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.
45 results for “Christian living”
Clear searchLabour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…escribes that ability as God's gift. This corrects pride without producing false modesty. Christians need not pretend that competence does not matter. We may learn, practise, improve and take satisfaction in a task done well. But we should remember that intelligence, opportunity,…
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 →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 →C. I. Scofield · Pastoral sermons · 1915
…thoughtful rereading. New life in Christ Christ in us Holy Spirit Consecration Cleansing Christian joy Spiritual growth
View recommendation →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…. Worldly sorrow may attempt to pay for sin through self-punishment. It may withdraw from Christian fellowship, prayer, Scripture, and anyone who speaks of grace. It tells us to hide from God until we can somehow make ourselves worthy to return. But we cannot cleanse ourselves be…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…rturned. From the human point of view, the situation looked unstable. People who spoke as Christians were leading others away from truth. Some who had appeared to believe were being shaken. Then comes Paul's nevertheless. The error is real. Its effects are grievous. Human profess…
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 →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 →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…e conclusion Rabshakeh demanded was false. Assyria’s victories did not establish that the living God was powerless. Intimidation often works by joining a real difficulty to an unjustified conclusion: You are vulnerable; therefore God cannot be trusted. Others have surrendered; th…
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 →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 →Jesus and the fountain of living water
If Any Man Thirst Jesus and the fountain of living water There is a thirst deeper than the body's need. It is the ache of the soul when the things we hoped would satisfy us have not done so. Success can distract it. Pleasure can brief…
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 →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
…His Apology and related appeals confront Roman governors with the injustice of condemning Christians without hearing their case, while his doctrinal works answer opponents with close argument and a profound regard for Scripture. He can also be searching on the practical demands o…
View recommendation →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 →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 →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 →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 →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 →Hippolytus · Exposition, prophecy, and polemic · early third century
…of Scripture, vigorous rebuttal, a clear premillennial witness, and repeated concern that Christian belief should issue in faithful and holy living. Treat Hippolytus as an important early witness rather than an authority whose every conclusion is binding. The identity of Hippolyt…
View recommendation →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
Every Christian Should Believe in the Rapture The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing The rapture is often treated as though it were an eccentric event invented by dispensationalists…
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 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 →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 →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 The Church belongs to Christ. He builds…
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 →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 →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination Christians sometimes hear a sweeping objection: the Bible may once have contained God's word, but generations of copying changed it so thoroughly that nobody can now know what it originally…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…s not possess. But they do not remove the problem. Daniel 9 existed within Judaism before Christianity. Its prophecy places the cutting off of an anointed figure before the destruction of the city and sanctuary. Jesus appeared during the Second Temple period, was recognised as th…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…roves—and what it does not The historical objection is often stated in absolute terms: no Christian taught the rapture before John Nelson Darby devised it in the nineteenth century. The conclusion then follows that pretribulationism cannot be apostolic. Two questions are being co…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…guity is real, but it cannot decide the identity of the one being named. English-speaking Christians, Muslims and Hindus may all use the word God while intending radically different conceptions of the divine. Arabic-speaking Christians and Muslims both use Allah. A common noun do…
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
…rument through which God acted? The problem is not confined to careless modern preaching. Christians were struggling with its underlying questions in the early fourth century, even as they defended the eternal deity of the Son. Eustathius of Antioch saw one danger with unusual cl…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…histicated objections to pretribulationism centres on a single Greek noun. Paul says that living believers will be caught up with the resurrected dead "to meet the Lord in the air" (1 Thessalonians 4:17). The word translated "to meet" is apantēsis. It is often argued that apantēs…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…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 Discourse is anchored in Daniel and Jerusalem Jesus' teaching begins with the…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…promised covenant includes national Israel transformed by an inward work of God. Present Christian participation demonstrates the power and inauguration of the covenant; it does not prove that its named national recipients have been permanently excluded from its complete fulfilm…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…ent of that reception in John 6 is faith—not the physical mechanism of a sacrament. Early Christian witnesses including Tertullian and Augustine reached the same conclusion from the text. Their testimony is not offered as an infallible authority alongside Scripture. It demonstrat…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…hand" in verse 2 can mean present. Paul reassures persecuted believers that they are not living in that unveiled day of lawlessness and judgement. Verse 1 states the ground of his appeal—Christ's coming and their gathering to Him. Verse 3's supplied phrase "that day shall not co…
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 →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…4:16–17 is straightforward: The Lord descends from heaven. The dead in Christ rise first. Living believers are caught up together with them. They meet the Lord in the air. They remain with Him for ever. His concern is pastoral. Some Thessalonian believers feared that Christians w…
Read article →E. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
…ation, and practical urgency: prophecy is meant to shape hope, watchfulness, and faithful living. Bullinger writes within a distinctive dispensational framework and readers need not accept every sequence, distinction, or prophetic conclusion in order to profit from the study. Ser…
View recommendation →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…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 distinction between self and world, extraordinary ligh…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…aders assume the answer is obvious. The New Testament applies the language of election to Christians, so the elect in Matthew 24 must be the Church. If they are gathered after the Tribulation, the passage appears to place the rapture there as well. The first premise is possible.…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ure explicitly teaches the event. The Lord descends from heaven; the dead in Christ rise; living believers are changed; and together they are caught up to meet Him in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54). The question is not whether Christians should believe…
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