a visit with jesus

 Bible Art

The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
Artist: Abel Grimmer
 1611    Painting

 See Details

The parable of the barren fig tree is a parable of Jesus which appears in Luke 13:6–9.  It is about a fig tree which does not produce fruit.  This parable is about Jesus warning  Christians that they must bear fruits after their conversion worthy of repentance or risk being condemned to Hell. God, in his mercy, repeatedly checks on believers to see if they have borne fruit worthy of their baptism and conversion. If someone who has been baptized and says they are Christian has not borne fruit, they are condemned. This verse was used during the Counter-Reformation to help support the belief of the Church that faith without works is dead. 

The Parable of the Good Shepherd Separating the Sheep from the Goats
 Byzantine School    Mosaic

 See Details

Mosaics consist of a number of tesserae—small pieces of stone or glass—placed together to render a work of art. Pliny the Elder gives the Greeks credit for inventing the mosaic form of art (Natural History 36.31), but the earliest extant mosaics, from around 700 BCE, are found in Gordian in Phrygia (in modern-day Turkey). Almost no mosaics with Christian motifs are extant from the period before the Emperor Constantine’s Edict of Milan (313 CE), which granted religious toleration throughout the Roman Empire. The surviving Christian mosaics before 313 tend to be found in tombs.