97 T messages

Sometime there's more Gospel on a pop culture t-shirt than in Christian testimonies, sermons, books, and TV religion programming. "Jesus is my homeboy" doesn't really move me much, nor does it mean anymore than Jesus and I are close friends. But "My Savior is tougher than nails" with a side bar of Rev. 1:18 pretty much tells the story of the resurrection and Christ's victory over death, something most Christians hear about only at Easter.

"These words do not quite prepare us, however, for what follows: I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades (v. 18). It is as if "the Almighty" and he who was "pierced" (1:7) and "freed us from our sins in his blood" (1:5) have merged into one. The mighty angel turns out to be Jesus himself--Jesus raised from the dead and clothed in divine splendor--but John cannot know this and we do not know it, until he so identifies himself. John had fallen to the ground as though dead (v. 17), but here was one who had actually been dead and had come back to life again (v. 18; compare "firstborn from the dead" in 1:5), and who consequently held the keys of death and Hades, the power to give life or take it away." Intervarsity Press Commentary on-line

Today's Wall Street Journal carried a marketing story on the Christian pop culture.