The Antichrist's Penchant for Taking Heads

There are three biblical characteristics by which the Antichrist can be identified (other than his proclamation in the Temple that he is god above all that's called god, which removes all doubt). First, he arises in the place of the King of the North (Seleucid Monarch) which was centered in what is today Syria, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iraq. Second, we are told in Daniel that he honors a martial god unknown to his fathers at the time of Daniel and gains his status due to his fealty to him. Third, his name (which could be his birth name, his titular name, or his popularized name) has the gematria value of 666. What can we conclude, if anything from these characteristics?

The 666 is so cryptic, I don't know that there's anything helpful to say about it in this time. Perhaps it suffices just to recognize that what it means won't matter until after the Rapture, when it's used as a mark of submission. Prior to that it's anyone's guess, and after that it will only be of usable consequence to the Jews. So much for gematria.

What more can I say about the King of the North? It really is self-explanatory.

The reference to a martial god, on the other hand, could use some unpacking. It aligns quite well with the god of Islam, and really, no other. Allah is a god of conquest and siege who was unknown in the days of Daniel. Since no other god before or since could really fit the entirety of this description, the Antichrist will be a nominal Muslim.

He will succeed politically through the auspices of Islam. It may be that he initially sees himself as the Mahdi (I think others will), but eventually, he will come to see himself as god. The Islamic world will gravitate toward him, and much of the rest of the world will be bowled over by him and his violent impulse. Resistance will be seen as futile, while spiritual delusion will seal the deal.

With all true Gentile believers removed from the scene through the Rapture, the only people that will withstand the delusion and offer any resistance (particularly to the mark) will be the Jews. For anyone not willing to go along with his rule, his religion, and his economy, their heads will be taken. That that is a a penchant seen readily amongst radicalized Muslims today is no mere coincidence, its seems to me, so the details converge and tell me the Antichrist is a Muslim who will rise to power in the area that's at war this very day.  

The Failure of Middle Knowledge

Molinism posits that God's omniscience is expressed in three moments which are logically sequential rather than chronologically sequential. The first moment is God's Natural Knowledge which encompasses everything that is necessarily true apart from God's will. The second moment is God's Middle Knowledge which is aware of all possibilities (particularly free actions of agents) given any circumstance. The third moment is God's Free Knowledge which entails all that he actualized.

What kind of knowledge is Middle Knowledge, actually? At best, it could only be analytical and theoretical, because it is never actualized, never incarnated (apart from that which becomes Free Knowledge). What isn't realized is merely hypothetical--a mental "trial run," if you will. Supposedly, Middle Knowledge answers with certainty, not mere conjecture, the question: "What would occur if another state were to obtain? Since those other states are nothing more than whimsy in the mind of God, who purposely selects what is actualized, how is the outcome resultant from using Middle Knowledge distinct from, or better than, compatibilism, or soft determinism?

A Bible passage that purportedly backs the Middle Knowledge premise is Christ's musings concerning Sodom and Gomorrah. I question whether or not interpreting the passage to teach Middle Knowledge catches the gist of what Jesus was using the illustration for.

“Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades. For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day."    Matthew 11:21-23  NASB

Was Jesus divulging precise alternate history or just making a point about how awful was the rejection of Christ by Jews who heard what he said and saw what he did? I don't think there's really much of a question that it was all about the latter.

If God can forecast the free choices agents would make in any circumstance accurately, without fail, prior to anything created existing, then I submit that those actions are not truly the agents' at all, but are instead mere projections of the mind of God. How could they be proven to be otherwise? The only qualification that withstands scrutiny and averts blameworthiness when it comes to matters of choice is independence (in connection to this, see Genesis 2:19; Judges 3:4; Jeremiah 19:5; James 1:13-15). Choice has to be made by the chooser and seen by the seer at the moment of decision in order to be free.

If a decision of an agent is known with absolute certainty before anything else was even made, and if in making everything else God opts among various possibilities to instantiate that decision (the agent certainly has no access to those possibilities), God unavoidably becomes the author of that decision. In that case, there is no way that choice is free in the sense that it is instigated in freedom by the chooser. The biblical notion of freedom, as I see it, is that choice is derived independently of God. If that choice is made before it's made, the choice is illusory.

Middle Knowledge was formulated as a means of attributing meticulous sovereignty and foreknowledge to God without obliterating freewill or having God incur culpability for actions taken which he opposes (sin). It fails to do so. If God knew what every choice an agent would make was before he created the universe, and knowing, then actualized that "blueprint," then culpability for all choices (including sin) adheres unshakably to God, and none of those choices are actually free (independent).

Molinism, it seems to me, reduces to determinism, so why add the extra layer?

Omnipresence and Omniscience Entail Omnitemporality

If it is true that God is both omnipresent and omniscient, then he must also be omnitemporal.

Omnipresence requires that each point in creation (or space, if you'd like) is accessible to God with equal facility. More to the point, everywhere is actually always before God, though God himself is not circumscribed by creation or in any way actually "in" it. God is transcendent and immutable, so for every point in creation God is what he is at once without variation or locus.

Everywhere in space is in a state of fluctuation from the quantum level up. Nothing is static, everything is in motion and changing. To be omnipresent and unchanging, God has to be the same everywhere despite that constant fluctuation. Change, itself a time construct, is experienced with time relative to motion (which we know thanks to Einstein). As a result, I am led to the conclusion that God must be omnitemporal if he is omnipresent.

Omniscience requires that everything that can be known is known by God. If, in any instant, God is unaware, or ignorant of some knowable thing, he would cease to be omniscient. Omniscience, it would seem, precludes discovery. If that is so, it follows that God knows all that he has known or will ever know at once, or at least at once upon any decision to act.

Knowledge grows with the passage of time. Not in the sense that new facts come to light as time goes on, but that new facts, correlated with time passing, come into being. There is constantly, in every instant, something new to know. The result, I think, is that God could not be perfect in knowledge if his knowledge was dependent upon time. Therefore (by definition alone), God must be omnitemporal if he is omniscient.

Therefore, omnitemporality is entailed in omnipresence and omniscience. We can't have one without without the others. To that end, God's omnitemporality could be understood to be that such that every instant in time is before God at once. God is not "in" time nor subject to it, but rather is transcendent to time and unfettered by it, and he knows its entirety from start to finish.

Why Neither Molinism nor Determinism Can Be True

"Because they have forsaken Me and have made this an alien place and have burned sacrifices in it to other gods, that neither they nor their forefathers nor the kings of Judah had ever known, and because they have filled this place with the blood of the innocent and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind"    Jeremiah 19:4-5   NASB

Molinism and Theological Determinism suffer from the same scriptural and fatal flaw, in my mind. Either regimen has to say something about how God thinks that he doesn't say of himself. We don't know, nor can we know how God thinks. We have what he tells us about himself, and that is it.

In the passage above, God tells us something about how he thinks, namely that the brutal, idolatrous infanticide practiced by apostate Jews was something that never entered his cogitations. It was not something that found it's way into his thinking nor something that arose because of his thinking. This was solely existent because of the agency of the Jews in question. God had no prior involvement, as it were.

This conclusion depends, to a degree, upon how one reads this text, there is some ambiguity in it. The general context of the passage is God's decrial through Jeremiah of a sin incomprehensibly out of place given Israel's history and God's word to them. As I see it, the extension in thought (v. 5) intended to be communicated by the author was something along the line of: "I did not command such a thing be done, I never spoke of such a thing, nor has such a thing ever even entered my mind." In other words, the antecedent of the understood "it" in that last phrase is the horrific act of infanticide, not the act of commanding or speaking.

Even if the antecedent of the understood "it" in that last phrase were to be seen to be referring to the action of God commanding or speaking (i.e., "nor did it ever enter my mind to command such, or speak of such"), there would still be an issue concerning God's decrees. If all is only as God decreed, as either Molinism or Calvinism would affirm, then the Israelites were, in effect, commanded (decreed) to burn their children from before time began and it did, in fact, enter God's mind to speak (decree) of it. His disclaimer through Jeremiah would be a disingenuous protest at best if Molinism or Calvinism were true--merely crocodile tears.

On either Theological Determinism or Molinism, my reading, which I think reflects what was the original intent, could not possibly be true. In both regimens, "it" would have had to enter God's mind before this world was actualized (which would actually be the case regardless of how one interprets that "it"). Therefore, for either system to be true, this passage would have to be false. The Word says, "let God be true and everyman a liar," so Molinism as well as Determinism must be tossed into the ash can, as far as I can see.

The Image of God, Freedom, Depravity and Faith

There are those made in the image of God without the presence of God within, which are thereby bound to be sinners. Sin will be their very nature, for there is nothing truly good (godly) in them. They are depraved.

There are those made in the image of God within the presence of God (as were Adam and Eve) which thereby are capable of choosing a course contrary to God and thus becoming sinners. Though they were created good, it's hard not see that sin, for them, was inevitable.

There are those made in the image of God who actually participate in the divine nature (as the redeemed do in earnest now but who will not fully, or perfectly, do so until raptured) who thereby can do as God would at every opportunity to do anything, without fail. They, like Jesus, will never sin.

It seems to me, faith is the operative element and the status of spirit the conditional element in each category which determines the outcome.

Those in the first category are born separated from God and therefore have no inclination to, nor capability of seeing him as he truly is. They do as they want, and what they want does not factor in God as he truly is. Faith in God as he truly is (without which it is impossible to please him) could not arise in those in such a condition. They suffer an incapacity, as a result, to do anything truly good (i.e. of God) with no desire to do according to God as he truly is or wants.

Those in the second category (in which only Adam and Eve ever existed, and then only until The Fall) are made to do as they choose, for that is what being in God's image entails. As long as they chose to do as God wished things were splendid. When they chose to do otherwise sin was conceived, to be born when the choice was enacted. Faith (trusting in God's rather than their own judgment) would have been the thing which could have averted disaster, but they acted without faith and threw themselves and their heirs into Depravity.

Those in the third category are actually the other categories made anew without the taint of separation and are granted participation in the divine nature. They are like Jesus. They have a complete trust in God which does not have to compete with evil drives within nor evil enticements from without, and thereby they are enabled to walk in perfect agreement with God throughout eternity.

Once Saved, Not Always Saved

As addressed in the Apocalypse, the churches at Ephesus and Thyatira were such that apart from Christ's penetrating gaze below the surface, they would look to be fantastic churches. But Christ found fault with the believers there, and not of a minor nature. The churches at Ephesus and Thyatira were threatened with eternal loss (though veiled in figurative language) because of what Christ saw. I would think these threatening statements would go a long way toward destroying the conception of once-saved-always-saved.

In the case of the Church at Sardis or Laodicea, even though neither church had much to commend them for, the threat to ultimate salvation was as clear, maybe even clearer. There were in those congregations folk who were just not persisting in the obedience of faith. That is not a situation Christ is willing to overlook. What I infer from this is that true faith can become the sort that isn't, and if it isn't, it holds no weight in the eyes of him who matters.

Who would argue that the letters are not written to what Christ considered genuine churches? What he could commend in them he did, what he couldn't, he sought to amend. The assumption seems to have been that the members of these churches were part of the kingdom, but that their status as such was in danger. Those considered presently part of the body of Christ by Christ could end up not retaining that status if repentance was not forthcoming. Their status could be considered Once-Saved-Not-Necessarily-Saved-Thereafter, it seems to me.

If Adam and Eve, pristinely, immaculately made by God, can fall from belief into estrangement with God and sin, then anyone with less wholeness (i.e. all the rest of us, even the born-again) can fall too. If those born-again would fall, they'd be just as lost as Adam and Eve and the host born to them afterwards. If humans as perfect as they can be this side of eternity fell from a state that was deemed "good" in God's sight into unbelief and separation from God, then why would anyone in Christ think he or she could not?

How Does Apostasy Occur?

"For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law."   Romans 3:28 NIV 

Justified, in regard to the verse above, means to be declared righteous or acceptable to God. Guilty humans at trial under a magnifying glass in a cosmic court need a verdict of "not guilty" in order to be freed from the consequences of sin. Without being justified by God they will be bound over to judgment, which in a cosmic context, unfortunately, can only be cosmically ultimate. For someone actually guilty (as are all humans before God) there can be no escape in such a court on the basis of technicalities, obfuscation, ignorance, prejudice or character (i.e. good works).

Faith, as used in the above verse and as generally understood as "saving faith", is an apprehension of who Jesus is and what he has done which moves a person to trust Christ as his or her savior and follow Christ as his or her leader. As long as a person has faith that Jesus came from God, died for his or her sins, rose bodily from the dead victorious over sin and death, and is his or her Lord, that person is justified without the possibility of change in status. However, if such faith is lost or reversed, then so too is the condition for justification, and hence salvation, and the result is apostasy or falling away. We can lose our salvation, therefore, if we lose our faith.

Works, as spoken about in that verse, are actions of mind or body which accrue toward the worker's justification. In this instance, they are specified to be in the context of the law, i.e. the Mosaic Code. However, works of the law cannot possibly effect justification because: 1) good works have no power to erase or nullify bad works; 2) even the works of law associated with sacrifices intended to remit sins cannot undo the sin nature of the sinner, which has him or her in sin, virtually, before the last whiff of smoke has dissipated; and 3) it is impossible for the blood of animals to cleanse a guilty human conscience. [How could they? Neither party (God or the sinner) has any "skin in the game."]

Since salvation is not founded upon nor attributable to works then neither can a loss of salvation be the result of such. Our works, in themselves, good or evil, do not have the power to engage, alter or to unravel what Jesus Christ has already done on the cross and in rising from the grave. Whereas keeping a clean conscience is a boon to faith, keeping or not keeping a clean conscience can neither keep one saved nor cause him or her to lose salvation. Sin, though it doubtless arises out of some sort of unbelief, cannot be the source of apostasy anymore than it is the source of salvation; otherwise, virtually every Christian would eventually apostatize.

Apostasy is departing from the faith. It starts with some disappointment or disillusionment with Christ and ends with one abandoning the trust he or she has in who Christ is and what he has done. If one does not trust in Christ as the Son of God, nor rely upon his death and resurrection for justification before God, that one cannot possibly be saved so long as he or she remains in such unbelief. It matters not that he or she believed at one time or even that he or she was baptized.

Sin is not and never can be the cause of apostasy!  Faith is what effects justification, and a departure from faith is the only thing that could effect a loss of salvation.  

Indestructible Souls and Irresistible Grace

"Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."     Genesis 2:7 (NASB)

The breath of God is a precious thing.

God's breath imparts that something that makes a human soul, that makes one a person. Not that every person animated by that breath is the person of God, but it is God's breath that infuses all of the capacities of soul that personhood builds on and without which there would be no person. It communicates those characteristics of personhood that are analogous to God's personhood. That breath is spirit, and more than anything else in all creation represents something directly emanated from God's being. 

Think about that: something within humans that makes them persons represents a direct input from the person of God. Some repercussions of that astounding fact are easily enough perceived--humans exercise choice (freewill), are creative (even to the extant of bringing something out of nothing), love, and... wait for it... humans are eternal. Once God invested his own breath in humanity, the persons that result have an essence that will never pass away. What an astonishing thought!

God's breath may exist eternally, but that does not translate into those infused by that breath living eternally. Breath that is separated from God does not respire, it does not go out and come in (as it were). God's breath must be actively with God, in tune with God, in contact with and in the presence of God to live. Cut off from God, separated, it merely exists. It projects some measure of its capacity for personhood, but it is dark, really, lifeless.

In order for one in whom God has breathed the breath of life to live, he or she must walk in agreement with God; however, even God cannot make creatures who possess his image but who do not exercise creaturely freedom thereby. His image makes such freedom necessary and irresistible grace impossible. Creatures made in God's image, by the capacity of choice in that nature, must freely choose agreement with God. That is an action of faith (i.e. trustful reliance) without which it is impossible to please God--faith is what it takes for free creatures to live in agreement with God.

Whereas it is very true that God loves everyone he's made, those made in his image with the capacity of choice have no future without faith. The Gordian knot is that no one born since the Fall of Man can make that choice of faith unless the Spirit has enabled him or her. However, if the enablement was such that one was rewired to make that choice without the possibility of not making it, that one would cease being in the image of God. The breath that confers such is indestructible, so it is impossible for the grace that underlies enablement to be irresistible and enablement to be a guarantee.

Does God Love Our Children Less Than We Do?

Does the God who breathed life into them love our children less than we do? We would never write them off, or send them into flames no matter what they had done. Yet, it appears that God is willing to. Do we love and care for them more than he does? No, but we certainly tolerate sin and the company of sinners more than he does.

Whatever is not of faith is sin, so faith is the key for our children. If our children do not come to trust God there will be nothing that can be done for them. There is no obligation that could be enforced upon God in the name of love which could cause him to give eternal life (freedom) to those who do not trust him. Could God allow the evil of sin and rebellion to continue just because some of those who have faith happened to have children who did not? Not without resigning his throne as God!

Since the Fall, however, no one is able to believe (at least effectively) without divine enablement. The Spirit of God attending the word of Christ is the instigator of such enablement, so if our children do not hear that word and come to faith thereby they have no possibility of life. Oh, they may be graced under a parental umbrella for a spell, but there are no reliable coattails to heaven. Those who do not trust God can have no eternal hope.

The love of God is broad and deep, but its object is humans made in his image with creaturely freedom. It is important to God that our children be in his image and have creaturely freedom. Everyone made like that must come to the place where, freely, they trust God and choose to follow him. Our children must come to that place or be separated from God forever.

Perhaps we could never bear to write-off our children and would always find a way to preserve them and commune with them. We are not God. We do not see what he sees and do not have the pure moral clarity he does. God does love our children, but not with sin-stained, sentimental affection like we are apt to. He loved them enough to make them in his image and to redeem that image eternally through the sacrifice of Christ.

God wants our children with him forever, but that is not possible if they do not trust him.