What do the 7 seals and trumpets of the book of Revelation mean? We unpick the pattern and try to imagine what messages the early Christians would have taken from it. The way the sequences of images are communicated continue to confound the expectations of the hearer. But as they unfold, two powerful lessons for Christians of any age emerge.
What do you find when reading the Gospels for the first time? What's the historical basis behind it all? How do you deal with all the miracles? We consider ways to think about both what Jesus said and what he did, and how faith might develop from reading the Gospels.
What or where is heaven? We explore what "heaven" meant to the Biblical writers, concluding that it's much less about a physical location and much more about the presence of God and a relationship that ordinary people (on earth) can have with him through Jesus.
In this episode Dan chats with Professor Anna Whittaker about her expertise and how it relates to the Bible. There is plenty to learn from Jesus about stress and anxiety. He knows from experience of course, because he endured acute times of stress himself.
We invited Tom Gaston back onto the show to answer your questions on Unitarianism and the Trinity. The writer and editor of ‘One God, the Father, a defence of Biblical Monotheism’ gives us his thoughts on the opening of John 1, the influence of Justin Martyr, the virgin birth and why any of this matter should matter to Christians.
In chapters 2 and 3 we discover the difficulties facing some of the early church communities and it all seems quite familiar and down to earth. But suddenly with chapter 4 the perspective changes with a view of a throne in heaven. How can the church's down-to-earth experience and the view from heaven come together?
The first book of the New Testament is packed full of insight about Jesus, God, the problem with humanity and God's kingdom that Jesus announced. If you want to understand what the Bible and Christianity is really about, you can't go wrong starting with the gospel of Matthew.
There's so much that could be said about the record of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection so we focus this discussion on just one phrase that Jesus said on the cross. It's a heart wrenching moment, but what we think he meant is guided by who we think Jesus is. We explore the narrative, the Psalm in the background and end up with the reflections of the Apostle Paul and the conclusion of Matthew's gospel with the glory of the resurrection.
Who is Jesus? This gets to the heart of the gospel, so we think about what it means for Jesus to be Son of Man, Son of God, Son of David and Christ.
John's gospel climaxes when a series of people come to belief in Jesus. What’s fascinating is the different stages of belief that each individual represents - from scepticism to an embracing conviction and everything in between.