Without Excuse: Apologetics Blog

We live most of our lives trying to avoid the thought of death, but sometimes it's unavoidable  like when a loved one passes away. Only then we are forced to confront death. The reality is, death is inescapable. It is part of the human experience and will touch each and every one at some point in our lives. The question then becomes, what happens when we die? It's one of life's biggest questions, alongside "Why am I here?", "What is the purpose of life?", and "Is there a God?" There are many ideas of what happens when we die. The materialists believe death is final, and there is no life after death. Buddhists and Hindus, among others, believe in reincarnation and that we have lived many lives. Traditional Christians, such as Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and most Protestant denominations, believe in an intermediate existence between death and the resurrection. Jehovah Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, Christadelphians, and a few other g...

I've heard many accusations against the pre-trib rapture over the years, but I admit, this is one is new to me. It goes something like this: The first person who formulated this eschatology was a Jesuit named Ribera in 1591AD. He interpreted the book of Revelation suggesting an end-time personal antichrist, a rebuilt Babylon and a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem at the end of the Christian Era. This doctrine began to fester within the system of Romanism which by now had a few dozen more erroneous and blasphemous doctrines introduced as biblical truths by its own leadership. But it wasn't until 1745AD that another Jesuit named Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz began to really distort the Scriptures through doctrines that perfectly fit the category of the kind of doctrines whose destructive results we are warned about by Paul. (2 Tim 4:3-4). Back in the 18th Century, there was a Spanish family living in Chile named the De Lacunzas. In 1731, they had a baby boy whom they named Manuel. After fi...

  Contrary to some views, I believe Scripture indicates we will not have one body but three: one that is temporal, one that is intermediate, and one that is permanent. Much like a metamorphosis, we move from one stage to another until we reach our final form. The goal here is to identify the body types, including their substance, function, and purpose. 1Co 15:21 For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. 1Co 15:40 There are also celestial (heavenly) bodies and terrestrial (earthly) bodies, but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. In First Corinthians, the Apostle Paul makes mention of three bodies: earthly, heavenly, and resurrected. Together, they make up the three-body types. Some interpret this to be Paul speaking in astronomical terms, not body types. However, it could also be true that it can have a double meaning to make a broader analogy of the nature of our being. In some ways, they are comparable t...

  There is a common accusation that Christians adopted the concept of the soul from the Greeks, most notably from Plato. There’s a variation of this argument that Christians adopted ideas about the soul and the afterlife from the Egyptians. But just how true is this accusation? We will seek to answer that very question. It should first be established that Israelite/Jewish thought had already allowed for a postmortem existence prior to Greek influence. One very prominent example can be found in 1 Samuel involving the story of the Witch of Endor. King Saul had gone to visit the witch to summon Samuel from the grave. Much to the witch's surprise and dismay, she summoned what appeared to be the spirit or ghost of Samuel (1Sa 28).  The summoned spirit of Samuel is often dismissed as a trick, hallucination, or a demonic deception. Those are all separate objections that can be addressed another time. But it is far less relevant whether it was the actual spirit of Samuel or not for th...

Soul sleep proponents believe that Greek philosophy significantly influenced traditional Christian ideas about the soul and the afterlife rather than Scripture alone. For that reason, they reject the continued existence of the soul after death, also known as the intermediary state. Instead, they have a more Hebraic worldview that places far less emphasis on heaven and the afterlife than later Jewish and Christian theology. Soul sleep is founded on the belief that humans don’t have a soul; we are souls. This is interpreted from Genesis 2:7: “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul ( nephesh ).” The Hebrew word for “soul” is “ nephesh ” and is broadly defined as the whole living being or person. The question is, are we only nephesh ? “ Nephesh ” is translated to “psyche” in the Septuagint. If nephesh were strictly biological, they could have used the Greek word “bios,” from which we get the Eng...

Introduction: There are those who will contend that the Church has replaced Israel, the Jews have no future role, and the modern state of Israel was either created by happenstance or by some nefarious plot. Such views are often intertwined with replacement theology, allegory, and modern conspiracy theories. But if we shift the paradigm by connecting the right prophetic dots and having the proper eschatological framework, a different picture emerges. This view is based upon dispensationalism, covenant theology, and literalism ( i ). These are prerequisites that not everyone accepts. However, I will contend it is the only view that explains two perplexing enigmas: why Jews have been one of the most persecuted people in history, and why the world is so fixated over the tiny state of Israel. The Covenant God chose Abraham among the nations to create a people for His own (Gen 12:1–3). He then made an "everlasting" covenant with Abraham and his descendants (Gen 17:7-8). A series of...