As a student, I was privileged to sit under an advisor for whom Christian ethics and its application were a vibrant passion.  With his careful drawl and smiling eyes, my professor slowly and gladly brought me to an understanding of ethics that would never allow me to leave it, as I might have left a stuffy, uninteresting class.  Ethics, for the Christian, is no more optional than the scriptures that tell us who we are.  In one of Dr. Verhey’s more recent works, he writes, “There is no Christian life that is not shaped somehow by Scripture.  There is no Christian moral discernment that is not tied somehow to Scripture.  There is no Christian ethic—no Christian medical ethic or sexual ethic or economic ethic or political ethic—that is not formed and informed somehow by Scripture.”(1)  That is to say, Christian communities are communities who practice ethics on some real level because they live by a particular identity, because it is who they are.

Now working within the field of Christian apologetics, one of the comments that I hear most often as a reason for rejecting Christianity is that of its followers:  “Christians are so hypocritical!”  “The problem I have with Christ is that his followers do him more harm than good.”  “I am continually disappointed by Christians; why should I consider their religion?”  ”The problem I have with Christianity is Christians.”  I can try appealing to these voices to see the gap in their logic; I can try reasoning that the abuse of a religion must never stand in the way of getting at the truth of a religion.  But many will not be swayed.  I leave these conversations saddened not merely because the obstacles seem immovable, but because I fully understand the grievance.  The letter of recommendation written upon the countenance of professing Christians is far too often a message that deters.

Like ethics, Christian apologetics is a daily activity writ large upon the life of Christians and Christian communities whether they realize it or not.  The world hears clearly their message with or without words.  For they go about life confessing, commending, defending, and living the gospel, showing the world an ethic and a religion whether they speak of these things or not.  Both disciplines are thus inherently Christian activities, disciplines that must take seriously the responsibility the identity imparts.  The Christian is a person of the Book, commanded to remember the movement of God in history, the nearness of the Spirit today, and the promise of Christ’s return in every word he speaks, in every thing she does.

In the midst of this great reality, the Christian need not live as one who holds every answer, but as one who lives with the confidence that is ours through Christ before God, as we grow further into our conversions and the abundant life Christ describes.  In this, both the world and the Church is benefited when believers learn to see their own conversions as a process, salvation as more than a ticket to heaven, and faith as something deeper than sheer preference or unquestionable certainty—for this will likewise help us see that reaching our neighbors is a lifelong activity.  In the meantime, John Stackhouse argues that it is imperative for the apologist and the ethicist to take with her the right questions.(2) Instead of evangelicalism’s favorite foci—Is he saved?  Does she have a personal relationship with Christ?  Or, what must I do to convert them?—a far better question was entertained by the one the believer follows:  Who shall I say is my neighbor? At this question Jesus recounted a story that left everyone asking appropriately, If the world is filled with my neighbors, how then shall I live?

If every member of the body of Christ on earth lived an apologetic life that reflected the inherently Christ-like response to that question—with love, with grace, with truth and humility—perhaps we would find the distance between Athens and Jerusalem converging, bridged by the glory of the one who rose from the grave.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) Allen Verhey, Remembering Jesus: Christian Community, Scripture, and the Moral Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s, 2002), 54.
(2) John Stackhouse, Jr., Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 84-85.

To say that the word “heaven” is an important Biblical concept can be easily proven by the fact the word appears over 580 different times in the Bible. Sometimes the idea of heaven refers to the sky, as when Genesis 1:1 says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”  While other times it focuses on that place where God lives, such as when Jesus said in John 14:23, “…if anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

The popular view that heaven’s entrance is a pearly gate where Saint Peter grants admission to that lush filled land of golden streets comes from both popular imagination and Scripture. Nowhere do we read that Peter stands at a pearly gate. However, Revelation 21:21 says the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem are made of a single pearl and the “street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass.”

But there is more to heaven than gates and gold. For example, the Bible teaches us that heaven will not be a land far away in another place and time; instead, it will be localized on the new earth. Revelation is clear that we do not go to live in some celestial enclave; rather, God brings heaven with him to the earth. God makes heaven, heaven.

Certainly heaven will be a place where there will be no more death, no more sin, no more suffering, and it will be filled with light, angels, rejoicing, and pleasures. Revelation 7:9 states that people from every corner of the earth will stand before the Lord, giving us the hope that we will see those loved ones who died in the Lord, and we will meet men and women whom we’ve grown up longing to meet for their exploits of faithfulness, along with those of whose faith we have never heard. But all of this will take a back seat to the fact that we will see Jesus face to face.

Volumes have been written on the splendors of heaven, and this article could have been written from a purely theoretical standpoint. But what each of us ought to keep clear in our understanding is that heaven is a real place, and our only access to it is through Jesus Christ, for at the end of the day, wherever Jesus is, that’s where heaven will be.

Dana Arledge, Will Uminn, Phil Meade, Kevin Farmer

“When men talk of a little hell, it is because they think they have only a little sin, and they believe in a little Savior.  But when you get a great sense of sin, you want a great Savior, and feel that if you don’t have him, you will fall into a great destruction, and suffer a great punishment at the hands of the great God.” -C. H. Spurgeon

Hell is a reality that the world ignores It is the butt of jokes and a swear word that to most has lost any since of meaning. What does the Scripture teach about the final place of punishment?

Hell, the Lake of fire, the final judgment that was made for the Satan and his followers is a place of rejection. Matthew 7 describes people being sent away from the presence of the Master, “depart from me, I never knew you”. This image of being in the presence of God and being sent away is a startling one. It shows not only are they sent away and not allowed to enjoy the presence of God, but that for a moment they new the presence of God and will have that knowledge for eternity.

The Lake of fire is pain. Its name befits the type of punishment that will be executed there. Mathew 13:40-43, along with other passages uses the imagery of a fiery furnace where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. It is a pain that is worse then we can understand here on earth. Christ warns us not to fear those who can hurt the body, but He who can destroy it in hell.

Hell is a place of loneliness and darkness. Mathew 22:13 says, “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness, in that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” This is in contrast to the presence of God who is the light of New Jerusalem. Away from God man is in utter darkness without hope and alone.

The most sobering thought about the doctrine of Hell is that it is the eternal judgment. This will not just be for a moment but forever: “everlasting punishment” (Matt. 25:46), “everlasting fire” (Matt. 18:8), “the fire that will never be quenched” (Mark 9:45) and “the worm that never dies” (Mark 9:46). There is no easy way out, only the grace of God. And so as the Apostle Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:11, “Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

Kevin Farmer, Will Uminn, Dana Arledge, Phil Meade

“There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.”
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

I have heard it said that Hell is the least Read the rest of this entry →

It is important to note at the outset that the eschatological (future) resurrection in Scripture is completely overshadowed by the central truth of Christianity-the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  The greatest news ever is what God in Christ did for a bunch of undeserving sinners. Read the rest of this entry →

The title of this article alone is enough to make you want to close your bulletin before proceeding further. The words present the reader with an ominous sound. However, what is the “Abomination of Desolation?”  Jesus used the phrase in Matthew 24:15 when he said, “So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place…”  From that verse, we learn that this abomination was first mentioned by Daniel, and that he will one day stand in the “holy place,” which many scholars equate with the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Read the rest of this entry →

Within premillenialism two camps have arisen: the pre-tribulational and the post-tribulational views.  The pretribulational, or dispensational, type of premillennialism has become very popular since the 19^th century.  In contrast to the historic view, this more modern version of premillennialism teaches not only that Christ will return pre, before, the millennium occurs, but also that Christ will return before the tribulation period takes place.  The historic view, however, would take issue with the concept of Christ returning prior to the tribulation period, for many reasons, but in essence because they only believe in “one” second coming (further, the much less common mid-tribulational view holds that Christ returns during the seven year tribulation period, just prior to the great tribulation (i.e. the last 3½ years). Read the rest of this entry →

Within the theological framework of Eschatology, three primary views concerning the Millennium and the return of Christ have been prevalent in Christianity throughout the centuries.  The three positions are: amillennialism, post-millennialism, and pre-millennialism.  These views did not always exist as they do in the present day, as many varieties of millennial positions have evolved throughout church history.  The scope of this article is to briefly introduce these multiple meanings behind the term millennium. Read the rest of this entry →

Matthew 3:1-2 says, “in those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,’” and with those words, the New Testament refocused the idea of Kingdom to the worshippers of Jehovah.  For centuries the Jews longed for a visible Kingdom in which the rule of God would spread over his people Israel, freeing them from every vestige of Gentile law. The Jews longed for that day when King David would once again rule over Israel (cf. Jeremiah 30:8-9), and so when John the Baptist came on the scene, many thought the fulfillment of God was close. However, they stumbled over the nature of God’s kingdom. Read the rest of this entry →

God, being who He is, holy with an unchanging character, has been judging sin since it entered history.  Punishment following Adam’s sin was immediate and definite, as it was at many other places throughout the Bible-Korah’s rebellion, Achan, the false prophets on Mt. Carmel, Ananias and Sapphira.  At other times judgment was “stored up” or accumulated until a point at which God executed it, the Israelite conquest of Canaan and the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. following many centuries of idolatry and breach of the covenant being cases in point. Read the rest of this entry →