Somewhere beneath the question, “Is retirement biblical?” sits a deeper question many people are really asking: Does my life still matter once my working years are behind me? Scripture does not give us a modern retirement plan or name a universal age when everyone should stop working. What it does give us is a clear…
Say the word “doctrine” in most churches today and you’ll get a wince — it sounds cold, academic, the opposite of a real relationship with God. But avoiding doctrine doesn’t make the question go away; it just means you end up believing something about God without ever checking whether it’s actually true. Biblical doctrine is…
Scripture uses one Hebrew word, Rephaim, for two things that don’t seem to belong together — a race of unusually large warriors, and, in several poetic passages, the spirits of the dead in Sheol. Many scholars believe those two uses are intentionally connected, though others see them as separate developments of the same Hebrew word….
Ask ten Christians whether Goliath was a Nephilim and you’ll get ten different answers, and most of them are guessing. That matters, because getting it wrong in either direction either dismisses real textual evidence tying Goliath to the giant clans of Canaan, or turns a careful genealogical argument into speculation the text never actually makes….
My wife and I spent some time at the beach recently. What we saw there wasn’t a surprise — it’s what beaches look like now. But on the drive home I found myself thinking about something that doesn’t get said enough in church. What used to stay at the beach isn’t staying there anymore. So…
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17 — “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” Most Christians love that verse. They should. It describes something real — a radical change in identity, standing, and direction that happens the moment someone is genuinely…
Psalm 82 is one of the strangest passages in the Bible to read cold. God is standing in an assembly, surrounded by other divine beings he calls elohim, and he is pronouncing judgment on them for failing in their responsibilities. The divine council in the Bible is that framework — the structure the biblical writers…
Most Christians know the Bible mentions angels. Far fewer know it also describes a specific category of heavenly being the text calls Watchers — beings who appear in a king’s dream and connect directly to one of the most debated passages in all of Scripture. Getting the watchers in the Bible right matters because the…
The phrase “sons of God” appears in the Bible in ways that confuse people — partly because it means different things depending on where you find it, and partly because popular theology has blurred the distinctions without explaining them. In the Old Testament, sons of God in the Bible refers consistently to heavenly beings —…
The Nephilim in the Bible appear in four verses in Genesis 6 and one verse in Numbers 13. That’s it. Five verses total, and they have generated more speculation, more bad theology, and more movie plots than almost any other passage in Scripture. Most of the popular treatment of the Nephilim runs in one of…