September 23, 2017 – Homecoming or Ho Hum?

For the second year in a row, certain Christians have been predicting that major, world-changing events will take place on my son’s birthday. It has to be a bit of a bummer when you want to celebrate but folks around you are forecasting apocalyptic-type events for your big day.

A growing number of Christians have been rallying behind the belief that a secret rapture of the Church is going to occur on September 23, 2017. They believe this event will then kick off a seven-year tribulation period, which will ultimately culminate with Jesus’ visible return.

I have to admit; the folks that have been working on this theory have done a ton of research. Hundreds of hours must have been spent putting all of this stuff together. And to be honest, some of it is impressive.

  

The theory, though, totally hinges on the doctrine of imminence. The modern doctrine of imminence basically states that Jesus will secretly rapture His Church without any signs preceding this event, and then the Great Tribulation will begin. Many Baptist seminaries teach this doctrine, and I used believe it as well. It’s become a very popular teaching over the last 150 years, and I admit that aspects of it are quite appealing.  

However, please consider that understanding of imminence in light of Jesus’ parable of the fig tree in Matthew 24. 

Jesus also told His disciples, “Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place (Matthew 24:32-34).”

Jesus said that when we see all these things, we will know His return is imminent. So, what are all these things that He referenced earlier in the chapter?

v Vs 10) A great apostasy occurs within the Church.

v Vs 15) The Antichrist sets himself up in temple of God declaring himself to be above God.

v Vs 21) There is a great tribulation like never before in history.

v Vs 24) False Christs and false prophets do remarkable signs and wonders to mislead the elect.

v Vs 29) The sun is darkened.

v Vs 29) The moon doesn’t give its light.

v Vs 29) Stars fall from the sky and the powers of the heavens are shaken.

v Vs 30) THEN, all the tribes of the earth mourn when they see the Son of Man coming in clouds with power and great glory like lightning flashing from one end of the sky to the other. He appears with a great trumpet blast to gather His people to Himself.

Peter affirmed the simple words of Christ in his first sermon on the day of Pentecost. Quoting the Lord God in the book of Joel, he proclaimed, “And I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come (Acts 2:19-20).”

According to Peter and Jesus, before the day of the Lord, the sun will be darkened and the moon will look like blood. We should be looking for these signs.  

Paul adds his witness against the modern understanding of imminence in 2 Thessalonians 2:1, 3-4, writing that Jesus’ return and our being gathered to Him will not occur until after the great apostasy and the Antichrist is revealed.

Now we request you, brethren, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him… Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.

Like Paul and Jesus, the early Christian writers overwhelmingly affirmed that the Church would remain on earth while the Antichrist was bringing tribulation upon Christians. Here are just a few examples:

He shall come from heaven with glory, when the man of apostasy, who speaks strange things against the Most High, will venture to do unlawful deeds on earth against us Christians. – Justin Martyr 160CE, ANF Volume 1, p. 413 [CD-ROM]

He will cause all those who will not worship the image of the beast to be put to death. Here the faith and the patience of the saints will appear, for he says: “And he will cause all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their forehead; that no man might buy or sell without having the mark, the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” For, being full of guile, and exalting himself against the servants of God, with the wish to afflict them and persecute them out of the world, because they give not glory to him, he will order censers to be set up by everyone, everywhere, so that no one among the saints may be able to buy or sell without first sacrificing. – Hippolytus 200CE, ANF Volume 5, p. 382 [CD-ROM]

The Antichrist, when he begins to come, will not be allowed to enter into the church just because he threatens. We will not yield to his arms and violence, even though he declares he will destroy us if we resist. . . . The Antichrist is coming. Yet, above him, comes Christ also. The enemy goes about and rages, but immediately the Lord follows to avenge our sufferings and our wounds. – Cyprian 250CE, ANF Volume 5, p. 613, 619 [CD-ROM]

The testimony of the earliest Christians is that we are going through the Great Tribulation. We will be around while the Antichrist is wreaking havoc on us and on the earth. Many Christians will fall away. Though we will experience the wrath of Satan and the Antichrist, true believers who persevere will not experience the wrath of God. Jesus will come for us just before He pours His bowls of wrath out upon the earth.

That is the overwhelming testimony of the earliest Christians. Now, it is possible that they could have been mistaken. It’s possible that at any moment, even on 9/23/17, without any signs or warnings, there will be a secret rapture of the Church that will usher in the Great Tribulation. But which is more prudent to prepare for?

Hurricane season is rapidly approaching in Houston, TX. In my lifetime, some have hit close to home, and some have been all bark and no bite. That being said, anyone who has been a Houstonian as long as I have knows that you prepare for the worst but hope for the best. Perhaps we should take the same approach to the Great Tribulation as we hold fast to the simple words of Christ.    

Love Wins and Jesus

The Christian Mommy Blogger is back in the news again. Glennon Doyle Melton isn’t making the current headlines because her husband cheated on her, she divorced him, or because she then began to date former Olympic female soccer player Abby Wambach. No. This time, she’s causing a stir in Christian communities because she married Abby Wambach.

Though these actions are becoming more and more common in today’s moral climate, biblically speaking, they are not normal. They are not the way God intended for us to interact with each other.

Melton, however sees things differently.

She wrote in a 2013 post, “I know my Jesus, I love Him, and I think if he needed me to believe that homosexuality was a sin, He would have mentioned it. … And even the Gospels… well, even though they are gospel to me, I accept that they are also interpretations of what Jesus said and did and meant -we don’t have a single written word directly from Jesus. He could have left us something – he could have left another list of rights and wrongs when He came to Earth, but he chose not to.”

Notice a couple of things about these statements. First, in these words we see humanity’s propensity to fashion a god in our own image. Melton’s Jesus is obviously okay with homosexuality because, to Melton, her Jesus must explicitly state the things he is for or against. And, according to that stance, Melton’s Jesus must be okay with the rape of minors because her Jesus doesn’t explicitly say, “Thou shalt not rape minors.”

Next, Melton’s view of the Scriptures is not surprising. She claims that the simple words of Christ are not even His words; they are only interpretations of Jesus’ actual words made by His disciples. Following her train of logic, we would then be free to appeal to the authority of our feelings when interpreting these supposed interpretations of Jesus, which Melton has a clear propensity to do.

However, the words of Jesus in the New Testament are not merely the interpretations of His disciples, and Jesus absolutely spoke out against all sexual sin, including homosexuality.

For instance, in Matthew 5, Jesus said He didn’t come to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it. In other words, Jesus meant that He came to interpret the Law correctly so that it can be lived correctly. And, in the gospels we see Him both affirm and amplify the sexual morals of the Torah.

Second, in Matthew 15, Jesus expressly declared that all sexual acts committed outside of marriage defile human beings. The term He uses is porneia, which is a general reference to the sexually forbidden behaviors listed in Leviticus 18.

Paul fuses together two words from the Greek translation of Leviticus 18:22, also known as the Septuagint, to coin the term homosexual in his first letter to the Corinthians. Arsenokoitai is actually a combination of the two words, Arsenos and Koiten, which roughly translate as man-bedder. Here in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul echoes Jesus’ words in both Matthew 15 and Revelation 21:8 saying that no arsenokoitai, or anyone who unrepentantly commits any form of porneia, will enter the kingdom of God.

Finally, in Matthew 19 Jesus quotes the Torah again by saying that marriage as God created it is the union of one man and one woman for life. There is not a single positive example of homosexual conduct in the Bible or place it is blessed. And, every single time homosexuality is mentioned in Scripture, it is expressly spoken against.

The early Church clearly spoke out against homosexuality. They also made distinctions between what we would think of as common homosexual practices and more deviant forms such as pederasty and sex cults. These are all unchanging facts that we have to deal with.

This, however, is more than a blog about homosexuality, this is a blog about love.

I realize that some folks may believe that what I have written reads more like hate speech than love. But please, please hang with me a little longer before writing me off as a hate and fearmongerer.

On May 15, Melton wrote her Instagram followers, "My beloveds – please never give up on love. Life could surprise the [expletive] out of you. Trust me – you might just wake up one morning and find yourself smack dab in the middle of heaven. I love my wife. LOVE WINS." 

Just as there is a culture war being waged over sexuality, there is a war being fought over the definition of the word love. So, what does it actually mean to love God? Let’s look at a couple of passages.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So choose life in order that you may live, you and your descendants, by loving the Lord your God, by obeying His voice, and by holding fast to Him; for this is your life and the length of your days. – Deuteronomy 30:19-20

What you just read is basically a summary statement of the entire book of Deuteronomy. This message is repeated over and over: If we love God, we keep His commands. But surely Jesus, who embodied love would see things differently, right?

Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me. – John 14:23-24

John 14 is just one of an overwhelming number of places that Jesus identifies Himself with the Lord God of the Old Testament. He and the Father are one. If we love Jesus, we will obey His commands.

How many of Jesus’ commands are we called to obey? He made that crystal clear in His parting words. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:19-20).”

Last week I wrote that God’s love language is obedience to the commands of Christ. Based on the Great Commission, if we love Jesus and others, we will teach people the truth about what He said, and then help them to follow Him. And I am confident that you can demonstrate the same obedient love toward Him as the early Christians did because the same Holy Spirit that empowered them empowers followers of Jesus today.

Jesus loved us enough to deny Himself and carry His cross. The early Christians willingly laid down their lives out of devotion to Jesus' commands. May we love Him enough do the same. 

Let him who has love in Christ keep the commandments of Christ. Who can describe the [blessed] bond of the love of God? What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told? The height to which love exalts is unspeakable. Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love bears all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love … without love nothing is well-pleasing to God. In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the Love he bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls. … Blessed are we, beloved, if we keep the commandments of God in the harmony of love; that so through love our sins may be forgiven us. – Clement of Rome 95CE, ANF Volume 1, p. 36-37 [CD-ROM]

Fire of Fire

Occasionally, we have a random maid come by to clean the house. Just like when the Jehovah’s Witnesses ring our doorbell, I try to make the most of these opportunities.

After she finished up, I asked her if she liked to read. When she said she did, I offered her a copy of my book New: Wineskins and the Simple Words of Christ. I explained how I believe that everyone who comes into a relationship with Jesus carries baggage that influences him or her to not take God at His word.

Societal and familial traditions, religious and denominational leanings, philosophical pontifications of teachers and university professors, traumatic experiences, affluence, poverty and the values of our closest friends are all potential pieces of luggage we bring into the journey of following Jesus. And most of the time, we have no concept of the tremendous weight they carry in shaping our worldviews.

Also, it is very natural to see God through the lens of how we feel about our fathers. If our fathers were dependable, we often find it easier to trust God, who is referred to as our heavenly Father. However, if we had rocky or nonexistent relationship relationships with our dads, taking God at His word often proves to be a difficult endeavor. The cleaning lady told me she hadn’t seen her father in roughly twenty years, and had only just begun going back to church after about that same amount of time.

It’s interesting how the Scriptures inform us that instead of passing God through the filter of our earthly fathers, we should let the life and ministry of Jesus be the living, visible definition of our unseen heavenly Father.

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. – John 1:17-18

“Only begotten” is a weird phrase we do not often hear in our culture, which literally translates as “one of a kind”. To help understand what it means that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, let me explain by using an analogy from the early Church (remembering, of course, that all analogies will fall short at some point).

It is just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled another fire. Rather, it remains the same. And that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing the fire from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom … is Himself this God, begotten of the Father. … “The Lord made me the beginning of His ways for His works. From everlasting He established me in the beginning, before He had made the earth.” – Justin Martyr 160CE, Volume 1, p. 365 [CD-ROM]

Fire of Fire. Light of Light. God of God.

Jesus, the Word who was God and was with God from the beginning, was never created, for by Him all things were created. Jesus was begotten. He is very God of the eternal one true God. All these truths reveal why Jesus could say to Philip, “Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Those words can be life-changing for people like me who have grown up with trust issues.

Maybe you’ve been wounded by a parent, so it’s hard for you to trust in a God who calls Himself a heavenly Father. Maybe you’ve been hurt by Christians who call God their heavenly Father, so it’s difficult for you to become part of what you consider a dysfunctional family. Maybe you’ve read sections of the Old Testament where you see God making laws or doing things that appear to be contradictory to One who calls Himself slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

Whatever the case, whatever baggage you carry, let me ask you: How do you feel about Jesus? Is He someone you feel you can trust? Personally, I can’t think of anyone more trustworthy, and He is the exact representation of the Father’s nature.

The apostle Paul wrote, “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8). This passage does not imply that God forced Christ to die for us, but that Jesus willingly engaged in this selfless act.

In fact, Hebrews 12:2 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, “who for the joy set before Him endured the cross.” His joy was not found in experiencing the agony, but in what would be accomplished through His humiliation—our reconciliation. Our deliverance from the domain of darkness brought Jesus Christ joy as He contemplated and endured the physical and spiritual torture of the cross. We fix our eyes on Jesus because He shows us God the Father.

For nearly two decades, I believed I had a terrible earthly father, and thus a sketchy heavenly one. But how many people can say they had fathers who constantly told them they loved them? Or had fathers who always pro- vided new clothes for school? Or had fathers who came to virtually all their sporting and musical events? Or had fathers who played sports with them, even if they did not particularly enjoy those sports? Or had fathers who were separated from their mothers but still managed to keep doing these things?

I could go on, but you get the idea. Perception is not always reality. The truth is I am blessed to have the father I do, and I had a much better upbringing than millions of other people. Likewise, though for a while I thought my heavenly Father was untrustworthy, nothing could be further from the truth.

Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God, has demonstrated to us the character of God the Father, and He is good. He is worthy of us laying down our lives for Him, because Jesus has already laid down His life for us.

It was amazing seeing the fire come into that woman’s eyes as we talked and she began to view her heavenly Father in a new and true light. May the fire of the Holy Spirit ignite a new love for your heavenly Father that manifests in a passionate commitment to following the simple words of Jesus Christ.