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Castle Stone Wall
Taught vs Written: The Short Versions

Each paper on this page takes up one subject: what salvation is, what happens at the judgment seat of Christ, what the kingdom is, what lies after death. Each sets out what Scripture says about it in a single sitting. They’re short by design. Nothing has been softened and no conclusion has been held back. What’s been left out is the machinery: the word studies, the source citations, and the long engagement with what’s commonly taught on each subject.

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That engagement is the other half of this work. Under Digging Deeper, the full Taught vs. Written series sets what is taught on each of these subjects beside what is written in Scripture, and works through the comparison at length. Every short paper here has a longer companion there. Read these first; go there when you want the whole case.

Every paper is free to download.

0

Let God Be True

Intro Paper · About 14 min read

How to read the Bible so it explains itself, and what happens to a doctrine when no outside authority is allowed to settle the question.

2

The Bema: Judgment and Rewards

Paper 2 · About 9 min read

The Judgment Seat of Christ is a review of a Christian's life for reward and inheritance, and nothing about his standing before God is on the table there.

4

Afterlife Vocabulary: Heaven & Hell

Paper 4 · About 12 min read

Sheol, Hades, Gehenna, the abyss, outer darkness, the lake of fire, and the second death are naming different things, and English collapses several of them into one word.

6

Israel and the Church: Two Peoples

Paper 6 · About 10 min read

What Israel lost when she rejected her Messiah, what she never lost, and why the Church remained a mystery until Paul was given it.

8

Faith and Works: Paul and James

Paper 8 · About 11 min read

Paul and James both build on the same verse in Genesis, thirty years apart in Abraham's life, and neither one contradicts the other.

10

Eastern Orthodoxy

Paper 10 · About 6 min read

The East took a different road on salvation, on what went wrong in Eden, and on the kingdom, and it is worth hearing in its own words.

12

Where the Roads Split - Part One

Paper 12 part I · About 8 min read

Groups that use the same vocabulary as the New Testament while meaning something else by it, and the exact point where each one turns off.

1

One Salvation: Three Tenses

Paper 1 · About 14 min read

Scripture speaks of salvation in past, present, and future tense, and reading all three as one moment is where a great deal of confusion begins.

3

Kingdom Now or Not Yet?

Paper 3 · About 9 min read

Christ is seated at the Father's right hand, but seated is not the same as enthroned, and the difference decides what the kingdom is and when it arrives.

5

Aion and Aionios = Eternal?

Paper 5 · About 7 min read

A noun that means a bounded age and an adjective built from it, both routinely translated as though they meant unending, and what that translation has changed.

7

The Mustard Tree and the Leaven

Paper 7 · About 9 min read

Two parables about growth that looked like success, and the institution that grew up in the branches.

9

Genealogy of the Kingdom Doctrine

Paper 9 · About 9 min read

The present-kingdom reading has a datable origin, a line of men who carried it, and an institution that had reason to keep it.

11

Answering the Critics

Paper 11 · About 8 min read

Every objection this teaching has drawn, stated at full strength in the critic's own terms, then answered.

13

Where the Roads Split -Part Two

Paper 12 part II ·  About 7 min read

Groups that use the same vocabulary as the New Testament while meaning something else by it, and the exact point where each one turns off.

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