Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10118 The phrase “Abraham’s bosom” appears only once in the entire New Testament, in the account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31), and yet it has generated an outsized amount of theological discussion. What did Jesus mean by it? Was He describing an actual location in the afterlife, or was this simply…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10131 The New Testament makes a remarkable promise to believers: they will reign with Christ. This is not metaphorical language for spiritual influence or a poetic way of describing the blessings of salvation. It is a concrete promise about the future role of the redeemed in the administration of Christ’s kingdom. Understanding what this…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10133 The question of whether God will destroy the present creation and replace it with something entirely new, or whether He will renew and transform what already exists, has been debated by careful Bible students for centuries. It is not a question on which the whole of Christian theology hangs, but it touches on…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10129 In the closing chapter of Scripture, the Apostle John describes a vision of breathtaking beauty: a river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the centre of the city. The image is not decorative. It draws on a thread of imagery…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10130 The tree of life appears at the very beginning and the very end of the biblical narrative, forming a theological bracket around the entire story of Scripture. What was lost at the fall is restored in the eternal state, and its reappearance in Revelation 22 tells us something profound about what God has…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10128 Few questions in eschatology press as painfully against the human heart as this one. If heaven is the place of perfect joy in the presence of God, how can the redeemed experience that joy while knowing that people they loved on earth are suffering eternal punishment? The question is not academic. It arises…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10151 The New Testament teaches that every human being who has ever lived will be raised from the dead. This is not a general, undifferentiated event but a structured sequence involving two distinct resurrections separated by the millennial reign of Christ. The categories of “the just” and “the unjust” are not merely descriptive. They…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10152 The word “Maranatha” appears once in the New Testament, at the close of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!” (1 Corinthians 16:22). That final phrase, preserved in its original Aramaic as Marana tha, is one of the earliest…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10149 The “book of life” is a concept that appears at several points in Scripture, from the Pentateuch through to the closing chapters of Revelation. It refers to a divine register of those who belong to God, and its implications for the doctrines of salvation, assurance, and final judgement are profound. Understanding what the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10150 Revelation 20:12 describes a scene of terrible finality: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.”…