Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60096. The book of Jonah divides readers more sharply than almost any other short piece of the Old Testament. A prophet runs from God, is thrown overboard, is swallowed by a great fish, survives three days inside it, and is vomited onto dry land to preach to a city that repents. Many scholars treat…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60029. Every so often someone tells me that the historical Jesus never existed, that He was invented by the early church out of older myths, and that the whole thing is a construction. It circulates online, appears in popular books, and lands in the inbox of Christian students at university with an air of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 11047. Ending prayers in Jesus’ name is a habit most Christians acquire before anyone explains it, and quite a few carry a low-level worry that they have been reciting a formula rather than doing something meaningful. The phrase comes straight from Jesus himself, repeated several times in the upper room discourse, so we are…
Reading Time: 11 minutesQuestion 8010. The Angel of the LORD is the most intriguing figure in the Old Testament, and working out who He is has been one of the most rewarding studies I have ever undertaken. He steps into the story unannounced, speaks as God in the first person, accepts worship that no created angel would dare…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10121. The fire of Gehenna is the image Jesus reached for whenever He spoke about final judgement, and it comes from a real valley on the southern edge of Jerusalem with a very ugly history. Understanding that valley is the shortest route into understanding the warning. Eleven of the twelve New Testament uses of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10048. The Second Coming is the visible, glorious and physical return of Jesus to the earth to defeat His enemies, rescue Israel, and reign as King. When I speak of the Second Coming I mean something quite specific and utterly certain, an event as real and bodily as the first coming in Bethlehem long…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1162. Biblical parables are, in my experience, some of the most loved and most misread passages in the whole Bible, because readers are tempted to hunt for a hidden meaning behind every single detail rather than asking what one main point Jesus was actually making. I want to give you the method I use,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 04034. Follow the Gospels closely and you cannot miss how often the Spirit and Jesus appear side by side. From the announcement of his conception to the power of his rising, the Holy Spirit is present at every hinge of the Lord’s earthly life. This is not a minor thread running quietly in the…