The Mileses

Paul and Olena Miles with Grace Abroad Ministries

dispensationalism

Three reasons why you do not want Jeremiah 29:11 to be about you

​Have you ever seen a conversation like this take place between two believers?

​Believer 1: How is life going, Believer 2?
Believer 2: Oh, life is terrible! My dog left me and I stepped on a LEGO. Things will never get better. Blah blah blah.
Believer 1: Oh no. Be encouraged! The Bible says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Believer 2: Oh, wow! You’re right! Everything is just swell. I think I’ll ride off into the sunset now.

​Believer 1 has just quoted Jer 29:11. If we look at the context of this passage, I think we’ll find that he has actually misused this particular verse (though, I’m sure his intentions were good).

​Now, Jer 29:11 is a source of encouragement for many believers and I don’t want to rob anyone of encouragement. So, I have compiled a list of three reasons why we should rejoice that this passage is not about us. If Jer 29:11 was indeed about us, then:
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Hanukkah, Jesus, and Potato Pancakes

Hanukkah had begun in Jerusalem. It was winter and Jesus was walking around in the temple at Solomon’s Porch, so the Jews surrounded Him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us bluntly.”
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Jesus answered them, “I told you and you don’t believe. The work that I do in the name of My Father testifies on my behalf, but you don’t believe, since you are not from My sheep, as I’ve told you. My sheep hear My voice and I know them and they follow Me and I give them everlasting life and they will never ever perish and nobody will pry them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all and nobody can pry them from the hand of My Father; My Father and I are one.” (John 10:22-30)

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How panmillennialism robs Christians

Since the emergence of the Seeker Sensitive Church in America, many local churches have watered down their teaching such that doctrinal obscurity abounds in the pews and pulpits today. Decades ago, Christians would know whether they believed in premillennialism (the belief that Christ’s return will precede a thousand-year kingdom), postmillennialism (that His return is after the millennium) or amillennialism (that the kingdom is now)… but now the most common belief is panmillennialism (that somehow or another, it will all ‘pan out’ in the end).[Read More]

Knowing is half the battle

Videos of Jews who have converted to Christianity have been emerging on the internet. There seems to be a common thread among many of them: they were taught at an early age that the New Testament was an evil book and they should stay away from it. I don’t even blame them for thinking Christianity is evil; just look at the atrocities committed against the Jews in the name of replacement theology. But, I don’t think that Jews, nor Christians for that matter, should avoid reading something on the account of it being heresy. As a minimum, we need to be prepared to give an answer to objectors and we need to hear the objection before we can respond.
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MosaicLawopoly

​Everyone who loves Monopoly has his own set of house rules (Greek οἰκονομία …hehehe). I’m not going to talk about American politics today, but I saw the picture above on facebook that’s a jab at Bernie Sanders, and I wanted to turn it into something Bible-related. ​Whoever made the Bernopoly post must have been anti-Bernie, but someone from a pro-Bernie point of view made a similar post:

Picture

​Well, I’m not going to ramble on about which Monopoly board I like better, but I would like to jump on the bandwagon and use Monopoly to explain economics. More specifically, I want to try to explain how economics worked in Israel during the Mosaic Law using an overly simplified Monopoly illustration… and will probably fail miserably.

Here it goes:

Rules of MosaicLawopoly

The game starts with all of the properties distributed evenly among all players except for one, who’s not allowed to have property. Players can buy and sell properties from each other, but after 50 laps around the board, the properties get redistributed as they were at the beginning of the game.
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Does God condone raping and buying virgins? Part two.

Part Two

In part one of this post, we saw that the Law was set up to protect Israel, and we saw that Deut 22:13-30 contains laws to protect her from sexual debauchery. We looked at Deut 22:13-22, and are driving through vs 23-30 in this post. If you haven’t read part one, please do so.
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