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Coffee with Jesus: John 1

Brief Thoughts From Daily Devotions I’m sure we’re all familiar with John 1, especially the first few verses: John 1:1–2In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. Sometimes I think we can become so familiar with a Biblical text that we can forget or gloss over the rest of it, or what comes after and around it. Similar to the other famous John verse, John 3:16. After reading all of John 1 today, I was struck again with just how much theology John packs into such a short space in the opening paragraphs (...

The Coming of Jesus: Introduction

  Will Jesus return in the way most of us have been taught? I suspect that when many people think of the "Second Coming" — that is, the return of Jesus, images of the world ending in a blaze of fire and glory come to mind; or of some super-war called Armageddon where the Anti-Christ battles it out with God's people one last time before the End comes. You may even think of Jesus surfing across the sky on clouds with a bunch of angel in tow, or maybe the Left Behind book and film series frames your view of the "end times." Whichever it is, one thing I can assure you of is that some of that imagery has been embellished and some misunde...

Fasting: A spiritual and physical discipline

The topic of fasting often comes up in online discussion groups that I'm a part of, more often in Protestant circles where the practice is more often sidelined in low churches. So let's take a look at the practice of fasting from a practical and historical view, as it seems to be a spiritual discipline which has been pushed aside in many churches today, with prayer, worship and bible reading taking more precedence in a Christian's life instead (not that those are bad things to do!). Why fast? There are many reasons to fast, and recent studies have shown a lot of health benefits that can be derived from fasting. But on the spiritual side of life, there are also...

Palm Sunday and the End Times

It’s not often we read the text of the triumphant entry into Jerusalem as an eschatological text thinking about the return of Christ. Especially as at this point the in the Gospel narratives, Jesus is on earth in his first coming, and still a week away from his crucifixion! While the texts usually read across the world on Palm Sunday may be familiar to us (Luke 19:28–40), we might miss the connection with the preceding parables if we don’t read the whole of Luke 19 together. I won’t quote everything here, as you can read the whole text for yourself, but the pertinent verses come from the Parable of the Ten Minas in verses 11–27: Luke 19:11, 27As the...

Great Lent: The Season of Fasting

Fasting A spiritual and physical discipline If you are looking for a Lenten reading plan, make sure to check out my book, 40 Days with the Fathers: A Journey Through Church History, which will take you through the first 400 years of church history in forty days! Lent is upon us once again (according to Western tradition), and so I thought it’d be good to write something on the discipline of fasting, which is often neglected or overlooked in many Protestant churches. And much like any major holiday, there is the usual arguments and accusations about how it's all just pagan festivities with a "Christian mask". Easter is no different, and usually gets hit...

Where Hal Lindsey and Dispensationalism Went Wrong

This is a guest post from Charles Meek Hal Lindsey’s bookThe Late Great Planet Earth Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth, first edition in 1970, sold over 40 million copies. Gullible Christians got sucked into Lindsey’s soon-end-of-the-world cult-like poppycock. As time has passed without his version of Armageddon taking place, we can now objectively analyze where Lindsey went wrong: Lindsey (p. 54, 181), like other dispensationalists, placed the beginning of the end with Israel becoming a nation in 1948. He thought all prophecy would be fulfilled within a 40-year generation (Matthew 24:34). But 1988 came and went, proving him to b...