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55 results for “Judgement”
Clear searchEarth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
Where Is the Church during Revelation's Judgements? Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse The argument that the word church disappears after Revelation 3 is often stated as though silence al…
Read article →Two 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 evil deserves judgeme…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
Did God Give Laws That Were Not Good? Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over “I gave them also statutes that were not good.” Those words in Ezekiel 20:25 can sound startling when read alone. The following verse makes the difficulty sharp…
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 promised tr…
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 its right…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…noticed. A righteous recompense The controlling subject of the paragraph is the righteous judgement of God. Paul begins by describing the believers’ endurance as: “A manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…am, 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 earth do right?" —Genesis 18:25 His appeal assumes something about God's character…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…distinguishes the nation's responsibility from God's reliability. Israel's failure brings judgement; it cannot make the word of God fail. The future restoration of Israel is therefore more than one item on a prophetic timetable. It is a public demonstration that God remains true…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…nd David, however, were grounded in God's oath and carried forwards even through national judgement. The new covenant finally provides the cleansing and transformed heart which Israel could never produce under the law. The covenants are not competing plans. Together they reveal h…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…ulness determines the transfer. It would be evasive to pretend that the verse contains no judgement upon Israel or no consequence for rejecting the Messiah. The disputed question is more precise. From whom is the kingdom taken? What aspect of the kingdom is removed? Who is the fr…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…ians should therefore bring every party, leader, policy and political narrative under the judgement of God's Word. Scripture fixes moral ends—truth, justice, protection of innocent life, impartial judgement, sexual integrity, care for the poor, honest commerce, responsible stewar…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…Comfort rests upon the character of God Isaiah 40 opens with comfort for Jerusalem after judgement. Chapter 39 has announced Babylonian exile; chapters 40–48 address the humiliation of God’s people, the apparent strength of Babylon, the impotence of idols and the promised work o…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…theological tradition may presume that possession of present privilege makes it immune to judgement. God judged unbelief in the natural branches; Gentile profession gives no licence to unbelief, pride, or contempt. The warning also prevents the Church from using Israel's judgemen…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…ccounts. Brooke examined the beliefs being carried back from the brink: claims about God, judgement, reincarnation, universal salvation, spirit guides and the meaning of death. That remains the right question. A testimony may be moving without being self-interpreting. An experien…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…riants are readily recognised and do not affect meaning. A smaller number require careful judgement. An even smaller number are both meaningful and difficult. Well-known passages such as the longer ending of Mark and the account of the woman taken in adultery are marked in respon…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…uman nature. (See Note 4.) The Stoic sought freedom from passions that disturbed rational judgement. Serious Stoicism was not simply an instruction to feel nothing; it distinguished disordered passions from good and rational affections. Nevertheless, its moral ideal centred upon…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…n and secured righteousness. The final phase brings the addressed people and city through judgement and repentance into the public enjoyment of what His finished work alone has made possible. This avoids two opposite errors. Futurists must not speak as though Daniel leaves atonem…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…m, Israel's future restoration, and forms of a translation of saints separated from final judgement. Earlier writers did not assemble those elements into Darby's complete scheme, and it would be anachronistic to label them modern dispensationalists. The balanced historical conclu…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…s. Their evidence varies. Some distinguish resurrection stages, expect translation before judgement, or place saints in safety while wrath falls. Few should be labelled straightforward pretribulationists. They show a field of developing exegetical possibilities rather than one se…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…to love Ray Comfort and his ministry. His zeal for evangelism, his clarity about sin and judgement, and his desire to bring people to Christ have helped an enormous number of Christians. I am not suggesting that he consciously denies Christ’s complete humanity, and I am certainl…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…and content to be changed? There was no small print in God's covenants. Their conditions, judgements, recipients, and promised restorations were stated openly. Fulfilment in Christ cannot introduce an escape clause which God never placed in the text. Why does Paul say every promi…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…on is sometimes restated rhetorically: if Christ gathers the Church and later descends in judgement, pretribulationism has invented two second comings. That misdescribes the claim. Pretribulationism sees one future advent with distinguishable movements and purposes. Christ comes…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…ct does not, without further argument, establish the precise conditions under which their judgements are guaranteed to be without error. The keys therefore belong in the discussion. They do not remove the need to demonstrate the additional claims being made about succession and i…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…ct, and so are believers in Christ. Angels participate in several end-time gatherings and judgements. The question is what gathering Matthew's context leads us to expect. The prophets repeatedly promised that Israel would be regathered when Messiah establishes His kingdom. Isaiah…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…e without inward reality cannot please God. Circumcision cannot protect a lawbreaker from judgement, and the approval which matters comes from God rather than man. But the conclusion introduces words which Paul does not use. He does not mention Christians, the Church, or Gentile…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…hed; it anticipates Israel put in order under Messiah. Jerusalem's rejection brought real judgement. Jesus declared that its house would be left desolate. Yet His lament did not end with the word never: "Ye shall not see me henceforth, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…state how long the gathered saints remain with Christ before His public manifestation in judgement. Paul was comforting grieving believers, not supplying the complete Tribulation timetable. Pretribulationism must therefore be established from the wider evidence: the identity and…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
…hers the dead and living in Christ. In Revelation, seven angels sound a series of earthly judgements. Revelation's seventh trumpet announces kingdom, wrath, judgement, and reward; it does not narrate the dead in Christ rising or living saints being caught up. Paul also wrote befo…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…e. For all practical purposes, it could appear that God had rendered His final historical judgement upon the nation and raised up the Gentile Church in its place. Those circumstances did not logically require supersessionism, but they made it appear historically persuasive. The e…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…the Antichrist, a covenant, a rebuilt temple, the abomination, or a numbered sequence of judgements. It is the Saviour. A necessary sign changes what can be expected next Suppose Scripture clearly taught that the Church must identify Antichrist, enter Daniel's final week, and se…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…again be inhabited and cultivated, and Zion will no longer appear abandoned under divine judgement. In the prophetic vision, Israel’s reconciliation to her God is inseparable from her restoration to the land He promised her. Zion and Her Land Isaiah 62 opens with an explicit con…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…ntence reading, “Christ will gather the Church seven years before He descends to earth in judgement.” The question is whether the absence of that one-sentence formulation proves the absence of a biblical case. It does not. Many doctrines arise from the relationship among passages…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…tsider misses. That may be true, but it makes the miracle increasingly dependent upon the judgement of those already schooled within the tradition which declares it incomparable. Suppose an Arabic composition were offered as an answer. If Muslims judged it inferior, would that pr…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…estament does not soften it. Many of Israel's leaders opposed Jesus; Jerusalem came under judgement; and the gospel went with astonishing fruit to the Gentiles. Yet Paul would not allow Israel's unbelief to become proof that God had discarded Israel: "I say then, Hath God cast aw…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…ble because it acknowledges failure, but it may still be centred upon self. It treats our judgement of ourselves as more decisive than God’s promise of grace. Judas’s story does not teach that suicide is an unpardonable sin, nor does it give us permission to make sweeping judgeme…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…ed into Babylon; and later generations experienced further dispersion. But the threatened judgement is not the whole prophetic message. The same passages that announce exile also anticipate restoration. Leviticus 26 describes Israel confessing its iniquity in exile, after which G…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…nd Jacob towards the land God had sworn to their fathers. Their disobedience brought real judgement, yet even the covenant curses anticipated scattering, repentance, regathering, and restored blessing. David did not receive a vague assurance that godly government would exist some…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…riest tears his clothes and charges Him with blasphemy (Mark 14:63-64). The high priest's judgement is not infallible merely because he made it. But his reaction confirms that Jesus' answer was not heard as a harmless claim to prophetic honour. Jesus has taken the scriptural imag…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…rophesy against him” (Ezekiel 38:2). God defeats the invading armies through overwhelming judgement. Ezekiel supplies the apocalyptic enemies and their final destruction. It does not supply: a two-horned world ruler; journeys towards the rising and setting of the sun; two mountai…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…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 in “fine linen, clean and white”, which John identifies with “the righteousness of saints”…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…s not necessarily to rise above deception. A person who deliberately lowers his powers of judgement may be making himself less able, not more able, to discern what is happening. The surrender of discernment is not spiritual maturity. When consciousness becomes contagious Not ever…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…ally, making a covenant, or removing and destroying a person. When used of a person under judgement, it frequently carries the force of death or decisive destruction. In Daniel 9:26, the anointed figure does not merely step down from office peacefully. He is cut off and left with…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…nctions which human observers could not initially see. Wheat, tares and the limits of our judgement Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares warns us against imagining that every visible profession has the same spiritual reality. The field in the parable is the world, not simply…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come Israel's history contains 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…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…t 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 Son made flesh. Islam denies that God has…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…e salvation which came through Israel's Messiah. Israel also experienced genuine covenant judgement. The destruction of Jerusalem and its temple was not an insignificant historical accident. The nation rejected its Messiah, blind leaders lost their stewardship, and unbelieving br…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…ides. This agrees with the prophets. Isaiah anticipated the earth renewed under righteous judgement, creation at peace, and the knowledge of the Lord filling the world (Isaiah 11:1-10). Israel would be regathered, Jerusalem restored, and the nations brought under Messiah's govern…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…crucifixion become unintelligible. At Calvary, love does not redefine evil. It bears its judgement. The gospel summons sinners to repent and believe. Those reconciled to God are created unto good works and commanded to walk in holiness. Jesus does not promise intimate communion…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…is associated with Arabian peoples. Isaiah 42 also describes the Servant bringing law or judgement to the nations and prevailing over his enemies. Muhammad preached in Arabia, established a community governed by revelation and brought the worship of one God to Arabian tribes. Th…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…f over his physical kinsmen and closes in wonder at the depth of God's wisdom, knowledge, judgements, and ways. Romans 12:1 then turns from this theological argument to practical appeal: "I beseech you therefore, brethren." The question which drives Romans 9-11, however, arises f…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…atters First, it governs interpretation. If "Israel" means national Israel in passages of judgement but the Church in passages of blessing, the change must be demonstrated from the text rather than assumed from a theological system. Second, it concerns God's faithfulness. The str…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…y after receiving theological guidance. He treated the council's near-unanimity as divine judgement. He then converted its Church penalties into civil penalties: Arius and supporters who would not submit were exiled; an imperial order commanded Arius's books to be burned and thre…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…Another ruler arises after them and subdues three. His persecution is followed by divine judgement and the kingdom given to the saints. This final phase of the fourth kingdom remains future. God’s kingdom follows its overthrow; Christ returns to establish His reign. That is the…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…who received Messiah and exposed the unbelief of those who rejected Him. The existence of judgement does not make the original appeal insincere or the promised restoration meaningless. The Twelve embody a faithful remnant The apostles were Israelites. They did not stand outside t…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ation 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 people unto Himself; later they appear with Him. The saints must be gathered to Him before they…
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