This really pulls back the curtain on cobalt

... and makes carbon look beautiful by comparison.

https://rumble.com/v21xovy-the-disturbing-reality-of-cobalt-mining-for-rechargeable-batteries.html

Oliver's Christmas commentary nicely conveys the sense of the Magnificat

 

499 years old, now going on 500

This historical and pivotal sermon series began on December 1, 1523. It evidently ran right up through Christmas Eve.

2023 would be a great time to have a Bible study on 1John, with Oecolampadius' sermon series to guide you. 

Here is a playlist of 17 videos consisting of a 30-min Introduction and sixteen short summaries by Oecolampadius' leading biographer, Ernst Staehelin (a contemporary colleague of Karl Barth); the summaries are newly translated and read as introductions to Bible Study sessions.

Meanwhile, as further evidence of just how groundbreaking this series was, check out this link; notice whose name appears first and notice the categories:

Tradition = Reformed and Genre = Sermon / Sort = Date (Oldest)

The title in question is the third on the list. The first is Oecolampadius' translation of a patristic sermon, the second is a collection of three sermons from 1521, which merit translation, but do not quite represent the full breakthrough to the Reformation, as they were produced while he was still in the monastery.

For the hardcover version of the Sermons on the First Epistle of John, and also for additional translations of related material, ... these Works of Oecolampadius are appearing at Barnes & Noble.

First Year in Basel

This latest volume in the series, The First Year in Basel, fills the gap between Sown on Rock: The Sermon on the Vernacular and the Correspondence with Hedio, and the Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life).

[Links to images lead to paperbacks. Links in the paragraph above lead to hardcover options.]

What is a Christian to do in a time of runaway inflation?

Lower prices on Christian resources, of course!

No time to list them all. But check out my Amazon author page and you will see. 

Note the several Advent and Christmas selections, from the sublime ...

• Johannes Oecolampadius, Sermons on the First Epistle of John (A Handbook for the Christian Life), a groundbreaking Advent sermon series that turns 500 years old next year.
• Waste Not the Fragments: A Commentary for Year D (Advent)
• Waste Not the Fragments: A Commentary for Year D (Christmas) — BRAND NEW
• Greater Attention: Liturgical Elements for Reformed Worship (Year D)
• Lightning from the East: Liturgical Elements for Reformed Worship (Year A)

... to the childlike:

• A Phenomenal Llama: A Tall Christmas Tale for Children of All Ages
• A Coal Train Bound for Christmas — BRAND NEW

Lots more to explore and enrich your faith in the coming year. 

The "Mere Christianity" of its day

 

  

Cloth w/ DJ                                      Kindle                                      Paperback

Next year (2023) is the 500th anniversary of this popular and pivotal sermon series, first preached in Advent in 1523. 

Looking at the history of preaching, especially through the work of the late Hughes Oliphant Old, it is hard to overstate the importance of series of 21 sermons on the First Epistle of John. Casting about for a literary comparisons, allowing for differences in genre, technology, and context, and measured in terms of influence, the best comparison that springs to mind is C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity. Both are challenging, but still accessible to the persevering lay reader. In hindsight, it really was momentous, a major milestone in the Swiss Reformation.

"What does the fire chief say?"

 

  

Cloth w/ DJ                                      Kindle                                      Paperback

Next year (2023) is the 500th anniversary of this immensely popular and important sermon series, first preached in Advent in 1523. 

Reading the opening of Sermon Ten, it is hard not to think of Kierkegaard's short piece from the Attack on Christendom, entitled, "What does the fire chief say?" 

There are times when one needs to preach like the fire chief at the scene of a conflagration, and even times when the beloved apostle had to write in this urgent tone. Half a millennium since this sermon was preached, but it could have been, and perhaps it was, written for just such a time as this.

The "purest Gospel"

 

  

Cloth w/ DJ                                      Kindle                                      Paperback

Next year (2023) is the 500th anniversary of this immensely popular and important sermon series, first preached in Advent in 1523. 

Once the Reformation in Germany had taken hold under Luther, based in particular on his re-discovery of the theology of Paul (Romans and Galatians), further south in Basel, Switzerland, Oecolampadius' serial exposition of 1John likewise tackled, among other things, the doctrine of justification by faith, and strongly confirmed it, while at the same time affirming the fact that good works testify to the genuineness of a living faith and offer us reassurance that we truly have the Word of God abiding in us.

In Sermon One of this series, which was enthusiastically received by the Wittenberg theologians, when Oecolampadius introduces the human author John as the author of the Gospel and the Epistle, he refers to the latter, this epistle as, "itself the purest gospel." This is super-essential material, the stuff of confirmation, a short course in Christian basics, and here it is, finally translated into English for the first time as of 2017, for just such a time as this. 

Why not soak in this sermon series with your congregation in its 500th year, the series that reconnected preaching to the patristic tradition of lectio continua expository preaching, after 1000 years of drift? [Let me know if you want to buy in bulk for your Sunday school, adult Bible study, pastor's reading group, confirmation, or new member's classes, and we can work something out.]