Scholarship • Serving • Ministry – Ian Paul
The lectionary epistle for the Third Sunday before Advent in Year A is 1 Thessalonians 4.13-18. This is notorious for being used to teach the idea of the ‘secret rapture’ of believers before Jesus’ return, so that those who are alive are snatched up to heaven. The Greek term harpazo is translated in the Vulgate by …
With the advent of Advent on Sunday, we make the move in the lectionary from Year C to Year A. So, after journeying through Luke all year, this Sunday’s gospel reading comes from Matthew, Matt 24.36–44. (For video discussion of this passage, see here, also linked below.) This short section of text contains some important …
When a student in Oxford in the 1980s, I walked into a church bookshop and picked up a landscape-format book full of complex diagrams. It was setting out the seven dispensations of history, apparently according to the Bible, in which God gave humanity in each era a distinct challenge, which it failed, and a unique …
Where is the world heading? How will it all end? Are we in the ‘end times’? Will there be a ‘secret rapture’? What is the ‘millennium’? These are questions which we find asked often in the modern world, and many claim that we are in unique times when these questions are singularly appropriate. But you …
As we approach Advent once more, we are confronted with issues around the End of the World. What was Jesus talking about in Matthew 24 and Mark 13? Did he and his earliest followers expect the world to end in their lifetime? What about popular ideas like the ‘rapture’ and the ‘tribulation’? Are they found …
Martyn Whittock is a historian who has written two fascinating books about end times expectation through history, The End Times, Again? 2000 Years of the Use & Misuse of Biblical Prophecy and its impact on the radicalisation of politics, Apocalyptic Politics: A Taproot of Political Radicalization and Populism. In this video, he asks me all the …
I recently recorded a ‘fireside chat’ on the Book of Revelation for a conference of the Christian Residential Network. Keith Hagon asked me a number of questions, including the ones below. For fuller exploration, see my Grove booklet and my IVP Tyndale commentary. (On some of these questions, see also the articles on this blog …
With the advent of Advent on Sunday, we make the move in the lectionary from Year C to Year A. So, after journeying through Luke all year, this Sunday’s gospel reading comes from Matthew, Matt 24.36-44. This short section of text contains some important ideas and images, but we cannot make sense of them without …
With the advent of Advent on Sunday, we make the move in the lectionary from Year C to Year A. So, after journeying through Luke all year, this Sunday’s gospel reading comes from Matthew, Matt 24.36-44. This short section of text contains some important ideas and images, but we cannot make sense of them without …
I was due to be at Lee Abbey in Devon this week, teaching on eschatology (thinking about ‘the last things’) and the end of the world. Sadly, Covid prevented me going, so I recorded five videos and did two Zoom question and answer sessions. The five videos are embedded below; the Zoom sessions were not …
Over the last two years, there seems to have been a heightened interest in certain circles in discussion of the ‘end times’—and there is no doubt that this will continue. Many Christians don’t know how to respond to or engage with this, and without a better understanding of what the New Testament says, unhelpful and …
