PreTrib PilgrimSearch the library
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.
44 results for “Christ's return”
Clear searchE. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
…s, and Revelation, drawing attention to the sheer weight of Scripture devoted to Christ's return. The sermons combine expectation, careful textual observation, and practical urgency: prophecy is meant to shape hope, watchfulness, and faithful living. Bullinger writes within a dis…
View recommendation →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
Does "Meet the Lord in the Air" Mean an Immediate Return to Earth? Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture One of the most sophisticated objections to pretribulationism centres on a single Greek noun. Paul says that living b…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…Me but cannot accept the Eucharist.” He identifies their problem as unbelief. Jesus then returns again to coming: “Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.” —John 6:65 The chapter’s own diagnosis is not that established…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…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 may be gathered to Him. The distinction matters. An event can be certain an…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…r study. The gospel Faith Love for God Discipleship The cross Christian doctrine Christ's return
View recommendation →Hippolytus · Exposition, prophecy, and polemic · early third century
…ical text and preserves a compelling early discussion of Daniel, the Antichrist, Christ's return, and the future kingdom. His Refutation of All Heresies also records and challenges many competing teachings. Together the writings offer a high view of Scripture, vigorous rebuttal,…
View recommendation →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…h as the Body of Christ. The group may include other redeemed people gathered at Christ's return, but the discourse does not identify this event as the resurrection and transformation Paul reveals for those "in Christ". Clue one: the setting is Judea The discourse begins at the t…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…who exalts himself in the sacred place and is destroyed by Christ's appearing. Revelation returns to Daniel's imagery and repeatedly uses periods of forty-two months, 1,260 days, and "a time, and times, and half a time". The question is whether these are disconnected crises or th…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…rfect love is directed towards one worthy of the highest love; it is mutual rather than unreturned; and it is not closed possessively between two. Love at its fullest delights in another sharing the same beloved. Richard therefore speaks of a co-beloved: a third who is not an imp…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…es not prove that Christ has broken His promise or that the Spirit repeatedly departs and returns according to our feelings. Dryness may expose neglected prayer, tolerated sin, self-reliance or months spent drinking from broken cisterns. When it does, we should confess honestly a…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…have betrayed the innocent blood.” —Matthew 27:3–4 Judas experienced genuine anguish. He returned the money and openly acknowledged both his sin and Christ’s innocence. He no longer wanted what his betrayal had purchased. These actions show that remorse can be profound without b…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…was in man. He was tempted, yet without sin. He said that He did not know the hour of His return, yet His disciples confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, although God is immortal. Christians rightly believe all these things because Scripture plainly teach…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…l question is whether Scripture distinguishes Christ coming for His Church from His later return with His saints. That question cannot be answered by attaching a loaded label to one side. It must be answered by comparing the passages themselves. What Paul actually describes Paul'…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…life. Elijah and Elisha witnessed resuscitations, and Jesus raised Lazarus. Those people returned to mortal life and died again. Christ is firstborn from the dead because He rose into indestructible, glorified life, never to die again (Romans 6:9). His resurrection is both first…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…of Muhammad. But that abandons these four proof texts rather than defending them. It also returns us to the Injeel problem: where is the earlier manuscript, quotation or textual tradition containing the lost prophecy? A hypothetical corruption cannot turn an unsuitable surviving…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ael and Jerusalem, judges the beast's world while saving a multitude within it, and later returns with His redeemed people to deliver, judge, and reign. Christ receives His people—and later appears with them Jesus promised His disciples: "I will come again, and receive you unto m…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…belongs with the Gospel’s wider movement: the Son came from the Father into the world and returns to the Father (16:28). Could this be glory that existed only in God’s plan? Some non-Trinitarian interpreters understand pre-existent glory as glory prepared in God’s purpose. There…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…superior way of salvation. What is the rule in Galatians 6? At the end of the letter Paul returns to the controversy over circumcision. His opponents desire a good showing "in the flesh" and glory in the circumcision of others. Paul will glory only in the cross of Christ (Galatia…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…ugh the exodus and Sinai, receives a kingdom under David, and continues through exile and return. Its identity includes genealogy, land, tribes, covenants, priesthood, kingship, and a calling among the nations. The Church is revealed in relation to a new work of the risen Christ.…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…es, a panoramic review of life, and a boundary beyond which the person believes he cannot return. Not every account contains all these features. Some are confused or dreamlike. Some are frightening. Some contain imagery shaped by the person's religious and cultural world. Many pe…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…be severed absolutely nor identified simplistically. The Jewish people's preservation and return to the ancestral land are historically remarkable and may properly be considered in light of prophecy. But no government receives moral immunity from Scripture. Let me therefore state…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…l first receive a faith sturdy enough to examine them. No lesser form of deity We can now return to our original question. Does eternal equal divine? Not if eternal merely means that someone will continue for ever. Believers possess eternal life by grace and remain creatures. Dur…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…d seek the sign of His coming and the end of the age (Matthew 24:1-3). The discourse then returns repeatedly to the prophetic world of Israel: The abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel stands in the holy place. Those in Judea must flee to the mountains. Flight on the sabb…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…f Israel" and called the nation to repentance. He spoke of "the times of refreshing," the return of Jesus Christ, and "the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began" (Acts 3:19-21). The risen Christ and t…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…. The second is when that event occurs in relation to the Tribulation and Christ's public return to the earth. Christians may disagree seriously about the second question. The first should not be controversial. Paul describes the event directly. "For the Lord himself shall descen…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…:44-45). Jeremiah announced seventy years of Babylonian domination and also the appointed return (Jeremiah 25:11-12; 29:10-14). Severity and mercy are not competing portraits of God. Both show that He means what He says. Israel's unbelief cannot cancel God's truth Paul confronts…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…or ever before thee: thy throne shall be established for ever." —2 Samuel 7:16 The Psalms return to the same tension. David's sons could forsake God's law and be visited with the rod, yet God declared, "Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer m…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…origin or capacity connecting them to the transcendent fullness. Fourth, redemption meant return beyond the present cosmic order. The Saviour descended from above to awaken, reveal, and gather what belonged to the higher realm. The details varied, as did attitudes toward the body…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…anegraaff finally rejects what he calls a second opportunity for salvation after Christ’s return. He appeals to resurrection at the last day, the liberation of creation and the completion of the universal Church at the Second Coming. The first problem is definitional. Pretribulat…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…es expanded especially in recent apologetics. It often begins with the discovery and then returns to the text searching for correspondence. That order matters. The expanding universe Surah 51:47 is frequently translated in a way which appears strikingly modern: "And the heaven We…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…will remember the land.” —Leviticus 26:42 Deuteronomy likewise looks beyond dispersion to return: “Then the LORD thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations.” —Deuteronomy 30:3 The pattern is therefore not s…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…r exodus from sin, but Israel still left Egypt. The resurrection is greater than Israel's return from Babylon, but the exiles still returned to their land. In the same way, a worldwide kingdom can include the land promised to Abraham. A renewed creation can contain a restored Jer…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…carnation, the atoning death and bodily resurrection of Christ, His ascension, His future return, the resurrection of humanity and final judgment. I could receive baptism and the Lord’s Supper as commands of Christ. I could worship under recognised elders, submit to biblical disc…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…, repeated invitations, heightened emotion, and the laying on of hands. Participants then returned to their own churches and prayed for others to receive what they had experienced. This does not prove that every response was consciously imitated. Social and psychological influenc…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…weakness; it is raised in power." —1 Corinthians 15:42–43 No decay. No final weakness. No return to the grave. Flesh and blood cannot inherit What, then, does Paul mean when he says that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" (1 Corinthians 15:50)? He explains the st…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…bove, fruitful land, secure Zion, forgiven inhabitants, 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 whe…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…witnesses arguing from Israel's Scriptures that Israel's Messiah suffered, rose, and will return. Gentile inclusion was the surprise The great controversy in Acts was not whether Jewish people could follow a Gentile Christ. It was whether Gentiles could be received without becomi…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…is not a wall between two saving programmes. When Israel is restored, the nation will not return to God by law, ancestry, temple sacrifice, or a separate covenantal path. Israel will look upon the One whom it pierced, receive cleansing, and know the same Jesus whom the Church pro…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…esent. There is the Word. There is creation. There is descent. There is flesh. There is a return to divine glory. But the road runs in the opposite direction—and the difference reveals just how astonishing the Christian confession is. John does not say that the Word fell into fle…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…vineyard. He destroys the wicked husbandmen and entrusts his vineyard to others who will return its fruit. That distinction cannot settle every question by itself, but it is fundamental. The parable depicts a change of stewardship within property which continues to belong to its…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…explanation concerning righteousness is less immediately obvious. Jesus relates it to His return to the Father. In the setting of His rejection and approaching death, that return vindicates the One the world condemns. This is a contextual reading of His words: the world’s verdict…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…l phase of the fourth kingdom remains future. God’s kingdom follows its overthrow; Christ returns to establish His reign. That is the premillennial expectation: His return precedes the thousand-year reign. Daniel 7:23–27. The succession need not depict every intervening century.…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…edient. Brown therefore concludes that the Church receives deliverance at Christ’s public return, not in a prior rapture. This is a serious argument. It deserves something better than an appeal to a disputed Greek meaning, an ingenious rearrangement of the sentence, or a refusal…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…movement. The churches dominate the opening chapters. The earthly judgement visions then return to Danielic periods, Israel's tribes, Jerusalem, the temple, the nations, a beastly ruler, and saints persecuted under him. At the same time, redeemed companies worship in heaven, and…
Read article →