Christ is coming to reign on earth

In my last post I indicated that the Bible foretells a catastrophic turn of events for the nation of Israel still to come. I believe that this turn of events is shortly to unfold and that the trigger will have been the brutal actions of Hamas provoking a response from Israel that will eventually set the Middle East alight.  Israel has possession of the land for now but it is as temporary a possession as was the possession under the return of Cyrus. Israel of today is in a state of unbelief in the eyes of God just as it was in the days before the first captivity and in the days of the first coming of Christ to the earth.    Their possession of the land was conditional upon their continued obedience to God's will. Their disobedience resulted in their removal twice from the land of their fathers, a fulfilment of God's promise to them in Leviticus 26 v 27-33, an excerpt of which is below   And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me.....

Almost twelve years ago, I was Masada in southern Israel. I was listening to the tour guide describe the last stand of the Jews against the Romans in AD73. The Roman empire had besieged and destroyed Jerusalem and mostly captured and enslaved the inhabitants of the land. A few Jewish rebels remained, holed up in the fortress of Masada. The siege eventual overthrow of Masada marks the conclusion of the bloody and violent Roman conquest of the land of Judea.   The siege of Masada is often revered in modern Israel as "a symbol of Jewish heroism". Some Israeli Defence Forces inductees proclaim their loyalty to the Jewish state on top of Masada. Others take it at the Western Wall, the remnant of the sacred Temple in Jerusalem. The oath taken concludes "Masada shall not fall again."    The average Israeli today has an unflinching determination to protect their homeland, the place that they were given by God via the promises to Abraham, partially fulfilled in the conqu...

In the last post, I laid out the clear, unambiguous principles upon which salvation is based. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, said Jesus in Mark 16 v 16. His apostles conveyed this same message throughout their preaching work after his ascension.    Belief in the saving work of Jesus and his integral part in God's plan of salvation is the first condition. Once we are convinced of the truth of that gospel message, we must then be baptised, fulfilling the second condition. This baptism must be a "believer's baptism": a full immersion in water. It is certainly not the sprinkling of water on an infant.    In the last post, I spent a little time dwelling on the implications of this for Christianity today. Let me try and make my meaning here as plain as possible because understanding this verse and its implications is literally life and death.   If you do not believe, you cannot be saved  If you are not baptised after you believe,...

We started and finished the last post with a quote from Galatians 3. We're going to start with it again because there are some issues with which we still need to deal.    For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Galatians 3 v 26-29)   So, who exactly can count themselves as part of the number of Abraham's seed? Does everyone who calls themselves a Christian get to do so? Does it matter what you believe or what you do as a professing Christian? Does doctrine matter? Does what you do in your life matter? Will you receive salvation purely on the basis of your works? Or do works not count at all and is it all based on grace?   Take a poll of your f...

In the last post on Hebrews 11, we talked about the fact that the men and women of faith mentioned therein waited for but had not received "the promises".  It seems to me, then, that we need to talk about these promises and define what they are. Only by understanding what they are can we truly say we understand the basis of salvation offered through Christ and also why the Jews cling so dearly to their possession of the land of Israel.    Not the Law of Moses  The first thing we need to realise is that what we are referring to predates Moses and the Law that Israel held themselves up as the keeper of at the time of Christ. The law of Moses contained no promises of life. It contained no message of salvation. Paul said that the Law could not give life. It only promised punishment for sin.    The promises to Abraham  The promises which contained life were given earlier to Abraham. God made a covenant with Abraham and promises to him and to his s...

Faith.  It's a small little word with very big implications as shown in Hebrews 11.  Hebrews 11 is sometimes described as the "Faith Chapter" as Paul (supposed to be the writer of the letter to the Hebrews) runs through a list of faithful men and women throughout the ages.    Faith, it is proclaimed in the chapter at hand, is the essence of things hoped for and the firm assurance of things not seen. Each person mentioned in the chapter had faith and because of that faith, they did something.  "By faith, Abel offered unto God",  "By faith, Abraham... obeyed and went out" "By faith, they (Israel) passed through the Red Sea" etc.   The word faith occurs 31 times in this chapter. What might be less easy to spot is that there's another word repeated oft in this text and it's the word "promise". The word promise occurs 7 times in this chapter, with most being in the form of "the promise" or "the land of promise...

 A change of pace from the heavy but important stuff on the immortality of the soul. This is a lesson in the practical response to the gospel message when its preached. It has some bearing on the previous topic but its real relevance is in undercutting the ideas that underpin universal salvation.  A. An exposition of Jesus' parable of the sower.  I would encourage you all to go and read the parable in its entirety in Mark 4 and Matthew 13 for in these chapters Jesus both tells the parable to the multitudes and then expounds it to his disciples afterwards.    https://biblehub.com/kjv/mark/4.htm  https://biblehub.com/kjv/matthew/13.htm   In broad strokes, the parable sets out a story of a man who sows seed The seed falls in four different places and the end result for the seed differs based on where it falls.   The hard path The stony/ rocky ground The ground full of weeds, thorns and thistles The good ground  This parable would ...

In this post, I'm going to try and bring all of the previous arguments together and show them as a consistent, coherent, whole. I'll add some extra material that I've since thought about which helps to bring things into clearer focus.     My objective: To show that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is unscriptural and inconsistent with the doctrines and teachings of the Bible.   A. Recap  Part 1 of this series showed that death is nothing more than the complete cessation of life. Death was described by God as the punishment for sin and was so interpreted by the righteous throughout the Bible. Paul wrote in Romans 6 (v23) that the "wages of sin is death". Not hell, but death. You sin; Your death ensues because of that sin.  I've not made it up nor have I retranslated or reinterpreted the words spoken by the apostle. It's very very clear. In death, you are about as conscious of your surroundings as when you are asleep.   Part 2 of this series show...

Part 3: The New Testament view   In Part 2, we showed that the word translated as "soul" in our English Bibles is originally the word "Nephesh" in Hebrew. If we translated its correct meaning in Hebrew into English, it would probably be most commonly rendered as "life". Crucially, it contains no connotation of inherent immortality or "ever-livingness" and is used alike for men and animals.    Psuche The equivalent word in the New Testament is the Greek word "Psuche" which comes from the Greek meaning to breathe or to blow. Importantly also, there is no connotation of immortality in the word at all.   https://biblehub.com/greek/5590.htm  Strong's Concordance lists the usage of this word as follows "(a) the vital breath, breath of life, (b) the human soul, (c) the soul as the seat of affections and will, (d) the self, (e) a human person, an individual"  From this Greek word, we derive the English word of "psyche" m...

Part 2: What is the "soul" anyway?  The Old Testament View.    Most English versions of our Bible liberally use the word "soul" in their translations.  Most people understand this word to be a reference to one's immortal soul but if you've read Part 1 of this topic, you'd know that the idea of an immortal soul is completely incompatible with the idea that death is no more than a complete cessation of life.    In the teachings of the churchmen, the immortal soul is an indestructible part of your very being which survives after you draw your last breath. That soul then either goes to heaven (if you've been good), to hell (if you've been bad) or (especially for Catholics) to Purgatory.  Let's start dismantling this idea with some scrutiny of the word translated as "soul" in our English versions.    Nephesh  In the OT, the word we know as soul in the Hebrew is "Nephesh". It is defined in Strong's Concordance in accordance ...

There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call Death. Part 1: What is death And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.  The serpent in Eden pronounced the first lie of creation. God had told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, they would die. God's words were unequivocal, yet for some reason the serpent thought differently. Sadly, Eve believed the serpent's lie and as a result of her and Adam's sin in taking of the Tree of Knowledge, God pronounced that terrible sentence of mortality on man. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Go back and read God's warning and commandment to...

If you are a local churchgoer and new to this fledgling blog, I'd encourage you to think critically about the content you are being served in the weekly sermons you hear from the pulpit.  How much of what you hear relates to Christ's second coming? How much of it is focused on what will happen when he returns? How much of it focuses on the earth as the place as the venue for the outworking of the purpose of God through Christ?  I suspect you'll find that the answer is some version of "not a lot". By and large, the doctrine of Christ's return to this earth is treated as an afterthought, an epilogue, if you will, to the prevailing narrative of "you're going to heaven at death to be with Christ and God". The logic here isn't hard to understand. If you receive your reward at the moment of your death, you will naturally focus less on another concept which, to you, doesn't seem to really have that much consequence.  Would you therefore be surpr...

I published this site a little while back. Early on I struggled with how to start off. I typed, deleted, retyped, revised and adjusted this initial post many times, wrestling with the content and how to present it. The reason I’ve done this is simple. I’ve chosen a topic on which to base this blog which, whilst simple enough to grasp as a concept, has a depth to it that I know will likely be beyond my capability to ever fully expound to you. Why should you care? There’s so much in this phrase which demands attention and exposition. The best place I can think of to start is, however with a single word “why”. Why is it important for Christ to come back to the earth? Why should it matter for the world and its inhabitants? Why should it matter to you personally? The answer to the why is confronting. Your life is finite. You are a mortal, dying creature as a result of Adam’s sin in Eden (Genesis 3 v 19). You have inherited from him a nature which, without intervention, will lead...