Quotes from Scot McKnight

J. Nelson Kraybill therefore contends that the "rapture" more accurately describes not being whisked away into heaven but our going out to meet Jesus to welcome him back to earth!

The top two lines on every prophet's job description look like this: Speak openly and clearly about what God is for. Speak openly and clearly about what God is against. The third and fourth lines look like this: I [God] am with you. Have courage. (But you may have to duck or die.)

In the Roman Empire a child's religion was determined not by some choice in the teenage years but by that child's family.

Fourth lesson in Bible reading: we are challenged to be better than nonfollowers. Followers are marked by a greater righteousness or by more righteousness. (Just what that more will look like can be found in the antitheses of 5:21—48.)

But Augustine knew the Bible's main mission: so that we can become people who love God and love others. If our reading of the Bible leads to this, the mission is accomplished. If it isn't …

As we have already explained, conversion is a journey that begins for the infant at baptism, during which a seed is planted—a seed that will grow.

If God entered Abraham into the covenant by circumcision and demanded Abraham enter his son through circumcision, then it is clear that God thinks the best way to form children into the covenant faith is by way of birthright entrance into the covenant.

Since—and this is why it changed how I read the Bible—God chose to communicate in language, since language is always shaped by context, and since God chose to speak to us over time through many writers, God also chose to speak to us in a variety of ways and expressions. Furthermore, I believe that because the gospel story is so deep and wide, God needed a variety of expressions to give us a fuller picture of the Story.

Prayer was and is both a spontaneous act and a recitative

We stand with Calvin when it comes to the moral compass: Jesus "means that however difficult, arduous, troublesome or painful God's rule may be, we must make no excuse for that, as the righteousness of God should be worth more to us, than all the other things which are chiefly dear and precious.

It tells us that God gave the Bible a mission: God speaks to us so we will be the kind of people he wants and will live the way he wants us to live.

Every scene of heaven in the Bible shows us a vision of the Church praying together and singing together and praising together.