At the risk of stating the obvious, Jesus Christ is the most important person in Christian teaching and theology. The Old Testament points to Him, the New Testament documents His ministry and the birth of the Church that exists to worship Him, and of all human history since the First Century has been affected by His life. This sermon is the first in an 8 part series on the Life of Christ. Unfortunately, only 5 of those messages were recorded. This sermon is based off of Matthew chapters 1-4.

This was not the conclusion to the End Times Series, but the last couple of messages were not recorded. So this sermon about the Tribulation is the last teaching about the End Times that we will have on this podcast for a very long time, since I have already covered this topic thoroughly in Sunday School format and in lectures from a Revelation class for senior citizen learners. In this message, I do not attempt to go into every detail about the Tribulation, but rather to hit a few highlights and talk about what the Tribulation is in terms of broad characteristics instead of minute details.

I am always careful when dealing with the topic of the rapture, acknowledging that many (perhaps most) Biblical scholars scoff at this piece of dispensational theology, and I remain extremely non-dogmatic about it. Nevertheless, this episode of the pod makes a Scriptural case for the rapture, but also gives a more expansive set of lessons that we can learn from this bit of doctrine.

This episode explores the differences between premillennial dispensationalism, historic premillennialism, and amillennialism. (Unfortunately, the recording got cut off before discussing postmillennialism or preterism.) In short, there are many different interpretations of eschatology. Scripture is not as crystal clear about eschatology as we would like, and therefore, Christians should be very tolerant of other Christians with different interpretations about End Times verses.

If your exposure to my teaching is mostly limited to the content of this podcast feed, then you might have concluded by now that I am one of the those End Times preachers. After all, I have already done a Bite-Sized Theology series on the End Times, a pandemic-era Sunday School series on the End Times, and a Lifetime Learning college class on eschatology. I ask you to believe that I actually do not fixate on these teachings; I just happen to have recordings of most of my End Times teaching opportunities, including this episode. In fact, this October 2012 sermon series was the first time I had the courage to tackle eschatology (the study of the end times) in the pulpit. This is the introductory message in that series.

In this conclusion to The Hurt & the Healer series, we talk about what it looks like to heal, and how God can use the tragedies in your life to bring glory to Him, to enrich your life, and to love and serve others in their times of trouble.

The Hurt & the Healer series continues by showing that the ultimate struggle between God and Satan is already a foregone conclusion. Satan and evil and death and pain are marked for defeat. Ultimate victory and healing belong to God, and Christ's victory is our victory. For in New Heavens & New Earth, He will wipe every tear and there will be no more pain or death, and God will make His dwelling with humans, and we will be His people and He will be our God. Hallelujah!

This episode digs into the age-old Problem of Evil, or as it is usually expressed: "Why do bad things happen to good people?" The question can be answered, but we need to be careful. Telling a hurting person that God may have sufficient reasons to allow a certain instance of suffering, or that there are not really any purely good people, is probably not helpful. Such explanations are not going to provide any healing for a hurting person. But having a proper theological understanding of suffering is quite helpful for a person to learn and internalize when times aren't bad. For when the bad times inevitably come, we can better calm our stormy minds and see God not as failing to protect us, but rather we see Him as our strong tower in times of turmoil.

This is the first sermon in a series called "The Hurt & the Healer." This series was inspired by the Mercy Me song of the same title. This series seeks to provide hope to those who are hurting. The theme of this message is "strong tower," as in: "The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe." (Proverbs 18:10) Each of us has a crossroads moment when hard times and suffering happen. (1) We can run to Him. (2) We can abandon God. Which shall you choose?

This is one of my favorite sermons from the archives. By mining the rich mines of Jesus' parables and teachings, this sermon seeks to show that loving people is how you love God. Now, of course, love for God is more complex, as it involves worship, something that you should never offer to any person short of Jesus Christ. But Christ makes it clear. Whatever you do for the least of these ... you do for Him!