Faith & the Word
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Questions from the Threads

What people asked on Facebook in the autumn of 2026, grouped by subject, with the short answer and the page that carries the long one

Every question here was asked by a real person, on Facebook or in a private message, between late September and early October of 2026. The names are gone and the questions are kept, because the same questions come back. Each answer was checked against the King James text and against the early church before it was posted, and where we conceded a point or hold one loosely, the row says so. The short answer is the one given on the thread; the page under it carries the long one. This is the running record, and it will grow.

The rapture and the tribulation

Someone asked whether "keep thee from the hour of temptation" (Revelation 3:10) means the church is removed, and how anyone is kept "out of" an hour while in it.
That verb and preposition occur together only twice, both from John, and the other place rules removal out: "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John 17:15). Peter uses the same "out of" for Lot, still in Sodom until morning (2 Peter 2:7-9); the hour is aimed at those who "dwell upon the earth," the phrase Revelation uses for the unbelieving world (Revelation 13:8). Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether Revelation 3:10 was for Philadelphia only, for its angel only, or for Israel.
If for Philadelphia alone, the pre-tribulation case built on it goes too; but every letter ends "unto the churches" (Revelation 3:13), and this one went to a Gentile church in Asia. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether "came out of great tribulation" (Revelation 7:14) means removal, and whether chapter 7 has two peoples.
The verb is "come," a present participle, a stream still arriving; they came through, most by dying. Hearing Israel and seeing the nations is the pattern of hearing a Lion and seeing a Lamb (Revelation 5:5-6); careful readers divide the two, and we say so. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether "escape all these things" (Luke 21:36) is the rapture.
The chapter speaks to people who will be there, the word for escape is Paul's basket at Damascus (2 Corinthians 11:33), and the snare is the day catching people asleep (1 Thessalonians 5:4). Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether "meet the Lord in the air" means we leave with Him, and where the marriage supper is.
In all three New Testament uses of "meet," the party goes out and comes back in with the one met (Matthew 25:6; Acts 28:15): a welcome, not a departure. On the supper we admitted a gap; Scripture does not give the schedule. Eschatology
Someone asked whether the meeting "in the air" is in heaven.
The word is aēr, the lower sky, the word of "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2), not ouranos. Answered on the thread; not yet a page
Someone posted two trumpets and a two-column chart of verses; someone said an any-moment return requires pre-tribulation.
The same words sit on both sides of the chart; the "last trump" has none after it (1 Corinthians 15:52); and Paul puts the gathering after the man of sin is revealed (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3). Watch, but things must come first. Conceded that parousia is an ordinary word. Eschatology; The Timeline
Someone said the church is not appointed to wrath, that Noah, Lot and Egypt are patterns of removal, and that "one taken, one left" takes the church.
Tribulation is not wrath; the plagues fell on the unsealed while Goshen was spared (Exodus 9:26). Noah was on the water in the middle of it, Lot was in Sodom until "the same day," Israel left "the selfsame day" after the tenth plague (Exodus 12:51), and in each story the wicked are the ones taken (Luke 17:37). Is the Rapture in the Bible?; Taken or Left
Someone asked who the elect of Matthew 24 are, whether "tribulation saints" differ from the church, and why "church" is absent from Revelation 4 to 21.
The same people the rest of the New Testament calls elect and saints: believers (Colossians 3:12; Revelation 14:12). "Church" is absent from chapters 19 to 21 too; if absence means absence, the church is missing from heaven. We conceded "no saints" was overstated. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether the "falling away" (2 Thessalonians 2:3) is the church departing, and whether John 14:2-3 takes us to heaven.
The noun both times means departing from teaching (Acts 21:21). "Mansions" and "abode" are one word in John, and the other use is "make our abode with him" (John 14:23); the city comes down. Is the Rapture in the Bible?; Heaven
Someone asked who the restrainer is, and whether the church is in the tribulation if believers are the restraint.
Paul does not name him (2 Thessalonians 2:5-7); Chrysostom read Rome. Yes, the saints are there when the man of sin makes war (Revelation 13:7). 2 Thessalonians 2
Someone asked, in an eschatology group, whether only the overcomers are taken.
"Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5:5). Jesus puts every believer's resurrection "at the last day" four times in one chapter (John 6:40), and the first resurrection is made of people who went through the beast's time (Revelation 20:4). Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether "rapture" means a secret snatching, like a thief.
The Latin word translates harpazō, used of "pluck them out of my hand" (John 10:28) and of Philip (Acts 8:39). The day comes as a thief to the world, not to brethren who watch. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked whether the fall feasts give the schedule.
The pattern is granted; the schedule is not in the text, and the shadow is not the body (Colossians 2:17). Held with an open hand. The Feasts
Someone said post-tribulation is a warning sign because of who holds it; someone said pre-tribulation believers preach another gospel; someone asked why cite Irenaeus, who was wrong about so much.
The Didache, Irenaeus, Augustine, Luther, Calvin and Wesley have the church going through, and no church taught pre-tribulation before the 1830s; we softened our own absolutes to that. Pre-tribulation believers hold the same creed and are wrong about a date, not the gospel (Romans 14:4). Irenaeus's errors are granted; he is the earliest witness to what was received. Is the Rapture in the Bible?; Irenaeus
Someone laid out 1 Enoch beside Jude and asked what it says about the end.
Jude quotes Enoch as prophecy (Jude 14-15), and the book blesses the elect "who will be living in the day of tribulation," kept in it. "Ten thousands of his saints" is the Bible's phrase for the angels who come with Him (Deuteronomy 33:2). The Book of Enoch
Someone asked who is gathered at Matthew 24:31 if the church is already with Him, and where the glorified saints are mentioned as coming with Jesus.
Agreed: the elect gathered are believers, "by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him" (2 Thessalonians 2:1). The saints are in the passage: the departed come with Him (1 Thessalonians 4:14), the dead rise, the living are caught up to meet Him (4:16-17), and "ye also appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4), one trumpet. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone asked how God keeps a person from His wrath on earth without removing him from the earth.
The way He always has: by a line, not a lift. Goshen in every plague, "only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail" (Exodus 9:26); Noah delivered out of the flood by floating on it (2 Peter 2:9); the sealed spared by the locusts (Revelation 9:4); the first vial on the marked only (16:2). The beast's sword is not God's wrath. Is the Rapture in the Bible?
Someone said Revelation 4:1 is the rapture, the church is absent after chapter 3, and the first seal opens only after the church is gone.
John went up "in the spirit" (Revelation 4:2) and stayed on Patmos; the saints are on earth under the beast in 13:7, 13:10, 14:12, 17:6. Paul gives the order: "that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed" (2 Thessalonians 2:3), with "our gathering together unto him" as the subject (2:1). The "us" of 5:9 is a divided reading. Is the Rapture in the Bible?

Daniel 9 and the seventieth week

Someone asked where the Bible teaches a seven-year tribulation.
One verse, Daniel 9:27; Revelation gives three-and-a-half-year spans and never adds two together. The "he" who confirms the covenant is the Messiah of verse 26, and Hebrews says what His one offering did to the sacrifices (Daniel 9:26-27; Hebrews 10:14). Daniel and Revelation
Someone said the clock stopped at the sixty-ninth week; someone said foreshortening, as in Isaiah 61 at Nazareth, allows a gap; someone said we were reinterpreting.
The count to Messiah is granted; the stopped clock is the one added move. Foreshortening is granted for landscapes (Luke 4:19-20), but a count with two thousand years inside it is not a count, and Jesus placed the abomination in that generation (Matthew 24:34). Every reader interprets; the question is who added seven years. Daniel and Revelation
Someone said the seventieth week with a rebuilt temple is the foundation of the whole system; someone asked about Daniel 11:31.
Agreed that the temple is the real difference: on the no-gap reading no third temple is needed, because the sacrifices were ended (Hebrews 10:12). 1 Maccabees dates the abomination to December 167 BC, and the rededication is the Hanukkah of John 10:22. Daniel and Revelation; The Temple
A historical premillennialist said the no-gap reading still has a gap, since Jesus died in the midst of the week and the temple fell forty years later; and asked about Tertullian.
Conceded that premillennialism is the oldest view and not ruled out here. The forty years are not a hole in the count: verse 26 places the destruction after the cutting off and outside the numbered weeks, "unto the end of the war desolations are determined" (Daniel 9:26), a sentence passed with its execution left open; the week itself runs to the cross (9:27). Tertullian held both the earthly kingdom and the straight count, so they are two questions. Hippolytus is the oldest to split the week. Daniel and Revelation

Olivet, "this generation," and AD 70

Someone said "this generation shall not pass" is a failed prophecy; someone else said it must be future.
Neither: the temple, the siege, the captivity and the timing all came in AD 70, as Josephus records; the return is still ahead (Matthew 24:34; Luke 21:20-24). We had overstated Chrysostom, who read "this generation" as the faithful, and corrected it. Matthew 24
Someone said the Gospels were written after AD 70, so the prophecy came after the event.
A backdated prophecy is not a failed one; the two objections cancel. Acts ends with Paul alive and silent on AD 62, 64 and 70 (Acts 28:30); the early dating from that silence is a minority view, and we say so. The Witnesses
Someone said the lightning and darkened sun of Matthew 24:27-29 were AD 70 too, and asked how far we go.
Granted for verses 23 to 29; Isaiah used the same sun and stars for Babylon (Isaiah 13:10). But verse 30 with Acts 1:11 is seen by every eye, and verse 36 turns to "that day and hour." We conceded the trumpet of verse 31 can be read as the gospel going out; Chrysostom and the Didache read it as the resurrection. Matthew 24
Someone said "such as was not since the beginning of the world" must mean the worst event in history.
Prophetic superlative: Ezekiel 5:9 says the same of a siege that came, and Hezekiah and Josiah are each "none like him" (Ezekiel 5:9; 2 Kings 18:5). Matthew 24
Someone held that the return itself is behind us and that all will be saved.
Much was fulfilled then, but Paul names "the resurrection is past" as an error (2 Timothy 2:18), death is still the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), and each "all" verse is answered by its next verse. Eschatology; Hell
Someone said the temple is the believer and the man of sin is in each of us; someone said he is the papacy; someone said our timeline is Scofield's.
The temple is people (1 Corinthians 3:16), but one man revealed and ended at the coming is not a fifteen-hundred-year line of men (2 Thessalonians 2:8). The timeline needs no rebuilt temple, since there is no more offering for sin (Hebrews 10:18); Israel's salvation runs across the church age (Romans 11:23-26). The Temple; The Timeline
Someone asked when John saw Revelation.
Both datings in their own words: Irenaeus quoted whole, Revelation 17:10 counted. When John Saw It

The first resurrection and the millennium

Someone asked what happens at the first resurrection.
Certain: the second death has no power over those in it, the order is Christ and then His at His coming, and all are raised (Revelation 20:6; 1 Corinthians 15:23). Three readings surveyed, bodily (Papias, Justin, Irenaeus), the new birth (Augustine, Calvin), staged (since the 1800s); no verdict. The Resurrection; Last Things
Someone said "the rest of the dead" are the saved majority; someone asked about the first death and the second.
Verse 6 says the second death has no power on those in the first resurrection, so it has a claim on the rest; the rest are the lost. Paul has one group at one time, "they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23). The Resurrection; Hell
Someone said a literal kingdom requires a pre-tribulation rapture; someone asked about 2 Peter 3:8 and a seventh-millennium rest.
Irenaeus held a literal reign and the church going through. The thousand-year day has old company, but the next verse explains the delay as patience (2 Peter 3:9), and the rest is entered now (Hebrews 4:9-10). Eschatology; Rest

Salvation: saved and kept

Someone posted that no amount of bad deeds can make Christ unrighteous, so the believer's record is settled whatever he does.
The true half is kept; the question is whether a man living in bad deeds is in Christ at all, because abiding is a place you stay (1 John 3:6-7; John 15:6). Our own Justification page was reworded after this thread. Hyper-Grace; Justification
Someone asked whether a believer can lose salvation, and how "pluck them out of my hand" fits with "fall into the hands of the living God."
Both are His hands: no thief can take a sheep from the one (John 10:28), and a sheep can still walk out of it on its own feet into the other (Hebrews 10:31). The third text settles who the warning is for: "Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell" is said to "my friends" (Luke 12:4-5). No Man Plucks Them; The Three Tenses of Salvation
Someone said Hebrews 3:14 is only about missing a blessing, as Moses missed the land and was still saved.
Granted: Moses, Aaron and Miriam died outside the land and are in heaven. But Hebrews names the falling-away group as the generation under the oath, not Moses (Hebrews 3:17-19), and later sets "draw back unto perdition" (Hebrews 10:39) against the saving of the soul. In the second round we granted that God calls Moses's act unbelief (Numbers 20:12), but the oath fell on the numbered murmurers and the Levites were not numbered (Numbers 14:29; 1:47); Hebrews calls Moses faithful in the same chapter (Hebrews 3:5); and "departing" in 3:12 has the living God as its object and is the verb of Luke 8:13 and 1 Timothy 4:1. The Warning and the Way Home
Someone posted that you are valued by God; someone asked whether God gives up on a person.
"All these things worketh God oftentimes with man" (Job 33:29-30), and the Hebrew behind "oftentimes" is twice, three times. Jesus told it as a fig tree given a fourth year with the ground dug and fed (Luke 13:6-9); the tree that still bears nothing is cut down. The Vine
Someone said God cannot forgive without being asked, so either He breaks His rule or no one is forgiven first.
A third door: He forgives first, from the cross and in the prodigal's father, and will not force the receiving (Luke 23:34; Luke 15:20). Forgiveness
Someone asked whether repentance and the new birth are the same thing, and whether faith alone survives James 2.
Repentance is our turn, the new birth is God's act (John 1:13). Justified by faith alone, but the faith that justifies is never alone (James 2:17). Repentance; Faith Is a Verb
Someone said the overcomers are a class above ordinary believers; someone asked whether few are saved; someone joked that six churches gave six answers.
Every believer overcomes by John's definition (1 John 5:4-5). Jesus turned "how many" into "whether you" (Luke 13:23-24). The six churches agree on the centre first; put the notebook down and read John. The Warning and the Way Home; Salvation
Someone asked, with a chart, whether "servants" and "unprofitable servants" mark a lower rank of believer.
Servants are every believer, from the chart's own verses (Galatians 3:26). "Unprofitable" is said of a servant only twice: the disciples of themselves, and the master of the one who buried the talent (Luke 17:10; Matthew 25:30). Who says it is the difference. Servants and Chosen
Someone asked what the penalty is in penal substitution, since Christians are still beaten, martyred, and Jesus is not in hell.
Death, the sentence named on the first page (Genesis 2:17; Romans 6:23), which He tasted "for every man" (Hebrews 2:9). Believers still die but not as sentence: "the second death hath no power" (Revelation 20:6); Athanasius, "no longer now do we die as subject to condemnation." Substitution and participation together (2 Corinthians 5:14); the martyrs share His sufferings, not His propitiation (1 John 2:2). What Did the Cross Do?
"They went out from us, but they were not of us" was used to say that anyone who leaves the faith never believed.
John wrote it of the antichrists who denied the Son (1 John 2:19, 22), not as a rule for every departure. Beside it stand the warnings addressed to believers: "If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered" (John 15:6); "we are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end" (Hebrews 3:14); and Peter on those who "have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord" and "are again entangled therein" (2 Peter 2:20). The ten virgins were invited guests with lamps, and the door was shut (Matthew 25:12). The early church read the warnings as real; see Every Warning, Gathered.

Calvinism, free will, and the Fathers

Someone said "draw" in John 6:44 is irresistible, with a card offering "all who give themselves to me will come to me" as the only alternative.
That sentence is not in the Bible; nobody on our side holds it. The verb of 6:44 is the verb of "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32); the drawing is to all and not all come. Seventeen verses after "the election of grace," the elect Gentile can be cut off (Romans 11:20-22). Free Will
Someone said anyone sound in Scripture and logic reaches Calvin's conclusion, and the Fathers would have held it.
Then Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Tertullian and Chrysostom were unsound, since each taught that grace does not override the will; Calvin himself treats Augustine as the exception. Irenaeus reads Matthew 23:37 of fallen Jerusalem and says the refusal was theirs. Early is not the same as sound, which we granted. The Road Home; Free Will
Someone asked, in a soteriology group, whether non-Calvinists believe the will is constrained at all.
Yes, three ways: by the fall, free to want and not free to reach (Romans 7:18); by sin (John 8:34); by distance, no man comes undrawn (John 6:44). Grace frees the will rather than overriding it, and the freed will still answers, both ways (Matthew 23:37). Free Will
Someone posted a preacher's line that non-Christians cannot believe and no one finds God by reason.
Granted that nobody reasons his way into the new birth (John 16:8). But Paul's habit was to reason and persuade (Acts 17:2), and the unbeliever is "without excuse" (Romans 1:20). The quote says "cannot"; Jesus said "ye will not come to me, that ye might have life" (John 5:40). Faith Is a Verb
Someone answered from Romans 8:5-8 that faith and repentance are the evidence of the new birth, not its cause, and that the order is logical, not chronological.
Romans 8:7-8 granted whole; nobody says a dead man makes himself alive. But the new-birth chapter goes on: "as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John 3:14-15); the Spirit is received "by the hearing of faith" (Galatians 3:2); Lydia's heart was opened "that she attended unto the things which were spoken" (Acts 16:14). The Spirit works through the word that is reasoned, not around it. If the order is not chronological, what is lost by saying it John's way? Which Comes First
Someone asked whose purpose "according to his purpose" is in Romans 8:28, since "his" is supplied.
Chrysostom read it as including the called one's purpose, Augustine as God's alone. We conceded on the thread that every other "according to purpose" in Paul is God's (Ephesians 1:11). Predestination and Free Will
Someone quoted Sproul, that no one in hell was treated unjustly; someone said being chosen settles everything; someone asked whether life comes before faith or through it.
Granted on justice; the question is what God wants: "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live" (Ezekiel 33:11). Judas was chosen and lost (John 6:70). John's order is believing, that ye might have life (John 20:31). Predestination and Free Will; Which Comes First
Someone said Deuteronomy 30 proves ability, "it is up to us."
Granted against a God who commands the impossible; but verse 6 has God circumcising the heart first, and Paul reads the near word as Christ (Deuteronomy 30:6; Romans 10:8). Free Will
Someone said Calvinists worship another god and teach that dead infants are lost; someone said "I am a Calvinist"; someone said Calvinism and Arminianism are cousins with a shared flaw.
Same creed, and Dort itself says the death of Christ is sufficient for the whole world; most Calvinists do not teach infants lost. Calvin did not write TULIP; Dort is 1619, the acronym twentieth century, and both ditches are ones Paul dug (1 Corinthians 1:12-13). Cousins, agreed; we asked what the shared flaw is. The secret things belong to the Lord (Deuteronomy 29:29). The Label and the Man; TULIP
Someone set Calvin's decree of reprobation (Institutes 3.21.5) beside 1 Timothy 2:4, 2 Peter 3:9 and Romans read past chapter 9.
Agreed, and the quotation is accurate. God "will have all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2:4); Romans 9 opens in grief for Israel (Romans 9:3) and chapter 11 has branches cut off for unbelief and grafted back on belief (Romans 11:20-23), which is not a fixed destiny. Fairness: Dort says Christ's death is sufficient for the whole world, and Chrysostom read Romans 9 of Israel. Predestination and Free Will
Someone argued that sovereignty is who God is, not "determining everything that happens," from the word dynastēs.
Agreed, with the word study tightened: the King James never says "sovereign"; dynastēs is said of God once, "the blessed and only Potentate" (1 Timothy 6:15); the modern "Sovereign LORD" is Adonai Yahweh, "the Lord GOD," about three hundred times; the all-ruling word is pantokratōr, "Almighty." "He hath done whatsoever he hath pleased" (Psalm 115:3) and "rejected the counsel of God against themselves" (Luke 7:30) stand in the same Bible. Free Will
Someone said omniscience settles it: since God knew before creating who would be saved, Calvin's "created for one or other of these ends" cannot be denied.
Knowing is not creating-for; Calvin himself refused to rest election on foreknowledge. Scripture puts knowing first and the predestining to Christ's image (Romans 8:29; 1 Peter 1:2); God knows what would happen as well as what will (Keilah, 1 Samuel 23:12; Tyre and Sidon, Matthew 11:21), and "why will ye die?" is not asked of men made for dying (Ezekiel 33:11). Predestination and Free Will

The resurrection as history

Someone said Jesus wrote nothing and the Gospel writers were unknown Greeks who never met Him.
Socrates wrote nothing either. Luke states his method, eyewitness sources (Luke 1:2); Papias has Mark as Peter's interpreter; Irenaeus names all four by 180; no manuscript carries another name. The Witnesses
Someone said the historians mention Jesus but no resurrection, that Rome crucified only insurrectionists, and that the one crucified skeleton we have shows the Gospels wrong on method.
Conceded, agreed, and granted. The historians give the man, the execution and the movement; the claim comes from the witnesses, earliest in the creed Paul received (1 Corinthians 15:3-6). The sign on the cross says He died as a pretender to a throne (Mark 15:26). One skeleton is one method; Seneca says Rome crucified in several ways. The Resurrection; Josephus
Someone said Paul never visited the tomb or gave Agrippa its location, and the Gospels came later, so they could claim anything.
Paul went to Jerusalem to question Peter and James (Galatians 1:18-19); a Pharisee's "buried, rose" means an empty grave; the other side said "stolen," never "here is the body" (Matthew 28:13). Agrippa "knoweth of these things" (Acts 26:26). The Resurrection
Someone proposed that the witnesses were bribed; someone else that the serious rival is visions, not fraud.
The bribe story is already in the record, on the other side, and concedes the empty tomb; bribes do not buy martyrdoms. On visions we conceded that the verb covers them; what discriminates is that Paul closes the list, "last of all" (1 Corinthians 15:8), while his visions continued, and the first readers chose "risen" over ghost or angel. The Resurrection; The Resurrection Body
Someone said a historian can never conclude a miracle; someone asked what would convince us another god was real; someone asked for empirical evidence.
A method that rules out the answer before looking is not neutral. The standard for any god is the one Christianity submits to: a public, checkable act, recorded while the witnesses were alive to be asked (1 Corinthians 15:6). No laboratory result was promised, and yes, we could be wrong: "if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:17). Not Blind; The Witnesses
Someone said Christianity means believing without evidence, that bronze-age flat-earthers wrote the Bible, that Isaiah 53 was written to fit, and that coincidences prove nothing.
The Bible asks for examined testimony: "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21). Iron Age, Greek and Roman, and the flat-earth story comes from an 1828 novel. The Great Isaiah Scroll predates the church. Coincidences prove nothing, agreed; the case rests on the empty tomb. Not Blind; Prophecy Laid Out
Someone posted Bart Ehrman's line that no first-century Greek or Roman historian, inscription or letter mentions Jesus.
The line is from his book Did Jesus Exist?, written to argue that He did. The sentence is worded to exclude Josephus (Jewish), the apostles (followers) and Paul's letters, which carry a creed Paul "received" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4) and his fifteen days with Peter and "James the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:18-19). Tacitus and Pliny follow; Pilate himself has one inscription. The Witnesses
Someone asked for an argument for Christianity that other religions cannot use.
Two. It names what would falsify it: "if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain" (1 Corinthians 15:17), staked on a tomb in a known city and five hundred living witnesses (15:6). And its salvation cannot be earned, "not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:9); nobody invents a religion in which you cannot earn anything. The Witnesses

One body: Rome, the Reformers, Israel and the church

Someone asked, in a dispensational group, whether the mystery and the body of Christ were given to Paul alone.
Revealed to apostles, plural (Ephesians 3:5); Andronicus and Junia were in Christ before Paul (Romans 16:7); Paul binds Gentile churches to Jesus' earthly words. One new man, one olive tree, one hope (Ephesians 4:4-5). Dispensationalism
Someone said James and Peter wrote only to the scattered tribes, and that Mark 16:16 pairs faith with baptism, so it is a different gospel.
Peter's readers are described as former pagans (1 Peter 4:3); we later found Calvin reads them as Jews rebuked for Gentile living, so that should have been hedged, and the correction is recorded here. Paul pairs faith and baptism too (Colossians 2:12). Dispensationalism; Baptism
Someone said Israel's fall is final and posted three quotes to show the message was to Israel only; someone asked whether the modern state of Israel fulfils prophecy.
Broken off, grafted in, and grafted in again, one tree (Romans 11:23); each quote is finished in its own chapter, other sheep, all nations, Jew first and also Greek (John 10:16). On 1948 we declined: the New Testament does not settle it, and a people is not a clock. Dispensationalism; The Book of the Generations
Someone asked which Protestant denomination is the correct church.
None, and the question cuts the other way too: which of the churches with apostolic succession is the correct one? Paul wrote to a congregation already in parties and still called it "the church of God which is at Corinth" (1 Corinthians 1:2). Their own sources concede that anyone validly baptised is incorporated into Christ, and that is the body. The test that cuts against the 1830s cuts against 1854, 1870 and 1950. Every Line Drawn; Did the Church Get It Wrong?
Someone posted the Agnus Dei and asked whether a Protestant could pray it.
Every word. It is John the Baptist's own sentence turned into a prayer (John 1:29), and the "once" of Hebrews is the thing to hold hardest (Hebrews 10:14). The one phrase we would change is "trust Him blindly." The Atonement
Someone asked about praying to Mary and the saints, and said "show me the verse."
No verse shows it, and Scripture never says the departed hear us (Isaiah 8:19; 1 Timothy 2:5). The Catholic claim is stated as it is made and answered there. What the Hail Mary Is; Prayers for the Dead
Someone said a thread had turned into insults, and asked what to do.
Michael would not rail even at the devil (Jude 9); argue the text, not the man (2 Timothy 2:24-25). "Judge Not"?
A Catholic offered Revelation 5:8, 2 Maccabees 15, the Sub tuum praesidium and 2 Thessalonians 2:15 for praying to Mary and the saints.
Each shows intercession in heaven, none shows invocation from earth: the prayers in Revelation 5:8 are the saints' own, rising; the departed in Revelation speak to God (6:10); John is told "worship God" (19:10); Jeremiah prays for the people, nobody prays to him. The Sub tuum is third century at the earliest; the apostolic fathers have nothing of the kind. Trent calls invocation "good and useful," not commanded. "One mediator" (1 Timothy 2:5). What the Hail Mary Is
A street debate: a Reformed pastor said the Fathers never held transubstantiation and the early Christians did not keep the elements; a Catholic said two thousand years of Christians have rendered divine worship to the Eucharist.
Both stretched the same history in opposite directions. The real presence is second century: Justin Martyr, "Not as common bread and common drink do we receive these," and the food "is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh" (First Apology 66); Irenaeus calls the cup "the communion of His blood" (Against Heresies V). Reservation is second century too: Justin's deacons carry a portion "to those who are absent" (First Apology 65). What is late is the explanation, transubstantiation, defined in 1215, and adoration with the monstrance, twelfth and thirteenth century. On John 6 the pastor's argument is Augustine's: "Believe, and thou hast eaten already" (Tractate 25), beside "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). The Fathers said the bread is the body and did not explain how.

Scripture, Enoch, and the canon

Someone said the letters were written to Israel, so not for us; someone said 1 John 2:27 forbids teachers.
Written to Corinth, "with all that in every place" (1 Corinthians 1:2; Romans 15:4). The letter that says you need no man to teach you is itself teaching, and God keeps sending guides to be checked (Acts 8:31). The Authority of Scripture; Sola Scriptura
Someone said that if we take the Septuagint we must take 3 and 4 Maccabees too; someone asked whether the Book of Enoch is valid.
Nobody canonises by codex; Hippo and Carthage listed books, not bindings. Hebrews 10:5 follows the Greek against the Hebrew, and Jude quotes Enoch (Jude 14). Enoch is not in the canon but was read by the apostles; Tertullian wanted it received, others did not. Beyond the Canon; The Book of Enoch
Someone said nothing can contradict the Bible; someone said "kinds" are not a scientific category.
Things contradict readings, as Galileo found and as Bellarmine himself allowed (Isaiah 40:22; Job 26:7). Granted that "kind" has no settled definition; the minimum is reproducing true to type, and biology has a species problem of its own. Not Blind; Creation
A page read the wicked tenants as an allegory of the soul: the hedge is grace, the tower is contemplative prayer, the Master steps away to honour our freedom.
Jesus and Isaiah say what the vineyard is: "the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel" (Isaiah 5:7), the servants are the prophets, the son is Himself, and "the chief priests and Pharisees... perceived that he spake of them" (Matthew 21:45). Chrysostom read it so. A parable allegorised away from the meaning its Teller gave it becomes ours, not His. Matthew 21 in the Study Bible

Hard questions and the character of God

Someone posted fourteen questions to show the God of the Bible is evil: Adam and Eve, Ezekiel's dung, the two bears, hell for unbelief.
Taken one at a time, four of them are stories of mercy. Adam and Eve did not die that day; God made the first promise of rescue and clothed them Himself (Genesis 3:15; Genesis 3:21). Ezekiel objected and God relented (Ezekiel 4:15). The "children" of Bethel are the word used for Joseph at seventeen. The ones sent away in Matthew 25 are sent away for mercy withheld, not for a creed (Matthew 25:45). The flood, the firstborn and Job are not easy, and we offered to take them one at a time. Children; Hell
Someone asked why God allows terrible things; someone asked where God was for two abused girls.
He permits for now, and He did not stay out of it (Genesis 50:20). For the girls there is no formula; the protest is in the book (Habakkuk 1:2), Jesus is angrier than you are (Matthew 18:6), and what is offered is a Person, not an explanation. Suffering; Why God Allowed Sin
Someone asked whether good is whatever God commands or God obeys a standard above Him; someone asked whether prayer changes anything if God is sovereign.
Neither; goodness is His nature, and He cannot deny Himself (2 Timothy 2:13). Friends talk: ye have not because ye ask not, and Moses stood in the gap (James 4:2; Exodus 32:14). The Moral Argument; Prayer That Moves the Hand of God
Someone said Christianity made Americans mean, and asked about the fruit test.
Jesus predicted tares among the wheat and said love would be the mark (Matthew 7:20-21; John 13:35). The churches drifted from their own confessions, and we say where. Even From Their Own Confessions
Someone posted a cartoon of God and Jesus laughing that the command to sacrifice Isaac was a joke.
Abraham told his servants "I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you" (Genesis 22:5), "accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead" (Hebrews 11:19). "God will provide himself a lamb" (Genesis 22:8), and did, on the same hills. God Will Provide Himself a Lamb

Other

Someone said Jesus never used the word "Christian," and asked whether He was one.
True; the word is used three times, first at Antioch (Acts 11:26). He preached a kingdom and Himself (John 14:6). When the Devout Miss God
Someone said the Catholics changed the Ten Commandments.
Nobody numbered them in the text; Augustine's count is the one Luther kept, and the graphic making the claim had altered Exodus 20:8. Answered on the thread; not yet a page
Someone asked whose the study Bible is and what our background is; someone asked which recording to send a bereaved friend.
Fifteen years of writing; raised Catholic, Baptist years, back to the Fathers; Scripture first, then the earliest witnesses. For the friend, The Graves That Wait, with a soft note. About; The Graves That Wait

Still open

Honesty requires a list of what was not settled.

A list like this can look like a scoreboard, and it is not one. Nobody on these threads was an opponent to be beaten; each was a person Christ died for, holding a reading he was taught, and most held it with more love than the comments showed. The questions were worth answering because the Person at the centre of them is real, and risen, and still asking the only question that was ever His: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). Every row above ends there, whichever page carries the long answer. So does this one.

The questions are given in substance, not in the words of any one person, and no commenter is named. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to the site's Study Bible; the Father's word is marked in gold, the Son's in purple. Each linked page carries the Fathers and the commentators behind the short answer given here.