The Blue Collar Scholar

Divorce is not ideal. It can even be described as an evil. That does NOT mean that those who have been touched by divorce are evil, defiled, unredeemable, yada, yada, yada. This episode begins to survey the Biblical texts on divorce, talking about what divorce is, what it is not, when it is allowable, etc.

This episode starts a new Sunday School series about marriage. This series was done via Facebook Live in the summer of 2020 while we were in lockdown.

This episode concludes our Sunday School series on the controversial topic of the End Times. This lesson talks about the Millennial Kingdom, Judgment Day, and New Heavens & New Earth. Soli Deo Gloria!

In this episode, we talk about some of the chapters of Revelation that appear to be out of chronological order. Then we look at the 3rd set of 7 judgments called the Vials of God's Wrath. Following that, this episode discusses the physical return of Christ, Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, the Final Rebellion of Satan, and Judgment Day.

The middle chapters of the Book of Revelation mirror the early chapters of Exodus, showing an active God who uses a series of judgements to achieve His aims. These chapters describe events that ought to be interpreted literally, as well as events that ought to be interpreted figuratively. This Sunday School lessons quickly surveys the first 14 of the judgements in the Book of Revelation, which the text refers to as seven seals and seven trumpets.

The figure that evangelical Christians know as "the Antichrist" is an archetypal figure that informs many of the great villains in fiction, especially Nicolae Carpathia in the Left Behind novels. However, the Book of Revelation does not even refer to this person as the Antichrist, preferring to refer to him as "the Beast." In this episode, we will take a brief look at what the Bible says about this person, and consider whether this is a person who has already come in history or who is still yet to come.

After discussing various interpretations of the End Times, this series will continue in a basic premillennial understanding of eschatology. The central event - or series of events - to this interpretation of the End Times is the Tribulation, a 7 year period of hardship and judgement on the Earth that precedes the physical return of Christ. Just a reminder to hold your End Times theology loosely. We are living before these events and so there is an incredibly wide range of acceptable, orthodox positions one can hold. This episode opens with a tribute to Ravi Zacharias, who had recently died in...

The Rapture is almost certainly the least-agreed-upon topic in eschatology (the study of the End Times). Men and women who are dedicated to studying Scripture and are careful to let the Scriptures dictate doctrine (and not the other way around) will disagree vehemently about the Rapture. So, in this episode, we will look into the Scriptures that premillennial dispensationalists use to form the doctrine of the secret, pre-Tribulation Rapture. ... Don't worry, we will define our terms.

This episode opens with a nice little time capsule: a discussion about when and how to reopen after quarantine in 2020, a process that ended up happening three times as we had to thrice go into quarantine during surges of Covid. The main thrust of this episode is a frank discussion of the 4 different "schools" or interpretations of eschatology (i.e., the study of the End Times). Those interpretations are Premillennialism (both historic premillennialism & premillennial dispensationalism), Postmillennialism, Amillennialism, & Preterism.

After the completion of our church's Church History series, we began a series on the End Times. This episode of the podcast is the introductory lecture of that series. There are major themes that Revelation, the prophetic books of the Old Testament, and other New Testament books teach us. These themes are important to establish before one digs in to deeper the details of eschatology.