The Greatest Prayer

two eleventh-century battles and their dates were

“As soon as one adopts a way of life in accordance with the law, even though a lover of money, one is forced to act contrary to natural ways and to lend without interest to the needy and to cancel the debt when the seventh year arrives” (2:8).

well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear…. Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth” (Isa. 25:6, 8). Finally, God’s Great Cleanup establishes worldwide equality. I cite here a text from outside the Bible because, unlike t

Next, God’s Great Cleanup establishes a worldwide banquet. There will be “for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of

First, God’s Great Cleanup establishes worldwide peace. Recall those famous lines found verbatim in two separate biblical books: “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and un

This is the fourth-century BCE empire of Alexander the Great, whose infantry carried two-handed twenty-foot pikes. That length meant about five ranks of pike heads pushing their lethal tips past one another into the killing zone. With heavy infantry as anvil and heavy cavalry as hammer, Alexander’s terrible war machine swept across “the whole earth

they stress the type and mode of divine rule—as distinct from the type and mode of imperial rule.

First, among the Ten Commandments, there is this one: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16). It does not say, “obey” your father, but “respect” your mother. It does not make any hierarchy or even distinction between parents. It commands “honor” alike to both. Next, in the biblical book of Proverbs there are over a dozen case

To call God “Father in Heaven” is to call God “Householder of Earth.” And that is why Jesus addressed God as Abba in the Lord’s Prayer.