Just Asking Some Questions

If God's love is of the sort that everyone will eventually be rectified before God and established in right relationship to him, why were Adam, Eve and the serpent cursed in the first place?

What has been the purpose of generations of suffering and death, if in the end it has no real impact or purpose?

In the face of the reality of suffering, death and violence, what enables one to extrapolate to the surreality of an hereafter where everything is copacetic?

Purpose in Relation to David & the Prophets

David is an iconic figure for a number of reasons. He was the prototypical "good" king of the chosen people. He and his life experience was typical (and therefore prophetic) in so many ways of the coming Messiah. He was a hero who put himself on the line for God's purpose, which makes his story fascinating! He was a prophet-king, a shepherd-king, and God himself testified that David was a man after his own heart.

We need a figure like David among us--an inspirational leader who protects us and leads us into the blessing of God. Someone who can show us passion for God and the obedience of faith. We need a shepherd, a good shepherd. As great a model as David may be, ultimately, he is not up to meeting all that need. It can be met only in a perfectly anointed One, the Son of God, for God alone is good and able.

The Baptist's declaration took that arrow of David and pointed it directly to Jesus of Nazareth. He who would be called the son of David, the Son of Man, and the Son of God brought those disparate streams that revealed something of God's purpose together into the focus of accomplishment. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and the Prophets were unveiling in part that which could only be met in whole by Jesus Christ.

Through Christ a people would be rescued and raised, reformed in righteousness and enabled to walk with God in the agreement of faith. In Christ, that people would, living stone by living stone, be built into a habitation of God. Becoming like Christ, that people would be embraced in the fullness of Christ, knowing God, being one. The splendor of God's purpose only grows in glory as one sees it through the timeless ages God has been bringing it to pass.

Purpose in Relation to Moses

There are things that the Pentateuch reveals about God and his purpose, and there are things that it does not. The Law is not God's picture of an ideal society--sin and failure are in inextricably embedded within it. It was, in fact, written for a specific lineage of unregenerated sinners for control and maintenance rather than any grand revelation of how God made people to live. That's a far cry from God's ideal society and not very reflective of his purpose in any profound way by any means.

Though the Law frequently speaks of defilements, abominations, and prohibitions, it is not even a trustworthy statement about how God is eternally-minded about some of those issues. If it was the Gentile church of the NT would not even exist. There was a purpose to such transitory statements, but it wasn't an eternal one: can you really perceive of cattle chutes in heaven? The law schoolmastered the purposed of God until they could step into the purpose of God.

What, then, does Moses tells us about the purpose of God? Well, that God is motivated to rescue a people from bondage to be his people, to live with them in harmony, and to bless them and share his goodness with them. That purpose cannot be achieved with broken Adamic humanity, because righteousness is essential to the purpose but impossible with them. Despite that, God's purpose remains fixed. Adamic humanity cannot enter into it, but people raised in Christ can.

Magic Words

Magic words. Words that in themselves carry efficacious power.

Magic words are discredited among empiricists. Words are the inventions of humans, what in them could be intrinsically powerful?

Don't be too quick to reject magic words, difficult as it may be to acknowledge such a thing--not that I'm superstitious or credulous.

I know this to be true: faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.

Apparently, there is magic in some words, and we can draw that magic out!

Then that magic draws us out of the grave and into Christ.

What Must One Believe to Be a Christian?

First, we need to understand the kind of belief that's relevant to the question. When the New Testament speaks of belief of the sort that's in view here (Koine: pistis), it's referring to a persuasion. In other words, belief (i.e. faith) is quality of certainty regarding a proposition: for instance, "God exists." Hebrews 11:1 (ESV) describes it as such, "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." So belief is a state of certainty about things that can't be seen.

When we add the parameter of belief according to the standard of the Bible, a rather clear picture emerges. 

Let me lay out on a scale which builds this standard from the most fundamental and necessary to the least. Only one who believes according to the entire scale could truly be called a Bible-believing Christian, anything less would call into question the genuineness, according to the biblical measure, of such a person's faith. Will people who believe less than the whole scale be saved? Yes, I think that is possible, but they will be weak in faith and limited in their growth into Christ.

1. Jesus rose from bodily from the dead
2. Jesus is the Son of God, that is, God with us
3. Jesus is our leader, unquestioned, as is everything he taught and said
4. The Old Testament is true, every jot and tittle
5. Moses was an actual deliverer, the Exodus an actual migration
6. Noah was an actual person, the Flood an actual event
7. Adam and Eve were actual persons, the Creation Week an actual occurrence

What is generally concentrated on in discussions of Christian doctrine is the why's and how's (e.g. penal substitution, grace vs. works, etc.), but often at the cost of ignoring what is actually the foundation underlying everything. Christianity starts with an event-- Jesus rising from the dead. If you buy the top of the list, the next three are logically consequent, leading to the last three. One repercussion of this approach: a theistic evolutionist is not in any way, shape or form, a biblical Christian. Are you?

God Is No Will Rogers

I find that most people are likable. There are jerks out there, don't get me wrong, but I think they're the exception, not the rule. Not that everyone doesn't have his or her faults, they would be fiction rather than fact if that were the case. Regardless, I wouldn't want any harm to befall any of them, despite their faults.

It is easy to project that kind of Will Rogers outlook onto God, and think he feels similarly. I don't think he does, though: in fact, he hates the soul that sins. The earth shudders, 200,000 men, women and children vanish into eternity suddenly, ignorant of gospel--did God lift a mitigating finger? Not that I can tell. Jesus wept over Jerusalem, does he shed a tear for lost Indonesians, Haitians, Chinese, or Pashtuns?

Does God love the world? The Bible says he does, the sacrifice of Christ put forward as the ultimate evidence. Furthermore, the scriptures also say God wants the world to hear of his love in Christ, but what about the multitude of lost slipping into eternity without so much as ever hearing a word about Christ? Where is the love there?

To say that it is the church's responsibility does nothing to allay the problem; not anymore than a bartender who served the obviously impaired can say the blame for the roadside tragedy that ensued lies only with the drunk. What kind of God is it that would leave such a monumental task in the hands of the flawed, the failing, and the faith-challenged? It would be a bizarre kind of love indeed, if that were the case.

Calvinists at least have logical cover, and can slough off such questions by adjusting the meaning of words in the scriptures. God's love doesn't extend to the unelected anymore than does Christ's blood (as long as any, all, whole, and world do not really mean any, all, whole, and world, that is). That is a game that should not be played by those seeking truth.

Is it possible for man to be more magnanimous than God? No, it is impossible that any man can be more virtuous than God; it is also impossible that any man be more righteous. God knows what he's doing in balancing competing considerations. Those he foreknew, he has also predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. God may be no Will Rogers, but I don't think he can be less!

Purpose In Noah and Abraham

From Adam to Abraham, God's governance of man and time appears somewhat chaotic. Violence filled the earth, to which God responded by violently overturning the earth. God commanded the survivors to disperse and repopulate the earth. They refused and instead began planting the seeds of idolatry, to which God responded by overturning their ability to communicate and enforcing dispersal and tribalism upon them.

God apparently adopted silence thereafter until confronting a single pagan. God called upon him to drop all his relational ties (one's safety and security in that day), and travel hundreds of miles across the desert to a destination unknown. Abram believed what God said and acted upon it (eventually) and the covenant of relationship was established. Later, in perhaps the most significant event in Abraham's life, God's love was graphically illustrated and the blessing that would come to all the world presaged in the actions of a father and son.

How does one make sense of this human wasteland of violence and sin or God's reaction to it? At least the prediluvian sinners lost in the flood saw the promise of redemption eventually; the postdiluvian sinners do not appear to have fared so well. Why did God do what he did they way he did? Covenant or Dispensation can, at best, describe the scenerio; neither reasonably explicates it. Unraveling the knot, I think, is what this reveals about God's purpose:

• The saved found grace in the eyes of the Lord, not merit, as they have always;
• The blessed had to respond to God's promise by the obedience of faith until the end;
• In God's eyes, love is demonstrated in the sacrifice of an only son;
• Though specific historical events appear exclusionary, the ultimate aim of God's actions in history are inclusionary.

Though God cannot uphold sin or sinfulness, there is a loving compassion in the heart of God for humanity. Because of his grace, an intimate relationship with him that will last for eternity can be established now which begins and ends with faith. What can a human do in light of the purpose of God? Trust him, believe what he says, and to follow him into life.

Purpose in Relation to Adam

Genesis 1:26-3:15

Adam was not the ultimate picture of God's purpose. If he was, the promise of eternity would look like Eden: it does not. Adam, Eve, the first heavens and earth were but the beginning of the revelation in time of God's purpose. Everything from the beginning in time to its end moves toward that purpose.

Adam, untainted by sin, does, however, reveal something of God's purpose with man:

• Man was in creative partnership with God (Adam named the animals);
• Man was free to do as he pleased as long as what he pleased was not in direct opposition to what God pleased;
• Man was empowered to make up his own mind about God's thoughts;
• The knowledge of good and evil would have been shared with man once man had decided to go with God (I acknowledge this point is speculative on my part).

Adam, in failure, was the testing prototype and role model that taught us the lesson that trusting in God rather than our own wits, or the gossip of the Devil, is the way to life. That his failure was not the end was announced in God's curse upon the Serpent. Hope was birthed, now that he knew death, that if he ever had the opportunity at redemption, he'd go with God.

Islam as a Precursor to the Antichrist

An interesting quote from John of Damascus in Fount of Knowledge (c.a. 726 CE) [HT:Christianity Today]:

"There is also the superstition of the Ishmaelites which to this day prevails and keeps people in error, being a forerunner of the Antichrist."

I do believe the Antichrist will be a nominal Muslim (at least when his career begins) and that Islam will be the precursor to his worldwide empire and religion. Perhaps the thought isn't all that new after all!