Tag Archives: eschatology

All Tears Wiped Away

21 Sunday Feb 2016

Posted by in eschatology, Promises of God, prophecy, Theodicy

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1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. 2And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 3And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, 4and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away.”

As with many of the visions of the Bible, this one from near the end of the book of Revelation (Chapter 21) appears too good to be true — or at least too big and broad to be believed.

To make sense of it, we’ve got to find a way to limit it. First, it can’t be referring to the planet, and the known universe, because the literal statement here is that heaven and earth… that is, everything in the Universe, will cease to exist. And then, just like that, a new heaven and earth is created… except the new one doesn’t have any oceans. (Which with what we know of life on earth as we know it, simply couldn’t happen. The ocean is the key to biological life.)

And to complicate the picture, we have a description of a city arriving on planet earth from some distant place in the cosmos. But how could this be, because the cosmos just ceased to exist. Also, verse 3 says that God is now going to live with mankind…. but how could this be? Didn’t we just lose the earth? Where are the people now?  Is this why they’re crying… because the earth ended?

So let’s try viewing this as metaphorical. Let’s think of heaven as the spiritual or religious realm of human society. Turns out if we do this it can help dozens of places in Revelation and elsewhere in the Bible seem more reasonable.

A new heaven would then mean a new way of thinking about religious things, and therefore new people in charge, new rules, new values, new perspectives. The old religious scene is simply gone. “Imagine there’s no heaven.” John Lennon could picture this, and I can too.

And a different earth … the physical part of human society. That’s gone, too. No republicans and democrats arguing about who is right. No supreme court justices needed to interpret laws, because … well Jeremiah and Isaiah saw the picture with all the laws written in people’s hearts. No courts are needed to explain or enforce obedience among reluctant citizens. And thus no angry youth afraid of police, and no police harassing them.

Now, a major change in this new imaginary scene is where God is. In the old picture, the one we’ve grown up with, God is basically nowhere to be found. He “hides himself”, as Isaiah puts it. And those who claim to have found him have trouble convincing others that they really have. Is it because the ones who seem to know about God aren’t very good examples of what we would logically expect a spokesman for God to be — or is it because the people who they are preaching to are just plain bad … and don’t want to know about God, no matter how nice the preachers are? Or maybe could it be a mixture of both?

So now we have this new picture, and in it God isn’t hiding somewhere or speaking through ancient Jews or weird people who show up on TV or surrounded by stained glass, dress funny, ask for donations, smile too much, and generally just irritate us. All those folks are gone, but God is living with us. Right next door. Maybe even in our spare bedroom.

Now who are the people of God? Is it still the church folks… a small percentage of the population? No, the way John seems to see this picture, all the people are now God’s people.

We know this because they’ve been crying, they’ve been dying, they’ve been in pain… but God is suddenly standing there next to them, wiping their tears. He’s removing their pain. He’s ending death.

How many of the tears are being dealt with in this way? All of them.

How much of the pain is being eradicated? All of it.

How much death is being thwarted? All of it.

Now, here’s where the picture makes us furrow our brows and clench our fists.

Wait a minute! I understand the picture that is being painted. But why is this artwork being created? What does it mean to me? Is this really a true picture of the way things are going to be, or is this some kind of cruel joke? Is this really just saying that the ones who are already setting them up to be the God-people are going to have THEIR pain and tears wiped away, but the rest of us are just going to see them off in the distance, wishing we could be there … and suffering on forever and ever while the lucky few get to live in their own paradise?

The Hope Diamond.

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Well, the guy who painted this picture thought of this… so he put the Jesus followers into the picture too. He put them in there as the “holy city”, which comes out of heaven — the religious world … and comes down to earth. It’s a city with some features like Jerusalem, with its protective walls and its government buildings and its houses and its festivals where lambs die to restore people to God — and its temple where priests mediate between God and man … restoring everyday people to full fellowship and access to God, by making payment for their sins.

And this picture doesn’t only refer to the truly good guys as Jerusalem… he also compares them to a bride who is married to the Lamb… Jesus. How is this bride pictured? Well, she is dressed in white, and she’s beautiful, and the Lamb really, really loves her. What does this bride do? She is attractive to her husband … and that leads her to become like a mother to the rest of the human race. It might even be thought of as the new mother of humanity, in the same way that the Lamb is the new father.

The human race in this picture was orphaned when their first father messed up, and left them outside of paradise, living under curses that mom and dad are to blame for. Now there’s a new father and mother … Jesus and his bride. And all the people who were related to the original father … every human who has ever lived … are released from their curses and welcomed back into this expanded, updated Garden. A garden with no Serpent. A garden with no weeds. And with no Angel of Death to keep people from living there forever.

Too good to be true? No, redemption is the plan. A redeemed and restored earth is precisely what we must learn to expect, to hope for, and to pray for. And whether we pray or not, believe or not, even whether we survive until it arrives or not … it’s a gonna happen.

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Benjamin Button – more about death than life

27 Saturday Dec 2008

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, Hell, love of God, movies, prophecy, religion, Theodicy, universalism

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I took my wife to see the Curious Case of Benjamin Button on Christmas day. We both enjoyed it a great deal.

It’s a love story, and an adventure story. Someone compared it to Forest Gump, but it’s never as emotional as that masterpiece, nor as funny. But it’s got some humor, I’d give it it a thumbs up for the quality of the writing, acting, cinematography, and directorial artistry. And I love the way sunrises over the water are like a character in the film … somehow Benjamin is attracted to them, and watches them regularly by himself, with family members, etc.

As I stated yesterday, what makes me resonate with the movie the most is the way it presents human growth backwards from the norms we see every day…. aging, failing, dying. Here, a person emerges from the womb as from the grave, in decrepitude, and then grows toward youthful vigor. The “youthful” Benjamin writes in his diary at one point (perhaps at 15 biological years, now with the body of perhaps a 60 year old) “Some days I feel different than the day before…” His wrinkles are disappearing, his hair is sprouting “like weeds”, his hormones are catching fire.

Does the Bible really support the idea that such a miracle is possible? That it will happen to the masses of humanity? Yes and Yes!

Jesus himself states the case as emphatically as words can say: “Don’t be amazed…. All in the graves will come forth.” Unfortunately the fog of neo-Platonic concepts like immortal soul and hellfire make it difficult for most Christians to really see what Jesus is saying here. It’s quite simple, though. The ones who enter into a relationship with God during this age, and continue walking in grace and faith, emerge in the resurrection of Life, what Jesus calls the First Resurrection in the book of Revelation. For such, their resurrection is instantaneous, glorious, and in heaven. The entire rest of mankind, who remain in their sins, emerge from the grave still in their sins, but experience a gradual resurrection, through a process of judgment or trial and testing. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul states that God gives each a body as it pleases him. This is tremendously reasuring, because it means that disfigured, disabled, distorted folks in this life can look forward to being whole upon emerging from the grave. Then, their education will begin and it will take most of the Millennium for each person to build the finegrained righteous character that is going to be their birthright and their ticket into everlasting life as a member of the human community.

Isaiah describes the scene in several places, including chapter 35. He defines its scope as “the ransomed of the Lord” (which by the authority of 1 Tim 2:4-6 I claim means “all the human race”). He states that they return (come back). That is, they don’t go to a place they never were before, they come back to where they were before.. planet Earth. They come back joyfully, and yet they have some travelling still to do. Isaiah calls it a highway of holiness. He describes it as a place that you can’t travel if you’re unclean (dirty or sinful) … and yet he says that it exists FOR the unclean. He says that the wayfaring man (Joe Sixpack), though they be but fools, won’t err therein. They will figure out how to navigate that highway to holiness, and with the help God has provided with his powerful Son and his patient Bride they will get to that place of moral excellence, of wisdom, of forgiveness, of victory over doubt and selfishness and fear. I envision the Bride or spiritual government of that age as all the great and saintly Christians of ages past; myriads of powerful spiritual mediators working overtime to help everyone with a cloud of supernatural help and faithbuilding efforts. The result of all this effort is the process of age-reversal that Job described in the verse I quoted yesterday… returning to the days of youth.

Isaiah hints at the remarkable reversal of all that we think about in this new living (un-dying) process. He says in 65:20, “”No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days; For the youth will die at the age of one hundred and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed.”

What an odd verse! I think the normative experience during the Millennium will be to awaken from the grave near the beginning of the Millennium and live under the authority of Christ and his “Bride”. Joe Sixpack will be living, learning, getting the occasional rebuke but mostly lots of great instruction and encouragement, for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Then comes the end, when Christ turns over the Kingdom to the Father, and there is one last final test, known in the book of Revelation as the “little season” when one more time an evil deceptive intelligence (Satan) is allowed to try and organize opposition to God. This will finally settle who really has love in their heart and really wants to live eternally on the earth…(see Matthew 25:31 to 46)

So I think the Isaiah 65:20 text is saying that since every person can expect the better part of a Millennium to be their minimum opportunity,  anyone who dies at, say, 100 years old in that Messianic Age will be like a child in comparison to the 700, 800, 900-year lifespans that the vast majority will experience. And all those who die before the end of the Millennium would do so only as a final judgment… so after a 100 or so years of the most patient and thorough tough love imaginable, those who are executed will be truly sinners, truly deserving of the curse of death. They’ll be the few, the occasional incorrigible folks who simply refuse to buckle down to the righteous authority of the Lamb and his Bride. They will be recognized as accursed sinners by their fellow men.

The Button story isn’t remotely about any of these things. It explores the challenges and unique tragedies that would face a man whose 70 years of experiencing the hereditary fall of man if his growth pattern were reversed. So in the end his life is still a process of dying, not a real life as the Bible envisions it for all people in the future.

It’s tough for us to shake the perception that this life is LIFE. It ain’t folks. It’s death. Cradle to grave, dying we die. That’s why Jesus said weird things like “let the dead bury the dead.” Even the people he resurrected remained firmly dead … that is, dead in trespasses and sins, not released from the condemnation upon all who get their life from Adam.

Those who receive new life from Christ are indeed alive, however. Christians in this age are truly set free from death, and though their outer man appears to die, inwardly they are being renewed with an inner spiritual life that is the spark of an immortal, spiritual existence beyond the grave.

But those who do not receive Christ in this life remain in their sins, and will have to be dealt with in the next age. And of course, that’s where I differ from the main stream of the Christian community… in seeing a second age of grace for all the rest of mankind.

So enjoy a good love story… but also try to put your mind around the incredible love story of a happy God for ALL the human race. Not one that falls flat because most folks don’t respond… [SPOILER ALERT] not one in which the leading lady gets old and dies, and the leading man gets young and dies … but a love story that is reasonable, fair, and yet results in everyone who wants to living happily ever after!

Q: Why was Jesus sent to Earth?

04 Friday Jul 2008

Posted by in a happy God, Bible Questions, Calvinism, eschatology, love of God, Theodicy

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Hi, Brian and Kimberly,
My apologies for taking so long to answer you.

Jesus told us that God’s motivation is love, and that his goal is to bring life to whoever believes in Jesus. John 3:16

Of course, the mainstream traditional teaching is that most people self-select themselves out of that opportunity, by choosing to reject Jesus. My Calvinist brothers acknowledge that humans are not really free and capable of responding, but their perspective isn’t very comforting, either: they teach that God has chosen who will escape the wrath of God. Apparently in this view God has chosen to send the majority of the human race to eternal misery. Some Calvinists will tell you that God knew these folks would not do the right thing anyway … others will say that the sovereign God can’t fail, is always righteous, so of course this idea that millions, billions are fore-ordained to hell cannot be an unloving or bad idea. After all, “who are we to reply against God?”, they will say; “who are we to complain as lumps of clay against the potter’s will?” (language Paul used in Romans 9, but not to justify eternal damnation, it seems to me).

However Jesus was well aware that God’s sending of a righteous man into the sinful world would not just magically make everyone all sweetness and light… those who benefitted from the status quo would fight him… and so he states in John 3:17 that again, the goal is not to judge the sin-gripped world through Jesus, but to save that very world through Jesus’ efforts on their behalf.

Jesus stated that he came to give his flesh for the life of the world. Again, life for the entire world is what is clearly and unambiguously stated. It doesn’t say, “I came to give my flesh for every individual who receives me before he dies.” There’s a world dying, and Jesus sets his sights pretty darn high — “I’m going to save the world.”

Pause for a moment to consider the ways in which that phrase, “save the world”, is used so often today.

Here’s the first 5 things that come up in a Google search:

  1. The Save the World Project says, “Today we all face a great challenge…” Indeed. This one focuses on fossil fuels, something Jesus never even mentioned.
  2. The How to Save the World blog focuses on unequal distribution of wealth, species extinction trends, and other ominous facts that make thinking people worry.
  3. Justin Timberlake and Madonna apparently have an orgasmic focus in their 4 minutes to save the world.
  4. Foreign Policy magazine presents 21 solutions from various brilliant people on how to save the world. First is from Garry Kasparov the chess master: a Global Magna Carta.
  5. And at the Save Your World store, you can learn about body care, hair care, and other accessory items at the Rainforest-Mall:

    “By purchasing our products, you are contributing to the Save Your World® project, a partnership with Conservation International and the Government of Guyana Forestry Commission. The project secures rainforest habitat that would have been leased by mining or logging companies. Every purchase you make helps protect one whole acre of dwindling habitat…”

That’s just the top 5 ways various well-intentioned folks think we can save our world. Do you suppose that Jesus was equally misguided when he tossed out the notion that somehow if he died on a cross it would do something to save the world?

Or do you think that the historic results of Christianity so far were what he had in mind when he said “my flesh I give for the life of the world”? According to ReligiousTolerance.org, the percentages of the world that are Christian have barely budged in a hundred years — still roughly 33% of the world population. And that’s counting “Christians” in the broadest, most shallow ways possible.

ReligiousTolerance also quotes Samuel Huntington:

The percentage of Christians in the world peaked at about 30 % in the 1980s, leveled off, is now declining, and will probably approximate to about 25% of the world’s population by 2025. As a result of their extremely high rates of population growth, the proportion of Muslims in the world will continue to increase dramatically, amounting to 20 percent of the world’s population about the turn of the century, surpassing the number of Christians some years later, and probably accounting for about 30 percent of the world’s population by 2025.

Islam is growing faster (2.9% annually, faster than world population growth), while Christianity is slowly slipping as a percentage of world population.

If we try to evaluate Christianity according to the number of adults who have chosen to claim themselves practicing followers of Jesus, a survey published in Crosswalk.com in 2001 stated that 11% of the world “know Jesus”. Quoting ReligiousTolerance.org:

Missiologist Ralph Winter estimated in early 2001 that there are 680 million “born again” Christians in the world, and that they are growing at about 7% a year. This represents about 11% of the world’s population and 33% of the total number of Christians.

So getting back to my main point: Christianity as we know it should not be viewed as a fulfillment of Jesus’ claims that he came to save the world.

Jesus said, “If I be lifted up [on the cross], I will draw all men unto me.” Here he doesn’t talk in general terms about the world, he makes a pretty bold claim about individuals. That’s especially significant, since elsewhere he said, “no one comes to the Father except through me” and “no man CAN come to me unless the Father who has sent me draws him…”

And Jesus not only claims that he is the only way to life, he claims that the opportunity comes from God, and ALL men will indeed be drawn to him.

It should be obvious, it seems to me, that either we should dismiss Jesus entirely as a raging, self-deceived lunatic, or else we should try to find a rational explanation for these amazingly grandiose statements.

Paul, writing about it later, said that Jesus brought life and immortality (two distinct things) to light through the gospel. (That’s from 2 Timothy 1:10)

I would submit that life for the human race (on earth beginning in Messiah’s worldwide reign) was brought to light through the gospel. The whole world will be saved when the redemptive plan of Jesus is fully accomplished. The earth will be restored, the garden paradise will expand to fill the world, the nations will be healed — whoever wants to — and only after they have made their choice will Satan be allowed to attempt to instigate one last rebellion. (see Revelation 20) Though Christians lost sight of this world-wide redemption, orthodox Jews have held fast to it in one form or another and it’s still a prominent part of their hope for the future.

The Gospel also brought to light the promise of immortality or death-proof-ness, the power to live without external sustenance, forever. This distinct quality was not even enjoyed by angels, but only God and the resurrected Jesus. And yet it in the Christian “high calling”, this opportunity is opened up for the victorious followers of Jesus, who will live in heaven as spiritual beings. This is the “special” salvation for the “church of Christ.” In the “first resurrection” they will become part of the “bride, the lamb’s wife”. They will be given the kingdom. They will judge men and angels. They will shepherd the nations with a staff of iron with Jesus in his throne.

In summary, Jesus came to save the world. And he’ll really do it. First he saves a small group who will be so close as to be called his “bride” … but then they together turn their attention to the world and continue the hard work of saving it, through a process of resurrection by judgment, and teaching the world what it means to live in harmony and follow the principles of God’s universe. When they’re done, every man, woman and child who has ever lived will have fully learned what God expects of them, and how wonderful things can be if everyone follows those loving and just principles. Then a final test, and those who choose death will receive it. The vast majority, no doubt, will choose and forever enjoy life and love on a restored earth. “And they all lived happily ever after…”

Happy Heretic, meet Happy God

28 Saturday Jun 2008

Posted by in a happy God, barna, George Barna, Hell, love of God, orthodoxy, revolution, Theodicy

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I’m happy to rediscover Judith Hayes, the Happy Heretic. I’m a happy heretic myself, being convinced that most of Christianity is dead wrong about the end game God has planned. 

In her most recent post, Judith points her incisive wit at the 7 visions of Hell described in an article she reviews. All the views, though nominally Christian, are not only illogical and wrongheaded, but unbiblical.

In the Bible view, Hell is always 52 degrees … a little chilly but you won’t care because when you go there, you can’t feel anything anyway. And everyone goes there — including Jesus. And no, it’s not the body that goes there, it’s the soul — the existence or conscious life, which is clearly said to die, not live immortally. (Jesus’ soul went to hell — hades, oblivion — while his body lay in a tomb). 

And in the Bible view, Hell (oblivion — the condition of death inhabited by the children of Adam) is cast into the “Lake of Fire” — eternal oblivion, absolute destruction. How does one absolutely destroy the condition of death for all the souls who have died since Adam? Well, the Bible makes that clear, too: you resurrect them out of death — all of them.

In the Bible view, Death also gets cast into the Lake of Fire. Are we tormenting Death here? No, we’re also obliterating the process of Death, and the sentence of Death that was given to all human beings way back in Genesis. That whole dying process, that whole engine of despair and pain, of what God told Adam would be “dying though shalt die” will go out of existence… along with all the things that were invented to make it either easier (guns, ammo, bombs) or less painful (doctors, hospitals, clergymen). All gone. Foof.

Oh, and Judith, don’t worry.  I’m not saying you have to do anything about meeting God right now. When he’s ready, he promises to introduce himself to everyone, and at that point participating in his pleasant society will be strictly voluntary and with no strings attached (other than the kind of rational interactions and mutuality that I can tell you would find appealing, according to Revelation 22:17.)

Judith is asking the same questions that I think God is asking the Christian church today. He is poking them in the chest, demanding that they answer the questions that Judith so eloquently articulates:

Will we ever stop this nonsense? Will the day come when we stop screaming threats at each other about some outlandish place of torture in some invisible, unknowable afterworld? When will we cease to believe in this maliciously cruel myth called Hell? When are we going to learn to appreciate our wonderful world and our all-too-brief visit here? When will love and tolerance finally dominate hate? When will….oh, the hell with it.

The answer of “will the day come…?” is found in Isaiah 28:15-18

“When…?” is a little bit trickier. I’ll give my 2 cents another day, but Barna clearly documents the fact that Isaiah 25:18 and Revelation 18 (comeuppance for Xtianism) are well under way.

By the way, you might also like to meet Josh Brown, who after his own exodus calls the corruption of Christianity “the religious industrial complex.”

Q: Why OT/NT dichotomy?

27 Friday Jun 2008

Posted by in Bible Questions, christianity, eschatology

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Hello Brothers and Sisters…

I am a true follower of Christ, and I accepted Christ as my only saviour.

But I have one question that bothers me…We know the Old testament and the new testament are different. Why is it that God is an ‘angry and destructive’ God in the Old testament, and written that we follow an eye for an eye, and destroyed lands and annihilated tribes, and there were strict rules then, etc. you know what I mean. BUT…in the new testament, God is a God of love, forgiveness, compassion, etc. Here, it teaches that we should turn the other cheek, etc. And that the old testament rules don’t apply to us now! Who said that? We are commanded not to eat pigs, and we still eat them. Please…tell me. What is the difference b/w the old testament and the new testament, and why did God suddenly change in the New.

Thanks

With much love in Christ,

Eyoel

Thanks for an excellent question.

I would start with the fact that Jesus lived as a Jew, born under the law, and did not condemn the Law. He obeyed it both in letter and spirit, and won the right to become the mediator of that law for the world of mankind. (1 Timothy 2:3-6)

Now, here’s where the mainstream teachings of Christian tradition will start to steer you wrong: most churches teach that Jesus abolished the law for all people, and made the new testament concepts of turning the other cheek, etc. as the new standard … as though God had changed the rulebook half way through human history. I agree with you that this is how it seems.

In reality, I think to make sense of the Bible we need to see 3 things:

1. The Law is eternal.. that is, the principles of right and wrong, how to treat people, etc.

2. Overlaid upon the Law are some ceremonial features and some dietery guidelines that have more symbolic, spiritual significance. These ceremonial features include the tabernacle, the sacrifices, and the activities of the feasts and fasts. Each of them is a picture of God’s dealings with different parts of humanity, at different times. The spiritual meaning of each of these applies to things God is planning for either the Church or the world of mankind.

For example, the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16) sacrifices picture the activities of Jesus and his followers (Aaron and his sons the under-priests) during the Christian age. They experience the symbolic burning of the flesh outside the camp (The writer of Hebrews refers to this in Hebrews 13:11-13 and applies the process to both Jesus and his followers — clearly a reference to the fact that both the bullock and the goat of sin offering experienced the burning of their bodies — an offensive and dishonored smell as viewed from the world’s perspective. And yet the result of the very same sacrifices involved the commingling of their blood with incense which ascended from the “holy” compartment to the “most holy”.

I believe that this feature of the Law — the tabernacle — defines for us the temporary dwelling place of God among members of the Church of Christ in this life. Throughout the Christian era, God has met only with  those who approach him through Jesus — who is pictured by the 3 doors of access to God the tent was fitted with. An outer gate, represents belief in Jesus as our savior. The inner building could only be entereded through the door of full commitment to Jesus, as described in Romans 12:1. And the inner door represents the pathway to the presence of God which Jesus made accessible through his death, and we only pass through upon our death as his followers.

At the same time that those carcases — hide and hoofs and entrails — were making a stench from the world’s perspective, the blood or life essence of the same animals was brought with incense and coals of fire and combined on the golden altar inside the Holy. This created a “sweet smelling savor” from the viewpoint of fellow-believers, and it actually permeated the door and wafted with the High Priest into the Most Holy when he came to sprinkle the blood at the “mercy seat”. (See Revelation 5:8, which defines incense as the prayers of holy people, and Revelation 6:9-11, which indicates that the blood of martyrs is valuable to God and he factors it into his decisions as the righteous judge.)

Hopefully from this example you can see that the Law was given to foreshadow things which the New Testament presents in greater detail. Other examples which you can easily research include:

  • the Passover lamb picturing Jesus, their escape from Egypt picturing the promised deliverance of all people, and the night of the firstborn, picturing the deliverance of the Church in advance of the rest of the world;
  • the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham picturing God and his sacrifice of his only Son;
  • the whole story of Joseph picturing Jesus and his interactions with the Jewish people;
  • the 3 40-year kingdoms of Saul, David, and Solomon picturing the 3 ages of grace — the Jewish, the Christian, and the Messianic;
  • the battle of Gideon and the Midianites, picturing the “little flock” of the Christian church defeating the enemies of God;
  • the battle of Joshua against Jericho, picturing the fall of the world system through an earthquake brought by God.

The Old Testament is literally filled with these “types” or foreshadowings of the great plans of God.

3. The most important thing you need to see is the amazing love of God for all the world of mankind. What few Christians seem to realize is that God ordained two different ways of dealing with those whom He intends to save through Christ. In New Testament times until now, God is dealing with people who in his wisdom he decided not to actually make healthy, get new bodies, etc. Instead, he gives us a “treasure in an earthen vessel”. He gives us a measure of His spirit which “transforms our mind” (Romans 12:1-2) but does not actually restore our physical bodies. We continue to sin, and learn to be somewhat punished, somewhat crippled, by those sins. We must struggle with our environment, too — temptations from bad people and even evil angels; tendencies to sin from our own fallen nature as well as our selfish human heart. In God’s wisdom, this is the condition we are left in throughout our Christian walk in the flesh.

Therefore, much of the Old Testament teaches the human followers of Jesus for the last 2000 years how to think and act in imperfect surroundings. It helps us learn how to struggle and fight against evil in our very souls. In the Old Testament, this struggle was pictured by the battles of the nation of Israel to capture the promised land. All of that happened, not because it is God’s will that we should practice “ethnic cleansing”, but because he wanted to create an illustration of what is happening in the lives of true Christians across the last 20 centuries.

But both the Old and New Testaments also state that the vast majority of the human race will be dealt with by God in a different way. He will “pour out his spirit upon ALL FLESH”. He will swallow up death in victory. He will heal all people. “All in their graves” will come forth and be resurrected onto the earth. In that era, people will actually be healed physically, while their moral development is still progressing. All the inhabitants of the world will “learn righteousness”. There will be no stumbling blocks. Satan will be bound. There will be no deceivers, and God will no longer hide himself. Instead, he will be with them, and be their God. Before they call, He will answer.

These promises are the key to understanding how to harmonize the Old and New Testaments.

When you came to the Lord you were probably taught that those who don’t accept Jesus now will burn in hell forever, either literally or in some sort of psychological separation from God. Perhaps you grew up being taught this awful idea since you were a child. Clearly the Bible has lurid language in places which can be interepreted this way. However, the only way you’ll be able to harmonize the entire Bible and really make sense of the Old and New Testaments as one united work is to realize that God has planned for the complete recovery of all who are willing. The whole world is going to be restored. The whole world is going to be taught. God so loved the world — the entire world — that he sent his son to save them. He didn’t come to bring a message that would in reality condemn them. No, he came to die for their sins, to pay the price of their inherited sins from Adam, so that they would have what some people call a “second chance”. In reality, it is a full “first real opportunity” to know and understand God for the vast majority of the human race.

If you look carefully at the words of God uttered through the mouths of the prophets of the Old Testament, there is very good news promised for the whole world. Everyone. Not just for Jews, and not just for Christians either. A “feast of fat things” has been decreed and planned for the entire world. It is the sovereign God’s righteous and irresistable will that all the world will be saved, and come to a knowledge of the truth. Because Jesus was “lifted up” (like the serpent of Numbers 21), he will draw ALL MEN to him. All the world will be delivered from death, as Isaiah describes it. All people will know the Lord, as Jeremiah expresses it. All of these Old Testament promises are echoed in the broadest possible language in the New Testament, such as Revelation 21:1-4 which describes the blessing of all the people of the world, and paints a picture in which the “wife of the lamb” works with the lamb to bring these blessings to all. Clearly the intent of the writers is to tell us that the Christian church (that is, the folks whom God hand-picks to be the spiritual wife of Jesus in heaven) will be united with Him and bring life to all the world. This is really good news.

As for the dietary laws, I would think of part of them as sanitation and health regulations for the benefit of the people back then (as well as now) and part of it is meant to have spiritual meaning as so much of the rest of the Old Testament does.

I believe that the number of “goats” (Matthew 25) who will perish in what the Bible calls the “2nd death” is, relatively speaking, very small. Even if the “Gog and Magog” rebellion at the end of the Millennium is comparable to the 200 million evil “horsemen” described at the beginning of the Millennium in Revelation 9, that’s only maybe 2 percent of world population by the time all the dead are raised.

In summary, the important thing to remember is that God does not change, and Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. For Christians now, God has a higher standard and a more difficult test in place. We aren’t just as as Christians to be good people to the best of our ability, we are asked to love our enemies and “turn the other cheek” as Jesus did. And we are being trained to be kings, priests, judges and rulers of the world of the future.

The rest of the world is not on trial at the present time. Their sins are not being imputed to them, but instead they are “storing up” the wrath or judicial judgment of God for their day of reckoning and learning, the 1000 year reign of Messiah. But they will be evaluated at that time, not as a simple condemnation for past mistakes, but as a hopeful and righteous opportunity to learn from those past mistakes and learn to walk in God’s ways. They will be helped and taught in that time by a very merciful group of mentors — the Christian Church and Jesus himself.

And so in the end, the wrath of God (which describes the entire time period of human history — 6 thousand years to us, but only 6 days to God) will have been but “for a moment”. And his mercy — his love for the human race which will effectively and massively restore it, will last forever.

Thanks for your question and please follow up with the many more questions which my answer will probably generate.

An Unfinished Life

28 Thursday Dec 2006

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology, love of God, movies

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Einar Gilkyson: You think the dead really care about our lives??
Mitch Bradley: Yeah, I think they do. I think they forgive us our sins. I even think it’s easy for them.
Einar Gilkyson: Griff said you had a dream about flying.
Mitch Bradley: Yeah. I got so high, Einar. I could see where the blue turns to black. From up there, you can see all there is. And it looked like there was a reason for everything. 

Just saw a great movie — An Unfinished Life. Ranks right up there with Places in the Heart and My Life As a House as stories of redemption and forgiveness, told in realistic terms by a real thinkers who understand the complexity of human experience.

The quote above is from the end of the movie (not giving away the plot). Two crusty old cowboys played by Robert Redford and Morgan Freeman are reflecting on the dead because at the beginning of the movie we learn that Redford’s character Einar had a son who died in his 20s, and the old man never got over it. Every day he would sit at the grave and tell his son what had happened, what he was thinking, and ask for his opinion. It was not eerie or spiritualistic, just a man coping with life by metaphorically speaking to his son’s memory. So at the end Einar asks Mitch if the dead can forgive. The movie has just explored the more practical question, “can the living forgive?” The title comes from the inscription the father has cut into the son’s gravestone — “an unfinished life.”

My wife and I loved every character in the movie, and appreciated that the story saw hope and joy in even the bitter, disappointing aspects of human experience. In the end, the reason for everything comes out.

It makes me happy to see Hollywood types who are cynical toward churchianity, yearning to pierce the veil of time and ask what the purpose of human life might be. And it makes me happy to see them often arriving at the view that our lives are not in vain — that there is hope for everyone.

Problem of Pain

18 Friday Nov 2005

Posted by in eschatology, Theodicy

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MM writes in her “Theology of the Body” blog yesterday that as many philosophers have noted, there are two primary issues relative to evil that we must lay at God’s feet: the “acts of God” that involve human suffering in an incomplete or unfriendly planet, and the “moral failures” that flow form human free moral agency.

She writes an interesting conclusion:

I would submit also that people tend to become uncomfortable with these explanations of pain as resulting from a broken world and moral failure; such an answer seems incomplete. In fact, such an answer is incomplete, until both you and your audience have acknowledged your own “breaking” role in the broken world. May I suggest that such a conversation about the problem of pain is a good opportunity to recognize (gently) the sin and brokenness of the one who brings these troubling questions about the reality of pain, and the consequent need for the Savior?

The approach advocated by MM, it seems to me, may come across as insensitive — sort of like blaming the victim. (as Anonymous seemed to be saying). Yes, we all need to repent. But even after we have repented we will still hurt. And hurt even more on behalf of those who are darkened and discouraged by the prevalence of invincible evil, while the only invincible force in the universe does not interfere. So to force people to wait for an answer about the goodness of God, until they have personally taken full responsibility for their troubles, is both incomplete and unnecessary.

Unnecessary because the Bible is full of answers on this topic of God’s goals and ultimate designs. Incomplete, because the process of repentance and growth toward Godlikeness is a long journey, not a single step. In fact, when we envision the world as it will be toward the end of Messiah’s rule — a world that by today’s standards will be a paradise, with scarcely a problem visible anywhere, victory over evil will still be quite incomplete. In that world, all the people who have ever lived will be back, outwardly obedient and living happily. They will have acknowledged the Savior, and learned substantially much more about how to live and love, freely … and yet the probability of a major explosion of evil will still exist. And it is predicted that evil will indeed come roaring back at the end of the Millennium, in the “little season”. Jesus puts his finger on why in his parable of the Sheep and the Goats. There, when queried as to their sins of omission, exposed at the end of Messiah’s rule, both categories of people are unconscious of what they omitted. Or at least they say they are.

I therefore submit that what God is working toward, the goal he has laid down of complete victory over evil, will only come when all human beings and angels will have fully learned how to be unconsciously, constantly good. So good that they will not only avoid transgression, their love for others will not miss opportunities to do good. This level of character growth will require God’s mighty help, and it will begin to be extended while people are weak.

At the moment, the weak are still saying they are strong. The proud are still “happy”. But God will intervene, he will cry, yea, roar. He will defeat every human rival institution, including and especially the “Christian” ones.

Yet God will also be winsome in victory, and even with the toughest cases of wickedness, God will rise to the occasion by revealing his judgments in an educational way, and by attacking the wickedness of the wicked, until he finds no more wickedness. (Psalm 10:15)

This will take some amazing teaching on God’s part, and some long experience with the subtleties of human and angelic pride. But it will happen, and it is promised. And so I would disagree that God did the ultimate good by creating free beings who can and do sin. If that is all he did, he would be the author of confusion, bitterness and death. But God will make the anger of man, the sin of man, the wilfulness of man, praise him by turning it into a learning opportunity, and nurture every willing heart toward complete victory. All godlike creatures carry destructive possibilities within their hearts and minds — so pain and suffering at the present time is only a problem when viewed shortsightedly. In the long view, it is a necessary part, and everyone will be able to graduate with honors from this long and arduous class.

Grandfather’s role

11 Friday Nov 2005

Posted by in a happy God, eschatology

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Yesterday I got to do two things that are part of Grandfather’s role, as I am discovering it. The first is fixing up the family’s house. Yesterday, it was a frustrating little plumbing leak. Also, looking into a refrigerator problem. And getting to hold the baby and help with its bath.

Guess what. These are fun things for a grandpa to do.

And for me they are insights into what God has in mind for the future. First he has to bring all those people, who had the potential of being his sons, back from the grave. He has to teach them his ways as he has promised he will do. If we think of Jesus and has bride as the first generation of God’s children, the spiritual generation, the fruitage of the rule of Messiah who gain their life from the Second Adam and the Second Eve will be…. God’s grandchildren.

Jesus and the church will have the heavy job, all the diapering and disciplining of those masses of mankind. But God will be enjoying the role of Grandfather, it seems to me. He’ll do special things to make their home better after so many years of being a shambles. He’ll anticipate the needs of all these children, and look for ways to show them grace and glory.

Looking forward — past the current Federal Reserve woes and debt troubles and energy fears — makes me happy, and it helps me to see why God is happy. Everything is under control and moving according to plan.

Yet more wrath?

20 Thursday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, eschatology, Hell, John MacArthur, John Piper, love of God, orthodoxy, Theodicy

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I love the premise of “Desiring God” — that our chief end is to delight in God, enjoying Him forever. It can and should be “all joy” to know, and be loved by, the great and good God of the Universe. But when John Piper gets to describing what God is doing, and how the heavenly Father is treating the people he created, I see a disturbing picture that fails to find a balanced vantage point, an internally consistent understanding of God that harmonizes all that the Bible says about His attributes of love and justice. Let’s start with the first of brother Piper’s statements about God’s “final” wrath — that it is “eternal — having no end.” He leads with the following statement in support of his proposition:

In Daniel 12:2 God promises that the day is coming when “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” 

Let’s look at Daniel for a minute to see what he is arguing. In verse 1 he talks about the beginning of Messiah’s rule, when it starts to make an impact on the world scene. And he talks about 2 resurrections: those who awake to olam life, and those who awake to olam contempt.
Now, there is no question that olam, a Hebrew word for indefinite time, can and often does mean “everlasting”. There is also no question that the life of the righteous who are awakened at the beginning of Messiah’s rule do indeed live beyond the age of Messiah, into the unlimited future — everlastingly. I would argue, however, that the contempt referred to here is limited by other scriptures to the age of Messiah — the “judgment day”. As such, this scripture is focusing on the experience of 2 classes of people who are awakened and dealt with by God during the day of the Lord: those who were already proven righteous beforehand, and those who arrive without having done “the good deeds”, as John 5 describes it. For them, the age of Messiah will be an age in which abhorring or contempt will be their experience.

Take a look, for example, at another use of olam with regard to God’s wrath: Isaiah 57:16. There God says that he will not be always angry. How long is he angry? a long and indefinite period of time (olam in the sense it is apparently being used in Daniel 12:2); but not FOREVER (olam in the sense it is apparently being used in Isaiah 57:16). How long will he be angry and exert pressure on the sinners? Apparently, until the heart becomes contrite, and humility appears. Until that time, there will be no rest for the wicked. Or as the Psalm I quoted yesterday puts it, “call his wickedness to account till you find none.” (I think a number of passages make it clear that God has set aside one day of 1000 years to do all this — it won’t go on longer than that.) At the end, there will still be some who are incorrigible in their wickedness, as Revelation 20 makes clear. Their fate? Revelation 20 calls it the “second death”. The next verse here in the Psalms states, “the strangers are perished out of his land.” He will judge the fatherless and the oppressed, so that the man of the earth may no more oppress. (Psalm 10:18) He is trying to teach as many as become willing to learn. Those who refuse after God’s amazing grace has attempted with sweetness and fury to reach them, will perish — vanish, die, be exterminated according to Strong’s.

The problem God has with sinners is their sin. His hand is not shortened, it can save. But God is working with people in a way that is respectful of the condition he created them with — free moral agency. Unlike Satan, who dominates and enslaves, God allows even sinners the individuality of their will, such that they are able to choose not to be contrite, not to submit to God. Granted, as long as they remain in sin, in one sense they are not “children” of God until they come back to him in the only way he has appointed — repentance from sin and faith/obedience in the Son. But all people, including those still rebellious, are God’s creation, and God has promised some things for all of them.

Some nuts are really tough for even God to crack. Human fathers find this, too. Some of my kids were so responsive that I could catch their eye and melt them. Others needed direct, vigorous confrontation and the imposition of consequences to turn their behavior and, more importantly, their attitudes.

This variety of the tools of love needed for different folks is described in Isaiah 59.
Again, it is talking about the same group of people Daniel refers to, those whose sins have kept them from having a familial relationship with God. In 59:18, 19, God spells out the principle he uses in meting out vengeance — according to their deeds, he will repay. There is reciprocity there, and the penalty is appropriate to the sin. More on that tomorrow.

Still, hope is held out because of the power and commitment of God: (Isaiah 59:20)

And come to Zion hath a redeemer, Even to captives of transgression in Jacob, An affirmation of Jehovah. (Young’s Literal translation) 

This is the verse which Paul quotes in Romans 11:26, to support his conclusion that “all Israel shall be saved.” Paul reads it as meaning, not that the Redeemer will only benefit the repentant, but that he will succeed in turning the “captives of transgression” toward righteousness. He will be a victorious Redeemer.

The Redeemer that is referred to, in the context of Isaiah 59, is Christ, of course, but I believe that Christ in the full, composite sense is meant. The entire body of Christ, the church and its Head, is what both Paul and Isaiah have reference to. For example, in Isaiah 59 God muses that there is no man that can accomplish this redemptive work, this intercessory work, on behalf of the rebellious of Israel. So he sends “his right arm” — a reference to Jesus. And this man puts on a helmet of salvation, covers himself with a breastplate of righteousness, and wears the garments of zeal, of vengeance. (See Isaiah 63 for further description of how Jesus is the agent of vengeance, paying for the sins of the world with his own blood).

All studious Christians will recognize these elements of the Redeemer’s clothing, the breastplate etc., as being descriptive of the soldier’s garb that is also given to Christians who follow in Jesus’ steps. (Although in this life Christians are told vengeance is not appropriate to them, it is promised as a reward in Revelation 2:27, and it is spoken of as what we are being prepared for in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6).

No question, the Bible is difficult to understand. And it doesn’t work to try and erect competing lists of “proof texts” to see whose list is longer. Let’s roll up our sleeves and earnestly try to catch the spirit of God, what the attitude of God is toward human beings.
I believe the harmony is found in recognizing that God’s anger is “for a moment“, and his mercy or undeserved kindness will indeed “endure forever.”

(Psalm 30:5, Psalm 136)

Remember. The Daniel text, and other seemingly harsh texts, must be harmonized with the picture of a father that Jesus gave us in the parable of the prodigal son. The father is willing to let the son squander his inheritance until he comes to his senses — and then he is ready to meet him more than halfway, helping restore and welcome him back to the fold.

Tomorrow — more on trying to understand God’s anger, its appropriateness, and its fairness and redemptive impact.

Why is God happy? My first response to John Piper

17 Monday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, eschatology, Theodicy

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I am not the first to notice that Paul calls God the “happy God” twice in his epistles to Timothy. Many have commented on this extensively. One of the most prolific is John Piper, whose book Desiring God I am now reading.
In the link above, Pastor Piper states what he calls “the ultimate Biblical explanation for the existence of suffering.” I agree that the Bible does indeed offer the ultimate Biblical explanation for suffering, and that Christ is the center of that process, and the Church is the firstfruits of that redemptive plan. I keep hoping for Piper, and C.S. Lewis, and others to reach the logical implications of their arguments, but they keep falling short.

And the reason they keep falling short is that they ignore God’s mechanism for bringing salvation to Adam and Eve and all the others who have not believed in this life.

Here’s an excerpt from this sermon:

“As for you, Adam and Eve, you meant evil against God as you rejected him as your Father and Treasure, but Oh what an infinite good he planned through your fall! The Seed of the woman will one day bruise the head of the great Serpent, and by his suffering he will display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God. You have not undone his plan. Just as Joseph was sold sinfully into slavery, you have sold yourselves for an apple. You have fallen, and now the stage is set for the perfect display of the greatness of the glory of the grace of God.

“For not only did sin enter the world, but through sin came suffering and death. Paul tells us that God subjected the world to futility and corruption under his holy curse. He put it like this in Romans 8:20-23:

“The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

“When sin entered the world, horrible, horrible things followed. Diseases, defects, disabilities, natural catastrophes, human atrocities—from the youngest infant to the oldest codger, from the vilest scoundrel to the sweetest saint—suffering is no respecter of persons. That’s why Paul said in Romans 8:23, “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

“Ezekiel tells us that God does not delight in this suffering. “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11). But the plan remains, and Jeremiah gives us a glimpse into the mysterious complexity of the mind of God in Lamentations 3:32-33, “Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.” Literally: “He does not from his heart [millibbô] afflict or grieve the children of men.” He ordains that suffering come—“though he cause grief”—but his delight is not in the suffering, but in the great purpose of creation: the display of the glory of the grace of God in the suffering of Christ for the salvation of sinners.

“The stage has been set. The drama redemptive history begins to unfold. Sin is now in its full and deadly force. Suffering and death are present and ready to consume the Son of God when he comes. All things are now in place for the greatest possible display of the glory of the grace of God.”

It seems to me that the glaring omission in all of this is that God has provided a way to undo the pain and sin of all humans throughout all history. Piper correctly sees that the true followers of Christ will be a glorious redeemed group, a victory for suffering over evil, for grace over pride. True Christians, of whom I am sure brother Piper is one, will indeed enjoy each other and enjoy God throughout all eternity. But I think the Word promises they will also enjoy the masses of mankind, whom they are explicitly promised to reign over, to shepherd with a staff of iron, to “judge” (which means not condemn, but guide and correct). Christians will enjoy being priests on behalf of the world of mankind, they will enjoy being representatives of God’s extended and sovereign grace on behalf of the world. The gates of pearl, allowing access to the City of God. Indeed, the very streets of the city itself!

Pastor Piper speaks about how Joseph’s brothers are akin to Adam and Eve, who did something bad but God found a way to bless. But in Joseph’s case the brothers are blessed and restored to favor. What about Adam and Eve? The silent elephant in the middle of the living room, which I haven’t yet seen Brothers Piper or Lewis or McArthur talk about, is that in their view Adam and Eve are lost forever for their sin. Jesus is the seed of the woman, to be sure, and he brings some folks out of death and destruction through his and their pain, but there’s a whole lot more people and a whole lot more suffering that is unaccounted for. It feels like we are asked to just wash our hands of it and smile and say, “God can’t make a mistake so it must be OK.”

Or as Piper puts it early in his book, Desiring God, we have to learn to look at it with God’s wide-angle lens — I guess so we don’t see the personal pain and futility of it all.

So brother Piper quotes Romans 8:23 in the above sermon, which talks about how we groan within ourselves during the time of suffering and pain. That’s true, that’s good. But it also says in Romans 8:22 that the whole creation likewise suffers through this process. What of that? When will those who aren’t “the sons of God” yet have their suffering addressed? Paul answers that question in verse 21. The creation itself will ALSO be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

They don’t live happily ever after until they start to live happily ever after. But they will and I think THAT is why God is happy now. Because he sees it and he has planned it and he knows it will happen.