Pisteuomen - πιστευομεν - T. Michael W. Halcomb

Ok, so, I'm going to do my best to keep this brief and to the point. I have been putting this post off for days but since I was just interrupted 5 minutes ago, I thought I'd go ahead and post it. Who was I interrupted by? A Southern Baptist preacher and his wife. That's right, at 7pm in the evening, they knocked on my door. When I opened the door, he did the first thing a good Baptist does: Handed me a tract. After that, he told me he was a pastor and then told me about his church. I told him I was a pastor too; he didn't know how to respond. So, I said, yeah, I am a teaching pastor at a new Methodist church. His silence ended as soon as I said that. So, what did he say when he found the words to speak again? You probably guessed it, that's right, he said, "Well, are you saved?" Yep! As soon as I said the word "Methodist" he questioned my salvation. He went on, "Even some pastors aren't saved, did you know that? They can ha...

It's no secret that scholars have long debated the notion of "God's rest" in the biblical text known as Hebrews. Similarly, there has been much ink spilt on discussions concerning the concept of salvation in Hebrews (e.g. is it past, present or future oriented or is it all of those?). When taken together, these two concepts (salvation & rest) seem to make Hebrews all the more confusing. For example, in Hebrews 3, in the warning section (7-19), we encounter both concepts but we encounter them in a most peculiar way. Instead of quoting those verses here, I will just summarize what seems to be a major point of them: These words are an exhortation to first-century believers not to harden their hearts against God as the Sinai / Kadesh-Barnea communities did. But here's the thing, some scholars such as H. Bateman have argued (unconvincingly in my view!) that the only reason that 1st century believers were offered salvation and rest is merely because their predecesso...

In his initial post , James asked readers to take the “Flaming Meteorite Challenge”. He posited the following theory (in sum): If, just before Peter had reached Cornelius (a non-Jew; see Acts 10) a flaming meteor had struck him dead, would Cornelius, having already been “righteous enough to be noticed by God”, be included among or excluded from the saved? Probably, most of us have heard this question in one form or another. Usually, it tends to come up in debates between those who have high and low views of baptism. The one with the low view will ask the one with the high view, “So, if John Doe made a confession to Christ but didn’t have the chance to be baptized, you’re saying he wouldn’t be saved?” Personally, I don’t think the Scriptures answer this specific question. Probably, it would have been closer to the context to ask: If Cornelius’ chariot wheels came off and he wrecked and died, would he still be saved? (joking) Anyway… For Paul, salvation was a process (present, past and f...