What are spiritual gifts? Are the lists of spiritual gifts in the Bible complete? Spiritual gifts are a subset of the many gifts the Holy Spirit gives to his Church. The word spiritual, or as Paul puts it, “the spirituals” are the ones people usually focus on a 1 Corinthians…
Why don’t we talk about Hell anymore? It used to be that preachers would regularly preach about Hell and its dangers. Whether there was an unsaved person in the sanctuary or not, everyone knew about it. It seems that trend has been changing for a while in the church. But…
Was Moses talking to Jesus on Mount Sinai? Who was at the burning bush? The most obvious answer to these questions is that Moses was talking to God. But I want to be more specific and say he was talking to the Trinity. All three members of the Trinity would…
In Exodus 33, how can Moses speak with God face-to-face and then only look at his back when he passes by Moses in Exodus 34? “Face-to-face” is translated literally in Exodus 33:11. Very few Hebrew idioms are translated exactly because they would make no sense in English. But most translations…
Why did God abolish the old covenant laws? I don’t know if “abolish” is the proper word for it. This may be a more recent term used by scholars and people who write books about the Bible. It may be a common term within systematic theologies as well. But it’s…
Did the stone at Jesus’ tomb roll uphill? Where was Jesus’ tomb? The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ burial describe the tomb and the stone. But archaeologists question some of the ways that they are described. You can find the accounts of Jesus’ burial in Matthew 27:52-61; Mark 15:42-47; Luke 23:30-36;…
Has the number of angels/demons increased since the very beginning? Do they reproduce like humans do or find another way to increase? The Bible never gives a number to the amount of angels that God created. However, we know that Satan fell from heaven and that one third of the…
Lucifer was cast out of heaven along with other fallen angels, but heaven is a perfect, sinless place. Where did the sin of pride that grew in Lucifer come from? What about the other angels that fell? Were they condemned for the same thing? In several places throughout Scripture we…
What will the withdrawing of the restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2:6 look like as you understand the process? The Restrainer is a very interesting, almost cryptic, passage tucked away in Paul’s teaching to the Thessalonians on the man of lawlessness. To understand who or what the Restrainer is, we need…
Before Christ, where do souls go? The Psalms talk a lot about a place called Sheol, sometimes translated “the pit” or “the grave.” It was the understanding of most of the Old Testament ancients that whether they were saints or not, everyone went to the same place. Sheol is a…