The Orthodox Church does not have statues like the Catholic Church, but they do revere holy pictures, or icons. In Russia the most important of these icons was the Virgin of Vladimir. Both Ivan the Terrible and Nicholas II carried it into battle. They believed they could not be defeated if that picture went before their army. We...

England's Coventry Cathedral is one of the most impressive church buildings in the world. The old Cathedral was destroyed by Nazi bombs during World War II. After the war, Christian youth from Germany came over and helped clean up the rubble. The architect left the ruins of the old church as a kind of forecourt through which...

John Leo, writing in U.S. News and World Report, noted that twins are now more frequent. Someone said, "I guess it's because little children are afraid to come into this world alone!" Those who think this present age the worst of all possible worlds have not read very much history! And those who make themselves sick thinking...

Jesus' parable of a man who found buried treasure in a field has had some modern parallels to show that, like all His parables, this one is true to life. In 1820, a Greek farmer on the island of Milos uncovered some blocks of carved stone. Digging deeper, he found four statues. One of them was bought by a...

A church in Georgia published a rather long prayer list. They thought it would be helpful to identify the reason for each one being on the list. In this way people could pray for specific needs and problems, rather than praying in vague generalities. There were all the usual things: hospitalized, bereaved, facing surgery. But beside...

In his history of remarkable entertainers, Ricky Jay told the story of Tommy Minnick. Minnick had learned how to stand excruciating pain. Just before the turn of the century, in a hall in Trenton, New Jersey, he was actually nailed to a cross. Of course, he didn't stay on it very long, and he was taken down alive. But it is a useful...

It is said that when the great Italian artist Raphael was painting one of his frescoes in the Vatican, two church cardinals were watching and criticizing his work. One said that the face of the apostle Paul was too red, to which Raphael is said to have replied, "He blushes to see into whose hands the church has fallen." Now the ...

It's rare to find a mistake in the movies. They are well researched. But some moviegoers have made a hobby of finding those mistakes. In Indiana Jones, the leading character flies across the Atlantic in an airplane a year before planes began carrying passengers across the Atlantic and starts back by airship a year after the end of...

When David Wallechinsky and Amy Wallace wrote the 90's edition of the Book of Lists (published by Little Brown and Company, 1993) they included of course, the Ten Commandments. But in which of the book's several categories did the Ten Commandments belong? Certainly not under the category of People, or Family, or Crime, or...