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.
36 results for “Creation”
Clear searchMichael J. Vlach · Biblical theology · 2023
I recommend The New Creation Model because it gave me a clear, sustained account of the resurrection body and the renewed creation as parts of one coherent purpose. Vlach is especially helpful in resisting the…
View recommendation →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
Eternal Love Before Creation What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God Before there was a universe, what was there for God to love? There were no angels, no human beings and no created order. Nothing…
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…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…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 happiness in Him. It draws upon magnificent promises: “Blessed are the pure in he…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…nation sound impossible to the human mind? Part of the answer may be that we stand within creation and mistake its boundaries for the boundaries of reality itself. Space, time, matter, causation and bodily limitation are not merely subjects we study. They are the conditions under…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…an hope. The New Testament points towards the resurrection of the body and the renewal of creation. God does not discard His handiwork. He redeems it. The body which suffers weakness, ageing and death will be raised and transformed after the pattern of the risen Christ. Christian…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…ings as made in the image of God and commissioned to exercise responsible rule within His creation (Genesis 1:26–28). We do not create from nothing as God does, but we receive what He has made and develop it for good. That includes far more than paid employment. A parent caring f…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
Does Eternal Mean Divine? Origen, Arius and 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, Jeho…
Read article →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…iscussions of the true humanity and deity of Christ, bodily resurrection, the goodness of creation, and the unity of the Old and New Testaments. He is also an important early witness to a future earthly kingdom: his premillennial passages show that this expectation cannot simply…
View recommendation →Brian E. Daley · Historical theology · 1991
A broad survey of Christian teaching about the last things across the first seven centuries, tracing the many ideas which developed around death, resurrection, judgment, the intermediate state, the millennium, and the final destiny of creation.
View recommendation →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…he letter by pronouncing peace and mercy upon those who walk according to the rule of new creation "and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:15-16). Is that expression Paul's name for the whole Church? These are substantial questions because Galatians gives Gentile believers the…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…he final Christian expectation is resurrection, judgement, and life with Him in a renewed creation. This larger biblical horizon corrects popular NDE spirituality at both ends. It rejects the claim that consciousness simply expires with the brain, but it also rejects a vague afte…
Read article →Augustine of Hippo · Spiritual autobiography and prayer · c. 397–400
…ugustine's later books move from autobiography into difficult reflection on memory, time, creation, and biblical interpretation, and readers will not agree with every conclusion. Read the work prayerfully but discerningly, receiving its insight while testing its theology and exeg…
View recommendation →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…the humanity He had assumed. The divine nature did not become mortal or cease to sustain creation. The person who died in the flesh is the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). That sentence requires care, but it is not evasion. It identifies both who suffered—the eternal Son—and h…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…God's promises have transferred to the Church. Israel's land becomes a figure of the new creation, David's throne becomes Christ's present heavenly rule, and Israel's promised national restoration becomes the salvation of the multinational Church. The promises are not said to ha…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…aithfulness, Israel will not boast. The nations will recognise His holiness. God attaches creation itself to the promise The prophets do not speak of Israel's future in tentative language. God repeatedly attaches it to realities beyond human control. After promising the new coven…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…s. Fulfilment expands from one land and nation to a worldwide people and ultimately a new creation. Much of that is true. Christ is not one detail within the covenants; He is the One through whom they stand. Paul says that Jesus Christ came "to confirm the promises made unto the…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…f the present cosmos. The material order did not simply suffer from sin within God's good creation. Its structure reflected ignorance, deficiency, or hostile rule. Some systems sharply opposed the unknown Father to the Creator portrayed in the Old Testament; others developed subt…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…entail the cancellation of its particular features. The same principle applies to the new creation. Abraham looked for a heavenly country and a city whose builder and maker is God. The meek will inherit the earth. The final dwelling of righteousness will encompass a renewed creat…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…the saints, Christ’s descent to earth, the judgement of the nations and the liberation of creation all occur as one indivisible event. That conclusion is produced by identifying passages with one another. It must be tested by exactly the same standard. Does John 5 teach one simul…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…l literary case. Medieval Muslim interpreters certainly reflected upon nature and treated creation as a sign of God. But the programme of matching Qur'anic phrases with modern scientific discoveries expanded especially in recent apologetics. It often begins with the discovery and…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…come one people, inherit the promises, and anticipate not merely one land but the renewed creation. On this reading, nothing has been cancelled. Everything has been enlarged and fulfilled. That argument rightly insists upon Christ's supremacy. Any interpretation which leaves Him…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…seventh day (Genesis 2:3), commanded Israel to keep it and grounded it in His own work of creation (Exodus 20:8-11). Yet Jesus does not say merely that He understands the Sabbath better than His opponents. He declares Himself its Lord. Again, a single statement can be assigned to…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…of his own inner life (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). He is involved with the Father and Son in creation, salvation, sanctification, and resurrection. Calling the Spirit divine does not add another god. It recognises the identity Scripture gives Him within the one divine Being. One Bei…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…s Qur’anic theology. Forming a creature from clay and breathing life into it evokes God’s creation of Adam. Jesus appears to perform a divine kind of creative act, but the repeated qualification “by Allah’s leave” places the power under divine permission and prevents the miracle…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…merely disagree about secondary details. They introduced another God, another account of creation, another Christ and another salvation. Their elaborate systems did not deepen the apostolic faith; they displaced it. Here, then, is the question I cannot escape: if I sincerely con…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…se councils invented Jesus' deity, death or resurrection. Development in precision is not creation from nothing. Nor must Christians choose between Christ defeating death and Christ dying for sins. He conquers death by entering it, bearing sin and rising victorious. Sacrifice and…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…e prophets. John wrote of the Lamb, temple, feasts, testimony, tribes, Jerusalem, and new creation through imagery saturated with Israel's Scriptures. Their faith in Jesus did not make their thought less Jewish. It convinced them that Israel's hope had begun to reach fulfilment.…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…nity and Islam agree about many things at the level of vocabulary. Both speak of one God, creation, revelation, prophets, angels, judgement, mercy, prayer and Jesus the Messiah. But shared vocabulary can conceal incompatible meanings. Christianity says that Jesus is the eternal S…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…g, the promised Spirit, adoption, forgiveness, resurrection life, and hope in the renewed creation. We are not distant observers of Israel's story but participants in the salvation which came through Israel's Messiah. Israel also experienced genuine covenant judgement. The destru…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…esus places the apostolic thrones "in the regeneration". The word describes renewal or re-creation. Its only other New Testament occurrence refers to the believer's spiritual renewal (Titus 3:5), but Matthew supplies a different setting here: the Son of man sits upon the throne o…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…efore say that Allah is merciful, forgiving and loving; that his mercy reaches throughout creation; that he receives the repentant; and that his love is morally serious rather than indifferent to human conduct. The Christian argument should not deny any of that. It should ask wha…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…d’s own being. The economy of salvation refers to how the three divine persons act toward creation and within history to accomplish redemption. The distinction does not divide God into two Trinities. Nor does it imply that God merely wears three temporary masks. The same eternal…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…ng, the Spirit, and knowledge of God. The Church awaits bodily resurrection and a renewed creation. Both hope in spiritual and material redemption under Christ. The better distinction concerns recipient and calling. God can extend Abrahamic blessing to the nations without ceasing…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…or the creature's side? Nicaea answered that He is truly God, not the highest item within creation. But the conclusion does not follow from those facts. To establish that Constantine invented the doctrine, one would need evidence that Christians did not worship Christ as God befo…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…human heart, forgive sin, reconcile humanity to God, raise the dead or inaugurate the new creation. We honour lawful authority, but reserve our fear for God. When rulers require what God forbids or forbid what God requires, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Scri…
Read article →