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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Features of New Jerusalem: Part 4

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 previous posts (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3), we explored some key features of New Jerusalem. We conclude this study now.

New Jerusalem features a river, a broad street, a tree, and a throne (Rev. 22:1-5).

The first five verses of the final chapter of Revelation describe four prominent objects in New Jerusalem. 

A river

First, the river of living water. John describes the water as “clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s main street” (vv. 1-2). Just a few verses earlier, the one seated on the throne says, “I will freely give to the thirsty from the spring of the water of life” (Rev. 21:6).

This promise draws deeply from the Old and New Testaments and speaks of eternal life received by God’s grace through faith. The Greek word potamos is translated “river,” “flood,” or “stream” and is used metaphorically in John 7:38 to describe the blessing of eternal satisfaction found in Christ.

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Rosh Hashanah and the Book of Life

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 12: Rosh Hashanah and the Book of Life.

Rosh Hashanah is one of the seven major feasts of Israel, occurring on the first day of Tishri, the seventh month of the Jewish lunar calendar – September or October by Western reckoning. While the biblical and modern-day observances of Rosh Hashanah differ, the holiday plays a significant role for the book of life. 

Let’s begin with some background. In Scripture, Rosh Hashanah is referred to as Zikhron Teruah (“Memorial of Blowing [of trumpets],” Lev. 23:24) and Yom Teruah (“Day of Blowing [of trumpets],” Num. 29:1). Because of these biblical descriptions, Rosh Hashanah often is called the “Feast of Trumpets.” It’s a day of sounding trumpets in the Temple and throughout Israel. Rosh Hashanah literally means “head of the year.” 

This holiday marks the first day of the Jewish civil New Year. However, this designation only came to be after the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. Since there was no longer a central place of worship and an altar of sacrifice – that is, at the Temple in Jerusalem – the observance necessarily had to change. Today, the emphasis is on the Jewish New Year rather than the blowing of trumpets. 

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