Many Christians have been taught that spiritual maturity means becoming less and less ourselves. But Scripture paints a different picture. God isn’t trying to erase your humanity—he’s restoring it. The goal isn’t none of you; it’s all of you, renewed in Christ.
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…
We have to admit in analyzing the New Testament that the early church thought Jesus was serious about coming back really soon. Waiting a few millennia was not at all the way they interpreted Jesus’ prophetic statements. In Mark 13 He said he’d be back before a generation passed and so the New Testament authors…
Paul loves to reflect on order when talking about church services in 1 Corinthians 14. That subject continues to be in play all the way to the end of the chapter. What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things…
Jamin Bradley 