Excursions in Covenant Eschatology

The implication of the parable of Luke 16:19–31 is clear, there was never any hope of salvation for the rich man, even when he was alive.

Matthew's demoniac is an apostate Jew, unrestrained through sin and/or misfortune from the bonds of the Mosaic Covenant, and civilised society.

On the misuse of Proverbs 24:11 in the present Pro-life crusade. If you want a transcript of this video, or have a question, email me by clicking here . Thanks for watching, and God bless.

How the literary device known as "inclusio" is used by the author of the Book of Revelation to emphasize the imminence statements he placed in his prologue. If you want a transcript of this video, or have a question, email me by clicking here . Thanks for watching, and God bless.

Update on my upcoming Bible study series. In January, I posted the outline for a short series of seven “mythbusting” Bible studies at Remuera Baptist Church . As everyone knows, since then the entire world had a collective meltdown, turning 2020 into a year no one will ever forget (unless something even more dire occurs next year; which we’re all praying hard won’t). The effects of the Great Lockdown are still being felt here in New Zealand, even though we’ve been more or less out of lockdown since the beginning of May. I know that Sandy and I are still combatting an unusual reluctance to re-engage with the outside world the way we used to. This inability to get back into things has naturally affected my Bible Study preparations. In fact, today is the first day since Lockdown that I’ve felt any kind of excitement about teaching again!

When Jesus changed ritual water into superior wine at the Wedding at Cana, he did the exact opposite of saving the wedding. This is a video taking a sound exegetical look at John 2:1–10. NOTE: A longer exegetical essay suporting the conclusions made in this video can be seen by following this link: The First of the Signs. If you want a transcript of this video, or have a question, email me by clicking here . Thanks for watching, and God bless.

An Easter video on the YouTube channel. This is a reworking of the Stations of the Cross video I did for RBC . The Transcript WELCOME to the outrageously popular CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIST channel, where reason and sound exegesis are used to highlight faulty doctrine and practice in the contemporary, English-speaking Church. The title of this video is “The Daughters of Jerusalem in Luke 23.” The verses we’ll be dealing with are 27 to 31.

Grow camp 2020 a little look at a big question from Jim Kerr

The abstract of my Masters' thesis. From the time of the Early Church until today, interpreters have employed a variety of hermeneutical methodologies to produce a range of different conclusions about the meaning of the so-called “Good Samaritan” passage of Luke 10:25–37. Nonetheless, when defending conclusions that differed from those of their contemporaries, every sincere and committed NT interpreter still referred to the same texts of Scripture as their contemporaries – a text which they all accepted as authoritative in their day. The present thesis is one such defence. The accepted text of its day is the twenty-eighth edition of the Nestle-Aland critical Greek text. The idiosyncratic interpretation it defends is called the “Grateful Victim Viewpoint” (GVV). "The Good Samaritan" by Rembrandt (1630) public domain

I received my grade for my Masters' thesis. Great news! Laidlaw Graduate School has given me an "A" for my Masters thesis. The two examiners gave it very high praise indeed. One of them recommended that I submit it for publication; and each of them recommended I go on to doctoral studies. My supervisor concurred with both recommendations. It was a fantastic result and I'm stoked!

An essay on the historicity and pseudonymity of Daniel 4 As with many of the books in the Old Testament, interpretation of the Book of Daniel is beset by questions of pseudonymity and historicity vis-à-vis the book’s author, its characters, and events. Did all of the characters described actually exist? If so, did they act and interact in history in the same way they do in the biblical narrative? If not, how do we account for these discrepancies? Is the eponymous hero of the book the author of any of it? In the case of the individual stories in the Book of Daniel, the fourth chapter’s tale of Nebuchadnezzar’s humiliation and subsequent enlightenment seems a tailor-made subject for these perennial exegetical questions. "Nebuchadnezzar" by William Blake (1795/c. 1805) public domain

Updates on the End of the End of the World. Not quite two years ago I posted The End of the End of the World , an introduction to partial-preterism. Today I thought about updating that blog post with a few videos I'd watched recently about preterism. But I decided instead to just fix a couple of dead YouTube links on that original post and then embed these recent videos on a whole new post. So here we are. "The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem" by David Roberts (1850) public domain

The grateful victim has been identified. I've finished writing the thesis for my master's degree (MTh). The final edit has been done and it's ready to go to the printers. I officially submit next week. Then I get to wait anxiously for three months while it's with the examiners (two of them). Then, sometime in September, I find out just how well the last two years actually went. If it's as well received as I hope, I will probably move on to doctoral studies ... eventually. "The Good Samaritan" by Jacopo Bassano public domain

Six short exegetical comments on the Book of Daniel His hair grew as long as eagles’ feathers and his nails became like birds’ claws (Dan 4:33 NRSV). 1. Hebrew Supremacism As well as “set[ting] the scene for the subsequent stories of court life,” the first chapter of the book of Daniel does much to establish one of the many underlying themes of these subsequent stories: the racial and (especially) cultic superiority of the “conquered” Israelites over the “conquering” Babylonians. From a certain perspective, chapter one could be seen as Hebrew-supremacist propaganda.

Those who hold the futurist view of the End Times have to divide the disciples' question of Jesus into two unrelated parts: The first part asking about the timing of the destruction of the Temple, and the second, for no apparent reason, about signs of the end of the whole world.

Another unfortunate KJV-Onlyist attempt at "Gottcha"! David and Goliath , by Osmar Schindler (c. 1888) Spend any time at all in the comment sections under Christian Youtube videos and you’re bound to run into the dreaded cultic KJV-onlyist . I am intimately familiar with these people, and their way of thinking, because I used to hold similar beliefs regarding the Textus Receptus . Without getting into the whole controversy (see James White's excellent video series here for more details), let's just say that these people are, for the most part, well-meaning but unsophisticated believers who are sadly ill-informed about the process of translation and the vital field of textual criticism. This lack of understanding results in their mischaracterization of the KJV as an inviolate and unimpeachable biblical text--the standard English Bible from which any deviation is deemed satanic heresy. Recently, upon citing a verse from the ESV, I was immediately challenged...

My first published work in a theological journal. [ UPDATE 20/04/17: The Stimulus editor just emailed me to say that some student at the Saint Paul School of Theology , Oklahoma City University (OCU), just requested a copy of my article. As the editor noted in her email, "[I] just went international."] UPDATE 01/04/17: This was originally posting on October 2016, but I'm re-posting it today because I've just learned how to easily add pdfs to my blog. I've also made some significant changes. ] Hopefully the first of many The latest volume of Stimulus , the peer-reviewed "New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice," is now out and I'm chuffed to bits! That's because yours truly is one of the contributing authors. Last semester, at the behest of my current master's supervisor, I reworked one of my thematic essays into an article and it was accepted for publication. Here's a pre-pub draft: "Sign as Symbol: T...

The cure for faulty doctrine is reason and sound exegesis. Detail of the idiosyncratic 5c uncial Codex Bezae . The word highlighted is GAR ("for"), the final word in v. 8. I want to talk about a recent email that I received from Crossway books—Crossway is the publisher of the ESV, the English Standard Version of the Bible—and I’m on one of their generic mailing lists for some reason. Anyway, this latest email was just an update on the four most recent posts on their blog , all of which shared the common theme of evangelism. The second post on the list was called " 7 Tips for Sharing the Gospel with Teens ," by Jaquelle Crowe.

An Exegetical Essay on John 2:1-11 ΚΑΙ ΤΗ ΗΜΕΡΑ ΤΗ ΤΡΙΤΗ ΓΑΜΟC ΕΓΕΝΕΤΟ ΕΝ ΚΑΝΑ ΤΗC ΓΑΛΙΛΑΙΑC The second chapter of the Gospel of John opens with an account of what the author designates as the first (1:11) of seven specific “signs,” or illustrative deeds Jesus did that confirmed his identity as Israel’s Messiah; changing water into wine at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Because this event is not found in any of the Synoptic Gospels, none of the details can be confirmed or explained by appeals to the other Evangelists’ points of view. That, along with the fourth Gospel’s single perspective, with its economy of detail and simplicity of expression, has provided great scope for scholarly imaginations to run, often leading to exegetical uncertainty and highly speculative interpretations.

An Exegetical Essay on 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 The Apostle Paul wrote his “first” letter to an astonishingly depraved Corinthian church rife with syncretistic factionalism (1:12, 3:4), sexual immorality (5:1) and shameless self-promotion (5:2, 6). Whether dragging their internecine disputes before the gentile magistrates of the public courts (6:1-8) or conducting themselves deplorably at the Lord’s Supper (11:17-22), inside and outside the church, the Corinthians continually debased the name of Christ and shamed the Family of God. In anticipation of his imminent arrival (4:19), Paul’s epistle puts the whole church on notice by unflinchingly detailing every unseemly issue and unchristian practice he intends to correct when he gets there.