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54 results for “All God's promises”
Clear searchWhat 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
Do All God's Promises Transfer to the Church? What "yea and Amen" in Christ means for Israel and the covenants Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements about the promises of God: "Fo…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
The Unshaken Truth of God's Promises One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel This series began with a question: has the Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answer cann…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…y rebelled and, when Messiah came, the nation did not receive Him. What happens to divine promises when their recipients prove unfaithful? Scripture does not answer by minimising Israel's sin. Nor does it conclude that God's purpose must be transferred to a more deserving people.…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
No Shadow of Turning What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises This series has examined covenants, prophecies, apostles, thrones, tribes, branches, seeds, kingdoms, and the difficult words upon which the debate turns. We have tried to hear the…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
Does the New Testament Reaffirm Israel's Promises? Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy The Old Testament repeatedly promises Israel preservation, regathering, cleansing, the kingdom of Dav…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
Are Israel and the Church Really the Same? Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose The New Testament teaches a unity so profound that it would have startled the ancient world. In Christ, Jewish and Gentile bel…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…may prefer words such as fulfilled, transformed, or expanded. They believe that Israel's promises have reached their true meaning in Christ and now belong to the multinational Church. Others maintain that Jewish and Gentile believers are one in Christ while national Israel still…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
What Does "They Are Not All Israel, Which Are of Israel" Mean? Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation Romans 9:6 is often used as a definition of spiritual Israel: "Fo…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…romise, and fulfilment in Christ Israel broke God's law, rejected the prophets, and nationally refused its Messiah. Jerusalem was judged, the temple was destroyed, and the Jewish people were scattered among the nations. Does covenant unfaithfulness permit us to conclude that God…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…el no longer possesses a distinct future in the fulfilment of the biblical covenants. The promises reach their final meaning in Christ and the Church; any future conversion of Jewish people is their entrance into the Church, not the restoration of Israel as a nation with a distin…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
Not Three Gods Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God The Trinity is often rejected before it is accurately defined. “The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…rgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who never loves. Nor can Christianity be reduced to the sentimental claim that God approves everyone regardless of truth, repentance or hol…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…hn, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ If YHWH alone is Creator, Saviour and Lord of all, what are the New Testament writers saying when they place Jesus within that identity? Isaiah does not leave Israel searching for a greater God behind the God who speaks. The One who com…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…earns that judgement is approaching Sodom, he asks one of Scripture's great questions: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" —Genesis 18:25 His appeal assumes something about God's character. The Lord will not treat the righteous and the wicked as morally indistinguish…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…the Meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5 “Thou shalt no more be termed Forsaken; neither shall thy land any more be termed Desolate: but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the LORD delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married. For as a young man marrieth…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…y. It does force an important question: how should we read the many passages in which God promises to preserve Israel as a nation, gather its scattered people, restore them to the land, cleanse them, pour out His Spirit, and bring them under Messiah? The biblical pattern is not m…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
Your Party Is Not Your Church How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal Political parties do not merely ask for our votes. Increasingly, they offer an entire identity. Each side supplies its own account of t…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…dvance. The resulting picture is richer than either separation or replacement. Gentiles really do enter blessings rooted in Israel's covenant history. They do so by grace and faith, alongside the believing remnant of Israel. Yet Paul continues to distinguish wild branches from na…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…asis. Translations variously express it as substance, assurance, or confidence. We should allow the context to guide us rather than assume every possible meaning applies at once. What follows is especially helpful: Hebrews gives us lives in which this faith becomes visible. Hebre…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…poke loudly in the language of its people. His words were intended to reach those on the wall, to unsettle them, and to break their confidence in their king and their God. Then we read: “But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the king’s commandment was, sayin…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…f the strongest arguments for identifying the Church as Israel. First, Paul says that the promises were made to Abraham and his singular Seed, Christ. Everyone who belongs to Christ is then called Abraham's seed and an heir according to the promise (Galatians 3:16, 29). If Christ…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…on medicine has advanced, researchers have interviewed cardiac-arrest survivors systematically, and neuroscientists have recorded surprising activity in brains under extreme physiological stress. The subject is now more scientifically interesting than it was when I first encounte…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…rael, we must identify the person being addressed, follow the argument from verse 17, and allow Paul's next question in Romans 3:1 to control what his conclusion can mean. The crucial question is not whether Gentile believers receive an inward circumcision. They do. The question…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…res: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). That statement raises a serious question. If God is eternally one solitary Person, was divine love eternally active, or did it exist only as a capacity awaiting creation? Did relationship begin when God made something other than Himself? The quest…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…ome obsolete. No nation, including modern Israel, is excused when it acts unjustly. Above all, salvation has always rested upon the saving work of Christ. Yet none of those propositions establishes that God has cancelled Israel's territorial future. The central question is not wh…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…ns while drawing entirely different conclusions from them. One person encounters what he calls Christ; another believes she has met a Hindu deity; another speaks of Allah, the universe, the divine self, a spirit guide, or an impersonal consciousness. They cannot all be confirming…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…ians 1:5–10 as a decisive passage. Paul is writing to Christians enduring persecution. He promises them rest when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in flaming fire, taking vengeance upon the disobedient. Brown therefore concludes that the Church receives deliverance at Chris…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…ther period of persecution, or is it a defined hour of divine judgement from which Christ promises to deliver His Church? Persecution and wrath are not the same Persecution rises from the hatred of Satan, the world, and wicked rulers. Divine wrath is God's judicial response to si…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…abel to one side. It must be answered by comparing the passages themselves. What Paul actually describes Paul's sequence in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 is straightforward: The Lord descends from heaven. The dead in Christ rise first. Living believers are caught up together with them.…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…ill find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) with them" (Surah 7:157, Pickthall). That is not a minor claim. If Muhammad was genuinely foretold in the Bible, Christians must face the evidence. A prophecy does not cease to be true because its fulfilment is unwelcome.…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…sionism more directly than Matthew 21:43: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof." —Matthew 21:43 The language is unmistakably judicial. Something is taken away, another people receives it, an…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…ness rather than submit to the righteousness of God (Romans 10:1–3). Christ is therefore called the telos of the Law within a contrast between two approaches to righteousness. One seeks to establish a standing before God through the Law; the other receives God's righteousness by…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…alem. Jesus takes Daniel's abomination of desolation and places it at the head of an unparalleled tribulation. Paul describes a lawless ruler who exalts himself in the sacred place and is destroyed by Christ's appearing. Revelation returns to Daniel's imagery and repeatedly uses…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…oes not require Dispensationalism is often criticised by slogans before it is defined. It allegedly began with John Nelson Darby, turns the Church into God's failed contingency plan, ignores the fulfilment of prophecy in AD 70, baptises modern politics, and restores animal sacrif…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…ion tells the religious history of Israel in approximately this way. The patriarchs originally worshipped the Canaanite high god El. Yahweh was a separate deity from the southern wilderness—perhaps Midian, Edom or Seir—whose worship was later brought into Israel. Over time, the t…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…the elect. The sequence appears plain: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light... And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds,…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…ssed. He speaks often of leaving this world, seldom of bodily resurrection, and hardly at all of the local church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper seem peripheral. Ordinary Christian service appears dull beside the latest prophetic timetable. Other believers are divided into those…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…ugh one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile, separated socially from Jewish communities, interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem as lasting displacement, and read Israel's Scriptures principally through their fulfilment in Christ and the Church. Th…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…to me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." —John 7:37–38 John immediately explains what Jesus meant: "But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive." —John 7:39 This…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…redeemed will see God and find their perfect happiness in Him. It draws upon magnificent promises: “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8); “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2); and “they shall see his face” (Revelation 22:4). The difficulty beg…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…inies, Christians enjoy seven years of safety, and Jewish people are abandoned to an unparalleled holocaust. He then appeals to John 5, Daniel, Matthew 24, Romans 8 and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to reject the system. Some of his criticism is directed particularly towa…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…estion is not which son a later community would prefer. The question is which son God actually named, how securely that reading is preserved, and which account explains the complete redemptive pattern. Three questions which must not be confused Discussion often moves too quickly…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…periences are more painful than awakening to the seriousness of our own sin. The excuses fall away, the damage becomes clear, and conscience begins to speak. We may feel guilt, grief, shame, fear, or even disgust with ourselves. Yet sorrow by itself is not repentance. The Bible p…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…s Islam honours Jesus in ways which Christians should acknowledge accurately. The Qur'an calls Him the Messiah, describes Him as a word from God, affirms His virgin birth and attributes extraordinary signs to Him by God's permission. It does not dismiss Him as an impostor or an i…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…nt code which the Church must simply re-enact. The authors read its narratives, patterns, promises, and commandments as a coherent witness whose goal is found in Yeshua. Their Jewish and Israeli setting makes the discussion especially valuable, while the book's clarity opens ques…
View recommendation →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…I despise her. I stand outside because I love much of what I find within her, yet cannot call every later development apostolic. There is a particular accusation made against evangelical Christianity that I feel more deeply than might be expected. We are told that we are rootless…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…nts, judgment upon the nations and the return of the redeemed. Their cumulative movement calls for an explanation large enough to accommodate all these things together. We should allow that movement to develop before deciding where it belongs in an eschatological framework. This…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…Gospel places Him at the feast of tabernacles and the feast of dedication, now commonly called Hanukkah (John 7:2-14; 10:22-23). When asked for the first commandment, Jesus began with Israel's confession: "The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…ed the transmission of the Bible, the missing Islamic Injeel, the Qur’an’s miracle claim, alleged prophecies of Muhammad, the covenant line through Isaac, Daniel’s cut-off Messiah and the Qur’an’s relationship to the religious stories of late antiquity. The individual questions m…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…as begotten when He rose from the dead, did He only then become the Son of God? Yet John called Him God’s “only begotten Son” before the cross and presented Him as the eternal Word who was already with God in the beginning. I knew those truths could not contradict one another, bu…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…r candlesticks, examines their doctrine and conduct, warns them, comforts them, and gives promises to the overcomer. "Church" or "churches" appears repeatedly because these assemblies are the stated earthly audience. The final promise to Philadelphia is especially relevant: "Beca…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…c reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light... And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds,…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…en, seventy, or any other number. Instead, He deliberately formed a group whose number recalled the twelve sons of Jacob and the twelve tribes of Israel. Most interpreters recognise the symbolism. The dispute concerns what the symbol means. Did the Twelve announce that Israel was…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ry more than it says. It is a cumulative and comparative case: which timing best explains all the biblical data together with the fewest forced exceptions? Scripture explicitly teaches the event. The Lord descends from heaven; the dead in Christ rise; living believers are changed…
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