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Anointing of the Sick
[Worship & Rites]The Anointing of the Sick is one of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, a rite in which a priest prays over a gravely ill or frail elderly person and anoints him or her with consecrated oil. Protestant churches do not recognize it as a sacrament.
Resurrection of the Body
[Doctrine & Theology]The resurrection of the body is the Christian doctrine that on the last day the bodies of the dead will be raised and reunited with their souls. It is one of the articles confessed in the Apostles' Creed.
Parable of the Great Banquet
[Bible]The Parable of the Great Banquet is a parable of Jesus recorded in Luke 14:15–24. When the invited guests make excuses and fail to come, the host calls in the poor and people from the roadsides to fill his banquet.
Bride of the Lamb
[Bible]The Bride of the Lamb is an expression in the Book of Revelation for the bride who is married to the Lamb, Jesus Christ. It is commonly read as a symbol of God's redeemed people, that is, the church.
Light of the World
[Bible]An expression Jesus used of himself (John 8:12) and of his disciples (Matthew 5:14). It denotes one who reveals God's truth and salvation to a world in darkness.
Book of the Covenant
[Bible]The Book of the Covenant is the book that Moses read aloud to the people in Exodus 24:7. In scholarship and in the church, the name is commonly applied to the collection of laws in Exodus 20:22–23:33.
The Nations
[Bible]In the Bible, "the nations" refers collectively to the peoples and countries outside Israel. The term is closely tied to the biblical theme that God's salvation extends to all peoples.
The First and the Last
[Bible]"The First and the Last" is a biblical title expressing that God alone exists before the beginning of all things and after their end. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah it appears as the LORD's self-declaration, and in the New Testament book of Revelation it is used as a title of Christ.
The Door of the Sheep
[Bible]"The door of the sheep" is the expression Jesus uses in John 10, where he compares himself to the door of a sheepfold, saying, "I am the door of the sheep." It is commonly read to mean that salvation and life are reached through him.
Immortality of the Soul
[Doctrine & Theology]The immortality of the soul is the belief that, although a person dies and the body decays, the soul does not perish but continues to exist. Many denominations teach it together with belief in the resurrection, though views differ on its basis and on how it should be expressed.
Water from the Rock
[Bible]The water from the rock refers to the events in which God, through Moses, brought water out of a rock when the Israelites in the wilderness complained because they had no water to drink. The events are recorded in Exodus 17 and Numbers 20.
Healing of the Demon-Possessed Boy
[Bible]The healing of the demon-possessed boy is a miracle in which Jesus, after coming down from the Mount of Transfiguration, cast a demon out of a boy whom his disciples had been unable to heal. The account appears in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Rebuilding of the Walls of Jerusalem
[Bible]The rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem was an event of the Persian period in which Nehemiah led the reconstruction of Jerusalem's walls, which the Babylonians had destroyed, completing the work in fifty-two days. It is recorded in Nehemiah 1–6.
Battle of the Milvian Bridge
[History]The Battle of the Milvian Bridge was fought on October 28, 312, near the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber River outside Rome, where Constantine defeated Maxentius. It is widely known as the event that turned Constantine toward Christianity.
Distribution of the Bread and the Cup
[Worship & Rites]The distribution of the bread and the cup is the part of the Lord's Supper in which the bread and cup, after the prayer of thanksgiving, are given to the communicants. In Korean Protestant churches, the practice is known as bunbyeong-bunjan, a term combining the distribution of the bread and the distribution of the cup.
Peter's Vision of the Sheet
[Bible]The vision the apostle Peter received while praying in Joppa, in which a great sheet containing unclean animals was let down from heaven (Acts 10). It led to the acceptance of the Gentile Cornelius.
The Widow's Two Mites
[Bible]The widow's two mites refers to the incident in which Jesus, watching at the treasury of the Temple in Jerusalem, saw a poor widow put in two mites, all that she had, and declared that she had put in more than anyone else. It is recorded in the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
Church of the Holy Sepulchre
[History]The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church in the Old City of Jerusalem, built on the site traditionally identified as Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and as the tomb in which he was buried. First built under Constantine the Great in the fourth century, it is now administered jointly by several denominations.
Three Uses of the Law
[Doctrine & Theology]The three uses of the law is a teaching of Reformation theology that organizes the work of God's law into three functions: restraining evil in society, bringing people to recognize their sin, and guiding the life of the believer.
Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification
[History]The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification is a document signed on October 31, 1999, by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church. It states that there is a "consensus in basic truths" on justification, the issue that had divided the two churches since the sixteenth-century Reformation.