Undeception

This post is prompted by two recent comments, from two different commenters on two different issues. But their answer, it seems to me, is related.
I was asked, “Why wouldn’t Jesus say that evil would be forever dead instead of having this eternal fire to go to? Even if it was recognized as an exaggeration at [...]

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It is my belief that Revelation’s Lake of Fire/Fiery Sulfur was never intended to be read as an actual geographic location (even in the spiritual realm), but was a colorful apocalyptic image meant to depict and dramatize final termination of various sorts, including punishment. The key indicator of this is that the sulfur imagery and [...]

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I was recently asked to contribute to a podcast for Love for All Ministries, a group of young Christians dedicated to honest, intellectual dialogue with non-believers of all walks and creeds. The topic for the discussion when I was on was “Hell”. I haven’t talked much about hell on this blog so far, so I [...]

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I have recently been dialoguing with a new full preterist friend, Patrick Stone, about the timing of the millennium. Early on in the conversation, the possibility was raised that the First Resurrection of Rev 20.4-6 occurred at the beginning of the Roman-Jewish war and corresponds to the resurrection of the martyrs at the time the [...]

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I have not tried to find a reason to disagree with the majority when it comes to my theological positions.  Any reader of this blog will recognize that this has nevertheless happened on occasion.  Chiefly, theistic evolution puts me at odds with most evangelicals and full preterism puts me at odds with most believers.  In [...]

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I have been musing lately about how my stance on the creation/evolution controversy would impact other areas of theology if applied consistently. The stance I’m referring to is my conviction that viewing the history of the natural universe as a string of miraculous interventions into nature is hopelessly misguided. I have argued that the atheistic [...]

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Note: I regularly break what seems to be an unwritten law for blogging that says that, except for minor editorial fixes, one shouldn’t edit posts that add new information without some kind of notification. I have added a little more material to this post to make my arguments more clear; my position remains the same, [...]

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I’ve had a poll running for a couple months asking Undeception readers what topics they’re interested in seeing me address. I decided to give it a while and see if trends emerged. Well, I just noticed yesterday that there is indeed a small trend. At present, there is a four-way tie for second place: Linguistics, [...]

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A correction from a commenter shows that I was wrong in attributing the following quote to Eusebius, the Early Christian Father (ECF), in my post entitled: “Is full preterism a new doctrine?“

All authorities concur in the declaration that “when all these things should have been done” “the End” should come: that “the mystery of God [...]

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Something jumped out at me several days ago when I was reading Acts 13: it reminded me of Romans 11. And well it should. After all, Acts was written by a fellow who accompanied Paul on numerous missionary journeys and should have been quite in sync with his doctrine and theology.
Interestingly enough, at about the [...]

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I was in college. In my fourth of five years, I heard about a professor who was fairly “liberal” in theology. A friend of mind took his class on Revelation, and was disturbed by how good the arguments were that Revelation was written about first century events. When my friend explained to me in brief [...]

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Who said this?

But the things which took place afterwards, did our Saviour, from his foreknowledge as THE WORD or GOD, foretell should come to pass, by means of those which are (now) before us. For He named the whole Jewish people, the children of the City; and the Temple, He styled their House. And thus [...]

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Summary of Part One

God the Gardener created a son (Lk 3.38) to tend the garden.

God, as a father, was training up his children Adam and Eve in the garden.

Adam was put in a garden for instruction because gardening requires faith: both faithfulness in tending day by day and faith that what is planted and cultivated [...]

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When I was at Truthvoice 2008 a month ago, the co-author of Beyond Creation Science, Tim Martin, gave two talks that I thought were worthy of discussion on my blog. Here are my thoughts on the first talk.
[Note: I am summarizing based on the notes I took, and I honestly hope I misrepresent nothing he [...]

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As my regulars probably know, I like podcasts. One I listen to regularly (it comes out daily) is Renewing Your Mind with Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries. He is well-known as a partial preterist, but, as you will see here soon, posits a future consummative coming of Christ. This is what he said in [...]

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