Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10161. The four beasts of Daniel 7 come out of a churning sea in a night vision, and they cover the same ground as the metal image of Daniel 2 from an entirely different angle. Where Nebuchadnezzar saw a magnificent statue, Daniel saw predators. That difference in perspective is the first thing to notice….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10165. The king of the north and the king of the south dominate Daniel 11, a chapter so detailed that critics have long insisted it must have been written after the events it describes. I take the opposite view, and I think the chapter is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for predictive…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10171. Daniel 12 contains the clearest statement about resurrection in the whole Old Testament, and it arrives at the end of the strangest chapter in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Two destinies, one…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10172. When are Old Testament saints resurrected? It sounds like a specialist question, and then you realise it is really a question about Abraham, Moses, David, Ruth and Daniel, and about whether the people whose stories formed our faith are raised with us or separately from us. My answer is that Old Testament saints…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10173. Tribulation saints are the believers who come to faith after the Church has been taken, during the seven year period of judgement that Scripture calls Daniel’s seventieth week. They are among the bravest people the Bible describes, and a great many of them will die for their faith. So when are they raised?…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10176. What kind of resurrection body will believers receive? Paul was asked a version of that question by the Corinthians in a slightly sneering tone, and rather than dismissing it he gave us the fullest chapter on the subject in the Bible. The answer he gives is neither a ghost nor a repaired version…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10177. Cremation and resurrection is a subject I am asked about far more often now than I was twenty years ago, usually by someone sitting in my study with a funeral to arrange and a worry they feel slightly foolish for having. Will it make any difference to the resurrection if there is no…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10178. We who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds. That phrase, caught up, is the engine of the whole passage, and it is the reason the English speaking church has a word like rapture at all. Paul chose a strong and slightly violent verb, and…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10179. 2 Peter 3 contains the most violent description of the end of the present order anywhere in the New Testament. The heavens will pass away with a roar, the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. What is…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10180. How literal are the numbers in Revelation? It is one of the first questions a thoughtful reader asks, and the answer largely determines what sort of book he thinks he is reading. Sevens, twelves, a thousand years, 144,000, forty two months, 666. The book is full of counting. My working rule is that…