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Writing

Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.

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Revelation

The Seven Thunders, An Interpretive Suggestion

And He cried out with a loud voice, as when a lion roars; and when He had cried out, the seven thunders spoke their voices (Revelation 10:3). In Revelation 10 John sees Jesus come down to him from heaven with a little book in His hand. Jesus cries out with…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994
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Biblical Chronology

Genesis 5 & 11: Chronological-Theological Reflections

The numbers found in Genesis 5 & 11 display characteristics that indicate a complex and meticulous symbolic schematization operating at several levels. Because these numbers are so potent symbolically, unbelieving scholars have universally (as far as I know) treated them as artificial. Believers take them literally, but believers must also…

by James B. JordanOctober 7, 1994
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Revelation

The Kings From the East

And the sixth angel poured out his bowl upon the great river, the Euphrates; and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings from the east [sunrising]. (Revelation 16:12) The kings from the east in Revelation 16:12 are generally assumed to be enemies of…

by James B. JordanSeptember 10, 1994
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Biblical Studies

Covenants and Dates

During my brief sojourn as a pastor during the 1980s, I had several occasions to be involved in settling disputes between men in the congregation I served. A typical dispute went like this: Two men formed a company to do business. After a few years, the business went sour, and…

by James B. JordanSeptember 10, 1994
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Revelation

The Grape Harvest of Revelation 14:17-20

The two harvests of Revelation 14:14-20, of grain and of grapes, are most often understood as symbolic of God’s judgment against the wicked, or against Babylon, as amplified in chapters 16 & 17. Some commentators, however, notice that the gospels speak of the grain harvest as a reaping of the…

by James B. JordanAugust 10, 1994
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Deuteronomy

The Chronology of the Pentateuch (Part 6)

(Conclusion of Chapter 16 in the previous Biblical Chronology Article) Month 3, 2513 According to Leviticus 23:15-16, Pentecost was to be observed 50 days after the sabbath after Passover, or 49 days after the Feast of First Fruits. I initially based my reflections on the Jewish tradition that the Law…

by James B. JordanAugust 10, 1994

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Calvin and the fourfold

On the Psalms, Calvin wrote: “although David speak of himself in this Psalme: yit he speaketh not as a common person, but as one that beareth the person of Christ, bicause he was the universall pattern of the whole Churche: and the same is a thing worth the marking, too…

April 10, 2008

Totus Christus

Samuel Mather wrote that “types relate not only to the Person of Christ; but to his Benefits, and to all Gospel Truths and Mysteries, even to all New Testament Dispensations.” To speak of “types of Christ” is thus not merely to speak of types fulfilled in Jesus, but types that…

April 10, 2008

Single sense

William Perkins on the one sense of Scripture, referring specifically to Galatians 4: “There is but one full and intire sense of every place of scripture, and that is also the literal sense . . . . To make many senses of scripture is to overturn all sense, and to…

April 10, 2008
History

Ren and Ref

Lewalski’s book makes clear just how much the Reformation owed to the Renaissance. The Renaissance was, among many other things, rhetoric’s reaction to centuries of dialetical hegemony, and Lewalski shows in great detail that in England at least Protestant fully shared the Renaissance obsession with rhetoric.

April 10, 2008

Puritan sacramental hermeneutics

William Perkins on figures of speech: “There is a certaine agreement and proportion of the externall things with the internall, and of the actions of one with the actions of the other: wherby it commeth to passe, that the signes, as it were certaine visible words incurring into the externall…

April 10, 2008

Typology and history

I have found Thomas’s explanation of the quadriga convincing. He argues that the multiple spiritual senses are not “located” in the words but in the things that the words name. One might say that for Thomas the words have a single, namely literal, sense; but the things they name are…

April 10, 2008

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