The Michlaude Discipleship Project
Tools and writing for Christians who want to hold their convictions firmly, with open hands.
"Now this is eternal life—that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent."John 17:3 (NET)
Interactive tool
Match your beliefs to a church, or compare churches.
Answer 19 questions and see where your beliefs meet what 26 church bodies teach in their own documents. It takes no side among them.
Open the instrument →Writing
Three ways people read the end of the story, and how to tell which one you’re being handed.
Walks through all three readings at their strongest. It will not tell you which one to hold.
Start reading →Prologue
This changes how you should read a book about the future. If eternal life were a future destination, a book about prophecy would be a book about geography and timing. But if eternal life is a present-tense knowing of the Father and the Son, a book about prophecy has to answer a harder question at every turn: does this get you closer to knowing Him now, or does it hand you a timeline to manage instead?
Part One
"Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near!"
— Matthew 4:17 (NET)
Near. Not "coming eventually, so prepare a place in line." Near — the Greek word is ēngiken, a perfect tense that carries the sense of something that has drawn close and remains close, an arrival already underway rather than a distant appointment on the calendar. Jesus is not opening His ministry by handing His hearers a countdown to something that will happen after they die. He is telling them that something has already changed, right now, in their lifetime, because of who is standing in front of them.
Part Two
There is a question underneath every other question in this book, and it is not really a question about theology at all. It is a question you will ask, someday, standing in a hospital corridor, or sitting in a car outside a cemetery, or lying in a bed yourself with a diagnosis you were not expecting. The question is simple enough that a child can ask it and old enough that it has never once been answered to everyone's satisfaction: when I die — or when the person I love dies — where do we go?