Typology

Betty and I enjoyed stimulating conversations this past Lord’s Day evening with the saints at Grace Heritage Baptist Church. Two ideas for blog posts sprang from them. The one I will share here relates to my last post on typology. The other relates to Paul’s meaning when he says, “Children,…

The Bible is filled with patterns. God does not merely reveal truth through isolated doctrines or disconnected events. He weaves themes, images, and historical parallels throughout Scripture so that earlier events prepare us to understand later ones. The apostle Paul repeatedly draws attention to this, especially in his discussion of…

In this series of posts, I am using the inmillennial prophetic model to interpret Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians. My last three posts mentioned a point N. T. Wright has made: Paul’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah forced him to adjust three key elements of his Jewish theology—election, monotheism, and eschatology. A…

  We are working our way through 1 Thessalonians to show how inmillennialism affects our understanding of Paul’s words. My last two posts introduced the fact that he has re-thought three elements of Jewish theology: monotheism, election, and eschatology. This change appears in his salutation. Last week’s post (here) discussed how…

After reading our “Already—Not Yet” post, a reader suggested we provide a list of prophecies inmillennialism puts in the “not yet” category. This post will expand on his request. It will use typology to develop a list of both “already” and “not yet” prophecies. It will emphasize the relevance of…

Recent posts in our Mediations in Matthew series have looked at Jesus’ accomplishments in his death, burial, and resurrection (Matt 27–28). Through these events, he erected a new Temple (here) and redefined Israel (here). In our last post (here), we said Jesus accomplished the true Exodus.  Paul authorized the comparison…

Our most recent five posts have considered the cessation of supernatural gifts. They are no longer an ongoing, day-to-day reality in the church’s experience. We will now return to our series of Meditations in Matthew. Our last two posts in that series dealt with Matthew 27–28. One (here) showed how Jesus…

We have now come to the last five days of Jesus’s life on earth. Philip later used Isa 53:7–8 to show the Ethiopian eunuch what happened next: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; And as a lamb before its shearer is silent, So He opened not His mouth.…

The usual view of the parables of the “treasure” and the “pearl of great price” (Matt 13:44–46) is glorious. Christians must “abandon anything that would stand in the way of wholehearted allegiance to Christ and the priorities of the kingdom.” Scripture supports this teaching. We should place a high value…

Inmillennialism requires us to view many Scriptures in a new way. It challenges some of our underlying assumptions. For example, few people think of the “last days” as the final period of the Mosaic age. Inmillennialism says we must adopt the perspective of the biblical writers to understand their meaning.…