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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.
47 results for “Church history”
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 →The Venerable Bede · Ecclesiastical and national history · 731
I recommend Bede because he brings the early English Church out of abstraction and fills it with people, places, journeys, decisions, failures, and acts of courage. His history shows how the gospel crossed cultures and kingdoms, how political…
View recommendation →Edward Burman · Historical survey · 1984
…us conviction, political authority, fear, and coercion became entangled. It is disturbing history, but necessary history for understanding what can happen when a church claims the power to compel belief. The history of the Inquisitions is heavily disputed, and both sensational le…
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 →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
…of Antioch Council of Nicaea Christology Arian controversy Incarnation Divinity of Christ Church and empire
View recommendation →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…at 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 believers, the transformation and catching up of the livin…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
Are Abraham's Seed and the Israel of God the Church? Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing Galatians contains two of the strongest arguments for identifying the Church as Israel. First, Paul says that…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…pirit The question becomes especially urgent when extraordinary behaviour occurs inside a church and is attributed to the Holy Spirit. Beginning in 1994, the movement known as the Toronto Blessing attracted visitors from around the world to the Toronto Airport Vineyard church. Pe…
Read article →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 churchl…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
Are Israel and the Church Really the Same? Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose The New Testament teaches a unity so profound that it would have startled the ancient world. In Christ, Jewish and Ge…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
Israel and the Church: Why This Series Matters The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God Has the Church replaced Israel in the purpose of God? Some Christians answer yes, although the…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…t. Those facts should not be minimised. But he did not introduce the deity of Christ to a Church which had never believed it, he did not decide the outcome by himself, and the council did not choose the books of the Bible. Nicaea was an attempt by bishops, enjoying unprecedented…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…within it, and unbelieving Jewish branches have been removed. Surely the tree is now the Church, the Church is Israel, and the distinction has disappeared. That argument gives the metaphor real weight, but it moves too quickly. Paul does not say that Gentiles are grafted into Is…
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 →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…kward text for any theology in which national Israel has permanently disappeared into the Church. The promise names the rulers, their thrones, the time of their rule, and those over whom they exercise authority. Each part should be allowed to retain its natural force. The promise…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…rent people. It is a polemic against identifiable rulers at a decisive moment in Israel's history. The consequences nevertheless reach beyond those individual men. Jerusalem followed its leaders in rejecting Messiah, and the generation would experience catastrophic national judge…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…the children of promise: everyone who believes in Christ, whether Jewish or Gentile. The Church is therefore the Israel within Israel, while unbelieving ethnic Israel no longer possesses a distinct covenant identity or future. Paul certainly denies that physical descent guarante…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…t it can also conceal important differences. Many Christians accused of teaching that the Church replaced Israel would reject that wording. They believe that the Church is the fulfilment, continuation, or expansion of Israel rather than its substitute. The discussion should there…
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, resurrect…
View recommendation →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 →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…d's Unfailing Faithfulness Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail Israel's history presents a severe test of theology. God chose the nation, gave it His law, sent it prophets, and brought the Messiah through its line. Israel repeatedly rebelled and, when Messiah ca…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful supersessionists do not believe God lied to Israel. They do not imagine Him tearing up His covenants or…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…d with little connection to the people, covenants, and hopes into which He was born. That history cannot be denied. It can, however, obscure the world of the New Testament itself. The New Testament is the story of Israel's God fulfilling Israel's Scriptures through Israel's Messi…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…is unmistakably an Israel-shaped act. Jesus is not gathering a religious society without history. Israel's Messiah is calling representatives whose number declares that the story of Israel has reached a decisive moment. Jesus was summoning Israel to its King The setting of the a…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…of Israel Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come Israel's history contains both judgement and preservation. The Jewish people were conquered, exiled, dispersed across continents, denied sovereignty, and repeatedly persecuted. Yet they did not disap…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…sed by slogans before it is defined. It allegedly began with John Nelson Darby, turns the Church into God's failed contingency plan, ignores the fulfilment of prophecy in AD 70, baptises modern politics, and restores animal sacrifices in competition with the cross. Some dispensat…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…secret there. The real 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 ac…
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.…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…enemies. Nothing God had promised them failed. But fulfilment at one point in redemptive history does not necessarily mean exhaustion for all subsequent history. Joshua itself says that territory remained to be possessed, while later biblical writers continued to appeal to the l…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…escue by saying God remembered Abraham and sent Lot out of the overthrow. Peter turns the history into a theological pattern Second Peter 2 places Lot alongside Noah. In both cases God distinguishes those He delivers from those reserved for judgement. Peter draws the conclusion:…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…nt 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. It is not yet proven. "Elect" can describe the Chur…
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…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…“the last”, the title encompasses His unmatched priority and enduring sovereignty across history. Isaiah 48:12–13 immediately connects this identity with His founding of the earth and spreading of the heavens. Isaiah 45:5–6 repeats the exclusion of another God and extends its ac…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…ke an afterlife seem probable. It rests upon Jesus Christ, crucified and bodily raised in history. An NDE survivor approached death and returned to mortal life. Jesus passed through death, rose in an incorruptible body and declares: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…languages, quoted by Christian writers, and carried across a wide geographical area. That history did produce differences between manuscripts. It also produced the evidence by which those differences can be identified and examined. The honest Christian case is not that every hand…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…e mixture of Jewish, ascetic, visionary and philosophical ideas confronting the Colossian church. Paul was not secretly writing a refutation of Plotinus. (See Note 3.) Nevertheless, Colossians delivers a theological judgement upon every system that separates divine fullness from…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…o a waiting man. He sent His Son. Yet the Son 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 stron…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…e did not create the person of the Son. The eternal Son Himself entered a genuinely human history. Scripture is equally insistent that His humanity was real. Jesus was born. He grew. Luke says that He “increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). He became hungry and weary. He e…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…equence as an imposition, constructs two questionable seven-year fulfilments from ancient history, and makes AD 70 exhaust a prophecy whose narrated conclusion reaches the visible coming of Christ. The article’s governing problem is selective compression. Passages are collapsed i…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…y believers. That observation does not disprove revelation. A revelation delivered within history will naturally speak to people within history. The Bible itself uses human languages, recognisable literary forms and real historical settings. The question is more particular. Why d…
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?
…How could seventh-century Christians judge by a book which no one can now locate in their history? This is the Injeel problem. It is not merely that Christianity and Islam disagree. It is that Islam appeals to a Gospel which it cannot historically produce, while rejecting the Gos…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…nounces that their security is about to collapse. Verses 9–14 keep the prophecy rooted in history. Agricultural failure, abandoned habitations and land overgrown with thorns are recognisable consequences of invasion and covenant judgment. Yet even here caution is necessary. Jerus…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…wer an isolated Christian objection. It is this: Which account of God, Christ, Scripture, history, justice and salvation possesses the greatest cumulative explanatory power? Why I began this series I began writing these articles because I had grown tired of watching poorly catech…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…istinguish His eternal Sonship from His resurrection, enthronement and 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; Act…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…fies through faith, freely by grace. Acts 3:19; Romans 3:24–28. Believing does not change history. It is how the sinner receives the salvation accomplished by Christ. We are called to entrust ourselves to the One the gospel makes known. These relationships give substance to the f…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…ple and upon thy holy city”. This gives the succession its prophetic focus amid the wider history of nations. Daniel 9:24. The ten horns belong to the fourth beast: “And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise”. — Daniel 7:24 Another ruler arises after th…
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