The Christian Faith Podcast

Do we really appreciate the fact that God desires to have the church? We tend to look at spiritual things from our own viewpoint, focusing on our need for forgiveness of sins, for satisfaction, and for a sense of purpose in our life. But if we are willing to consider what God is after, what He desires, and to serve the Lord to that end, our Christian life will come to an entirely different level....

So many Christians today seem to believe that God's goal for people is to get them into heaven. Yet, in reality, God is not working to bring people to heaven, but to re-take the earth, which today is in rebellion against Him. So now God is calling us, as the believers in Christ, to stand with Him in this purpose by preaching the gospel of the kingdom in all the earth (Matt. 24:14), to defeat Satan...

In recent episodes we have considered the eternal gospel (Rev. 14:6-7; see A New Podcast Series: “The Eternal Gospel” ). We have shared that, according to this gospel, a person may have their sins forgiven even if they have not had the opportunity to believe in Christ directly. If that is the case, however, then we must ask, Do we still need to be burdened to preach the gospel of Christ? The answe...

The gospel of Christ produces the saved, regenerated believers in Christ, while the eternal gospel (Rev. 14:6-7), in contrast, produces the blessed nations, i.e., those who have their sins forgiven through the death of Christ, but who are not regenerated. So, in eternity, as the result of these two different gospels, there will not only be those who are blessed as the saved believers in Christ in...

Is the “eternal gospel” (Rev. 14:6-7) simply another way of referring to the basic New Testament gospel of the grace of God? Or is it, instead, a distinct message that gives those who have never had the opportunity to believe in Jesus a way to have their sins forgiven? Most Bible teachers today would claim it is the former, pointing out that the New Testament does indeed refer to the gospel of gra...

According to so many Bible teachers today, to have our sins forgiven we must ask God to forgive us in Jesus’ name. Therefore, they say, all those who never heard the gospel of the grace of God will have to spend eternity in the lake of fire, even though they never had the opportunity to believe in Jesus. (For an example of this, watch this brief video clip ).  What these teachers are saying is, in...

Does the Bible really say that all those who never heard of Jesus, and who therefore had no opportunity to believe in the gospel, will go to hell for eternity? This is what many prominent Bible teachers have affirmed for centuries—and in this episode, we hear how one such teacher recently reaffirmed this teaching when asked this very question. Sadly, so many are turned away from the God of the Bib...

The Lord needs followers today who have the same spirit as the writers of the New Testament, who considered themselves as nothing more than His slaves; if He can gain such ones, then He will have a way to carry out what He truly desires to accomplish in our time. But how can we become those who, in terms of our daily living, are slaves of Christ Jesus? Only by allowing ourselves to be fully defeat...

As believers in Christ, we tend to consider spiritual matters from the standpoint of our need, such as our need for the forgiveness of sins. And while there is nothing wrong with that, as we grow in Christ we should eventually realize there is also something God needs, in the sense it is something He truly desires, and thus begin to seek the Lord for how we can cooperate with Him to fulfill His de...

The Bible covers so many different topics, and one of the main ones, of course, is the gospel of our salvation. So, we begin this episode with a reminder, courtesy of a story about Billy Graham, of how we need to be in prayer for the gospel to once again go forth in this country in 2025; Amen, Lord, have Your way! Yet, among all the matters dealt with in the Bible, the thing it shows us in particu...

For centuries there has been a dispute among Bible teachers over who wrote the book of Hebrews, since the book itself does not identify its author. Early on in church history it was widely accepted that it had been written by the apostle Paul. Later, however, some began to doubt his authorship, and today most Bible scholars say that no, it was not Paul; rather, someone else must have written it. W...

As this new year begins it is good to be reminded of how important it is for us as the believers in Christ to come to the Bible in a regular, consistent way! So in this episode, which is mostly a re-broadcast of an earlier one, we talk with Mike Samulak for some practical tips to help us be in the word as we should, sometimes even by beginning in a very small way. For example, we can make a resolu...

If we are indeed three part beings, “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thess. 5:23), then what is the Bible referring to when it speaks of our “heart”? A primary example of this is when a scribe asked Jesus, “Which is the first commandment of all?” (Mark 12:28). He answered by quoting the Old Testament: The first is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord! And you shall love the Lord your God Fro...

If we desire to know Christ and follow Him today, we must be clear about the kind of relationship He desires to have with us, as revealed in the Scripture. And what the Scriptures show us, especially in the New Testament, is this: God wants to be one with mankind. That’s why He became a man in the person of Jesus Christ through the Incarnation; and now He desires to incarnate Himself again in the...

In this special Thanksgiving edition of our podcast we consider how the first national day of thanksgiving ever held in the United States of America came to be. We also read the full proclamation made by President Washington, which he issued in response to a request from the first congress—the same congress that approved the first amendment—that he appoint “a day of public thanksgiving and prayer...

One of the hallmarks of Reformed theology is its strong teaching that man is a two-part being. Rejecting the plain and direct word of Scripture that man is actually a three-part being, “spirit and soul and body” (1 Thess. 5:23; cf. Heb. 4:12), it insists our spirit and our soul are the same thing, thus denying we have a human spirit which enables us to receive God’s divine life. In doing so it tur...

To live a fruitful Christian life we need a basic realization, first, that we have a human spirit within us, and second, of the proper function of our human spirit; how crucial it is for us to see this!   So, we begin this episode by considering some basic principles that can help us appreciate our human spirit, and how God desires to impart Himself as life into us, that is, into our human spirit....

If we desire to grasp the New Testament concept of salvation, in the sense of how we are being transformed into the image or Christ, we must realize we are three-part beings (1 Thes. 5:23, Heb. 4:12). Only then can we truly understand the apostle Paul’s meaning when he tells us, Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is being consumed, yet our inner man is being renewed day by da...

To be genuinely spiritual we must be clear about the difference between our soul and our human spirit—that, as revealed in the Bible, these are two distinct parts of our being, rather than to aspects of the same thing (1 Thes. 5:23, Heb. 4:12). The function of our spirit is to contact God and receive His divine life; the function of our soul is to love God and magnify Him (cf. Luke 1:46-47).  If i...

And the God of peace Himself sanctify you wholly, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. — 1 Thessalonians 5:23  In the Gospels of Matthew of Mark, Jesus tells us we are to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength (Matthew 22:37, Mark 12:30); in brief, with so many of the different parts of...

We should love the Lord not only “with,” but also “from,” our whole being. So, the Gospels of Matthew of Mark give us two parallel accounts of the Lord’s word concerning what is the greatest commandment (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:30). While the differences in these two accounts are very slight, they are nonetheless very meaningful, and can give us a real insight into this matter of truly loving the L...

Philippians 3:7-10 shows us the way to pursue Christ and the price we have to pay to do so. But then, in verse 11, the apostle Paul speaks of the incentive God gives us for following Christ in such a way: attaining to what may be called “the outstanding resurrection” from among the dead (cf. 1 Cor. 9:24-27, Luke 20:35). Yet, only later in the New Testament, in Revelation 20:4-6, are we able to act...

In Philippians 3 we see a portrait of a man who was fully given to pursuing Christ so he could gain Him, be found in Him, and eventually come to know Him. How can we enter into this same experience? First, by loving the Lord in a pure and absolute way, so we are fully captured by Him, while all else becomes dross to us. Second, we must not be satisfied with just the revelation of Christ, as wonder...

After passing through so many experiences of the cross in Philippians 3:7-9, so we may gain Christ and be found in Him, we finally come to the point where we are ready to know Christ, as seen in verse 10. And according to this verse, to know Christ Himself in the deepest way is to know Him according to the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, so we may be conformed to Hi...

One of the greatest frustrations to our knowing of Christ is our effort to establish our own righteousness (cf. Rom. 10:3). In fact, the more we live in our own righteousness, the less we will know Christ. While many Christians realize our own works could never be sufficient for God to forgive our sins, we fail to realize the exact same principle applies in terms of our daily living; even in this...