Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10011. The return of Jesus is the most asked-about event in Christian teaching, and the question people actually put to me is nearly always the same one the disciples put to Him: when? Let me answer honestly from the start: I do not know, you do not know, and anyone who claims to know…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10010. The number 666 has escaped the book of Revelation and taken up residence in horror films, heavy metal albums, and internet conspiracy theories, which makes it one of the few Bible details unbelievers can quote. Behind the noise stands a serious text and a serious question: is the number 666 literal, and what…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10009. Replacement theology, the teaching that the Church has permanently superseded Israel in God’s purposes and inherited her promises in spiritualised form, is one of the oldest and, I would argue, one of the most consequential wrong turns in Christian history. It sounds plausible, it has distinguished defenders, and it is refuted by an…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10008. The Land covenant of Deuteronomy 29-30 is the least known of Israel’s great covenants, and the old label “Palestinian covenant” has not helped it, since the covenant concerns a land that Scripture never calls Palestine. Yet this neglected covenant answers one of the most contested questions of our age: does the Jewish people…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10007. The New Covenant is announced in Jeremiah with a named addressee, “the house of Israel and the house of Judah,” and yet the Lord Jesus lifted the cup and said, “this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood,” to a table of Jewish disciples about to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10006. The Davidic covenant is God’s sworn commitment that a descendant of David will sit on David’s throne for ever, and I want to show you why this promise, made three thousand years ago to a shepherd-king, is the hinge on which the identity of Jesus, the shape of the Millennium, and the meaning…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10005. The Abrahamic covenant is the backbone of biblical eschatology, and I choose the word backbone deliberately: remove it and the entire prophetic skeleton collapses into a heap of disconnected hopes. Made four thousand years ago with one man from Ur, this covenant governs the storyline of Scripture from Genesis 12 to Revelation 22,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10004. Progressive dispensationalism is the name of a revision movement that arose among dispensational scholars in the late twentieth century, and if you have heard the term and wondered whether it is a refinement or a retreat, you are asking the right question. The movement’s leading names are Craig Blaising, Darrell Bock, and Robert…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10003. Covenant theology and dispensational theology are the two great rival frameworks by which evangelical Christians organise the storyline of Scripture, and the difference between them is not a quarrel over charts; it decides how you read prophecy, how you understand Israel, how you relate law to grace, and what you expect God to…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10002. The seven dispensations of the classic dispensational scheme raise an immediate question for anyone new to this subject: does the Bible actually number them, or is seven a human tidy-up? Let me be straight with you from the start. Scripture never says, there are seven dispensations, any more than it says, there is…