Turkey Is Always Interesting This Time of Year (Updated)

Zoiks! I know I've taught this for what seems like forever with conviction and near certitude, but seeing things shaping up as they are makes the hairs on the back of the neck stand up. As I've said before, the Bible teaches that the Antichrist will rise in Turkey and control two other nations (likely adjacent) in his climb to worldwide dominion. Dr. Michael Davis published this astonishing article yesterday. YOU'VE GOT TO READ IT!!!!  Thanks Dr D for the heads up, and thanks Wikipedia for the pic.

And then there was this a few weeks ago. Hmmm, what is it that Turkey is positioning itself for? Don't tell me better relations with and economic opportunities in Europe. Something more is afoot, trust me! This is the end game, and yes, I know folk have been convinced of that before, and yet here we still are. But the totality of things prophesied have never come together so completely before. I hope you're wearing your flying shoes.  Thanks Heanous for the heads up.

Update: Dr D mentioned a Joel Richardson article in a comment to this post, but that link address doesn't work. Try this instead, interesting reading, to say the least! The source for some of his analysis is not crazy, pie-eyed religious nut jobs (like yours truly), but the US government. It should becoming clear, that something is afoot in turkey, and it's not a drumstick!

Our Abortion Battle

This story is absolutely amazing! What does it say about Crisis Pregnancy Centers shift to an ultrasound strategy for combating abortion? Whereas the scriptures say one can only believe in what is not seen, the people we're trying to persuade say seeing is believing. Regardless, God has a way of making his enemies friends! A strange way to fight a battle, I know, but apparently it's very effective, at least the early church would say so.

It is frustrating trying to know how to approach the abortion battle in America. The religious foes of abortion, particularly Evangelicals, have been waging political warfare for 30 years, with precious little to show for it. Even with pro-life majorities in both houses of Congress and a pro-life President (from 2002 to 2006) nothing, really, got done. Innocent blood continues to pay the price for American hedonism.

As a result (I hope) some have taken to more violent measures in their frustrations. I think, however, violence is likely to beget only more violence, fire is likely to be met with fire, without actually stopping the evil battled against in the first place. The devil doesn't let loose of his grasp on those that are his through unbelief. His claws are only broken by the light of faith.

Murder is worth being against in any venue. It is a justice and mercy issue. The early church was opposed to abortion within the Roman Empire, but did not have the opportunity nor the political power to do anything legislatively about it. They fought their battle passively by getting adults saved and actively by rescuing the exposed (adoption). Abortion never became illegal within their realm, even after the days of Constantine, but it all but ceased due to the power of conversion and persuasion-- a lesson for us, perhaps?

Happy Reformation Day

Today, 492 years ago, an antisemitic monk tacked an op-ed piece on the door of a Catholic chapel in Wittenberg, Germany. The rest, as they say, is history. I am no fan of Luther or Calvin (although he did write a superb series of commentaries); really, it was the radical reformation (Anabaptists) that did anything that could be called restorational (although real restoration did not begin until 1906 and Azusa Street). Nonetheless, I think it's still better to celebrate Reformation Day than Halloween, and one doesn't need to dress up as a dead person to do so! So, Happy Reformation Day!

The Cons of Being Anti-Antichrist

I may be reading this wrong, but my anecdotal sense is that Evangelicals often perceive their duty as citizens of planet Earth as thwarting the rise of the Antichrist. Since I came into Christ way back when, over and over again I've talked with folk that are politically and socially against policy, or action, or even people they consider furthering the cause of the coming Antichrist. I think that is a misplaced aspiration.

Please don't misunderstand me, I don't want people primed to take the mark because they've come under a delusion, especially on my part. The Antichrist is [is it prophetic that I said is instead of will be? You be the judge! ;-) ] an inherently evil person and his mark seals one's doom. In my view of eschatology, only Jews will actually face that choice; nonetheless, I think we need to understand that the Antichrist and his kingdom are just part of the fabric of what God has prepared for the conclusion of this current economy.

Since the Antichrist is a precursor to the return of Christ, he will arise at the time of God's choosing, and will mark the conclusion of God's work in human history. If you give it any thought, opposing the rise of the Antichrist is not far removed, if removed at all, from opposing the return of Christ. Who'd want to do that?

So, we'll do as we have tried to do through time--what's right, what's biblical, what's sensible--and the Antichrist will come any way. He'll still take over everything and the world will go to hell in a handbasket, it's unavoidable. God did not misspeak in revealing the sequence of events leading to the end, so there are some things we just need to resign ourselves to. Why spit into the wind?

This world is not now and never has been the home to any who followed Christ. Focusing our energies here as if it were has sapped the Spirit from the bulk of the church for the bulk of the Church Age. It has destroyed the witness of the American church since 1980. Assemblies of God minister, John Keurt once quipped when asked about his philosophy of financing a building campaign, "take out a big mortgage and leave it to the Antichrist." Like it or not, we're leaving the world and all that's in it to the Antichrist, maybe we should start living like it.

Becoming Holy

Holiness, I think I have established, is about the uniqueness of God's being, and by extension, about that which is not God being made holy by being consecrated to him. It is the consequence of anything, and eventually everything belonging entirely to the holy God. Ultimately, even the reprobate sinner and the principalities, powers and rulers of this present darkness will be his in the fullest sense of the word (that's what the Lake of Fire is all about). In this bubble of time we call history, there is an option available to us. We may render ourselves "not God's" which is but an illusion that can only last for a lifetime, or we may surrender ourselves to God believing him to be Lord which can translate into eternity.

In relinquishing ourselves to God by grace through faith, we become holy, the actual efficacy thereof coming through two impositions. First, sacrificial blood must be imposed upon that which was not intrinsically holy in order to consecrate it; and second, the divine breath (the Spirit of God) which is intrinsically holy, must be imposed upon that which was sprinkled with sacrificial blood to make holy in substance. This is the pattern of things to come revealed in the OT, and this is the fulfillment of things that are in the NT. I would call these two aspects of holiness 1) positional holiness, and 2) substantial holiness.

For humans, positional holiness can only be achieved through the application of the blood of the Lamb of God through faith. When one comes to the conviction that Jesus Christ died for his or her sin and that he or she is trusting that blood alone to make them acceptable to God, that one has become positionally holy. His or her tabernacle of flesh has been sprinkled with blood. As the Holy Spirit inhabits that sprinkled tabernacle, that one has now become one with God and is thereby made substantially holy. Since our tabernacles are made of transitory stuff, God has appointed a day when all that is passing will be transformed into that which is not. Our substantial holiness will then be perfect.

Notice, I have made no reference to efforts or toil in explaining the biblical concept and process of holiness. Had I done so, I would have been in error. Holiness is not something developed from that which is not holy of itself. Holiness is a derivative property for all but him who alone is holy. For us who are not him, holiness comes imputed and imported. To walk in holiness, then, what is required is not a supernatural effort from that which is only natural, but an abandoned cooperation of the natural with the supernatural who has come in.

How Does One Become Holy?

In the Matrix, there is a number of scenes where Agent Smith infiltrates a person, who then goes through what looks like a very painful transformation--stretcho, change-o, then snaps back into the shape of Agent Smith. Believe it or not, I actually think that is a great illustration of how a Christian becomes holy.

We look at a statement like "be holy as the Lord is holy," and instantly jump to the wrong conclusion: we think it is something we can achieve if we set our minds to it and get it done. Nothing could be further from the truth. It just isn't in the nature of the beast for a human to be holy. God alone can be attributed with that quality.

The most fundamental way to conceive of the notion of holy is to think "other" or "distinctly separate." No one can fit that description but God (see link in post title). Everything else, everyone else is just part of the creation, generally along with countless other examples of the same sort. "Other" in the realm of the created is a relative term at best!

God stands alone (and when I say that, I mean the trinitarian Godhead). Nothing else is what he is; nothing else has independent existence as he does; everything else was fashioned by him, yet he was fashioned by nothing. We generally jump immediately to the moral repercussions of God's separateness when speaking of holiness, but to do so is to not go deep enough into the subject.

If we don't plumb far enough, however, we generally devolve into some kind of petty rule keeping regimen in order to give us some sense we're aligned with the command to be holy. Holiness, however, can never arise from that which is intrinsically unholy. So, perhaps we need to rethink the force of the command, and see it more as an invitation. Like any of the commands of God in the old covenant, the point was not to elicit actual obedience, but to make us aware of just how unholy we truly are, and thereby to lead us to the gracious hand of Christ.

Oh, it's not that it's possible to be unholy and get along with with God, it's just that we can't achieve holiness by our own efforts. If we're to be holy, as we must to get into heaven (not to earn it, but just to survive it), holiness has to come to us, imported like oil is to Singapore. Since we must be holy to co-exist with God, we must come to Christ and receive the gift of his nature which alone is holy. When the holy one is in us, holiness becomes possible for us.

Is Yours the Gospel of the Born Again?

Technically, we could define gospel as the good news about Christ. Generally, that is what we focus upon as Evangelicals-- why not? Good News is in our name. I have begun to wonder if in doing so we have actually stripped the gospel of its power. We take it as a story, that if believed, results in a change of one's status before God from lost to found. We have pressed this line of theology hard since WWII, and it seems to me, we need to consider whether or not the fractured, frayed, weak condition of the Evangelical church is the result.

A noted internal study at Willow Creek a couple of years ago framed the issue quite well, for more than their own congregation, I think. Church-going Evangelicals look more and more indistinguishable from unchurced Harry and Mary everyday. Our approach to gospel isn't producing change in hearers lives. We have had, in fact, a fruitless season of harvest. I think we have entirely lost track of a simple verity: Jesus said we must be born again.

So then, what does it mean to be born again? Is it a Toyota moment? Not too many evangelicals would like the feeling of that! Is it just an idiomatic expression which refers to believing the story. If one believes, then our Cartesian soteriology assumes rebirth-- I believe, therefore I'm born again. We might not say it that way in our theological tomes, but I think that may be the practical reality of our approach to gospel. I don't think that's what Jesus had in mind, nor is it the picture the NT paints of the born again.

It seems to me that the born again should know they're born again, and that it should not be that hard for even the non-born again to perceive it. After all, there are effects on the mind and heart; there is an awakening of an intimate perception of the Father and the Son; there is the experience of change, akin to going from dry to wet when one jumps in a lake (not a very evangelistic image, I understand). Jesus spoke of such in crystal clear terms in regard to Zaccheus, though wee man that he was.

It's hard for the promoters of that story, such as myself, to resign ourselves to waiting upon the Lord to do that secret Spiritual thing in the soul of people that truly makes them born again. We want to know right now whether or not the hearers of that story buy the story, and we want those folk to respond right now to the telling of it. The result has been an at first slow, but now precipitating decay into methodology that delivers assent to the story while downplaying the true nature of being born again. Is it any wonder the church looks so much like the world around her?

It Keeps Coming Up Turkey! (Updated Again!)

I have gone on record here, and many of you have read it, saying that Turkey will be the country of origin for the Antichrist. Read this (HT: Paul Grabill) chilling account of what has purportedly been going on behind the scenes between Turkey, Israel and the U.S. over the last 15 years. 

Now this bit of sad news hits the headlines. Even though it's been a long time since royalty had any impact or influence in Turkish affairs, I have to wonder whether things are not converging to a ripe moment for Turkey and the world. Could a new, populist leader arise out of nowhere and repeat the type and ultimately fulfill that which Daniel spoke so long ago?

And then, there's this. The Antichrist, according to my interpretation of scripture, will start out as a Muslim. That portion of the world (at least the Shia) are primed, looking forward to the imminent arrival of the Mahdi. All things taken together, my theory doesn't look so far fetched in the real world after all-- wouldn't you say?

A Biblical Political Platform

Christians come in all stripes politically, and those that espouse a political position (as opposed to having no real position at all) tend to do so passionately. My only question about doing so is whether or not such views are truly informed by the word of God, or are they just the ideas of mankind? I've previously written about things in the political sphere that are unbiblical, but now I would like to offer some broad principles that are biblically informed and that effect virtually every political issue.

All Are Sinners

Every politician, every office holder, every public servant is a sinner. They won't always do what is right, they won't always act in other than their own interests, their judgment is able to be swayed by other than facts and circumstances, they are corruptible by privilege, power and lucre. In view of these realities, no biblically informed and Bible believing Christian should be for anything which expands governmental imposition on people. Such actions will always result either in bondage to or tyranny from the sinful, and should be opposed insomuch as a Christian has the freedom to do so.

Because those that govern are irretrievably sinners, government should be as small as possible, and as weak as possible in comparison to the citizen. Those serving in government should do so in as limited a fashion as is possible for the shortest period that makes sense given the learning curve. Most definitely, elected officials should not be able to raise their own salaries, perquisites or pensions while in office.

The Rich and Powerful Oppress the Poor and Weak
Combine the truth above with money and power and the result is the ability of the rich and powerful to use the system and to massage circumstances to their own benefit to the detriment of the weaker and poorer. The wealthy always find an excuse, like "the market," to shuffle the benefits of production to themselves, while those who labor to make the production possible get the shaft.

Unions, minimum wage laws, and the SEC have been mere bandaids for the problem. They have the appearance of addressing the issue, but leave the wealthy relatively untouched in their ability to make the system work for themselves, and actually end up working against increased productivity. Why not allow market mechanisms to determine base wages, but have every worker share in the profits produced by corporate ventures (not necessarily just incorporated ones) equally with executives and shareholders?

Human Life Is Precious
Since each human life has its own blood, it should be protected from the womb to the tomb. Abortion is murder, plain and simple. Each abortion kills a human being that left alone would live as long as God determined. Those that perform abortions are guilty of murder, and those that have them done are guilty of conspiring to murder. Assisted suicide could certainly be considered a conspiracy to murder as well.

Family Is More Fundamental than Government
The family, particularly parents, should not be interfered with nor infringed upon. If there is not actual, physically treatable abuse or neglect, no one has any right to tell anyone else how to run their household or raise their children. All decisions, from education to healthcare rests with parents, never with government.

Government Is to Do Good to Its Citizens
Citizens that do ill need to be treated appropriately, but citizens who do not, should never be put into worse situations, or be adversely effected by government action.

One could apply these principles and make a case for everything from publicly assured healthcare to environmental protection, from preventing the seizure of private property to banning professional lobbying. The issue to be balanced in doing so would be whether any stance or proposal would transgress any of these principles in its prescription to cure some ill.