Unbinding the Bible

In this episode, we'll wrap up our mini-series on heaven by looking at Revelation 21:1-4. In it we'll see the holy city coming down out of heaven from God so that God can forever dwell among his people, like he initially did in the garden of Eden.

In keeping with our mini-series on heaven, I decided to synthesize all my points against the escapist-mindset belief in the Rapture and put them all into one episode. These are my scriptural and philosophical reasons for rejecting this modern imposition on the biblical text, seeing no scriptural reason for interpreting Jesus and Paul as speaking about anything other than Jesus' second coming. The work of redemption, as we've seen, is heaven coming to the earth, not a heavenward trajectory from the earth.

But I welcome your feedback!

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In this episode, I tie together several themes that are intersecting in my own life and ministry and do my best to connect them to our series on heaven. I then set us up for where we're headed on the podcast and encourage Christians to allow their faith to get as close to "real life" as possible, for that is where things will make the most sense.

In this episode, we'll explore the reality that Christians are citizens of heaven and are called to not only root their identities there, but also choose to live out reality as it exists in "the heavens" in their daily interactions with others on "the earth."

There's a huge need today for a true Christian identity to grip the hearts of God's people. And this teaching is where all good identity understanding comes from. This is an episode every Christian needs to listen to!

In this episode, we'll look at John 13:31-14:23 and see just what Jesus means by going to "prepare a place for you" (14:2). We'll address several common assumptions about this passage and what Jesus may or may not be saying and then I'll offer what I believe is a more faithful way of reading this text, which puts Jesus, not heaven, at the center.

In this episode, we'll shift our discussion of heaven onto Jesus himself. How do the gospel writers portray Jesus? In what ways does Jesus bring the blessings of the heavens to the earth? We'll consider a few OT passages and compare them with several NT passages to highlight how Jesus himself becomes heaven on the earth.

In this episode, we'll start at the very beginning of the Bible by looking at Genesis 1:1. We'll see that at this very early stage (in the world's first temple, called the garden of Eden), God's space (the heavens) overlapped with man's space (the earth). And the trajectory of redemption is that these two spaces would fully overlap once again.

In this episode, we're starting a new series looking at what the Bible actually teaches about heaven. No, we're not going to do an in-depth examination of what heaven will be like. Rather, I want us to think biblically and with a kingdom perspective as we allow Jesus to define for us what "heaven" means in the first place. And yes, that may lead us to challenge the "Earth now, Heaven and Hell later" narrative that many of us have been taught to believe.

Mentioned on this episode were several resources:

What if Jesus Was Serious About Heaven?

The Skeletons in God's Closet

The Temple and the Church's Mission

Tim Mackie from The Bible Project - Heaven and Earth (YouTube)

In this episode, we'll wrap up Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. We'll look at Matthew's summary of Jesus' teaching from 7:28-29 and tackle the topic of Jesus' authority - what it means and why it matters.

In this episode, we'll look at Jesus' words from Matthew 7:23-27 - his final thoughts in his masterful sermon. We'll spend some time talking about wise and foolish people and why it's so important to recognize that Jesus is in fact talking about DOING SOMETHING with his words besides just listening to them. And we'll end our time looking at Proverbs 9, which will help us understand Jesus' wisdom teaching even better.