Treasure of Glory Podcast: Recent Episodes
James D. Perkins
This podcast is a place for Christians who want to cultivate a deeper relationship with God. This won't be a one-dimensional podcast where only one topic is discussed. We will explore everything from eschatology to discipleship to politics. If you want to renew your mind with God's Word, a daily episode will give you plenty of material to "chew" on!
In this episode, we will discuss the controversial topic of election and predistination. Did God really choose who would go to heaven and hell?
Join me in this fascinating series on Paul's letter to the Ephesians. This letter is considered the crown of Paul's writings so you don't want to miss this series of podcasts!
Join me in the episode for a fresh look at John 14-17. It's not trinitarian like I was raised to believe. It's binitarian from start to finish, so in this episode, we will discover something very interesting about the spirit of truth.
It may suprise you to know the early Church and the post-apostolic Fathers were binitarian. It may also suprise you to know just how binitarian the New Testament is. For example, why did the Apostle Paul always leave the Holy Spirit out of his greetings to his letters? Why is there no Holy Spirit in the New Heaven and New Earth in Revelation? In this episode, we will explore these truths and you will see that the Holy Spirit is not a third, separate person, but rather, the spirit of the Father and the Son.
Most Christians are taught a trinitarian model of the Godhead. I certainly was all of my life. However, as I was doing research to prepare for a series of videos on the holy spirit, I realized that the Bible doesn't teach the Holy Spirit as a third, separate person in the Godhead. Rather, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of the Father and the Son. One of the ways to arrive at this conclusion is to identify the God and Spirit of the Old Testament. Was it the Father? The Son? The Holy Spirit? This episode will show that Christ was the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament.
The world seems to be unraveling right before our eyes. The Corona pandemic has really turned the world upside, but there is an even worse pandemic ravaging the people of the world–worry. Worry is the devil's form of meditation and it will lead to serious spiritual, emotional, and physical problems. But there is way to have God's inner peace in the midst of the storms of life, and this episode will address how.
I talk a lot about meditation in my teachings, so I thought I would devote a whole episode on how to actually do it. There are some very good tips in here for you if you want to go to the next level with God.
As a member of Christ's body, He takes note of when you feel pain and suffer, just like you notice pain in your own body. Jesus takes it personally when you hurt, so rest in the assurance that He notices and cares.
Everyone has an internal compass. Unfortunately, a lot of people are walking around with broken compasses not knowing their needle is not pointing at true north. There are many forces in our culture competing to control your compass, such as politics, religion, and social media. The spirit of antichrist is working hard in the earth to move the needle in everyone's compass. Make sure you know where true north is (Christ), and know how to use the Bible to move your needle.
Did the universe have a beginning? Some of the brightest minds in physics wrestled with this and even Einstein, when his own equations led to the conclusion, couldn't accept it because of its philosophical and religious implications. Eventually the science backed the skeptics into a corner and they eventually embraced Big Band cosmology. The Kalam argument says that anything that begins to exist, even a universe, was caused. What caused the universe? Mind. Intelligence. Information preceded matter and energy so mind preceded the material universe. This mind is God.
We continue in this episode with evidence for God's existence, but we're going to take a more philosophical approach this time and talk about the Cosmological Argument. Thomas Aquinas was a Christian philosopher who developed 5 ways, or 5 arguments for God's existence, and we're going to discuss the first 4.
We will look at the evidence for God's existence using amino acids, proteins, cells, and the information in DNA. Did life really emerge from non-living atoms and molecules? Could complex chains of amino acids assemble themselves on their own? The origin of life has always been a mystery, but to say that time and chance alone brought it about, doesn't really answer the question without knowing where the information came from that preceded matter and energy. An intelligent being is the most plausible explanation for how something as complex as life could arise.
In this episode, we will tackle the very controversial topic of whether or not a Christian can embrace socialism. Socialism isn't bad just because conservatives say so. It's bad because it's based on a humanist worldview and that is a foundation that is sure to crumble.
Who or what do you identify with? Is it the music you listen to? Your career? Your family name? Your political group or racial community? If you are a Christian, your identity is in Christ and that identity transcends identity politics.
This episode will be a biblical response to Critical Theory, and more specifically, Critical Race Theory, which is a subcategory. If there is one thing Christians want, it's love and harmony among all races, but does CRT harmonize with the Christian Gospel?
In this episode, we will continue with our political theme and talk about how politics is shaping the world for the arrival of the antichrist.
We often hear in Christian circles that Jesus wasn't concerned with politics, but was only interested in spiritual matters. Is this true? In this episode, we'll explore the incredibly political nature of Christ's birth, life, and future reign. Christians are being naive if they believe they can separate their faith from politics.
Should Christians be political? How are we to engage with an increasingly hostile culture? In this episode, we will begin to build a case for why Christians should be engaged politically if we want to be relevant and influence people for Christ. We will look at some examples of where the Bible is political.
We see the spirit of antichrist becoming more dominant in our culture. Christians are being silenced, bullied, sued, and targeted by the antichrist mobs. How are we to respond to what's happening in our culture? Are we going to be raptured and escape what's coming? No! We need to prepare for conditions to worsen before they improve, and we need to learn how to engage with this culture so we can win some to Christ.
Now that we determined Jesus is worth following, how do we do it? What is a disciple? We will look at first-century discipleship in the Jewish world to see what Jesus meant when he said, "Come follow me."
Jesus asked His followers to give up everything for Him and even be willing to die. What makes Jesus worth all of that? If Jesus was raised from the dead then it's all worth it, but did it really happen and is there evidence? This episode will go through some of the evidence to show the most likely explanation for what we do know is a bodily resurrection.
When God picks you up to play a beautiful melody through you, what kind of sound is going to come out? How well the instrument is maintained has a lot to do with the answer. Will the sound be bad because the instrument has been neglected?
Have you ever considered how radical Jesus' call was to follow Him? What exactly did Jesus mean when He asked people to follow Him?
Should Christians participate in Halloween festivities? Is it really the Devil's holiday? We will discuss the history of Halloween and tie it into spiritual warfare.
In this episode we will discuss the importance of having the proper spiritual diet. This involves feeding on God's Word.
In this episode, we will discuss the process God uses to transform His people into His glorious image.
This episode will finally bring to a close our study on the rapture. We will complete our examination of the book of Revelation.
We will continue our journey through the book of Revelation to see if we can find clues about the timing of the rapture.
Part two of our study of the book of Revelation. We will go through the seals and the 144,000 sealed ones.
We will begin to wrap up our series on the Rapture. This episode will begin an examination of what the Apostle John had to say on the topic from the book of Revelation.
In this episode, we will discuss what the writer of Hebrews and the Apostle Peter wrote regarding the rapture and return of Christ. Peter spoke of this future day as a day of fire when the heavens disappear with a roar and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! The brightness of Christ’s glory will actually set the atmosphere on fire!
This is a fascinating exploration of one of the most amazing biblical prophecies— Daniel’s 70-Weeks Prophecy. This prophecy was given hundreds of years before Christ was born, yet it predicts to the year, when the Messiah would be presented to Israel as their King. This prophecy proves the Bible is truly God-inspired.
We’re gonna take a break from the Rapture series and discuss some things going on in our society right now. Social justice sounds good but be careful. The devil packages everything as moral and virtuous, but make sure you know what’s really going on beneath the surface.
In this episode, we will conclude our discussion on the resurrection. This teaching will get rather scientific as we examine the nature of matter at the quantum level. Is matter really evil? Is having a physical body really a bad thing?
In this episode, we will discuss the resurrection and how it is connected to the rapture. We will examine the following points:
- What type of body will we be raised in?
- What type of body was Jesus raised in?
- When does the resurrection occur in relation to the rapture?
In this episode, we will discuss Paul's teachings from 1 and 2 Thessalonians. We will see that Paul understood the return of Christ to be a one-time event, not something that would take place in phases.
Now that we discussed how to interpret Bible prophecy, we are now ready to examine the Olivet Discourse where Jesus laid out in detail how this age would come to a close.
Topics discussed:
- Abomination of Desolation
- Near/Far Dimensions of Bible Prophecy
- Was Jesus talking about AD 70 or the actual end of human history? Perhaps both?
- The ones taken in the field are not raptured!
- Jesus did not teach a pretribulation rapture
This episode will cover the very important topic of how to interpret biblical prophecy. If you understand the two-dimensional nature of prophecy (near and far), it helps make the picture of the end times more focused.
We will also discuss the descriptions of the Day of the Lord and how the Day of the Lord is not the tribulation.
There is much debate in the Church about the timing of the Rapture. Does it happen before the tribulation (pretribulation rapture), sometime after the midpoint (prewrath rapture), or at the very end of the tribulation (posttribulation rapture). This will be the first episode in a series of teachings on why I believe the posttribulation rapture position is the most biblical.
This is very important because if the posttribulation position is correct, that means evangelism in the very near future will become a bloody business. Knowing the timing of the rapture is crucial to understanding the future of evangelism and discipleship.
This episode will cover the following:
- Spirit of antichrist preparing world for the antichrist.
- Evangelism in the near future could be deadly
- Spirit of antichrist programming the world to hate Christ and His followers
- The Church will not get raptured before the tribulation of antichrist.
After you've taken them to first base and addressed the God issue, you are now ready to take them through the rest of the bases. This episode will be about how to take anyone through the main points of the Gospel and explain what the Gospel actually is. I will also share with you how to close the conversation and schedule a follow-up.
This episode presents two strong scientific arguments that even the most educated atheists will have a hard time refuting.
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Where did the information come from that preceded the Big Bang?
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Where did the information come from that preceded the first amino acid, protein, and cell?
We've been talking in the last few episodes about what we need to do to reach this culture, but this episode will be more the HOW. I will share some practical tips on how to share your faith anywhere with anyone.
If we hope to penetrate this culture with the Gospel, we need to know what type of people we are targeting. Just like any company has a marketing strategy to reach potential customers, we need to have a strategy to reach this culture with the Gospel. Part of that is knowing how this culture thinks.
The spirit of antichrist began in the Garden of Eden. It is the invisible power that operates in the earth to oppose Christ and His kingdom. It is also the reason we see Christianity in decline. The spirit of antichrist influences people through all channels of information (academia, news, movies, etc.).
Christianity is in decline in America. Churches are losing members left and right. High school students raised in Christian homes are leaving the faith after graduation to never return! What happened to our saltiness? How can we reverse these trends?