned to God, and so God showed them mercy.Read More »Be A Prophet: Pentecost

Hope

Romans 8: 18-25

Pentecost Sunday, May 27, 2012

St. Stephen Presbyterian Church,Fort Worth,Texas

By Rev. Dr. Fritz Ritsch

 

The other day, I heard a story on NPR’s “This American Life” that particularly resonated with me. It was a story about the violence perpetrated by the government of Guatemala on its own people during the Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s and ‘90s. Sixteen years ago, I joined a Presbyterian mission group that travelled to Guatemala as the war was winding down, and I so I have some familiarity and ongoing interest in their struggle.Read More »Hope

Pentecost: Positive Apocalypse

Acts 2: 1-21

A few weeks ago, many of the faithful were disappointed that the Day of Judgment did not arrive as someone had predicted. There was no Rapture of the faithful to heaven, no judgment of the faithless. The terrifying end of the world scenario this person had predicted didn’t come to be.

The thing is, terrifying, end of the world scenarios are happening all the time. We’ve seen our share of them. The Stock Market crash. 9-11. Katrina and other natural disasters. The list goes on. All sorts of end of the world scenarios, things that someone predicrted would be THE WORST THING EVER have ended up happening—yet somehow we’ve survived.Read More »Pentecost: Positive Apocalypse