Restitutio

Are you interested in online ministry?  Would you like to reach more people?  Ryan Maher shares what he’s learned about combining his love for God and graphic design into his bible lock-screen app.  Once Instigram came out, he jumped on board and developed a following that numbers around a million people.  In this interview Maher talks about his journey of faith, how he’s found success...

How does your belief in the God’s coming kingdom affect your life now? Now that we’ve looked at the kingdom as hope (what we look forward to) and gospel (what we preach to others), we’ll examine how God calls us to embody the kingdom now.  Taking our cue from Jesus’ kingdom-saturated ministry, we’ll see how he enacted the future in the present as a testimony and a tas...

J. Dan and Sharon Gill are part of a growing movement of bible students who have concluded that the Father of Jesus is the only true God.  They’re so passionate about this truth that in 2008, they launched their website, called Twenty-First Century Reformation (21stcr.org).  To date they’ve received over 700,000 views on YouT ube, not to mention visitors to the site.  In this interview...

What is the gospel of the kingdom of God? It’s not about Jesus dying for your sins or going to heaven when you die. In fact, Jesus’ gospel of the kingdom is not new at all; it’s the message the prophets of old proclaimed–that one day God was going to make everything wrong with the world right and extend his reign from heaven to earth. In this lecture, you’ll see how J...

Sir Anthony Buzzard has led a fascinating life.  He grew up in the Church of England in the 1930s and 40s.  While at Oxford, he attended a “get saved” meeting and went forward.  Next he joined Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, but then left and studied with the Christadelphians, before joining the Church of God General Conference.  He’s written seven books, publi...

What happens when you die? Is there an intermediate state? What does the bible teach about the dead before resurrection? These questions are important for our study of the kingdom of God.  If you go straight to heaven when you die, you’re not going to care very much about what happens when Jesus returns.  You may find it marginally interesting, but it’s what’s next for you.  In t...

Nicholas Hlifka grew up as an atheist until a Christian teacher shared his faith with him in high school.  While attending the State University of New York at Fredonia, he took a class with Dale Tuggy.  When he found out that Tuggy was a biblical unitarian, he was immediately wary of such a heretical belief.  Over time, he challenged Tuggy, his best trinitarian proof-texts to him.  Tuggy explained...

After a bad divorce, Chad Hoffman became a Christian.  He attended a number of different churches and something didn’t sit right at each.  In 2006, he was diagnosed with a inoperable tumor on his brain stem.  After some treatment it shrank and grew back.  During this tumultuous time, he started considering what he believed about the afterlife.  He took some seminary courses to get more infor...

Steve and Phyllis Carouthers have attended many churches throughout their Christian journey.  A couple of years ago Phyllis was researching the gifts of the spirit and came across an article on the Truth or Tradition website and saw that they were biblical unitarians.  Initially she found this quite disturbing as she associated all unitarians with the very liberal Unitarian Universalist denominati...

Even though he grew up in the Calivinist Reformed tradition as a pastor’s kid, Jouke Elsinga was not sure he believed in God’s existence.  After reading Frank Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist , he came to believe in God and started searching for apologetics.  He came across my apologetics class on youtube (also available on podcasts 50-65 ) and deepened hi...

Danny Tanner grew up in the Lutheran Church and later got heavily involved with the Brethren in Christ group.  He’s served as a worship pastor, an associate pastor, and an executive pastor.  Currently he’s involved in a church plant.  Over the years he’s questioned his faith, but never let himself dive in deep enough to reconsider his core beliefs.  He didn’t want to give h...

While working in a casket factory as an upholsterer, one day Jeremy Bowders reflected on the fact that he would be in one eventually. He began asking the big questions about his life’s purpose. He began reading the bible and became a Christian. In the course of researching open theism, he read an article by William Lane Craig that mentioned Dale Tuggy. He came to trinities.org and began list...

Having overcome his desire to remain in the background, Jonathen Favors boldly shared his testimony of coming to understand who God is.  After a severe football injury, he had a lot of time to spend time with and think about God.  While attending BIOLA University, he had learned that the title “Son of God” is a messianic title, but he didn’t understand how God could be three in o...

Now that we’ve looked at many of the kingdom texts from the Old Testament, today we’ll get into the New Testament and see what Jesus and the apostles taught about the kingdom.  We’ll examine the titles of Jesus, a couple of his parables, some texts from Paul and James, and conclude in Revelation.  In this lecture, we’ll restrict our focus to just those verses that speak of...

Simply put, restorationism is the approach to Christianity that seeks to compare accepted doctrines and practices against the bible to see if they are valid.  Our intention is to recover authentic New Testament Christianity and live it out today.  We hold God’s inspired scriptures above traditions, creeds, and clergy.  The time is ripe for us to reach over denominational lines and dialogue w...

Last time we looked at the kingdom prophecies in Isaiah.  Today we’ll examine Amos, Micah, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Ezekiel, and Daniel to continue developing a biblical picture of the age to come. This is lecture 4 of the Kingdom of God class , originally taught at the Atlanta Bible College .  To take this class for credit, please contact ABC so you can do the work necessary for a grade. Notes...

Let’s face it; it’s difficult to talk about pornography, especially among Christians.  We get overwhelmed with feelings of shame and embarrassment while fearing how others will regard us with disgust or disdain.  However, this issue is a huge struggle for a ton of Christians (and non-Christians) in the world today.  Drawing on some of what he shared last week about spiritual discipline...

The prophet Isaiah spoke more about the kingdom than any other prophet in the Hebrew bible. Consequently, his book is a phenomenal place to begin developing our understanding of what the kingdom will be like.  Stitching together his various snapshots, we encounter a magnificent collage detailing a new world full of peace, justice, and healing. This is lecture 3 of the Kingdom of God class , origin...

What spiritual disciplines do you practice?  We’re all familiar with reading our bibles and prayer, but there’s so much more available.  In this interview, Blake Cortright guides us through his own journey into discovering ancient Christian disciplines that can help us today, including prayer, fasting, meditation, bible study, simplicity, solitude, submission, service, confession, wors...

It’s impossible to understand the kingdom of God or Jesus without having a grasp of the history-changing promises God made with Abraham and David.  To Abraham God covenanted the land and to David, a descendant to rule.  Ultimately these two covenants find their fulfillment in Jesus of Nazareth–the Messiah. This is lecture 2 of the Kingdom of God class , originally taught at the Atlanta...

What role does doubt play in your life?  Do you think of it as something to push aside and ignore or do you pursue your doubts to get answers?  In this episode we examine the role of doubt for Christians, avoiding both extremes of refusing to engage with doubt as well as obsessing on it.  Our goal is to face doubt honestly and ask God for help as we do the hard work of getting good answers. Links:...

Today we begin a new class on Restitutio on the Kingdom of God. Jesus said the kingdom was like a treasure hidden in a field—it’s so valuable it’s worth selling everything to purchase. He said to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness above what we eat or wear. In this class we’ll spend a great deal of time exploring what the bible teaches about the kingdom, including hope, gospel, and way....

Christians protecting Muslims while they prayed in Tahrir Square, Egypt in 2011 On January 27, 2017, President Trump issued Executive Order 13769, called “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” in which he banned immigration from seven countries, including Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.  This unpopular order caused much controv...

In the last episode ( Boundaries for Same-Sex Attraction ), we looked at what the bible says about same-sex attraction.  In this one, we consider seven important questions about gay and lesbian Christians: How should same-sex attracted Christians think of themselves? Isn’t the Christian sexual ethic harmful to gays and lesbians? Is having same-sex feelings a sin? Can someone go from gay to straigh...

Is it a sin to be gay? What does the bible say about same-sex attraction? In this episode you’ll become familiar with the relevant scriptures that talk about homosexuality. You’ll also learn what arsenokoitai (ἀρσενοκοῖται) means in 1 Corinthians 6.9, a key battleground text for discussions of biblical sexuality. Here the Apostle Paul pulls from the Greek translation of Leviticus 20.13...