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62 results for “Resurrection”
Clear searchNot escape from the body, but its redemption
The Hope of the Resurrection Not escape from the body, but its redemption Many people imagine the Christian hope as an endless disembodied existence: the soul released from the body, leaving the physical wo…
Read article →Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son
Was Christ Begotten at the Resurrection? Born, begotten and firstborn in the eternal identity and saving work of the Son “This day have I begotten thee” appears to be applied to Christ’s resurrection. Did Jesus become…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
Four Difficult Texts for Pretribulationism The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day A cumulative case should be exposed to the passages which appear least friendly to it. Four objections deserve particular attention: Second Thessalonians 2 app…
Read article →Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation
Is the Beatific Vision the Whole Christian Hope? Seeing God, bodily resurrection, and life in the renewed creation The beatific vision is the Christian teaching that the redeemed will see God and find their perfect happiness in Him. It draws upon magnificent…
Read article →The glory philosophy could not contain
…never anything less than the Lord of glory. The risen Christ still bears our humanity The resurrection is where the difference between Christianity and the philosopher’s version of incarnation becomes impossible to hide—and where Christian hope breaks into triumph. Amelius imagin…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…postolic text. It plainly does. The rapture is the living believer's participation in the resurrection The most important clarification is that the rapture is not a rival to the resurrection. It is the experience of believers who are still alive when the resurrection occurs. Paul…
Read article →Brian E. Daley · Historical theology · 1991
…o come really was. Daley traces the development of the intermediate state, apokatastasis, resurrection, judgment, and the principal eschatological expectations without pretending that the early Church spoke with one settled voice on every question. His great strength is his balan…
View recommendation →Michael J. Vlach · Biblical theology · 2023
I recommend The New Creation Model because it gave me a clear, sustained account of the resurrection body and the renewed creation as parts of one coherent purpose. Vlach is especially helpful in resisting the idea that Christian hope means escape from the physical world. He tr…
View recommendation →Irenaeus of Lyons · Early Christian theology and polemic · c. 180–190
…Gnosticism contains powerful discussions of the true humanity and deity of Christ, bodily resurrection, the goodness of creation, and the unity of the Old and New Testaments. He is also an important early witness to a future earthly kingdom: his premillennial passages show that t…
View recommendation →Simon Greenleaf · Legal examination of testimony · 1846
…d the ancient world. Four Gospels Witness testimony Historical reliability Legal evidence Resurrection Gospel harmony Christian apologetics
View recommendation →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…not absorption into universal consciousness. Eternal life is found in the Son. "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." —John 11:25 Scripture's striking restraint The Bible contains resurrections, visions and glimpse…
Read article →The crucifixion in history, Scripture and the Qur'an
…longs to the earliest decades of the Christian movement. It names Christ's death, burial, resurrection and appearances as matters of first importance. Paul was not isolated from the Jerusalem witnesses. He records spending fifteen days with Peter and meeting James, "the Lord's br…
Read article →What Christ’s promise establishes—and what claims about infallible teaching still need to prove
…tanding Jesus’ promise as an assurance that death cannot finally overcome His Church. The resurrection connection becomes especially significant when we read on. In verse 21, Jesus begins explaining that He must suffer, be killed, and rise again on the third day. The builder of t…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…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 Christian service appears dull beside the latest prophetic timetable. Other belie…
Read article →The divine identity of Jesus across the Gospels
…ation affirms; it does not answer the Gospel's testimony concerning who became flesh. The resurrection completes the portrait All four Gospels culminate in the resurrection. Mark announces that the crucified Jesus "is risen; he is not here" (Mark 16:6). Matthew presents the risen…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
Is the Pretribulation Rapture Without Biblical Basis? A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation In an article published by the Christian Research Institute, Hank Hanegraaff argues that the pretribulation rapture has no biblical bas…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…tion (1:13–14). Paul then explains His relation to creation before turning to the church, resurrection and reconciliation. “Firstborn” translates prōtotokos (πρωτότοκος). Its ordinary use concerns the child born first. Chronological priority is a real part of its semantic range,…
Read article →The incarnation, the limits of created perspective and the love philosophy could not imagine
…ess upon the ship was the Creator of the sea. The man who wept at Lazarus’s grave was the resurrection and the life. The man who hung upon the cross was the Lord of glory. Then Paul employs the language of shadow and substance: “Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body…
Read article →How the Law reaches its goal and appointed end in Christ
…nd into the deep to raise Him from the dead. God has already acted in the incarnation and resurrection. The saving word is near: "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…Matthew 24:29-31). Rome's siege did not produce the bodily appearing of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead, or the kingdom conditions required by the wider prophetic programme. AD 70 vindicated Christ's warning and anticipated the final crisis. It did not consume the enti…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…ates Daniel's abomination, unparalleled tribulation, the public coming of the Son of man, resurrection, and final kingdom with a larger consummation than the Roman destruction achieved. Second Thessalonians 2 links the man of sin with Christ's coming and the gathering of believer…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…led system identical to modern dispensational pretribulationism? No. Did Darby invent the resurrection of dead believers, the transformation and catching up of the living, heavenly ascent, every form of pre-Tribulation deliverance, and every interval between translation and publi…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…tered the full reality of human weakness and carried faithful humanity through death into resurrection life. Precision serves worship Asking whether Jesus had a human soul can sound like dry theology. It is anything but dry if we understand what is at stake. Without a human mind,…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…s receive the blessing of Abraham, the promised Spirit, justification by faith, adoption, resurrection hope, and an inheritance in the new creation (Galatians 3:6-29; Ephesians 1:3-14). Jewish and Gentile believers form one body with equal access to the Father. The Church also en…
Read article →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…a sixty-minute event merely because it is called a day. Nor does the word coming require resurrection, judgement, reward, marriage, warfare, national deliverance, and kingdom enthronement to occur in one instant. The distinction is not fundamentally between a secret coming and a…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…ut we have not always existed. Our life has a beginning in God’s creative act even though resurrection life will have no end. Something may also be called eternal because it belongs to the coming age or carries permanent consequences. Scripture speaks of “eternal judgment” and “e…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…e living are caught up, and both meet the Lord in the air. Matthew 24:31 does not mention resurrection, transformation, or a caught-up company. Angels gather the elect after the public manifestation as the kingdom is about to be established. The similarities show that both belong…
Read article →Fulfilment in Christ, the inclusion of the Gentiles, and Israel's future mercy
…h rejected its King is addressed as the Jerusalem which will one day acknowledge Him. The resurrection did not erase the kingdom hope It is sometimes argued that the apostles expected a restored kingdom only because they had not yet understood Christ's spiritual mission. That exp…
Read article →Why Israel's failure cannot make the word of God fail
…terchangeable terms. Christian assurance rests directly upon Christ's completed work, His resurrection, His intercession, and the promises of the gospel. We should not pretend that every covenant operates in precisely the same way. What they share is the character of the Promiser…
Read article →Conditional blessing, irrevocable promise, and fulfilment in Christ
…suffer my faithfulness to fail" (Psalm 89:30-37). Jesus is the promised Son of David. His resurrection and exaltation confirm, rather than evade, the covenant. Gabriel announced that God would give Him "the throne of his father David" and that He would reign "over the house of Ja…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…t in precisely that way. John 6:54 is officially connected with Eucharistic reception and resurrection, while contemporary apologists argue that Christ’s words must be read literally because He intensified them and permitted His hearers to leave.[2] Our task is to test that claim…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…ist as the fulfilment of the Passover and contains powerful proclamation of His death and resurrection. It also addresses Israel collectively as the killer of the Lord. "I," says Israel, "killed the Lord." —Melito of Sardis, On Pascha The Passion narratives plainly identify Jewis…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…one. It rests upon who Christ is and what God did in public history through His death and resurrection. Experience must answer to truth. Truth cannot be inferred simply from the strength of experience. Do the arguments become stronger together? The informed Muslim may object that…
Read article →The covenant son and the sacrifice that points to Christ
…cret meaning. Scripture itself, however, interprets Isaac's deliverance through death and resurrection, identifies Christ as the promised Seed and presents Jesus as God's unique beloved Son and sacrificial Lamb. The cumulative pattern is extraordinary. The unique beloved son Abra…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…class members of God's household. Every sinner is reconciled to God through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The question is whether this unity in salvation removes the distinctions which Scripture continues to make between Israel, the Gentiles, and the Church. That qu…
Read article →Two failures, two responses, and the difference between remorse and repentance
…The Restoration of Peter John 21 records one of Scripture’s most tender scenes. After the resurrection, Jesus met His disciples beside the Sea of Galilee. He prepared a meal for them and then addressed Peter personally. Three times Jesus asked, “Lovest thou me?” Three times Peter…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…s still born. Christ provides a greater exodus from sin, but Israel still left Egypt. The resurrection is greater than Israel's return from Babylon, but the exiles still returned to their land. In the same way, a worldwide kingdom can include the land promised to Abraham. A renew…
Read article →Why the Trinity is not polytheism—and why Christians confess one God
…0–11). He is involved with the Father and Son in creation, salvation, sanctification, and resurrection. Calling the Spirit divine does not add another god. It recognises the identity Scripture gives Him within the one divine Being. One Being, three Persons The language of being a…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…ld say to Him, “Now are we sure that thou knowest all things” (John 16:30), and after the resurrection Peter appealed to that knowledge: “Lord, thou knowest all things” (John 21:17). We should not remove one set of passages to make the other easier. Faithfulness requires us to co…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…story eventually became known, demonstrating the reality of God’s promise and the coming resurrection. The passage even records disagreement over their number: “(Some) will say: They were three, their dog the fourth, and (some) say: Five, their dog the sixth, guessing at random;…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…. It is truth once hidden and now revealed by God. The Old Testament plainly foretold the resurrection, the Day of the Lord, the Messiah's kingdom, and His coming in glory. Paul's revealed mystery includes something more specific: a generation of believers will not die but will b…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…phets concerning the saving works of God: Christ’s coming, His virgin birth, His passion, resurrection from the dead and bodily ascension. Christ will appear again from heaven in the glory of the Father. Humanity will be raised, every knee will bow to Christ as Lord, God, Saviour…
Read article →Spiritual ecstasy, altered states, and discerning what is from God
…om Scripture what had occurred. The result was a clear proclamation of Christ’s death and resurrection and a call to repentance. The Holy Spirit did not bypass truth. He illuminated and proclaimed it. Paul likewise refused to treat disorder and loss of control as proof of spiritu…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…y hostile and non-Christian sources knew Jesus as executed, and account for the rise of a resurrection proclamation in Jerusalem itself. Islam does not resolve Daniel’s difficulty by denying the crucifixion. It deepens the difficulty by forcing Scripture and history to be rewritt…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
…usions fail. We care for mortal bodies even though medicine cannot conquer death and only resurrection can finally redeem them. Resurrection hope does not authorise abuse of the body. In the same way, the coming regeneration does not make present conduct towards creation irreleva…
Read article →How the Lord knows His own—and how their lives bear His name
…doing serious harm. Hymenaeus and Philetus had departed from the truth by saying that the resurrection had already taken place. Their teaching was not an innocent difference of opinion: "And their word will eat as doth a canker: of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus; who concerning t…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…ed. Jesus' authority, His unique Sonship, His predicted death, His saving purpose and His resurrection are embedded throughout the Gospel tradition. Selection by agreement is not recovery. It is manufacture. Did Jesus preach a different gospel from Paul? The next escape route sep…
Read article →The near was real. The far is still coming.
…final new creation. Christ’s saving reign is inaugurated now; at His return, judgment and resurrection lead directly into the perfected world. Isaiah’s terrestrial promises are fulfilled there. Anthony Hoekema presses precisely the relevant objection to simplistic premillennial a…
Read article →Israel's Messiah, Israel's Scriptures, and a gospel for the world
…wish The Twelve were Jewish men chosen to correspond to Israel's twelve tribes. After the resurrection, they remained in Jerusalem awaiting the Spirit. At Pentecost, Peter addressed "Ye men of Judaea" and "all the house of Israel", proclaiming that God had made the crucified and…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…that He was crucified. Christianity says that He rose bodily from the dead. Islam has no resurrection of Jesus from a tomb because it denies the death which preceded it. Christianity says that the one God eternally exists as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Islam treats that confessi…
Read article →One Messiah, one gospel, and God's continuing purpose for Israel
…Gentile believers receive Abrahamic blessing, the promised Spirit, adoption, forgiveness, resurrection life, and hope in the renewed creation. We are not distant observers of Israel's story but participants in the salvation which came through Israel's Messiah. Israel also experie…
Read article →What Jesus promised the apostles about Israel's future
…world and angels (1 Corinthians 6:2-3). Revelation describes those who share in the first resurrection as priests of God and of Christ who "shall reign with him a thousand years" (Revelation 20:6). Jesus' parables connect faithfulness in present stewardship with responsibility in…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…ecause it neither sees nor knows Him. The timing also belongs to the narrative. After His resurrection, Jesus tells the apostles to remain in Jerusalem until they receive "the promise of the Father" and power from the Holy Ghost (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4–8). At Pentecost, the Spirit…
Read article →The wicked husbandmen, the fruit-bearing nation, and what Jesus said afterwards
…at about the disciples' final question? The same expectation survives the crucifixion and resurrection. Luke carefully tells us that Jesus showed Himself alive "by many infallible proofs" and spent forty days speaking to the apostles "of the things pertaining to the kingdom of Go…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…There is a biblical example of the difficulty in Athens. When Paul preached Jesus and the resurrection, some hearers concluded that he was proclaiming strange gods. They heard Christian proclamation through the categories available to them. Paul then declared the Creator, His rel…
Read article →Defining the position before testing it
…national Israel. Paul asks the decisive question Romans 9-11 was written after the cross, resurrection, ascension, and formation of the Church. If those events meant that Israel had ceased to possess a distinct identity in God's purpose, Paul had the ideal opportunity to say so.…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…d from Constantinople in AD 381 and speaks more fully of the Spirit, the Church, baptism, resurrection and the life to come. Because the council's own proceedings do not survive and this text first appears in the record of Chalcedon in AD 451, historians debate the precise proces…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…ration Tertullian explicitly connects Paul’s restraint with Rome. In chapter 24 of On the Resurrection of the Flesh, he asks: “What obstacle is there but the Roman state” He links its dissolution into ten kingdoms with Antichrist’s arrival. He also interprets the falling away pol…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…gathering The most conspicuous fact about the passage is what it never says. There is no resurrection of the dead in Christ. There is no transformation of living believers. There is no trumpet, no catching up, no meeting in the air and no gathering together unto Christ. Paul des…
Read article →A forensic reading of Christ's Olivet Discourse
…people gathered at Christ's return, but the discourse does not identify this event as the resurrection and transformation Paul reveals for those "in Christ". Clue one: the setting is Judea The discourse begins at the temple. The disciples point to its buildings; Jesus foretells t…
Read article →A sign of Israel's renewal, not Israel's disappearance
…kingdom of heaven is at hand." —Matthew 10:5-7 This restriction was temporary. After His resurrection, Jesus commanded His witnesses to make disciples among all nations (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 1:8). Yet the earlier mission explains the sign of the Twelve. They were sent through…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…ationism also has difficult passages. Second Thessalonians 2, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day all require careful treatment. Yet none explicitly assigns the Church to Antichrist's unveiled career or identifies the rapture with the public descent after t…
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