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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.
19 results for “Difficult texts”
Clear searchThe man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
Four Difficult Texts for Pretribulationism The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day A cumulative case should be exposed to the passages which appear least friend…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…within the divine identity whose action Isaiah describes. This is a synthesis of the two texts, not a claim that Isaiah’s first hearers already possessed John’s account of the Word. John gives further revelation about the Creator whom Isaiah had distinguished so sharply from cre…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…words in Ezekiel 20:25 can sound startling when read alone. The following verse makes the difficulty sharper by connecting the judgement with offerings of the firstborn. Did God command child sacrifice? Was He admitting that His own law was evil? The words deserve a serious answe…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…he exact etymology of Shaddai remains disputed, so more should not be claimed than the contexts warrant. The memorial pattern is especially clear in expressions formed with Yahweh’s covenant name. After God provides the ram in Isaac’s place, Abraham names the location YHWH-jireh:…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…ury, also separates the heavenly Saviour from the suffering perceived by His enemies. Its difficult passage says that Simon bore the cross and repeatedly speaks of "another" receiving elements of the passion while the Saviour rejoices above. Scholars differ over how its body-Chri…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…divine nature. Eustathius’s answer protected something essential. It also exposed another difficulty. Once the Word and Christ’s complete humanity were carefully distinguished, how should Christians confess their indivisible unity? How could they avoid turning Jesus into a divine…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…ognises that Christ can bring a fulfilment greater than the first hearers understood. The difficulty is that the prophets already distinguish Israel's unworthiness from God's determination to restore it. Ezekiel names the profaning "house of Israel" before promising to gather and…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…, and saving revelation. Sethian materials differ from Valentinian ones. Even Valentinian texts do not form a perfectly uniform system. “The Gnostics believed” should therefore make us cautious. Nevertheless, a responsible comparison remains possible if the definition is sufficie…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…Jewish national association with the land. Whatever Rome intended, the symbolic effect is difficult to miss: Judaea disappeared from the official provincial map, and Jerusalem from the city's official name. To a Christian already inclined to read the military defeat as divine jud…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…burned, soldiers brought their standards into the temple area and sacrificed to them. The difficulty is chronological as well as symbolic. The Roman standards provide the clearest idolatrous object, but their worship within the captured precincts came too late to function as Jesu…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…st guarantee the promises in all the fullness God intended? The answer must come from the texts themselves. A literal reading does not mean woodenly ignoring symbols, poetry, typology, or progressive revelation. It means allowing context to determine what is symbolic and refusing…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…e verb by itself proves deity every time it appears. Context determines its force. The contexts here steadily remove the weaker explanation. Jesus walks upon the sea in the scriptural pattern of God's own rule over the waters. He rises from the dead. He declares that all authorit…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…ry can travel orally without the hearer ever seeing the book in which we now find it. Two texts can also inherit material from a common tradition rather than one copying the other directly. Similarity is not enough. But repeated, distinctive and chronologically prior similarities…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…us position than merely shouting, "The Bible was changed." It recognises genuine Qur'anic texts and a real distinction between the Christian New Testament and the Islamic concept of a revelation given to Jesus. But it creates a historical and logical burden which Islam has never…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…which ignores approaching judgment, from assurance, which rests upon divine renewal. The difficult imagery of verse 19 brings judgment back into view: hail strikes the forest and a city is brought low. The precise identification of forest and city is disputed. The verse should n…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…evidence it prefers, but for the whole body of evidence—including the facts which create difficulty for its own claims. This is the closing address. And the final question is not merely whether Islam can answer an isolated Christian objection. It is this: Which account of God, C…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…ally may leave every one of those questions untouched. There is a biblical example of the difficulty in Athens. When Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection, some hearers concluded that he was proclaiming strange gods. They heard Christian proclamation through the categories ava…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…ain the difference between the rapture and the Second Coming, he struggled. He found that difficulty especially strange because he could articulate other doctrines clearly. Brown then bought books explaining pretribulationism, learnt the system, became devoted to it and taught it…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…lated comings. It distinguishes stages within the one future coming of Christ because the texts describe different directions, purposes, audiences, and results. Daniel's unfinished programme has a defined subject Daniel's seventy weeks are decreed upon "thy people and upon thy ho…
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