South Featherstone Gospel Hall

Led by Shaun  Fereday, Prison Chaplain (Sessional) &  Leader  @SFGH Church  All Power, False Signs & Wonders. (Transcribed from Tuesday's Bible Study Group) This week’s Bible study was one of those evenings that felt both intense and illuminating. We tackled 2 Thessalonians 2:9–12 (but on the night didn’t get past verse 9), a passage that pulls no punches — speaking about deception, delusion, and the ultimate showdown between truth and lies. It’s one of Paul’s darkest sections, but as Shaun said right at the start, “There’s a glimmer of hope amid the darkness for us.” A Passage That Does What It Says on the Tin After reading the verses aloud, Shaun noted that the text is “straightforward enough.” There’s nothing mysterious about the warning — it says exactly what it means. But it’s also heavy: “The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan, with all power and false signs and wonders.” The group revisited earlier studies to confirm that this “lawle...

The teaching of Jesus must have seemed to the Disciples like words from another world, which they actually were! Jesus was from Heaven, and they had only experienced earth and the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees. Religion to most of the Jewish nation at that time must have appeared very formal and perhaps many of the congregation were not really involved but just when through the motions and tried to keep from breaking the many rules and regulations, which had been built over time on top of the original Mosaic Law. Looking back over the history of the Christian church, this was a time probably like that before the Reformation. Jesus spoke with authority and sought to teach by parables as well as direct teaching and in some ways, the “I am….” statements fall in between those two types. They were direct and dramatic but called into play pictures of everyday life. One of the most dramatic is the one we will think on today: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”. Rarely has so much s...

The Old Testament has many references to the nation of Israel as God’s ‘vine’. But despite God seeking to tend the vine in every way, the vine became unfruitful, and God brought in the New Covenant which didn’t just favour the Jews primarily but gave equal rights and access to God to both Jews and Gentiles . So Israel was no longer the vine, the core of the plant, and Jesus now says “I am the true vine….. and you are the branches”. This is exactly where God was going when he chose Israel and His first people. He was always the gardener tending and pruning the vine, but now His Son holds that central position and we can only be fruitful for God if we abide in the vine because the His life flows through us and we can pay back, as it were, our thanks for that life and fellowship with Him and from Him by becoming fruitful in every way. And part of that fruitfulness is by honouring God in every way in our lives and recognising that outside of our Saviour and the life He want s us to live...

All through the Old Testament, there were instructions and patterns given for the approach of man to God. The Tabernacle was an intricate piece of work with specifically designed and segregated areas where different classes and sexes of people could assemble. The whole mechanism of approach to God was to emphasise the holiness of God’s character and worth and that stimulate with man an act of worship, or literally “worthship”. Expressing the feelings of gratitude and awe which resulted in praise and worship. We come this morning with exactly the same thoughts as we remember our Lord Jesus Christ, and we have seen much greater worth in Him because He has given us salvation from sin and a closeness of relationship with Him that few of the patriarchs in the Old testament could ever achieve. Our praise and worship should be of a different order because we have had our sins, not just covered, but totally wiped out by His all prevailing sacrifice. Hallelujah! What a Saviour! Article written ...

  Jesus lived the normal life of a carpenter until He started His mission to bring salvation to the world. He would have experienced life in all its aspects as He lived with His step-family. He would also have been no stranger to death as He would have seen older family members and friends pass away.  When He began to teach and preach, He encountered sickness and ill-health on every hand and even raised some people from death back to life. And when His good friend Lazarus died, He arrived 4 days after death and still raised him from the dead. He fulfilled the next “I am” in both physical and spiritual ways, initially raising Martha and Mary’s brother back to physical life and we now look at “I am the resurrection and the life”. But Jesus also died and was raised from the dead to put in place the resurrection and life that comes from faith in Him. We have been raised to newness of spiritual life and only God in Jesus could achieve that. The despair that death and the grave nat...

  The Tribulation, the Rapture, and the Prophetic Timeline: Daniel’s Witness to 2 Thessalonians 2 Sometimes the richest truths lie in the studies we didn’t have time to explore. On the evening of 7th October, our group voted to study “ Option 4 ” — moving on to verses 6–8 in 2 Thessalonians  2.  And in doing so chose to skip this debate (Option 1) and " Option 3 " — considering the traditional argument for a pre-tribulation rapture. But it would be a shame not to share what “Option 1” had to reveal. So, I present the argument to you here, which offers vital prophetic insight into how Daniel complements Paul’s teaching about the man of lawlessness and the timing of the Rapture . 1. Daniel’s Prophetic Lens: 7, 9, and 12 The Book of Daniel is the cornerstone for understanding end-times prophecy. When Jesus Himself said, “Let the reader understand” (Matthew 24:15), He was pointing us back to Daniel. In Daniel 7:20-27, the prophet gives us an early glimpse of the Antichrist:...

I mentioned yesterday that Jesus used two country likenesses in the ‘I am’s He spoke, both involved a shepherd . Yesterday we considered the protective shepherd lying down as the door when the sheep are safe in the fold. Today, we look at the active and sacrificial side of the shepherd. “I am the good shepherd , ……. the good shepherd gives his life for the sheep”. Here Jesus describes the loving shepherd who will fight to ensure the sheep live in safety. The good shepherd fights off the wolf, to protect the sheep, even giving up His own life. This ‘I am’ foretold what Jesus’ mission involved in order to save His people from their sins. At first, the Disciples must have thought Jesus’ sheep were only the Jewish people but He goes on to say, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold”, thus opening the door to the Gentiles and to us. If the good Shepherd had never given His life and been raised from the dead, then we would have still been without God and without hope in the worl...

In these days of advanced technology and use of materials and techniques that certainly were not available in the time of the New Testament , we can perhaps stare and wonder at what went on and imagine it was hardly adequate, judged by our current standards. This certainly applied in the country even more than the populated areas of Israel in Jesus’ time. The Bible has far more to say about sheep than cattle, possibly because sheep were more erratic in their behaviour than cows, and in reality they were more like human beings than cattle. The well-known chapter in Isaiah has a verse which says, “All we like sheep have gone astray….”. Two of the ‘I am’ statements made by Jesus have reference to sheep or shepherds and today we look at the first, “ I am the door of the sheep ”. At first sight, and with our 21st century perspective, this looks like a total anomaly. It doesn’t even make grammatical sense until we revert back to the way shepherds worked in Jesus’ time. At night, the shephe...

In the ‘I am’ statements, Jesus used common everyday physical items and conditions to get us to understand the spiritual truth behind them, and as we looked at last week, to link those spiritual truths to God by the use of ‘I am’. The second one we will look at is “I am the light of the world”. Jesus spoke this during the Feast of the Tabernacles. During that Feast, a huge candelabra was lit in the Temple to remind the Israelites of the pillar of fire that God used during their wilderness wanderings in their journey from Egypt to Israel, to guide them during the night. Jesus had also just forgiven a woman caught in adultery that the Pharisees had dragged before Jesus. Here Jesus was letting them know that in a world darkened by sin, He is holy and His light contrasts with that darkness. He then offers and continues to offer light and guidance to those stumbling in sin. The Jews to whom He was talking knew the Old Testament scripture in Psalm 84, “For the Lord God is a sun and a shield....

The Mystery of Lawlessness – Unveiling What 2 Thessalonians 2:7 Really Means “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is taken out of the way.” — 2 Thessalonians 2:7 (ESV) What Does ‘Mystery’ Mean in Scripture? In English, when we hear the word mystery, we often think of something puzzling or unsolved — a riddle waiting to be cracked. But in the original Greek, the word Paul used here is μυστήριον (mystērion) — a word that doesn’t mean unsolvable, but rather something once hidden that is now being revealed. A mystērion is a divine truth known only to God until He chooses to make it known to His people. In the New Testament, mysteries are not unknowable; they are unfolded truths that God discloses at the right time. So when Paul speaks about “the mystery of lawlessness,” he’s saying that evil’s hidden plan is already working beneath the surface — quietly shaping the world toward the final rebellion against God. Lawlessness with...

This article is for those who like to pick over the detail. A summary article - in magazine format - can be found on an alternate post - click the icon to read 📚 Shaun SFGH Church Leader Recorded on the Day Outline 00:00:00 — Welcome and Opening Remarks 00:00:06 — Setting the Agenda and Offering Four Options 00:01:20 — Review of Previous Studies: Paul, Jesus, Daniel, Revelation 00:02:00 — Objective Achieved; Options Recapped 00:02:32 — Options Detailed; Depth vs Discussion 00:03:30 — Group Chooses Option Four 00:04:04 — Reflections on Depth and Traditional Views 00:05:18 — Antichrist in Practice; Possible Scenarios 00:05:44 — Temple Context and Declaring Authority 00:06:05 — Bible Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:6–8 (Older Translation) 00:06:36 — Plan: Three Sentences, Four Key Questions 00:07:18 — Bible Reading: 2 Thessalonians 2:6–8 (NIV) 00:08:20 — Comparing Translations: “Mystery” vs “Secret Power” 00:08:56 — Framing Four Questions on Restraint 00:09:36 — First Question: What/Who Restr...