The Shield

06/21/2026

The Roman Empire tried to outlive Christianity.

The hymn outlived the Empire.

Around the third century AD, while Christianity was still illegal in many parts of the Roman world, an unknown Christian songwriter composed a hymn in Greek.

He did not sign his name.

He did not leave a biography.

History forgot who he was.

But it did not forget his song.

Yet they sang.

And what they sang is remarkable.

The hymn praises the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in language that sounds strikingly familiar to Christians today.

This matters because the hymn dates to around AD 250–300.

That means Christians were singing explicitly Trinitarian worship songs decades before the Council of Nicaea met in AD 325.

The Trinity was not invented by a council.

Christians were already worshipping God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Then the hymn disappeared.

For more than sixteen centuries, it lay buried beneath the Egyptian sands near the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus.

Empires rose and fell.

The Western Roman Empire collapsed.

Kingdoms came and went.

Languages changed.

The manuscript remained hidden.

Then, in the late nineteenth century, archaeologists excavating ancient rubbish heaps discovered thousands of forgotten papyrus fragments.

Among them was a hymn.

Not only had the words survived.

The music had survived too.

Today it is known as the Oxyrhynchus Hymn — the oldest surviving Christian hymn with both its lyrics and musical notation still preserved.

Think about that.

A believer whose name we do not know sang this song nearly 1,800 years ago.

The empire he lived under is gone.

The officials who ruled his city are gone.

The temples dedicated to Rome's gods have fallen silent.

But Christians still worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And his song still speaks.

"The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever." — Isaiah 40:8

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06/06/2026

Researchers recently deciphered a 1,800 year old silver amulet found in a grave near Frankfurt, Germany. Dating to between AD 230 and 270, the artifact contains multiple references to Jesus Christ, including the words, “In the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”

Historians say the discovery is changing Christian history because it provides evidence that Christianity had already spread into what is now Germany by the mid third century. The amulet is considered the oldest known evidence of Christianity north of the Alps and suggests the Gospel reached the region earlier than previously documented.

The inscription also includes language that closely mirrors Philippians 2:9–11, declaring that every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus Christ.

The remarkable find offers a glimpse into the faith of some of Christianity’s earliest believers and highlights how rapidly the message of Jesus spread across the Roman Empire.

06/06/2026

WAS THE BIBLE COPIED CORRECTLY?

One of the most common objections to Christianity is that the Bible has been copied so many times that we can no longer know what it originally said.

At first, that sounds reasonable.

After all, if a document has been copied by hand for centuries, wouldn't mistakes accumulate until the original message was lost?

The problem is that this objection ignores the evidence.

The New Testament is the most well-attested document from the ancient world. Today, scholars have access to more than 5,800 Greek New Testament manuscripts, over 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and thousands more in other ancient languages. In total, there are over 24,000 manuscript copies and portions of the New Testament available for comparison.

To appreciate how remarkable that is, consider other famous ancient works. The writings of Julius Caesar survive in about 10 manuscripts. The historian Tacitus is preserved in just a handful of copies. Yet few people question whether we know what those authors originally wrote.

Not only do we have an enormous number of manuscripts, but many of them are very early. Portions of the New Testament can be dated within decades of the original writings. Complete manuscripts appear far closer to the originals than those available for most ancient literature.

Because we possess so many copies from different regions and centuries, copyist mistakes are often easy to identify. If a scribe accidentally omitted a word, misspelled a name, or skipped a line, scholars can compare thousands of manuscripts and detect the error.

Think of it this way. If there were only one surviving manuscript, mistakes would be difficult to identify. But when thousands of manuscripts agree with one another, they function as checks and balances.

Critics often point to the existence of textual variants. However, the overwhelming majority are minor differences involving spelling, word order, or grammar. In Greek, changing the order of words often does not change the meaning of the sentence. Most variants are so insignificant that Bible translators simply note them in the footnotes.

Even skeptical textual scholars acknowledge that no major Christian doctrine depends on a disputed passage.

Then there are the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Discovered beginning in 1947 near the Dead Sea, these manuscripts included portions of every Old Testament book except Esther. Some of them were over 1,000 years older than the oldest Hebrew manuscripts previously available.

Critics expected significant corruption of the text over time.

Instead, they found remarkable consistency. The book of Isaiah, for example, was found to be substantially the same despite being copied over many centuries. The differences that existed were overwhelmingly minor and did not affect the message of the text.

The Bible was not preserved because people copied it perfectly.

It was preserved because so many copies were made that mistakes became detectable.

In fact, the manuscript evidence for the Bible is so extensive that scholars can compare copies from different countries, centuries, and language families to reconstruct the original text with a very high degree of confidence.

Every ancient document was copied.

The question is whether it was copied reliably.

When judged by the same standards historians use for every other ancient work, the Bible stands in a category of its own.

06/05/2026

Denial of the Creator always requires bigger miracles than acknowledging the Creator.

06/04/2026

Fascinating article! I especially liked seeing the references to the early churches that we know were founded in the 1st century and referred to in Scripture.

Archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed what is being called the best-preserved early image of Jesus, offering a remarkable new window into the visual heritage of the early Christian church today.

🔗 http://dlvr.it/TStBBV

06/02/2026

For generations, critics have claimed the Bible was filled with myths, legends, and invented people. Yet archaeology keeps uncovering the very kings, cities, inscriptions, and events they said never existed.

And these examples are only the tip of the iceberg.

06/01/2026

In 701 BCE, the Assyrian king Sennacherib conquered the Judahite city of Lachish and then did something remarkable: he had the entire siege carved into the walls of his palace at Nineveh. 🏛️

The Lachish Reliefs are one of the most extraordinary pieces of ancient evidence for a biblical event ever discovered. Panel after panel shows Assyrian soldiers storming the city walls, Judahite captives being led into exile, and the city itself consumed by fire. It is a conqueror's boast carved in stone, and it matches the account in the Book of Kings almost detail for detail.

What makes this so stunning is that the Assyrians had no reason to lie. This was their victory monument. And yet it confirms that the Kingdom of Judah was real, its cities were real, and its people suffered real consequences. Today, these panels sit in the British Museum in London, silent witnesses to a siege that happened 2,700 years ago. 🔍

What do you think it means when an enemy's own records confirm your history? Drop your thoughts below.

05/19/2026

It takes so much more faith to be an atheist. I don't have that much faith 🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲🎲