Christianity is Now Hate and Bigotry, and the Hope that Brings

Christianity is Now Hate and Bigotry, and the Hope that Brings

Jun 16, 2023 | Culture, Eschatology

In case you weren’t aware of it, if you’re a conservative Christian, believe the Bible is God’s actual word of revelation to mankind and the truth about human sexuality, you’re a bigot filled with hatred for “sexual minorities.” Yes, no better than any garden variety racist. No better than the Klu Klux Klan burning crosses in your black neighbor’s yard. I’m sure this is not news to anybody. But among our cultural “elite” and the lunatic left (those currently running the United States government, all the organs of culture and corporate America) it is commonly accepted. The word Christian slips off their lips with a condescending smear, and to them we are second-class citizens in our supposedly enlightened queer nation. Leftists (what almost all liberals have become) started out playing the victims. Then they asked for tolerance, and got tolerance. Next they demanded acceptance, and got acceptance. Finally, they demanded celebration, and those who refuse to celebrate will be made to pay by the alphabet mafia. Welcome to 2023 America! And what a grand place it is.

I saw this clearly coming during the runup to some unelected judges in black robes on the highest court in the land re-defining marriage in 2015. A large section of the less diplomatic and careful left branded those who didn’t support gay “marriage” as bigots and haters. Those pushing this perversion of marriage at a legal and PR level on an ambivalent population we’re much more careful. They told blatant lies sweetened with honey that went down easily with the unsuspecting and ignorant. It’s all about tolerance, just letting homosexuals have the same rights as heterosexuals. How could anybody be against that? The more prescient knew it could never stop there, and once marriage was redefined and homosexuality completely normalized, the transgender insanity circa 2023 was inevitable.

I was reminded of this unpleasant reality not only because it’s so called “pride month” (which God says goes before destruction) and daily shoved in our faces, but also because I read this article about a women who was a big name in Hollywood, thus appropriately left wing most of her life, and who became a conservative and Christian and now “has her friends mystified.” That’s almost funny, and speaks to how insular the woke left is. They live in an echo chamber only ever encountering people exactly like them and dismiss as unworthy ideas they disagree with. Such people are also deeply self-righteous and judgmental. Anyone who doesn’t think like them is unclean and unworthy of respect. Conservative Christians are modern lepers to them, and it is such people who hold almost all positions of cultural and government power in America today.

All of this is stunning, but completely unsurprising to anyone who knows the history of Enlightenment rationalism that in due course rid the world of God and His word. Once that started happening it led inexorably to the suffocating secularism of the modern world with the help of Kant, Hegel, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, et al. The 20th century gave us progressivism, cultural Marxism a la the Frankfurt School, “the 60s” and the sexual revolution, so called, radical feminism, no fault divorce, and eventually it had to get to homosexuality and their “rights.” Marx’s two primary goals of perpetual revolution and his communist Utopia was to be realized by the destruction of the family and religion, i.e., Christianity. The woke left in our day, the cultural Marxists, are his progeny, and even though he would be surprised the economic version of Marxism he predicted failed, he would be pleased as punch at the cultural version that hasn’t. It’s creating all the chaos, confusion, suffering, pain, and misery he could have ever hoped for, the conditions for communism’s perpetual revolution.

The article I mentioned above is definitely worth reading because it’s instructive of just how deeply ingrained this pathology is on the secular left, and it is important to realize the threat they pose to everything that is godly, good, and right. The goal of their push for sexual perversion, and that includes any sex outside of a married man and woman, and erasing biological sex, is and always has been the destruction of the family. You can look at the writings of leftists since the 1930s and it’s all there. The difference today is that all vestiges of Christian leaven that once made Western civilization flourish and prosper and held back wickedness are gone. In addition, we have a generation of leftists in cultural and political power today who are effectively woke zombies who can’t help themselves. They are compelled by generations of very effective brainwashing to silence or destroy any who get in the way of cultural revolution, their greatest enemy being Bible believing conservative Christians. If you’re also white and male, you get to the top of the list.

This is the bad news which we all know. The good news that most fail to appreciate is that because zombies aren’t subtle, normal people, which is the vast majority of the population, are waking up to just how pathologically evil and abnormal all this is. For Christians, this reminds us of the fundamental irrationality of evil, and that it is built and sustained on the pretzel logic of lies. God’s created reality, as for God Himself, cannot be mocked, people reap what they sow. Sooner or later it will bring the consequences of God’s judgment which happens whenever His law is transgressed. But God’s judgment isn’t an end in an of itself—it is revelatory as well. In such an environment the ugliness of sin and man pretending he can be God contrasts powerfully with the beauty of God’s law and the gospel of His grace in Christ. We have the answer to all the chaos and misery! And it goes through the cross.

We have something to sell that’s attractive and it works! All of Christian history proves it. And it doesn’t just work in our private lives or in churches, but it works for entire civilizations. Many Christians, and all secular people, don’t realize that what turned the ancient pagan world where, in Thomas Hobbes words, life was nasty, brutish, and short, into the modern world where it generally is not, was Christianity. Without God’s word, and God’s law, the gospel and the Holy Spirit, there would be no rule of law, no hospitals, no human rights, no universal education, no science or technology, no capitalism and wealth, and all the blessings that can bring, and much more. Secular culture, however, paints Christianity and God’s law as constricting when it is the most liberating thing that’s ever existed, in fact the only thing!

I’m currently reading a wonderful book that makes this case by an Indian named Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization. If you’re wondering what it is we’re trying to do in the so-called culture wars (and politics and everything else), you’ll find what that is in this book. We’re not just trying to save souls so people can go to heaven when they die. Rather, we’re part of Christ’s charge and mission to bring God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Before Jesus ascended into heaven to the right hand of God, he said all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, therefore go and make disciples of all nations, not just people. And this means, he says, teaching them everything he had commanded them. We need to get busy!

 

Post-Mill Optimism and the Victory of God in Christ

Post-Mill Optimism and the Victory of God in Christ

May 25, 2023 | Eschatology

In my previous post about the Postmillennial conference I attended, I remarked how surprised I was by how many families with children there were, and especially the size of the families. That makes total sense when you understand that post millennialism is a positive, optimistic eschatology. Large families and hope for the future go together like, well, love and marriage (Thanks, Frank!). Why would anyone bring children into the world when they think the future offers only misery and suffering? Or if they don’t believe in God. And speaking of misery and suffering, our secular cultural elites embrace and promote a worldview of fear. Everything is a threat, apocalypse just around the corner, dystopian Hollywood fantasies our cultural touchstones. I’m not participating in their pessimism. It’s unfortunate so many Christians do, albeit the catastrophes are of a moral nature.

I must confess that not long ago I was a certified doomer. All I had witnessed for forty years was Christian and conservative cultural and political defeat. Secularism and political liberalism was ascendant everywhere, and all we did was lose. And while the people on our side didn’t appear to want to lose, they seemed to accept it as a foregone conclusion. To them the forces against us, like gale force hurricane winds, are too much to withstand. The tide of history is against us. At best we can defend ourselves and not try to lose too much ground, but hey, if we’re Christians, Jesus is coming back soon, right? I had no idea until recently how eschatology, the study of end times, drives peoples’ view of things, be they religious or secular. Almost all Christians get their pessimism from their negative eschatology.

I’ll never forget the church service where our pastor said those who are focused on the “culture wars” are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. It’s a supreme irony how much Christians complain about the cultural rot all around us, but if we focus too much on “the culture wars” we’re wasting our time. Got it. As an amillennialist, which I was previously, our pastor was doing what they always tend to do, over spiritualize everything. He was preaching on what to him is the most important thing in existence, the spiritual and moral transformation of the individual, as if that is somehow mutually exclusive from Christian cultural engagement. It is not. In fact, everything is spiritual, and participating in the salvation of Christ’s people from their sins (Matt. 1:21) is a required part of Christianizing the culture. Most Christians because of their eschatology, whether they can even articulate what that is or not, have no idea how intimately connected those two things should be. The post-millennial awaking in the church is changing that, and it is a thrilling thing to be a part of.

It may surprise you that until World War I postmillennialism was the majority report in Protestant Christian eschatology. Unfortunately, this was highjacked by a growing Enlightenment secularism infatuation with science (nothing is impossible and everything will get better and better), and liberal Christianity’s focus on man’s moral improvement and the social gospel. These two melded together into what became post-millennialism. That is why I rejected this eschatological position without giving it a moment’s consideration, even though all my theological heroes of the 19th century and earlier embraced it. I thought the actual theological position was the highjacked version; it isn’t! Not even close.

As the lamentable twentieth century progressed, post-millennialism became increasingly discredited in the eyes of most Christians. Not realizing the position had nothing to do with an arrow-like progress through history, they embraced the new eschatological kid on the block, the fundamentally pessimistic dispensational premillennialism, first articulated by John Nelson Darby in the mid-nineteenth century. This speculative eschatology, I’ve heard it described as newspaper eschatology, was what I was born-again into in 1978. This was time of the incredibly popular Late Great Planet Earth (talk about pessimism!) by Hal Lindsey, and The Left Behind series of books that would come later.

I’ve discovered in my short time on this side of the eschatological divide that pre and a-mill Christians believe in large part that suffering is the lot of Christians in this fallen world, and that Satan in some way has the upper hand in the spiritual war that is human existence. The victory Christ won on the cross over sin is a spiritual victory with primarily eternal significance; we are saved to heaven. In this material fallen world, Christians are the losers, and salvation a kind of eternal spiritual fire insurance. Instead of transforming this fallen world with God’s kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, our desire is to escape it.

Even though this is true of most Christians, they all believe Christ is indeed seated at the right hand of God, and as Paul says in Ephesians 1, is “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.” Unfortunately, they do not believe his rule will in any way fundamentally transform life in this world. They miss the implications of his rule for all of creation as God through the Apostle Paul reveals to us in Colossians 1:

19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

All things is a lot of things! And notice the implication of the reconciliation of the cross extends to “things on earth.”

Paul is clear: there are material implications of these spiritual realities. The Great Commission Jesus gave the eleven in Matthew 28 is to all nations, in Greek ethnos-ἔθνος, not just all individuals (transformed individuals transform nations!). And they were to first baptize them, and then teach them to obey everything he had commanded them. I challenge any pre or a-mill Christian to carefully go through just the gospels (this “everything” command applies to the rest of the New Testament as well) and tell me that what Jesus commands will not transform and renew cultures and civilizations. It has to

Unfortunately, over the last few hundred years a dualistic Pietism has exerted a huge influence on Evangelical Christianity, with Christians valuing upper story spiritual things over lower story supposedly non-spiritual things. To the contrary, the Bible teaches what the Puritans of old believed, that true Christians are the agents of Christ’s renewing activity for all of life, the family, church, state, business, art, education, every single thing.

In I Corinthians 5:17 Paul points to the salvific transforming power of what Christ accomplished on the cross.  He says, “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new has come.” I always thought of this as just referring to the person who is the new creation, but as new creations we are in a real way renewing this fallen creation because Christ came not just to save us, but the entire world! And we do this with our Lord who reigns over all of it. Paul says in I Corinthians 15:25 and 26, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” We are currently living in the “until,” and as his kingdom goes forth, we are his instruments, his body, to put those enemies under his feet. This is why I am optimistic and excited because the victory of God in Christ is guaranteed now and forever!

 

My Post Mill Story and Isaiah 2

My Post Mill Story and Isaiah 2

Apr 6, 2023 | Eschatology

I’ve always thought I could do anything I put my mind to if I only worked hard and long enough. When I was a teenager I was convinced I could become the greatest guitar player in the world; Eddie Van Halen had nothing on me. Then when my interests changed to golf, I not only wanted to be the greatest golfer in the world, but the greatest golfer of all time. I know, it’s hilarious, especially because Tiger Woods has more talent in his pinky finger than I have in my entire body. But I’ve always been a big thinker. When I became a Christian, that didn’t change. I thought maybe I would be a missionary and Christianize the world. When my vision of Christianity expanded and I got into politics, I thought I would change the world that way. Next I thought I would become a scholar and change the world through academics and teaching. Whatever it was, I always wanted to “change the world.”

At some point along my Christian journey I realized that was impossible, or so I thought. I didn’t become a pessimist or cynic, but what I thought was a realist. This is a fallen world filled with fallen people, and it will always be so. Wanting to change it is a pipe dream, so much spitting into the wind. The best we could do is fill up the holes in the dikes, bale water in the sinking ship, and keep our eyes on our heavenly home and eternity. Things will go on like they always have, likely just getting worse until Jesus finally comes back and puts all things right in the final judgment. Then last year I realized this mentality was profoundly unbiblical, not to mention dishonoring to God. That was when much to my surprise I came upon post millennialism without looking for it, and then against my will concluded it is indeed the biblical eschatological position.

I’ve written about that here before so I won’t repeat it. What I want to write about is the phrase I used above, “change the world.” From my new perspective I no longer believe that is a futile fool’s errand, but a biblical imperative. Prior to my post mill conversion I believed that while God is sovereign and in control of all things, this world as fallen pretty much belongs to Satan. Isn’t it obvious? There are various verses that give the impression this is the case. One of the most direct assertions is 1 John 5:19: “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Other versions say in control of the evil one. Paul says our citizenship is in heaven, and Peter tells us as God’s elect we are exiles. The writer to the Hebrews says the Heroes of the faith “were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.” And what serious Christian doesn’t often feel that this world just isn’t our home; we belong somewhere else.

I discovered, however, that my thinking along these lines often became escapist because it was defeatist. The devil and his kingdom are on the offensive in this world, and the best we can do is defend ourselves against his ever-advancing onslaught. That’s what I used to believe. No more. I can’t give a full biblical exposition for the post millennial case in a blot post, but I will share my new perspective on two verses critical to it, both in Matthew. First the Great Commission of Jesus in Matthew 28:

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

First, Jesus has all authority, not some, so every single thing that happens in this fallen world is either allowed, controlled, or caused by him. The devil has no autonomous power. I basically used to look at this messed up world like he did. I mean, how could things be so messed up and Jesus actually be in control? Then when Jesus said baptizing and teaching them to obey everything, he is speaking of nations, not just isolated individuals in nations. And if they are being taught to obey everything Jesus commanded, then the culture will inevitably be Christianized. How can it not be!

The other Matthew passage is in chapter 16 after Peter declares that Jesus is “the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”:

18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

This rock is not Peter, but Peter’s declaration, and that declaration will drive the inevitable growth and advance of Jesus’ church. I used to look at the church as on the defensive, and hell on the offensive. Doesn’t that seem the way it is most of the time, if not all the time? But that’s not what Jesus says. Gates in the ancient world were defensive instruments, not offensive. So in fact, it is the church that is on the offensive, and the gates of hell will not be able to hold back its advance in this fallen world. That means Satan’s kingdom influence must inevitably shrink and the Kingdom of God spread its influence throughout the world. I must ask the question: Do we act like we’re on the winning team? That our victory is inevitable?

What has this to do with Isaiah 2? When I read that chapter this time through it was a jolt to realize how differently I used to read it. I’m speaking specifically of the first five verses. I won’t quote them here, but before in knee jerk fashion I automatically assumed this depiction was eschatological, meaning these events would surely never happen in this fallen world, but only in the new heavens and earth after Jesus returns. No more. I will quote one verse and pose some questions:

4 He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.

Will there be disputes in the age to come when sin doesn’t exist? How exactly in this present age would the Lord “judge between the nations” so in due course “they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks”? May I suggest that is by the “descendants of Jacob” who “walk in the light of the Lord”? (Verse 5) You and me? His people, his body on earth, and he as its head seated at the right hand of God ruling over all things?

These kind of passages indicate, in a phrase I first heard from N.T. Wright, inaugurated eschatology, or the already and the not yet. In other words, the transformation that will be fully realized when Christ returns in the renewed and redeemed heavens and earth, is now partially realized in this fallen world through his church. In reading through Isaiah I found such passages over and over that in the past I instantly thought, well that’s not happening in this world! Oh yes it is, and yes it will. As Jesus said, Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The Best Discussion of Postmillennialism I’ve Heard

The Best Discussion of Postmillennialism I’ve Heard

Jan 23, 2023 | Eschatology

As I’ve written here previously, the very last thing I expected in my red pill journey that started when Donald Trump came down the golden escalator in June of 2015 was to become a postmillennialist (PM). I’d rejected this eschatological position out of hand for many years, although I’d never once studied it. Funny how I could reject something so firmly I knew absolutely nothing about. It was obviously a discredited position, so why bother.

One of the guys mentioned a book by Lorraine Boettner about the topic and I said to myself, I have to get that. Then when I saw the cover it looked familiar, and there it was in my library! I remember getting it back when I was in seminary, which would be about 35 years ago. Had I ever even cracked it open? Nooooooo. Now I have!

As I continue to read and listen and learn, I am more convinced than ever that PM is the biblical eschatology. If you are at all open to this, I would encourage you to listen to this discussion of two other converts to PM, Joel Webbon and Dale Partridge. In this case, Dale is the one sharing his journey to PM, and he was a very reluctant convert. The amount of energy and time he spent in his own studying and learning and listening is impressive, and at least makes him worth listening to.

Briefly, what appeals to me about PM, other than being convinced it is the biblical position, is that it’s all about, in the title of an N.T. Wright book, Jesus and The Victory of God. On the other hand, the premillennial position is all about (as I learned from the guys John MacArthur once said), “Down here we lose, up there we win.” No wonder those who embrace the pre-mill position, and this is the vast majority of Evangelical Christians, are uniformly negative and defeatist. The essence of this view is things will get worse and worse and worse, yea, must get worse and worse and worse, then Jesus will return!

I can no longer look at Psalm 2 and 110, I Cor. 15:25, and Ephesians 1, among many others, and believe that. These are not mere “proof texts” as if they’re the only texts that affirm the doctrine. The entire scope of redemptive history is Jesus and the victory of God. Satan has been defeated on the cross and in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, fulfilling the prophetic declaration of God in the garden that he would crush the serpent’s head. It now distresses me to think I ever believed the story of the New Testament church and the coming of the kingdom of God (not the same thing) was about the victory of the devil on earth.

It excites me immensely to now have solid theological grounding for my optimism in knowing that Christ is ruling at this very moment in the midst of his enemies until he puts them under his feet. I encourage you to give the video a listen to see if PM might make as much sense to you as it does to us.

Stars in the Sky, Sand on the Seashore and Psalm 2

Stars in the Sky, Sand on the Seashore and Psalm 2

Dec 20, 2022 | Eschatology, Theology

What if we are in the early church? Such a question would have appeared absurd to me not too long ago, but no longer. I’m now inclined to answer in the affirmative. As I no longer believe we’re necessarily in the “end times” (i.e., Jesus coming back any day), I now have a longer time horizon on things. The reason is because I think He’s only just beginning to build His church to populate His redeemed new heavens and earth (Rom. 8:18-22). That’s kind of a mind bender, isn’t it.

Psalm 2 speaks to Christ’s Messianic reign among the nations, the peoples, the kings of the earth, and the rulers. They rage, but the Lord assures us they plot in vain, thinking they can break the chains and shackles of the Lord and his anointed. History is littered with the futility of such mortal hubris. The one enthroned laughs and scoffs at them. Why?

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become your father.

8 Ask me,
and I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You will break them with a rod of iron;
you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

And when the Son asks, the Father gives.

Since I became a Christian over 4 decades ago, I’ve always believed Christianity is a minority report. It started out with a small band of peasants in an outpost in the Roman Empire, and against all odds became a worldwide religion and transformed the world. Yet, even in ostensibly Christian nations, Christians were not necessarily the majority of the populations. And while there may be upwards of two billion people today who call upon the name of Jesus, the population of the world is upwards of eight billion. But what if we’re just in the first inning of what turns out to be an overtime game?

Until recently I interpreted these words of Jesus to mean in the end few would be saved:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

That seemed to fit my experience, so it must mean few will be saved in the end. Well, maybe not.

A critical biblical hermeneutical principle is that the Bible was written in a specific historical context, and it’s primary meaning must be taken from that context. Until recently, I took these words of Jesus completely out of their historical context (not good) as if they applied to all times. I’m now convinced they absolutely do not. They were spoken by Jesus to Jews in first century Palestine, of whom John said in the first chapter of his gospel, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” By taking the words out of their proper context we end up distorting their meaning. In addition, it is critical that we do not take our experience, what seems to be the case from our perspective, as the interpretive framework for Scripture. That is also not good.

Yes, Jesus’ words could have some spiritual meaning for fallen humanity and how easy it is to give in to sinful human nature, and how hard it can be to fight against it, but that was not what Jesus was saying. He was not saying this about all fallen humanity for all of history, and that only a very few would ultimately be saved from their sin and reconciled to God in Christ. Yet that’s what I believed! Why?

The answer is simple: I was living by sight and not by faith.

Which brings me to God’s promises to Abraham in Genesis 12, 15, and 17 respectively:

* I will make you into a great nation . . . . and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

* He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

* 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you.

Keep in mind this was before Abraham and Sarah bore Isaac. Then when Isaac was a teenager, the Lord told him to sacrifice his son, and when he was willing to do that the Lord doubled up on the promise (Gen. 17):

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

Even before my recent eschatological transformation, I felt a cognitive dissonance between Jesus’ words in Matthew 7, and these promises to the first Patriarch. Over the years I’ve come to believe God’s mercy and grace is far more capacious than I had originally thought, but I didn’t have the theological justification for that intuition. Now I do. It is impossible to lay out my argument in a short blog post, but I’m convinced Psalm 2 give us that justification in light of the rest of the redemptive history we find in our Bibles, including:

  • The Lord’s prayer
  • Kingdom language throughout the gospels
  • The Great Commission
  • Paul’s declaration of Christ’s authority over all things in Ephesians 1
  • Quotations from Psalm 2 and 110 in the New Testament, among others

In Ephesians 1, Paul says, “God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church.” The coming of God’s kingdom, the Kingdom of heaven, it’s blessings of righteousness and peace, are for the purpose of Christ populating his church and his eventual reconciled universe.

Looking back at Psalm 2, it’s clear the devil doesn’t stand a chance. It’s now unimaginable for me to believe Almighty God would allow the majority of those creatures created in his image to end up eternally separated from him. The metaphors of stars in the sky and sand on the seashore were not throwaway lines by Yahweh. Think about this imagined conversation between them:

“You do get what I’m saying, Abram, right? It will be lots and lots of people, kinda like sand on the seashore and stars in the sky. But of course, I’m just using language metaphorically, so you get the idea. I certainly don’t mean that many people.”

Well, maybe Yahweh didn’t literally mean every single grain of sand and every celestial ball of light, but it is way, way more than I thought when I misinterpreted the Matthew 7 passage. And we know now that Abraham had no idea just how many stars in the sky there really were, but the Creator God sure did.

I’ll end this post with a quote from Revelation 7. John is told by an angel about the 144,000 sealed by the living God, 12,000 from each of the tribes of Israel. I see those numbers as symbolic for the stars in the sky, and the sand on the seashore, the uncountable great multitude:

9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:

“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”

11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:

“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”

 

Psalm 2 Is Happening Now!

Psalm 2 Is Happening Now!

Dec 13, 2022 | Eschatology, Theology

I’ve made it to Psalms in my reading, and I’m amazed how much my perspective on Psalm 2 has changed. I always assumed it was talking about the future when Christ returned, and only then would God the Father make the nations Jesus’ inheritance, and the ends of the earth his possession, only then would he break them with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like pottery (v. 8, 9). Because, you know, look around the world, or in history, and it doesn’t exactly look like Jesus is reigning, does it? Or is he?

It’s fascinating talking to Christians about current affairs and the state of the world. Inevitably all lament to one degree or another how horrible things are. Many are convinced Jesus is coming back soon. I heard Eric Metaxas recently say because of technology never before available, the mark of the Beast could actually happen now; he believes it will. Almost everyone believes we live in “the end times.” Because, that’s how it’s supposed to work, right? Things go straight to hell, they get really horrible, suffering and misery unmatched since the world began, and then bamo! Jesus returns like Batman to save the day. Or something like that.

I enjoy countering such pessimism with a bit of a different perspective on things. I might ask; I wonder what Christians in Europe were thinking in the late 1340s. It was kind of a tough time given they had to endure something called the Black Death, the bubonic plague. To get a sense of the damage:

Best estimates now are that at least 25 million people died in Europe from 1347 to 1352. This was almost 40% of the population (some estimates indicate 60%). Half of Paris’s population of 100,000 people died. In Italy, Florence’s population was reduced from 120,000 inhabitants in 1338 to 50,000 in 1351. The plague was a disaster practically unequalled in the annals of recorded history and it took 150 years for Europe’s population to recover.

Rush Limbaugh used to say most people think history started when they were born, and historical amnesia in our culture is at pandemic levels. What do you think those living in Europe at the time of the plague might have thought about the second coming? The phrase, “Bring out your dead,” would have been a common refrain in the streets. The level of suffering is staggering and impossible to conceive. Life was hard enough in the Middle Ages without the Black Death.

Dickens started A Tale of Two Cities with, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” and everyone seems to agree ours is most definitely “the worst of times.” I’m kinda thinking Europeans living in 1350 might disagree. By any measure we live in the best of times, and it isn’t even debatable. I could multiply historical examples like this, if not to this degree of suffering, to make the same point. Why all the gloom and doom at this point in history? Historical amnesia is one reason, certainly, but faulty theology is another. Which brings me to Psalm 2.

When I’m talking to my Negative Nellie Christian friends, I bring up Psalm 2 and ask them if they’ve ever considered it in light of current events. Then I’ll say something like, you do know at this very moment Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the Father “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,” right? You do know right now Jesus is reigning, ruling, at this very moment, “until he has put all his enemies under his feet,” right? These are not theoretical theological points or Scriptural speculation; this is orthodox Christian doctrine since Pentecost. Yet it seems most Christians miss this part as their assessing the horribleness in which we live. They ought not do that.

There are many other Old Testament passages that make the point, but Psalm 2 is especially powerful. Our tendency, and not too long ago I was guilty of the same thing, is to see events happening in some way apart from God’s providence. Oh sure, I knew and believed God is the sovereign Lord over all things, and in fact in control of all things, but my emotional reaction to things sure didn’t reflect that. And what I believed about the “end times” effectively compelled me to pessimism. My eschatology, my understanding of the “end times” was basically what I described above, things get worse and worse, and eventually so bad Jesus has to come back to save the day. Which is why I so horribly misinterpreted Psalm 2.

Properly understanding Psalm 2 is too important to grapple with in a paragraph or two, so I’ll focus on the Psalm itself in the next post, but I will make a salient point about the Black Death.

If we look at the Great Commission Jesus gave his disciples, he affirms his authority over all things “in heaven and on earth,” which is the fulfillment of what we read about in Psalm 2. He then tells them, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations . . .” I always assumed “nations” really meant individuals, and while it clearly does in light of the rest of the New Testament, the word Jesus uses doesn’t mean individuals. The Greek word Matthew uses (remember Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, a form of Hebrew) for nations is ἔθνος-ethnos; properly, people joined by practicing similar customs or common culture; nation(s). Now read Psalm 2 in light of the Great Commission, and the bigger picture emerges.

Could Christians in Europe in the 1350s imagine the gospel going to the literal ends of the earth as it has in our day? A hundred years ago the African continent was heathen, and today it is primarily Christian. Whatever the numbers, by all accounts Christianity is exploding in China, as it is in South America. Even where Christianity is a minority religion or persecuted it grows and prospers. The nations are being discipled, God’s kingdom is advancing, and Christ’s church is growing, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. There is much disagreement among Christians as to what exactly this discipling of the nations will look like in practice, but it is happening. Psalm 2 tells us why.