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.”…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10147 The question of who wrote the book of Revelation is not a matter of idle curiosity. The authority of the book depends upon it. If Revelation was written by the apostle John, the last surviving member of the Twelve, then it carries apostolic authority and takes its place as the capstone of the…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10163 The fig tree appears in one of the most discussed passages in the Olivet Discourse, and its meaning has been the subject of considerable debate. Jesus uses it in a short parable that is intended to teach His disciples something about the timing and recognisability of the events He has been describing. Whether…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10139 The idealist approach to Revelation, sometimes called the spiritual or symbolic approach, reads the book not as a prediction of specific historical events, whether past or future, but as a timeless portrayal of the ongoing conflict between good and evil, between God and Satan, between the Church and the world. It is the…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 10154 Eschatology is not a speculative hobby for those who enjoy charts and timelines. What we believe about the future shapes how we live in the present, and the New Testament writers consistently draw ethical and pastoral conclusions from prophetic truth. The question is not whether eschatology affects daily life but whether we have…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 10121 Of all the terms the New Testament uses for the place of final punishment, Gehenna is the most vivid and the most disturbing. It is the word Jesus used most frequently when warning about the ultimate fate of the wicked, and its background in both geography and history gives it a force that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10051 Amillennialism is the belief that there will be no literal thousand-year earthly reign of Jesus following His second coming. The “a-” prefix means “no” or “not,” so amillennialism means “no millennium” in the sense of a future earthly kingdom. Instead, amillennialists believe the “thousand years” in Revelation 20 symbolically represents the current church…