How Often Should We Take Communion?
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Do angels attend church services?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8028 The idea that angels might be present when God’s people gather for worship sounds either startling or sentimental depending on one’s assumptions. Scripture is less ambiguous than either reaction might suggest. Several biblical texts indicate that the gathered church exists in a context that is far more populated than what is visible to…
What is the difference between angels and the “host of heaven”?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8014 The phrase “host of heaven” appears throughout the Old Testament and is sometimes used to warn against the worship of stars and planets, while at other times it clearly refers to the angelic company surrounding God’s throne. Understanding how the phrase works in its different contexts prevents both confusion and a flattened reading…
What are the “living creatures” in Ezekiel and Revelation?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 8019 Among the most striking descriptions in all of prophetic Scripture are the living creatures of Ezekiel’s inaugural vision and John’s throne-room vision in Revelation 4. They defy easy description, they surround the immediate presence of God, and they have provoked more theological reflection than almost any other category of angelic being. Mercifully, the…
Is beauty a divine attribute?
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 2072 The question of whether beauty is a genuine divine attribute, something that properly belongs to who God is rather than merely a poetic description of how creation affects us, is one that systematic theology has sometimes neglected. The traditional list of divine attributes tends to run through omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, holiness, love, and…
Why did God accept Abel’s offering but not Cain’s?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2078 The account of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4 is one of the earliest and most studied passages in Scripture, and yet the reason God accepted one offering and rejected the other remains genuinely puzzling to many readers. The text seems, on the surface, to offer very little explanation, which has led to…
What does it mean to fear God?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 2010 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 1:7), and it is also one of the most persistently misunderstood concepts in the Bible. Two errors recur in how people handle it. The first is to sentimentalise it — to insist that fearing God simply means respecting Him or standing in…
Why does God require worship?
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02031 Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God “is not served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). If that is true — and it is — then a reasonable question follows: why does God command worship? What…
What is heaven?
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10055 When Christians speak of heaven, we’re talking about the dwelling place of God and the eternal home of all believers. But heaven is more than just clouds and harps, as if it is to do with that at all. Scripture presents heaven as a real place where God’s presence is fully experienced, where…
Why did God create us?
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 05039 Why did God create us? It is the question that underlies every other question about human existence. Before asking what we ought to do with our lives, or what awaits us after death, we need to know why we are here at all. Scripture does not answer with a single proof-text, but its…
