It’s a tradition. I recount the top ten articles on blog at the end of each year. I suppose it’s only fitting to look at the mile markers over the part year, as I have been wont to review the mile markers of my lifelong journey over the years.
Over recent years, the readership of this blog has increased from 10,000 in 2019, to 20,000 in 2020, to 30,000 from 2021 through 2023, 20 61,000+ in 2024, and 112,000+ in 2025. The data demonstrates a shift in readership. according to Chat GPT, from more of a community minded, WordPress driven blog to a blog that ranks on Google and attracts a wider audience.
I have done nothing intentionally to trigger that change in readership. I suspect the change may have something to do one article that has become the most read article on the blog: Who Were the Sons of Issachar? And What Might They Mean for Us Today? It has been read over 34,400 times since I published it in September 2020, and over one third of those views (12,203) came in 2025.
The article is the result of my own angst over American Christian support of Donald Trump. It was written at the height of the 2020 presidential campaign after a conversation with my best friend from college in which I learned of his support of Trump. We both years together in a charismatic church that grew out of the Jesus People movement in the Northeast and morphed into the New Apostolic Reformation movement that melded the charismatic movement with the fundamentalist, Moral Majority.
These forces brought politics into church culture and fueled Christian political activism as a primary focus of the local, regional, and national church mission. We both left that church to go to law school, and our paths diverged.
Paul and I could pick up as if we last saw each other only a week ago, though years had gone by. Yet, our paths had taken us to very different places in our spiritual journeys. I had moved on.
From my new vantage point, Donald Trump appeared to me like a wolf in sheep’s clothing; while my good friend had embraced the prophetic excitement that fueled the support of a certain segment of the faith community for Trump. While Paul celebrated Trump like a modern incarnation of King Cyrus ordained by God to establish God’s people in the United States like a new promised land; I was convinced that Trump is like Saul, the king God’s people wanted because they rejected God as their king.
Though I was confident in my own assessment, I was deeply troubled by my good friend’s support and the prophetic fervor that fueled it. I spent many hours listening to those prophetic voices. Those voices took me into a world of faith and politics with gnostic, conspiratorial, arcane, militaristic, and occultic undertones.
The sons of Issachar “who knew the times” was a catch phrase spoken like a secret handshake among purveyors of prophetic understanding. I took my growing angst to the Bible to familiarize myself with the story of David living in exile from the paranoid King Saul where many members of the various tribes of Israel joined him, including the sons of Issachar, who knew the times.
I used writing to resolve my angst as I meditated on Scripture and sought clarity in prayer and meditation. The Sons of Issachar piece was my way of working through that angst. I was able to put a bow on my efforts with the Postscript to the Sons of Issachar Who Understood the Times, published a few days after the 2020 presidential election.
Thank you for indulging me as I recall the backstory to the most well-read article of this blog, which may also be the reason the blog ranks now on Google. Whether it is the reason (or not), it underscores how this blog characterizes my own journey and grows organically out of it. Following are the next most-read articles in 2025.
Continue reading “The Top Ten of 2025”
Navigating by Faith 