This Articles page is proud to serve up links to the house specialties that were on offer at Chez ALS back in the year 2017.

Each entry below contains a "hook" that suggests what the article deals with (an hors d'oeuvre), the first several paragraphs (an appetizer), plus a link to the full article (the main course). If you just want to scan over a list of the titles of all the articles on this site, you can save time by grabbin' a burger at the Article Index page. Bon appétit!

If you want to look for a specific topic, use the search function in the sidebar. Use the menu below to go to similar pages for previous years.

I Am God—Worship Me

All people who correctly identify themselves as Christians have one thing in common: they all believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God and worship Him as exactly that. In spite of a kaleidoscope of doctrinal differences, if they don't believe this, they cannot properly be called "Christian." Note that there are groups that don't believe this, however, and in effect misappropriate the word.

We believe Jesus is the second Person of a triune God who was sent by God the Father to be born into the world to redeem sinful mankind. The Bible is quite clear about the fact that Jesus existed as God from eternity past, and briefly and voluntarily interrupted His heavenly existence to come to earth to be born as a man in a body of flesh so He could do the job. He was crucified to take the judgment for our sin in our place, resurrected to break the curse of sin and death on our behalf, and then ascended back into heaven to serve as our High Priest during the current Church Age.

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Twenty Questions (1)

No, not the party game.
Just 20 questions. And 20 answers.

I've wanted to do something like this for a long time, and this month I finally broke down and took the plunge. I spend a lot of time online at websites like YouTube, Quora, and so forth, and invariably end up in all kinds of discussions about all manner of things related to God, Jesus, the Bible, the gospel, and so on, and I end up hammering out answers to many people's questions—people ranging from sincere believers to hardcore atheists, and everybody in between.

Hard questions, easy questions. Sincere questions, snarky questions.

But all deserving of an answer.

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The Sky Don't Lie

Last year, I wrote an article about what has become known as the Revelation 12 sign, or the first of two signs described by the apostle John in Revelation 12:1–5. (For the remainder of this article, I will refer to this as the REV12 sign.) In that article, I explore in some degree of detail why I am utterly convinced this passage of Scripture not only gives us a clear picture (not a prediction, a picture) of the pre-trib Rapture, but also how the REV12 sign will be confirmed with stunning astronomical precision on September 23 of this year.

For the last several years, a dedicated, enthusiastic, and growing core group of believers have taken to the streets, in a manner of speaking, to spread the word of this upcoming prophetic fulfillment through various means and media (and I consider myself a humble, fledgling member of their ranks). Although this passage of Scripture is absolutely a picture of the pre-tribulation Rapture, the great majority of these people are not attempting to set dates and as a general rule are not running around shouting:

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling! The Rapture's gonna happen on September 23! It's a Bible lock!"

And those who recklessly do so are likely to be gently admonished by others to knock it off.

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Cold Feet

In the 1999 romantic comedy Runaway Bride, Julia Roberts stars as Maggie Carpenter, a spunky, attractive young woman who has been through three relationships that very nearly ended in marriage. In all three cases, however, she literally ran out the door of the church, leaving the would-be groom standing at the altar, ring in hand. Her three epic attacks of cold feet earn her the tabloid moniker "The Runaway Bride."

Although Maggie does finally find true love in the form of co-star Richard Gere, I am reminded of the plot of this movie when I look around and see some of the things that have been happening with the bride of Christ in the last few years. As I look at some of the doctrines being heavily promoted these days, it makes me realize that many Christians are, just like Maggie, running out the door of the church in a panic, spooked by the idea that the moment may actually be rapidly approaching when we will walk down the aisle, so to speak, to be with our Bridegroom.

Although they dream of being with Jesus in the sweet by and by, they are beginning to get the gnawing feeling we could be about to come face to face with Him in the scruffy here and now. They are beginning to sense the hour is growing late, the clock is ticking down, and all of a sudden this Bible prophecy business is getting a bit too real for their comfort level. In other words:

They're getting cold feet.

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The Exit Sign

Unless you've been living on the planet Jupiter for the past couple of years, you've almost certainly heard the buzz about the Revelation 12 sign that the Bible prophecy community has been buzzing about since 2011 (if you're one of the few who hasn't, read this first). This isn't the first time I have written about it—and the way things are going, I suspect it won't be the last.

Although the Bible prophecy community may have been abuzz about it since 2011 (particularly in the last couple of years), the mainstream Church has been eerily quiet on the subject. It seems most established ministers (with reputations to protect) have been avoiding the topic the way you would avoid a worried-looking manager clutching a fistful of documents heading in your general direction 15 minutes before quitting time. Many simply don't want to address it—and when they do, they typically bungle it so badly it would have been better for all concerned if they had remained silent.

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The Chance of a Lifetime

When people hear the message of the gospel, respond to the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and trust in Christ's finished work of atonement for the forgiveness of their sin, they are born again spiritually. They become a new creature in Christ, and have passed from death to life from an eternal, spiritual standpoint.

I'll bet you knew that.

I'll bet you also knew that to have the chance to avail yourself of the grace and mercy of a holy, just, loving God during the current Church Age (i.e., prior to the Rapture) is in reality a wonderful opportunity. If you are born of the Spirit, then you are sealed with the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, who will never leave you and who is the down payment on the finished product—a glorified saint who will stand righteous before God thanks to Christ's perfect righteousness being imputed to you. You have become a member of the body of Christ, and your eternal destiny is secure in Him.

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The Long Arm of the Lord

My best friend died.

Wait...let me back up. First of all, relax. It's not the way it sounds. I was in my school the other day using one of their computers during a long break between classes, perusing prophecy-related news as usual, and out of the clear, blue sky I felt the urge to google the name of an old childhood friend of mine. I've done this before on a few occasions, as I'm sure most of you have, just out of idle curiosity to see what ever happened to good old Michael or Mary or Jimmy or Jane.

Or Joe. Joe and I were born and raised in a small farm town in Central Illinois, and like most boys from small farm towns anywhere, we played baseball together in elementary school, teased girls together in junior high, and cruised the streets of our sleepy little town together in high school.

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Right for the Wrong Reasons?

There is a wildly popular teaching that has taken Planet Pre-trib by storm over the last couple of decades, and it is being trumpeted (no pun intended, but I'll take it) by some of the most highly respected dispensational, premillennial Bible teachers around. This teaching has to do with alleged scriptural clues about the timing of the Rapture—not in terms of its relationship to the Tribulation, mind you, but rather in terms of the day of the year it will occur.

People who promote this teaching believe there are verses of Scripture that constitute rock-solid proof that the Rapture absolutely must occur on the Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets. In this article, I want to discuss reasons why I believe the scriptural support that is typically offered for this Rapture on Rosh Hashanah idea is not nearly as strong or compelling as many seem to think. In fact, I believe it is so deeply flawed that I see little choice but to reject it out of hand. Not necessarily the idea of the Rapture occurring on Rosh Hashanah, that is, but the biblical support currently being used to "prove" it.

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Sweet Hour of Prayer

"Sweet Hour of Prayer" has long been one of my favorite old hymns, but here lately it has taken on a whole new significance for me. Last month one of the most familiar faces associated with the REV12 movement took it upon himself to share with the world his theory about the exact day and hour of the Rapture, and I have been contemplating his remarks ever since. Oh, the day? September 23, 2017. Surprise! The hour? Keep reading.

Part of me almost doesn't want to write this because I don't relish the possibility of being viewed as the kind of guy who comes against someone many people love and respect (including me); but on the other hand I already had the car door slammed on my fingers over my last article, so...que será, será and all that. It is what it is and, like Popeye, I yam what I yam. I did want to get this out before the 23rd, however, partly on principle and partly because I will be traveling to the States during the last week of September and will be extremely busy.

But I don't anticipate spending the aforementioned hour, the zero hour as it were, expecting at any moment to be changed into my glorified body. Not that I'm not looking forward to that.

It's just that I have other ideas about what to do during the zero hour.

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Where Do We Go From Here?

To the chagrin of many anxious prophecy watchers, the great stellar-planetary alignment depicted in Revelation 12:1–2 came and went on September 23, 2017 in an ostensibly uneventful manner (read "sans Rapture"). Many thousands of believers were so hepped up and so convinced the Rapture was a lock for September 23 or the several days immediately surrounding it that the disappointment felt throughout the Revelation 12 community was palpable, and was likely felt to some degree even by those who made it clear they were not expecting the Rapture to occur in that time frame, even though they took the REV12 sign seriously.

Ever since September 23, 2017 passed quietly into history, there has been what I can only describe as a mad scramble among many prophecy teachers and researchers to explain to everyone (a) why the Rapture didn't happen on or around the September 23, (b) why whatever they said about September 23 and the REV12 sign is still valid and correct, and (c) why we should still be diligently scouring the skies for more astronomical clues as to exactly what will happen next and exactly when it will happen.

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The 24 Elders Revisited

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about the 24 elders, an enigmatic group that is introduced in Revelation 4, and in that article I laid out about as thoroughly as I could why I believe they can be no one but the raptured Church—home and dry and in heaven before the Tribulation starts in Revelation 6. Identifying the 24 elders as the raptured Church (not to mention viewing the Tribulation as beginning with the seal judgments in chapter 6) has been the predominant view within dispensational theology for nearly two centuries, and it puts a stone-cold stranglehold on the fact that the Rapture occurs prior to the Tribulation.

I was recently taken to task over what I wrote in that article by a very nice young woman who has a somewhat different view of these transitional chapters of the book of Revelation, a view that has the seal judgments preceding the Tribulation proper. She has the dead in Christ rising at the fifth seal (Rev. 6:9–11), the catching away of those who are alive and remain at the sixth seal (Rev. 6:12–17), and the Tribulation actually beginning with the first trumpet judgment (Rev. 8:7). I was mildly surprised that she still had it worked out so that the Rapture is pre-trib, because this notion that the seal judgments of chapter 6 are merely a prelude to Daniel's 70th Week has been kicked around for decades and is typically fodder for pre-wrath/post-trib cannons.

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A Missing Piece

Few would disagree that the book of Revelation is one of the most puzzling and controversial books of the entire Bible. For nearly two millennia, legions of Bible scholars and teachers as well as ordinary believers have tried to sort out this dizzying array of symbols, characters, events, and cataclysmic waves of judgment that God pours out to purge Israel and judge a Christ-rejecting world.

As one might expect in the face of such a dizzying pageant of symbols, characters, events, and cataclysmic waves of judgment, there is an equally dizzying array of interpretive schemes that valiantly attempt to explain what it all means. These schemes evoke images of everything from literal asteroid strikes to allegorical fairy stories; from a horrifying future apocalypse to a historical fait accompli.

The problem, of course, is that God's Word doesn't afford us the luxury of accepting and entertaining myriads of interpretations. When people come along with unconventional theories and unorthodox scenarios, rather than just warmly embracing them in the name of tolerance, inclusion, and diversity, we have a biblical obligation to study them and do our utmost to rightly divide the Word and ultimately decide what's right and what's not in the light of what the Bible clearly teaches.

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