I don’t know about you, but when I am in church singing songs to the Lord, I come alive. The Holy Spirit reaches within me, and God’s love reminds me of how blessed I am. This is a time to bless God and to be blessed by God. Now, with that said, one of the blessings/curses of being a student of theology is that occasionally during worship music time, I will begin to analyze what I am singing (fully distracted... Read more
With Pentecost coming up this week, the topic of the Holy Spirit working in the story of the Christian seems like a worthy discussion piece. I did not grow up in a pentecostal or charismatic tradition, but have seen the power of God’s Spirit at work in my own life and in the lives of others. I believe that the Spirit of God still is at work as he was in the book of Acts. My interest in this post is simple:... Read more
I have had to take a break from blogging for the past several weeks. 1) I have moved to a new city for a new and exciting ministry opportunity 2) I am in the middle of researching the Roman Empire and Luke’s Gospel. I have not adequately interacted on my prior “atonement” post, but will come back to the subject after my life slows back down. I wanted to post a “Quote to Ponder” that I just came across from... Read more
I have been doing some thinking about the atonement in recent months and even though I am behind the trend of making this a focus during Lent leading up to Easter, I decided to blog about it anyway J . At seminary, I have a professor who has pushed me to think outside of the box on what we mean when we use terms like: gospel, mission, and especially atonement. Mark Baker is the author of two books on the... Read more
Have you ever been to an old fashioned southern church? You know the kind of place where you unable to stand still while you are worshiping the Lord. It is truly a full body experience. Billy Blank’s Tae-Bo has nothing on a worship gathering of this sort. Even during the preaching, people are moving and shouting. They would say that they have the anointin’ and that this force has taken over what is happening in the room. Now, I am... Read more
“Throughout the history of the church, Christians have recognized that we cannot pray ‘Our father’ together on Sunday and deny bread to our brothers and sisters on Monday. But we live in difficult days. The hungry are not just hungry. Often they are our enemies. Drug addiction and mental illness make many who are hungry hard to deal with. They threaten us. Others have been hungry for so long that they are angry, even at those of us who want... Read more
There are some basic arguments against a futurist understanding of the Olivet Discourse. Within the context that Jesus spoke, it seems reasonable that he was continuing to pronounce judgment on the old system of Temple worship that he would have viewed as corrupt and void. The judgment of God on the nation of Israel was inevitable; and this was going to be carried out through the pagan nation of Rome. Jesus’ statements about the fall of the Temple can be... Read more
UPDATE: MARCH 28, 09 (Lois Tverberg chimes in) Hi Kurt – Thanks so much for this discussion of our book! I’m enjoying listening in. Just to reiterate what you’ve said, the critics are right in saying that the task of understanding Jesus’ context is fraught with difficulties. We knew as we were writing that our knowledge is approximate, and our misstatments will be corrected later on. We may not be perfect, but we’re a lot closer to understanding Jesus than... Read more
The great tribulation, when it is spoken of in our culture, usually has the referent of Hollywood or the best-selling book series Left Behind. This book series argues what is called, premillenial dispensationalism (a form of ‘futurism’). In this system of theology, it is believed that in the future a rapture will occur, followed by a seven year tribulation period (and subsequently the destruction of the cosmos). It is believed that Jesus, in the Olivet Discourse described such a period... Read more
In this post, I want to give some background information about the Temple’s destruction that I will be arguing as the fulfillment of the entirety of the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13 and parallels). This interpretation confronts popular dispensational theology of rapture and tribulation… but more on that point in a later post. For now, lets look at some needed information about the Temple. The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of religious worship for the Jews of antiquity. From the... Read more
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