The Keys To Thriving In Exile

This week’s passage makes me think of one of Jennifer’s older relatives who would always offer the greeting “Waiting for the Lord to come back.” While she had genuine faith and truly was expecting the return of Christ, she probably didn’t intend that greeting as evidence that she was greatly enjoying life at the moment. We probably each know of …

What Is Salvation?

1 Peter 1:3-5 Peter begins the body of his letter by ecstatically praising God. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He then takes the remainder of three verses to tell us why God is deserving of praise. Because of his great mercy Because he has caused us to be born again Because we have a …

Elect Exiles

From the very beginning of the letter of 1 Peter we are given some important truths about what God thinks about us. As Peter addresses his original audience in the areas that are today western Turkey, we know that God is using Peter to address us as believers in Jesus today. 1 Peter 1:1-2 In verse 1, the most important …

Preparing for Tribulation

One of the interesting phenomena in America is the industry that has built up around people who are preparing for a doomsday scenario which ordinary people with ordinary provisions could not survive. The people preparing for the end of the world are so interesting that they were the subject of a reality TV series a few years ago. When everything …

Two Different Kingdoms

The eleventh chapter of Daniel goes into some very specific and historically verifiable prophecies about the comings and goings of kingdoms of this world. Daniel 11 Scripture Link What should we conclude? Any reading of world history, even over a period of a few hundred years, will conclude that the political kingdoms of this world are under the reign of …

A Spiritual Battle

Daniel’s eyes are opened to a spiritual reality that most people in their day-to-day life are immune from seeing. He is visited by a supernatural being who talks about massive cosmic battle raging in the spiritual realm amongst the angels and demonic forces who influence the earthly human realm. Daniel 10 Scripture Link The story spoken by the supernatural man …

Covenant & Repentance

Daniel 9 Scripture Link Austin made the point in his sermon that parts of Daniel 9 are among the most difficult in the entire Old Testament to interpret for a specific prophetic meaning. For Daniel’s understanding, however, the prophecies regarded events that were to come in the life of his people, Israel. Our interpretation of the difficult verses should start …

Moving To Emotional Freedom

As we progress in the latter half of the book of Daniel we should remember that we are in a genre known as apocalyptic literature. One of the great characteristics of apocalyptic literature is its heavy use of symbolism in speaking about real-world events. Because of the heavy use of symbols, sometimes the reference of the symbols is a bit …

Apocalypse Now?

Daniel 7 begins a portion of the book that is exceedingly difficult for readers to interpret and understand. This is because Daniel 7-12 belong to a genre of biblical literature known as apocalyptic literature. Here is a short video explaining what apocalyptic literature is within the Bible. Daniel 7 Scripture Link This passage has many symbols that are unclear for …

A Public Faith

Scripture Link: Daniel 6 We live in a day in age where people go to great lengths to make distinctions between public expressions of faith and private expressions of faith. Almost all Americans, even Americans who are not particularly religious, are quite supportive of the idea of other people making private expressions of faith. The great controversies over religious faith …