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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.
30 results for “Apostolic Church”
Clear searchSamuel G. Green · Historical survey · 1904
Of the several church histories I have read, A Handbook of Church History remains one of the best. Green handles an enormous sweep of people, events, doctrines, and institutions with unusual clarity, yet d…
View recommendation →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
How Supersessionism Took Root in the Early Church A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension Supersessionism did not appear in one moment through one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…d with a promise larger than personal reward. He spoke of His own glorious throne, twelve apostolic thrones, and the twelve tribes of Israel: "Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye a…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
Does Matthew 16:18 Establish Church Infallibility? Few promises offer Christians greater assurance than these words of Jesus: “I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” — Matthew 16:18…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…and the fulfilment of Israel's story. Those who belong to Christ are Abraham's seed. The Church receives Israel's covenant titles, the kingdom is taken from unbelieving Israel and given to a fruit-bearing nation, and all God's promises are yea and amen in Christ. There is one go…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…ospel, 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 cannot be reached by asking whether Christ fulfils the promises. He does. Nor can it be settled by asking whether Gentile…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…ne body of Christ and taught to bear the fruit God required. This is a real transfer. The Church does not merely observe the kingdom from a distance. Believers presently possess its spiritual blessings, submit to its King, proclaim its gospel, and bear responsibility as His peopl…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
Standing at the Door An Unrequited Love for the Historic Church I do not stand outside the historic Church because I despise her. I stand outside because I love much of what I find within her, yet cannot call every later development apostolic. The…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…e understand Jesus, the apostles, the gospel, and the relationship between Israel and the Church. Jesus was born within Israel's covenant world Jesus was not a Gentile religious founder who arrived with an unrelated faith. He was born to a Jewish mother, circumcised on the eighth…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…me also there is a remnant according to the election of grace." —Romans 11:5 The earliest Church was born from that believing remnant. Jesus, the apostles, the women who followed Him, the believers gathered before Pentecost, and the thousands added in Jerusalem were Jewish. Genti…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…lding of David's fallen tabernacle to the inclusion of the Gentiles (Acts 15:13-18). That apostolic application should be received at full strength. Gentile salvation belongs to the Davidic and prophetic hope. It does not require the permanent exclusion of Israel from the restora…
Read article →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…but antiquity does not make every interpretation correct. When he speaks of the catholic Church, the word means the universal or whole Church confessing the apostolic faith; it must not be treated as proof that he would endorse every doctrine or institution of the later Church w…
View recommendation →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…t in the nineteenth century. The conclusion then follows that pretribulationism cannot be apostolic. Two questions are being confused. Did the early Church possess a settled system identical to modern dispensational pretribulationism? No. Did Darby invent the resurrection of dead…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…whole doctrine. Together they form a coherent movement: Christ completes and gathers His Church, resumes Daniel's unfinished programme concerning Israel and Jerusalem, judges the beast's world while saving a multitude within it, and later returns with His redeemed people to deli…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
Is the Church Appointed to the Tribulation's Wrath? Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape The claim that the Church is not appointed to wrath is sometimes answered too q…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…christ Must Come First, Is Christ's Coming Imminent? Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await Imminency does not mean that Christ was required to return within the apostles' lifetime. It means that no revealed prophetic event must first occur before the Church…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…enteenth-century translation. It is whether the event denoted by that term appears in the apostolic text. It plainly does. The rapture is the living believer's participation in the resurrection The most important clarification is that the rapture is not a rival to the resurrectio…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…angelical deformations—secret-key religion, escape rhetoric, elite conversion status, and churchless faith—but fails when it becomes a historical genealogy or a substitute for doctrinal argument. Imagine a Christian whose faith is assembled from prophecy videos, private impressio…
Read article →Sir Robert Anderson · Biblical and apologetic argument · 1897
…tied to his dispensational distinctions and to his understanding of miracles, Israel, the Church, and the apostolic age. That framework must itself be tested rather than assumed. The book offers a theological argument, not a complete pastoral answer to every sufferer, and it shou…
View recommendation →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…did not travel through one vulnerable channel The New Testament writings circulated among churches in different places. Copies produced further copies; early translations carried the text into Latin, Syriac, Coptic, and other languages; Christian authors quoted passages in sermon…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…hristian confession of a real crucifixion remains clear across a geographically dispersed church soon after the apostolic period. Second, the alternative he answers is not presented as a historical memory preserved by witnesses who saw Jesus escape. It is a doctrinal claim associ…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…use he lacked conviction. It was underdeveloped at the point of personal unity. The later Church would need to say that Christ’s humanity was complete but did not constitute a second human person alongside the Son. The eternal Son is the personal subject of both the divine and hu…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…a brilliant, influential and sometimes troubling theologian whose writings show that the Church did not immediately possess a perfectly settled vocabulary for everything Scripture revealed about Christ. The truth was present in the apostolic writings. The language used to defend…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…n immaterial vision enjoyed by the soul, bodily resurrection would become an appendix. In apostolic preaching it is essential. The Christian hope is creational Revelation does not conclude with the redeemed escaping the earth for ever. John sees “a new heaven and a new earth” and…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…lers of this world “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). Acts speaks of “the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). The one who shed His blood is identified by who He is: the Lord of glory, the Son of God. We may therefore say that G…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…use it treats the Torah neither as an embarrassing relic nor as a covenant 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…
View recommendation →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…l evidence. The clay birds appear within an imaginative collection written well after the apostolic period. That collection contains many episodes which neither Christians nor Muslims would readily accept as reliable history. The Qur’an then selects one of its most memorable mira…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…those who name Christ is also real. We must not use either truth to silence the other. A church troubled by words that eat like a disease Paul did not write these words during a peaceful theological discussion. Timothy was facing teachers whose words were doing serious harm. Hym…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…some people distorted, concealed or fabricated religious claims is not evidence that the apostolic Gospel was universally replaced. Who were the People of the Gospel? The Qur'an does not address an imaginary community. By the seventh century, Christians had lived for centuries t…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…them. That is not said to mock the converts. Their confusion also belongs at the feet of churches which entertained but did not teach, gathered crowds but did not catechise, and told people to believe without preparing them to explain what they believed. If someone leaves Christ…
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