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65 results for “One gospel”
Clear searchOne Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
The Unshaken Truth of God's Promises One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel This series began with a question: has the Church permanently replaced Israel in the purpose of God? The answer cannot be rea…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
WHAT DID THEY REJECT? The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit We sometimes describe an evangelistic conversation in a single sentence: “I explained the gospel, and he rejected it.”…
Read article →Two accounts of judgement, mercy, and the sinner's hope before God
…ity 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. The contrast is not simply “Muslims believe…
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 →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
The Injeel Problem Which 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…
Read article →Simon Greenleaf · Legal examination of testimony · 1846
Greenleaf's work is worthwhile because it asks readers to take the four Gospel witnesses seriously as testimony rather than dismissing them by prejudice or accepting them without examination. His legal approach draws attention to the difference between contradic…
View recommendation →Why 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 →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 →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, affirms His virgin birth and attribute…
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 →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 →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 →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…of the Law than Romans 10:4: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." —Romans 10:4 Does Paul mean that Christ terminated the Law? Is Christ the goal towards which the Law was always moving? Does end mean fulfilment, completion, or abolitio…
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 →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…d Him into an apparition or a spiritual myth. I love their insistence that the God of the gospel is the Creator of heaven and earth, that the body is not evil, that Jesus Christ truly suffered in the flesh, and that He rose bodily from the grave. I value ordered worship, accounta…
Read article →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
…use it refuses to separate Christian belief from Christian living. Hunt ranges across the gospel, faith, love for God, discipleship, doctrine, the Church, and the believer's heavenly hope, but the recurring appeal is intensely practical: take God at His word and let that truth go…
View recommendation →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 →Dave Hunt · Biblical polemic · 2002
…passages, read their contexts, and the book becomes a Scripture study rather than merely one side of a theological dispute. This is an unapologetically controversial book, and Calvinist readers strongly dispute many of Hunt's descriptions and conclusions. Do not read it hurriedl…
View recommendation →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 →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
Has God Abandoned Israel? What Do the Covenants Say? Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ Israel broke God's law, rejected the prophets, and nationally refused its Messiah.…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
The New Testament Is a Very Jewish Story Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world To many Jewish people, Christianity appears thoroughly foreign. Its historic centres became Rome, Constantinople, Canterbury, Geneva, and countless cities far from Jerus…
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 →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…nd the Qur'an Christianity and Islam cannot 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 Christi…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…dates and water beside a palm tree. These are not stories found in the Torah or the four Gospels. Yet recognisable forms of them appear within the religious narrative world of late antiquity. The superficial accusation is easy: Muhammad heard old legends and copied them into the…
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
…linical death, cardiac arrest and brain death are not interchangeable expressions. If someone returned, we should be cautious about saying that he reached the settled state of the dead and came back with a map. This does not make the experience trivial. It defines the question mo…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…entities named in the text, and the unconditional promises God made to Israel. It affirms one way of salvation by grace through faith, centred in Christ. It distinguishes Israel and the Church without teaching two gospels or two redeemers. The following answers do not prove the w…
Read article →Matthew, the Hebrew word almah, and a sign whose meaning reaches beyond Ahaz
…oman of marriageable age and is compatible with—often suggestive of—virginity. The word alone neither proves Matthew's complete case nor excludes his rendering. The Greek translation existed before Matthew Matthew did not invent the Greek word parthenos for Isaiah 7:14. The Jewis…
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 →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
…remain in our sins (1 Corinthians 15:12–19). The resurrection belongs to the heart of the gospel because the Christ who died for our sins rose bodily from the grave. Our future rests upon what has already happened to Him. Christ the firstfruits and pattern "But now is Christ rise…
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 →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 →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 →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 →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
No Shadow of Turning What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises This series has examined covenants, prophecies, apostles, thrones, tribes, branches, seeds, kingdoms, and the difficult words upon which the debate turns. We have…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…t raises a further question. Does eternal existence necessarily equal divinity? Could someone confess that Jesus is eternal and uncreated while still denying that He is truly God? And if the answer seems obvious to us, was it always expressed with equal clarity by Christians atte…
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 →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 →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
…define the term before trying to prove anything with it. Christians use soul in more than one way. Sometimes it means the whole living person: “eight souls were saved by water” (1 Peter 3:20). Sometimes it refers to life itself. Sometimes it describes the inward life in distincti…
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 →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 →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 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
…d in context The Qur'an says that the coming of Muhammad was written in the Torah and the Gospel possessed by Jews and Christians: "Those who follow the messenger, the Prophet who can neither read nor write, whom they will find described in the Torah and the Gospel (which are) wi…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…ry. When the season of fruit arrived, he sent servants to receive it. The husbandmen beat one, killed another, and stoned another. More servants were treated in the same way. Finally, the owner sent his son: "But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence…
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
…angels, In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” —2 Thessalonians 1:6–8 The posttribulation argument appears straightforward: Christians are being persecuted. Paul promises them rest. That rest is associat…
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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