Tradition must give way to the clear statements of the Scripture

 1 Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— English Standard Version Catholic Edition (n.p.: Augustine Institute, 2019), Ga 1:1. Paul’s missionary work did not end with the oral proclamation of the good news of Jesus Christ and with the conversion of individuals. Paul established churches, communities of men and women who had come to faith in Jesus the Messiah and Savior, and who came together to study the Scriptures, to learn what Jesus Christ had done and taught, and to live according to the will of the living God. Eckhard J. Schnabel, “Paul’s Missionary Strategy: Goals, Methods, and Realities,” in Christian Mission: Old Testament Foundations and New Testament Developments, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Cynthia Long Westfall, McMaster New Testament Studies (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 183. Paul knew the importance of authorized apostolic letters, for he saw the authority behind the letter t...

  DOES THE NEW TESTAMENT SUPPORT THE ROMAN CATHOLIC VIEW OF COMMUNION? By Norman L. Geisler Introduction In the first three Gospels Jesus is represented as saying “this is my body” and “this is my blood” (Mt. 26:26, 28; Mark 14:21, 24; Lk. 22:19, 21) about the bread and wine at the Lord’s Supper.  This is repeated in 1 Corinthians 15:24.  On another occasion Jesus exhorted his disciples to “eat” his “flesh” and “drink” his blood” (John 6:52-58).  Roman Catholics base their doctrine of transubstantiation on these passages, affirming that bread and wine of the Communion are literally transformed into the physical body and blood of Christ, while retaining the outward appearance and characteristics of ordinary bread and wine.  

To you, O king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and the revealer of mysteries disclosed to you what is to be. Da 2:29 just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold.  The great God has informed the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain and its interpretation trustworthy.” Da 2:45. As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. Dan. 7:13–14 “Seventy sevens are determined for your people and your holy city, to end wrongdoing, and to finish with sin, and to atone f...

 Modern readers tend to interpret “flesh” as “bodily appetites,” especially sexual desires, but “flesh” normally has a very different connotation in the New Testament. On the one hand, it describes the condition of all men in Adam and indeed the entire Old Covenant order, which is a fleshly order in contrast to the New Covenant order of the Spirit. More specifically, Paul frequently connects the “flesh” of circumcision with the “fleshly” interests of the Jews. Judaizers want to be perfected by the flesh (Gal. 3:3) and insist that Gentiles can be perfected only through the fleshly rite of circumcision (Gal. 5:13). Obsession with a ritual that is quite literally “fleshly” is connected with the “fleshly” behavior described in Galatians 5:19-21 . When we read the list of the “works of the flesh,” we cannot forget that Paul has consistently been describing the Jews and Judaizers as “fleshly.”   The “works of the flesh,” appalling as they might be, are primarily descriptions of the...

Berean Bible Church: Inspiration and the Second Coming of Christ : Inspiration and the Second Coming of Christ Delivered 04/27/1997 Have you ever wondered why it is that two men can read the same passage of scripture and come up with two totally different interpretations? Or why two men can read the same Bible and yet see things so differently? Two men who love God and yet see the same scripture in two different ways. Is it that one of them is stubborn or unreasonable? No, it is because each of us has within us  paradigms  of what life is really all about. The word paradigm means a model or a map. We look at life through our paradigms. Inside each of us is a map or model of what life ought to be like. Our paradigms are representations of life. We all have them, and we all have paradigms of eschatology. Eschatology is a word that frightens people, they don't understand it so they are afraid of it. When I talk about eschatology, I am not talking about the  end of ...

Apocalypse is also supposed to describe a particular form of eschatology, particularly beliefs about the end of the world. This is the sense in which the word is used in Ernst Kasemann’s famous claim that apocalyptic is the mother of Christian theology. Kasemann meant that early Christians believed in the imminent return of Jesus, and this expectation shaped their entire outlook. Kasemann said that it was characteristic of apocalyptic eschatology to acknowledge that the world is not yet subjected to God’s will, but that the subjection of the world has already begun, begun so thoroughly that it is in sight. This is the perspective of Paul, Kasemann said, an “no perspective could be more apocalyptic.” Christopher Rowland provides a fuller description of the eschatological perspective that is usually thought to be embedded in apocalypses: “the doctrine of the two ages, a pessimistic attitude towards the present, supernatural intervention as the only basis for redemption, and an urgent ex...

The Sermon on the Mount: The Law The Conclusion of the Law (Matthew 5:17-18) The relationship of Jesus to the Mosaic Law has been debated among certain people for many years. Most acknowledge that there is a difference between the law delivered by Moses and the one delivered by Jesus, but just how much of the Old Law was replaced and exactly when it was replaced has been contested.