Godly Insights for the 21st Century Life

 "He came out and went, as was his custom , to the Mount of Olives" ~ Luke 22:39, emphasis mine When we think of the power Christ had to prevent His crucifixion, we often think of the army of angels that he had at His command or the power over nature he held. Any one of the people who were responsible for His death could have been smote, scattered, or suddenly thrown into confusion with just one word from His mouth. When passersby mocked Him, they were right in knowing about His power to save others, but wrong in thinking He could not save Himself. A devotion I read Sunday morning caused me to think of another power He had that could have saved Him if He had chosen to use it: the power to choose a hidden spot to pray. The verse quoted above tells us that going to the Mount of Olives to pray was something he did often. According to the author of the devotion, "it was easy for the authorities to find Jesus to arrest him." Another verse says, "Now Judas, who betra...

"and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor." ~ Luke 6:16 "[Judas] said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it." ~ John 12:6 "Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself." ~ Matthew 27:5 These three verses are a summary of the life of one of Jesus' twelve apostles: he was a traitor and a thief who killed himself. Yet I think there has to be more to the story than these verses convey. Jesus chose Judas for the honor of being one of the twelve apostles, and Jesus would not have chosen him if He didn't have a good reason. We know from Acts 1:21-26 that there were other disciples that could have been promoted because, by the end of this passage, Matthias was. Jesus had to have a good reason why Judas was in the top twelve and Matthias wasn't. Unfortunately, that reason is something we will never know because...

"Judas would have become one of the most powerful witnesses for Christ, had he only waited three days." ~ Adam Hamilton, 24 Hours that Changed the World I have read Dante's Inferno  twice for a class, once in my senior year of high school, and then again in my freshman year of college. In both settings, there was a debate among some members of the class about whether Judas should be in Hell, and if so, should he be in quite the intense spot he was placed in within Hell. After all, His betrayal was necessary for God's plan to redeem humanity, and according to Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, he was destined to be lost. Why then, would Dante choose to place him in such a spot of torture in writing his epic poem? I don't pretend to know where Judas's final destination is, and won't ever know it this side of Heaven. There is however, one factor that could justify the theory that it's a different place than the rest of the disciples: of th...