Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, For theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:10-12) When those who defend the innocent are fined, imprisoned, or silenced, they embody the very Beatitude spoken by Christ: “Bless

Many a cow weeps when she ends up in a slaughterhouse. She is mourning her own imminent death. Her tears embody the mourning that Jesus blesses. They are not symbolic but real—an expression of grief, terror, and loss in a place of blood and death. When Jesus declared, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt 5:4), he spoke not only of human sorrow but of the universal mourning that runs through all creation subjected to violence. To mourn is to feel th

Introduction: In Luke 13:1-9, Jesus warns murderers of animals that unless they repent, they will perish like the Galileans whose blood Pilate has mixed with their sacrifices, or they will be cut down by God just like a fig tree which fails to bear fruits. The following is inspired by Pastor Frank Kaufman’s 2019/03/24 sermon, “Animal Exploitation Needs Repentance”:- Jesus teaches about the necessity of repentance from a unique angle, emphasizing that true repentance leads to

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:3; Luke 6:20) has two layers of meaning. First, Jesus is blessing the Ebionites (πτωχοί, ebionim/poor), the earliest vegan followers of Him. Second, disconnected from God, we can achieve very little. 1. “The poor”=Ebionim=Ebionite Concerning the first layer of meaning, the “poor” whom Jesus blesses (πτωχοί) are best understood not merely as the economically deprived, but as the ’ebionim (אביונים)