Restitutio

This is part three of a series of three lectures on why some Christians ended up rejecting the kingdom message in the first few centuries of Christianity.  In this part, I work through the major differences between how Jews and Greeks read scripture.  What we find is that the Christians who didn’t like the kingdom idea lumped in those who did believe in it with the unbelieving Jews who rejec...

Last week we looked at stewarding your body. In this episode we focus on a phenomenon that has been growing over the last couple of decades–tattoos and piercings. What was once seen among sailors, bikers, and soldiers is now rampant among celebrities, athletes, and countless others. What’s a Christian to do? Should we go with the flow? Does the bible condemn tattoos and piercings outri...

Last time we saw that some influential Christians rejected the biblical teaching on the kingdom because the idea of living on earth forever seemed crude to them.  This time, we look at how the ancients thought about bodies and bodily pleasures.  As it turns out, from (at least) Plato onward, many philosophers tended to embrace a very negative view of pleasure, arguing that the truly enlightened pe...

How should you steward your body?  Are all bodily pleasures inherently sinful?  In order to grapple with these questions, we take a tour through the bible from the Garden of Eden through to the time of Jesus to observe the balanced biblical perspective between asceticism (denying all pleasures) and hedonism (living for pleasure).  As it turns out, God designed us to experience pleasure, but within...

Now that you’ve seen the historical defenders of the kingdom faith, it’s time to turn our attention to those who fought against it.  Over the next three lectures you’ll learn the main reasons why Christianity rejected the kingdom message of the bible and replaced it with going to heaven or hell at death.  First up, we’ll take a tour of how the ancients thought about creatio...

We’re beginning a new series on stewardship. To start with, we’ll discuss the biblical mindset towards stewarding the earth. Future episodes will address stewarding our bodies and finances.  In this show, we begin with creation theology and move to consider how God injected covenantal significance into how Israelites were to think about their land. Lastly, we look at how believing in t...

Who has believed in the kingdom over the history of Christianity?  In this lecture, you’ll find out who defended the kingdom belief in the first four centuries, before it faded out of the mainstream and got replaced with going to heaven instead.  In order to put you in contact with the primary sources, we read through a bunch of quotes, so you can hear the unfiltered voices of these remarkab...

Do you know what the Trinity is?  Could you explain it to someone else or is it just a confusing collection of impenetrable statements hidden under a cloud of fog?  In his recent book, Professor Dale Tuggy seeks to clarify everyone’s perceptions of the various Trinity theories so that we can have productive conversation on the subject.  He delves deep into the various key concepts like expla...

Like all kingdoms, God’s kingdom is political in nature. As a result, the kingdom requires allegiance from its citizens. By examining Jewish messianism and Roman political sensibilities, you’ll come to better see how early Christians prioritized their allegiance to the age to come over their local and national allegiances. This is lecture 9 of the Kingdom of God class , originally taug...

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...