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Search by subject, then refine by approach. A prophecy study may also be apologetic or discerning because subject tells you what it examines, while approach tells you how it examines it.
34 results for “Ancient world”
Clear searchMarvin W. Meyer · Historical sourcebook · 1987
I recommend The Ancient Mysteries because it gives an excellent view of the Gentile religious world in which Paul preached. Rather than leaving the mystery cults as vague names in a textbook, Meyer lets the…
View recommendation →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…ry the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.” —1 John 4:1 Ecstasy is not exclusively Christian Certain features appear repeatedly in accounts of spiritual ecstasy: a diminished awareness of the body, the weakening of the distinc…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…ion of the high god in Canaanite religion. Israel lived within a wider Canaanite cultural world. Several ancient biblical poems describe Yahweh as coming from Sinai, Seir, Paran or Teman. Israelite and Judahite inscriptions attest forms of worship condemned by Scripture, includin…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…cease to feel their force. God became man. The Word was made flesh. The One who made the world entered it, accepted the limitations of a human life, suffered at the hands of His creatures and died upon a cross. We confess these things because they are true. But we should not pre…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…and sufficiency of Jesus Christ—and to believe on Him. The same words can carry different worlds Consider a short gospel explanation: God is holy. You are a sinner. Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again. Repent and believe on Him. The statements are biblical. But none en…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…prove pretribulationism, but it can disprove a careless invention narrative. The event is ancient Tertullian, writing around the beginning of the third century, says that believers remaining at Christ's coming, together with the resurrected dead in Christ, will be "caught up in t…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…m to have recovered what nearly everyone else has missed. 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 propheti…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…nderstand it rightly. They conclude that Jesus is “that prophet that should come into the world” and intend to make Him king by force (vv. 14–15). When they find Him on the other side of the sea, Jesus exposes their motive: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…hind Qur’anic narratives The Qur’an did not emerge in a cultural vacuum. It appeared in a world alive with biblical names, Jewish interpretation, Christian preaching, sectarian disagreement, devotional legend and stories carried across languages by travellers, merchants, clergy a…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…leave an institution that binds the conscience beyond Scripture are said to resemble the ancient Gnostic impulse—a flight from matter, history, authority and ordinary Christian fellowship into a private world of disembodied knowledge. The charge would be easier to dismiss if I f…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…eing”, to verse 3. Some critical editions attach those words to the beginning of verse 4. Ancient punctuation and the history of interpretation make this a real issue, not a triviality to conceal. But either punctuation retains both “all things came into being through him” and “a…
Read article →Simon Greenleaf · Legal examination of testimony · 1846
…hecking its assumptions and placing it alongside contemporary work on the Gospels and the ancient world. Four Gospels Witness testimony Historical reliability Legal evidence Resurrection Gospel harmony Christian apologetics
View recommendation →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…anches broken off | Israelites excluded through unbelief | | The wild olive | The Gentile world outside Israel's covenant privileges | | Wild branches grafted in | Gentiles brought by faith into the blessings flowing from the root | No symbol should be pressed beyond Paul's purpo…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…d's purpose The New Testament teaches a unity so profound that it would have startled the ancient world. In Christ, Jewish and Gentile believers are reconciled to God in one body. Both possess the same Spirit, approach the same Father, and inherit salvation on the same basis. It…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…rsian decree begins the count, whether the relevant year should be 445 or 444 BC, how the ancient calendars should be correlated, and which date best fits the crucifixion. Even the popular summary of Anderson's arithmetic is often misstated: the final twenty-four days are not sim…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…prepared me” mean? Hebrews places these words on the lips of the Son as He comes into the world: “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me.” — Hebrews 10:5 Read alone, the sentence could sound as…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…It does not. A Roman historian confirms the execution Christian sources are not the only ancient witnesses. Writing early in the second century, the Roman historian Tacitus explains the origin of the Christians whom Nero persecuted after the fire of Rome. He reports that Christu…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…another person. The man Jesus is the Son living as man. A modern hand inside a glove This ancient problem has not disappeared. It survives in many of the simple images Christians use when explaining the incarnation. Ray Comfort has sometimes said that God created a human body for…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…preter who supplies that movement is drawing an inference beyond the sentence itself. The ancient reception background In the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, citizens could go out to meet an approaching dignitary and accompany him in a formal entry. Two other New Testament passages…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…ginning of His personal existence. Before He was born of Mary, before Abraham, before the world itself, He was. But that raises a further question. Does eternal existence necessarily equal divinity? Could someone confess that Jesus is eternal and uncreated while still denying tha…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…o trace the development accurately: neither excusing indefensible words nor forcing every ancient writer into a modern category. The apostolic starting point was Jewish The earliest Church did not think of Christianity as a Gentile religion which had displaced Israel. Jesus and t…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…he traditional Masoretic pointing reflected in the KJV and most English translations. The ancient versions generally understood the noun as “sons,” although several rendered the accompanying verb with the sense of dwelling or cohabiting. The same consonantal form repeatedly means…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…plicit sequence as an imposition, constructs two questionable seven-year fulfilments from ancient history, and makes AD 70 exhaust a prophecy whose narrated conclusion reaches the visible coming of Christ. The article’s governing problem is selective compression. Passages are col…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…pply microscopic anatomy, genetic information or a developmental mechanism unavailable to ancient observers. The sequence of bones followed by their being clothed with flesh also requires interpretation in light of modern development, where skeletal and muscular tissues different…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…tthew 3:17). John later describes the measure of God's saving love: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). Isaac is not the eternal Son of God. He is a created man…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…come “seek.” The difference probably reflects either a distinct Hebrew textual form or an ancient interpretive rendering. It should be examined rather than silently harmonised. James introduces the quotation by saying: “And to this agree the words of the prophets.” —Acts 15:15 Th…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…und. Daniel saw: "One like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days ... And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him" (Daniel 7:13-14). This figure is distinct from the…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…e Christian case; it is simply the truth. The Old Greek witness Daniel also circulated in ancient Greek. The earlier Old Greek translation arose within Jewish transmission before it was displaced in most Christian manuscripts by the version associated with Theodotion. The Old Gre…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…Christian hope for creation rests neither in human effort nor in escape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of its rightful King, the revelation of the sons of God, and the righteous reign of Christ with His saints. Recently, Emma Ruth Rundle's song God's…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…the seventh century, Christians had lived for centuries throughout the Roman and Persian worlds, Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Ethiopia and regions connected with Arabia. Their churches disagreed sharply over Christology, councils, episcopal authority and imperial power. T…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…le, Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome, and Jewish communities became established across the world. The warnings did not end with scattering. Moses also looked beyond it: "Then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee f…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…ther, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was” (John 17:5). And: “For thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). Before creation there was not merely a solitary deity possessing an unused capacity for re…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…John gives us something far greater. The Word did not tumble helplessly into the material world. He came willingly. He was not diminished by taking flesh. He sanctified our humanity by making it His own. He did not escape the grave by abandoning the body. He conquered the grave a…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…s. Increasingly, they offer an entire identity. Each side supplies its own account of the world: the dangers which matter, the injustices which deserve attention, the experts who may be trusted, the words which may be used and the people who ought to be feared or condemned. Once…
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