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The Coming of Jesus: Daniel's 70 Weeks

...oes it in some other versions, such as the KJV. I looked this up in a Hebrew interlinear (since I can't read ancient Hebrew) and the flow of the sentence is more akin to the NIV, KJV etc., with a Sof passuk (ie. a full stop/period) marking the end of the sentence at the end of verse 25. But I'm not a Hebrew expert so I may be overlooking other aspects of grammar here. What has this got to do with Jesus? Now you may be asking, what has all this got to do with the "Second Coming?" Well, in order to fully understand when the return and "the end" is to take place, we must first understand the timing of Daniel's prophecy about the Messiah as his first comi...

The Coming of Jesus: Coming on the clouds

...slated in some Bibles as "like a son of man" which makes Jesus's reference a little clearer when comparing the texts, though the meaning is the same.   So what's happening in Daniel's vision, and why is Jesus talking about it? First of all, Jesus isn't just making a reference to this vision of Daniel by talking about clouds. Jesus repeatedly calls himself the "Son of Man" throughout his ministry, which is a veiled reference to what Daniel saw. When the Pharisees were questioning Jesus during his arrest, they asked him bluntly if he was the Messiah (Matt 26:63-65), and how did Jesus answer? By making a reference to Daniel 7: Jesus said to him, “You have...

What does the word "Catholic" mean?

...nglish in some literature from the 1800s, though that usage has fallen out of common use in modern times. The first Biblical[1] reference to the word is found in Acts 9:31 when speaking about “the church throughout [all] Judea, Galilee, and Samaria…”. The words “throughout” and “all” are καθ (κατά) and ὅλης (ὅλος) respectively in Greek, which together come to form the word καθολικός. The earliest historical use of the word, in the context of the Church, is found in one of the letters of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, written around A.D. 107, where he writes: Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of t...

Lent Day 26: Athanasius: Life of Anthony: Chaps. 51-60

...er asking some to bring him corn and seeds, he managed to till the ground to be able to make his own bread and grow his own herbs to save others from needing to bring him food. sometimes the wild animals would ruin his garden looking for food and water, but at one point Anthony gently captured an animal and said to it, “Why do you hurt me, when I hurt none of you? Depart, and in the name of the Lord come not nigh this spot” and as though they could understand his words, no longer did the animals come back! Not against flesh and blood By this point in time, Anthony was an old man and some of the other believers who had served him, would bring olives and oi...

John Chau, missionary to the Sentinelese: martyr or madness?

...You've probably seen it in the news lately: John Chau, the American guy who tried to evangelise the secluded Sentinelese tribe off the coast of India. Much of the debate in secular media has centered around the grief of his friends and family; how he could have brought outside disease to the tribespeople and potentially killed them all (despite this not being their first contact with outsiders, with no known ill effect), or that he ventured there completely in ignorance with no preparation or wisdom — something which the missionary agency, All Nations, has recently debunked. But the question I want to look at is this: was Chau's mission total madness or is...

What are the Seraphim, and was the devil one of them?

...Have you ever wondered about what the devil is — or was, pre-Fall? You’ve probably been told that he used to be an angel with God, so then why is he often described as a snake, serpent or dragon? Though there isn’t a great deal given away in Scripture as to the nature of angels, or the heavenly realms in general, we get some glimpses from the visions of the prophets. But what we can also look at is the words which the Bible uses; some of which aren’t translated and so lose their original meaning in English. The Seraphim The word “seraphim” is a transliteration of a Hebrew word, rather than a translation, so in English we often will miss the me...