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75 results for “One Person”
Clear searchWhy the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
One Person, Two Natures Why the distinction matters when 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 Hi…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
Not Three Gods Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God The Trinity is often rejected before it is accurately defined. “The Father is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God,” the objection runs. “That makes three gods.” It would—if…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…o not dream of Christianity as a solitary intellect with a Bible and no obligations to anyone else. The tragedy is not that I want nothing to do with the historic Church. The tragedy is that I could stand at her door, confessing my love for Jesus Christ and affirming the ancient…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
Twelve Thrones and Twelve Tribes What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future Peter once asked the question which many faithful disciples have quietly wondered: what will those who sacrifice…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
Does Matthew 24 Place the Rapture after the Tribulation? The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery Matthew 24 contains the most direct Gospel objection to a pretribulation rapture. Jesus describes Great Tribulation, cosmic disturbance, H…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
What Restrains the Lawless One? Rome, Israel, and a Working Theory While researching The Kingdom Still to Come, my premillennial sequel to my rapture book, I have been revisiting Paul’s account of the restrainer in 2…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…received. 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 p…
Read article →Unity in Christ and distinction in God's purpose
…rtled the ancient world. In Christ, Jewish and Gentile believers are reconciled to God in one body. Both possess the same Spirit, approach the same Father, and inherit salvation on the same basis. It also continues to speak of Israel, Gentiles, and the Church in distinguishable w…
Read article →Faith, assurance, and the unseen reality of God
…ty of God When you have been touched by God, it is different. What you believe has become personal. You may struggle to explain the certainty you have, but the difficulty of communicating it does not make it insignificant. How do you explain that to someone else? How do you speak…
Read article →Regathering, national rebirth, and the spiritual renewal still to come
…that Israel will love Him (Deuteronomy 30:5-6). Judgement and restoration therefore form one covenant sequence. If the scattering was national and geographical, the promised gathering should not be made exclusively spiritual without compelling textual reason. Jeremiah guarantees…
Read article →Jesus and the fountain of living water
…dy's need. It is the ache of the soul when the things we hoped would satisfy us have not done so. Success can distract it. Pleasure can briefly numb it. Religion can cover it with activity. None of these can give life. On the last and greatest day of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jes…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…mplete 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 actually reveals. Suggested excerpt:…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…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 Israel searching for a greater God behind…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…oundation and Its Seal How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name Can a person possess true faith while showing no movement towards godliness? Can someone belong to Christ while remaining settled in the very iniquity from which He came to deliver us? These quest…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…into Israel and have therefore become Israel? The conclusion may appear obvious: there is one tree, believing Jews and Gentiles are branches within it, and unbelieving Jewish branches have been removed. Surely the tree is now the Church, the Church is Israel, and the distinction…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…en to a fruit-bearing nation, and all God's promises are yea and amen in Christ. There is one gospel and one people of God, not two parallel plans. Therefore, the promises have reached their intended fulfilment in Christ and His Church, leaving no distinct national future for Isr…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…people not to despair of Allah's mercy (39:53), and a hadith in Sahih Muslim says that no one enters Paradise by deeds alone but by Allah's mercy. Nevertheless, the scales remain a central image. Deeds are recorded and weighed; repentance, belief, obedience, and divine mercy all…
Read article →What mercy, holiness and the cross reveal about God
…er loves. Nor can Christianity be reduced to the sentimental claim that God approves everyone regardless of truth, repentance or holiness. The deeper question is not whether the word love appears in both religions. It is this: What does each revelation show divine love doing for…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…beings or deceased relatives, a panoramic review of life, and a boundary beyond which the person believes he cannot return. Not every account contains all these features. Some are confused or dreamlike. Some are frightening. Some contain imagery shaped by the person's religious a…
Read article →Ezekiel 20, child sacrifice, and the judgement of being given over
…tatutes that were not good.” Those words in Ezekiel 20:25 can sound startling when read alone. The following verse makes the difficulty sharper by connecting the judgement with offerings of the firstborn. Did God command child sacrifice? Was He admitting that His own law was evil…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…s. He had also discussed it with his priest, who apparently regarded it as something everyone already knew. The claim itself was far from new to me. I first encountered it around seventeen years ago, when I began engaging in religious forums online. I was debating a humanist who…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…rily imply an infallible teaching office? Those are distinct claims. To determine whether one follows from the other, we must examine what Jesus promises, to whom He promises it, and what the passage actually says about authority. What Is Being Claimed? We should begin by represe…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…rence speakers, and a succession of teachers who claim to have recovered what nearly everyone else has missed. He speaks often of leaving this world, seldom of bodily resurrection, and hardly at all of the local church. Baptism and the Lord's Supper seem peripheral. Ordinary Chri…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…ot an attempt to settle every question concerning the Lord’s Supper. It is concerned with one narrower claim: does John 6 teach that eternal life is received by literally or sacramentally eating the body of Christ? The answer of the chapter itself is no. Jesus identifies the life…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…urn, the 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 wi…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
…motionless contemplation, as though salvation finally releases us from material creation, personal vocation, and shared life. Scripture gives us something fuller. Seeing God is not less than the goal of redemption, but the people who see Him are resurrected, gathered, serving, re…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…as’s sin was beyond forgiveness. The essential question was where their sorrow took them. One remained enclosed within guilt and despair; the other was ultimately brought back to the Saviour. Similar Failures, Different Endings Judas and Peter had more in common than we might ini…
Read article →The peace Christ gives in a troubled world
…re real mercies, and we should receive them gratefully. But circumstances change. A telephone call, a diagnosis, a loss or an unexpected conversation can overturn in minutes the security we spent years constructing. On the night before the cross, Jesus spoke to men whose circumst…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…ibe remarkably similar sensations while drawing entirely different conclusions from them. One person encounters what he calls Christ; another believes she has met a Hindu deity; another speaks of Allah, the universe, the divine self, a spirit guide, or an impersonal consciousness…
Read article →Not escape from the body, but its redemption
…tion of our body." —Romans 8:23 The body is not an embarrassing shell from which the real person must be liberated. Sin has affected the whole person, and redemption reaches the whole person. Death tears body and soul apart; resurrection answers that rupture. This is why the apos…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…becomes an inadequate question because it assumes that a prophecy must belong entirely to one historical moment. Isaiah does not always speak that way. He addresses actual kings, actual invasions, actual sins and actual deliverances. Yet, within those same prophetic settings, his…
Read article →The brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility
…e brothers of Jesus, the sons of Mary, and an argument of strong plausibility Psalm 69 is one of the clearest portraits of the suffering Messiah in the Psalter. Its language repeatedly reappears in the New Testament’s account of Jesus: “They hate me without a cause” is applied to…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…nd in social-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 Chris…
Read article →Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence
When Faith Does Not Answer Back Trusting God when voices seek to weaken our confidence One of the most instructive details in the account of Hezekiah and Rabshakeh is easily overlooked: the people did not answer. Rabshakeh had come as the spokesman of the king of Assyria. Stan…
Read article →Labour, purpose, and faithfulness in a fallen world
…life as God designed it. The fall changed the conditions under which that work would be done: "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life ... In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." —Genesis 3:17, 19 God cursed the ground.…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…, protection of innocent life, impartial judgement, sexual integrity, care for the poor, honest commerce, responsible stewardship and the dignity of persons made in God's image. These are not optional interests which may be traded away for party advantage. They belong to the publ…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…belong to the multinational Church. Others maintain that Jewish and Gentile believers are one in Christ while national Israel still has an appointed future under the covenants. This is not a contest over which group matters more. Jewish people have no separate path of salvation,…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…al: when creation began, the Word already existed. Bethlehem was not the beginning of His personal existence. Before He was born of Mary, before Abraham, before the world itself, He was. But that raises a further question. Does eternal existence necessarily equal divinity? Could…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…Scroll contains Daniel 9:26. The Hebrew word translated “Messiah” can describe more than one kind of anointed person, and responsible Jewish interpreters have proposed alternatives to Jesus. Those qualifications matter. They prevent an apologetic argument from claiming evidence…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
…hen He rose—or does Scripture distinguish His eternal Sonship from His resurrection, enthronement and saving work within history? --- More than twenty years ago, during the early part of my Christian walk, one sentence in Scripture troubled me: “Thou art my Son, this day have I b…
Read article →R. V. Sellers · Theological biography and history of doctrine · 1928
…being argued, tested, and refined. Sellers shows that councils, bishops, imperial favour, personal conflict, and genuine theological conviction were closely entangled. Eustathius himself emerges as a man of heart and zeal, determined to defend Christ's true divinity while also ta…
View recommendation →John Bunyan · Spiritual autobiography · 1666
…tles through which he learned to look away from himself to Christ. It gives an unusually honest picture of spiritual struggle and makes The Pilgrim's Progress more intelligible by revealing the experience behind its landscapes. Bunyan's experience is a testimony, not a pattern ev…
View recommendation →Edward Burman · Historical survey · 1984
…ct which is often reduced either to a few notorious names or to the Spanish Inquisition alone. Burman shows how the institution developed, how it operated in different places and periods, and how religious conviction, political authority, fear, and coercion became entangled. It i…
View recommendation →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…rst, Paul says that the promises were made to Abraham and his singular Seed, Christ. Everyone who belongs to Christ is then called Abraham's seed and an heir according to the promise (Galatians 3:16, 29). If Christ is the true Seed and the Church is united to Him, does the Church…
Read article →How an openly transmitted text survived copying, criticism, and centuries of examination
…til we ask how the biblical text was actually transmitted. The Bible did not pass through one secret chain in which a single guardian could rewrite every copy. Its books were read publicly, copied repeatedly, translated into other languages, quoted by Christian writers, and carri…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…often that we can cease to feel their force. God became man. The Word was made flesh. The One who made the world entered it, accepted the limitations of a human life, suffered at the hands of His creatures and died upon a cross. We confess these things because they are true. But…
Read article →Augustine of Hippo · Spiritual autobiography and prayer · c. 397–400
Confessions remains compelling because Augustine examines his own heart with unusual honesty. He traces the loves, ambitions, excuses, habits, relationships, and ideas through which he ran from God, while recognising the patient providence that pursued him. The result is both…
View recommendation →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…a time". The question is whether these are disconnected crises or the developing parts of one prophetic structure. If the correlations hold, the New Testament Tribulation is the still-future completion of Daniel's seventieth week. Seventy sevens for Daniel's people and city Danie…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…is the occupant. Humanity supplies the visible instrument, while deity supplies the mind, personality and active life within it. That picture feels simple. It also leaves out a great deal of what it means to be human. The previous article considered the danger of imagining the in…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…God dealt with sin. The Qur'an appears to deny that event. Surah 4:157 says of Jesus' opponents: "But they neither killed nor crucified him - it was only made to appear so" (Surah 4:157, The Clear Quran, trans. Mustafa Khattab). The next verse says that Allah raised Jesus to Him…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…o 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 promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." —2 Corinthians 1:20 Every prom…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…ean an Immediate Return to Earth? Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture One of the most sophisticated objections to pretribulationism centres on a single Greek noun. Paul says that living believers will be caught up with the resurrected dead "to meet the Lord in…
Read article →Circumcision of the heart and the identity of Paul's inward Jew
…Jew is often treated as a decisive redefinition of Israel: "For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the lette…
Read article →What the Father's love for the Son reveals about God
…"God is love" (1 John 4:8). 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 i…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…th companies meet the Lord together and are thereafter always with Him. Whatever position one takes concerning the timing, this event is not hidden in a theological chart. It is stated in the text. The word may be absent while the event is present One common objection says that t…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
…on event "the first resurrection". John 6 promises to raise believers "at the last day". None is trivial. None requires the abandonment of pretribulationism. Must the man of sin appear before our gathering? Paul writes: "Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jes…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…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 to His word when every human ground for confidence has disappeared. God is faithful because He cannot li…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…story of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension Supersessionism did not appear in one moment through one theologian. It developed as the Church became increasingly Gentile, separated socially from Jewish communities, interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem as lasting dis…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
…Him. The distinction matters. An event can be certain and constantly expected without anyone being authorised to calculate its date. The New Testament repeatedly directs believers towards Christ Himself: "Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…peoples and destinies, Christians enjoy seven years of safety, and Jewish people are abandoned to an unparalleled holocaust. He then appeals to John 5, Daniel, Matthew 24, Romans 8 and the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 to reject the system. Some of his criticism is directed p…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…terpreted wherever it disagrees. That claim must now enter the witness box. Why should anyone believe that the Qur'an came from God? The usual answers form a cumulative case. The Qur'an is said to be linguistically inimitable, scientifically prescient, mathematically structured,…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…vest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of" (Genesis 22:2). The wording intensifies at every step: thy son; thine only son; Isaac; whom thou lovest. The name cannot be removed without ov…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…her that category can contain the Jesus of the Gospels. This cannot be settled by lifting one sentence from John, printing the words "I AM" in capital letters and declaring the case closed. Nor should it be made to depend upon a familiar slogan whose conclusion is often heard bef…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…h we now find it. Two texts can also inherit material from a common tradition rather than one copying the other directly. Similarity is not enough. But repeated, distinctive and chronologically prior similarities still require an explanation. Was the Qur’an independently restorin…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…The usual answer is that Christians no longer possess the original Injeel. Jesus received one revelation, but Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are later human accounts. They may retain fragments of His genuine teaching, but the original book was corrupted, obscured or lost. That answ…
Read article →C. I. Scofield · Pastoral sermons · 1915
…es genuine theological depth with direct, unpretentious language. The chapters build upon one another, adding layer after layer of biblical truth while speaking to both the mind and the heart. His treatment of true consecration is especially memorable: its use of biblical pattern…
View recommendation →Tal Brooke · Christian investigation · 1979
…es actually prove. It is useful apologetic and discernment reading for a subject on which personal testimony is often allowed to outrun careful biblical judgment. The book was written during the first great wave of modern interest in near-death experiences, so some research, pers…
View recommendation →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…oken this is the sum: We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens” (Hebrews 8:1). The evidence has been heard. We have examined what Christians mean when they say that God is one. We have followed Jesus through the Gospels…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…exceeds the limits of our created experience. The God who made the universe is not imprisoned by it. He is not merely outside our box; He is the reason there is a box at all. That truth should do more than answer an objection. It should enlarge our worship. The Incarnation is no…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…racteristics have been removed. What would count as evidence? It is entirely possible for one person to resemble another in some respects. Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were all male religious leaders. Each opposed unbelief, gathered followers and profoundly affected history. If broa…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…es the Israel which matters to God. True Israel consists of the children of promise: everyone who believes in Christ, whether Jewish or Gentile. The Church is therefore the Israel within Israel, while unbelieving ethnic Israel no longer possesses a distinct covenant identity or f…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…substitute. The discussion should therefore begin with a definition which an informed opponent could recognise. Supersessionism is the view that the Church has permanently succeeded Israel as the covenant people of God, so that national Israel no longer possesses a distinct futu…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…is recompensed to the persecuted. Paul is not merely contrasting two physical locations, one dangerous and the other safe. He is contrasting two judicial outcomes. Those who appeared condemned in the world are shown to belong to God’s kingdom. Those who appeared able to persecut…
Read article →Earth-dwellers, heaven-dwellers, and the literary structure of the Apocalypse
…nt that the word church disappears after Revelation 3 is often stated as though silence alone proves a rapture between chapters 3 and 4. It does not. A word count cannot establish a doctrine which the narrative never supports. The silence is nevertheless significant when placed w…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…at sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." —Matthew 24:29, 31 Few passages in prophetic Scripture generate more debate than Matthew 24. At the centre of that debate stands an apparently simple questio…
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