Author: Matt Powell

The Millennium

Matt Powell7 Comments

But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. (1Co 15:23-26 NKJ)

This passage rules out postmillennialism, for it has Jesus’ millennial rule operating in order to put down enemies.  In a postmillennial scheme, the millennium happens after the world has been largely Christianized; the enemies have all pretty much been put down already.  The premillennial likewise sees the rule of Christ happening after the enemies have all been defeated, and also has it happening after Christ’s second coming, in direct contradiction to this passage, which says that the rule of Christ happens until His second coming.

Both of these views suffer from externalizing the rule of Christ, making it something to be seen with the eyes.  Jesus said, My kingdom is not of this earth, else would my servants fight.  In addition, they misunderstand the nature of this rule as it works on the present age.  It is the rule of the rod of iron, and a rod of iron is a weapon for punishing the disobedient.  Psalm 2 sees the Messiah ruling with a rod of iron, dashing his enemies to pieces, until all are put under His feet, and according to 1 Corinthians 15 quoted above, the completion of the destruction of all Jesus’ enemies, by the power of the gospel, coincides with His second coming.  Postmillennialism and premillennialism see this rule as exercising an already established reign of Christ over a conquered world, instead of seeing the millennial rule as the means by which that conquest is established, as Psalm 2 and 1 Corinthians 15 has it.  It is the process of extending that rule over the world which is spoken of in Psalm 2 and 1 Cor 15.  The end of the millennium, the second coming of Christ, comes at the point when that process is finished, culminating with the final confrontation between Christ and the devil spoken of in Revelation 19-20.

So amillennialism is our best understanding of the passage quoted above, as well as the other passages we have mentioned.  The rule of Christ is the process by which He brings saints under His rule by His Spirit, and the process by which He casts down every false philosophy and religion erected in opposition to Him.  Revelation 19-20 reveals a final time when Satan in his rage and defeat throws off every mask and disguise and comes against the people of God in open warfare and is finally destroyed forever by Christ in His triumphant return.

So we are now in a time of spiritual warfare, advancing the truth of the gospel against every false idea erected against it. We can do so confident of success, for it is Christ fighting the war through the power of His Spirit, working through His people.

Kim Davis

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From all appearances, Kim Davis is doing what she believes to be right, regardless of consequences.  I have a great deal of admiration of her for that.  She did not make herself famous.  She did not publicize her cause as far as I know.

When I first heard the story, I thought she should probably resign.  You don’t join the military, after all, if you’re opposed to war.  But as I considered it, it seemed to me she has a real legal case, not to mention a moral one, though I’m not sure that she has made this case.  But I know the state of Kentucky defines a marriage by statute to be between a man and a woman.  The recent Supreme Court decision enshrining the particular religious worldview of Anthony Kennedy is clearly illegal, unsupported by any real constitutional argument.  Therefore, Kim Davis can simply declare that she was elected by her county to enforce the law, and this decision being made illegally by an officer with no constitutional power to make such law, she will ignore it and instead enforce the laws of the state of Kentucky.

To the degree there is any political solution to the current political state of this country, I think it must come from states and localities asserting their rights and refusing to obey the lawless dictates of the federal government.

Of course the real solutions are not political at all.

Seeking the Living Among the Dead

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Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth, they said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee,  saying,`The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.'”
And they remembered His words. (Luke 24:5-8)

We are coming to the end of a Bible study in Luke.  I find my attention drawn to a central themes of Luke, and of all the gospels, that of the surprising nature of Jesus’ Messiahship and of the salvation He brings.  We are familiar with the story of Jesus, so it has lost its ability to surprise.  But all the gospels emphasize throughout how consistently and completely Jesus’ whole ministry defied people’s expectations.  The way we naturally think of power, glory, truth, progress, and effectiveness is all wrong and corrupted by sin.  That is why they didn’t “get” Jesus.  They took the concept of the Messiah and twisted it to line up with their earthly expectations, so that when the Messiah came, they rejected Him.

It’s why people still don’t get Him.  We still do the same thing today.  Being familiar with the story of Jesus, we twist Jesus to fit into our own materialistic, earthly expectations.  We see His salvation as satisfying my lusts.  But our response to this story should not be, “Those stupid disciples!”  It should be, “How am I being rebuked by this story just as they were?  How do I search for the living among the dead?  How do I look for salvation in the cursed wreckage of this world?”  If you don’t think you do, then you don’t understand the problem.

It’s the most natural thing in the world to do to construe God’s salvation in terms of the satisfaction of our own selfish lusts, the vindication of our own desire for autonomy.  This must be confronted.  Perhaps Jesus’ salvation to you means that you can be comfortable, that you can put away your guilt and relax about your sin, feeling no need for repentance, so that you can live your life the way you please with no fear of what comes after.  Perhaps Jesus is the means you can use to make your family or society what you think it should be.  Perhaps Jesus is the road to wealth and fame and power for you.  Perhaps Jesus is the club you can beat everyone else with, using Him to establish your moral or intellectual superiority over everyone else.  This pastor has seen every one of these motivations and more.  I’ve seen several of them in myself.  All of these are distortions of the salvation that Jesus brings.  All of these are examples of seeking the living among the dead, of seeking the life of God among the death of this world.

“Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.”

Truth or Power

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All of a sudden, the law is supreme.  All of a sudden, everyone must obey the law above all else.  All of a sudden, people firmly in favor of the civil disobedience of the 60’s, people who were firmly in favor of Occupy Wall Street and all its lawbreaking, people firmly in favor of illegal immigration and sanctuary cities, are all about the vital importance of keeping the law when one little county clerk in Kentucky has a scruple.

Or is it just about power?  Is it just about the fact that now that the law favors you, all of a sudden it’s supreme?

The modern statist knows only power.  They are the intellectual descendants of Nietzche, he who was beyond good and evil.  At least he admitted it.  But then he himself said that no assertion in all of human thought was more unfounded than that truth was to be preferred to lies.  Whatever gets the job done, whatever gets you power to get what you want.  So when you’re not in power, then it’s all about higher principles, civil disobedience, etc.  When you’re in power, all of a sudden law and order becomes super important.

Of course the chain of dependence goes back much further than Nietzche.  One might cite a certain Roman governor saying to an innocent man, “What is truth?” just before having him crucified to preserve his power.

Or one might go back to the father of lies himself, who led man into a lie, in order to enslave him.  His descendants have learned the lesson well, continuing to lie in order to enslave.

The truth will set you free.

Progressivism’s totalitarian nature reveals itself again

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A clerk in Kentucky has been ordered to jail for refusing to issue gay marriage licenses.  I am really touched by the leftists’ newfound respect for always obeying the law no matter what.

This shows well what I’ve been talking about, that the government will inevitably operate according to a worldview.  And the more statist the worldview, the more totalitarian it will inevitably become.

Perhaps she should have just resigned.  I’m a little torn on that part of the question.  One thing that has stood out to me is the hatred, the personal vitriol, directed toward this woman.  The left has gleefully dug into her admittedly sordid past and called her every kind of vicious name- ignorant, bigoted, hateful, and much worse.  They have absolutely no interest or respect for her beliefs.  Tolerance, as I have said before, was never really a core value of the left.  It was just a smokescreen they used to get in power.  Once they are in power, or think they are, the mask comes off.  I think they would happily call for this woman’s literal stoning if the authorities put it on the table, so thoroughly have they already dehumanized her.

Nobody is being meaningfully hurt by this woman’s decision.  They can get their make-believe marriage licenses from any number of other places.  This is about compliance.  This federal decision was already so far out of the bounds of the constitution, such an egregious overstepping of federal power, do you really think they will stop at people’s rights to privately believe what they want?  Four of these justices have already voted, repeatedly, to strip the citizens of their right to bear arms, their right to free speech, their right to freely practice religion.  The Constitution is now whatever the Supreme Court on any given day says it is.  This is the rule we are under.

But Christian people have always had the victory in the long run, and they do not gain that victory through the political process, through military means, or the like.  God may and does use these things to bring about the change He desires.  But our focus should always be living lives of honesty, integrity and love.  The best thing we can do to transform this culture is to raise our kids faithfully, love our spouses, support our churches, and love our neighbors.  We ought to speak to public policy when God gives us the means to do so, but far more important is faithfulness to all the duties God puts in our lives, to be disciples of Christ in the light of His Gospel in a million ways that will never be in any newspaper.  That’s what changes the culture, what spreads the kingdom.

Conservative Christian Libertarianism

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While I’m on the subject of establishment:

A religious worldview will always undergird the state.  This is inevitable.  This is because a religious worldview will always undergird everything we do.

The problem in the past with church and state has been that a statist worldview, the belief that the power of the state can bring in an ideal society, has frequently masqueraded as a Christian worldview.

When the true Christian worldview undergirds a culture, then the state will be limited to only protecting public safety and safeguarding people’s lives and properties, because this is what God gave the state to do, in the covenant He made with Noah.  They will do this in a way informed by the Christian worldview- again, this is inevitable.

What about the freedom of those without such a worldview?  The Christian worldview is actually that worldview which is best suited to protect the liberty of conscience of those who are not Christians.  This is precisely because the attempt to bring in the ideal society, which always ends up persecuting those who disagree with that worldview, is no part of the true Christian worldview.  Jesus made clear that His kingdom is not of this world, else His servants would fight (just like the servants of all the other worldviews).  Paul told us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.  So while basic law and public safety will be provided according to a Christian worldview, there ought be no attempt to draft the power of the state to force agreement with the worldview.

So a Christian state can tolerate Muslims and atheists and others, as long as they are willing to live according to that state’s understanding of human rights, marriage, family, public safety and the like.  And there will always be debates about the proper role of the state.  But statism really should have no place in our thinking as Christians.  People’s hearts and minds must be ruled by Christ; the state has no right to demand that allegiance.

The statist, on the other hand, aims for the creation of utopia, the perfect society, here and now, through the collected power of humanity, something the Christian faith rejects.  Because the statists inevitably fail in this goal (because Christ is king), rather than realize their error, they always blame those who reject their worldview.  This blame will always fall hardest on Christians, because all worldviews other than Christianity are essentially statist; they all look to the state in one way or another to create the ideal society.  Christians alone simply reject all of the claims of the statist and look quietly for the hope of the Messiah.  Because of that, they never go along with the statist program.  This is why a modern progressive is more tolerant of a Muslim than a Christian.  It might appear that a Christian has more in common, valuing human rights and liberty and the equality of women and the like, but the core value of the progressive is not any of these things.  His core value is statism, and this he shares with the Muslim.

The materialist worldview that dominates the modern West is fundamentally statist, because if material existence is all there is, then our hope is only in this life, and therefore the greatest possible power must be harnessed to make this immediate existence as ideal and just and prosperous as possible.  That greatest possible power is always the state, and the use of its power to create utopia is always oppressive and intolerant.

So I hold to something like a Christian libertarianism, with strong conservative tendencies.  We should unabashedly champion Christian principles in matters of public policy, in those limited things which we believe the state should do, those things given to the state by God in Scripture (especially important here is recognizing the unique role that Israel played in God’s redemptive history and not trying to recreate that).  We should reject utopian visions, which means engaging only slowly and cautiously in reforming or altering the institutions of the past.  We should recognize that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and therefore the state should make no effort in advancing the Christian gospel or worldview; that is the job of the church.  But the state should likewise make no apology for being a Christian state governed by a Christian worldview.  Therefore the state should always ensure that the Christian church has a protected place in the culture, while officially favoring no particular Christian church over another.

If you are worried about religious freedom, the Christian worldview is the only one that actually protects religious freedom, simply because our hope is not in this world or this society, but in the age to come.  The Christian state therefore can protect the religious freedom of others precisely because of this, in a way that no statist worldview ever can.

 

The Dangers of Establishment

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I’ve been studying church history a lot for the last two years especially.  One major aspect of the story is how bad sponsorship by the state inevitably is for the church.  This Sunday we were talking about the English Reformation, and one man said something to that effect, “Seems to me that one lesson to draw here is how bad it is when the church and state get intertwined with each other.”  Very true.

Here’s a great quote from Madison on the subject:

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial.  What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. Enquire of the Teachers of Christianity for the ages in which it appeared in its greatest luster; those of every sect, point to the ages prior to its incorporation with Civil policy.”

(Ironically, I first heard this quote from an Atheist who deleted the phrase “the legal establishment of Christianity” and bracketed [Christianity] in its place, and didn’t include the last sentence, deceptively making it look like it was Christianity itself which had produced these results rather than its legal establishment.)

This is absolutely true.  The more political power and connectedness the church gains in a particular society, the more anemic and spiritually powerless the faith becomes in that land over time.  The start of a great train of ills in Roman Christianity began with Constantine, who made Christian clergy wealthy and influential overnight.  When that happened, almost immediately the greatest power and vitality of Christianity shifted away from Rome, to Northern Europe, the British Isles, to North Africa.  Western Christianity broke free of Imperial entanglements sooner than the East, not on purpose but because Rome in the west fell while it continued in the east for another thousand years.  It was in the west where the church thrived and grew.  Looking at Germany, the Netherlands, England- in each place the real vitality of Christianity in those lands mostly happened when it was fighting for acceptance, unsupported by the state.  When a particular version of the church gets enshrined in a position of privilege by state power, it almost immediately begins to stagnate.

America is sill one of the most religious countries on earth, and Christianity has thrived here like nowhere else.  Is it any accident that this has been accomplished in an environment of separation of church and state?

But note something- this never meant separation of religion and state.  Until about the sixties, public officials were constantly citing their religious faith in support of different policies.  It was accepted that they do so.  Congress still opens with prayer.  Our national monuments are full of quotes from the Bible.  There was never any doubt about the fact that a society is going to rest on a religious worldview, that religious perspectives will drive a person’s beliefs about politics.

Since the sixties or so, under the influence of Marxists, the separation of church and state to many elites in this country has meant more the separation of Christianity from matters of public concern entirely.  It has become standard for Presidential or Congressional candidates to insist that their religious views will not affect their policy decisions, which to me means that your so-called religious views are worthless.  This has been done in the name of secularism, the idea that no religious worldview will prevail.  This is of course nonsense; it is impossible not to have a worldview, and for that worldview to drive the way you think that people should be organized into societies.

The actual religious worldview is materialism, the belief that matter is all there is.  This is the philosophical presupposition which lies behind the three great philosophical traditions of the modern West, Freudianism, Marxism, and Darwinism.  Each one of these philosophies is based on a materialist foundation, and materialism is a religious worldview.  It is insusceptible to proof, but is instead a presupposition about the way the world works.  Freudianism is the outworking of materialism for human behavior; Marxism is the outworking of materialism for politics and economics; Darwinism is the outworking of materialism for human nature and origins.

Now, the interesting thing is, as the materialist worldview succeeds in getting itself established as the official state religion of modern western states, it suffers from the same dynamic that afflicted the church when it was established.  Science, which used to be so dynamic and effective, becomes corrupt and impotent.  Most scientific research is now funded by the government, and must toe the line.  The peer review process is just the mechanism that is used to ensure that only party-line opinions are expressed, much like the medieval doctrine of tradition that ensures only opinions with which it already agrees can be taught.

The Guardian reports on a survey of social scientific studies done in 2008 and published in major journals, and reports that 60% of them cannot be replicated.  This is a huge piece of news, that received very little attention.

The study, which saw 270 scientists repeat experiments on five continents, was launched by psychologists in the US in response to rising concerns over the reliability of psychology research.

Social science is of course one of the very least “sciency” kinds of science.  But it is also among the most important.  How people are organized, how they behave, what is right and wrong, why people do what they do- these are vitally important questions- really far more important than the molecular composition of Pluto (as interesting as that is).  The understanding we have of human behavior and relationships is one of the most fundamental questions of any society, and we base our understanding on extremely shaky grounds.  “Science” tells us things about homosexuality, about the effect of children growing up in single parent households, about the effect of divorce on people, about the effect of poverty or of being dependent on financial support from the government, and these claims lie at the root of public policy.  The more important the question is with regard to human culture and society, the more, in our modern world, it is based on extremely sketchy scientific grounds.

But given that Stephen Hawking is saying that black holes lead to other universes, or even that scientists are claiming the existence of other universes, something that absolutely cannot be observed by scientific observation by the very nature of the proposition, shows how much of hard science is influenced by supposition and philosophy.  The proposition of a multitude of universes is made for no other reason than to support the philosophy, to get around the problem of how perfectly fine-tuned our universe is for human life.  If there are an infinite number of universes, then there would have to be one like this one, with all the universal constants just perfect for human life, and thus there is no need for a pesky Creator who made things like this on purpose.

The global warming hoax is just one of the most obvious examples of science being drafted to serve the cause of the state, just like medieval theology was so often twisted to support the power of the establishment.  The giveaway is that the proposed solutions to anthropogenic global warming always involve increasing the power of the state, just like their solution to every other problem.  And who is funding all these studies?  The state.

But this is good, from a Christian’s perspective.  It means that the materialist enemies of Christianity are shooting themselves in the foot, undermining the credibility of one of their most effective tools against Christ, the claims of science, at the same time as they are putting the church on the ground where the church fights most effectively, from a position of a lack of societal and political influence, where the church is forced to rigorously defend the claims of Christ and to truly live out His teachings, where hypocrites and false believers who join the church merely for the societal benefits abandon it, leaving the church purer and stronger as a result.

 

The Problem with Contemporary Worship

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Here is a solid and perceptive article on why contemporary worship music will likely decline, and why this is a good thing.  I suppose in part I link to this in order to justify what our church does, but indeed it is a good and healthy thing to advocate for why we do a thing, beyond mere tradition.

We cannot evade or avoid the “holy catholic church” of the Apostles’ Creed forever. Even people who are untrained theologically have some intuitive sense that a local contemporary church is part of a global and many-generational (indeed eschatological and endless) assembly of followers of Christ; cutting ourselves off from that broader catholic body may appear cool for a while, but we ultimately wish to commune with the rest of the global/catholic church. Indeed, for many mature Christians, this wish grows as we age; we become aware that this particular moment, and our own personal life therein, will pass away soon, and what is timeless will nonetheless continue.

 

Yes, exactly.  This is just one selection of a great deal of insight into modern worship practices.

Calling the Defectors Home

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I’m reading Gerhardus Vos’ Biblical Theology again, and it spurred some thoughts about how we view the human race with regard to salvation.  I think often we view it statically, with reference to our current time frame, so that we think of Christians as those that have departed from the de facto standard of the human race and become something else.

But we need to view it historically, in the context of the whole history of defection and redemption.  God made the covenant of grace with Adam and Eve and their descendants.  When Cain murdered his brother, he went out from the presence of Adam and Eve.  When the northern kingdom defected from Jerusalem, where God had placed His worship, they left the covenant people of God.  The default standard for people is to be part of the covenant of grace, to be believers in the promise of God (regardless of numbers; this isn’t about majorities, but about history), and those who are unbelievers are therefore defectors, those who have left the historic faith and practice of the human race.

Jesus speaks of going and finding His lost sheep, of getting His lost fold and rejoining it to Israel.  This really is what the church is, and this is our historic mission, to go out into the world and find Jesus’ lost sheep and bring them home, by His power and grace.  The good news really is all about amnesty- that those who have defected, by God’s grace, will be forgiven of that defection if they come home.  The world really is the prodigal son, which only makes sense if you remember that the whole human race, like the son, was once in the household of God, but left.

That means we shouldn’t be embarrassed of the gospel, or feel like we need to justify it.  We need to simply proclaim it and explain it as effectively as we can, and show the hopelessness of any other approach.  History is on our side.

But the principle also reminds us to avoid arrogance and triumphalism.  Those of us already in the house are there by God’s grace and gift.  It’s the only way to be there.  Defection is always by a rejection of that grace and gift.  The only way to stay in the family is to embrace that grace, that none of us deserve it or have earned it.

I have a print of Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son on my wall.  It reminds me that we are all really in this position, of having defected, departed, made ourselves miserable, and now have returned.  But just as important as the reaction of the prodigal son here, as Rembrandt captures so well, is the response of the aloof older brother, who disdains the returned son and is more concerned with his own right, failing to recognize that his position in the house is every bit as much the gift of the father as his younger brother’s is.

 

Rembrandt_Harmensz._van_Rijn_-_The_Return_of_the_Prodigal_Son