TheCross Blog

The Branch The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. (Jeremiah 23:5). Listen, O high priest Joshua and your associates seated before you, who are men symbolic of things to come: I am going to bring my servant, the Branch . (Zech 3:8) Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the LORD. (Zech 6:12) In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. (Isaiah 4:2) King, Servant, Man, Lord These four passages all speak of a coming Messiah and while each refers to Him as “The Branch” they all portray Him in a different way. The Hebrew word translated branch is “tsemach”, which comes from a root (no pun intended) meaning “to spring up.” In Isaiah 11:1-2 a different word, netzer, is used to c...

The Wrath Of God hey called to the mountains and the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?” ( Rev. 6:16-17 ).   I saw in heaven another great and marvelous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed ( Rev. 15:1 ) for 20 centuries various forms of the phrase “Wrath of God” brought one image to mind and that was the period of end times judgments that immediately precede the 2nd Coming. But lately it has begun to mean different things to different people. At the same time phrases like the Wrath of the Lamb, the Wrath of Man, and the Wrath of Satan have also crept into the discussion. In addition, some have begun speaking of a period of judgment they call the Wrath of God which is not mentioned in the Bible. They say it comes right after the 2nd Coming. Others have even said the W...

The Sermon On The Mount (Conclusion)  The final installment of our three part study covers Matthew 7 , the conclusion of the Lord’s “Sermon on the Mount.”   Judging Others “Do not judge, or you too will be judged.  For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye ( Matt. 7:1-5 ) . This passage is about whether we as individual believers have the right to inspect the life of another believer using standards we our selves don’t meet to render a judgment about him or her. We may not commit the same sins as another...

Rapture? Which Rapture? Among Christians who believe there will be a rapture of the Church, the great majority of us are convinced it will precede the end times judgments. This position is commonly called the pre-tribulation rapture. Those who reject the pre-trib view are either mid-tribulation, post tribulation or pre-wrath rapture advocates. In this study we’ll review these rapture positions. The Mid Tribulation Rapture These believers place the rapture at the end of the trumpet judgments, just before the beginning of the Great Tribulation. Their justification for doing so comes from equating the seventh trumpet of Rev. 11:15 with the last trump from Paul’s description of the rapture in 1 Cor. 15:51-53 . Also the mid-trib view does not agree that the Seal and Trumpet judgments are manifestations of divine wrath, which in their view consists only the Bowl judgments.  For them, that makes the Bowls the time of wrath the Bible says we are not appointed to suffer...

The Sermon On The Mount,Continue  In our study of Matt. 5:21-48 ( Be Perfect, Therefore, As Your Heavenly Father Is Perfect ) I showed why I believe that Jesus, while not specifically addressing the Pharisees, certainly had them in mind when He explained what it would take to earn admittance into the Kingdom in one’s own strength. But I would remind us that the Pharisees are not all dead yet. There are many in the Church today who teach that unless we add our own efforts to the salvation equation, either in earning it or maintaining it, we’ll be in for a big shock when we stand before the Lord, seeking entrance into His Kingdom. Matt. 5:21-48 can as easily be intended for people who teach a works based approach to eternal life now, as it was for those who taught obedience to the Law in the Lord’s time. I say that because any works we do in an attempt to supplement what Jesus did for us would have to meet the same standards as those the Lord outlined for the P...

What Does The Bible Say? The Sabbath Year (Shemitah) The weekly Sabbath is one of the foundations of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, often called the five books of Moses). The Israelites were commanded to rest from their labors on the seventh day of the week, because in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the seventh day and made it holy ( Exodus 20:11 ). The Torah also calls for the land of Israel to rest one year in every seven in a Sabbath for the land ( Exod. 23:10-11; Lev. 25:1-7 ). In a Sabbath year (known in Jewish tradition as a “shemitah”) farmers were not to plant seed, prune their vines or trees, or harvest their crops. For that year the land became public property, and anyone could take whatever grew by itself according to their needs. In order to prevent the people who worked the land from suffering undue hardship during the shemi...