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Rob Bell's “Love Wins” (Review)

...udied the Bible on Heaven, this chapter will likely smash a lot of cultural ideas you hold without you really realising it – the same can be said about the the chapter after which deals with hell. Prepare for an eye-opener, and a lot of "Gospel Truth" that has somehow got lost, changed, misrepresented and mixed up in Medieval tradition and imagery over the last few centuries. Anyone who is aware of the controversy that was/is surrounding this book and who heard that that Rob Bell "doesn't believe in hell" can rest assured that this isn't the case. To quote the book, Bell writes: "There is a hell now, and there is a hell later, and Jesus teaches us to tak...

Exodus: Gods and Kings Review - Action epic loosely based on the Bible

...I know the film has been out for a while now, but I missed seeing it in the cinema and so have only just seen it. I'm sure there's others out there who still haven't watched this and are wondering whether it's worth the time and effort, so here goes: my review of Exodus.  The film begins with Moses later in life living in the Pharaoh's palace as his adopted son along side his half brother. Now I'm not sure if this part was based on any Jewish Midrash or if it was purely artistic license, but either way I thought it was well done to show how Moses' life could well have gone being brought up Egyptian. Apart from some pretty epic looking battle scenes, t...

Did the Qumran community predict the coming of Jesus?

...I'm going to start a new category here for "General Interest" which will be for things I see or read about that I think are interesting or informative about the Bible, Christianity or the Faith in general; but which aren't necessarily topics I could, or would need to, write a full blog post about. I'll kick off this new venture with an brief look at something I read the other day from the Dead Sea scrolls which is very interesting – Qumran text 4Q521. It gives us a glimpse of early Jewish expectations of the coming Messiah from the time before Jesus arrived, and shows just how Jesus did actually meet those expectations. For example, when John asks his disci...

My new book, available now! Take a journey through the first 400 years of Church History in only 40 days!

...tween the Bible and the present day. They fill the void we sometimes wonder about when we get to the end of reading Acts or the Epistles and think, “what happened next?” or “what happened to the Ephesian church after Paul left?” — well now you can read for yourself and see how God continued to grow His Church! Revised Edition includes: a chronological timeline of the Early Church texts, a map displaying where the New Testament and early texts were written and sent, plus a map of Ignatius’ journey to martyrdom in Rome. As a small added bonus, at the end of each chapter there is now a "Notes" section so you can jot down any thoughts you have w...

Power Cuts and the Fear of God

... in the Bible. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to find. 2 Corinthians 5:11 is where I began, as that was the verse quoted in the sermon. Knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are revealed to God, and I hope that we are revealed also in your consciences. I thought I may see a Greek word with a semantic range which includes “respect” or “honour” maybe, but what I found was the word φόβος (phobos) which literally means “alarm or fright; be afraid, fear, terror”. It’s also where we get our English word “phobia” from! So I went forward a couple of chapters to this verse: 2 Corinthians 7:1Having there...

Francis Chan turns towards a more historical and ancient view of Communion

...class at Bible College)! We would all be wise to reserve judgement on the matter until Chan comes out and gives a proper statement about his new views and says one way or the other if he’s going towards Rome fully, or towards one of the other more historically rooted Protestant denominations, if anything actually comes from this.   Further Reading / Sources: Full Francis Chan sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUUbXzb2atM Short 3 minute Clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP9roQQwzsA “BASIC series” on communion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4k5qHuDmEM https://www.theopedia.com/huldreich-zwingli https://patristics.info/ignatiu...