What if our modern theology of politics is far too simple—and dangerously wrong? The Bible doesn’t paint a picture where every ruler is handpicked by God in a neat, predictable way. Instead, it reveals a cosmic drama of spiritual powers, human leaders, and seats of authority that can be used for justice—or deeply abused. To…
If you’re like me then you didn’t open up Revelation much growing up because you didn’t know what to make of all the violence. Jesus showed us His loving character by dying on behalf of others and exercising extreme forgiveness, but at first glance He appears quite the opposite in Revelation. What do we do…
If I wanted to teach you the Hebrew word for God, I wouldn’t spell it as, “אֱלֹהִים”—rather, I would spell it as, “Elohim.” This is how transliteration works: I take the closest English letters I can find to help you pronounce the Hebrew word, recognizing that Hebrew letters are likely foreign to you. John uses…
The short answer? I don’t think so. I could never say for sure since Jesus said that only God knows when the end is coming, but Jesus did say in Matthew 24 that things would be way worse than corona—like, “the-entire-cosmos-is-falling-apart” worse. Yet it seems that anytime Americans get a little taste of the suffering…
There is a huge difference in what it looks like for us to take justice into our own hands and to do justice as Jesus would have us do it. In Romans 12:14-21, Paul tells us what it means to live and act like Jesus in the midst of evil. Watch this message above or…
Me and Erin continued our series on the different theories of creation. Check out the latest episode on the Erinvironment section of the 1208PODCAST. You can listen on the 1208GREENWOOD webpage or by subscribing to the 1208PODCAST on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Play.
When we read Revelation we naturally think that John was talking about the oppressive Babylonian Empire when he references Babylon—but John’s audience knew he was talking about the oppressive Rome. They knew this because, for one, the Babylonian Empire had crumbled some 500 years earlier and, for two, John described the Lady Babylon with characteristics…
People often say the end times are coming soon or that the end times are here, but from a Biblical perspective the end times started after Jesus was resurrected. He ascended into the heavens and now all He has to do is come back. Therefore, we are in the final pages of the grand story—we…
Is it a credit card? Your social security number? The bar code? RFID microchips? No, no, no and no. We must remember that while Revelation is partially about that which is to come, it was also very much about that which has already happened since it was a letter to seven communities 2,000 years ago,…
I suppose we shouldn’t even call this post a “Revelation misconception” since there isn’t really anything in Revelation about people being taken to Heaven while everyone else gets “left behind.” In fact, there’s very little in the Bible that speaks to this view and the idea doesn’t really match the Biblical narrative. Christians have always…
Nero was an infamous brutal dictator that was so bad that his own senate declared him an enemy of the state and decided to have him executed, which he avoided by committing suicide. So in Revelation, John could be saying, “Nero is the second beast,” when he says the number of the beast is 666…
Jamin Bradley 