Trying to Get the Rapture Right (Part 10)

Paul Henebury

This installment may be thought of as a digression, but I think it belongs to the overall argument.

Imagine a world where the removal of the saints from planet Earth happened but no one had the foggiest idea of when that might be. If the NT alluded to such a thing there would still be some hope that we just may be the ones to get called up. The doctrine of the rapture would still be a “sure thing”, it just wouldn’t be very concrete in our minds. Well, as a matter of fact, as a starting place for considering the rapture this isn’t that bad; there are far worse ones. A “worse” one would be the dogmatic insistence that the catching away of the Church as pretribulational is a dead-certainty. Another would be the blithe notion that the rapture occurs when Jesus returns to earth and any theories to the contrary are speculative fancies.

Discussion

Paul - Ethics passages - "Seemingly Obvious" Ideas

Dan Miller

I’m not sure how well this will work…

Romans 14 has been discussed ad nauseam here on SharperIron. What I’m hoping to do here is make a list of things that are “seemingly obvious.” They do not have to be true. They just have to be the most obvious meaning of a part of Paul’s ethical writings. This means if you say, “Yeah, I agree that X is what the Text seems to say, but I don’t think it can be saying that because this other Scripture contradicts that,” then you can still agree that it’s seemingly obvious.

Discussion

The Preservation of Scripture: Its Process and Form

Aaron Blumer

Originally posted January, 2010 as “Preservation: How and What?”

The doctrine of preservation of the Scriptures has been hotly debated in recent years. Much has been written and said, but most of the rhetoric on the subject has been closely connected to defending or rejecting one view or another on the translation issue. The result has often been that important foundational questions have been overlooked in a rush to get to conclusion A or B in the translation debate.

Among the neglected questions are these: (1) what process did God say He would use to preserve His word and (2) what form did He say that preserved word would take? Both of these are subsets of another neglected question: What does Scripture actually claim (and not claim) about it’s own preservation?

Discussion

Trying to Get the Rapture Right (Part 9)

Paul Henebury

Israel means Israel

I am a pretribulationist. I think my main reasons for being so are theological, in particular the covenantal issues concerning the nation of Israel are a central concern to me. But I am not pretribulational because I adopt a form of theological hermeneutics (now so fashionable in some quarters). I have already made it clear that rapture scenarios cannot (in my opinion) rise above a “best explanation” conclusion.

Discussion