The Kingdom of God is Not Identical to the Church

The Kingdom of God is Not Identical to the Church

Nov 13, 2023 | Eschatology

For all of my Christian life (over four decades), I tended to see the kingdom of God and the church as the same thing. In my mind there was no differentiation between the two. When Jesus prayed “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” I thought he was referring exclusively to the church because that is where kingdom values could grow and flourish among God’s redeemed, covenant people. Outside of that, not so much. The kingdom to me was something specifically “spiritual,” something that really couldn’t happen outside of the confines of God’s people. Out there was God’s common grace, as Jesus says, the sun shines and it rains on the just and the unjust. In my mind the “spiritual” kingdom of God had nothing to do with this fallen world which is passing away. I was wrong, but more on that in a minute.

I look back at this with a sense of irony because ever since I discovered Francis Schaeffer in college, I’ve been a big Christian worldview guy. I believed the Christian faith applied to all of life, and rejected any kind of sacred/secular distinction. As the great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper said, and I believed, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!” Yet there was a bifurcation in my mind, a fork in the road where God’s kingdom and the church went off in one direction, and the fallen world inevitably in the opposite direction. I now believe this is not the biblical understanding of the kingdom of God, the church, or the world. This goes back to my eschatological epiphany of a year ago August that entirely changed my perspective on what it is God is doing in history.

This is a big topic requiring far more space than a blog post can adequately address, but we can briefly focus on the first three chapters of Genesis to make the point. The entirety of redemptive history is found in these three chapters, creation, fall, and redemption, and they will help us see why the kingdom and the church are distinctive entities in God’s economy.

Creation and Fall
When God created the heavens and the earth he emphasized its goodness, that it was for His glory and the flourishing of man who was to exercise dominion over it. We call this the cultural or dominion mandate. We read His charge to Adam and Eve in Gen. 1:28 (KJV):

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

First let’s notice God’s desire for humanity, the apex of his creation: He wants them to be fruitful. When we look at a tree and see fruit on it, what do we think? There should be many things Christians think, but one is that bearing fruit is what trees do, it’s what they are made for, their telos or purpose. When God made man, male and female he created them, it was to bear fruit, it is what they were made for. It is critical to understand, though, that this is not solely referring to creating little humans, but bearing fruit in every area of our lives. God, as the book of Genesis makes very clear, wants to bless us, as I wrote about here recently. The word is used over 60 times in the book, the first of which is in this verse. Contrary to the devil’s lie, God is no big meany out to keep all the goodies for himself and make us miserable. Sinners easily believe that, but it’s not true. 

The secret to true happiness is found in this verse. The first is to have babies, if you are married and can. God is clear throughout Scripture, more babies, more happiness. It is our telos! One of the ways to unlock this secret is to become both less self-absorbed and self-obsessed, and marriage and babies will most certainly do that. 

Then, we are to subdue and have dominion, i.e., rule. What does that mean? A lot! God uses two different words for a reason. Subdue according to Strong’s means to “bring into bondage, force, keep under, subdue, bring into subjection.” Unlike Rousseau thought and his current secular leftist followers think, “nature” is not our friend. It must be brought into subjection—we call that civilization. Dominion or rule is more positional, in that it gives us the authority over creation to act as its rulers as God’s vice regents, His image bearers. We are Christ’s body on earth, so it is our responsibility to exercise dominion in his place, as he exercises it over all rulers and authorities and powers, both spiritual and temporal. The fall didn’t change God’s charge to man made in his image.

When Adam and Eve decided to trust the serpent rather than God, the creation with man fell into sin and death. At that moment, the creation didn’t transfer ownership to the devil. Psalm 124:1 tells us, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.” All he could do was pervert and distort what God created good, but he could not change the fundamental goodness of creation, of material reality. Modern Christians tend to think the dominion mandate doesn’t apply to us anymore, but it most definitely does. When you wake up every morning and fight to put bread on your table and a roof over your head, you are exercising the dominion mandate as God’s image bearer, and more importantly as a Christian.

Redemption
Jesus as the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45-49) fulfilled the covenant that Adam could not. What Adam lost, a world blessed by God without sin, Jesus came to redeem, and not just individual sinners, but the earth, creation itself. Thinking Christianity is primarily about dying and going to heaven misses the larger point, as Paul says in Romans 8:

18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

In eternity, God promised the Son that this fallen creation, including man, would be given to him to redeem and restore (the covenant of redemption). This promise is given to God’s people in Genesis 3:14-15, where we learn the seed of the woman will crush the serpent’s head. There is nothing subtle or nuanced about crushing—it is total, it is absolute. Jesus accomplished this crushing by his life, death, resurrection, ascension, and reign at the right hand of the Father. This is already done; working it out is just details, of which you and I get to be intimately involved. We are, to put it bluntly in redemptive terms, in the crushing business! 

Sadly, most Christians don’t believe this, thus the salvation is dying and going to heaven focus. We think on a practical level that Jesus came to redeem our souls, and not so much the earth, creation, this material fallen world. Of course we know how it ends; Revelation 21 and 22 make that perfectly clear. But we are under the impression that the new heavens and earth comes down out of heaven as a one-time event, a complete rupture in the space-time continuum, old fallen earth out, new redeemed earth in. As I used to see it, the devil has the upper hand “down here” and basically wins the world war of material reality in a fallen world. When Jesus returns he cleans up the mess, puts the furniture back where it belongs, and we live happily ever after. The only problem with my previous perspective is that it was utterly wrong.

Christology as the Key to Church and Kingdom
The study of Christ, Christology, is seeking to understand his nature, who he is, and his mission, what he came to earth to accomplish. As we delve into him more deeply, we’ll see that we’ve been constricting his mission to a narrow sphere of existence we call “spirituality.” Modern Christians tend to live a dualistic existence, upstairs-downstairs, where the spiritual, eternal next-life stuff is more important than the mundane, material everyday this-life stuff. It is not. This is the bifurcation I mentioned above. 

Let’s say we do our morning Scripture reading and prayer, the “spiritual” part of our day, that’s one road, the most important road, by far. Then we go down the other road where the fork is, and it has a sign that says, “The Rest of Life,” and that’s what we do every day after our worship time with the Lord. Mind you I did not think this at all. I knew everything I did was “unto the Lord,” but my theology missed the mission of the Messiah, the Christ, Jesus now seated reigning at God’s right hand. Or course I knew he is there and interceding for me before the Father, wretched sinner that I am, but that’s just it. It was for me! What about the rest of creation? That, my friends, is a huge question, and our answer will determine how we look at life. The answer will broadly fall one of two ways: victory or defeat.  

I believed creation, the earth, will be redeemed at the end, but I missed that Jesus started redeeming and transforming it when he ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This redemption Jesus accomplished and the Holy Spirit is applying, is a package deal, his people and his earth. Remember the crushing? That started 2,000 years ago. Adam lost his ability to rule, to exercise dominion, and Jesus gave it back. He is now exercising the dominion Adam forfeited through us! Does that sound strange to you? Not too long ago, it sure sounded strange to me. How does this actually work? We read about the authority Jesus was given when he was coronated as King at the ascension in several passages, including Ephesians 1:15-23, and Daniel 7:9-14. We further read that his reign is not only over the hearts of Christians, his people, but over his enemies and is happening now and until they are all defeated. We learn this in I Corinthians 15:25, and Psalm 110 says the same thing: 

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

These enemies are not just in our hearts and in our struggle to overcome sin, they are everything and everywhere in a fallen world. Keep in mind, Jesus is conquering his enemies through us his church until the final enemy, death, is destroyed at his second coming. The church is the staging ground, and from there  we are daily sent into the world to transform it.  It is a gradual thing, not a one-time cataclysmic event like I used to believe. And we’re only 2000 years into it, so we’re just getting started!

John the Baptist got the ball rolling when he declared: Repent, “for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus started his ministry with the exact same words. It is instructive to note the word kingdom, basileia- βασιλεία in Greek, is used over a hundred times in the gospels. The word church, by contrast, ekklésia- ἐκκλησία, is used three times in two verses in Matthew. You can come to your own conclusions, but something tells me we’ve ignored the kingdom of heaven and of God to the church’s and societies’  detriment. The ἐκκλησία was the assembly of citizens in the city-states of ancient Greece, those who helped govern and rule the Greek polis (i.e., city). In the same way, the church, this spiritual assembly, is to participate in the reign of Christ over the earth. The church has the authority to minister the word and the sacraments, and Christians go into the world extending Christ’s reign, advancing this kingdom of heavenly and Godly values, and building his church. Through His word and our words, not swords and violence, we bring the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control, and justice. In Hebrew this is called Shalom.

The devil doesn’t stand a chance. He’s already been crushed.

Next time you sing the Christmas carol, Joy to the World, think about the Lord is come, the Savior reigns:

3 No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

 

 

Colonies of Heaven and Our Spiritual Home

Colonies of Heaven and Our Spiritual Home

Oct 9, 2023 | Eschatology

Have you ever heard the phrase, “You’re so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good”? The biblical truth of the matter is the opposite: the only way you can be any earthly good is if you are “so heavenly minded.” The former is the typical understanding of most Christians post 19th century’s Second Great Awakening. We are saved, supposedly, so when we die our souls go to heaven, which is somewhere up there, far, far away. In fact, when I was first presented the gospel at the tender age of 18, the guy asked me, “If you died right now would you go to heaven?” For me it was a powerful question because I sure didn’t want to go to hell, but it set me up for the pietistic, over spiritualized Christianity I was born-again into a few months later at college. Christianity seemed kind of like a British double decker bus, with the upper deck being where the important “spiritual” stuff happened, and the lower deck was where I lived daily life, which wasn’t so important.

This is a very hard habit of mind to break because so many streams of Christian and secular thought have come down to us in Western civilization mitigating against a robust earthly faith. Such a faith calls us to live the heavenly life here as we bring God’s kingdom to this earth, to this fallen world. Unfortunately, we tend to equate earth, the material stuff, with what is fallen, a concept we get from Plato not the Bible. God created everything good, in fact very good, and the fall didn’t make it suddenly bad. That’s why becoming a Christian isn’t an escape from this world, the earth, because our mission is to transform it, as Paul says in Romans 12, to “overcome evil with good.” Or in a metaphor used throughout the Bible, to bring light to a dark fallen world. And remember, light always defeats darkness—when light shows up, darkness flees.

Which brings me to this discussion of colonies, something I learned about from a blog post by Doug Wilson. He discusses this passage from Philippians 3:

20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

This is a thrilling passage, but like most Christians I used to typically focus on the first sentence assuming it meant going to heaven is the thing. In other words, the Christian life is a short sojourn on this earth, which is not our home, and when we get to heaven we will finally be home, where we belong. Here we’re aliens, and we belong up there. The problem with this perspective is that it’s exactly wrong, upside down from biblical truth. This is where Wilson’s discussion of Paul’s use of the word “citizenship” is helpful in understanding the biblical picture of salvation in the gospel. 

The Greek word translated citizenship, politeuma-πολίτευμα, is where we get our word polity from, or a form of government. The idea is not referring to a location, but to the rule or laws under which we live. Paul isn’t saying our Christian life is really about some far off spiritual place we call heaven, but rather it’s about living here and now according to the rules and laws of God’s heavenly kingdom, or in Paul’s metaphor, Rome. Paul was writing to Christians in the Roman colony of Phillippi, and he and those who he was writing to understood what he meant. Here’s how Wilson puts it:

In this passage, Paul is using this striking metaphor for a reason. He says that our citizenship is in heaven (v. 20). We look toward heaven because that is where Jesus went, which means that heaven is the place He is going to come from when He returns to earth. When the metaphor is translated, it means that Jesus was going to come from “Rome” back to “Philippi.” He was not going to take “Philippi” up to “Rome.” And so when the Savior, the Lord Jesus, comes, He is going to transform our lowly body so that it becomes like His glorious body (v. 21). What He does in this final transformation is in complete accord with the authority He is exercising now as He brings all things into subjection to Himself (v. 21). In multiple places, the New Testament tells us that He is doing this.

Thus on this earth in this life we live in colonies of heaven, and the end game is down here not up there. The idea of “going to heaven” gets the image all wrong. When we’re saved, heaven is coming to us! And Jesus because he was given authority over all things when he ascended to the right hand of God is bringing everything under his control, every single thing. No matter what it looks like to us at the moment, Jesus is ruling and ordaining all things to his glorious, predetermined end. Daniel 7:14 tells us what this means:

He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

This dominion is happening now, His reign extending and kingdom advancing, and we His church get to be part of making all this happen. I used to think this process had little if anything to do with now, and that it was only going to happen when it was fully realized at his return in glory. Ironically, though, because of the early influence of Francis Schaeffer in my Christian life I always believed that Christianity applied to every area of life, but in the end it was a futile enterprise. I now realize my mistake.

I was under the impression that it was merely Christian ideas, the Christian worldview, that spoke to culture and politics, art and architecture, philosophy and law, etc., but completely missed that it was far more profound than that. It was in Paul’s words in Ephesians 1, rather, Christ seated at God’s “right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” Somehow I completely missed, “in the present age.” Why would I do that? Because I thought “going to heaven” was the thing instead of heaven coming to earth. And even more important, I didn’t realize that when the Church is bringing the kingdom of heaven on earth, a la the Lord’s prayer, it isn’t us doing that, but the Lord Jesus himself! The victory isn’t ours but His. We’re simply his body carrying out His orders as subjects in His earthy colonies. This is what it means to make disciples of all nations.

This is a critical distinction the holier-than-though above-it-all Christians I wrote about in my last few posts don’t get at all. They see Christians who engage in and prioritize cultural and political engagement as somehow doing that apart from the rule of Christ, as if the victories we achieve are our victories and not Christ’s. As if we’re building our kingdom and not the kingdom of God. That’s why they throw around words such as “authoritarian” when talking about people like me. Read the Great Commission in Matthew 28 again. The reason we make disciples of all nations (not individuals) is because Jesus has been given all authority “in heaven and on earth.” Because this is true, He tells us to therefore, go. We do the legwork because God uses saved sinners to build his kingdom, and He has the authority and power to turn our feeble efforts into results for our good and His glory. It’s because of this that I said above that the Philippians 3 passage is so thrilling. We’re Jesus’s advance team! And we’re ultimately on the winning team!

So, what does this look like? We can take our cue from Jesus’ command in his Great Commission. After baptizing the converted, it means “teaching them to obey everything” He commanded. That includes not only everything in the gospels, the “red letters” if you will, but the entire Old Testament because it’s all about Him and is His word, as well as the rest of the New Testament because it’s all about Him and is His word. Unfortunately because of our pietistic privatized faith the tendency is to see this as only applying to our personal and not our professional lives or occupations. What does it look like to obey everything if I’m a truck driver? Or an engineer or architect or teacher? I grapple with how I do it every day as a sales guy loving and serving my customers and co-workers. This is for each Christian to figure out how they bring the gospel, their Christian worldview, and God’s law to bear on everything they do.

Now imagine what happens when a city council woman or county commissioner or state legislator becomes a Christian. Do they not bring their Christian faith to bear on how they carry out their public duties? God’s word and law is their ultimate standard, and they will do politics differently than someone who has a different standard. They don’t leave their faith at home and enter some neutral secular square because they are doing politics. This doesn’t mean Christians agree on public policy positions, but that they govern based on God’s word and law as Christians and everyone should know it.

Here is a sermon Wilson gave some years ago where he goes more in depth into this idea. It’s amazing how wrong we as Christians have gotten this for so long. We’re bringing to earth what God will ultimately bring at the consumation of all things revealed to us in Revelation 21 and 22.

The Life of John Knox, the Christian Long Game, and the Peril of Pessimistic Eschatology

The Life of John Knox, the Christian Long Game, and the Peril of Pessimistic Eschatology

Aug 21, 2023 | Eschatology

I’m currently reading a biography of John Knox, the influential 16th century Scottish Reformer. I knew very little about his life other than that. He was born in 1514 and died in 1572 as the Reformation was beginning to make headway in Catholic Europe. What is especially fascinating about his life and time is now looking at it with my newly fitted postmillennial spectacles (that means glasses for you youngsters), I have a much different perspective than what I might have had before, thus “the Christian long game.” It’s hard to convey and for most of us to grasp just how much we’ve been influenced by dispensational premillennialism to see everything in the short term. Our eschatology, how we see “end times,” has consequences on our perspective and how we live. In other words, our eschatology determines how we see things, how we interpret them, and almost the entire Evangelical church has become pessimistic. Why is that? Why would our theological understanding of how things end make us pessimists? Keep in mind I struggled with this for the first 44(!) years of my Christian life. I say struggle because I didn’t like being a pessimist, but my theological framework left me no other option.

In one way this is understandable and secularism doesn’t help. We’re programmed by the culture to always focus on the immediate, the here, the now. For the non-Christian if this is it, eat, drink, and be merry . . . . Who cares what happens in a hundred or five hundred years. The Christian response to secularism is too often to focus on the next life, reasonably enough. The problem is that Christians have focused salvation almost solely on “going to heaven” when we die, which seems to have become the primary reason we are saved. We’re committed to personal holiness as best we can, our personal relationship to Jesus, and the church is the primary venue for our faith; I’ve heard it called churchianity. This personalization of our faith has little to do with secularism, however. The primary drivers are dispensationalism and pietism, the latter influence coming from 17th century German Lutheranism which made its way broadly into American Evangelicalism in the Second Great Awakening.

Not only do we have an overly personalized faith that has no impact on the culture, but we are also convinced as bad as things are Jesus could be coming back any day. Our dispensational eschatology even tells us the worse it gets the sooner Jesus returns! In a perverse way we are almost inclined to see failure as a sign of progress. As I heard someone put it, tribulation is our hope and societal decay is our encouragement. Evangelism becomes an invitation to join the losing team! At least on this earth, in space and time. All Christians agree our ultimate victory only comes at Jesus’ return. Yet nobody likes this losing, and we complain about it all the time, but again, our theological framework leaves us unable to conclude otherwise. Our myopic eschatology forces us to believe we are passengers on a sinking ship, and who wants to waste time rearranging the deck chairs if it’s going down. We may as well get as many into the life rafts as possible before she goes down. But is that really the biblical testimony of our life in Christ on this earth? It is not! Are we to believe the fall of Adam is more powerful than the resurrection of Christ? It is not!

Needless to say John Knox and the Reformers did not think this way. They lived before the so-called Enlightenment, secularism, and scientific advancement, plus life was harsh and very often short, so there were no illusions about living forever in this life. Yet they saw salvation as far more than going to heaven when you die. They saw Christianity not only as personal spiritual formation, but as societal transformation as well. They were committed to Christianizing their societies and cultures knowing it would never be easy or without Risk. During Bloody Mary’s short reign of five years over 300 Protestants were burned at the stake! Knox and many Protestants who refused to embrace Mary’s Catholicism left Britain and became exiles on the continent, many finding their way to Calvin’s Geneva, which became a model for them of the ideal Christian society. After Mary’s death they made their way back to Britain with the express goal of Christianizing all of England in a Protestant mold. Knox himself was instrumental in transforming Scottland from a primarily Catholic nation and culture to a Protestant and Presbyterian one, all of which in the next two hundred years had a powerful influence on the founding of America.

Because of their eschatology they were what all Christians should be, multigenerational Christians. They knew what they were doing would be a blessing to many generations yet unborn. As I argued in a recent post, the reason Jesus teaches us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come . . . .” is because He expects this coming now, on this earth, in this fallen world, and He expects us to expect it too! Most Christians prior to the rise of dispensationalism in the 19th century did as well. And they never thought the kingdom was just about “spiritual” stuff, or only applied to just Christians and the church. They believed the gospel had implications for all culture and society. And they believed Jesus was serious when he compared the kingdom to a mustard seed and leaven, a slow but relentless growing that in due course would bring the kingdom of heaven to earth (Matt. 13:31-33). They, as are all postmillennialists, were gritty realists who understand we are in a cosmic war against evil, not against flesh and blood. There will be times of suffering and setback, as is apparent from looking at history. The kingdom coming isn’t a straight line to ever increasing success, but a mountain we climb with many valleys and hills, and we only arrive at the ultimate Mt. Everest peak when Jesus returns to destroy the ultimate enemy, death.

One way I’ve come to conceptualize all this can be found in Genesis 3 when the Lord told us the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head and the serpent would strike his heel. I see this now as a microcosm of all redemptive history, not just what happens at Christ’s return. In this little encounter who wins? My money is on the one who crushes. The other who strikes the heel can do some damage, but according to God he has no chance—he gets crushed! Why in the world, literally, do we act as if it’s the other way round? As if the heel striker can crush? I would argue the answer is primarily dispensational eschatology. Few Christians realize how deep and widespread its influence is on our seemingly congenital pessimism about the nature of this world and the spiritual battle in which we are engaged. Christ, we think, is only the victor in eternity, in the sweet by and by, in “heaven” beyond this veil of tears. Of course He is, but He is also the victor here, now, in this life, in this fallen world. He sits at the right hand of God Almighty reigning “until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (I Cor. 15:25). In other words, here, now, in this life, he is crushing it!

Having said that, in one of my favorite sayings, God is never in a hurry. Think about it. When He promised Abram he would bless his offspring, or seed, and make them like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky, it took 2,000(!) years before the seed would be born Jesus of Nazareth. Another 2,000 years has passed, and as far as I can tell we can still count the number of Christians on earth. I think we have a ways to go. And all the nations per Jesus’ command in Matthew 18, the Great Commission, have yet to be made disciples, so we have a lot of work to do. As we go about the business of the Great Commission in our daily lives, all of it, we can have absolute confidence our God in Christ is crushing the serpent’s head before us as we love and serve others and proclaim the gospel. How exciting are our lives! We serve a victorious king; pessimism is not allowed.

 

Why Do We Pray, “Thy Kingdom Come . . . .”?

Why Do We Pray, “Thy Kingdom Come . . . .”?

Aug 9, 2023 | Eschatology

Good question. Maybe a more important question is why Jesus would command us to pray it. I’ve been reassessing such questions over the last year as my road of learning took a very unexpected eschatological turn. I realized previously I wasn’t really sure why I was praying it or why Jesus commanded us to pray it. In my previous eschatological framework the prayer seemed more about the future, about God’s eternal kingdom which he’ll establish at the end of time. The implicit prayer, it seems, was, “Lord, hurry up and establish your kingdom!” It’s crazy, but I really had no framework for His Kingdom being established, coming, and His will being done on this earth in this fallen world, here, now. According to how I saw “end times” and the end of history, God putting all things right, it happened at the very end in one, big, ginormous cataclysmic event, what we know as Christ’s Second Coming or Second Advent. That’s not what the Bible teaches, though. There is some very symbolic language in Revelation and OT eschatological passages, but I must go back to my question. Why does Jesus command us to pray this?

First, I want to point out that the purpose of the theological discipline of eschatology, which is basically how everything ends, is not primarily about how things end. Well, it is and it isn’t. Prior to this detour, I thought eschatology was primarily about trying to figure out how the end goes down, what exactly happens at that point in history. As such I tended to view it as primarily a speculative enterprise. In a way I was agnostic about it, not really believing we could know anything with certainty, thus the necessity of speculation. And so many people disagree anyway, often very strongly, so I figured why bother spending too much time worrying about it. Then postmillennialism fell out of the sky, I think literally, a year ago this month. I was shocked because as far as I was concerned it was a completely and totally discredited position nobody should take seriously. Boy, was I wrong!

David Bahnsen captures what is truly critically important about eschatology:

The cause of an optimistic eschatology has never been one of enlightening one’s view of the future as much as informing their activity in the present.

It isn’t just postmillennialism, what he’s referring to, that informs our “activity in the present,” but whatever eschatology we hold. When I say, “activity in the present,” I’m sure your mind went where mine would have, to our personal holiness and morality, and how we love and serve others. That’s of course true, and part of the kingdom of God, but the question is much bigger and the consequences more far reaching.  

Let’s start with the definition of Kingdom. What’s the first thing a kingdom has to have? A king, of course. And what is the king’s role? Also of course, to rule or reign. So when Jesus prays the Lord’s Prayer, He is praying that His reign or rule be extended “on earth as it is in heaven.” And Paul tells us explicitly what that means in Ephesians 1. Remember, after Christ died and rose from the dead he gave his disciples what we call the Great Commission in Matthew 28 where He informed them “all authority in heaven, and on earth had been given” to Him therefore they were to go and make disciples of all nations. Not individuals, but nations. I’m just reporting what Jesus said. Then he ascended into heaven in front of their eyes to be seated at the right hand of God, the place of ultimate authority in the universe. Speaking of the resurrection power for us, His people, Paul says:

That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 

Did you get that part, that his authority to reign or rule over all these powers is for “the present age” and not just “the one to come”? I found it fascinating when I put these new, optimistic, eschatological glasses on that Paul was inclined to put the present age first and then added the “but also,” the eternal age, the one where there will be no sin, misery, suffering, and death. Why would that be? Let me suggest the Lord’s Prayer is the answer, and his command that we pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” He’s bringing his eternal, spiritual kingdom reign that he exercises in heaven to earth . . . . through us! Now in this life, in this fallen world to affect all of it, every square inch.

My prayer now is that God would extend Christ’s reign, advance his kingdom, and build His church. The latter is the reason for everything according to Paul:

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

God brings his kingdom to earth through us, His people. Our sanctification and growth in the Lord is not just personal, but societal. We are light, the world is darkness. What happens when a light is turned on? Darkness flees? We belong to He who is Truth, we live in a world of lies. What happens to lies when Truth comes? They are exposed as lies. We live in a world of self-centeredness and hate, and we bring service, love, and peace. Everyone wants what we have, they just don’t know it!

Think about it. If you lived in the first century, and told your Roman neighbors Christianity is going one day topple the Roman empire through love they would have laughed at you, thought you delusional, but that’s exactly what happened. If you had said this Christian faith will one day dominate the Western world, and eventually bring peace and prosperity to the entire world they would have had you committed, but that is exactly what happened. Today we’re 2,000 years into this, and we’ve only seen a limited amount of this “kingdom come” and God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven.” The mustard seed has only grown into a little bush at this point, and the leaven has barely raised the dough. And we get to be part of God continuing His advance!

And yet what do most Christians do? Moan and whine about how bad things are, and say Jesus must be coming back soon because it’s so bad, and he’ll save the day. What we should be doing is get about building the kingdom, and have confidence that God is going to give us success because we’re told Jesus will reign and crush his enemies until they are a footstool for his feet. But do Christians believe and live this? No. It’s the defeatist attitude that bothers me most, as if the truth is as John MacArthur put it, “Down here we lose, up there we win.” No we don’t! Did Jesus command us to pray this because His expectation was that we would lose “down here”? Seriously? Christians believe this? Well, I used to! For most of my Christian life, like over 44 years! That makes me sad.

Just remember next time you get a little depressed at the news that at least Christian families at your church aren’t being thrown to lions by Roman emperors, or being burned alive for spectacle. And we think we have it tough? We wonder what God is doing. We don’t need to wonder because like Christians in the first century we know He is extending Christ’s reign, advancing His kingdom, and building His church. Why else would he tell us to pray, “Thy kingdom come . . .”

 

 

 

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

Book Review: The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism

Jul 16, 2023 | Eschatology

One of the most unanticipated of my many red pill experiences of the last seven or eight years was the transformation of my eschatological position, as I’ve explained here previously. When I was born-again, as we called it back then, in the late ‘70s premillennial dispensationalism was ubiquitous, as it continued to be throughout the ‘80s and into the ‘90s. Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians (they were two somewhat distinct groups back then) were obsessed with the rapture and Jesus’ immanent return. Rampant speculation about “end times” events was everywhere, and some were so bold as to predict the exact date when Jesus would return. I recently learned about this book, and while I can’t take the time to read it, the short book review by Joel Looper was interesting because the obsession of those early couple decades of my Christian life has disappeared. I’ve often wondered why, given most Christians are still dispensational. I’ve chalked it up to one too many predictions falling short, and people just getting tired of all the speculation, but there are also scholarly and theological reasons, which you can learn about in the piece.

The reason I’m writing about it, though, is because of what this change says about the nature of Christian and human hope in general. The most exciting thing about embracing postmillennialism is that it gives us ground for optimism and hope in this world, as fallen and dysfunctional as it is. But before I get to this, I want to quote the last two paragraphs of the book review:

The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism obliquely but powerfully gestures toward a hole often found in the gospel that post-dispensationalist evangelicals believe today. “In the wake of dispensationalism’s collapse,” he writes in the epilogue, “the eschatological sight of the American church has blurred.” That means that our hope is less fervent, thinner, colder.

Many Protestant pastors understandably are trepidatious about even alluding to eschatological matters for fear of getting sucked into controversies about numerology, new candidates for the Antichrist, and dating the second coming. Nevertheless, Hummel reminds us, “Christianity is inescapably eschatological.” That is so because faith cannot exist without hope.

Exactly, especially religious faith. All human beings live by faith, be they “religious” or not, and in one of my favorite phrases, there is no such thing as an unbeliever. The same thing, though, applies to hope. As all people live by faith, all people need hope, need something to look forward to, something to give their lives purpose and meaning. Without hope, life is death, as we witness in our hopeless secular age in which close to 50,000 people a year kill themselves.

One of the leftovers of dispensational premillennialism, shared to one degree or another by amillennialism, is a kind of skepticism about this world, that everything is inexorably going to hell in a handbasket, and Jesus will come back soon to save the day. Before embracing postmillennialism I didn’t realize how our theology of “end times” determines how we interpret everything about the times in which we live, whether negatively or positively. As I explain in the piece I linked to above, I was as negative and often depressed as the next Christian and conservative, but found Steve Bannon’s War Room, and he turned me into an optimist. The problem was that I didn’t have the theological, specifically eschatological, framework for optimism. In the book I’m currently finishing, I started it hoping to argue theologically for that optimism, but without postmillennialism it would have been a difficult argument to make. With it we realize Jesus came to earth and now sits at the right hand of God ruling to extend his reign, advance his kingdom, and build his church. I can’t make the case again here, but I will share two passages proving that Christ’s rule is now, in this world, not merely in eternity or only in our hearts. First, Psalm 110:

The Lord says to my lord:

“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”

2 The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
3 Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.

This Psalm is clearly Messianic and refers to Christ, and Paul knows that as he writes these words in I Cor. 15.

25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

The question on the table for all Christians is this. Does this “reign until” have real, substantive, positive affects in this fallen world, here and now? Or does Satan call the shots, and things will inevitably get worse until like a dues ex machina Jesus returns to save the day and change everything in an instant? I now believe the former is the biblical answer, not the latter, but that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing it because of hope, and why the former gives us incredible hope for this age, as well as the age to come, as Paul tells us of Jesus’ reign in Ephesian 1, and the latter falls short.

Ever since the Second Great Awakening in the 19th century, and the corresponding rise of secularism and dispensational premillennialism, Christian hope has moved its focus almost completely on the world to come, our eternal hope in Christ. I believe as important and powerful as this is, the hope of being saved from our sins and going to heaven one day, as the author of the book review says, makes our hope “less fervent, thinner, colder.” In this take, the only reign of Christ is in the Christian’s heart, and has effect primarily in our sanctification. It’s merely personal. But Jesus didn’t come to solely transform his people’s lives, but that their transformed lives would impact the world for righteousness and his kingdom, as he himself taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.” Jesus didn’t teach us to pray this expecting our prayer would be futile, did he?

Imagine if we really believed God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is working now, this very moment, to advance his kingdom through us so his rule of righteousness and peace would in some way manifest itself in the societies in which we live. The problem is we live by sight and not by faith, as if what appears as debacle and defeat is the end of the story. If you read the history of redemption in our Bibles you’ll see things are rarely as they appear on the surface to the finite human beings who haven’t a clue what God is really doing. And we must realize as I say all the time, God is never in a hurry. If in God’s providence we’re to live in a time of defeat, so be it, but we battle (Eph. 6:12) not just for our generation but for generations to come. As the Apostle Paul also says in I Corinthians, our labor in the Lord is not in vain, and thus he exhorts us to give ourselves fully to it!

Micah 4-Swords Into Plowshare, The Last Days are Our Days

Micah 4-Swords Into Plowshare, The Last Days are Our Days

Jul 13, 2023 | Eschatology

The thing I love about reading the prophets is that amid all the gloom and doom rays of light and expectations of hope jump out like the sun peeking through the clouds on a very gray day. You know it may only peak through briefly, but that gives you hope of sunny days to come. This analogy is especially powerful for me since I’ve embraced postmillennial eschatology, except now the sun shines more brightly. It applies to the entire Bible, of course, given it’s all about Jesus (Luke 24), but the contrast in the prophets is startling. Micah 4 is an especially good example. I’ll quote the first part of the chapter to illustrate the point, but when I was a “pan” millennialist (it will all pan out in the end) and an amillennialist I instantly read passages like this assuming it must apply to after Jesus returns and has established the restored heavens and earth he came to save. How could it not! You read it and tell me what you think:

In the last days

the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established
    as the highest of the mountains;
it will be exalted above the hills,
    and peoples will stream to it.

2 Many nations will come and say,

“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the temple of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us his ways,
    so that we may walk in his paths.”
The law will go out from Zion,
    the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 He will judge between many peoples
    and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
    and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
    nor will they train for war anymore.
4 Everyone will sit under his own vine
    and under his   own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
    for the Lord Almighty has spoken.
5 All the nations may walk
    in the name of their gods,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord
    our God for ever and ever.

Previously, my knee-jerk reaction to this passage was it had to be in the new heavens and earth; I didn’t even question it. Swords into plowshares? Not in this fallen world! But I was actually wrong. If we look more carefully at this passage we’ll see what’s being talked about is life in this fallen world. If there is still a need for judging and settling disputes “for strong nations,” then sin still exists. If nations are still walking “in the name of their gods,” then sin still exists. No, this passage is very much about the here and now, and it’s obvious. As Micah says, this is “in the last days.”

We are currently living “in the last days.” There are several New Testament verses telling us these days started with the coming of Messiah. In the very first Christian sermon in Acts 2, Peter tells us quoting the Prophet Joel:

17 “‘In the last days, God says,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your young men will see visions,
    your old men will dream dreams.

That pouring out started, as we know, with Pentecost. Peter was telling Jews in Jerusalem it was Jesus of Nazareth, risen Lord, who ushered in these last days. The writer to the Hebrews tells us:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

In the Old Testament these days are referred to in various ways that Jews all interpreted to be Messianic. So we must conclude that Micah is referring to today, to our time, to here and now, to how life is lived as the Holy Spirit enables followers of the Savior who is now seated at the right hand of the Almighty “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.” (Eph. 1: 21) For Paul Jesus’ current rule is taken for granted, and we have to be reminded his rule is also for the age to come. Think about that!

So, what does this look like? How does this differ from the typical doom and gloom Chicken Little Christianity of those just waiting for Jesus to come back any moment to save the day? Micah 4! And according to Micah it will look something like peace and prosperity, where justice is done and people live in safety. I know, it almost sounds prosaic, boring. That’s it? Shouldn’t it be, I don’t know, more spiritual? More miraculous like? Well, what is more miraculous than turning chaos and violence and want into justice, shalom, and plenty? Or people loving one another? Or the fruit of the Spirit! To me one way this is graphically portrayed, to see what it looks like in this world, is in the history of the war of Christianity against paganism in the first millennium of the West. The spiritual war of Ephesians 6:12 is worked out in this history of redemption from Abram being called out of Ur of the Chaldeans four thousand years ago to this very day. It looks very different now, but the battle is the same. This is graphically played out in the ninth century in King Alfred the Great’s battle saving Christian England against the heathen Viking horde from the north.

Alfred was the king of Wessex from 871-899, and he wanted to establish a Christian united England under one king. He’s the only King in English history with the appellation Great attached to his name because he started the process of uniting England under the law of God. Several years ago, my daughter told me about a Netflix series called The Last Kingdom (i.e., Wessex). I was quickly hooked, not only because it was well done, but also because, sadly, I knew absolutely nothing about the history I saw portrayed on the screen. I was amazed to learn Christian Western civilization as we know it hung by a thread during Alfred’s reign, and a thread might be overestimating the odds, from a human perspective. You’ll have to either watch the series or learn the history to know what I mean, but when Christ rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the heathens didn’t have a chance.

One of my favorite scenes is in season 1 when Alfred and the Danish leaders Guthrum and Ubba are negotiating. They ask Alfred what the transcribers are writing, and he says, “They are writing what we speak.” He adds, “They are writing history, we are here creating history. People will read of this very meeting.” The heathens didn’t write or create history. They also ask why he seeks peace, and he says, “It is the Christian in me, the will of my God.” Ubba wants to talk of the gods, and Alfred replies firmly, “God, there is only one.” This encounter is a microcosm of two mutually exclusive forces, the two worldviews, and only one could be victorious. Christianity would bring learning and peace, the rule of law, and the advance of God’s kingdom in the world, or the pagans would bring a bloody world of arbitrary power none of us would want to live in. Tom Holland in his important book, Dominion, contends, “So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilization that it has come to be hidden from view.”

This impact is what we read of in Micah, swords being turned into plowshares. When Alfred defeated Guthrum, he and his leaders were required to be baptized and become Christians as the terms of peace. Guthrum was allowed to rule peacefully in East Anglia for the rest of his life, and everyone was able to sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one was able to make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.