TheoFaith

When things go right it is easy to rest in the sovereignty and grace of God.  I was reminded of this recently when I saw a clip from the movie "A River Runs Through It".  In the clip the father and his two sons are comparing their catch.  The two sons display decent sized fish.  The kind a fisherman can be proud of.  The kind that usually allude me!  As the dad slowly pulls out his own monster catch he says that it looks as if the Lord had blessed them today.  As he leaves he says that it just looked as if God had blessed him more.  It is easy to see God's blessing when the day goes well.  But how about when it doesn't? One of the essentials of dispensationalism is that Gods ultimate aim in everything He does is to glorify Himself.  This is a recurrent theme throughout the Bible.  For example, He glorifies Himself in creation (Ps. 19; Is. 40; Rev. 4:8–11),  in His  predestining and calling works , (Eph. 1:5–12; 2 Pet. 1:3) in the ministry  of Jesus (including His

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. (1 Thess. 4:17) I want to call your attention to the phrase "to meet" in 1 Thess. 4:17.  It translates a Greek term apantēsis.  The standard understanding of this word, particularly by those who oppose dispensationalism, that this is a technical term that describes a formal meeting by an official delegation who goes out from a city to meet a visiting dignitary then escorts them back into the city.  When that meaning is applied to this verse then it would seem as if the saints will be caught up with Jesus in the air, then return immediately to earth, a post-tribulational rapture.  This is the interpretation of Henry Alford, James Moffat, Charles Ellicott, R.C.H. Lenski, and I. Howard Marshall. Those who take the view that this describes a reception and escort back to the city do so even in contradiction of the way the

Having recently moved. My wife and I were visiting churches looking for a place to call home. One of my big surprises was how much sentimentality and emotion pervades the ministry of worship and the word. Worship and sermons often left me feeling as if I had underwent brain bypass surgery. It is apparently, not just a local phenomenon.  Just today a friend and colleague forwarded me an email he received that is designed to entice the recipient to sign up for a webinar on Christian witnessing. The lead in line for the webinar was that a famous Christian apologist came to faith by first making an emotional decision, and then later backed it up with reason. The email went on to say that nearly every buying decision is made emotionally not intellectually. So of course I need to learn to bypass the mind and appeal to emotions, which the webinar would teach me to do. I understand and even appreciate the emotional aspects of faith. Yet, the idea that I need to first get someone to ma

The “Gap Theory” of Gn. 1:1-2 holds that there was an indeterminately long gap of time between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2.  During this period of time Satan fell, a pre-adamic race populated the earth, sin entered into the world, and God brought judgment in the form of a flood on His original creation.  Gn. 1:2 therefore is not an account of original creation but rather an account of the re-creation of the earth. This view was held Thomas Chalmers, Franz Delitzsh, Arthur Pink.  Some early dispensationalists such as Arno Gaebelein,  C.I. Scofield and Lewis Sperry Chafer.   Sweetnam and Magnum in their work “The Scofield Bible: Its History and Impact on the Evangelical Church” believed that the gap theory was adopted by Scofield as a way to reconcile the emerging evidence of an old earth, with the biblical account of creation.   Three arguments, syntactical, contextual, and historical are usually advanced to support a gap between Gn. 1:1 and Gn. 1:2. First, syntactically some con

The work is massive. The author is wordy, has long sentences, demands careful attention, and has a propensity to come up with lists of 7.  Nevertheless, I read and re-read Lewis Sperry Chafer's Systematic Theology regularly.  Hop on over to Amazon if you want to pick up a copy for the bookshelf.  Otherwise Logos will sell it to you and you can put a copy in your library.  By the way, the Logos version is a lot easier to carry around. One of the things Chafer does that I like is that he speaks to the student of scripture more or less directly.  In fact, Logos tells me he addresses the student 174 times.  I like this because it gives me some guidance and direction in my study of Scripture.  I thought his addresses to students might be motivating, or at least interesting, to some of you. So here are a few of my favorites.  Note this is a list of 7 in honor of Dr. Chafer. "No student of the Scriptures should be satisfied to traffic only in the results of the study of ot

I don’t know why these things happen to me but just the other day a January 16 post on The Gospel Coalition website popped up on my feed.   The title of the post is “WillPeople Die During Christ’s Millennial Reign?”   The author, John Currid from Reformed Theological Seminary, tries to make the case that Isa. 65:20 refers to conditions in the eternal state.   If you are not familiar with the issue, here is a little background.   Covenant theologians hold to a two-age model of history, the current age and the age to come.   The current age extends until Jesus returns, then the eternal state or age to come arrives.   Dispensationalists on the other hand contend that the scriptures envision a 1000 year reign of Jesus on earth between the present age and the eternal state.   Isa. 65:20 is one of the battleground texts. Dr. Currid’s view is that the dispensational interpretation is problematic for two reasons.   First, it disrupts the context. Dr. Currid contends that since Isa