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Raised in the Heavenlies!

Easter is upon us once again! Lent is over, Good Friday has passed and now the time for mourning and fasting is complete. It's a time to feast, a time to remember and celebrate the resurrection of Christ as we look forward to our own final resurrection!But what really is the resurrection? How will we be resurrected, and what does it mean for us that Jesus rose again? Let’s explore what this means for us as Christians, and see what the Scriptures say. The resurrection is spiritual! That heading may cause some reading this to question me, but do read on – this is actually what the New Testament teaches us (though not only this type of resurrection). Many ti...

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...

Creedal Christians: The Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed — what is it and why is it called that? This creed gets its name from a time and place: the first ecumenical Church council held at Nicaea, which is now known as İznik in northwestern Turkey, in 325 AD. Now that may raise another question for you: what is an ecumenical council? Well, to explain more about the Nicene Creed, we are going to have to take a look at The First Council of Nicaea in order to better understand why this creed was written. First things first though; an “ecumenical council” is ideally a Church-wide meeting where all the Bishops from all across the Church come together to hold a very large and very important meetin...

BOOK REVIEW: Four Views on Hell 2nd edition

This is a guest post by David Jakubovic. The views are that of the author and don't necessarily reflect the views of That Ancient Faith. A 20 year update of the 1996 book by the same name, this slim volume (211 pages) is a helpful cross-section of current evangelical thought on Final Punishment, sampling Denny Burk on Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT hereafter), John Stackhouse Jr on Conditional immortality (CI hereafter), Robin Parry on Christian Universalism (CU hereafter) and Jerry Walls on (a Protestant) Purgatory. Preston Sprinkle pens both Introduction and Conclusion, plus there are Scripture, Author and Subject indices. The Introduction sets the scene,...

The Gospel of Jeffrey Dahmer

There’s a new Netflix documentary out at the moment which has hit the news recently about the infamous serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. I haven’t watched it, but I knew of him as a serial killer though I didn’t realise just how horrific his crimes were until I read the Wikipedia article about him! Not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure. But this post isn’t really about Dahmer, not entirely, but rather the reactions to some recent social media posts about him and the (often vitriol) responses they’ve got. Here’s one example: Dahmer is probably in heaven and experiencing eternal joy. If this bothers you, you don’t know the depths of your o...

The Coming of Jesus: Revelation Fulfilled?

Don’t let the title put you off, we’re about to go on a mad journey through the annuls of history and the Roman Empire, contrasting what John saw in his vision with what has already played out on the “world’s stage” and what we possibly have to look forward to! First though, let’s look at a little history concerning the book itself before delving into its contents. Why do this? For a couple of reasons really: one, Revelation has some dispute over the year in which it was written, which can impact on the interpretation. Two, at various points in early church history, the book was held in suspicion of being spurious and almost...