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52 results for “Divine revelation”
Clear searchTesting Islam's evidence for divine revelation
Is the Qur'an a Miracle? Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation Christians are frequently placed on the defensive. Has the Bible been corrupted? Did Jesus really claim to be God? Was He actually crucified? Has the doctrine of the Trinit…
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 →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…
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 →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…ape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of its rightful King, the revelation of the sons of God, and the righteous reign of Christ with His saints. Recently, Emma Ruth Rundle's song God's Picture and its accompanying video gave me food for thought. The art…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…begins at the wrong end of the Bible. The case does not start by counting backwards from Revelation. It starts with a measured programme in Daniel concerning Israel and Jerusalem. Jesus takes Daniel's abomination of desolation and places it at the head of an unparalleled tribula…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…f the Tribulation should be defended merely because it came from a pretribulation writer. Revelation does not explicitly call the 144,000 evangelists. Pretribulationism does not require Christians to help build a third temple. Nor should Israel’s final trouble be presented as div…
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 →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…s that the passages themselves describe. The Bride is in heaven before Christ rides forth Revelation 19 strengthens the distinction. Before heaven opens and Christ rides forth in judgement, the marriage of the Lamb has taken place. His wife has made herself ready and is clothed i…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ays that when Christ appears, believers will "appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). Revelation presents the Bride prepared in heaven before heaven opens and Christ rides forth in judgement (Revelation 19:7-14). These are materially different movements. Christ receives His p…
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 →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…er Neoplatonism developed this into an ordered ascent from the material world towards the divine source of all things. Matter occupied the lowest level. In Plotinus, it could be described in terms of privation (the absence or lack of positive being and goodness), darkness and evi…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…re is the Word. There is creation. There is descent. There is flesh. There is a return to divine glory. But the road runs in the opposite direction—and the difference reveals just how astonishing the Christian confession is. John does not say that the Word fell into flesh, lost H…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…ovement takes them, or how this meeting relates chronologically to the warrior descent of Revelation 19. Those questions must be answered from the wider context of prophecy. This limitation cuts both ways. The passage alone does not prove a seven-year heavenly interval. It also d…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
Revelation or Reception? Sources behind Qur’anic narratives The Qur’an did not emerge in a cultural vacuum. It appeared in a world alive with biblical names, Jewish interpretation, Christian…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…ction of the truth is followed by being handed over to error. His account includes active divine judgement and blinding as well as permission; it is not merely passive non-intervention. Nevertheless, the central distinction is the same: these destructive practices express judgeme…
Read article →Why 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 →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…in full members of Christ's body. Gentiles have been brought near, not left in a parallel divine programme. Israel, meanwhile, does not possess saving privilege apart from Christ. Broken branches must be grafted in again through faith. A future national turning would bring Israel…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…hat believers should be very wary of treating familiar NDE imagery as self-authenticating revelation. What science can—and cannot—decide Science can compare reports, measure circulation and electrical activity, test hidden targets, investigate memory, and examine how drugs or bra…
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 →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…f God at work within those who belong to Christ. This does not mean that believers become divine or cease to be weak human beings. Nor does it mean that every Christian continually feels full, powerful or emotionally refreshed. The Spirit's presence is a promise of Christ, not a…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…ldren of God." —Romans 8:21 Creation groans, and believers groan, while awaiting the same divine answer. The future is not God abandoning the world to death while rescuing souls from the wreckage. Scripture ends with a new heaven and a new earth, the holy city, the river of life,…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…source of renewal in heaven. The verb rendered “be poured” presents the gift as abundant divine provision. Nothing in the vocabulary itself establishes a millennial chronology; its significance lies in the relationship Isaiah establishes between divine outpouring and comprehensi…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…ne nation and later allocates the renewed land by tribes (Ezekiel 37:15-28; 47:13-48:35). Revelation names twelve tribes when describing the sealed servants of God (Revelation 7:4-8). The New Jerusalem bears their names upon its gates (Revelation 21:12). These passages contain sy…
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 →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…evisiting Paul’s account of the restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2. Something holds back the revelation of the final lawless ruler. The Thessalonians knew what Paul meant. We have his letter, but not the earlier conversation to which he refers. There is a serious case for understand…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…stery that living saints would be instantaneously changed (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). Later revelation may deepen an earlier saying. It should not be imported in a way that makes the original conversation unintelligible to its first hearers. Clue four: the surrounding vocabulary po…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…omised to Israel and Judah. Twelve remains visible at the end of Scripture The imagery of Revelation does not allow the reader to forget either the tribes or the apostles. The New Jerusalem has twelve gates bearing "the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel" and tw…
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 →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 →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…alvation apart from Christ. It promises that Israel will be brought to Christ through the divine work which removes ungodliness and writes God's law upon the heart. Does applying Israel's titles to the Church settle the question? Peter calls his readers "a chosen generation, a ro…
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 →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…the Bible that gives sustained weight to grammatical and historical context, 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 distin…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…Josephus has political and apologetic interests; Muslim tradition receives the Qur'an as revelation. Historical method does not discard committed sources automatically. It asks when they wrote, what sources they used, how close they stand to the events, whether their claims are…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…not uncertain. God's message does not affirm and deny the same promise. In Christ, every divine undertaking receives its decisive yes, and through Him believers voice the Amen to the glory of God. Paul's point is divine reliability. Christ demonstrates that God's word is trustwo…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…preter places it after Antichrist's persecution but before the concentrated outpouring of divine wrath. A pretribulationist places it before the final seven-year period begins. These positions disagree profoundly about sequence, but they are debating the placement of an acknowled…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…im a great name, and bless all families of the earth through him (Genesis 12:1-3). As the revelation developed, three features became prominent: descendants, land, and worldwide blessing. Genesis 15 gives the covenant an extraordinary form. God alone passes between the divided pi…
Read article →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 →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…rit gives life, and Christ’s words are spirit and life. His hearers have treated heavenly revelation as a proposal for bodily consumption; Jesus directs them to the life-giving spiritual reality communicated through His words. Nor does “spiritual” mean imaginary. The Spirit is re…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…often been damaged by date-setting. Predictions have failed, charts have been treated as revelation, and excitement has sometimes become irresponsibility. None of that is required by imminency. It contradicts it. Jesus said that the times and seasons remain in the Father's autho…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…ossession followed by permanent forfeiture. It is disobedience, discipline, repentance or divine renewal, regathering, and restored enjoyment. In some passages repentance precedes return. In others God acts to produce the necessary spiritual transformation. Deuteronomy 30:6 says…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…stract attribute. It is the reason His people can trust what He says. If the wording of a divine promise does not reliably disclose what God has committed Himself to perform, confidence becomes impossible. Faith would rest not upon revelation, but upon our hope that the words wil…
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 →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 Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…s not merely match a date. He explains why the prophecy’s chronology is embedded within a revelation about sin and reconciliation. What Islam denies The Qur’an says: “And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah Jesus son of Mary, Allah’s messenger—they slew him not nor cruci…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…Gospel does the Qur'an affirm? Islam says that Allah gave Jesus the Injeel. It was a true revelation from God. It contained guidance and light. The Qur'an claims to confirm it. The People of the Gospel are told to judge by what God revealed within it. Yet when Christians open the…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…f Israel's Scriptures was already deeply influential. From Matthew's opening genealogy to Revelation's final Jerusalem, the New Testament assumes the story of the Hebrew Scriptures. Its authors quote them directly, echo their phrases, reuse their patterns, and build arguments fro…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…y just judgement according to works. Christianity does not replace moral seriousness with divine indifference. Yet at the centre of the gospel stands an answer that no scale can supply: the Judge has provided a substitute, and righteousness is given to the believer through Christ…
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 →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…rily mean covenant revocation Scripture repeatedly joins severe judgement with an abiding divine purpose. Israel experienced exile under Assyria and Babylon, lost king, temple, government, and possession of the land, yet the prophets did not conclude that God's covenants had ceas…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…her. Jesus declares that He lays down His life of Himself. We should explain that willing divine provision before speaking as though an arbitrary third party were being punished against his will. John 10:17–18. Why blood? In the sacrificial teaching of Scripture, blood is related…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…d ousia, meaning “being”, “essence” or “nature”. It means that the Son possesses the same divine nature as the Father. Older English translations often render it “of one substance” or “consubstantial”. It does not mean that the Father and Son are the same Person, or that the Son…
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