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46 results for “Second Coming”
Clear searchE. W. Bullinger · Sermons · 1892
I recommend these sermons because Bullinger treats the Second Advent as a great biblical theme rather than an isolated prophetic curiosity. He ranges across the Law, Prophets, Psalms, Gospels, Epistles, and Revelation, drawing attention to the s…
View recommendation →Why apantēsis does not settle the timing of the rapture
…se fellow believers have died. He assures them that the departed will not miss the Lord's coming: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are a…
Read article →Why a loaded label does not settle the question
…4:16). Nothing secret there. The real question is whether Scripture distinguishes Christ coming for His Church from His later return with His saints. That question cannot be answered by attaching a loaded label to one side. It must be answered by comparing the passages themselve…
Read article →Michael Brown, 2 Thessalonians 1, and the public vindication of the saints
…first, that the promised rest means the physical removal of the Church from persecution; secondly, that no earlier gathering to Christ can have taken place if the saints receive public rest and vindication at His revelation. Those assumptions must be tested rather than allowed t…
Read article →Hippolytus · Exposition, prophecy, and polemic · early third century
…oth authorship and interpretation, and let Scripture judge the witness. Daniel Antichrist Second Coming Premillennialism Kingdom of God Heresies Holy living
View recommendation →Dave Hunt · Devotional theology and biblical exhortation · 2000
A wide-ranging call to recover the seriousness of the gospel, wholehearted love for God, biblical discipleship, the necessity of the cross, fidelity to Christian doctrine, and a life shaped by Christ's return.
View recommendation →The near was real. The far is still coming.
The King, Zion and the Coming Kingdom: Reading Isaiah 32–35 Across the Prophetic Horizon The near was real. The far is still coming. The historical horizon and the question of fulfilment “Was this fulfilled, or is…
Read article →Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await
If Antichrist Must Come First, Is Christ's Coming Imminent? Signs, expectancy, and the event the Church is told to await Imminency does not mean that Christ was required to return within the apostles' lifetime. It means that no revea…
Read article →Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ
The Earth's Great Sabbath Creation, judgement, and the coming reign of Christ The Christian hope for creation rests neither in human effort nor in escape from the material world. The creation groans for the return of its rightful King, the revel…
Read article →The Messiah cut off before the Temple fell
…s is the Messiah, and if Daniel’s prophecy speaks of the Messiah being cut off before the Second Temple was destroyed, how can the Qur’an preserve His title while denying His death? The argument must be made carefully. Daniel is not named in the Qur’an. No surviving Dead Sea Scro…
Read article →Eustathius of Antioch, the human soul of Christ and the pictures created by our words
…ivisible unity? How could they avoid turning Jesus into a divine person dwelling within a second human subject? This is sometimes called “underdeveloped Christology.” The expression can be useful, provided it does not mean that the early Christians simply knew less Bible or belie…
Read article →The positive argument of the whole series, brought together
…om for the Bride's preparation in heaven. Pretribulationism does not invent two unrelated comings. It distinguishes stages within the one future coming of Christ because the texts describe different directions, purposes, audiences, and results. Daniel's unfinished programme has a…
Read article →The olive tree, the natural branches, and the limits of the metaphor
…ant according to grace as evidence that God has not cast away His people (Romans 11:1-5). Second, Gentile believers are grafted among them. The new branches do not constitute a replacement tree planted after Israel's tree failed. They enter an existing tree among natural branches…
Read article →What 'yea and Amen' in Christ means for Israel and the covenants
…the promises made to the fathers Romans gives us an inspired explanation of how Christ's coming relates to Israel's promises: "Now I say that Jesus Christ was a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made unto the fathers: And that the Gentile…
Read article →Does John 6 teach the literal eating of Christ's body?
…ist? The answer of the chapter itself is no. Jesus identifies the life-giving response as coming to Him, hearing Him and believing upon Him. Eating and drinking are vivid figures for that believing reception of Christ, particularly of Christ giving His flesh in sacrificial death.…
Read article →Isaiah, John, and the Divine Identity of Jesus Christ
…im the very passages in which Israel’s God declares His uniqueness. Does this introduce a second deity? Does it describe a magnificent creature authorised to represent God? Or does it reveal that the Son belongs within the identity of the one God, while remaining personally disti…
Read article →Christ the promised Seed, Gentile inheritance, and Paul's final blessing
…s united to Him, does the Church inherit every promise previously associated with Israel? Second, Paul closes the letter by pronouncing peace and mercy upon those who walk according to the rule of new creation "and upon the Israel of God" (Galatians 6:15-16). Is that expression P…
Read article →Near-death experiences, neuroscience, and the authority of Christ
…when the memory was encoded, or whether every part of the report has a single cause. The second mistake is credulity: "It felt more real than ordinary life, so it revealed ultimate reality." Vividness is not a truth test. Dreams, drug-induced states, delusions and false memories…
Read article →Why the final seven is unfinished, future, and centred upon Israel and Jerusalem
…ighteousness. To seal up the vision and prophecy. To anoint the most Holy. Christ's first coming is indispensable to their fulfilment. The cross made the only sufficient atonement for iniquity. Nothing in a futurist reading suggests that His sacrifice was incomplete or that a lat…
Read article →Responding to five common criticisms without defending what Scripture does not require
…. The New Testament associates 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…
Read article →What the historical evidence proves—and what it does not
…ting around the beginning of the third century, says that believers remaining at Christ's coming, together with the resurrected dead in Christ, will be "caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air". He describes what Christ prepared for His people as "this ascension into…
Read article →El, the Exodus, and the God Who Came from Sinai
…ithin a wider Canaanite cultural world. Several ancient biblical poems describe Yahweh as coming from Sinai, Seir, Paran or Teman. Israelite and Judahite inscriptions attest forms of worship condemned by Scripture, including the notorious references to “Yahweh and his asherah.” E…
Read article →Why the Son assumed a complete human nature, not merely a body
…an body as a complete human nature. This human soul was not the divine Word. It was not a second divine being. Nor was it a separately existing human person whom the Word later joined. The eternal Son is the one who lived this complete human life. That distinction is demanding, b…
Read article →Origen, Arius and the line between Creator and creation
…media intensifies the difficulty. A carefully formed doctrine can be attacked in a thirty-second video by a confident speaker quoting one verse: “firstborn of every creature,” “the beginning of the creation of God,” or “my Father is greater than I.” Someone who has only memorised…
Read article →The gathering of the elect, one taken and one left, and Paul's revealed mystery
…n to a pretribulation rapture. Jesus describes Great Tribulation, cosmic disturbance, His coming in the clouds, and a gathering of the elect. The sequence appears plain: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her li…
Read article →The event is explicit; the real dispute is its timing
…that living believers will be caught up to Christ when the dead in Christ are raised. The second is when that event occurs in relation to the Tribulation and Christ's public return to the earth. Christians may disagree seriously about the second question. The first should not be…
Read article →The man of sin, the last trumpet, the first resurrection, and the last day
…passages which appear least friendly to it. Four objections deserve particular attention: Second Thessalonians 2 appears to place Antichrist before our gathering. First Corinthians 15 places the resurrection at the "last trump". Revelation 20 calls a post-Tribulation event "the f…
Read article →History, heresy, and the temptation of private Christianity
…ric or dualistic Christianity into one worldwide counter-church. This debate matters. The second century contained several teachers and schools that interpreted the Christian proclamation through complex accounts of divine emanation, cosmic error, and saving revelation. Sethian m…
Read article →A history of interpretation, polemic, and forgotten tension
…le meaning of apostolic Christianity. Its development must be explained historically. The second century sharpened the boundary By the middle of the second century, the circumstances had changed dramatically. Jerusalem and the temple had been destroyed in AD 70. The Bar Kokhba re…
Read article →The LORD, Zion, and the meaning of Beulah in Isaiah 62:4–5
…ce. Isaiah’s imagery must therefore neither be overstated nor weakened. The land is not a second covenant spouse standing alongside the LORD. Yet neither is “thy land shall be married” merely an ornamental way of saying that conditions will improve. It declares that the long sepa…
Read article →Divine judgement, the character of God, and the promise of escape
…l response to sin. A Christian may be exposed to the first while being delivered from the second. Revelation's judgements do include human violence and satanic activity, but they unfold within a heavenly proceeding governed by the Lamb. The Lamb opens the seals. Authority is give…
Read article →A response to Hank Hanegraaff on resurrection, Daniel’s final week, and the Tribulation
…history, and makes AD 70 exhaust a prophecy whose narrated conclusion reaches the visible coming of Christ. The article’s governing problem is selective compression. Passages are collapsed into a single event when distinction would support premillennialism, while their historical…
Read article →Testing Islam's evidence for divine revelation
…terature is often recognisable precisely because its voice cannot be reproduced without becoming imitation. Shakespeare, Milton and the biblical prophets possess distinctive styles. No second writer can become Isaiah by approximating Isaiah's cadences. Yet stylistic singularity d…
Read article →The question reaches beyond prophecy to the faithfulness of God
…ers more. Jewish people have no separate path of salvation, and Gentile believers are not second-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 dis…
Read article →What God's faithfulness to Israel means for everyone who trusts His promises
…contain a restored Jerusalem. A multinational people can share Israel's Messiah without becoming a replacement Israel. Christ can reign universally while fulfilling the particular covenant made with David. The choice between national fulfilment and universal glory is false unless…
Read article →Why the distinction matters when we speak about Jesus
…weary. The first statement distinguishes His natures while preserving the one Person. The second can suggest that there is a human person alongside the divine Son. The same care is needed when people speak of Christ’s “divine side” and “human side.” Jesus is not divided into two…
Read article →Sources behind Qur’anic narratives
…tory is much older than Islam. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is ordinarily assigned to the second century, although its manuscript history is complex. In 2024 scholars published a fourth- or fifth-century Greek papyrus fragment containing part of the clay-bird episode. Whatever ch…
Read article →An unrequited love for the historic Church
…h sound doctrine and refute error (Titus 1:9). Elders are to shepherd the flock without becoming lords over it (1 Peter 5:2–3). Paul warned the Ephesian elders that men could arise from among their own number and speak perverse things (Acts 20:28–31). Even an apostle—or an angel…
Read article →Which Gospel does the Qur'an affirm?
…rehensive theories of textual corruption, with the eleventh-century polemicist Ibn Hazm becoming an especially forceful defender of corruption in the biblical text itself. Earlier Muslim views were not uniform. We should neither pretend that textual corruption was wholly invented…
Read article →Christianity, Islam and the verdict of the evidence
…ld not be reduced to crude slogans when its own theologians offer more serious arguments. Second, a valid concession should be made wherever the evidence requires it. The Bible contains textual variants. The Qur’an possesses literary power. The Hebrew word translated “Messiah” in…
Read article →Four popular claims tested in context
…mad Foretold in the Bible? Four popular claims tested 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…
Read article →The Gospel, Human Perception, and the Illuminating Work of the Holy Spirit
…l then declared the Creator, His relationship to humanity, the folly of idolatry, and the coming judgment, before grounding his appeal in the resurrection of Jesus. He did not assume that saying God had already established who God was. Acts 17:18–31. Our hearers may need that pat…
Read article →Election within Abraham's family, the believing remnant, and the future of the nation
…ho are of Israel are Israel. The first clearly refers to physical descent from Jacob. The second identifies those within that history who stand in the line of God's effective promise. It is reasonable to describe this as a distinction between national Israel and Israel according…
Read article →Constantine, Arius, the Trinity, the biblical canon—and the myths that refuse to die
…al vacuum. Ignatius of Antioch wrote while being taken to Rome for execution early in the second century—roughly two hundred years before the council. He spoke without embarrassment of “our God, Jesus Christ”. “For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God,…
Read article →Governmental restraint, the final ten kings, and the preparation of the temple
…e restraint. What Paul tells us Paul writes to reassure believers troubled about Christ’s coming and their gathering to Him. He reminds them of his previous teaching, then says: “And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.” — 2 Thessalonians 2:6 “Withh…
Read article →How Christians can think politically without surrendering conscience to a package deal
…another. The point is different. A politician may be your best available option without becoming your moral authority. A party may deserve your vote on balance without deserving your silence when it does wrong. Support is not absolution, and a ballot is not a vow of undivided loy…
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