PreTrib PilgrimSearch the library
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.
110 results for “NDE”
Clear searchSir Robert Anderson · Biblical and apologetic argument · 1897
…human: why does God not openly intervene when evil flourishes and His people cry to Him? Anderson refuses the easy answer that every unanswered prayer is caused by defective faith. He places the apparent silence of heaven within his reading of the biblical programme and argues th…
View recommendation →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…of Muhammad’s informants, a library catalogue or a signed acknowledgement of literary dependence. A story 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 oth…
Read article →Tal Brooke · Christian investigation · 1979
An examination of claims about death and what lies beyond it, engaging near-death experiences, spiritualism, reincarnation, Eastern religion, occult testimony, and popular attempts to interpret experiences of another world.
View recommendation →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…end that they are philosophically ordinary. To many ancient minds, the idea would have sounded almost absurd. The higher belonged above; the material belonged below. Perfection meant freedom from change, bodily weakness and suffering. The journey of the soul was upwards—away from…
Read article →Simon Greenleaf · Legal examination of testimony · 1846
…attention to the difference between contradiction and the ordinary variation found among independent witnesses, and to questions of character, opportunity, motive, corroboration, and the cost of maintaining their testimony. It remains a stimulating contribution to the cumulative…
View recommendation →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…third. Whatever else Christians mean by Father, Son, and Spirit, they cannot mean three independent gods without abandoning Scripture. Yet the Bible distinguishes Father, Son, and Spirit The same Bible places three distinguishable Persons together. At Jesus' baptism, the Son sta…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…ecisive change: believers have died to the Law, are delivered from it, and are no longer under its guardianship. Romans 10:4 holds those truths together. Christ is not the termination of something evil or mistaken. He is the destination towards which the Law pointed and the One i…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…. But the sentence contains a question we can too easily pass over. What did that person understand—and therefore reject? Did he understand the gospel as Scripture presents it? Did he understand some of it while misunderstanding the rest? Did our words awaken a familiar picture o…
Read article →Augustine of Hippo · Spiritual autobiography and prayer · c. 397–400
Augustine's searching account of restless desire, intellectual wandering, entrenched sin, conversion, memory, prayer, and the grace of God, written not merely as autobiography but as an extended confession addressed to God.
View recommendation →Michael J. Vlach · Biblical theology · 2023
A wide-ranging study of God's purposes from creation to new creation, presenting Christian hope as bodily resurrection and life in a restored world under Christ rather than escape from the physical creation.
View recommendation →Samuel G. Green · Historical survey · 1904
…s from a Protestant background but is consistently measured and fair, helping the reader understand why developments occurred before asking for a verdict upon them. This is an older work and its language, emphases, and available historical sources reflect its period. It also ends…
View recommendation →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…e book's breadth makes it especially useful for readers who need to recover the weight, wonder, and urgency of ordinary Christian faithfulness. This is a collection of forceful biblical exhortations rather than a systematic treatment of one doctrine. Hunt writes urgently and some…
View recommendation →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…in particular copies. Textual comparison is often able to detect them because earlier or independent witnesses preserve the less polished wording. Ironically, the evidence sometimes used to show that scribes made changes is also evidence that those changes did not successfully re…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…t both be correct about the death of Jesus. The Gospel declares that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried and rose bodily from the dead. His death is not a peripheral detail which can be removed while leaving Christianity substantially intact. It is the hist…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…Trinitarian faith, but it should not be asked to identify the Father, Son and Holy Ghost independently of revelation. Scripture supplies the controlling evidence: Jesus says that the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world, while the wider biblical testimony identifie…
Read article →John Bunyan · Spiritual autobiography · 1666
…ath to assurance look neat or effortless. He records the biblical words that awakened, wounded, corrected, and eventually comforted him, together with the fierce inward battles through which he learned to look away from himself to Christ. It gives an unusually honest picture of s…
View recommendation →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…e, but never met the literary challenge. The book also contains statements which Muslims understand as fulfilled prophecy, especially the prediction that the defeated Romans would reverse their fortunes. Its text was memorised, written, collected and transmitted with remarkable s…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…was born. He repeated that choice after his birth. He identified the son Abraham was commanded to offer. The rest of Scripture traces the promise through Jacob, Israel, Judah and David until it reaches Jesus Christ. Islam presents a different Abrahamic framework. The Qur'an assoc…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…ong to a school of rabbis. God blessed and sanctified the seventh day (Genesis 2:3), commanded Israel to keep it and grounded it in His own work of creation (Exodus 20:8-11). Yet Jesus does not say merely that He understands the Sabbath better than His opponents. He declares Hims…
Read article →Marvin W. Meyer · Historical sourcebook · 1987
…genuinely worthwhile educational journey through the ancient evidence. Use this book to understand the religious environment of the New Testament, not to assume that every resemblance proves dependence or borrowing. Shared words, rituals, or human concerns can conceal very diffe…
View recommendation →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…actually says Daniel has been praying about Israel’s sin and Jerusalem’s desolation. He understands from Jeremiah that the Babylonian desolation would last seventy years, confesses the sins of his people and pleads for mercy upon God’s sanctuary and holy city. Gabriel then gives…
Read article →The Venerable Bede · Ecclesiastical and national history · 731
…d treatment of Roman and Celtic practices all require historical evaluation. Read him to understand both the events he records and the world in which he interpreted them, comparing significant claims with modern scholarship where necessary. Conversion of England Mission Anglo-Sax…
View recommendation →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…hey find the Son who shares the Father's glory, gives His life as a ransom, is crucified under Pontius Pilate and rises bodily from the dead. Islam denies the decisive claims of that Gospel. The usual answer is that Christians no longer possess the original Injeel. Jesus received…
Read article →Edward Burman · Historical survey · 1984
…fear, and coercion became entangled. It is disturbing history, but necessary history for understanding what can happen when a church claims the power to compel belief. The history of the Inquisitions is heavily disputed, and both sensational legends and defensive revisions can di…
View recommendation →C. I. Scofield · Pastoral sermons · 1915
…especially memorable: its use of biblical patterns and personal application deepened my understanding of Christ in us. The final study of defilement and cleansing brings the whole book to a searching and satisfying conclusion. These sermons come from an earlier evangelical setti…
View recommendation →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…Christians should not react to the scales by pretending works are irrelevant. God “will render to every man according to his deeds” (Romans 2:6). The dead are judged according to their works in Revelation 20:12. Jesus speaks repeatedly of deeds revealing the true condition of the…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…These were not penetrating refutations of historic Christianity. They were elementary misunderstandings which should have been corrected before an Islamic apologist ever reached them. That is not said to mock the converts. Their confusion also belongs at the feet of churches whic…
Read article →Hippolytus · Exposition, prophecy, and polemic · early third century
…use they are ancient. His use of catholic language describes the whole true Church as he understood it; it does not mean that every later claim of the modern Roman Catholic Church can be read back into him. Check both authorship and interpretation, and let Scripture judge the wit…
View recommendation →Tertullian · Apologetic, doctrinal, and practical treatises · c. 197–220
Tertullian is forceful, memorable, and often wonderfully compelling. His Apology and related appeals confront Roman governors with the injustice of condemning Christians without hearing their case, while his doctrinal works answer oppone…
View recommendation →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…od 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 mercy, forgiveness and love. A fair comparison cannot begin by pretending that the Qur'an presents Allah as merci…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…receive their meaning from the sentences and books in which they appear. Complete correspondence: the proposed fulfilment must account for the whole description, not one selected feature. Canonical interpretation: when Scripture itself identifies the fulfilment of an earlier pass…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…urvivors systematically, and neuroscientists have recorded surprising activity in brains under extreme physiological stress. The subject is now more scientifically interesting than it was when I first encountered it. It is not, however, more authoritative than it was. Near-death…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…d Gabriel does not present the period as one undifferentiated block: "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks...." —Daniel 9:25 Sev…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…ete humanity, including a genuinely human mind, affections and will. That truth helps us understand His obedience, suffering, sympathy and saving work. Suggested excerpt: The Son assumed not only the part of us that can bleed, but the human life that thinks, desires, grieves, cho…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…s ways. One answer makes our conduct the foundation of our acceptance with God, leaving tender believers to wonder whether they have ever done enough. The other treats a verbal claim to faith as decisive even when a person is content to deny Christ by the direction of his life. P…
Read article →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
A reconstruction of the life, conflicts, surviving writings, and Christology of Eustathius of Antioch, a prominent opponent of Arianism whose career illuminates both the Council of Nicaea and the unsettled theological and political struggles which followed it.
View recommendation →J. C. Ryle · Doctrinal and pastoral essays · 1874
Nineteen clear statements from an evangelical Anglican standpoint addressing salvation, Scripture and private judgment, baptism and regeneration, the Lord's Supper and real presence, the Church and ministry, confession, worship, the Sabbath, doctrinal novelty, ministerial fallibility, and idolatry.
View recommendation →Seth D. Postell, Eitan Bar & Erez Soref · Messianic biblical theology · 2017
A study of how the Torah reaches its goal in Yeshua, addressing how Moses points to Messiah, the purpose of the Law, the place of rabbinic tradition, and the relationship of Jewish and Gentile believers to the Torah's commandments.
View recommendation →Eitan Bar · Biblical and historical polemic · 2019
A Jewish believer's response to common rabbinic objections to Jesus and Christianity, examining messianic prophecy, the New Testament's use of Israel's Scriptures, the identity of Messiah, and the historical barriers which have kept many Jewish readers from considering Yeshua.
View recommendation →E. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
Ten connected sermons tracing the Bible's testimony to the personal return of Jesus Christ, the prophetic hope woven through Scripture, and the events and purposes gathered around His appearing.
View recommendation →E. W. Bullinger · Verse-by-verse commentary · 1902
An extensive journey through Revelation which examines its language, literary structures, Old Testament connections, recurring themes, sequence of visions, and place within the wider prophetic testimony of Scripture.
View recommendation →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 →John Bunyan · Christian allegory · 1678
Christian's journey from the City of Destruction towards the Celestial City turns the trials, companions, temptations, and hopes of the Christian life into an unforgettable pilgrimage.
View recommendation →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
The surviving works and fragments of a second-century Christian writer, above all Against Heresies, defending the apostolic faith against Gnostic systems through sustained appeals to Scripture, creation, incarnation, resurrection, and the unity of God's purpose.
View recommendation →Dave Hunt · Biblical polemic · 2002
A sustained challenge to Calvinism which asks whether its account of sovereignty, election, grace, and the atonement is consistent with the Bible's revelation of God's character—particularly His love, mercy, justice, and genuine call to the world.
View recommendation →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
Your Party Is Not Your Church How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal Political parties do not merely ask for our votes. Increasingly, they offer an entire identity. Each side supplies its own account of the world: the dang…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…’s rebellion, and the practices that followed. Read in that setting, the passage is best understood as describing God giving rebellious people over to destructive practices after they rejected His good laws. The contrast begins before verse 25 Three times in Ezekiel 20, God descr…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…istians answer yes, although they may prefer words such as fulfilled, transformed, or expanded. They believe that Israel's promises have reached their true meaning in Christ and now belong to the multinational Church. Others maintain that Jewish and Gentile believers are one in C…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…ered people, restore them to the land, cleanse them, pour out His Spirit, and bring them under Messiah? The biblical pattern is not merely return. It is national restoration completed by spiritual regeneration. Scattering and regathering belong to the same promise Moses warned Is…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…e concerns what the symbol means. Did the Twelve announce that Israel was being restored under its Messiah? Or did they represent a new Israel which would permanently take the place of the old? The appointment itself establishes less than either side sometimes claims. Read within…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…ns the nations. He did not inherit His position from an older deity, and He will not surrender it to a younger one. “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” — Isaiah 44:6 Centuries later, John records these words from the risen Jesus: “Fear not; I am th…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…sing? Gentile believers in Galatia were being pressured to receive circumcision and come under the Mosaic law. Paul treats that demand as a denial of the sufficiency of Christ. The Spirit had been received by the hearing of faith, not by works of the law (Galatians 3:1-5). Paul a…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…ion. Paul's answer is sharp: "Well; because of unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by faith. Be not highminded, but fear." —Romans 11:20 The difference is not Jewish inferiority and Gentile superiority. It is unbelief and faith. The Gentile stands by faith, not by et…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…ith Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, develops through the exodus and Sinai, receives a kingdom under David, and continues through exile and return. Its identity includes genealogy, land, tribes, covenants, priesthood, kingship, and a calling among the nations. The Church is revealed in…
Read article →A quiet invitation to draw near to Christ
…n our ability to present an impressive account of ourselves. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). That does not mean there is nothing in our lives that needs correcting. There is plenty. But the believer comes to God as someone…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…st be rejected. Dispensational interpreters do not all explain Ezekiel identically. Some understand the sacrifices as memorial ceremonies looking back to the cross, as the Lord's Supper now proclaims His death without repeating it. Others emphasise ritual purification within a re…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…, not weaker: Edwards is not a nineteenth-century Darbyite projected backwards. He is an independent pre-Darby witness to the essential concept of a translated company removed before Christ's public arrival. Peter Jurieu, Increase Mather, Philip Doddridge, John Gill, James Mackni…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…d, if my memory serves me correctly, to Richard Elliott Friedman. Friedman was not the founder of the Documentary Hypothesis, although his work brought a modern version of it before a large popular audience. Whatever source my opponent was using, the essential argument was famili…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…n instrument rather than a complete human life. If it presents God joining Himself to an independently acting man, the one Christ begins to divide into two. Learning to speak carefully is not dry conformity to a council. It helps us know and trust the Jesus whom Scripture actuall…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…ertain. 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 trustworthy. Th…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…ile powers and establishes royal rule. Scripture regularly uses one expression for an extended programme. "The day of the Lord" is not limited to a sixty-minute event merely because it is called a day. Nor does the word coming require resurrection, judgement, reward, marriage, wa…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…have children, they may encounter them too, perhaps even through teachers or classmates. Understanding why Scripture identifies Jesus as the eternal Creator helps us preserve the faith, strengthen our trust in God, answer objections wisely and know Christ more truly. Suggested ex…
Read article →Abraham, Lot, divine wrath, and a pattern that must be used carefully
…r the sake of the righteous within it. The conversation establishes that indiscriminate condemnation would be inconsistent with the Judge of all the earth. That principle needs careful definition. The righteous can suffer in the same fallen world as the wicked. They experience di…
Read article →Matthew, the Hebrew word almah, and a sign whose meaning reaches beyond Ahaz
…irgin. The Hebrew word is almah, they argue, meaning merely a young woman. Had Isaiah intended virginity, he would have used betulah. Matthew is therefore accused of building the virgin birth upon a mistranslation. That objection identifies a real question but reaches its verdict…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…ts doctrine of infallibility concerns protection from error in teaching faith and morals under specified conditions. It includes certain definitive teachings of the pope and of the bishops in communion with him. The Vatican’s own summary makes these distinctions clear.¹ Consequen…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…parallel adds Lot: he departed from Sodom, and fire destroyed those who remained in the condemned city. Christ concludes, "Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed" (Luke 17:30). Most decisively, Luke records the disciples' question after the separation sa…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…possession of the law and circumcision while failing to obey God. His purpose is not to condemn Jewish ethnicity. It is to destroy confidence in privilege without faithfulness. Some recent interpreters propose a different addressee: a circumcised Gentile or Gentile claimant who c…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…deny those passages. It argues that the New Testament teaches us how they were always intended to be fulfilled. The argument runs like this: Christ is the true Seed of Abraham and the fulfilment of Israel's story. Those who belong to Christ are Abraham's seed. The Church receives…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…. The Greek verb is harpazō, meaning to seize, snatch, or carry away. The Latin Vulgate rendered the expression rapiemur, from the verb which supplied the English word rapture. The label is not being used to import a foreign event into Scripture. It names Paul's catching up. The…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
…velation can illuminate earlier revelation, but the Corinthians could not naturally have understood "last trump" as "the seventh trumpet in John's future book". Paul's trumpet is the concluding summons for the transformation he describes. Nothing in his phrase requires it to belo…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…ms when they become costly, or search for a technical excuse to escape what they plainly undertook to do. God is subject to none of those failures: "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…the land conditional upon obedience. The promises to Abraham and 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.…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…cism” names one religion. The movements placed beneath the term did not share a single founder, creed, organisation, or myth. Michael Williams has argued that the category can obscure the diversity of the evidence. David Brakke has defended a narrower use, identifying particular…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…aid that unless we eat His flesh and drink His blood, we have no life in us. His hearers understood Him literally. Rather than correcting them, Jesus repeated the saying in still more graphic language. Many disciples found it intolerable and walked away. Surely, then, Christ must…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…The resulting history is neither simple nor flattering. Some early Christian writers defended essential truths: Jesus is Israel's Messiah, the law cannot justify, Gentiles are full heirs in Christ, and the Old Testament finds its goal in Him. Yet those truths were sometimes join…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…ight to act upon it before the outcome can be seen. Hebrews 11:7–10, 24–27 This helps us understand the relationship between faith and certainty. We often imagine that certainty must wait until everything has been explained or demonstrated to our satisfaction. Yet personal trust…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…oming" (1 John 2:28). James says, "the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" and "the judge standeth before the door" (James 5:8-9). Paul includes himself among those who may be "alive and remain" at the Lord's descent (1 Thessalonians 4:15, 17). These statements do not prove that the…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…p command of our lives. The One who saves us is the Lord. We do not make Him Lord by surrendering enough; He already is Lord. We come as we are, but we come to Him—not to a version of Him who leaves our rebellion undisturbed. His grace pardons, receives and begins to change those…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…he land will 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…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…hope is therefore not an ascent away from created life but the union of heaven and earth under Christ. The Christian hope is active and communal Revelation's final vision contains worship, but not passivity. “His servants shall serve him,” and “they shall reign for ever and ever”…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…remain awake and sober. Paul does not merely promise that the Church will avoid eternal condemnation; that is true, but his argument addresses the coming day and its sudden destruction. Earlier he describes believers as waiting for God's Son from heaven, "even Jesus, which delive…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…pretribulationism, and not every rhetorical description of 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 tem…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…nse sorrow afterward—and yet their stories moved in very different directions. Judas descended into despair and death. Peter was brought through brokenness into forgiveness, restoration, and fruitful service. Their stories illustrate the vital distinction in Paul’s words: “For go…
Read article →A response to Michael Horton on the land promise, Amos 9, and the people of God
…nditional and repeatedly interrupted by disobedience. The interruption did not annul the underlying covenantal grant. On the contrary, the prophets ground Israel's eventual restoration in God's covenant faithfulness. Did Joshua exhaust the land promise? Horton appeals to Joshua 2…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…erefore not a specialised controversy at the edge of Christian doctrine. It tests how we understand the faithfulness of the God upon whose promises the Church itself depends. The opposing case deserves to be stated fairly Most thoughtful supersessionists do not believe God lied t…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…stered their emotions. He was preparing distressed disciples for events they did not yet understand. Yet the One comforting them was not sheltered from suffering. He knew precisely what awaited Him. He would be betrayed, falsely accused, mocked, scourged and crucified. Neverthele…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…n we speak about Jesus Jesus slept in a boat because He was weary. Then He arose and commanded the wind and the sea, and they obeyed Him. He grew in wisdom, yet He knew what was in man. He was tempted, yet without sin. He said that He did not know the hour of His return, yet His…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…cy and arguing that God retained a future purpose for national Israel. Lewis Way and Alexander McCaul belonged to that earlier prophetic conversation. Their work does not establish pretribulationism. It does show that Darby did not begin every discussion from which his later synt…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…ds pursuing private illumination while refusing the visible, historic community Christ founded. Sometimes the accusation is sharpened further. Our distinction between outward rites and inward grace, our insistence upon testing doctrine by Scripture, and our willingness to leave a…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…ying, or apparently life-changing. They can feel more real than everyday life. Those who undergo them may be left convinced that they have encountered God, discovered their true nature, or gained knowledge unavailable through ordinary thought. But an experience does not explain i…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…onmental utopianism nor careless dominion. The earth belongs to the Lord. Man governs it under delegated authority. Sin turns dominion into appetite and violence. The land, animals, waters, and whole creation suffer beneath man's rebellion. God judges those who corrupt His world.…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…e firstfruits of them that slept." —1 Corinthians 15:20 Firstfruits are not an isolated wonder. They are the beginning and pledge of the harvest to follow. Christ's resurrection guarantees the resurrection of those who belong to Him. Paul makes the likeness explicit: "Who shall c…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…RD. The account in 2 Kings 18:3–6 commends his faithfulness. For people who had suffered under corrupt leadership and faced the threat of Assyria, the prospect of righteous Davidic government had an intelligible historical meaning. The opening verse does not name Hezekiah, howeve…
Read article →The brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility
…sus by His brothers: “For neither did his brethren believe in him.” —John 7:5 The correspondence does not constitute an absolute proof that the brothers of Jesus were biological sons of Mary. Nevertheless, when the verse is read in its immediate literary setting and alongside the…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…hrough it. Recovering this setting does more than add cultural colour. It changes how we understand Jesus, the apostles, the gospel, and the relationship between Israel and the Church. Jesus was born within Israel's covenant world Jesus was not a Gentile religious founder who arr…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…its named recipients, or converted Israel into a title which now excludes the people descended from Jacob. The Church's inheritance is gloriously real. Israel's future is covenantally certain. These truths compete only if grace is treated as a possession which one people can rece…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…ary appearance. He assumed a complete human nature, died in that nature, rose bodily, ascended bodily and remains the man Christ Jesus. Amelius recognised the words while reversing the story. He read John, but he did not allow John to correct the philosopher. John gives us someth…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…srael's future Peter once asked the question which many faithful disciples have quietly wondered: what will those who sacrifice for Christ receive? Jesus answered with a promise larger than personal reward. He spoke of His own glorious throne, twelve apostolic thrones, and the tw…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…the textual problem before I possessed the theological vocabulary needed to resolve it. Under each heading I began listing every passage I could find. I was trying to discover whether Scripture was describing one event in three different ways or using related language for distin…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…of what Jesus says afterwards tests whether permanent national replacement can be the intended verdict. The vineyard and its husbandmen Jesus tells of a householder who planted a vineyard, protected and equipped it, let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country. When the…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…ology at Romans 11:33-36. Paul opens with grief 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 questi…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…Every Jewish person, like every Gentile, must believe in Christ. None of these truths is under dispute. The disputed inference is that Christ's fulfilment, Gentile inclusion, and Israel's unbelief together remove any future for national Israel. Paul asks the decisive question Rom…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…l-media mythology. The historical verdict is more interesting. Constantine summoned and funded the council, urged agreement, supported its conclusion and used imperial power to enforce it. Those facts should not be minimised. But he did not introduce the deity of Christ to a Chur…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…letter, but not the earlier conversation to which he refers. There is a serious case for understanding this restraint in relation to governmental authority, historically embodied in Rome. An existing order can obstruct a would-be ruler; its displacement can allow power to be reor…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…Jesus from heaven. This revelation is public and judicial. The Church therefore remains under persecution until Christ’s post-Tribulation appearing. The first four observations arise from the passage. The fifth does not. It introduces two assumptions which Paul has not stated: f…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
…ding outside Jerusalem, he spoke loudly in the language of its people. His words were intended to reach those on the wall, to unsettle them, and to break their confidence in their king and their God. Then we read: “But they held their peace, and answered him not a word: for the k…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…ael's tribes, Jerusalem, the temple, the nations, a beastly ruler, and saints persecuted under him. At the same time, redeemed companies worship in heaven, and the book repeatedly contrasts earth-dwellers with those whose proper dwelling is above. The absence is not the whole arg…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…be the Church, but it is not an exclusive technical title for the Church. The meaning intended here must be established from the discourse itself. Imagine, for a moment, that the words "the elect" were erased from Matthew 24. Could the people in view still be identified from the…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…nts, and the preservation of mortal believers who enter the kingdom. Those events do not independently prove that the interval is Daniel's final week. Daniel supplies its prophetic framework. They show why a real interval is exegetically useful rather than an artificial gap inven…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…effective, not for my own importance but so that I could provide better for those who depended upon me. In time, opportunities opened which shaped the whole direction of my career. I do not tell that story as a promise that every prayer for employment will be answered in the same…
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