I was very impressed with Timothy George’s brief article in Christianity Today about the execution of Michael Servetus in Calvin’s Geneva. George doesn’t excuse Calvin and he does a very good job of putting the event in context without likewise slaying Calvin. Here’s the heart of it:

Calvin worked with a more medieval understanding of the unitary nature of society and thus limited the degree of liberty he was willing to concede to religious dissenters. We can note that the Genevan officials who condemned Servetus to death were actually Calvin’s opponents, not his henchmen. We can also point out that religious persecution was commonplace in Calvin’s century: Mary Tudor sent hundreds of Protestants to their deaths in England, thousands of Huguenots were killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, and many more Dutch Calvinists were slain by the Duke of Alva.

All this is true, but the fact remains that Calvin should have known better. The logic of his own thinking could and should have led him to agree with Sebastian Castellio, his sometime friend and later critic, who declared: “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine; it is to kill a man.”

I am a Calvinist and so I admit that Calvin was a sinner in need of God’s grace. He was a real gift to the Church of Christ, but he was not a replacement for Jesus.

Jeremy asked an excellent question on the prior post and I don’t want to reproduce it here (go read it already!) but it was a good question and I’ll try to touch on it in this post.

Right off the bat I have to admit a few things. First, I don’t think there is a whole bunch of information in the Bible about the earth during the millennium. Unlike some, Historic Premillennialism doesn’t contain a bunch of detail about when things will happen and how it will all look. We must be content with the revelation God has given and the fact that there are some holes in the details.

Second, I haven’t read much on this aspect of Premillennialism yet either so I could be wrong.

I think the most important verse on this question would be Romans 8:19 “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” But frankly, it doesn’t help much. What does Paul mean by “the revealing of the sons of God?” Is it “creation” or “creature?” ¹Linguistically it can be either though most translations have ‘creation’. If it is “creation” is it only living beings or everything? What about the rest of the universe, is that included? Yikes.

Intellectual and hermeneutic honesty here demands that I not bypass this verse for something “clearer” so let’s work at it a bit. First, the creation/creature is awaiting the apokolupsis of the sons of God; that is, their “revelation, manifestation, coming, appearing.” Currently the sons of God are hidden but at some point they will be uncovered. Frankly, that sounds a lot like the first resurrection. You won’t be able to miss the sons of God, they’ll be the resurrected and glorified ones ruling with Jesus! That sounds like the earth will be renewed at Jesus’ return but according to a Premillennial scheme, that won’t happen till the New Heavens and New Earth and frankly, that’s where I’d feel more comfortable keeping it.

Another idea here is that “creation” is really “creature” which means the individual who gets saved. That changes the meaning of all of this from the created order groaning under the burden of sin to the individual till their redemption. This is the position argued by J. Ramsey Michaels in his chapter in Romans and the People of God [Google Books]. I don’t buy it. I don’t understand why Paul would go all cryptic at that point in the letter. It doesn’t make much sense to me. Paul doesn’t seem to maintain the focus but broaden it to the Spirit and all of creation groaning.

So where does that leave us? Here’s where I think it leaves us. If Historic Premillennialism is correct then the “revelation of the sons of God” is not till after the millennium. How can that be? Simple, the resurrected saints do indeed reign with Christ on the earth but that is not yet the totality of the sons of God. Presumably, there will be those who are born and come to faith during the millennium as well. The resurrected saints are not all of the elect.

Okay, so the earth in the millennium is not renewed. But does that mean it continues the same? Not really. Keep in mind the difference between whose running the world now and who’ll be running it then. Fallen, mostly unredeemed man is running the world and doing it largely without or flat out against God’s principles are in charge now. But during the millennium Jesus will run things. The planet will be blessed by perfect, holy governance. This is God’s creation after all and therefore Jesus would handle it correctly.

So to Jeremy’s question. Is there anything endemic to Historic Premillennialism that speaks to working on environmentalism, social justice and political reform now? Does the Historic position help keep us from a “polishing brass on the Titanic” attitude about the present world order? Right off the bat I want to say that none of the eschatological positions should produce that kind of fruit. Even Dispensationism with its focus on the Rapture shouldn’t engender that kind of “let it burn” approach. It just violates so much of Jesus’ clear injunctions. So any eschatology that does produce indifference is probably eschatology misunderstood or mishandled.

Talk about really healing the planet! Next up I have a few thoughts on humanity during the millennium I might work on.

“Use the clear texts interpret the difficult ones.” I don’t remember where I learned that but I do remember learning it and using it. It stuck with me for a long time. Then I took a class with Grant Osborne and he made a great point about this approach. He said, in effect, that what is a difficult text for you may not be a difficult text for someone else. Grant is an Arminian and so the texts that he finds clear can be troublesome for Calvinists. And visa versa. You have to include the “difficult” texts in the formulation of your theology. If you ignore them till the end and then make them fit, you’re in danger of misreading them. Wise words! Probably the very best thing I learned in his class. He also said that about 1/3 of everyone’s theology is wrong, the trick was figuring out which third. ¹Just occurred to me that that notion could be in Osborne’s incorrect one third! This was the second best thing I learned.

The Book of Revelation is cryptic and symbolic. There are tons of commentaries written on it and many disagree in meaning and approach. I seem to remember either being taught or just figuring for myself that to understand Revelation we need to bring the rest of the New Testament to bear on it rather than trying to understand it by itself. Let the clear text interpret the unclear.

See my first paragraph.

I don’t want to oversimplify the complexities of handling the Book of Revelation but I don’t want to treat it as second class revelation either. Normally, I would say that to properly understand the text you need to recognize the genre of the text. But what happens when the genre is poorly understood? Yikes. Still, not everything in Revelation is equally confusing. “From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God” (Rev 4:5) is perhaps more difficult to understand than “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.” (Rev 22:18-19)

What I’m saying is that there are places where The Book of Revelation will give us trouble and there are places where it will not. The difficulty is not in what it says but in understanding what is symbolic and what is not symbolic.  In my previous post, I said that the chain and pit that bind Satan are symbolic but the curtailing of his deceptive work in the world are not. I made a decision based on what I know about angels from the rest of the Bible. Did I violate my second paragraph? Maybe some, but there is a different between a detail in the vision and what the vision is showing. I could defend that a bit more but I don’t want to spend all my time there.

Besides, this post isn’t about angels.  It is about the saints during the millennium. We look again at Revelation 20 and read:

Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4-6)

There are a number things going on here so I’ll take them one at a time.

Read On…

Thanks to Nathan‘s excellent comments on my post on amillennial problems, I’m going to try to flesh out a few of my points. Not so much by showing where I think non-millennial positions are wrong, but more to positively state my position better. One place to begin is with Satan.

Revelation 20:3 says that John saw an angel who took Satan “and bound him for a thousand years.” This angel had a key and a great chain and he threw Satan “into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended.” This is an important part of the millennial discussion. Is Satan currently bound?

To answer that question, we have to understand what the text says and what it doesn’t say. First, the chain, the key and the pit cannot be physical things. An angel, even a fallen angel, is a spiritual being and a million foot pit cannot hold one. That said, the key, chain and pit are not without meaning. In a very real sense, Satan will be (or is) bound. So don’t get too hung up over the imagery used here, it is not meant to be the focus but instead to explain spiritual matters in a fashion we can understand.

Also pay careful attention to how Satan is bound. The qualification to his binding is  “so that he might not deceive the nations any longer.” For Satan to be bound doesn’t require the complete removal of his activity in the world but it does require that his deception of the nations ceases. He could still trouble the saints but he cannot lie to the nations.

Finally, this curtailing of his activity is not eternal. It lasts a measured amount of time. I don’t believe that 1,000 years is to be taken literally here. The way 1,000 is used in Revelation, really the way numbers in general are used in Revelation is much more figurative. 1,000 seems to indicate a sense of fullness. For example, in the next chapter, the bride of the Lamb, the heavenly Jerusalem, is described as being a 12,000 stadia cube. The picture there is 12 x 1,000. The 12 Apostles times the fullness of their ministry or the people they represent. ¹Some translations make the sad mistake of translating 12,000 stadia as “fifteen hundred miles;” as if the important thing is the physical size! It clouds the imagery of the vision. So “a thousand years” here isn’t meant to be 365,250 days but rather a grand, large, majestic period of time.

So is Satan currently bound? In Matthew 12:29  Jesus asks a rhetorical question, “Or how can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man?” It would seem that Jesus is teaching that the strong man, Satan, is bound because Jesus is plundering his house! So in a sense, yes, Satan is currently bound. But is it the same sense we read in Revelation 20? The context of Matthew 12:29 is not Satan deceiving the nations but rather the casting out of unclean spirits. Jesus is plundering Satan’s house by “setting the captives free” not by terminating Satan’s deceptive activity. If the binding of Matthew 12 was the same as the binding of Revelation 20, then Paul would have no occasion to say that “[Satan,] the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ” in 2 Corinthians 4:4.

Blinding to the eyes of the unbelievers is the same kind of activity as deceiving the nations. Both keep people from seeing the light of the gospel. So in a “Revelation 20” sense, no Satan is not currently bound. He is still blinding, still deceiving. But he is bound so that his house may be plundered of the captives he once held. Demons cannot withstand being cast out of a person in Jesus’ name. His house is being plundered.

And I wonder if this is not what Jesus meant when he told Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. Gates are not offensive weapons, they are barricades. They are designed to prevent passage. The Church is not trying to march into hell so the meaning cannot be that the gates of hell are there to keep us out as we try to press in. Instead, it could be that the Church is rescuing souls from hell by preaching the gospel. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church by restraining those souls she has unbound. Might this not be another picture of the strong man bound and his home being pilfered?

But there is another day coming when Satan’s binding will be more complete. Not simply a man bound in his own home, but an angel locked with a chain and thrown into a deep pit. His deceptive activity, his most powerful and familiar weapon will be denied him. When Satan “lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44) When that ability is removed from him, then his binding will be much more complete and effective.

That binding, according to Revelation 20, takes place during Jesus grand, large, and majestic reign on the earth. Next post will deal with the saints and the Millennium.

I’ve been here since Saturday and yesterday we did a lot of walking, including some good hills. So I thought today would be a great day to run! I started at a house at the bottom of the hill in the complex we’re staying at and ran to the school at the top. Three other people ran with me which was great.

So did I mention this was all uphill? Did I mention that we’re at about 7,000 feet? Did I mention it was uphill? Anyway, we got to the top and there was a football field. By this point “we” equals two of us. So Dan and I did laps. That was much, much easier. The trip down the hill, man, I could have run forever. Almost kept going and called our hosts to pick us up on the valley floor! (Not really.) 2.7 miles and an 11 minute per mile pace. But hey, I ran in Kenya!

Our hosts told us that the tribe here in Kenya that is known for running lives on the floor of the Rift Valley. They are still incredible runners but running up here in the mountains isn’t the same.

Gillian and I are packing tonight. Tomorrow we get on a plane and head to Kenya for two weeks. Before we’ve even left it has been an amazing trip. One that two and a half months ago I said was impossible. Jesus disagreed and guess who won?

So we’re going to work with a friend. He was here in the States working on his PhD when we met. He and his family attend Lakeland and we were in a small group together. I’ll be teaching in his church on leadership. Me and another man on our team will be preaching Sunday morning messages and teaching men’s Bible studies. The team will be doing a Vacation Bible School and working with a group of orphans (from AIDS and poverty) his family takes care of. We’ll do some evangelism, open air and some door-to-door. And his church owns a house which we’ll help paint.

This trip came together very quickly. We got to a point that we didn’t have enough to purchase tickets and the prices kept going up but we found a cheaper fare. That got us to Kenya but didn’t give us money to live and eat there. But we kept pressing on and now we have enough money to cover all of the things needed, including excess baggage fees which are pretty steep these days!

This is the first time I’ve lead a team like this and it has been exciting, energizing, terrifying and fun. I have a very good team, one couple were missionary kids and have been to Africa before so they have some cross cultural experience. I am excited and ready to go!

It didn’t take much reading for my theory on Ecclesiastes to be tested. In chapter 6 Qoheleth talks about toil, the working man’s world, not the domain of the rich and powerful. “All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied.” (Eccl 6:7) So is Qoheleth talking about all of life being futility and not primarily the rich? Perhaps not.

Now come on, would I bother writing another post if I was wrong? :) Maybe but the temptation would be to just not say another thing. So how do I worm my way out of this one? If I’m any kind of Bible student, I’d better not worm out of anything the Bible says! However, I do notice that chapter 6 begins by addressing “a man to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires.” (v 2) So maybe just because Qoheleth talks about “toil” it doesn’t mean that he’s talking to blue collar workers after all.

The lesson of chapter 6 is that we can’t take it with us. This is a lesson we’re well aware of today, especially from the influence of naturalism on our thinking. Once you die, the thought goes, your light goes out and that’s that. If there is no afterlife there is nowhere to take your stuff to, right? Ancient cultures used to pile artifacts with their dead so that they could use them in the afterlife. PBS and National Geographic then employ the euphemism that these great kings and queens now live forever in our museums. Yea. That’s what they had in mind when they built those things. Sure.

So what’s the lesson today then? Michael Jackson isn’t going to be buried at Neverland with all his junk under a large pyramid. Is he? He isn’t, right? No? Okay, just checking. Anyway, there are modern ways to try to “take it with you.” One is the idea of dying broke. There’s a book on that subject and I’m not going to link to it. The idea is to figure out how long you’re going to live and then spend your money so that when you’re broke, you dies. I’m guessing the hard part is knowing when you’re going to die. But this is the modern idea of taking it with you. Spend it. America at her present day best, this.

The older way to take it with you was to leave your children a large inheritance. You “take it with you” by being well remembered after your death. Fat lot of good that does you, being dead and all, but there it is. This is a method Ecclesiastes comments on:

I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. (Eccl 2:18-19)

So if you can’t take it with  you, you shouldn’t blow it on yourself and giving it to the kids doesn’t help, what are we supposed to do with it? The lesson is to not fixate on it. It comes, it goes, you go. So what? So don’t blow it foolishly and don’t cling to it, instead hold it loosely. The greater good, the greater joy is to delight in God. If he gives you wealth, that’s great, but ask yourself what would happen to you if you lost it all. Where would you go for consolation? The Teacher doesn’t give us answers yet, but he does paint us in to a pretty bleak corner.

I started on Amos this morning. The Minor Prophets have a bit of a bad reputation because they’re perceived to be all doom and gloom.  Except Jonah who is probably the only Minor Prophet to get his own flannelgraphs and Veggie Tales episode. And he was the biggest jerk of them all. Christians. Sheesh.

True to form, Amos starts in on judgment: “For three transgressions of _____, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment” is the repeated refrain. Amos doesn’t understand marketing, that kind of thing just doesn’t make for good “Kidz Fun Zone” (or whatever your children’s ministry is called) material. It seldom makes it into the adult Sunday school program for that matter. But it should. The Minor Prophets are speaking God’s word to his people every bit as much as the Major Prophets are and therefore we need to hear them.

To begin to make Amos accessible it helps to understand when he wrote and who he wrote to.  In chapter 2 the woes fall to Judah and Israel. That means that Amos wrote before the Assyrians took Israel into captivity in about 722 B.C. Given the two kings mentioned in the first verse, it is most likely that Amos wrote around 760 B.C. As I’ve noted, his message is largely judgment and though he rails at  a handful of nations in the first chapter and mentions Judah in the second chapter, the bulk of his message is aimed at Israel, the northern ten tribes.

And that’s what makes the first few chapters most remarkable to me. Israel is prophesied against using the same “formula” the prophet used against the other nations, even Judah. This is the general judgment when everyone stands before the LORD and gives account. God’s people and strangers all. No one escapes. But that isn’t it. The unjust are dealt with and then God turns toward his own. Judah is judged. But God’s greatest complaint is against Israel.

This kind of reminds me of how the church will be judged but won’t be condemned because of Jesus.  God looks at Judah and announces his displeasure.  The then most chilling part of the judgment. There will be those who remind Jesus that they worked miracles in his name and he will tell them “I don’t know who you are. You have nothing to do with me.”

Now that isn’t what was going on in Israel. They were pretty rotten from the moment the nation split. They were guilty of flagrant idolatry from the beginning. And Judah wasn’t a shining example of piety either. They had their ups and downs and judgment would come to them in a short order. So the picture painted (or flannelgraphed) by Amos isn’t a perfect image of the final judgment, but you should expect to find the basic shape of the judgment to be the same as the final judgment. I mean, it is the same Judge in both cases. And that’s what stood out. God judges his people just as he judges the nations. But he expects more from us.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. – 2Co 5:10

For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again, “The Lord will judge his people.” – Heb 10:30

So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. – James 2:12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. – James 3:1

And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile – 1Pt 1:17

For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? – 1Pt 4:17

And the good news for us is “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1) Amen.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity. – Eccl 1:1

I’ve started on Ecclesiastes today and it once again brought up old questions about the nature of the book. The typical approach is to say that Solomon wrote the book at the end of his life, looking back at how much he’d wasted and missed by living what is essentially a hedonistic life. There is merit to this approach but there are problems too. One of the big problems is that there is Aramaic in the book. Solomon wouldn’t have written in Aramaic, it points to a post-exilic (at least) editing.  Also, the author identifies himself only as “Qoheleth” which can be “Teacher” or “Collector” but he never specifically identifies himself as Solomon. He does say that he “have been king over Israel in Jerusalem” (Eccl 1:12) and that he had “acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before” him (Eccl 1:16) which rather sounds like Solomon. However, who ruled in Jerusalem before Solomon? Only David and is that really something to brag about? Being wiser than one other king?

So if Qoheleth isn’t Solomon, then what is all this “vanity of vanities” stuff about? It could be some other hedonist who figured it out late. I don’t think it is important to nail down which king in Israel it was. And as far as the post-exilic part, it could be that it was a work that was edited after the exile.

What still isn’t setting quite right with me is what this “vanity of vanities, all is vanity” stuff is about. Is Qoheleth saying all of life is vanity? I have this theory that I’m going to test as I read more of the book. I think the author is talking about a life of riches and affluence, lived apart from God specifically. True, any life lived without God is vanity and chasing after the wind, but I think Qoheleth is pointing out specifically that a life of luxury doesn’t make it any better.

This is not terribly different from the way I’ve understood the point of the book previously, it is just a slight change of emphasis. If the book is about the futility of a life of power and wealth without God, I don’t think it implies that the converse is true. A life of poverty without God isn’t great either. However, people often think that if they just had what “those people” had they’d be happy. So Qoheleth is saying that he’s had it all and it is just as pointless as any other way of living if you don’t have God.

Well, we’ll test my theory as I read through the book.