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Nov 15, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Benjamin L. Gladd
According to a recent , roughly 73 percent of adults in the United States believe in heaven. Drilling down further, about 60 percent believe the afterlife entails a future free of suffering where we’ll have “perfectly healthy bodies.” But I suspect the majority have thought little about what they’ll do in these bodies for all eternity. This article considers what activities the church will perform for eternity as described in Revelation 22.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | Benjamin L. Gladd
The implications of Scripture’s teaching on this subject are immense. We will not spend eternity floating on clouds. We’ll enjoy something far better: life in the new earth ensconced in God’s glory. We’ll finally see him face to face. On March 19, 2021, my father passed away. He was larger than life. Nobody who met him ever forgot him. And since his passing, I’ve thought more deeply about death and the afterlife.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Benjamin L. Gladd
On March 19, 2021, my father passed away. He was larger than life. Nobody who met him ever forgot him. And since his passing, I’ve thought more deeply about death and the afterlife. One pervasive misconception is that we’ll spend eternity in heaven, gathered around God’s throne with the angels. Of course, this is a present reality—deceased saints are indeed worshiping God in heaven. Scripture is clear on this point (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23; Rev. 6:9–10).
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Sep 20, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | Benjamin L. Gladd
Once we’ve detected the Old Testament quotation or allusion and explored the Old Testament background, now we must take a step back and ask the million-dollar question: How is the apostle using the Old Testament? New Testament writers don’t interpret and apply the Old Testament the same way each time. Most contemporary readers assume the apostles only use the Old Testament along an axis of promise and fulfillment.
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Sep 7, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Benjamin L. Gladd
I don’t remember the first time I heard the words “biblical theology.” I do, though, remember the first time hearing a professor trace a theme through the Scriptures and connect it to Christ and the church. I was mesmerized. I grew up in a dispensational environment, so it wasn’t natural for me to read the Bible as a whole, to read the Old Testament in view of Christ and his work. Perhaps this is why I’m so passionate about reading the two Testaments in concert.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Brian Tabb |Benjamin L. Gladd
The new August 2024 issue of Themelios has 263 pages of editorials, articles, and book reviews. It is freely available in three formats: (1) PDF, (2) web version, and (3) Logos Bible Software. Drawing on his years of experience as Themelios’s editor, Tabb explains in detail what a quality theological essay involves. An article must be aligned with the journal’s aims and marked by fidelity, freshness, fitness, focus, rigor, readability, and relevance.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | Benjamin L. Gladd
The Christian life is marked by trust in God and his promises. At our conversion, we trust God’s promise to deliver us from our sin on account of Christ’s work. But don’t we continue to trust those same promises throughout our lives? Every morning, we must remind ourselves of God’s faithfulness in the gospel. Christ lived, died, rose, and ascended to the heavenly throne for us. There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep.
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Aug 16, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Benjamin L. Gladd
There’s nothing better than a good night’s sleep. When my wife and I had our first kid, Judah, 14 years ago, we prized sleep above all else. One of us napped while the other took care of the baby. We’ve never been so tired in our lives. In his narrative account of the stilling of the storm, Mark tells his readers that Jesus was “asleep on the cushion” (Mark 4:38). Why mention that Jesus was sleeping? Was he exhausted from a hard day’s work?
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Aug 12, 2024 | 
theaquilareport.com | Benjamin L. Gladd
The Gospel writers include only the most pertinent information in their narratives. They don’t give us every historical detail at their disposal. For example, here in Mark 16:5, only one angel is found in the tomb, whereas Luke 24:4 says there were two. Is this a contradiction? No, Mark doesn’t claim there was only one angel. He simply aims his spotlight on the one angel and how that angel functions in the scene. The evangelists only included details that hold interpretive value.
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Aug 9, 2024 | 
thegospelcoalition.org | Robert Cheong |Tim Keller |Chris Castaldo |Benjamin L. Gladd
Every pastor encounters challenges—gaps between God’s design and his own ministry reality. Our programs and discipleship efforts produce less fruit than we want (ministry gaps). Our people struggle to love and care for one another as they ought (community gaps). We struggle to find and equip the people necessary to do the work of the ministry (leadership gaps).
