Restitutio

Are you a missionary? Although we typically think of missionaries as those who travel to foreign lands to share the gospel with people, the simple fact is that we are all called to the work of sharing the gospel.  Furthermore, as HeartCry Missionary Society points out, indigenous missionaries have huge advantages over foreign missionaries since they are more plenteous, less expensive, culturally literate, fluent, and avoid nationalistic biases.  What if you altered your thinking just a little?  Rather than seeing your role as a member of a church or a participant in a community of faith, what if you thought of yourself as an indigenous missionary?  How would that change your life?

Please pardon the quality of this recording.  This meeting happened outside in a park in the Albany, NY area.

Notes:

What do you know about the book of Proverbs?  It can be quite difficult to understand what’s going on without some knowledge of how Hebrew poetry works.  In this episode Jerry Wierwille, serves as our guide to get a better grip on what Proverbs is all about.  He explains the poetic structures, general approach, and theological content of this incredibly important book so you can get more out of it.

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Service is an important part of Christian living.  We are not spectators waiting to be entertained, but participants looking for ways to help out.  In this sermon, John Cortright shows what Jesus taught us about service at the last supper as well as what sort of attitude we should have.  So often we either critique from the sidelines or remain oblivious to the needs around us.  Instead, we can take the initiative and jump in where there’s a need.  This is a call to action!

Notes:

At the last supper, Jesus shared many important truths with his disciples that they would need to know after his departure.

John 13:1-17

Luke 22:24-27

Romans 12:1

Romans 12:2-11

Ephesians 4:7, 14-16

1 Corinthians 12:4-6

1 Corinthians 12:11

1 Corinthians 12:27

1 Peter 4:7-11

Philippians 2:1-13

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What is faith?  To some it is believing in something without evidence.  To others it is a means by which to attain God’s blessings like prosperity and health.  John Schoenheit explains how neither of these definitions best encapsulates the biblical understanding.  Instead, he shows how faith is really just trust in what God says, whether in scripture or by revelation.  In this fascinating interview you’ll learn about how the meaning of the word faith has changed throughout Christian history as well as how the “Word of Faith” approach could ruin your life.

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Find out what the most commonly misunderstood texts about the kingdom are as well as how to interpret them within their own contexts.  In this final session of the kingdom of God class, we’ll look at these important verses:

This is lecture 15 of the Kingdom of God class, originally taught at the Atlanta Bible College.  To take this class for credit, please contact ABC so you can do the work necessary for a grade.

Notes:

Sean Holbrook was attending a typical evangelical church when he heard a series of sermons teaching the Trinity.  Ironically, these very messages, designed to bolster faith in the doctrine, ended up inspiring Holbrook to question the age old dogma.  As a result, he set out to study the topic more and watched James White debates and read his book The Forgotten Trinity.  Once again, what was meant to convince Holbrook of the Trinity opened his eyes to more flaws and shaky logic that spurred him on to study the subject even further.  After much investigation and careful consideration, he concluded the bible teaches that the Father of Jesus is the only true God.

Early in 2017, Sean Holbrook debated Joshua Lovell on the question: Is God a Trinity?

Here’s another link to the debate with better audio quality.

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We’ve looked at how and why Christianity lost the kingdom message; in this episode you’ll learn how we got it back.  Over the last five hundred years, three different movements have made significant strides in recovering the kingdom: the Anabaptists (16th century), the Adventists (19th century), and liberal scholars (20th century).  In this lecture you’ll get a brief overview of each of these groups and see a bit about how they learned about the kingdom and did their part to restore it.

This is lecture 14 of the Kingdom of God class, originally taught at the Atlanta Bible College.  To take this class for credit, please contact ABC so you can do the work necessary for a grade.

Notes:

(16th c.) Anabaptists and Radicals Rediscover the Kingdom

George Williams: “Because the New Testament uses the euphemism of sleep, the term soul sleep (Seelenschlaf) is often encountered in the sixteenth century. It will be sharply opposed by Calvin in his first theological work, Psychopannychia (1534; Strasburg ed., 1542).  This important work against Anabaptists and perhaps Servetus supplies our generic term psychopannychism in the present narration for that full range of Christian views not in line with the decree on the natural immortality of the soul of the V Lateran Council and of Calvin himself who would come to hold to the continued consciousness of the departed souls, as saints ‘under the alter’ (Rev 6.9-11), participants as the elect in the invisible Church, awaiting the Last Judgment.  Luther, for his part, was himself, at the outset of his scriptural career as reformer a psychopannychist, as was his most renowned English follower, the Bible translator, William Tyndale.”[1]

George Williams: “Not only psychopannychism but also Antitrinitarianism was to find its fullest ecclesial expression in Polish Socinianism and Hungarian Unitarianism. The leaders of these two parallel and closely interrelated movements…were Italians or palpably dependent upon Italians.”[2]

(19th c.) Adventists and Restorationists

William Miller (1782-1849)

We all have resources, whether money, time, talents, or skills.  How should we steward these resources?  In this episode, we conclude our series on stewardship by talking about work, debt, contentment, retirement, volunteering, industriousness, and laziness.  We conclude that as with all areas of life, we need to seek God’s glory with our resources.

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This is part three of a series of three lectures on why some Christians ended up rejecting the kingdom message in the first few centuries of Christianity.  In this part, I work through the major differences between how Jews and Greeks read scripture.  What we find is that the Christians who didn’t like the kingdom idea lumped in those who did believe in it with the unbelieving Jews who rejected Jesus as the Messiah.  In other words, kingdom advocates got labeled “Judaizers” for supporting biblical (literal) interpretations that the Jews were using to show that Jesus could not be the Messiah because he did not literally fulfill the kingdom prophecies.

This is lecture 13 of the Kingdom of God class, originally taught at the Atlanta Bible College.  To take this class for credit, please contact ABC so you can do the work necessary for a grade.

Notes:

Christians Who Spoke Against the Kingdom as Too Jewish

Origen of Alexandria (3rd c.)

Now some men, who reject the labour of thinking and seek after the outward and literal meaning of the law…picture to themselves the earthly city of Jerusalem rebuilt with precious stones laid down for its foundations and its walls erected of jasper and its battlements adorned with crystal…Then, too, they suppose that ‘aliens’ are to be given them to minister to their pleasures, and that they will have these for ‘plowmen’ or ‘vinedressers’ or ‘wall-builders’…and they consider that they are to receive the ‘wealth of nations’ to live on and that they will have control over their riches, so that even camels of Midian and Ephah will come and bring ‘gold, incense and precious stones’.  All this they try to prove on prophetic authority from those passages of scripture which describe the promises made to Jerusalem…and they quote from the scriptures many other illustrations, the force of which they do not perceive must be figurative and spiritual. Then, too, after the fashion of what happens in this life, and of this world’s positions of dignity or rank or supreme power, they consider that they will be kings and princes…And, to speak briefly, they desire that all things which they look for in the promises should correspond in every detail with the course of this life, that is, that what exists now should exist again. Such are the thoughts of men who believe indeed in Christ, but because they understand the divine scriptures in a Judaistic sense, extract from them nothing that is worthy of the divine promises.  (De Principiis 2.11.2)

Eusebius of Caesarea (4th c.)

In addition to all these letters, he [Dionysius of Alexandria] composed two treastises, On Promises, occasioned by Nepos, a bishop of Egypt, who taught that the promises made to the saints in the divine Scriptures should be interpreted in a more Jewish fashion and that there would be a sort of millennium of bodily indulgence on this earth.  (Ecclesiastical History 7.24)

Like the Jewish people who read the Scriptures literally, one could assume that it is the land of Palestine. But according to the deeper meaning, according to the final word, the high and heavenly and angelic word of God and the divine apostle of the “heavenly” Zion teaches that it is “the Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all.” (Commentary on Isaiah 2.1-4)

And though the lion is carnivorous by nature, he shall be nourished with husks as a herbivorous animal. So too there are savage and coarse people who understand only the literal interpretation of the graces of the divine Scripture. The divine Scripture is the nourishing word of souls, but its secrets escape the notice of our minds, for the meaning is surrounded by a husk.  (C

Last week we looked at stewarding your body. In this episode we focus on a phenomenon that has been growing over the last couple of decades–tattoos and piercings. What was once seen among sailors, bikers, and soldiers is now rampant among celebrities, athletes, and countless others. What’s a Christian to do? Should we go with the flow? Does the bible condemn tattoos and piercings outright? If tattoos are ok, how should we figure out what is appropriate and godly versus what is inappropriate and sinful? In this Off Script episode we discuss these questions in an effort to set aside cultural bias and think biblically about tattoos and piercings.  Here’s a quick list of questions to ask before getting a tattoo or piercing:

10 Questions to Ask before You Get a Tattoo or Piercing

Here are some pictures we reference in the episode:

“The LORD is my shepherd”

Wife’s matching tatoo

Dan (cohost of Off Script)

Close up of Dan’s tattoo

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