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59 results for “Cross”
Clear searchTwo accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
The Scales and the Cross Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God How will I stand before God? The question reaches deeper than religious labels. We know that our actions matter, that…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
The King, Zion and the Coming Kingdom: Reading Isaiah 32–35 Across the Prophetic Horizon The near was real. The far is still coming. The historical horizon and the question of fulfilment “Was this fulfilled, or is it still future?” That is often a nec…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
Two Revelations of Divine Love What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God Love is easily claimed. Its character is revealed by what it does when the beloved is undeserving and the cost is real. Islam and Christianity both speak of divine mer…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…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 intensely practical: take God at His word and let tha…
View recommendation →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…a human prophet into God, he has rejected a historical fiction, not the Jesus presented across the Gospels. If he leaves because thousands of biblical manuscripts have been presented as thousands of corruptions, while every form of Qur’anic textual plurality is classified as per…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…ferent readings, but mainstream Sunni and Shia belief has denied that Jesus died upon the cross. This creates a direct historical conflict. The question is not whether God could miraculously rescue a prophet. The question is what the evidence says happened in Jerusalem under Pont…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…ho grew in wisdom is the one through whom all things were made. The one who died upon the cross is the Lord of glory. To speak faithfully, we need to distinguish Christ’s two natures without dividing Christ Himself. Who He Is and What He Is The basic distinction is not as difficu…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
Not Just a 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…
Read article →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 →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…ned to “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…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…owing "in the flesh" and glory in the circumcision of others. Paul will glory only in the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:12-14). He then states the governing rule: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature." —Galatians 6:15…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…unity is deeper than a change of label. Jew and Gentile are reconciled to God by the same cross, indwelt by the same Spirit, and given equal access to the Father. Their equal standing does not require their histories to become interchangeable. Paul anticipates the replacement arg…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…tecost, the Spirit baptised believers into a Spirit-indwelt community which would extend across the nations. Paul describes the equality of Gentiles within this one body as a mystery "which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men" as it was now revealed (Ephesians 3…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…citation research found The 2023 AWARE II study examined 567 in-hospital cardiac arrests across 25 sites. Fifty-three patients survived and twenty-eight completed interviews. Eleven of those twenty-eight reported memories or perceptions suggestive of consciousness; six described…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…ed repeatedly, translated into other 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…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…d the limitations of a human life, suffered at the hands of His creatures and died upon a cross. We confess these things because they are true. But we should not pretend that they are philosophically ordinary. To many ancient minds, the idea would have sounded almost absurd. The…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…ated as trivial, and its testimony to God's saving purpose is brought into the light. The cross does not prove that the Law was excessive. It proves that sin is so serious that redemption required the death of the Son of God. Faith does not call evil good or persuade God to overl…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…To anoint the most Holy. Christ's first coming is indispensable to their fulfilment. The cross made the only sufficient atonement for iniquity. Nothing in a futurist reading suggests that His sacrifice was incomplete or that a later work must supplement it. Yet the programme is…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…n AD 70, baptises modern politics, and restores animal sacrifices in competition with the cross. Some dispensationalists have spoken carelessly on these subjects, and not every objection is imaginary. But a system should be judged by its strongest responsible form and, above all,…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…ot God’s approval of evil worship. Calvin on Ezekiel 20:25. The agreement is significant across Jewish, Reformed, and Methodist interpretation. These commentators differ in their wider theology and in how they describe divine agency, but their shared reading does not depend upon…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…Son’s complete human response to the Father. Jesus experienced a real human death On the cross Jesus cried: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” — Luke 23:46 His death was not merely the disabling of a body that the Word had been controlling. He truly died a human death…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…lete human life of faithfulness and obedience. The distinction also helps us speak of the cross. The Son of God truly suffered and died; Christians must never turn the crucifixion into the suffering of someone other than the Son. Yet He suffered and died according to the humanity…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…made at the exodus. It is not a collective name for every undertaking God made before the cross. The promise of land to Abraham preceded Sinai by centuries, and Paul explicitly says that the later law could not disannul the prior promise (Galatians 3:17). The covenant guaranteein…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…D. It reveals the divine Saviour coming personally to redeem His people. The value of the cross is inseparable from the identity of the One who gave Himself. Our salvation was not delegated to the highest available angel. The Creator entered the creation He had made. The Lord of…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…lf remains magnificent. The Church’s builder is the Son of the living God. He went to the cross, rose from the dead, and holds authority over the grave. Church leaders remain accountable to Him. His people remain dependent upon Him. And their final victory is secure because He li…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…when He sent Christ. The mission in history manifests what is eternally true of God. The cross does not manufacture divine love. It reveals and accomplishes the saving purpose of the God who is love. Richard of St Victor and the fullness of love One of the deepest historical dev…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…nmity from its continuing election "for the fathers' sakes". The identity remains stable across sin, judgement, and promised mercy. The texts do not begin with national Israel under judgement and silently change to the multinational Church when blessing appears. The Church's incl…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…ficult to reconstruct. Most early accounts come from opponents, and the movement changed across time and region. The Key of Truth, once confidently published as a manual of the medieval Paulician church, survives in a manuscript copied in 1782. It contains adult baptism, strong b…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…sh, given in death. The future tense—“the bread that I will give”—points naturally to the cross. Jesus was already physically present before His hearers, but His flesh had not yet been offered for the life of the world. Compare the language later in John: “I am the good shepherd:…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…ity developed in later settings. The two terms should not be treated as perfect synonyms across every century. Neither should the distinction become an escape from moral responsibility. Collective guilt, degraded descriptions, and portrayals of Jewish existence as cursed helped c…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…he Spirit and the bride still say, Come The Bible ends with the same invitation sounding across Scripture: "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." —R…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…bulation in the world. The apostles endured imprisonment, violence, loss, and martyrdom. Across the world, believers still suffer precisely because they belong to Christ. Pretribulationism must never turn into a promise that Christians will escape ordinary discipleship. The quest…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…able stability. Its language has shaped worship, law, civilisation and personal devotion across many centuries. The informed argument is therefore cumulative: Muhammad was not equipped by ordinary education to produce the Qur'an. Its literary form is without equal. Its contents i…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…ected with his own intended sacrifice up the mountain. Jesus later goes forth bearing His cross: "And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull" (John 19:17). Genesis does not state Isaac's precise age. We should not confidently portray him as eithe…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…ut it is not hopeless. It looks beyond the wound to the Physician and beyond guilt to the cross. It produces repentance—a genuine change of mind that results in a changed direction. Repentance is not merely feeling terrible about the past. It is turning from sin toward God. What…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…can overturn in minutes the security we spent years constructing. On the night before the cross, Jesus spoke to men whose circumstances were about to become terrifying. He did not promise to prevent their bewilderment or remove every approaching trial. He promised something the w…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…tion, Christian preaching, sectarian disagreement, devotional legend and stories carried across languages by travellers, merchants, clergy and ordinary believers. That observation does not disprove revelation. A revelation delivered within history will naturally speak to people w…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…answers one common label. The Rapture: A Cumulative Biblical Case develops the argument across the complete ten-part reading path, tests the principal objections, and ends by bringing the whole case together. For a fuller treatment than an article series can provide, the book pa…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…sses the same saving truth. Irenaeus’s rule of faith is broad enough to unite Christians across nations and levels of education, yet definite enough to exclude the Gnostic teachers. They did not merely disagree about secondary details. They introduced another God, another account…
Read article →E. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
…Advent as a great biblical theme rather than an isolated prophetic curiosity. He ranges across the Law, Prophets, Psalms, Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation, drawing attention to the sheer weight of Scripture devoted to Christ's return. The sermons combine expectation, careful te…
View recommendation →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…Human beings have always sought to pass beyond the boundaries of ordinary consciousness. Across cultures and religions, people have reported visions, overwhelming sensations of unity, encounters with spiritual beings, the loss of their ordinary sense of self, and feelings of bein…
Read article →E. W. Bullinger · Verse-by-verse commentary · 1902
…an investigation rather than as a final map of Revelation. Follow his evidence, check the cross-references, examine the structures, and then make your own conclusions from Scripture. Its greatest value is not that it saves the reader the work, but that it provokes deeper work. Bo…
View recommendation →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…ess of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). “And, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself” (Colossians 1:20). Not every purpose of Daniel’s seventy weeks has reached its final historical consummation. Daniel’s seventieth week and…
Read article →The Venerable Bede · Ecclesiastical and national history · 731
…ces, journeys, decisions, failures, and acts of courage. His history shows how the gospel crossed cultures and kingdoms, how political and ecclesiastical interests became entangled, and how fragile the planting of churches could be. It is both a major historical source and a vivi…
View recommendation →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…ext escape route separates Jesus' "gospel of the kingdom" from Paul's proclamation of the cross. Jesus supposedly taught obedience to God and the Law; Paul later converted His religion into salvation through a dying and rising divine Saviour. The canonical Gospels will not sustai…
Read article →The brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility
…e particularly noted the repeated vocabulary of waters, mire, hatred, shame and reproach across the two sections. A recent structural summary describes verses 7–12 as the psalm’s central complaint: the speaker’s devotion to God has produced hostility and estrangement from his fam…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…throne and reign over the house of Jacob (Luke 1:32-33). Even the charge placed above the cross identified Him as King of the Jews. Israel's leaders did not speak for every Israelite when they rejected Him. His disciples, the women who followed Him, the Jerusalem believers, and t…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…ins both judgement and preservation. The Jewish people were conquered, exiled, dispersed across continents, denied sovereignty, and repeatedly persecuted. Yet they did not disappear into the nations among which they lived. Their Scriptures, worship, identity, and hope of return e…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…n which Jewish and Gentile believers are reconciled to God and to one another through the cross. Its unity is new and profound without requiring the earlier covenant names to lose their meaning. National Israel presently remains outside that body in unbelief, except for the remna…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
….” Creator and creature are not points on one continuous ladder of being. The eternal Son crosses that distinction, not by ceasing to be Creator, but by taking created humanity to Himself. The hands that fashioned man from the dust now possess human fingers. The voice that called…
Read article →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
…pture. He can also be searching on the practical demands of Christian discipleship. Read across the range and you encounter apologetics, prophecy, doctrine, courage under persecution, and an uncompromising emphasis on holy living. Tertullian is an early witness, not a final autho…
View recommendation →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…only then become the Son of God? Yet John called Him God’s “only begotten Son” before the cross and presented Him as the eternal Word who was already with God in the beginning. I knew those truths could not contradict one another, but I did not yet possess the theological distinc…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…dence of the supposed original. Nor does a possible similarity in meaning prove identity across languages. "Praised" is not a unique personal fingerprint. Many people may be praised; that does not cause every occurrence of a related Greek adjective to become a prophecy of one Ara…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…is being have authority over me? Why does He care so much about what I do? Then comes the cross. A Jewish man was executed by the Romans roughly two thousand years ago. How could His death bear any relation to my guilt today? Why blood? Why should someone else suffer? Why cannot…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…re for national Israel. Paul asks the decisive question Romans 9-11 was written after the cross, resurrection, ascension, and formation of the Church. If those events meant that Israel had ceased to possess a distinct identity in God's purpose, Paul had the ideal opportunity to s…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…ause the issue was not a verbal misunderstanding. Constantine then summoned bishops from across the empire, paid their travel costs and moved the proposed meeting from Ancyra to Nicaea. In his surviving summons, he explained that Nicaea was accessible to bishops coming from Europ…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…etation should begin with the conversation Jesus actually had. He was speaking before the Cross to Jewish disciples whose scriptural world was formed by the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. This point must be stated carefully. Jesus had already promised, "I will build my church…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…. All the redeemed enjoy one holy city and one divine presence, while God's faithfulness across the stages of His purpose remains permanently inscribed upon it. What the choice of twelve establishes The Twelve do not, by themselves, prove an entire system of future prophecy. Thei…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…nctional allegiance. Breaking the package The labels "conservative" and "liberal" change across countries and generations. Neither describes a complete Christian ethic. A believer does not have to swallow the whole set of positions marketed under either name. A conservative can c…
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