Archive for June 2007
“Sir, I Have No Need of That Quotation”
"Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis" is how Laplace supposedly replied to Napoleon’s question about the stabilizing role of God in the solar system. For years, I have heard that quote, and now Christopher Hitchens has made use of it in his atheist tract, God Is Not Great. Unfortunately, as Daniel Johnson points out, Laplace never said any such thing. And anyway, Laplace’s political opportunism casts doubt on the intellectual integrity of his irreligious (or religious) beliefs:
Laplace, who looks more and more like the Talleyrand of French science, enjoyed both Bonapartist and Bourbon patronage. Born in 1749, he was able to publish freely throughout the period from the ancien regime, the Republic, and the Empire through to the Restoration. Briefly Napoleon’s interior minister and president of his puppet senate, Laplace never hesitated to sign the warrant for the emperor’s deposition. He died a marquis, and was buried with great pomp, in 1827. If he was an atheist, he was certainly not prepared to risk his position in society by openly expressing his views. Laplace was a great man of science, but he was a great trimmer, as well. Hitchens and other militant atheists should look elsewhere for their heroes.
“Beyond the First Visit” by Gary L. McIntosh
Inviting guests to your church is easy. Getting them to stay is not. Gary McIntosh’s new book offers concrete suggestions for getting guests to stay “beyond the first visit.”I began reading Beyond the First Visit in January 2007 when my wife and I moved to California’s central coast to pastor a church. We didn’t know anyone in the area or the church, so for a while we felt like guests in our own congregation. I grew up in a pastor’s home and was associate pastor to a long-time friend, so this was a new feeling for me. But it was a very valuable feeling, for it gave me an important insight into how guests at our church feel all the time. (And I have a very friendly church!)
According to McIntosh, we need to “guesterize” our churches. That is, we need “to make a church more responsive to its guests and better able to attract new ones.” From the moment guests step foot on our campuses, they need to feel a welcome invitation to be there as well as opportunities to connect with others and get involved in the life of the church.
Each chapter of Beyond the First Visit includes numerous suggestions for making your church guest-friendly, real-life examples of what works and what doesn’t, and discussion questions that can be used individually or among leadership groups.
If your church has many guests, but few who stay, read Beyond the First Visit. It will open your eyes to your guests’ point of view.
“The Atrocities of Organized Irreligion”
Over at First Things, Robert Royal reflects on the significance of a newly unveiled memorial to Victims of Communism:
We often hear these days about the problems and misdeeds of “organized” religion. We much more rarely hear about the arrogance and downright atrocities of organized irreligion. Yet during the twentieth century, self-proclaimed scientific atheism in the form of communism killed 100 million people. As the old Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky used to say, people consider the Spanish Inquisition a blot on Christian history. And beyond doubt, it is. Yet the Inquisition killed, over three centuries—and after legal proceedings that are not ours, but were not mere show trials either—about as many as the Soviet Union killed on an average day. The high body counts of international communism were and continue to be a huge blot on the history of human rationality.
Unfortunately, according to Royal, few religious leaders showed up, in spite of the fact that the religious were often communism’s first victims:
Most worrisome of all, though, was the absence of all but a few religious leaders. Those present were mostly from former communist nations. Ever since Voltaire’s Ecrasez l’infame, militant atheism has not just been incidentally antireligious. Martyrdom appeared once again in Europe in the French Revolution and continued, on and off, until the last days of communism on the Continent. The easy assumption that faith and secularism are really after the same things and may readily coexist, which took hold in the West in the 1960s, has always been a doubtful proposition. There are forms of secularity that are tolerant and even welcoming of religion, but the more usual form of unbelief is ideologically committed to eliminating belief. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens may never have at their diposal security forces to round up troublesome believers, but not for lack of conviction that we are “child abusers” and dangerously delusional. Their kind of reason has deeply intolerant impulses. Benedict XVI has rightly pointed out that one consequence of paying attention to modern martyrs may be “the convalescence of reason.”
Religious leaders used to be alert to threats from militant nonbelievers. But in the 1960s, many lost the scent. Indeed, quite a few of them tried to make nice with nasty communist regimes at the time they were still persecuting Jews and Christians. In recent decades, there’s been a noticeable embarrassment among many leaders about having to point out the clear violations of religious rights that continue in communist countries. It’s easy to take up, say, the cause of illegal immigrants in America, harder—in certain circles—to talk about Christians in Cuban or Chinese prisons. It may be a slight stretch, but it seems that anti-anticommunism has survived the heyday of communism itself.
Next time I’m in Washington, D.C., I know which memorial I’ll be visiting first.
The Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ (Revelation 11.15–19)
The political language of the gospel never ceases to amaze me.
Consider the terminology of Revelation 11.15–19: “kingdom,” “Lord,” “Christ,” “reign,” “thrones,” “Lord God Almighty,” “power,” “nations,” “judged.” This is the language of power politics, and yet it shows up constantly in the religious lexicon of Christian believers.
Some of these terms are obviously political in nature, but a few of them have lost their political character through repeated liturgical use and changes in form of government. We offhandedly refer to God as “Lord God Almighty,” for instance, but do we see how politically loaded that title is? Emperor Domitian, in the late first century, claimed to be dominus et deus, after all: “lord and god.” The world “almighty” in Greek is pantocrator, which means “ruler of all.” Now, either God is almighty or Caesar is. This is not a matter of interpretation; it is a simple question of fact.
Put bluntly, then, the gospel is a political message, a message about who rules whom, and to what end. For Christians, God rules creation with an eye toward eternal justice: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
But, by the same token, the gospel is not a humanly political message. It is not, in other words, a message that necessarily compels us to register as Democrats or Republicans. (I am of the personal opinion that on some issues, one political party is on the side of the angels, on other issues the other party, and on many issues, both are simply flirting with the devil.) We do not usher in God’s kingdom through political activism. He establishes it at the Second Coming of Christ. In this life, those who have attempted to usher in God’s kingdom through power politics have merely succeeded at creating hell on earth.
The coming of God’s kingdom, in other words, is a future event at which he personally will bring justice to an earth whose history has been characterized by injustice. As the twenty-four elders describe it in their song of praise to God, it is a time of “rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.”
The first six trumpets heralded the disasters that are portents of the end of time. They include environmental devastation, demonic oppression, vicious warfare, pestilence and plague, and the persecution of believers. The seventh trumpet announces the end of these disasters and the advent of God’s kingdom, and so alludes to Christ’s Second Coming and the Final Judgment. That is why the elders describe God only as the One “who is and who was” rather than also as the One “who is to come” (1.4, 8; 4.8). With the seventh trumpet, history ends, and eternity begins.
How shall we live in light of this prophecy of the end? Not, as I have already explained, by trying to usher in God’s kingdom through political activism, although, Christians should always be good citizen. Rather, we heed the words of John’s prophecy by living now as if already God was king of our hearts. And we invite others, while there is still time, to do the same. The Lord does not wish that “any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3.9). For the kingdom of God is not merely a kingdom of divine power and justice, but also of heavenly grace.
And that is why the political language of the gospel never ceases to amaze me.
Simple Church by Rainer and Geiger
The mission of the church is simple: “Make disciples” (Matt. 28:19). Unfortunately, the discipleship process in many churches is anything but simple. How do you know if your church’s discipleship process matches the simplicity of its mission? Ask yourself the following four questions:
- Is my church’s discipleship process clearly stated and understood by all?
- Does it channel movement along a trajectory from unbelief toward mature belief?
- Are the church’s programs aligned with this process?
- Is the church focused enough on its process to eliminate programs that don’t align with it?
If you can answer yes to each of these questions, then your church has a simple discipleship process.
If not, then you should read Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for Making Disciples. Using biblical teaching, true-life stories, and statistical analysis, the book shows the connection between the vibrancy of a church and the simplicity of its discipleship process. Rainer and Geiger drive home the importance of four basic concepts: clarity, movement, alignment, and focus. And they provide concrete suggestions for using these concepts to design and evaluate effective church programs.
As a new senior pastor, I found Simple Church to be very helpful for diagnosing what is and is not working at my church, and why. As I work with my church’s leaders to develop a new discipleship process, I will undoubtedly return to Simple Church regularly for good advice.
The Two Witnesses (Revelation 11.1–14), Part 2
The measuring of the temple signifies God’s protection and ownership of it, and yet he allows it to be trampled on by “the nations.” Similarly, the two witnesses offer a powerful testimony to God, but he allows them to be killed and “the peoples and tribes and languages and nations” to celebrate their demise. In precisely what sense, then, does God protect his people?
Some interpreters (dispensationalists) claim that God protects his people from the great tribulation by rapturing them from earth prior to its beginning. And yet even they admit those people who convert to Christianity during the great tribulation will suffer its evils. Other interpreters (preterists, idealists, futurists) teach that God protects his people by bringing them through the great tribulation rather than by taking them out of it. But again, what kind of protection is it if some people suffer.
That brings me to the third point I want to make about Revelation 11.1–14, namely, that what God protects his people from is not persecution or death, per se, but judgment and what John later calls “the second death” (Rev. 20.14). In other words, God protects his people from the terrors of hell.
I find it important to stress this point for several reasons: (1) Some Christians seem to teach that faith saves you from all the ills of the world: from poverty, sickness, depression, persecution, etc. That is hardly what Jesus taught: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matt.5.11–12). Or consider this categorical statement from Paul: “all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Tim. 3.12). We should not promise others what neither Jesus nor Paul promised us.
And anyway, (2) Christianity is not a panacea for every ill. It is a cure for the very specific sickness of sin and the spiritual and eternal death that results from it if not treated. That cure is resurrection into an eternal life with God. And sure enough, after the short period of time that God allowed his two witnesses to be persecuted and killed, he raised them from the dead and welcomed them into heaven (verses 11–12).
Seeing this, we are able to affirm that God protects his people, not from all harm, but from ultimate harm, so that through the power of resurrection, they might spend eternity in his presence.
But does such an emphasis on our future resurrection and eternal life make us practically useless on earth? No! The fourth and final point I would like to make about Revelation 11.1–14 is simply this: Our job on earth, as we await eternity, is to witness to others about the grace and justice of God, inviting all people to repent and share in the benefits of salvation. John tells us that the two witnesses “will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” We sometimes think that prophesy is predictive, that is, about the future. But in the Bible, prophesy is about forthtelling as well as foretelling. It is about reminding people of what God requires of them (justice) and that he is offering them a chance to repent and follow him (grace).
As we suffer the world’s harms and await God’s ultimate salvation of us, let us never forget that now is the time to invite others to experience the eternal protection that God provides all his people.
The Two Witnesses (Revelation 11.1–14), Part 1
“In turning to matters in [Revelation] 11:1–14,” Robert H. Mounce comments, “we come to a passage that is universally recognized as difficult to interpret.”[i] Too see just how difficult, consider four basic interpretations of this passage laid out by Grant R. Osborne:
“(1) The preterist view…sees this as a description of the destruction of Jerusalem and preservation of the church in John’s day…. (2) The idealist view…believes this depicts the world’s opposition to the church…. (3) The dispensational view…sees this as the rebuilt temple of the tribulation period, with the converted Jewish ‘worshipers’ (the 144,00 of 7:1–8) as persecuted by followers of the Antichrist for ‘forty-two months’ (the great tribulation). (4) A modified futurist view holds that this teaches the spiritual preservation of either the church…or the remnant of believing Jews in this final period of tribulation (the forty-two months).”[ii]
Confused? Join the club!
Basically, interpreters differ over whether 11.1–14 describes a past (preterists), presently ongoing (idealists), or future (dispensationalists, modified futurists) event, which takes place in either the literal, geographical Jerusalem (preterists, dispensationalists, and some modified futurists) or in the spiritual point of contact between the church and the world (idealists and other modified futurists). They also differ over whether the temple and the two witnesses refer to an actual temple and actual people or whether they are symbolic of the church as a whole.
So, in the midst of this confusing welter of interpretations, what is an ordinary believe like you or me supposed to do? If the scholars do not agree on the meaning of the details, can the passage mean anything to us? Well, yes. Let me suggest of few points of common ground and application.
First, as Osborne puts it, “the measuring of the temple signifies God’s ownership and protection of his people.”[iii] John’s instructions in verses 1–2 are very similar to the instructions given to Ezekiel (Ezek. 40–42) and Zechariah (Zech. 2.1–5), both of whom were told to measure the temple as an indication of its protection.
Second, however, the protection of the temple—and more broadly, the people of God—does not mean that no harm will come to them or that the forces of evil will not make them suffer. Rather, as John puts it, the temple’s outer court “is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.” Additionally, John tells us, when the two witnesses “have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street…for three and a half days.” It seems to me that John is speaking of the same event in these two passages, for forty-two months is three and a half years, and Scripture sometimes speaks of years in terms of days.
But how can God protect his people when he nonetheless allows them to be persecuted? That is the topic of our next devotional.
You Must Again Prophesy (Revelation 10.1–11)
So far, we have seen that God uses bad things as a negative reinforcement technique induce change in people. Those bad things include natural disasters as well as humanly manufactured evils, such as war. But three questions arise: (1) Is God the author of evil? (2) Is God unfair? And (3) how do we know when God is using a bad thing in order to induce us to change? Let us take a look at each.
(1) Is God the author of evil when he uses bad things as negative reinforcement technique? No. Consider an analogy: When a child misbehaves, his parents discipline him. In my day, that often meant spanking, although “time outs” and loss of “privileges” is more common today. Now, in disciplining their child, parents are causing him to experience a bad thing, either slight pain or momentary deprivation. We do not consider parents “evil” for disciplining their children; why would we consider God so?
But of course, parents try to be consistent when disciplining a child, always positively reinforcing good behavior and negatively reinforcing bad behavior. When God disciplines us, however, he seems to hit and miss. Sometimes bad things happen to good people, sometimes good things to bad people.
This raises our second question: (2) Is God unfair? Again, I think, the answer is no, and for two very common sense reasons: First, God may be using a positive technique on a bad. Parents might just as well try to get their child to behave by offering her a lollipop as by threatening a “time out.” So too does God often let good things happen to bad people. But second, the consequences of disciplining a bad child may inadvertently affect a good child. If, for example, parents take away the driving privileges of their seventeen-year-old daughter, this negatively impacts their fifteen-year-old son who depends on her for a ride. (I know this from personal experience.) In a similar way, bad things often happen to good people.
How, then, are we to interpret what happens to us? Or, in the wording of our last question, (3) how do we know when God is inducing us to change? Revelation 10:1-11 answers that question by highlighting the role of prophets, i.e., men and women who speak God’s word to the people. John saw “another mighty angel” with a “little scroll in his hand.” As this angel descended from heaven, he “called out with a loud voice…[and] the seven thunders answered.” But John was commanded not to write down what he said. This is an important point to understand, for God’s ways are mysterious. Unless he reveals them to us, in fact, they are incomprehensible. That is where the prophets come in. They reveal what God wishes to make known. Events come to pass, in other words, “just as God announced to his servants the prophets.”
This does not make their job any easier, however. John was commanded to take the little scroll from the angel and consume it. “It will make your stomach bitter,” the angel told him, “but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” That is often the way it is with any person who is a witness to God’s word. The word itself is sweet, but its effect when relayed to others is bitter. And yet, to anyone who believes that God speaks to us through the Bible, giving witness is absolutely necessary. The angel commanded John: “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”
And so must we.
“They Did Not Repent” (Revelation 9.13–21)
We need to face a very uncomfortable fact about Revelation. It is, in many ways, a gruesome book. Of course, it is not gratuitously gruesome, like some Hollywood slasher flick with scene after scene of pointless violence and gore. Oh no, Revelation is an intentionally gruesome book. The violence serves a point—several points, really.
The first point is that God is just and those who disobey him get what they deserve. The second point is that God is merciful, offering people a chance to repent over and over again, even on their very deathbeds. We see both points—paradoxically related, I admit—at work in Revelation 9.13–21.
Note the gruesomeness first of all. A two-hundred-million-man cavalry emerges from around the area of “the great river Euphrates,” hell-bent for destruction. The number is not literal; instead, it represents an incomprehensibly vast, seemingly invincible horde. Interestingly, it is not these millions of mounted troops that inflict carnage but their mounts: “the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths.”
The mention of fire, smoke, and sulfur helps us interpret the passage correctly, for these are the very elements of hell. Robert H. Mounce astutely comments: “The plague anticipates the eternal torment that awaits the devil (20:10), his demonic cohorts (19:20), and all who bear the mark of the beast (14:10).”[i] God’s judgments in the course of history, in other words, are foretastes of his eternal judgment of sin.
And yet, despite experiencing these hellish conditions, “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols…, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” By adding these words at the end of the sixth trumpet, John lets us know that mercy—the offer of yet another chance for repentance—has been God’s purpose all along.
Some people learn best by positive reinforcement. They are induced to change behavior because they see the benefits of change. Others, however, change only through negative reinforcement, that is to say, by experiencing the costs of a failure to change. So, depending on their learning style, God uses either the carrot or the stick. Unfortunately, it seems, some people simply never learn. Nothing—either positive or negative—can induce them to change. Those are the people we read about in this passage.
Now, I must admit that I would be far more comfortable without all the Bible’s talk about sin, death, judgment, and hell. You probably would be too. But our comfortable feelings are not the issue; reality is. And reality is not all goodness and light. There is a heaven, of course—which is all goodness and light—but there is also a hell, which is neither. Where you go depends on how you respond to God’s offer—whether positively or negatively reinforced—of a second chance.
Will we take it, or will we pass it by?
The Locusts from Hell (Revelation 8.13–9.12)
Several years ago, as I was driving to work, I heard a talk show host fulminate against the opponents of genetically modified foods—what those opponents call “Frankenfood.” Why, he asked, did they oppose genetic modification when it led to high yield, bug resistant crops? It was a reasonable question, I thought, although I am not scientifically literate enough to weigh in on the debate over the costs and benefits of genetically modified foods.
Then, when I got to the office, I read Revelation 8.13–9.12 and realized how terrifying John’s vision must have been to those who lived in the age before scientific agriculture, pesticides, and genetic modification. What John saw, after all, would have struck fear into the heart of any pre-modern farmer, for it presaged the destruction of his crops. John saw a swarm of locusts from hell.
Robert H. Mounce comments: “Behind this picture are two scenes from the OT. Exod 10:1–20 tells of the plague of locusts that devoured all vegetation through the land of Egypt. Joel 1:2–2:11 interprets the devastation of Israel by locusts as a portent of the destruction that will come with the day of the Lord (Joel 1:15; 2:1, 11). Throughout the OT the locust is a symbol of destruction (Deut 28:42; 1 Kgs 8:37; Ps 78:46). Bred in the desert, they invade cultivated areas in search of food. They may travel in a column a hundred feet deep and up to four miles in length, leaving the land stripped bare of all vegetation.”[i]
John’s vision of locusts, in other words, is a vision of divine judgment. They swarm because they have been summoned by the fifth angel’s trumpet blast (9.1). And their power is circumscribed: They cannot “harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads” (9.4), and they can only operate for five months (9.5).
These are not ordinary locusts, however. Verses 7–10 pile simile upon simile to describe their appearance: “like horses prepared for battle,” “like crowns of gold,” “like human faces,” “like women’s hair,” “like lion’s teeth,” “like breastplates of iron,” “like the noise of many chariots,” “like scorpions.” Some interpreters have thought John might be describing helicopters or some other modern military aircraft. Verse 11 lays that idea to rest swiftly: “They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.” The locusts, in other words, are demons, and their king is a demon too—perhaps the devil itself.
The appearance of these locusts from hell has its intended effect: “And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them” (9.6). Just as earthly locusts strip the land of vegetation, so the demonic locusts strip human beings of hope without allowing them to die.
Why would God allow such a thing? Again, although it is hard to wrap our minds around such an idea, even this divine judgment contains a measure of grace. It represents one of God’s final attempts to get people to see that there is no hope outside of faith in him. They have rebuffed his loving advances and spurned his kindly invitations. Perhaps, he thinks, they will change their minds if they see the impossibility of life outside of him.
I wonder: Will we?
