The bodily resurrection of Jesus is not about the Christian notion of dying and going to heaven. Ben WItherington makes this point in his (great and highly recommended) little book, Revelation and the End Times Participant’s Guide Unraveling God’s...
One of my best and most trusted friends, who I will call Chase, emailed me this morning with an excellent question. Chase wrote this, “Can you explain this statement to me, ‘Faith does not come by intellectual ascension but by the Word and...
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believers, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. —Romans 1:16, emphasis added. Often times we overlook the fact that 99% of Jesus’ recorded words in the...
Here is a link to a sermon I preached at Farmland Friends Church in Farmland, IN this summer. The title of the message is “Jesus Is The Gospel”. The sermon begins right around 24 minutes into the video.
Shabbat Shalom to all.
Matt
For far too long now Christians have told the story of Jesus as if it hooked up not with the story of Israel, but simply with the story of human sin as in Genesis 3, skipping over the story of Israel altogether. —N.T. Wright The concept of covenant...
When God fulfills his World Renewal Plan through Jesus, his Son, he is not only setting up a government (Kingdom metaphor), but also creating a family. This, once again, means that our metaphors for God’s World Renewal Plan will often times flow...
For leisure I’m currently reading on ancient Chinese religion and philosophy that developed during the Warring States period (roughly the just a few centuries leading up to the birth of Christ). This is the period in which Confucianism an...
There is a crucial connection to be made between human behavior and human nature. Living beings behave according to their nature. If God prescribes a certain kind of human behavior it is for the purpose of reflecting a certain kind of nature. The...
So I’m upping the ante on my reading in apocalyptic and eschatological literature. I encountered this quote yesterday and thought it worth sharing: Ideas have consequences. . . . At worst, such belief [in a rapture] is a form of escapism. The...
You must speak my words to them, whether they listen or fail to listen — Ezekiel 2:7–8 It’s not uncommon for God to command his people to speak. Not only is it not uncommon, it’s quite regular. I can’t think of a single case where...