Across the theological spectrum it is agreed that easy texts are to interpret the difficult texts. The challenge for the interpreter is to discern which passages are easy and which are difficult. Since the only other occurrence of “kingdom” in the book of Colossians occurs in the final greetings in chapter 4,1 the meaning of “kingdom” likely occurs in an easier text somewhere else. The Bible develops the idea of a literal kingdom, the “kingdom of God,” established on land from Genesis all the way through the New Testament, so one would anticipate that this is the same kingdom in Col 1:13. There is an alternative theory, however, that Paul here is speaking of a spiritual facet of the kingdom, rather than the Millennial Kingdom. This theory that there is a spiritual facet of the kingdom is not necessarily in conflict with postponement theology. Much of this dissertation has responded to external threats to dispensational theology, but since a Spiritual Facet of the kingdom can coincide with postponement theology, Col 1:13 will be treated with the spirit of unity as an in-house dispute. Some fine dispensational scholars, propose that this Spiritual Kingdom is God’s rule in the heart of the believer and that it is composed of all believers, and only believers, of all time.[Read More]
linguistics
A Word Study on “Kingdom”
Kingdom Now theologians renegotiate Christ’s kingdom from the literal and global kingdom of the Old Testament promises to a new spiritualized kingdom which can exist spiritually in the hearts of believers or is able to spiritually outbreak without any physical territory. Theologians often support this move by subtly redefining “kingdom” to detach the Messianic Kingdom from its territorial promise. For example, George Eldon Ladd writes:[Read More]
Some concerns with Michael Heiser’s “The Unseen Realm”
Several months ago, a friend started reading Michael Heiser’s book, The Unseen Realm. It’s on the topic of angelology and she asked me if I had heard of the book or if I knew of any dangerous teachings therein. I had never heard of the book, nor the author, so I did a quick google search. I didn’t want my friend to get into some weird hyper-charismatic teaching on angels and demons, so when I saw that Darrell Bock of Dallas Theological Seminary endorsed the book, I assumed that it would be pretty safe.
Boy, was I wrong.
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The Kingdom, a word study, and a story about King Darius running away from Ukrainians
This post is extracted from some research I’m doing related to the kingdom.
φθάνω (Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20)
A host of clear biblical passages teach that the kingdom is literal and earthly. Two obscure passages that have become key to overthrowing the plain meaning of the text are Matt 12:28 and Luke 11:20, both of which record Jesus telling unbelievers that the kingdom ἔφθασεν ἐφ᾿ ὑμᾶς, which the KJV translates, “is come unto you” in Matthew and “is come upon you” in Luke. To the assertion that Jesus made it plain that the kingdom had already come, Millar Burrows responds:[Read More]
Reconsidering the Talmudic Definition of “Day”
I’ve recently had the privilege of being able to edit Robert Courtney’s article on the day when Christ died. This is a huge topic in apologetics. Mark and Luke record Jesus’ tomb being empty on Sunday, the first day of the week, the day after the Sabbath (Mark 16:1–2; Luke 24:1) and Matthew records Jesus saying:[Read More]
A tangent about typesetting
I wonder just how shocked folks were when Peter and John taught in the temple. They were arrested for teaching “in Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2). We know that “the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess 4:16), so it sounds to me like they were teaching the rapture, not the Great White Throne.
But, they also may have mispronounced the word, “hear,” so let’s talk about that instead.[Read More]