The Mark of the Beast Revealed!

We live in a time where there is extreme fascination with things found in the book of the Revelation (though this has really always been the case). You know…that book at the end of your Bible with all of those psychedelic visions of creatures doing bizarre things, angels trumpeting or pouring out destruction on the earth. This is a book that has held the attention of generations, but as many have bought into the notion that the Mayan’s were onto something about the end of the world in 2012, the thirst for seeking out such concerns has only grown.

What is the point of this last book of the Bible anyways? Does it reveal who the Antichrist is? Is it to guarantee we don’t receive some micro-chip implantation as the “mark of the beast”? Or perhaps to give us a timeline to Armageddon? All of these things have been proposed ad nauseum with charts, graphs and research to demonstrate the authority of their interpretation of the meaning of the Revelation. But is this really the point?

The answer is simple: No! The point of the Revelation is to reveal the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact the actual name of this final book is not “Revelations” (as if to be about revelations of all sorts of things), but “The Revelation”. The fuller name is even “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”. This book is about the one who knows and holds his own and will both reward and punish according to their faithfulness to him (Rev.2-3).

This book is about God’s final justice demonstrated in the reaction of the world to the revelation of Jesus. This world will not bend the knee to Jesus willfully, but reject him to the last (though multitudes from every people group will indeed place their trust and obedience in him). This world will offer its own “christ” and its own kingdom, but at the last these will all be destroyed. It is, in the end, about the glory of Jesus the Christ as sovereign over every power and authority, including death and the grave. And about those who overcome all opposition to faithfully give testimony to Jesus as Lord and Savior. He is the one who gives life (and is life) and he is the light of the world. He is the only one worthy of praise and glory and honor. And he is coming soon. Even so…come quickly Lord Jesus!


[This was an article I had published in the North Star News - Thursday, August 23, 2012]

A Brief Theology of Suffering: The Story of God and Man

There can be no missing that something is terribly wrong with the world.  One need not look far to conclude this.  Sin and evil; death and suffering; sorrow and loss abound.  Not that there is never life and hope or blessing and goodness, but that all things are not well with this world we live in.  How one understands this in the light of the Gospel of Christ is another matter that must be considered carefully.  What follows is a brief personal understanding of the biblical theodicy offered as the story of the suffering God[1] and of the ultimate satisfaction.

In the Beginning...and a World Gone Mad

Everything that is was created by God and for God (Gen.1:1; John 1:3; Col.1:16; Rev.4:11; 10:6) in the very beginning.  This is to say that nothing is an accident of chance or of “fate,” but of purpose and intention.  We, indeed, were created as his special “workmanship” to carry out God's plan of the ages (Eph.2:10) having been made in the very “image” and “likeness” of God (Gen.1:26-27).  If we were created for such blessing and goodness then why is there such suffering and evil?  Obviously, something in this world of ours has gone terribly wrong...was it God's plan that failed?  Or was God unable to keep His plan on track?  God is sovereign and God is love so what went wrong?  Let's look closer.

God IS and It Was Very Good

The Scriptures begin with the simple statement of God's existence (Gen.1:1 – בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים).  He just is and out of the divine freedom of His love He created all that is.  His existence proved (and still proves) to be the very foundation of continuing existence for everything and everyone (Luke 20:38; Acts 17:28; Col.1:17; Heb.1:3).  Existence is therefore a matter of grace and not of necessity.  Life consists always as a gift of God and never more.  This is the nature of His ever abounding Self-giving love that is confessed in the creeds of the Church in the form of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In the account of God's creating, the repetitive refrain that God saw it was “good” (טוֹב – Gen.1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25) is concluded by God seeing everything that he had made as “very good” (טוֹב מְאֹד – Gen.1:31).  This does not imply any kind of philosophical perfection (as if to leave no room for any possible fall...which would deny the nature of the “gift” of life as truly “gift”), but it still refers to a world where goodness reigned and happiness was the rule.[2]  Their world was one where loss was yet unknown, because humanity was still clothed in the glory of obedience and the world was all as it should be.

The Fruit of a World in Rebellion

Then through disobedience to the word of God, sin entered and by it…death.  The loss of the wholeness that had been the worlds and humanity’s prior to that moment was no more…lost in an instant.  What had been blessed was now cursed.  The curse of death reverberated even from that very first family (Gen.4:8) and became the morbid litany of all the generations (and of creation itself) to follow despite the longevity attributed to some of them (וַיָּמֹת “and he died” Gen.5:5, 8, etc.).[3]  The world was now a place filled with death and sorrow, pain and loss.  There were moments of happiness to be sure (the birth of sons and daughters, creativity and music – Gen.4:21-22), but none of it could overcome the sign of the curse that hung as a heavy shadow over everything.

Redemption...Now...But Not Yet

In the midst of the world of chaos, God called and covenanted Himself to a man (and to a people).  In so doing, God revealed Himself as the unchanging forever faithful  יהוהwho Himself would save His people and by so doing would work the redemption of the whole world through the redemption of His people (Gen.22:14-18).  His people Israel would not (indeed…could not do this) and so David’s greater son Jesus of Nazareth was the faithful deliverer bringing light to those who sat in darkness…to the Jews and to the Gentiles (Matt.1:21; 4:16; Luke 2:32).  This was a message of redemption and hope for the whole world (John 3:16), but it actually meant the suffering of God with us.  Our redemption was not simply purchased.  God has entered into our very suffering and born our sorrows (Isa.53:4).  God intimately knows our pain and by his own suffering our Lord Jesus has purchased our redemption (1 Pet.2:24).  In the shadow of the cross and the light of the resurrection suffering has been borne and redeemed by God Himself – not that suffering (and death as its sting) has suddenly been denied, but that now it has been swallowed up in victory.

He has not only purchased our salvation, but he has given “gifts” (χαρισματα) by his Spirit to his Church in order that in the midst of suffering and difficulties we may be sustained and built up as the Church (Rom.12:6-21; 1 Cor.12:4-28; Eph.4:8-16).  We must be sustained through encouragement, through timely prophetic messages, pointed teaching confronting us and directing us in the way we should go and acts of mercy when we are down-trodden.  We act in love towards one another by the Spirit which we have received as sons of God and co-heirs with Christ (1 Cor.13; Rom.8:14-17).  In these workings of the Spirit we live as Christ in the midst of a world of suffering declaring that this world belongs to the Lord (1 Cor.12:1-28).  That very Spirit which groans within us in the midst of a world in travail and agony also begs for our glorification that is yet to be revealed in us at the Day of Christ’s coming (Rom.8:18-28) because it will entail the restoration of all things and the end of death.

And yet we wait (not in passivity, but in Spirit-empowered activity) for our Lord’s return and the final establishment of His kingdom where all our tears will be wiped away and these bodies will be changed from loss to immortality (Rom.8:23; 1 Cor.15:53, 54; Titus 2:13; James 5:8; Rev.21:4).  In that Day, suffering will cease.  In that Day, suffering will have new perspective.  Answers seem trite today and overly simplistic (as evidenced by the friends of Job and even Job’s own response or that of the “Teacher” of Ecclesiastes).  But in light of that Day suffering has meaning, because in light of the day of Christ crucified (and risen)…suffering has been given meaning beyond measure in the overflowing free gift of God’s love for us.

Bibliography

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. 14 vols. Hendrickson Pub, 2010.  Harris, R. L., G. L. Archer, and B. K. Waltke. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Moody Press, 1980.  Sittser, Gerald Lawson. A Grace Disguised: How The Soul Grows Through Loss. Grand Rapids, MI.: Zondervan, 2004.

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[1]  Karl Barth wrote that one must remember "we have to do with the God who Himself suffers pain because of our sin and guilt, for whom it is not an alien thing but His own intimate concern" in Church Dogmatics II/1 (Hendrickson Pub, 2010), 373; and see also the discussion of the God who suffers in Gerald Lawson Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How The Soul Grows Through Loss (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2004), 158, 159.

[2]  cf.טוֹב  793 by Andrew Bowling in R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, and B. K. Waltke, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament (Moody Press, 1980).

[3] With the notable anomalous exception of Enoch who it is said of that he “walked with God, and then he disappeared because God took him away.” (Gen.5:24 NET)  He may be one who serves as a “type” looking forward to the eventual undoing of death itself in the eschaton as the work of Christ – see 1 Cor.15:26.

Forever Listening to the Spirit

I recently read something by Lesslie Newbigin (that great missionary statesman of the twentieth century) that struck a chord with me.  He wrote the following concerning the Jerusalem congregation's recognition of the validity of the Gentile mission that Peter had just returned from (Acts 10-11):

"They were silenced because they had to recognize something new. Jesus had never spoken or acted to call in question the law of circumcision (as he had called in question the law of the Sabbath). The Church was entering a new way which it had not trodden before. Nor did the Church formulate a new policy in this matter by reflection upon and development of the remembered words of Jesus. It was a fresh action of the living Spirit which confronted the Church with the necessity for a new decision. 'The word of Jesus is not a collection of doctrines that is in need of supplementation, nor is it a developing principle that will only be unfolded in the history of ideas; as the Spirit's proclamation it always remains the word spoken into the world from beyond' (Bultmann). But this word is the word of Jesus; it is not another word. The work of the Spirit does not lead past, or beyond, or away from Jesus." (The Light Has Come: An Exposition of the Fourth Gospel Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B.Eerdmans, 1982, pp.216-7)

We, as well, cannot simply treat the Scriptures as a comprehensive list (or we may end up being no different than some of the Pharisees of Jesus' own day--unless we take the New Pauline Perspective on the Pharisees as genuine) of do's and don't's. In every age we are called to listen to the voice of the Spirit which is the voice of the Lord Jesus speaking to His Church the very words of his Father. None of this is to suggest that there will be any discord between what God has spoken, is speaking and will speak. The Scriptures are our measure, but the Scriptures are not simply words that can be adopted apart from the working of the Holy Spirit within us. This means that in all of our hearing, we must press in to hear exactly what the Spirit is saying and once we have heard...to obey.

Jesus Christ and Time

 I've been reading through Karl Barth's "Dogmatics in Outline" (for a third time now and eagerly awaiting the arrival of the complete fourteen volume "Church Dogmatics" this coming November first) as prep for Sunday nights working through the Apostles' Creed and happened upon this wonderful extended quote dealing with Jesus Christ and time.  I just couldn't help but to share it (from Barth, Karl. Dogmatics in Outline. tran. G. T. Thompson; Harper Torchbooks, NY: 1959, pp.130-131) and ask: "What do you think about his concept of "eternity" and "time" in comparison to the modern Evangelical notions?"

Jesus Christ's yesterday is also His to-day and His to-morrow.  It is not timelessness, not empty eternity that comes in place of His time.  His time is not at an end; it continues in the movement from yesterday to to-day, into to-morrow.  It has not the frightful fleetingness of our present.  When Jesus Christ sitteth at the right hand of the Father, this existence of His with God, His existence as the possessor and representative of the divine grace and power towards us men, has nothing to do with what we are foolishly wont to conceive as eternity--namely, an existence without time.  If this existence of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God is real existence and as such the measure of all existence, then it is also existence in time, although in another time than the one we know.  If the lordship and rule of Jesus Christ at the Father's right hand is the meaning of what we see as the existence of our world history and our life-history, then this existence of Jesus Christ is not a timeless existence, and eternity is not a timeless eternity.  Death is timeless, nothingness is timeless.  So we men are timeless when we are without God and without Christ.  Then we have no time.  But this timelessness He has overcome.  Christ has time, the fullness of time.  He sitteth at the right hand of God as He who has come, who has acted and suffered and triumphed in death.  His session at God's right hand is not just the extract of this history; it is the eternal within this history....He is the Alpha and the Omega, the centre of real time, of God's time; which is not meaningless time that passes away....'Infiniteness' is a comfortless business and not a divine predicate, but one that pertains to fallen creatureliness.  This end without an end is frightful.  It is an image of man's lostness.  Man is in such a state that he is precipitated into aimlessness and endlessness.  This idea of the endless has nothing to do at all with God.  A limit is rather set to this time.  Jesus Christ is and brings the real time.  But God's time also has an end, as well as a beginning and a middle.  Man is surrounded and upheld on all sides.  That is life.  So man's existence becomes visible in the second article [of the Apostles' Creed]: Jesus Christ wit His past, present and future.

Why I'm Done With The Christian Life

Perhaps you may be wondering why I would say that I'm done with the Christian life (which is following suit after Dietrich Bonhoeffer who states as much in the final pages of his "Cost of Discipleship"). I'm a pastor after all and shouldn't say such things...right? Before you start writing to me to compel me to not abandon the faith...please read on.

The reason I'm done with the Christian life is because I've determined not to live the Christian life any longer, but to have my life hidden in Christ. If I live the Christian life it means I have some ethic or guiding principle that seems to be culturally "Christian", but this says nothing about its correlation to the very real life, death and resurrection of Christ. I will not let my life be judged by some "Christian" standard, but by the one who is Faithful and True...who alone bears the judgment of the world. I will not be conformed to Christianity, but to Christ who is the very Image of God. I will not live for Christianity, but for Christ who gave His life for the world and has taken it up again.

I pray that I may cease living a "Christian life" and truly take up the life of Christ crucified and risen. May my baptism be a baptism into Him. May the cup and the bread be his presence and power. May my prayers be taken up into His prayer. May the spirit that dwells in me be His Spirit. May I be found hidden in Christ and crucified to the world. And may I never be only a "Christian" again...

Jesus and the Old Testament

There was a wonderful and concise blog post over on the Desiring God Blog that I rather enjoyed (you can read it here). It's about the fact that there was never anyone who knew the Old Testament (or Hebrew Bible) better than Jesus. (I especially thought the quote at the end was noteworthy...and quite funny). How well do you know and care for the Old Testament?

10 Reasons I Shouldn't Embrace Jesus (but still do)

1) Jesus is too Jewish.
2) Jesus doesn't play well with others.
3) Jesus loves people that I don't want to and believes they are worth my loving.
4) Jesus commands things I don't want to do.
5) Jesus never answers questions according to how they are asked.
6) Jesus seems to think (as a first century man in an obscure insignificant kingdom) that he lays claim to everything that is, ever was and ever will be.
7) Jesus believes that he alone is the way to God.
8) Jesus believes he has a peculiarly intimate relationship with God that the rest of us don't have.
9) Jesus believes he is returning to the earth some day to carry out judgment of the righteous and wicked.
10) Jesus makes me uncomfortable and unsettled.

(Please read the forgoing as recognizing both my sarcasm and also the difficulty of actually believing on one who so thoroughly challenges all my presuppositions and sensibilities. All that being said...the reason I actually embrace Jesus is only because he embraces me).

Remember Me...

As I was reading Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007) today I was struck by several comments made in regard to "remembering" (specifically in reference to John's Gospel account) and how they might relate to the "remembering" of the Lord's Supper. In light of the "remembering" concerning Christ that occurs after the resurrection of our Lord (and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit), there is something profound that occurs at the table of the Lord.

The Resurrection teaches us a new way of seeing...it makes it possible to enter into the interiority of the events into the intrinsic coherence of God's speaking and acting (pg.232).

The "remembering" is not simply an intellectual assent to bare facts (like remembering some event that occured in the past), but a "remembering" that is vivified by the Holy Spirit; it gives life to those who "remember" and death to those who partake of it in an "unworthy manner" and thereby are disdaining the body and blood of Christ (see 1 Cor.11:27-30). It is a "remembering" that incorporates us into the hidden life of Christ; incorporates us into the very real life of the Trinity.  It is a "remembering" that changes everything...it is both of thought, word and action.  It is a "remembering" that bridges the gap of 2000 years and participates in the ever present life of the crucified and resurrected Lord Jesus who is now seated at the right hand of the Father where we are already present with Him (Eph.2:6) and where He is already present with us by His indwelling and empowering Spirit (Matt.28:20).

This remembering is an understanding under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; by remembering, the believer enters into the depth of the event and sees what could not be seen on an immediate and merely superficial level....This remembering is no mere psychological or intellectual process; it is a pneumatic event [i.e., an event imbued with the Pneuma, or the Holy Spirit]. The Church's remembering is not merely a private affair; it transcends the sphere of our own human understanding and knowing. It is a being-led by the Holy Spirit, who shows us the connectedness of Scripture, the connection between word and reality, and, in doing that, leads us "into all truth" (pgs.233-234).

I certainly reject transubstantiation concerning Communion, but affirm a real presence of Christ by the Holy Spirit that does not actually involve a changing of the elements of the bread and cup. Christ is truly present in the "remembering" that is empowered by the Holy Spirit...the "remembering" that proclaims Christ Jesus death until he comes again (1 Cor.11:26).  May we "remember" until that glorious Day!

Before You Pray...

I found it amazing to read Karl Barth's "Prayer" and find that he does not begin his discussion of prayer with the "how," "why," or "what," (as important as those matters may be) but with the answer!  This was shocking to me (though in all honesty it shouldn't have been).  What does he mean by stating that we begin with the answer and not with the questions?  Well, our questions (more often than not) are actually not straightforward questions, but attempts to skirt the heart of the matter.  When we question God (which I believe Scripture teaches clearly that God welcomes while also confronting this) we must be willing firstly to hear the answer.  And the answer is 'YES!' 

But this 'YES' is the 'YES' to the question posed (and necessarily answered) by God Himself (2 Corinthians 1:19-20).  It is the 'YES' that is found in Christ Jesus, but it is also an emphatic 'no' to our sins and our sinful and deceitful nature.  The 'YES' and the 'no' are bound up in God's Self-giving Love: incarnation, suffering, crucifixion, death, resurrection and coming again.  Thus, his 'YES' (and 'no') is only to be identified in Christ Jesus.  This is what is meant by "praying in Jesus' name" (John 14:13-14; 15:16; 16:23-26), instead of simply as the conclusion often thoughtlessly tacked onto the end of our prayers.

In Jesus Christ, we find all our prayers answered with this YES (or AMEN if you prefer to sound more spiritual :-).  In Jesus Christ, prayer is offered according to God's good and perfect will and not according to our own desires and plans.  In Jesus Christ, all our questions are taken up in the question He poses to us, "Who do you say that I am?" and we must answer with Peter (being led by the Holy Spirit), "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" (Matthew 16:15-16).
 
In the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, he begins with "Our Father..." (Matthew 6:9), because all prayer that is genuine prayer begins with the 'YES' of Jesus our Lord and Savior.  The relation of God as "our Father" is not accomplished except through faith in Jesus His One and Only Son.  Our relation to the Father is only as our "Father" because of our relationship with (and 'in') Christ.  We can pray in faith with assurance, because Jesus prayed (and continually prays) for us...and not only does he continue to make intercession for us, but His Spirit does so in and through us (Romans 8:26-27, 34).  His Spirit testifies that we are indeed in Christ and therefore are heard and the answer is...YES!  Praise His Glorious Name!!!

The Grounds of Faith

I read a wonderful quote in a book I'm almost through by Mark Batterson (pastor of National Community Church) "Wild Good Chase: Reclaim the Adventure of Pursuing God" (2008: pg. 79):

Faith is not logical. But it isn't illogical either. Faith is theological. It does not ignore reality; it just adds God into the equation.... Faith is not mindless ignorance; it simply refuses to limit God tothe logical constraints of the left brain.... Logic questions God. Faith questions assumptions. And at the end of the day,faith is trusting God more than you trust your own assumption.

I was struck by this quote, because it reminds me of a saying by Augustine: Credo ut intelligam "I believe so that I may understand."
Faith is not logical or illogical, but theological. It is the firm foundation of life beginning and ending in Christ -- God for man and man for God. And there can be no other foundation and no other goal than this one. All knowledge, all logic, has Christ as the center and boundaries.
Lord, I believe...help my unbelief...

Word/s of Life?

"Simon Peter replied, 'Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.' (John 6:68 - NLT). This was Peter's reply after many had left from following Jesus. Were they offended by Jesus' statements about eating his flesh and drinking his blood for "life" or were they offended because Jesus had just said that only the ones the Father gives to him will come to him?


But let's move beyond the question of the motivation for so many deserting Jesus at that moment, I want to deal with Peter's reply to Jesus query of his immediate disciples, "Are you also going to leave?" Peter replies that they have nowhere else to go. He states that Jesus has "the words that give eternal life." But is this the end of his reply? No! In fact, it would be entirely insufficient for Peter to only believe that the words of Jesus give eternal life. No, in fact it is Christ Himself who is life. The rest of Peter's answer "and we believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." This is where the key rests.

The disciples who deserted Jesus may have believed his words could give life (after all he multiplied the fishes and loves by a seeming blessing of God). The key is not that Jesus' words alone give life, but that Jesus is THE life (John 11:25 -- concerning the death and resurrection of Lazarus where Mary and Martha's belief in his word as life needed to be redirected to Jesus as THE life; and John 14:6 where Jesus reminds his disciples that he is the way, the truth and the life and therefore no one comes to the Father except through him). This is not to downplay the words, but to emphasize the one whose words they are. The words point clearly to the Word (John 1:1). May we not only believe the words of Jesus, but let us place our faith in Jesus Himself as THE LIFE. It is the difference between believing something about someone, and actually believing in that someone. May my faith move beyond God's words and to God's Word -- the Lord Jesus Christ...where else can we go???