We can all imagine in our minds the picture of someone standing in a crowded plaza, or along some busy road holding a sign that says, "THE END IS NEAR, REPENT AND BELIEVE" - it's been portrayed in movies a thousand times and if you've walked around a major city, you've probably seen it for yourself. In the past, I have seen this and perhaps crossed the road or did my best to ignore it...but with the stuff I'm learning lately, I feel like I want to become the guy holding the sign.
Check this out.
Jews in the 1st century (the audience to whom the majority of the New Testament was written) understood time very linearly and very simply. The Bible uses three key phrases to portray this understanding: there is
a) this Age,
b) the Age to Come and
c) the Day of the Lord (which goes by a few names). 'This Age' is present time, starting from the beginning, through Jesus' death on the cross, up until this very moment. 'The Age to Come' is what we commonly refer to as "Eternity" - the Jewish understanding is that is was actually time-unending (i.e. age upon age upon age), but whatever, the distinction between the two would be splitting hairs. The 'Day of the Lord' is the event that separates 'This Age' from "The Age to Come'; it is Jesus' return to Earth to a) judge the living and the dead, b) restore Creation to it's original design and c) take His seat as the ruler of the Earth forever.
Don't take my word for it, read Scripture for yourself with that framework in mind. It helps a lot of things make sense. For example:
2 Peter 3 (this section, in my Bible, is titled: The Day of the Lord)
"Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the Holy Prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation" But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of the ungodly.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."
I've heard this passage quoted and talked about a number of times in my life - some people focus on the part that says, "a day is like a thousand years...", some talk about God's desire that all people come to know Him. But really - all of this is one big warning. Peter finishes off this chapter by saying,
"So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him [...] Therefore dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever! Amen."
2 Peter 3:2 says, "I want you to recall..." and another way of saying this would by, "hey, remember! This is the situation as it has been understood since the beginning! I'm not changing anything or giving you a message you don't already know!" What is the message? "REPENT AND BELIEVE" (2 Peter 3:9). The delay of the Day of the Lord only serves to show how much God loves us. He is giving us all as much time as possible to turn from wickedness, take up our crosses and follow Him.
The 'Bride' of Christ
If the Church is the 'Bride of Christ', what does that mean? Several times in the Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as the Bridegroom and to the Church as either the bride or the attendants of the wedding party. In other places he talks about a great banquet or wedding feast. I assume he meant to convey this metaphor in a fairly direct way. What does a bride, or someone who is part of the wedding party do, in preparation for the Wedding Day? They make plans, they prepare and they make themselves ready. In much the same way, Jesus was and is calling all of us who call ourselves believers to make ourselves ready. He says so very explicitly in Matthew 25:1-13):
"At that time the kingdom of Heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five were wise. The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight the cry rang out: 'Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him' Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish ones said to the wise, 'Give us some of your oil, our lamps are going out.' 'No', they replied, 'there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.' But while they were on their way to buy oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut. Later the other also came. 'Lord, Lord', they said, 'open the door for us!' But he replied, 'Truly I tell you, I don't know you.' Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.'"
And in Luke 12:35-38
"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come to wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master find them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."
I will tell you what God is doing in my life, He is confirming this message to me.
A few months ago, someone who I had known for years but who I was not close with reached out to me and told me that he was starting a small group and that God had put my name on his heart. When I got his message, I knew I had to check it out and so without hesitation, I told him I was in. The preceding months and years had been a struggle defined by sin, apathy and the longing for something real. In my prayers before receiving that text, I had been thinking about Paul's outcry to God, "who will save me from this body of death?!" In all honesty, I was at a crossroads with my faith, having to decide whether I would keep putting on a face or if I would abandon my faith altogether. Bottom-line, I knew I needed God to step in.
We started studying a series of messages entitled, "Living in Anticipation of the Kingdom of God" given by a teacher named John Harrigan - these messages were recorded in 2013 and have to do with something called "Cruciform Apocalypticism" which sounds impressive, but simply means, "the cross in light of the Day of the Lord".
The sessions are a presentation of the Gospel, but as it was understood by the Apostles and the people to whom the Bible was written, specifically 1st century agrarian Jews. I had heard of this approach before and even had looked into it a little, reading some of N.T. Wright's "The New Testament and the People of God" which was also an attempt to read the New Testament from the perspective of a 1st century Jewish Christian. This study, however, was much more detailed than my previous efforts.
I reviewed some of the main points of the message at the beginning of this post, I won't rehash them here. Having grown up in the church, I have been exposed to a lot of doctrine and have studied various forms of systematic theology. I was somewhat skeptical and resistant to this message at first, but as I have sought to understand it more and have investigated Scripture myself to see if it jives with what the Bible is saying, I now believe this to be the full and complete Gospel. At the very least, it is the only framework that I have come across so far that makes sense of the Bible as a whole, in a simple way. I have seen other frameworks that make sense, but only with some serious mental gymnastics. This framework is easy (more or less) to understand, and is self-evident when you read the Scriptures through it's lens.
This group that I'm in is 5 guys - 4 of us live in the Chicagoland area and one guy calls in from CA. Early on in the group, most of the guys, well, all of them except me, reported having dreams and/or visions, confirming this message or revealing other things. I, however, had no dreams - and was desperately seeking God, asking, begging and pleading for Him to confirm this message to me. In anticipation of dreams, I had created a 'note' in my phone, as an easy place to find in the middle of the night in case I had a dream and wanted to record it.
Fast forward two months. We use an app called Voxer to communicate with each other during the week and often, guys will Vox out prayers or share notable events or thoughts, etc. One of the guys in the group voxed out a prayer and within that prayer, he was praying against a spirit of accusation from Satan and prayed that the Lord would "shut the Lion's mouth". I had been feeling very accused at that point in time - particularly with thoughts surrounding why I hadn't experienced any dreams - and so I shared that with the rest of the guys. This led to a phone conversation which led to a day of fasting, praying and a meeting with two of the guys in the group to specifically seek the Will of God. I spent that Sunday fasting, praying - and didn't hear anything - and I went to that meeting not knowing what God was going to say.
In talking with the guys, I conveyed to them that I felt like I was being choked out, suffocated, by life - by work, home, kids, activities, house stuff, etc. That I wasn't feeling particularly close to God and about my frustrations surrounding the fact that I had not experienced any dreams, or any other confirmation of the message. These two brothers said they had been praying about me and both had heard this word "suffocated" in their prayers before the meeting, ala the parable in Mark 4, "other seed feel among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it." I said I felt as though God was saying to me that he wanted more of me - more of a commitment from me, to be serious about following him and seeking him. So the meeting ended with me committing to meet with one of the guys and then making a plan for how I could make time for God.
We concluded our pre-meeting meeting and then the other guys in the group showed up and we commenced with our normal group time - everyone shares about the week that was, ups, downs, challenges, victories, etc. When people started talking, I remembered something that I had forgotten until that moment...that page of notes in my phone. A couple of nights after I had created that page, I had what I would call "gifs" - not full on dreams, but more like snippets or short videos. I wrote them down, but at the time, they made no sense and so I didn't share them with anyone, and forgot about them complete...until after this meeting I had.
Here were the two snippets:
In the first 'gif', there was a man in a crib that was teaching from the messages we had been studying and as he was speaking, he came out, or fell out, of the crib.
In the second, someone was preaching and teaching from the end of Isaiah 40 and I kept hearing this word "schmanyah" or "shemaya" - didn't understand it.
The meaning of these dreams is clear after God revealed to me that He wanted me to spend more time with Him. In the first, God wants me to mature in discipleship - to stop being like a baby where things just happen to me, but instead to grow up and pursue God in an intentional way.
For the second - I had to look up the end of Isaiah 40 because I didn't know it. The end of Isaiah 40 says this:
"The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." Isaiah 40:28-31
The word I kept hearing was the word "Shema Yisrael" which is one of the central Jewish prayers. Among other things, it quotes Deuteronomy 6:5-9 which says,
"You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your might. Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day. Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead, inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."
The interpretation of that dream is, again, that God wants all of me - that I would be working towards embedding His Word deep within my soul, the I would pursue Him in everything that I am doing and that I would not lean on my own strength to do it. That I would call on His power to work within me to carry me through and power me to live.
It is hard to explain what this series of events has done to my life. I decided, as a result of all of this, to set aside time in my day, early, before the kids get up, to spend time every day in prayer and in reading Scripture (I am not a morning person). Now that I am doing that - I have noticed changes in a lot of other areas of life, one of the biggest changes is that I can't stop talking about this story and about what God is doing and saying. I think my wife is starting to get annoyed, but I don't really want to talk about anything else.
On top of that - sins that used to present a snare have absolutely no hold on me. I face temptation, as any man does, but I have found it easy to resist. Whereas before, I would have described it as "white knuckling it", now there is something inside me that makes it easy to resist - again, hard to explain what that is like.
So what do I account all of this to? I have tried on several occasions to explain some of this to my wife, but my attempts have been feeble. She keeps saying that it sounds like I think have some special key or secret, but really, it is the opposite of that. What I think I have is a fuller understanding of the Gospel - a Gospel framework that is more complete than what I have previously understood. I don't think I have replaced anything that most educated Evangelicals would know - Jesus is still "The Way, The Truth and The Life" and belief in His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection are still the means by which we will be saved. But there is more to it than that - I feel like modern Evangelicalism is pretty narrowly focused (for the most part) on the New Testament. That isn't out of some maliciousness, but that is where we are - but that's like being assigned a 10-chapter book to read, knowing there will be a test about what that book says, and then decided to only read chapters 7-10. There is a lot more there and for the first time in my life, I have come across a framework that brings meaning and understanding to the whole Bible, to the entire story.
The framework is simple - the Gospel is Creational, Covenantal, Cruciform (cross-shaped), Charismatic (spirit-filled) and Apocalyptic (anchored to the future). Because it is simple, it helps keep "the main things the main things" and doesn't afford much room for all of the things that Christians tend to get caught up in (arguments about Baptism, predestination, etc, etc). To sum it up in one sentence, it grounds everything and makes it real. One of the teachers calls it "irreducibly complex" - like a mouse-trap. If you ignore or take away any of the elements, then it doesn't work. All of the elements have to be there and be understood, in order to have a full understanding.
All this to say - don't take my word for it. Here are some of the resources, check it out for yourself. Below are links to two messages, both of which provide a broad overview of this material. If you go through it, and you want to talk - call me, email me, comment here, etc - we'll get in touch.
https://gospelofchristcrucified.com/the-apostolic-kerygma-seminar/ (Please listen to the last message, entitled "The Holistic Gospel", given by John Harrigan)
http://www.joshuahawkins.com/resources/audio/what-faith (This talk is entitled, "What is The Faith" - given by Joshua Hawkins
