Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 60064. Reports of Catholic miracles put an evangelical in an awkward spot, and I think we should admit that rather than reaching for a stock answer. Healings at Lourdes, weeping statues, incorrupt bodies, the medical dossiers assembled for canonisations. Are they real, and if some of them are, what follows? I want to avoid…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10163. The fig tree in Matthew 24 has carried more prophetic weight over the last seventy years than almost any other image in the Gospels, and I think it has been asked to carry rather more than it can bear. Jesus tells his disciples to learn a lesson from the fig tree, and a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10077. The birth pains Jesus mentions in Matthew 24 are the opening troubles of the end times: false messiahs, wars and rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places. Having listed them He says, “All these are but the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:8). The image is deliberately chosen and it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10073. What signs precede Christ’s return? The answer depends entirely on which return you mean, and that is not a piece of clever footwork. Scripture describes the Lord coming for His people and coming with His people, and the two events are given very different treatment. For the Second Coming in glory, Scripture supplies…