Another month, another Briefing! While you are enjoying the fruits of the May issue (on infertility and the ethics of IVF), this next lot of Saturday posts will focus on the topic of the June Briefing: hell, judgement and the Sabbath. (more…)
Category Archives: Eschatology
Book review: “Christ and the future”
Review
Christ and the Future: The Bible’s teaching about the last things
Cornelius P Venema
Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 2008. 240pp.
True story: I’m at a bowling club, and a slightly drunk middle-aged man approaches, recognizing me as the local Anglican minister. We get chatting as he waits for his lift. I ask whether he has any church connections. It turns out his wife’s sister is married to a Baptist pastor. “Is that a fact?” I say. “Do you ever talk to your brother-in-law about what he believes?” He says he doesn’t see him that often, but he’s a pretty good bloke, and he did lend him a book recently, which he read. (Praise God!) “What did you make of it?” I ask. He says it was pretty interesting stuff; it was called Left Behind. Have I read it? (more…)
Jesus changed heaven forever
Thought
I’ve never been one for thinking about angels much. Nor have I thought much about how Jesus changed life in heaven. I mean, I’m sure it’s all very interesting; it’s just not very practical really.
Wrong!
Nowist Left and Right
Up front, Sola Panel
Nowism
Up front, Sola Panel
There is an insidious and dangerous teaching that I’ve noticed creeping into my church, threatening my Christian hope, and stifling my evangelistic effectiveness. Up to this point, it hasn’t had a catchy title.1 But I want to correct that. I’m going to call this teaching ‘nowism’, from the English word ‘now’, meaning ‘the present age’. (more…)
Millions of pagans will not die
On the dangers of Christian shorthand: ‘Going to heaven’
Anthony believes
The four judgements of God
Thought
What will happen on Judgement Day?
Two destinations
Review
The servant’s paradox: Part III
Life
Here’s one more paradox for those living to serve Christ and to grow his kingdom. It’s one which has been taxing my mind, because it goes to the heart of what Christians believe. We live in the time that gets called ‘the now and not yet’—the period of history after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, but before the revelation of his lordship to the entire universe. It’s an in-between time, so we have the blessings and securities of the eternal age, and yet we don’t see them all, experience them all, know them entirely or enjoy them fully.
‘He descended into hell’
Thought
One thing that has puzzled me ever since I went to church as a teenager was the line I used to say in the Apostle’s Creed: “He descended into hell”. When I said this, my mind was filled with all sorts of fantastic images of Jesus plummeting through the earth on Easter Saturday to a place where the devil lived and where the fire burned continually. I didn’t really know what it meant, but I was happy to say it, because, after all, it was in the creed that the apostles had written, right?
Do you believe in hell?
Thought
The devil you know
Life
Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us (1 Jn 2:18).