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…
Hearing God’s voice is a bit different for everyone, but whatever the case may be for you, getting quiet is typically what all Christians need do to hear Him. This is illustrated by the famous story of Elijah on a mountain, waiting to meet with God. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and…
While I was originally taught that prophecy died out long ago, my supernatural experiences in college began to teach me that it is still entirely possible to hear the voice of God. It took me awhile to figure this out because I thought that God’s voice must be overly surreal and obvious. After all, the…
While it’s true that Jesus gave us information about what the end times will look like, it’s important that we not get caught up in predicting the end of the world, because to do that is to miss Jesus’ real point in it all. As James R. Edwards points out, No one is either encouraged…
In the last few parts of our series, we’ve been further defining how prophecy and free will work to make sense of Jesus’ prophetic word that he would return within one generation. If you’ve been keeping up with the series, then you’ve probably guessed where I’m going by now; so if you’re assumption is that…
Since God can change prophetic words of blessing or judgment based on the free will of human response, we come to realize a strange paradox in the prophet’s job: “a successful prophet is precisely the one who does not see his prophetic word of judgment come to pass.” (Hays, Christopher M. When the Son of Man…
Scientists have been messing around with the theory of multiverse for sometime, which we love to play out the idea of in our books, movies and tv shows. It’s hard to see beyond our own night sky, let alone our entire universe, so we can only speculate about the existence of a multiverse, but surprisingly, when…
If everything is truly set in stone and going exactly how God planned it to happen, then every conversation He has with us is somewhat disingenuous, isn’t it? If we believe there’s no free will and God gives us a prophetic word that involves making a choice, then we must also believe that there really…
We often say that if a prophecy doesn’t come true, the prophet must therefore have been a false prophet. While this is rationally and even Biblically true (Deut 18:15-22), this is only one aspect of the prophetic genre. God shows Jeremiah that prophecy is a bit more complicated than this. The word that came to…
There is a narrative theologians know well that pastors often fear to address—a piece of the story that seems just a smidge too far to be preachable to an enlightened world. Moving from Earth to Heaven may sound odd, but it has enough logic to it that it might be heard: “We go from matter…
Jamin Bradley 