This is evangelicalism with more cowbell

Jared Wilson on FBC Dallas' new $130 million auditorium. Hilarious.

GROW: Reproducing through Organic Discipleship

A great new resource available from The Resurgence, "Grow" (written by Winfield Bevins), fills a needed spot in discipleship/church growth literature. Download the PDF here. Buy the analog version here. View the website here.

"They're Not a Blessing, Usually"

John Piper on riches.
Ten minute video explains the falsehood of the prosperity gospel.

A Great New Book

Just released from Kregel Publications and written by T. Desmond Alexander, From Eden to the New Jerusalem is an introduction to Biblical theology. If you have ever wondered about the Biblical metanarrative, this book is for you! View sample pages in PDF format, here.

From the publisher:Why does the earth exist? What is the purpose of human life?

The Bible - a complex literary anthology - answers life's most fundamental question in its remarkably unified story, which centers on a unique deity. T. Desmond Alexander explores this story by beginning at the end, in the final chapters of the book of Revelation. Anticipating the creation of a new earth and a new heaven, these chapters bring to fulfillment a process that began with the creation of the earth as described in the opening chapters of Genesis. These passages frame the biblical "meta-story."

This stimulating study outlines the central themes of the Bible, with broad brushstrokes designed to show the general shape of the meta-story. With the big picture illuminated, we are able to discover each book's contribution to the whole. Appreciating these themes, which were an integral part of the thought-world of the biblical authors, will significantly alter our reading of individual books.

Good theology always has pastoral implications, and this study is no exception. The truths revealed are extremely important for shaping our lifestyle choices.

208 Pages
Published October 2009

About the author:T. Desmond Alexander (PhD, Queen's University, Belfast) is senior lecturer in biblical studies and director of postgraduate studies at Union Theological College, Belfast. Previously, he lectured in Semitic studies at the Queen's University in Belfast, and was director of Christian training for the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. he is the author of From Paradise to Promised Land.

A Good Reminder About Hell

How Willingly Do People Go to Hell?

Does Anyone Standing by the Lake of Fire Jump In?
October 28, 2009 By John Piper

C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them. His stress is relentlessly that people are not “sent” to hell but become their own hell. His emphasis is that we should think of “a bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.” (For all the relevant quotes, see Martindale and Root, The Quotable Lewis, 288-295.)

This inclines him to say, “All that are in hell choose it.” And this leads some who follow Lewis in this emphasis to say things like, “All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want.”

I come from the words of Jesus to this way of talking and find myself in a different world of discourse and sentiment. I think it is misleading to say that hell is giving people what they most want. I’m not saying you can’t find a meaning for that statement that’s true, perhaps in Romans 1:24-28. I’m saying that it’s not a meaning that most people would give to it in light of what hell really is. I’m saying that the way Lewis deals with hell and the way Jesus deals with it are very different. And we would do well to follow Jesus.

The misery of hell will be so great that no one will want to be there. They will be weeping and gnashing their teeth (Matthew 8:12). Between their sobs, they will not speak the words, “I want this.” They will not be able to say amid the flames of the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), “I want this.” “The smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night” (Revelation 14:11). No one wants this.

When there are only two choices, and you choose against one, it does not mean that you want the other, if you are ignorant of the outcome of both. Unbelieving people know neither God nor hell. This ignorance is not innocent. Apart from regenerating grace, all people “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Romans 1:18).

The person who rejects God does not know the real horrors of hell. This may be because he does not believe hell exists, or it may be because he convinces himself that it would be tolerably preferable to heaven.

But whatever he believes or does not believe, when he chooses against God, he is wrong about God and about hell. He is not, at that point, preferring the real hell over the real God. He is blind to both. He does not perceive the true glories of God, and he does not perceive the true horrors of hell.

So when a person chooses against God and, therefore, de facto chooses hell—or when he jokes about preferring hell with his friends over heaven with boring religious people—he does not know what he is doing. What he rejects is not the real heaven (nobody will be boring in heaven), and what he “wants” is not the real hell, but the tolerable hell of his imagination.

When he dies, he will be shocked beyond words. The miseries are so great he would do anything in his power to escape. That it is not in his power to repent does not mean he wants to be there. Esau wept bitterly that he could not repent (Hebrew 12:17). The hell he was entering into he found to be totally miserable, and he wanted out. The meaning of hell is the scream: “I hate this, and I want out.”

What sinners want is not hell but sin. That hell is the inevitable consequence of unforgiven sin does not make the consequence desirable. It is not what people want—certainly not what they “most want.” Wanting sin is no more equal to wanting hell than wanting chocolate is equal to wanting obesity. Or wanting cigarettes is equal to wanting cancer.

Beneath this misleading emphasis on hell being what people “most want” is the notion that God does not “send” people to hell. But this is simply unbiblical. God certainly does send people to hell. He does pass sentence, and he executes it. Indeed, worse than that. God does not just “send,” he “throws.” “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown (Greek eblethe) into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15; cf. Mark 9:47; Matthew 13:42; 25:30).

The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.

When someone says that no one is in hell who doesn’t want to be there, they give the false impression that hell is within the limits of what humans can tolerate. It inevitably gives the impression that hell is less horrible than Jesus says it is.

We should ask: How did Jesus expect his audience to think and feel about the way he spoke of hell? The words he chose were not chosen to soften the horror by being accommodating to cultural sensibilities. He spoke of a “fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42), and “weeping and gnashing teeth” (Luke 13:28), and “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), and “their worm [that] does not die” (Mark 9:48), and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and being “cut in pieces” (Matthew 24:51).

These words are chosen to portray hell as an eternal, conscious experience that no one would or could ever “want” if they knew what they were choosing. Therefore, if someone is going to emphasize that people freely “choose” hell, or that no one is there who doesn’t “want” to be there, surely he should make every effort to clarify that, when they get there, they will not want this.

Surely the pattern of Jesus—who used blazing words to blast the hell-bent blindness out of everyone— should be followed. Surely, we will grope for words that show no one, no one, no one will want to be in hell when they experience what it really is. Surely everyone who desires to save people from hell will not mainly stress that it is “wantable” or “chooseable,” but that it is horrible beyond description—weeping, gnashing teeth, darkness, worm-eaten, fiery, furnace-like, dismembering, eternal, punishment, “an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isaiah 66:24).

I thank God, as a hell-deserving sinner, for Jesus Christ my Savior, who became a curse for me and suffered hellish pain that he might deliver me from the wrath to come. While there is time, he will do that for anyone who turns from sin and treasures him and his work above all.

Trembling before such realities, and trusting Jesus,

Pastor John


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Love Your Enemies

It's not about you. Loving your enemies, I mean. This is not some sort of brain-ninja trick Jesus is pulling to sort of reverse-psychology you into a higher plain of existence. It's not about your enemies, either. This is not compassion, social justice, or any other secular stand in for worship. Loving your enemies is about God's glory. Here's the thing - we are all created in the image and likeness of God. And we have all been marred by sin. Loving our enemies is first a recognition that we are image bearers of God. Human value is not based in race, gender, beauty, or how many touchdown passes one throws. Human value is based in the reality that God made us in His image. Loving our enemies is second a display of the gospel - because Jesus loved us when we were His enemies. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So the next time you feel like punching someone in the face, try loving them instead.

Eschatology Just Doesn't Work

I greatly enjoyed John Piper's "Evening of Eschatology", but it got me rethinking about some things I had long ago forgot about. I love the Apostle John. In college I translated all of his correspondence sans Revelation, and through this experience came to love the author and his writings. I think having a familiarity with John as a writer is crucial to understanding Revelation, even if it is a different genre. John was a sharp guy. The first few verses of John's gospel reveal a piercing command of theology, culture, and language. In fact, John has some of the most beautiful and compelling writing in the New Testament. Why do I say all this? Because when we study Revelation it often seems as if all this is chucked out the window. John's other writings are by no means natural to the logic-driven modern theologian, and yet they are painstakingly clear. Revelation is not. Is it not reasonable to conclude that John knew perfectly well that his readers would struggle to understand his visions? I think it is reasonable, even planned, and so I welcome discussions like this one.

But there is a very real problem with our eschatologies. They don't work. My goal in this short post is to demonstrate the problems inherent in the major views of the Second Coming of Christ. Perhaps in a later post I shall address some ideas of hermeneutics and how to approach Revelation, but my goal at this point is just to stimulate your thinking.

The problem of labels
The discussion of interpreting Revelation 20 is hamstrung by our vocabulary. The discussion is generally framed around "the Millennium", and is described with only three (or four) terms. The problem is that every different view is forced into one of these pre-conceived categories, when in fact they don't always fit. All of the terms are designed to relate Christ's second coming with his millennial reign. The term "Premillennial" is used for any view that holds to a literal reign of Christ on this earth after his second coming. But dispensational premillennialists will tell you that there understanding of Revelation 20 is significantly different from historic premillennialists. So the term is at best limiting. "Postmillennialism" is the view that Christ will return to this earth after a 1,000 year golden age (which postmillennialists would call a reign of Christ, but which I will not, because they don't believe he is physically reigning on this earth during that period). Of course this term is also limited because there are any number of ways this general idea could be hashed out (compare Daniel Whitby to Jonathon Edwards, for example). "Amillennialism" is used to describe any view where there is no earthly reign of Christ on this present planet. This is one of the most plastic terms used, as there are many, many views that fit in this general category (e.g., compare Richard Baulkham with Sam Storms). I say all this to say that thinking about these labels will be largely fruitless. I believe it is our duty and delight to study the writings of John in Revelation, and in so doing to figure out how the symbols fit together and what they mean. And when we do so, I believe that most of what is taught as "prepackaged eschatology" fails.

Problems with Postmillennialism
Revelation 19 ends with Christ returning and destroying his enemies. Chapter 20 begins with "Then I saw" (kai eido) which introduces a new vision (just as it does in 19:11). The vision describes Satan being bound and cast into the bottomless pit, the martyrs are resurrected, then Satan is released and makes war against the Lord and is defeated and cast into the lake of fire. The problem with postmillennialism is that it never actually engages this text. That's right. Even Jonathan Edward's A History of Redemption, as great a work as it is, completely fails to engage the actual text of Revelation 20. Instead, postmillennialism engages the broad ideas (listed above) and interprets them symbolically to represent the advance of the gospel. For Edwards, the millennium is a time of the gospel conquering Islam and Heathenism, and the release and attack of Satan constitute a final great pushback against the gospel, followed by Christ's return. Ultimately this comes down to an issue of hermeneutics. I do not believe that the text of revelation will bear the devices that postmillennialism foists upon it. I will list three ways in which the text itself rejects this understanding.

First, the original audience would not have understood the passage in this way. While they certainly understood that there was symbolism in Revelation, it is equally certain that they would not understand these symbols in a post-enlightenment, northern European sort of way.

Second, the story described in Revelation 20 doesn't include the major components of the postmillennial story - they have to be added. The gradual triumph of the gospel, a golden age of peace, and the delay of Christ's physical return until after said age are all absent from the text.

Third, the story in Revelation 20 includes major components that postmillennialism ignores. The binding of Satan and his future release are rendered nearly inert (one must confess that the "triumph and struggle of the gospel" is significantly less threatening than John's imagery of Satan mustering the world to attack the Lord and fire coming out of heaven to consume them). Furthermore, the only thing John ever mentions happening during the "thousand years" is the resurrection and reigning of the martyrs, which postmillennialism marginalizes at best.

Problems with Amillennialism
Amillennialism has its own set of problems. One common amillennial view is that the thousand year reign is taking place in heaven, not on earth, and is concurrent with the church age. This idea seems to founder on the imagery of Satan being bound and cast into the bottomless pit. Amillennialists argue that John's qualifier "that he might not deceive the nations" should guide our interpretation of these symbols in such a way that this imagery is only meant to convey that Satan cannot deceive the nations in regards to the spread of the gospel. I think this argument is whisper thin. John's imagery is much stronger that that (seriously, why bother to say that Satan was "seized" and "bound" with a "great chain" and "thrown into" the "bottomless pit" and "shut" and "sealed" if all he meant was "well, Satan is still out there being bad, but he just can't deceive the nations any more). Further, Satan is deceiving the whole world in Revelation 13:14 (and throughout Revelation, really)! Another problem with Amillennialism is in verse four where the martyrs "came to life" (zao) which is described in verse 5 as the "first resurrection" (anastasis). N.T. Wright points out that this word in the history of Greek language always refers to a physical resurrection, such that interpreting it to mean a spiritual resurrection (of the martyrs in heaven) stretches the word beyond credulity. These two problems are the biggest challenges to Amillennialism. There are other problems Amillennialism faces, depending on the variety, but these two seem to be universal to this understanding.

Problems with Premillennialism
The first problem with premillennialism is that it takes 20 to be chronologically subsequent to chapter 19. The introduction (kai eido) does not preclude such an understanding, but it also does not require it. In fact, kai eido is used consistently to introduce new and different visions. But the great problem lies in that chapter 19 describes the triumph of Christ over his enemies in extremely detailed and graphic terms. The angel in v.17 invites the birds of the air to feast on the flesh of "kings, captains, mighty men, horses and riders, and the flesh of all men, free and slave, small and great". Then, John sees the beast and false prophet cast into the lake of fire, and "all the rest were slain." This passage seems to indicate the utter destruction of all human flesh (it is hard to understand how "all men both slave and free, small and great" could be understood any other way). This is a problem because premillennialists have to have many (unbelieving) nations left alive to comprise the great army of 20:8 (numbered as the sand of the sea, and from the four corners of the earth). Premillennialists argue that 19:17-21 should only be understood to describe the army of the beast, not every human being. However, it is difficult to believe that John would use such dramatic and strident language in 19 if he really meant something less than what he says (this is congruent to the charge that premillennialists bring against amillennialists regarding 20:1-3 and the binding of Satan).

A second problem that premillennialism faces is the language of 20:4. Here, John explicitly describes those who are resurrected and reign with Christ as those "who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and who had not worshipped the beast or its image...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." Here, John states in very clear and unambiguous terms that the only ones who were resurrected were Martyrs who had been beheaded for their testimony. In order to clear up any confusion, he states the inverse - the rest of the dead did not come to life. This presents a problem to premillennialists, because the language John employs precludes the resurrection of non-martyred saints, as well as their participation in the proposed millennial kingdom of Christ. Premillennialists generally argue that the martyrs here are representative of all believers. This argument falls flat for two reasons, first interpreting "beheaded martyrs" as "all believers" stretches the meaning of the term "beyond credulity" (that is to say that premillennialists are guilty of the same interpretational error they see in the amillennial view of 20:4-5). Second, the words used to describe the martyrs here reflects the language of 6:9, where John very clearly has martyrs in mind (6:11 "Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.").

A third concern for premillennialism is the "thrones" argument where it is noted that every place where John uses the word "throne" it is in a heavenly setting (with the possible exception of the letter to Pergamum), while premillennialists view the thrones in 20:4 as being earthly. The only argument against this seems to be that John's otherwise consistent usage of the term does not preclude him using it differently here. This is a logically tenable response.

(The response argues that the interpretation of thrones is a characteristic of the term, or range of the domain, rather than the term or domain itself. For example, a cow is a cow because it is a cow. Just because all cows we experience are herbivores does not preclude the existence of carnivorous cows. If we discovered a carnivorous cow it would be illogical to argue that it was an herbivore just because it is a cow. This response does fail if we consider a term to be the sum of its characteristics, which means that it generally requires a more plastic, non-corespondence epistemology. However, such an epistemology is perfectly allowable in the context of Revelation. In other words, our carnivourous cow looks like a cow, and is described as a cow, even though it is carnivorous and is therefore not a real cow. In common language usage we would still probably just call it a cow.)

However, if we accept this logical argument (which, by the way, does not grapple with hermeneutics or John's style at all) it opens the door to hermeneutical instability. The problem with just accepting that this use as an abberation is that if John is inconsistent in his presentation of symbols, then "anything goes" to quote P.G. Wodehouse (this is particularly poignant here, as premillennialism presupposes the outcome and interprets the symbolism to fit this notion). Premillennialists should consider this argument carefully before dismissing it, as it is fairly similar to the error they accuse postmillennialists of.

A fourth problem for premillennialism is the premillennial understanding of what the "thousand years" is. All John mentions is the resurrection and reigning of the martyrs. The rest of the premillennial understanding - the resurrection of all saints, the bodily reign of Christ upon the earth, the lion lying down with the lamb, etc. are all added into this text. This is important, because premillennialists sometimes accuse others of interpreting Revelation 20 in light of Paul's teaching in Corinthians and Thessalonians. In fact, premillennialism commits the same offense, interpreting messianic age passages in the Old Testament to refer to this writing by John. In fact, the only thing really taught by John is the triumph of the martyrs over death, and their elevation to concurrent reign with Christ. Everything else that premillennialists see in this "millennium" does not come from John's writing at all. Not only that, but if John were writing about a millennial reign of Christ on this earth, it seems he would have spent a little more time on it. Instead, he rushes ahead to the final judgment, before spending a whole chapter and a half on the new heavens and new earth. This is significant because if the thousand years in 20 actually refer to a messianic age, then it is reasonable to presume that John would describe it with the same zeal and hope as the new earth - maybe even more, since such a messianic age would be the fulfillment of so much prophecy. Actually, John sees the fulfillment of prophecy in the new earth, as he describes the river of life, and the tree of life, and the eternal reign of the saints. Given the level of detail and description, it is hard to believe that John would almost ignore the millennium. All of this points to a serious problem for premillennialism, namely that it has to add many layers of meaning to the text in order to support itself.

Oh, yeah, and dispensational premillennialism...
There is simply no way to ever read any of the texts anywhere in the Bible and come up with the popular "Left Behind" eschatology of dispensational premillennialism. The only way to ever arrive at this scheme is to have a preconceived idea of what you want to get, and to ignore some of the plainer eschatological passages. Sorry folks, and I love you to pieces, but it just isn't in the Bible.

In conclusion
I think it is time to do a few things. The first is that it time to retire these millennial categories. They don't serve us well, and they hamper the conversation. The second is to come to grips with the fact that all of these popular views have flaws. I submit that it is foolish to hold so strongly to a certain view that we ignore the problems it presents. The third is to ponder the actual words and meaning and John's writing, and what they might mean for us today. I am not intending to suggest to you a certain view, only to open your mind to the text itself. None of the common views is without (sometimes serious) problems.

An Evening of Eschatology

Video of a roundtable discussion on the end times, available at Desiring God.