The Restoration of Eden

This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

Old Testament scholar Sandra Richter writes:

[E]verything that lies in between Eden’s gate and the New Jerusalem, the bulk of our Bibles, is in essence a huge rescue plan. In fact, we could summarize the plot line of the Bible into one cosmic question: “How do we get Adam back into the garden?” In Genesis 3, humanity was driven out; in Revelation 21-22, they are welcomed home.

The Garden of Eden is a temple where humans enjoy face-to-face friendship with their creator. The Fall results in human banishment from Eden and a divinely prescribed distance between holy God and sinful people. Even Moses, the great lawgiver, is forbidden to see the face of God because God has declared, “No one may see me and live” (Exod. 33:20 NIV). Moses is allowed only to see God’s back as he passes by (v. 23). In the ancient world, criminals are banished from the presence of the king and not allowed to see his face, an apt picture of our separation from God (Esth. 7:8; cf. 2 Sam. 14:24).

John asserts that no person has seen God at any time. Even so, Jesus has declared God as deity veiled in human flesh (John 1:18). Jesus teaches that only the pure in heart will see God (Matt. 5:8). So, consider the transformation that takes place when the redeemed in eternity see God face-to-face and become like him (1 John 3:2).

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Your Names Are Written in Heaven: Luke 10:20

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from Chapter 13: Your Names Are Written in Heaven: Luke 10:20.

The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Look, I have given you the authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy; nothing at all will harm you. However, don’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:17-20).

At first, it sounds like a buzzkill. Jesus has sent out seventy-two disciples to every town and place he is about to visit. He authorizes them to perform miracles and proclaim the coming of God’s kingdom. They are ecstatic when they return: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name” (Luke 10:17). 

After acknowledging the damage their spiritual offensive has done to Satan, Jesus seems to let the air out of the room. He tells his followers, “[D]on’t rejoice that the spirits submit to you” (v. 20). Say what?

But Jesus isn’t trying to harsh their mellow. Rather, he takes this opportunity, while they’re at a spiritual high point, to tell them true joy should not be grounded in missionary endeavors but in the ultimate gift of God: eternal life. “[R]ejoice that your names are written in heaven,” he tells them – and us. 

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Lifting the Curse

This is another in a series of excerpts from What Every Christian Should Know About the Return of Jesus, released by High Street Press and available at Amazon. 

In the midst of John’s blissful vision of the new heavens and earth, he records these simple but profound words: “and there will no longer be any curse” (Rev. 22:3). What’s the curse to which John refers? And who or what causes the curse to end?

John’s reference to the curse takes us back to Genesis 3 and the Fall. There, Adam’s sin plunges all creation into a morass of death and decay. John also whisks us through the pages of the Old Testament, where we see the parallel tracks of sin’s destruction and God’s promise of a virgin-born redeemer.

And he reminds us of the New Testament truth that Jesus of Nazareth burst onto the scene two thousand years ago, divinely conceived, perfect in humanity, and sent into a world sagging beneath the weight of sin. The Messiah’s sinless life and finished work on the cross conquer Satan, sin, and death, and his promise to return enables us to rest in the certainty that the curse cannot last forever. 

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The Book of Life in the New Testament

This is another in a series of excerpts from The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed from High Street Press and available at Amazon. This except comes from the beginning of Section III: The Book of Life in the New Testament.

This post begins excerpts from Section III of The Book of Life: What the Bible Says about God’s Registry of the Redeemed. Our focus in this section is on references to the book of life in the Gospels and epistles.

The New Testament offers numerous references to the book of life, and it specifically identifies the book of life as belonging to the Lamb. As we read the Gospels and epistles, we come to understand more clearly that the book of life is the registry of the redeemed – a record of those who have trusted in the Lamb of God for salvation.

Here’s a summary of future posts:

Chapter 13 explores the encouraging words of Jesus to his followers that their names are “written in heaven” (Luke 10:17-20). In chapter 14, Paul writes about his coworkers, “whose names are in the book of life” (Phil. 4:3). Chapter 15 examines what the writer of Hebrews means by “the assembly of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven” (Heb. 12:23). 

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What about the Little Gray Men?

This is the last in a series of articles on what the Bible says about UFOs and aliens.

Read Part 1 – Are There Aliens Among Us?; Part 2 – Who Are These Guys?; Part 3 – UFOs and Alien Theories; Part 4 – What the Bible Says about Alien Encounters; Part 5 – Alien Encounters in Scripture.

The 2002 sci-fi thriller “Signs” features one family’s encounters with aliens, whose global invasion of Earth includes the Hess family farmhouse in Pennsylvania. Mysterious greenish-gray creatures, who can change their skin color to match the environment, emerge from cornfields, stand on rooftops, and lurk outside the Hess’s barricaded home. 

These terrifying creatures have mayhem in mind, but they retreat when humans discover that dousing the aliens with water produces a toxic allergic reaction. The Hess family discovers this by accident, although a baseball bat to one alien’s head proves equally deadly.

In the end, the aliens depart, and the world survives, but the haunting memories of a little gray man crashing a children’s birthday party in Brazil and another threatening a captive boy with deadly gas emitted from his wrists make “Signs” an unforgettable blockbuster. 

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