Category Archives: Last Things

Biblical prophecy – a closed book?

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Unfortunately, the word ‘prophecy’ is thought, in the common mind, to be synonymous with ‘prediction’.

This has had two serious side-effects.

The first is the tendency for certain people to set themselves up as ‘students of Bible prophecy’, and to specialise in speculations about the ‘end times’ that have lost contact with the central message of the Bible.  Never trust a man (I say) who is more interested in Gog and Magog than in grace and holiness; who spends more time with the Revelation of John than with the Gospel of John.…

Romans 11:26a – ‘And so all Israel will be saved’

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11:25 For I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers and sisters, so that you may not be conceited: A partial hardening has happened to Israel until the full number of the Gentiles has come in. 11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written:
“The Deliverer will come out of Zion;
he will remove ungodliness from Jacob.
11:27 And this is my covenant with them,
when I take away their sins.”…

Ephesians 1:10 – ‘The fullness of the times’

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In the New International Version (1984 ed.) Eph 1:9f reads:-

‘[God] made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfilment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.’

There are several issues with this translation.  Firstly, ‘to be put into effect’ rather obscures the important word οἰκονομίαν (economy, administration) in the original. …

Judgment according to works

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Recent re-thinking about the doctrine of justification throws up a related question about the final judgment:-

Are we warranted to say that we are justified by faith, but are judged by works?  The very idea seems to undermine the grace of God and to take away with one hand what has so freely been given with the other.

N.T. Wright on ‘Justification by Works’

‘Here [in Rom 2:1-16] is the first statement about justification in Romans, and lo and behold it affirms justification according to works!

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Must God punish sin?

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Few Christians are willing to do any sustained thinking about sin.  Of course, evangelical preachers will mention it from time to time.  After all, they need to convince their hearers that they are ‘sound’.  But they will feel under intense pressure from those same hearers to move quickly and as smoothly as possible from anything to do with sin and judgment to a positive and uplifting message about God’s love.

The fact is, that for most modern Christians the doctrine of the love of God has become the one great ‘givens’, the unargued and unarguable axiom. …

‘Already…not yet’

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According to Fee & Stuart,

‘The early Christians came to realize that Jesus had not come to usher in the “final” end but the “beginning” of the end, as it were. Thus they came to see that with Jesus’ death and resurrection, and with the coming of the Spirit, the blessings and benefits of the future had already come. In a sense, therefore, the end had already come. But in another sense the end had not yet fully come.…

Shall we know one another in heaven?

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For many Christians the prospect of being re-united with loved ones in the life to come is one of the greatest comforts in the face of bereavement.

Of course, this prospect ought not to overshadow that fellowship with our Lord which ought to be pre-eminent.  After all, the Psalmist could pray, “Whom have I in heaven but thee?’ (Psa 73:25), and Paul’s great desire was to depart and ‘being with Christ’, Phil 1:23; 1 Thess 4:17. …

The case for conditional immortality

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A number of evangelical scholars, including John Stott, Phillip Edgecumbe Hughes, and Stephen Travis, have favoured a doctrine of ‘conditional immortality’ over that of ‘eternal punishment’.

According to Travis, the doctrine of eternal punishment depends on a belief in the immortaility of the soul, as well as the ‘apparently explicit’ teaching of texts such as Mt 25:34,41,46; Mk 9:42f; 2 Thess 1:9; and Rev 14:11; 19:3; 20:10.

The case for conditional immortality, on the other hand, can be summarised as follows:-

1. …

2 Pet 3 – The Day of the Lord – sermon notes

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“If only we’d known how that holiday would turn out,” muttered the Jones family as they returned wet and muddy from a week of camping in North Wales.

“If only we’d known how that marriage would turn out,” reflected Jenny and Brian as they signed their divorce papers.

“If only we’d known how that evening would turn out,” lamented the family of a young man who was shot in the back after asking some bar customers to stop smoking.…

“Sinners in the hands of an angry God”

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In this famous sermon – a negative icon of everything that people perceive to be wrong with Puritan evangelism – Jonathan Edwards describes the state of his hearers who are outside of Christ:-

That world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell’s wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.

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