A Preview of The End

Man - what a difference a month makes. On February 21st, my wife and I left for a week-long vacation to Mexico and on March 21st, Illinois was placed on "shelter-in-place" orders due to this stupid COVID-19 thing...and that's to say nothing about the difference in weather between Cabo and Chicago! At the end of last week, I felt like asking people, "how was your month this week?" Time and everything else, it seems, has slowed way down and left a lot of us with time to think. I don't know about you, but my mind hasn't always been going to the healthiest of places. Thankfully, I have a few people in my life who remind me of what's important and that's what I want to talk about here.

As a Believer, I have found myself awfully weak lately. We're supposed to have this Hope right? We're supposed to trust and run to Him with our doubts and problems, right? While it's true that I have found myself on my knees more, I cannot say I've been a shining example of hope and trust. Those friends I mentioned, they have been reminding me about where all this is going - and now I'm starting to come around to thinking that this is just a preview, a practice run if you will, for the end of this Age.

Here's what the Bible has to say about what it will be like when Jesus returns:

"Don't assume that I came to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to turn a man against his father, a daughter again her mother, a daughter-in-law again her mother-in-law; and a man's enemies will be the member of his household. The person who loves father or mother more than Me is not worth of Me; the person who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And whoever doesn't take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. Anyone finding his life will lose it, and anyone losing his life because of Me will find it." - Matthew 10:34-39

"Wail, for the Day of the Lord is near! It will come as destruction from the Almighty. Therefore all hands will fall limp, and every man's heart will melt. They will be terrified, pains and anguish will take hold of them; they will writhe like a woman in labor, they will look at one another in astonishment, their faces aflame." - Isaiah 13:6-12

"For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations." - Ezekiel 30:3

"Alas, you who are longing for the day of the Lord, for what purpose will the day of the Lord be to you? It will be darkness and not light; as when a man flees from a lion and a bear greets him, or goes home, leans his hand against a wall and a snake bites him. Will not the day of the Lord be darkness instead of light, even gloom with no brightness in it?" - Amos 5:18-20

"But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; avoid such men as these." - 2 Timothy 3:1-5 

"But before all these things [the last days], they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you to the synagogues and prisons, bringing you before kings and governors for My name's sake. It will lead to an opportunity for your testimony. So make up your minds not to prepare beforehand to defend yourselves; for I will give you utterance and wisdom which none of your opponents will be able to resist or refute. But you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death, and you will be hated by all because of My name" - Luke 21:12-17 (corollary passage in Mark 13:9-13)

It doesn't sound like a cake walk right? It sounds hard and arduous. It sounds like something that would really shake you, and perhaps cause you to abandon your faith, if you didn't really trust deep down that God is going to do what he said he is going to do. My question for all of us, is what if this happens in our lifetimes? Maybe it doesn't, but what if it does - are our hearts and minds prepared for that kind of trial and difficulty?

This is where the importance of discipleship comes in. Jesus talks about "taking up your cross daily" and about finding a "narrow road". Paul talks a lot about 'running the race' and about perseverance. These statements and metaphors imply that being a disciple of Jesus requires something significant from us. So often, in church, we hear about the "free gift" of God, of grace for sinners and the promise of Eternal Life. What we don't hear about as much is that though the gift is free, it is also extremely expensive in terms of what it requires from us...our very lives. I don't think that means we have to physically die for Jesus - but it certainly means that we have to die to ourselves. Figuring out what this means and what it looks like for us personally is a lifetime effort, but nevertheless, that is the call. Jesus couldn't have been more explicit about it.

So join me, during this time, in becoming more firmly rooted in the Messiah, in the promises of God made to Israel, through which we can have hope for Eternal Life, a renewed Earth, and a new body of Life. This current trouble, though light and momentary, is just a preview of much harder times that will accompany Jesus' return and we need to be about the business of preparing ourselves and each other.

Commentary: Rhett and Link

I am an occasional reader of The Gospel Coalition website - I think some of the articles found there are thought-provoking or interesting and recently, I stumbled across one entitled, "Let's Deconstruct a Deconversion Story: The Case of Rhett and Link". The story tells of a pair of YouTube stars, Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, who are former missionaries and Campus Crusade (Cru) staff members and now consider themselves former Christians as well. The TGC article portrays their decision as having a lot to do with the sexual ethic of the Bible and their problems with that, but I listened to both of their testimonies - each about an hour and forty-five minutes long - and I don't feel as though that is a fair portrayal, certainly not for Rhett, but likely not for Link either. That is part of their story, but the etiology of their deconversions is much more subtle.

From listening to both stories, it is clear that this all started with Rhett. He is the one who seems to have a more comprehensive understanding of Scripture and of apologetics; I suspect he started to have doubts on some of the scientific stuff and then started talking to Link about it and slowly convinced his childhood friend away from faith. If you listen to their stories, Rhett is clearly the one putting a lot of time and effort into the struggle and then when you hear Link's story - there are a lot of the same elements, but most of them are referring back to things his friend Rhett gave him or was telling him about. They pretty much acknowledge this straight out at the end of Link's testimony.

I very much identify with some of Rhett's doubt - as someone who has spent some time looking for scientific or archaeological verification of Scripture and desperately wanting my faith to have a strong rational component to it, I can identify the unsettling feeling he had when some of that stuff doesn't match up. But for me - rather than pushing me away, it caused me to ask different questions. Also - it reminded me of God's response to Job:

"Then the LORD spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: "Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you and you will answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:1-7)

We can look at the scientific data and the archaeological finds and all of these things in order to try and support a belief in a God of the universe, but ultimately, those pursuits eventually become a God in and of themselves - ultimately it is an attempt to make a God out of 'certainty'. It seems like they are missing the point and by that I mean, the point of God revealing himself through the Bible is not so that we can go and verify everything and come away with some certainty about it all...it's so that we can know Him and know where all of this is going. The bottom-line is that science is not "settled" any more now than it ever has been, particularly in the area of origins of the Universe. For every scientist that has become an atheist because of their work, you will find another scientist who came to belief in God as a result of their work. There are ardent Christian scientists in every field of science, genetics and evolution included. There never was such a thing as certainty and there never will be, in either direction - towards God or away from him.

As a kid, I was a big fan of the C.S. Lewis books in the series, "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". Towards the end of the first book, Lucy and Edmund (her brother) have both found Narnia through the wardrobe and Lucy is trying to convince their older siblings of this place they have found. Lucy insists that it is real and Edmund is more mum about it and eventually, the older two go and tell the master of the house about this, seeking his advice on what to do. He says,

"Logic!" said the Professor half to himself. "Why don't they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn't tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth."

Neither Rhett nor Link seem to be willing to go as far as Atheism. Rhett refers to himself as a 'hopeful agnostic'. I think they are both open to the possibility that they are wrong - but it seems like they have come to the conclusion, for now, that Jesus is either a madman or a liar. Lying would go against Jesus' very nature (if he is who he says he is) so the only logical conclusion would be that he is a madman - afterall, there is no denying his actual existence and life - that he was a real person who lived on earth is a historical fact.

One thing that struck me about their stories is how big of an impact one person can have on another. As I mentioned above - Rhett has clearly been the one who has led his friend Link away from the Lord. Which makes me feel for Link - I think he understands the doubts and struggles of his friend Rhett, but since they did not come out of his own heart, he is following but isn't as convicted/convinced. Rather, he has justified his own feelings by identifying more strongly with his disagreement with the Biblical sexual ethic that is bothersome to him. Here are some of his comments:

"The specific issue of the LGBTQ issues; the church was a welcoming place and a loving place, but when you really got down to it, they [some of his friends] weren't accepted as couples and that really ate away at me. This was a long time coming - as we made meaningful connections with people here, I couldn't sit in the seat at church knowing that the couldn't get married there. I just felt like it was a betrayal of my friends and what I believed. And so I didn't go back."

"I'm just not ready to enter back into a specific system of belief even if it's different and the practical applications of that belief system are exactly in line with how I want to live my life. Maybe I'm still just too close or have been in it so long that I need more distance from it."

"...it's easiest for me to believe that when you die -- it's just like Dana Carvey said, my Wayne's World doppelganger -- that "when you die, it's just like the experience you had before you were born, do you remember that?" So I'm like, yeah, that's actually comforting and I find it easy to believe that for some reason, I'm not compelled to believe it, but it's just an easy place for my mind to rest."

"...everybody believes whatever they want to believe, like, your innermost desires, it could be something primal like survival and security, there are so many different things - but we have a way of finding what works for us and I think that's instinctive. To put it bluntly, you believe what you want to believe, you know, I find it easy to believe that. I find it easy to believe that because so many people have had so many earth shattering experiences that are in complete contradiction, that probably means that God's not personal." 

"I want to do the work to stay open and not dogmatic - and I know that it will take work, it takes an investment of time and priority to not just sit back and go with the flow. I'm not looking for the next thing to latch onto and believe and start to follow, but being open to how God may exist and may want to connect with me. The main thing is, I don't want to judge, I don't want to condemn - I want to be as loving as I can. [...] I do feel like over the past few years my capacity to love has grown - my capacity to love myself and others has expanded a lot more over the past few years. I take that as a good sign. I just don't think that if God exists, I just can't believe that me being open and sincere and as loving as possible and as honest as possible is disqualifying me from receiving God's love. I can't accept that."

These, my friends, are the comments of an James 1:6 man: "...because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That man should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do."

Reading between the lines of some of these comments, which echo some of the comments that Rhett makes in his testimony - I get a sense that "the God of open options" is that one that Rhett and Link have built for themselves. It looks different for each of them, and how they got there was different, but ultimately, the God of the Bible doesn't align with their own views on certain things and because they are unwilling to accept that, they had to create their own God, or abandon him altogether. There was actually an article on TGC about this not too long ago.

Anyway, that's enough from me on this. I find these types of discussions interesting because they get at the heart of mankind. John Calvin once said, "The mind is...a perpetual forge of idols". Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his way, according to the fruit of his deeds."
We all have our experiences, yes, but at the end of the day, there is actual, real truth. The question we must ask ourselves is, "Do I trust Him?" That question lies at the intersection of faith and knowledge. Again, hearkening back to the C.S. Lewis kids book series, Susan (Lucy's older sister) is asking one of her new friends in Narnia about Aslan, the great lion who rules over Narnia and she asks, "Is he quite safe?" And her friend responds, "Safe? Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the king, I tell you."

...To The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel

How many times have you read or heard Matthew 15:24?

"He answered them, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel."

A companion verse is in Luke's gospel, a little less specific, but similar in tone, "For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost." (Luke 19:10) In this instance, Jesus is speaking to Zacchaeus, and it is important to note that Zacchaeus was a Jewish tax-collector, Jesus refers to him as a 'descendant of Abraham'.

The question begs itself, what does Jesus mean by "only to the lost sheep of The House of Israel?" I think the answer to this question lies at the very heart of God and demands Gentile believers consider and come to terms with some very difficult truths. These truths have been distorted over the past 2,000 years and the consequences are subtle, yet potentially profound.

The simple fact that no one, Jew or Gentile, would disagree with, is that Jesus himself was Jewish. He was born to Jewish parents, he was a descendant of the House of David, he was circumcised on the 8th day (Luke 2:21) according to Jewish law and tradition (Leviticus 12:3), and he was brought up and raised in the Jewish custom. He went through years of training and school to become a Jewish Rabbi, who were considered the foremost experts in writings of the Law and the Prophets (what we call "the Old Testament") and who were given the responsibility to teach the People of Israel. This would have, most likely, included memorizing the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, along with other writings. There's no getting around it - Jesus was a Jew in every possible way, and not only that, He had been steeped in the entire history and heritage of the Jewish people. He spent the vast predominance of his time speaking to the people of Israel and to their teachers and leaders. Furthermore, all of Jesus' Apostles were Jewish and all of the New Testament writers are Jewish. Paul, in particular, was a Pharisee ("Pharisee of Pharisees" Philippians 3:5) before his encounter with Jesus which meant that he was also an expert in the Law and the Prophets. Before coming to terms with who Jesus was, he was literally killing followers of Jesus because of the claims that they were making about Jesus (namely, that he was the Messiah) - that's how much of a Pharisee he was... Put simply - the ENTIRE Bible is steeped in Jewish culture and thought.

So the questions we must wrestle with are - does the fact that Jesus was Jewish (of the House of Israel) matter? What does removing the Jewishness of Jesus do to our understanding of who he was and what he was doing? Perhaps even, "if we don't acknowledge Jesus' Jewishness, and seek an understanding of the culture He himself was speaking to, is it even possible to rightly understand who He was and what He was about?"

I have few answers, but many questions.

I cannot take credit for this insight, but one thing I have come to realize recently is, you either view the Bible as having continuity between the Old and New Testaments, or you view Jesus as having done something different, or started something new, in the New Testament (discontinuity). Another way of saying it would be - either you view Jesus as further revelation of who God is, providing a perfect sacrifice and then pointing us to His return or you view Jesus (or Paul) as having started something new, changing God's plan part-way through the story.

This leads us to a brief but important discussion on something called 'supersessionism' (also called "replacement theology"). It's a seminarian term that simply refers to this idea, which is running rampant in the church today, which suggests that Jesus ushered in a 'new covenant' which supersedes the 'old covenant' which was made directly and exclusively to the Jewish people. Supersessionism is the ideology of those that claim that The Church is "the new Israel" or that the Israel of the Old Testament has been replaced by The Church. Proponents of this view will point to Jeremiah 31:31-32 and Hebrews 8:8-9 (which quotes the Jeremiah 31 passage):

"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt - a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 31:31-32)

"For if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for another. But God found fault with the people and said: "The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they did not remain faithful to my covenant, and I turned away from them, declares the Lord."" (Hebrews 8:7-9)

Jesus also speaks of the 'new covenant', when he is eating the Passover meal with his disciples. He says, "In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant of My blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."" (Matthew 26:28) So, Jesus certainly has something to do with the New Covenant, but when you read the totality of Jeremiah 31, an image of Jesus being the fulfillment of this prophecy in his first coming, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The overall tone and spirit of Jeremiah 31 is that of complete liberation and salvation - much more of a Heavenly motif and feel than an Earthly one. I would like to suggest (and again, this is not my insight but something I have learned from others) that what Jeremiah is referring to is chapter 31 is actually talking about the second coming of the Messiah. Read it for yourself with that lens and tell me that doesn't make more sense. To me, it is an image of God regathering His people to himself and the 'new covenant' he talks about is that of perfect union or marriage. He says, "...no longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another "Know the Lord," because they will all know me..." Not only that, but Jesus himself says that the New Covenant is in His blood, but is unto the forgiveness of sins. We are told to, as believers, to ask for forgiveness continually, in this life, but ultimately, we are looking to that Day when we stand before him and our sins are not counted against us, making us worthy to inherit Eternal Life.

What Jesus is doing here (Matt. 26) is revising the sacrificial system, not doing away with the Old Covenant. In ancient times, the Israelites had a system, established by God through Moses for how they could be forgiven of unintentional sin. Depending on who they were - if they sinned and became aware of it, they were to bring an animal to the temple, with the help of the priest they placed that sin upon the head of the animal which was then slaughtered; the blood was sprinkled around the alter and the animal was sacrificed.

Jesus is saying there is now a new way - as Hebrews says, "a new and perfect Sacrifice" - a single Sacrifice that covers all Sin, for all time. He is saying to his disciples, "I will bear your sin, I am the offering to the Lord on your behalf and placing your trust in my sacrifice is how you will be able to stand before me on That Day and not have your sins accounted to you." As Jeremiah says, it is not like the other covenants that God has made, where there was some onus on the people of Israel to hold up their end...no, this Covenant is unilateral. "If you trust in Jesus and in his Sacrifice for you on the Cross, that is the means by which you can stand blameless before him when He returns." Jesus did all the work - our side of the deal is to trust that God accepts Jesus' sacrifice on our behalf. To bring it all the way back around - those who put their trust in Jesus' blood

Are you starting to see what I'm saying when I talk about how critical it is to know the Jewish history and tradition within the Bible in order to accurately and rightly understand what Jesus and his Apostles are saying/doing?

Speaking personally now, I have struggled and wrestled with this a lot over the past several months - currently, I feel I have a strong grasp on the fact that our faith is a Jewish faith, but I'm wrestling with what to do with that, not in a political way, but as a Gentile disciple. It is difficult to wrap our minds around the fact that God would choose to be identified by an ethnicity, of this there is no doubt. But it's true - He is the (self-identified) 'God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob' - he is the 'God of Israel'. He chose Abraham and through that line, came Jesus and out of that comes the offer of salvation to the whole world...but it is still a Jewish faith. The Jewishness of it is the background of the story that we need in order to fully/accurately understand what Jesus, Paul and the other Apostles are talking about. In other words, the 'Jewishness' of the gospel in inextricable - to extricate it is, quite possibly, to have a different gospel than the one Jesus was preaching because it ignores the context and expectation around it.