The Two Witnesses of the Apocalypse

"Who are those guys?" students of prophecy wonder in regard to the two witnesses of the 11th chapter of the Revelation. We are given only a few details concerning these cryptic figures: they prophesy for three and a half years at the end of time; they fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah; they are powerfully anointed as attested by signs and wonders; their ministry and death will occur in Jerusalem; they are hated and feared by the world; and they are raptured by God, publicly, after being dead for three and a half days. There have been interesting guesses about who they might be offered through the ages, but I know who they are with certainty!

How? You might ask. Well, I Corinthians 15 gives us all the information we need to figure it out! We are told there that Christ is the first one who defeated death and received an imperishable body. Furthermore, we are told that no one can go into eternity in perishable flesh and blood inherited from Adam. All born of Adam must die and/or be transformed into a new body following after the model of Christ in order to enter eternity with God. The old cannot inherit the new.

That produces a problem with the biblical record when one remembers the stories of Enoch and Elijah. They were taken by God to be with him while they were still alive in Adamic flesh, before Christ arose. Therefore, according to I Corinthians 15, they are not prepared for, nor can they enter into eternity until they put off their old bodies and rise in new ones untainted by Adam's fall. Somehow, either by an transformation akin to the Rapture of the Church (which not revealed in the Word), or by returning to earth and going through "normal" processes, Enoch and Elijah have got to be transformed. 

We have known that Elijah is in the mix forever, but the identity of the other witness has caused incredible speculation in the church. It really did not need to, for the Apostle Paul told us what we needed to know in order to identify both of them conclusively. Enoch and Elijah may have been enjoying the last few thousand years in the presence of God well enough, but they can't go into eternity the way they are. For their own good, and for the good of the Jews alive during Daniel's 70th week, those guys need to come back to earth, and then, they need to die!

The Wealth Lie

Jesus said to him, “One thing you lack, go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”    Mark 10:21 NASB

Why do preachers in the modern church tell the rich, young rulers of our day something other than what Jesus told them in the days he walked on earth? For that matter, why do preachers in the modern church tell the poor to aspire to be rich, young rulers? The rich of our day are told that their wealth, and the self-indulgence and self-concern it breeds, is a blessing from God. They are told that God would like all his children to be thus, even that there are fool-proof ways of getting there (like tithing)--really, to be anything less than rich evidences a break-down in faith.

They are told lies!

From a biblically informed point of view, the only good thing to do with wealth is to give it away. Not to accumulate it; not to "seed" the ministry of a televangelist or mega-church pastor, but to give it away to the benefit and blessing of others. The televangelist and the big church guru (generally) seek only to build their own Taj Mahals or to pad their own notoriety and and influence. Either, more often than not, solicits the givings of the giver with the promise of multiplied returns from God (primarily, just so they can enrich themselves).

Jesus never asked for that kind of response to the Gospel, and won't open the windows of heaven for some self-seeking manipulator just because he or she "gives" along those lines. Give, oh yes, but to one who is in real need, without seeking blowback. Give actually trying to help someone else. To anyone to whom you do give, be like God and be generous. Don't let your left hand know what your right is doing. Give of your wealth and follow Jesus in service.

To the one who can't see, bring a healing salve that can give sight. To the one that has sight, teach him to read so he can read God's word, and then, give him God's word. To the one that can't hear, bring a means of hearing. To the one who can hear, speak God's word to him so he may truly hear. To the one who is thirsty or hungry give sustenance so he may live another day and come to know God's care.

It is absolutely true that there is no greater gift to give than the Gospel, and that giving toward the support of Gospel ministry is as important to give to as anything. But let's be clear and honest, the Gospel was not given by God as a source of wealth acquisition for its supposed promulgators, NOR FOR THOSE WHO EMBRACE ITS TEACHING. The church is talking a lot about wealth these day, but it's mostly telling lies!

The Image of God in Mankind

I have established, minimally, that the image of God in mankind is reflected in mankind's freewill. Furthermore, I implied that since God is more than his will, his image in mankind must include more than freewill. Love, creativity, reasoning, communicability, and dominion are part of the picture as well. To take it a step further, I think a very good case can be made that it was through the instrumentality of God's breath that the image of God was communicated to man (i.e. Spirit became spirit). He is spirit and so is man (in some respect) which is why man can be like him.

Of all the creatures God made in the physical world, mankind alone was said to be made in his image and given dominion. Angels are not mentioned at all in the creation account, but appear suddenly, without explanation or specifications, at the Fall of Man. Only much later in the record of revelation are we told they were made to be ministering (sacredly serving) spirits by God. Yet, even though salvation and redemption hold a fascination for them, they have no ability to be redeemed through faith.

Though they are spiritual beings, as is God, many of them fell into rebellion with Satan. Those, at least, had to have had some kind of freewill capacity (see this as to why), although we can only guess as to its nature. We don't know why unfallen angels did not fall, nor indeed, if they even had the capacity to do so in the first place. Regardless, we can be thankful they, at least, are faithful to God and serve the heirs of salvation amongst mankind to this day.

Mankind is a strange word to generically refer to all human beings with, but it is a biblical way of looking at things. Today's feminists may be bothered by designations that seem better suited to males than females, but believers in the Bible recognize that there is nothing inherently wrong with such. Men are made in the image of God and are tasked with dominion--some are male, some are female. There is absolutely no distinction in the image of God that either gender bears nor in the mandate of dominion they were given.

Only sin, followed by the curse and death has affected the relative status of both types of men. Enmity between the sexes exists, because under the curse, females were placed beneath males in the dominion mandate. In the perfection of God's created order before the Fall, male and female had no more significance than reproductive utility. In Christ, post-redemption, after the curse is no more, there is neither male nor female to any spiritual consequence, which will be particularly evident after the Resurrection.

What Is the Image of God in Mankind?

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.   Genesis 1:26-27 NASB

What does it mean that mankind was made in the Image of God? At its most basic, "image" as used in Genesis 1 refers to a rendering, something cut out like a sculpture or carving. Verse 26 uses "likeness" to describe the nature of that "image", which captures quite well the thought of resemblance. Therefore, the image of God in mankind is a representation in the created world that resembles God--an optical counterpart, if you will, which is not of the same stuff as the original but looks the same nonetheless.

However, God is not corporeal so the likeness in question cannot refer to the physical or tangible realm--it must refer to something metaphysical, something spiritual. Our physical being certainly says something about the attributes of its Creator, but our physical being is not what reflects the image of God. So what do we know about God that isn't physical or visible? He is spirit. He does as he pleases. He is creative. He is love. He reasons. He communicates. He has a will. And in the fullness of all that he is, he rules.

Now, it would be a mistake, in concentrating on that last characteristic, to assign the image of God primarily to the mere exercise of sovereignty or dominion. God's nature is not circumscribed by the attribute of sovereignty, and so being in the image of God cannot be solely about dominion. Besides, ruling, as commissioned in mankind, was concomitant upon them being made in God's image rather than being a reiteration of what it meant that they were made that way (i.e v. 26 is an expression of synthetic rather than synonymous parallelism).

But even if one were to insist on making this error, dominion, or ruling, is still founded upon the ability to do what one wants with what is dominated. The more limited a being's degree of freedom to act is, the less that being can be said to be exercising dominion. You see, sovereignty is really, at its most fundamental, about doing as one pleases with what one is sovereign over. Therefore, it is really no stretch at all to see that doing as one pleases, whether it is this or that (i.e. freewill), is essential to the nature of God, to the concept of sovereignty, and by implication, to the image of God in man.

In fact, a being cannot be said to be in the image of God without having freewill.

A Letter to the Protestant Church, Part II

Continuing with our look at the Letter to the Church at Sardis...

Jesus' command to the Sardisians to remember is similar to his command to the Twelve concerning the Lord's Supper. In that case the subject of recall was Christ himself, in this case it is what the Sardisians had embraced (received) and understood (heard) as believers. This is not the first time a NT writer used recalling that which had been experienced by believers as a means of correction. It seems that Christians forget what they've seen and heard, and which elicited and strengthened their faith in Christ at their own peril.

Instead, the Sardisians were told to guard (keep, watch over) what they had embraced and heard. Finishing one's work certainly progresses toward that end, but it also means revisiting, checking up on, remembering the things by which we stood and continue to stand in faith. The celebration of Communion can help with this, so long as it isn't seen as making the bread and wine instill some spiritual benefit of themselves, rather than being a means of remembering the Lord and what he's done to save us.

The Christians of Sardis needed to change their minds about and attitudes toward (repent) what they had already heard and known. It is my sense that human nature has a ready appetite for the fresh, that we are more intrigued by the new rather than what we have already been exposed to. We can be dismissive and even disdainful toward what was once fresh but is no longer on the cutting edge. Disregard for the foundational and worthy of continued attention can not only lead to works going astray but also faith going dry.

"Wake up!" Jesus commanded the Sardisians. Really, watchfulness is the practical outcome of wakefulness which seems to be the point Christ was making--pay attention to your ongoing faith walk with Jesus. The mention of his surprise appearance catching them unaware is reminiscent of the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Whereas there, sleeping per se was not cast in an irredeemable light (as it is here), the force there and here is the faithless lack of attention and concern some have toward what they have and are expecting in Christ.

As in any church, not everyone part of the congregation is truly part of the Church of the First-born. Some walk unsoiled (in this case, that is equivalent to unsleeping) and will be at the banquet when the Son of Man returns, some will not. Regardless, the action, one way or the other, is not attributed to Christ but to the one wearing the garment. If one keeps his garment unsoiled (perhaps that is the only proper garment for the occasion), he will thus have white garments, akin to Christ's and appropriate for eternity.

Take special notice to the typical use of white here. This treatment is consistent with the other symbolic uses of "white" throughout the scripture, but especially that in the Apocalypse. White is always associated with the good and right, never with the evil and unrighteous. Which, incidentally, is the reason the White Horse cannot be interpreted as evil (i.e. as representative of the Antichrist), but only as good (e.g. the Church turned loose on the Great Commission).

That one can have one's name "unwritten" or erased is a slam-dunk destruction of the Once-Saved-Always-Saved doctrine. As is clear from this letter, one whose name was written in the Book of Life can have that name erased from the Book of Life. Since that book is the instrumentality of final judgment later in the Apocalypse, the message is all too clear. There is a possibility that those who would have been saved eternally at one time in their lives, can at a subsequent time lose that status: the saved can become the unsaved.

Since we are saved by grace through faith, the consideration above would seem to indicate that the faith in question is something in the purview of the believer rather than God. There is in the believer that responsibility in regards to faith which is his or hers and dependent upon him or her to execute and maintain. God will not believe for the believer, the believer, ultimately, must do that for his or her self (despite their need for God's enabling assistance). For those that make the good confession of faith before men, Christ will confess them as his at the end before God and the angels.

A Letter to the Protestant Church, Part I

Zombies seem to be popular these days with just about everyone, but they don't hold much fascination with Jesus, at least as far as we can tell from his Letter to the Church at Sardis. There, Jesus excoriates the believers in that town for having the appearance of life but the reality of deadness. In other words, they were zombie Christians. Before their condition leads to their full and final expiration, he calls on the zombie Christians of Sardis to wake up, shake off the slumber of their hypnotic trance, and save what can be saved before all is lost.

Jesus' beef with the zombie Christians of Sardis is not founded upon mere conjecture. He's seen them in action, he's witnessed what they have done. They had a name, or reputation, for being a vibrant community of Christians, alive in God, but their actions did not measure up to their hype. It's not that they did nothing, they at least made a feint in following through with the works of God, but they stopped short and took a nap before they had pressed through to true fruitfulness (completeness) in God.

What the actual nature of their shortcomings was Jesus did not say. Conjecture and personal application is left to us; in my case, it reminds me of the Parable of the Sower. Rocky soil or weedy soil has the start of something good in reaction to the gospel, an appearance of life, but whatever the initially promising impact may have been, it is not followed through on with dedication and focus. What began to grow withers or remains fruitless (incomplete) as a result.

I look at this and wonder if Jesus could have been writing to the Protestant Church. The promise of a return to the Word and the reformation of what had become mere superstition, idolatry  and commercialism certainly gave the name of life to the Protestant Church. However, given her history and current state of affairs, what would Jesus say of her works? Protestants have fallen asleep in the light while whatever spiritual life and light they may have had has ebbed away. The promise of greatness for that body is all but past, now it would be sufficient if she just woke up, came to her senses, and bolstered what remained.

The Protestant Church is struck, in my opinion, with an overreactive fear of works. I am firmly in the sola camp, so I have no issue with the Reformation's protestation against depending on works for status, position, or merit with God. Works certainly cannot save us nor can they keep us saved. That is not the same, however, as acknowledging that what we do does matter to God, as the Old and New Testaments readily attest! The Protestant Church has, since the Reformation, offered a confusing, befuddled notion of what in the scriptures is the clearly communicated expectation of godly works.

The truth of the matter is that Jesus himself said that final judgment is correlated to works. James did in fact say (notwithstanding Luther's opinion of his epistle's canonicity) that faith without works is dead. That Christ reiterates the concept in the Apocalypse by relating deadness to unfinished or incomplete works should surprise no one. The truth is that there is a consistent emphasis in the New Testament on the works Christians do, and even the need for those to comport with the confession that Christ is the Lord.

Let there be no misunderstanding, we are saved by grace through faith; however, saving faith must be actual faith in order to save. Actual faith that Christ is the Lord motivates change in a person and inspires the one believing to do the works that God has prepared for them. It's not that anyone can be perfect in the sense that their works are nothing but good or that they are above being tempted to walk in their former works. Yet, if anyone has true faith, and any time at all to live in such, his or her life will evidence God-inspired works which demonstrate the reality of his or her faith in Christ.

Being a Protestant should never entail protesting that one is alive despite the lack of any recent works which demonstrate it. To have the name of life but the reality of death is a sham seen through entirely by Jesus Christ. If we are able, that is not incapacitated, it is perfectly fine for a Christian to look at his or her actions and wonder to themselves if they truly believe that Jesus is Lord (God certainly does). A person who truly believes is never undone by such an examination, even if they realize they have works to repent of and sins to confess.

Christ's works may be finished, but ours go on--not to gain salvation, but merely because we are truly saved. 

The Shroud of Turin

Earlier this year, just in time for Easter, the news came out that the Shroud of Turin may be authentic after all. It has been claimed to be a forgery by knowledgeable people since it's been in the West (~1390 CE). And it's been claimed to be authentic by relic apologists and the faithful just as long. In 1998 what was apparently a slam-dunk scientific examination proved it was a forgery.

But now, supposedly better testing techniques, better controlled for contamination have yielded results that make the Shroud possibly contemporaneous with Christ. Different dating technique, no fibrous contamination, and viola, what was not so, now may be so. To tell you the truth, I could care less. Nothing about my belief in Christ rests on the Shroud. I do admit, however, that it would be cool if it did turn out to be possibly authentic...

Jesus burial clothes were part of the Gospel account of the resurrection story. I can't imagine Mary, Mary, Peter or John leaving the empty cloth in the empty tomb.

Is There A Person God Cannot Save?

Is there a person that God cannot save? I suppose it depends on what one means by "save".  In any given perilous situation (e.g. my car going off a cliff) the answer would have to be "no", God could save anyone in any situation. If what is meant by use of the term is to be preserved alive after the final judgment of sin, then the answer is "yes", and resoundingly so. That being said, I still must confess that scripture convinces me that if God could save everyone from judgment, he would.

"‘...As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked..."     Ezekiel 33:11 NASB

It is quite clear from scripture that there is a place of eternal judgment and that it will be populated with unsaved sinners as well as the demon horde. Eternal confinement to a lake that burns with fire seems harsh, minimally--not at all the kind of thing one might anticipate someone styled "Savior" doing. I think it would be natural to think that God would have done something about that, if he could have.

He did.

"...I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all..."      1 Timothy 2:1-6 NASB

It seems to me, what God could do to save all humanity from judgment he did do. If all humanity does not end up saved, the fault will not lie with God, but with man. He has provided a substitutionary sacrifice for sin that effectively meets the demand that both man and God see for justice, and effectively reconciles the broken relationship between God and man the sinner. All that is left is for man to no longer want to be a sinner.

Now that is not something that can be imposed. It can be coaxed, an invitation can be made, and a supernatural effort to convince the sinner of his perilous status can be undertaken. But to write over the will of the person in order to make it happen would only serve to cause the sinner to cease being a man. The result could not be said to be a man being saved, but would represent a man being transformed into something other than a man, something less than the image of God.

Man was made in the image of God, to do as he pleased. A man could not be said to be a man on those terms if someone else's pleasure were substituted (especially unwillingly) for his own. To be a man is to have independent will. Unfortunately, it is also to have the possibility of withstanding every effort of God to turn that will to the obedience of faith.

Is there a person God cannot save? Yes, the one who won't repent and believe the gospel.

What Is Sin?

A good definition of sin is helpful in dealing with just about any issue involving God and man. Unfortunately, the Bible is not as straightforward as one might think in providing one. At one point, sin is described as breaking the law; at another, sin is said to have been in the world even when there was no law. If nothing else, that certainly tells us sin is more than breaking a rule.

Therefore, the mere concept of lawbreaking is insufficient for defining sin, since sin does not need to reference a command in order to exist or be described. In light of that, let me suggest, as I have before, that sin is nothing more than the exertion of will contrary to the will of God. A command from God would certainly invoke such a definition, but then too would any awareness of what God's will was, whether it came through conscience, conviction or comprehension. Really, will exerted presumptiously, without regard to God, could invoke a charge of sin, even if done in complete ignorance of God's will. 

Now, the Bible does say that sin is not imputed, or reckoned against one's record, where there is no law. There must be some distinction that God maintains between knowingly transgressing and ignorantly transgressing his will. Yet, as is clearly stated in the Word, death has spread to all humankind because all humans sin, even though many have had not so much as an inkling of the law. So, even if sin is not reckoned to one's account apart from the law, it still leads without exception to the penalty for sin which is death.

A child reaching for a flame, may have had no reason to believe mom or dad did not want her to do such a thing, but may nonetheless be greeted with a quick smack on the fingers as she tries to do so. She won't be punished further as she might have been had she known better, but she did receive a penalty regardless! Discovering that something is against God's will after the fact doesn't alter that it was against his will before. In other words, sin does not require the offense to be an overtly realized transgression on the part of the offender in order to be sin. 

If one knows God's will, or if one merely suspects what may be God's will, or if one is completely oblivious to God's will concerning any willful exertion, that one sins by taking a course contrary to God's whether in word, deed, or thought. Of course, if all occurs according to God's will (as in determinism), it follows that there is and could be no sin. Since it is scripturally clear that sin does exist, it is also quite clear that stuff happens that God did not will. Sin is stuff that is not "his". 

Therefore, sin is an unfortunate consequence of freewill. Without freewill sin would not and could not occur, but then neither would love nor the image of God exist.