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.
67 results for “Christian life”
Clear searchC. I. Scofield · Pastoral sermons · 1915
I value The New Life in Christ Jesus because Scofield combines genuine theological depth with direct, unpretentious language. The chapters build upon one another, adding layer after layer of biblical truth…
View recommendation →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…Pleasure can briefly numb it. Religion can cover it with activity. None of these can give life. On the last and greatest day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus did not whisper to such people. He stood and cried: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believe…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…of the Resurrection Not escape from the body, but its redemption Many people imagine the Christian hope as an endless disembodied existence: the soul released from the body, leaving the physical world behind and becoming something more like a ghost than a human being. Christians…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…lace of God. Others speak as though work itself were an indignity—an interruption to real life which should be escaped as quickly as possible. Scripture presents labour differently. Work is not our god, and it is not the curse. It is part of the good order God gave humanity befor…
Read article →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
…r beyond the familiar catchphrases about Nicaea and into the far less tidy world in which Christian language about Christ was still being argued, tested, and refined. Sellers shows that councils, bishops, imperial favour, personal conflict, and genuine theological conviction were…
View recommendation →Eitan Bar · Biblical and historical polemic · 2019
I recommend this book because Bar engages objections that Christians often answer without sufficient knowledge of their Jewish setting. His command of Hebrew, familiarity with Israeli life, and experience discussing Yeshua with Jewish people bring…
View recommendation →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 s…
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 is God,” the objection runs. “That makes three…
Read article →John Bunyan · Christian allegory · 1678
I recommend The Pilgrim's Progress because it gives memorable form to truths Christians often know only as abstractions. Bunyan makes conviction, temptation, discouragement, fellowship, perseverance, and hope into places and people that stay in the mind. It rewards r…
View recommendation →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
Is the Beatific Vision the Whole Christian Hope? Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation The beatific vision is the Christian teaching that the redeemed will see God and find their perfect happines…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
I recommend An Urgent Call to a Serious Faith because it refuses to separate Christian belief from Christian living. Hunt ranges across the gospel, faith, love for God, discipleship, doctrine, the Church, and the believer's heavenly hope, but the recurring appeal is…
View recommendation →Tal Brooke · Christian investigation · 1979
…ces popular claims about death, consciousness, spirit guides, reincarnation, and the afterlife alongside the Christian revelation and asks what these experiences actually prove. It is useful apologetic and discernment reading for a subject on which personal testimony is often all…
View recommendation →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
The Sum of These Things Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Ma…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…nel, brilliant light, encounters with beings or deceased relatives, 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 imag…
Read article →Brian E. Daley · Historical theology · 1991
I recommend The Hope of the Early Church because it showed me how varied early Christian thinking about death and the world to come really was. Daley traces the development of the intermediate state, apokatastasis, resurrection, judgment, and the principal eschatologic…
View recommendation →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
Have Evangelicals Become Neo-Gnostics? History, Heresy, and the Temptation of Private Christianity The accusation identifies real evangelical deformations—secret-key religion, escape rhetoric, elite conversion status, and churchless faith—but fails when it becomes a historica…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…m it. The People of the Gospel are told to judge by what God revealed within it. Yet when Christians open the Gospel they possessed for centuries before Muhammad, they find the Son who shares the Father's glory, gives His life as a ransom, is crucified under Pontius Pilate and ri…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…it against failure. The Bible also teaches a perfectly just judgement according to works. Christianity does not replace moral seriousness with divine indifference. Yet at the centre of the gospel stands an answer that no scale can supply: the Judge has provided a substitute, and…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…en to accompany Jesus. Both heard His teaching, witnessed His miracles, and shared in the life of the disciples. Both were warned that they would fail Him. Both acted against light they had received. Neither man could claim ignorance of who Jesus was or what He had taught. Their…
Read article →Michael J. Vlach · Biblical theology · 2023
…as parts of one coherent purpose. Vlach is especially helpful in resisting the idea that Christian hope means escape from the physical world. He traces God's work from creation to restoration and shows why bodily resurrection, the renewal of the earth, Christ's reign, and life i…
View recommendation →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…ion to love and freely express it when He creates. That answer should be taken seriously. Christianity does not need to prove the Trinity by defining love in a way which makes every alternative logically impossible. The biblical case is stronger than that. Jesus does not leave us…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…aw reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ Few sentences have carried more weight in Christian discussions of the Law than Romans 10:4: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." —Romans 10:4 Does Paul mean that Christ terminated the La…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…n away from Christ. He makes Christ and His words precious to His people. This means that Christian peace is personal before it is emotional. It does not begin with our ability to create a particular state of mind. It begins with the reality that Christ has not left His people as…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
The Earth's Great Sabbath Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ The 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, a…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…to faith as decisive even when a person is content to deny Christ by the direction of his life. Paul gives us a better foundation and a more searching test: "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merciless or that Muslims worship a deity who ne…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
Does Romans 2:28-29 Make Christians "Spiritual Jews"? Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew Paul's description of the inward Jew is often treated as a decisive redefinition of Israel: "For…
Read article →Marvin W. Meyer · Historical sourcebook · 1987
…rviving texts show what their adherents practised, sought, feared, and hoped for. For the Christian reader, that background makes the setting of Acts and Paul's letters more tangible and helps us appreciate the world into which the gospel came. It is a genuinely worthwhile educat…
View recommendation →A quiet invitation to draw near to Christ
…at a contrast. She has spoken of her neglected vineyard; he speaks of her beauty. For the Christian, this offers a lovely illustration of a truth taught plainly elsewhere in Scripture. Our acceptance before God rests upon Christ, rather than upon our ability to present an impress…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
When Do Persecuted Christians Receive Rest? Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints In his presentation Why I Reject a Pre-tribulation Rapture, Michael Brown identifies 2 The…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…A conversation with my son brought the strangeness of the incarnation freshly before me. Christians have heard the words so often that we can 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…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…nd the line between Creator and creation Why this is useful to know: On your walk through life, you will encounter challenges to the deity of Christ from television shows and documentaries, Muslims, Latter-day Saints, Jehovah’s Witnesses—and, if you have children, they may encoun…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…. There can grow within us a recognition that is difficult to convey to someone who knows Christianity principally as a subject of debate. God is no longer merely a proposition under consideration. We have come to trust Him. That does not mean every Christian must have a dramatic…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…r an objection. It should enlarge our worship. The Incarnation is not merely a difficulty Christianity can survive; it is glory Christianity alone can proclaim. The Maker entered His creation. The eternal Son made our nature His own. The One whom the heaven of heavens cannot cont…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…eir strength. He represented Hezekiah as a deceiver. He used knowledge of their religious life to cast doubt on their relationship with God. He even claimed divine authority for the Assyrian invasion. Then he offered the apparent comforts of surrender. There could be food, water,…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…nd some of it while misunderstanding the rest? Did our words awaken a familiar picture of Christianity assembled from school lessons, political arguments, religious hypocrisy, painful experiences, and things Christians themselves should never have taught? The question is not whet…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…Prophet The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels 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 perm…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…Christ’s Body? “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life.” —John 6:47–48 An evangelical watches a confident Roman Catholic presentation of John 6. The argument appears straightforward. Jesus said that unless we eat Hi…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…international people of God in Christ. Several parts of this argument are sound. Israel's life in the land was conditioned upon covenant obedience. Gentiles are incorporated into the people of God without becoming Jewish proselytes. The Mosaic covenant and its Levitical order hav…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres became Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Geneva, and countless cities far from Jerusalem. Its Scriptures have been used to justi…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…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 believers. That observation does not disprov…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…Christ and the Church. The resulting history is neither simple nor flattering. Some early Christian writers defended essential truths: Jesus is Israel's Messiah, the law cannot justify, Gentiles are full heirs in Christ, and the Old Testament finds its goal in Him. Yet those trut…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…The Council of Nicaea has become a screen upon which almost every conspiracy about early Christianity is projected. Constantine invented the Trinity. Jesus was voted into deity. Paganism defeated biblical Christianity. The emperor chose the books of the Bible. Reincarnation was…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…The subject of the incarnation is the Word who already was. The new reality is His human life among us. This also prevents the argument becoming a discussion of an abstract divine attribute with no personal identity: John narrates the Word’s coming, revelation, rejection and rec…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…confessed that He knew all things. He suffered, bled and died, although God is immortal. Christians rightly believe all these things because Scripture plainly teaches them. The difficulty begins when we try to explain how they can all be true of the same Christ. It is common to…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
Did Jesus Really Die? The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an Christianity and Islam cannot both be correct about the death of Jesus. The Gospel declares that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried and rose bodily from the dead. His…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
Is the Qur'an a Miracle? Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation Christians are frequently placed on the defensive. Has the Bible been corrupted? Did Jesus really claim to be God? Was He actually crucified? Has the doctrine of the Trinity compromised mono…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…xpressly records that God heard Ishmael, protected him and promised to make him fruitful. Christians have no reason to erase what Scripture affirms. But blessing is not the same as covenant election. God named the covenant heir before he was born. He repeated that choice after hi…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…egins before verse 25 Three times in Ezekiel 20, God describes His ordinances as bringing life to those who practise them: verses 11, 13, and 21. The chapter establishes their goodness repeatedly. It also distinguishes God’s commands from other statutes. In verses 18–19, God warn…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…he Church participates in that history; it did not create the root from which it receives life. Gentiles are grafted in among believing Jews Paul describes the grafting with carefully chosen relationships: "And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive t…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…hy the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body Why this is useful to know: Christians rightly confess that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh. Yet if “flesh” is imagined as a human body animated directly by the divine Word, Jesus can become less than fully human in…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…upying a human body, Christ’s humanity becomes an instrument rather than a complete human life. If it presents God joining Himself to an independently acting man, the one Christ begins to divide into two. Learning to speak carefully is not dry conformity to a council. It helps us…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…ise is certain in the divine purpose fulfilled through Christ, but it does not make every Christian Noah or give every believer the sign and historical commission given to him. God promised that Sarah would bear Isaac, that David would have an enduring royal house, that Mary woul…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…onclusion is overstated. What Paul actually says Paul's immediate concern is the grief of Christians whose fellow believers have died. He assures them that the departed will not miss the Lord's coming: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice o…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…s the revealing of the Son of man with the days of Noah and Lot (Luke 17:26–30). Ordinary life continued until judgement arrived suddenly. In Lot's case, “the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven” (Luke 17:29). The comparison highlights sud…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…ted day and night has spoken it. Christ confirms rather than dissolves the promises Every Christian interpretation must be centred upon Jesus Christ. He is Abraham's Seed, David's Son, the mediator of the new covenant, and the only Saviour of Israel and the nations. No promise re…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…nd sacrificial blessings to believers who approach God through Christ. Jewish and Gentile Christians therefore enjoy genuine new-covenant forgiveness, the indwelling Spirit, and direct access to God. These are not borrowed blessings of uncertain ownership. They were secured for u…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…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 and constantly expected withou…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues that the pretribulation rapture has no biblical basis. He presents it as a system in which God has two unrelated peoples and destinies, C…
Read article →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
…ecially valuable, while the book's clarity opens questions about law, grace, Messiah, and Christian obedience to readers without specialist training. The relationship between the Mosaic Law and believers in Christ is deeply disputed among Christians and Messianic Jews. The author…
View recommendation →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…emain with Him for ever. His concern is pastoral. Some Thessalonian believers feared that Christians who had died would miss the Lord's coming. Paul assures them that the dead will be raised and that the whole company will be reunited in Christ's presence. He concludes, “Wherefor…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…rbed into a greater reality. Such experiences may be beautiful, terrifying, or apparently life-changing. They can feel more real than everyday life. Those who undergo them may be left convinced that they have encountered God, discovered their true nature, or gained knowledge unav…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…tical strength but upon the Creator's faithfulness. Ezekiel sees a nation brought back to life Ezekiel's vision of dry bones is sometimes applied generally to spiritual revival. The prophet himself identifies the bones: "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel." —Ez…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…the prophets, the teaching of Jesus, Acts, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews, and the history of Christian interpretation, the cumulative answer is no. God has judged Israel severely. The nation remains largely in unbelief and cannot inherit saving blessing apart from Jesus Christ. Yet…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…d saving work within history? --- More than twenty years ago, during the early part of my Christian walk, one sentence in Scripture troubled me: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” — Psalm 2:7; Acts 13:33 Acts appeared to connect this “begetting” with Christ’s resur…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…is between Romans 8:39 and 12:1. Structurally, Paul pauses before moving to the practical life of the Church. The section is parenthetical in position but not incidental in purpose. It answers the largest possible objection to the assurance he has just given: whether human unbeli…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The question is not whether Christians should believe in that gathering. The question is where it belongs within the wider prophetic programme. Pretribulationism gains its strength from several strands which converge.…
Read article →