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54 results for “Biblical context”
Clear searchFour popular claims tested in context
Was Muhammad Foretold in the Bible? Four popular claims tested in context The Qur'an says that the coming of Muhammad was written in the Torah and the Gospel possessed by Jews and Christians: "Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither rea…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…ains the judge, while their practices remain evil. E. W. Bullinger discusses this under a biblical idiom in which active language can describe permission. He applies the explanation to several New Testament passages, including those concerning hardening in Romans 9 and 11. This i…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
Is the Pretribulation Rapture Without Biblical Basis? A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues th…
Read article →Matthew, the Hebrew word almah, and a sign whose meaning reaches beyond Ahaz
…solves the issue. It is the more usual word for virgin, but Hebrew usage still depends on context. Joel 1:8, for example, speaks of a betulah mourning for “the husband of her youth,” a phrase whose interpretation is debated. Lexical choices are not algebraic codes. The careful co…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
Secret Rapture—or Biblical Distinction? Why a loaded label does not settle the question “The secret rapture is unbiblical.” The phrase is repeated so often that it can sound like an argument. It is not. Pretr…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…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, including the notorious referen…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…o avoid Jesus. He is a historically recognisable candidate arising from the Second Temple context. The question is whether he exhausts the prophecy. Antiochus desecrated and plundered the Temple, but the sanctuary survived and was rededicated. Daniel 9:26 describes the city and s…
Read article →The brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility
…s imposed upon an unrelated poem. Taken together, they establish Psalm 69 as an important biblical pattern of the Messiah’s righteous suffering. The question considered here is whether Psalm 69:8 belongs to that same pattern: “I am become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…m is a way of reading the Bible that gives sustained weight to grammatical and historical context, progressive revelation, the distinct identities named in the text, and the unconditional promises God made to Israel. It affirms one way of salvation by grace through faith, centred…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…why should anyone place the rapture before it? The objection deserves an answer from the context, not the slogan that Matthew concerns Jews while Paul concerns Christians. The contextual differences must be demonstrated, and the similarities must not be denied. The Olivet Discou…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…9, and the people of God Michael Horton's essay, “No Holy Land: Does Israel Still Have a Biblical Claim on the Middle East?”, presents a concise Reformed case against dispensational land theology. Horton argues that Israel's possession of Canaan was conditional, that the promise…
Read article →E. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
I recommend these sermons because Bullinger treats the Second Advent as a great biblical theme rather than an isolated prophetic curiosity. He ranges across the Law, Prophets, Psalms, Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation, drawing attention to the sheer weight of Scripture…
View recommendation →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…to the warrior descent of Revelation 19. Those questions must be answered from the wider context of prophecy. This limitation cuts both ways. The passage alone does not prove a seven-year heavenly interval. It also does not narrate an immediate return to the earth. Any interpret…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…th, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." —1 Thessalonians 5:9 The immediate context concerns the Day of the Lord arriving as a thief upon those who say "Peace and safety". Believers are children of light who should remain awake and sober. Paul does not merely promis…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…ens. The unit is not stated in the phrase itself, so it should not simply be assumed. The context, however, strongly favours sevens of years. Daniel has been considering seventy years; Israel's law organised years into sabbatical cycles; and 490 ordinary days cannot contain the e…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
…and proclaim royal arrival. "Last" means last within the sequence or purpose in view. The contexts differ: In 1 Corinthians 15, the trumpet accompanies resurrection and instantaneous transformation. In 1 Thessalonians 4, "the trump of God" gathers the dead and living in Christ. I…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
The Jewish Messiah, apostles, Scriptures, covenants, and hopes which frame the New Testament's worldwide gospel brought back into view.
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…e text means what a passage actually says; inference means the conclusion its wording and context reasonably support; and theological synthesis means the account that best holds the passages together. Those distinctions allow a strong conclusion without making each individual ver…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…not build a ministry around revealing heavenly secrets. Indeed, he tells the story in the context of refusing self-exaltation. In Jesus' account of the rich man and Lazarus, the dead man wants someone sent back to warn his brothers. Abraham answers: "If they hear not Moses and th…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…ich God never placed in the text. Why does Paul say every promise is "yea"? The immediate context is not a debate about Israel and the Church. Paul is defending his integrity after changing his travel plans. Some in Corinth apparently accused him of vacillation, as though his int…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…e circumcised in the flesh while remaining uncircumcised in heart (Jeremiah 9:25-26). The biblical contrast therefore existed within Israel long before the Church. A person could bear Abraham's physical sign and remain inwardly rebellious. The answer was not to deny that he was e…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…s Christ died for your sins and rose again. Repent and believe on Him. The statements are biblical. But none enters an empty mind. Every hearer already has some understanding of God, morality, human identity, justice, death, and religion. Even the conviction that there is no God…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
Romans 10:4 examined in context to show how Christ is both the Law's intended goal and its appointed end in relation to righteousness.
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…wonder, and urgency of ordinary Christian faithfulness. This is a collection of forceful biblical exhortations rather than a systematic treatment of one doctrine. Hunt writes urgently and sometimes moves quickly across large and disputed subjects, including prophecy, the Church,…
View recommendation →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…t the Church appears detached from Israel's Scriptures, Messiah, covenants, and hope. The biblical answer requires both unity and distinction, each defined by the texts which teach it. The Church is one new man in Christ Gentiles were once "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel,…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…was truly “made of a woman” and entered our history under the obligations of the law. The biblical portrait of Christ’s inner human life There is no single proof-text that carries the whole argument. Scripture gives us something stronger: a sustained portrait of a complete human…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…that the early Christians simply knew less Bible or believed in an unfinished Christ. The biblical realities were already present. What remained underdeveloped was the language capable of preserving all of them together. What must be held together John does not say that the Word…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…its conclusions arise from Scripture, which errors its words exclude, and why apparently biblical alternatives fail. We should also teach these things to our children. They do not need to begin with fourth-century technical vocabulary. They can begin with John’s simple and decis…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…thew 18:18, within instructions concerning sin and discipline among believers. This wider context is relevant when considering how such authority operates within the Church. But authority and infallibility are distinguishable. The fact that Christ authorises His servants to act d…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…s quoted as though Tertullian himself taught the recovery of the Jewish homeland. Read in context, it establishes the opposite. Tertullian is answering Marcion's claim that the Creator's Christ promised the Jews restoration to their country. After voicing that position, Tertullia…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…ends by calling Jerusalem: “Sought out, A city not forsaken.” —Isaiah 62:12 The immediate context therefore does not encourage us to treat Zion merely as a symbol for spiritual blessedness. Nor does it permit us to turn “thy land” into a general reference to nature or humanity’s…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…e Gentiles, and the Church. That question matters because it touches three foundations of biblical faith: how we read Scripture, how we understand the character of God, and how we relate to the Jewish people. The words of a promise matter God called Abram from his country and pro…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…betrayal had purchased. These actions show that remorse can be profound without becoming biblical repentance. A person may hate what he has done, wish he could reverse it, confess that it was wrong, and attempt to repair some of the damage—yet still not turn to God in faith. Jud…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…tance. These truths are not concessions made reluctantly. They are essential parts of the biblical case. But they do not answer the decisive question: does fulfilment in Christ confirm the promises God made, or permit their stated recipients and particulars to be permanently exch…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…ratives 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 and ordinary belie…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…ative Christians, the question can feel politically loaded before it has even been opened biblically. Environmental concern has become so closely associated with the political left, liberal theology, nature mysticism, animism, and neo-paganism that some Christians instinctively r…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…why a settled claim to faith accompanied by a settled refusal of Christ's rule creates a biblical contradiction. Titus describes people who “profess that they know God; but in works they deny him” (Titus 1:16). Their profession and practice point in opposite directions. We shoul…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…s this fulfilled, or is it still future?” That is often a necessary question when reading biblical prophecy. Sometimes, however, it becomes an inadequate question because it assumes that a prophecy must belong entirely to one historical moment. Isaiah does not always speak that w…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…al fiction, not the Jesus presented across the Gospels. If he leaves because thousands of biblical manuscripts have been presented as thousands of corruptions, while every form of Qur’anic textual plurality is classified as perfect preservation, he has been taught two standards r…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…impassible. (See Note 3.) That is not verbal evasion. It is the necessary grammar of the biblical facts. If we say that only an independent human person suffered, we divide Christ into two acting subjects. If we say that deity itself bled or died, we confuse the natures and turn…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…hod remains sound: notice a distinction, trace the words through Scripture, compare their contexts, and allow the whole testimony of Scripture to govern the conclusion. The mature form of that method requires one further discipline. A concordance can show us where an English word…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…scourse is rooted in the land and institutions of Israel. Clue two: "elect" already has a biblical history The word "elect" does not arrive in Matthew without a history. In the Greek Old Testament and the KJV's rendering of Israel's Scriptures, election language can refer to the…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…century polemicist Ibn Hazm becoming an especially forceful defender of corruption in the biblical text itself. Earlier Muslim views were not uniform. We should neither pretend that textual corruption was wholly invented by Ibn Hazm nor read the most developed later theory automa…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…y receive the blessing of Abraham through Jesus Christ by faith (Galatians 3:13-14). That context establishes genuine Gentile inheritance. It does not ask whether Israel retains promises of nationhood, land, Davidic rule, regathering, and national renewal. Those subjects should n…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…crates the lump, and the root gives the branches their covenantal standing. The immediate context points backwards to Israel's fathers and forwards to Israel's future mercy. Paul later says that Israel remains "beloved for the fathers' sakes" (Romans 11:28). The details can there…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…slations 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. Hebrews 11:1, t…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…tinuing to distinguish Him personally from the Father. Each strand must be interpreted in context. Some passages establish more than others. Several are capable of a weaker explanation when isolated. The real test is cumulative: which identity explains the whole Gospel portrait w…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…n my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." —Luke 22:29-30 The context corrects worldly ambition without cancelling future authority. The apostles must lead as servants now precisely because Christ will entrust them with rule in His kingdom. Their autho…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…upon the unfaithful rulers and generation then entrusted with the vineyard? The immediate context identifies Jesus' targets. The parable identifies what they had corrupted. The chronology of what Jesus says afterwards tests whether permanent national replacement can be the intend…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…en of promise, children of God, the Church, and Israel are interchangeable terms in every context. Paul can unite the saved without confusing the histories through which God brought them together. Does unbelieving Israel lose the name Israel? Paul's vocabulary throughout the thre…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Biblical polemic · 2002
…acter of God, and especially of His love. Hunt repeatedly brings the argument back to the biblical text. Follow the references, open the passages, read their contexts, and the book becomes a Scripture study rather than merely one side of a theological dispute. This is an unapolog…
View recommendation →Eitan Bar · Biblical and historical polemic · 2019
…ity with Israeli life, and experience discussing Yeshua with Jewish people bring valuable context to questions about messianic prophecy, the New Testament, and rabbinic interpretation. The book is most useful when it sends the reader back to the Hebrew Scriptures to ask whether t…
View recommendation →J. C. Ryle · Doctrinal and pastoral essays · 1874
…and worship—can be severe. Read him appreciatively but not uncritically: distinguish the biblical principle from its nineteenth-century application, check every argument in context, and test Ryle by the same scriptural authority to which he appeals. Evangelical religion Scriptur…
View recommendation →Marvin W. Meyer · Historical sourcebook · 1987
…thers, attend to the date of every source, and then compare its claims carefully with the biblical text. The value of the book is context: it helps us hear Paul's preaching against the crowded religious background of his own Gentile world. Mystery religions Greco-Roman world Paul…
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