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43 results for “Divine promises”
Clear searchWhy Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…peatedly rebelled and, when Messiah came, the nation did not receive Him. What happens to divine promises when their recipients prove unfaithful? Scripture does not answer by minimising Israel's sin. Nor does it conclude that God's purpose must be transferred to a more deserving…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
Do All God's Promises Transfer to the Church? What "yea and Amen" in Christ means for Israel and the covenants Paul makes one of the most comprehensive statements about the promises of God: "For all the…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
Does the New Testament Reaffirm Israel's Promises? Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy The Old Testament repeatedly promises Israel preservation, regathering, cleansing, the kingdom of Dav…
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…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
Is the Church Appointed to the Tribulation's Wrath? Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape The claim that the Church is not appointed to wrath is sometimes answered too quickly. Christians plainly suffer. Jesus prom…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
“I Am the First, and I Am the Last” Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ If YHWH alone is Creator, Saviour and Lord of all, what are the New Testament writers saying when they place Jesus within that identity? Isaiah does not leave…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
No Shadow of Turning What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises This series has examined covenants, prophecies, apostles, thrones, tribes, branches, seeds, kingdoms, and the difficult words upon which the debate turns. We have tried to hear the…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…). That statement raises a serious question. If God is eternally one solitary Person, was divine love eternally active, or did it exist only as a capacity awaiting creation? Did relationship begin when God made something other than Himself? The question is often turned into a qui…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
The Unshaken Truth of God's Promises One Messiah, one gospel, 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 cann…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
Does God Remove the Righteous before He Judges? Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully When Abraham learns that judgement is approaching Sodom, he asks one of Scripture's great questions: "Shall not the Judge of all the e…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…ds partly upon a distinction Scripture itself makes. Not every covenant contains the same promises or places the same obligations upon its recipients. The Mosaic covenant made Israel's enjoyment of blessing in the land conditional upon obedience. The promises to Abraham and David…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…addresses the problem created by Israel's unbelief. If Israel received the covenants and promises, how can so many Israelites reject Messiah while Gentiles receive the gospel? Has God's word failed? Has God cast away His people? Paul answers both questions with "God forbid" (Rom…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…do believers possess in Christ?" It does not by itself answer, "Will God fulfil national promises made to Israel?" Israel existed before the Church Israel's national history begins with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, develops through the exodus and Sinai, receives a kingdom under Da…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…Whatever source my opponent was using, the essential argument was familiar: the different divine names in the Pentateuch betrayed different sources and an earlier history lying behind the Bible’s finished account. What was new was hearing the subject return through my son, not as…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…er Gentiles now share in Abrahamic blessing. It is whether Israel's disobedience annulled promises whose ultimate fulfilment rests upon God's faithfulness. Interrupted enjoyment is not cancellation The Mosaic covenant made Israel's continued enjoyment of the land conditional. Deu…
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, af…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…herefore an abstract denunciation of Jewish ethnicity. Nor is it a declaration that God's promises had always belonged spiritually to a different people. It is a polemic against identifiable rulers at a decisive moment in Israel's history. The consequences nevertheless reach beyo…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…ion; judgement is unreal; reincarnation is true; human beings are sparks of an impersonal divine consciousness; repentance and the cross are unnecessary. Whatever psychological comfort such claims provide, Christians cannot accept them merely because they arrived clothed in radia…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…. The length of the interval is not a defect in God's promise. Scripture repeatedly joins divine patience to the apparent delay of judgement (2 Peter 3:9). The gap is long from the human perspective, but it is neither empty nor purposeless. Who is the "he" of Daniel 9:27? "And he…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…progressive revelation, the distinct identities named in the text, and the unconditional promises God made to Israel. It affirms one way of salvation by grace through faith, centred in Christ. It distinguishes Israel and the Church without teaching two gospels or two redeemers.…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…prove identity. Trumpets can summon, announce, warn, and celebrate. Clouds accompany many divine manifestations. "Elect" is not an exclusive technical name for the Church; Israel is called God's elect, and so are believers in Christ. Angels participate in several end-time gatheri…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked." —Deuteronomy 10:16 The same book promises a future divine work in Israel: "And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, t…
Read article →John Bunyan · Spiritual autobiography · 1666
…healthy self-examination if treated as a rule. Follow his movement towards Christ and the promises of Scripture without assuming that every thought, impression, or theological conclusion carries divine authority. Conversion Assurance Grace Temptation Doubt Scripture Perseverance
View recommendation →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…chers and schools that interpreted the Christian proclamation through complex accounts of divine emanation, cosmic error, and saving revelation. Sethian materials differ from Valentinian ones. Even Valentinian texts do not form a perfectly uniform system. “The Gnostics believed”…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…t Jewish people. Other evidence complicates the story. Writers who spiritualised Israel's promises could still expect a future Jewish conversion. Some anticipated a rebuilt Jewish temple and a final crisis centred upon Jerusalem. Early Christian thought was not a single system. T…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…7:39 This is an invitation, but it is more than an invitation to temporary relief. Christ promises that the thirsty person who comes to Him will receive the Holy Spirit. The empty life does not merely receive a cup to carry away. God makes it the channel of a river. A cry on the…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…ccidental residence or ordinary property ownership. It is an enduring bond established by divine promise—a bond involving belonging, possession, habitation, fruitfulness, vocation, and permanence. Isaiah’s imagery must therefore neither be overstated nor weakened. The land is not…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…hristians to help build a third temple. Nor should Israel’s final trouble be presented as divine retaliation against Jewish people for the crucifixion of Christ. Daniel presents the final week as a period in which God completes His declared purposes for Daniel’s people and holy c…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…the LORD hath heard thy affliction" (Genesis 16:11). The name Ishmael itself memorialises divine hearing. When Abraham later asks that Ishmael might live before God, God replies: "And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee: Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and w…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…ee gods.” It would—if Christians believed the Father, Son, and Spirit were three separate divine beings. Historic Christianity denies precisely that. The doctrine of the Trinity is an attempt to hold together everything Scripture reveals: there is one God; the Father is God; the…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…ls His disciples that He is going to His Father's house to prepare a place for them, then promises: “I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” —John 14:3 Christ comes and receives His people to Himself. The natural direction of the pr…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…t; another believes she has met a Hindu deity; another speaks of Allah, the universe, the divine self, a spirit guide, or an impersonal consciousness. They cannot all be confirming the truth of their respective beliefs. The intensity of an experience may demonstrate that somethin…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…not a detailed chronology. These chapters stand near the culmination of the warnings and promises of Isaiah 28–35, immediately before the historical account of the Assyrian crisis in chapters 36–39. Reading them as a sustained unit respects that arrangement without requiring tha…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…That priority was covenantal, not racial favouritism. Israel had received the covenants, promises, temple service, and messianic hope. The King came first to the people whose prophets had announced Him. The title "Son of David" carried that history. Crowds used it when appealing…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…ntained within the category of prophet. We have considered eternal love, the crucifixion, divine justice, forgiveness and assurance. We have tested the transmission of the Bible, the missing Islamic Injeel, the Qur’an’s miracle claim, alleged prophecies of Muhammad, the covenant…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…Spirit eternally are in God’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 temporar…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…het stands within the succession of prophets raised up among Israel, in contrast with the diviners of the surrounding nations (Deuteronomy 18:9–15). The broader context therefore supplies three mutually reinforcing expressions: "unto thee", "from the midst of thee" and "of thy br…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…t test case. God had foreknown Israel, called the nation, entrusted it with covenants and promises, and set His love upon the fathers. Yet much of Israel now stood in unbelief. If that history simply ended in permanent rejection, how secure could anyone be in the declared purpose…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…dge of their religious life to cast doubt on their relationship with God. He even claimed divine authority for the Assyrian invasion. Then he offered the apparent comforts of surrender. There could be food, water, and a future—if only they would stop listening to Hezekiah and com…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…atthew 24 follows the same prophetic complex: Daniel's abomination, a unique Tribulation, divine intervention, and deliverance. In Daniel, "thy people" means Daniel's people, Israel. Matthew gives no notice that the controlling prophetic subject has changed when he later speaks o…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…tself establishes less than either side sometimes claims. Read within Jesus' ministry and promises, however, it points towards renewal rather than erasure. Twelve means Israel Israel's twelve-tribe identity runs through the biblical story. Jacob's twelve sons became the heads of…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…escribes an hour coming upon the whole world to test "them that dwell upon the earth" and promises Philadelphia, "I also will keep thee from the hour" (Revelation 3:10). The earth-dwellers form a consistent moral company throughout the book: they rejoice over God's slain witnesse…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…power. Its programme will contain moral convictions, economic predictions, negotiated compromises, donor interests, historical traditions, responses to present events and calculations about what can win an election. No Christian should expect that mixture to reproduce the mind o…
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