Barton Jahn's Blog - Posts Tagged "theology"
Biblical Journeys of Faith are not "Religious"
Another compelling apologetic evidence for the existence of God and the truth of the Bible…is that the biblical narrative stories of faith starting with Abraham in the Old Testament…do not align with what we normally want in life according to worldly conventional thinking.
But equally revealing is that the callings of God in the Bible are not “religious” in nature.
According to modern conventionality we want the best education, a great job that we enjoy working at…with a high salary…so that we can afford to travel and take vacations…and to purchase the things that we want.
We want to buy a house in a good location, have a loving marriage, raise a family, have friends, enjoy hobbies, play sports, have good health, drive a nice automobile, send our children off to college at Harvard, NYU, or Oxford, have a secure retirement, and avoid warfare and natural disasters.
There is nothing wrong with any of these goals and aspirations. They are commendable and admirable when translated into any culture starting in ancient times going forward…progressing up to today.
But these goals, dreams, aspirations, and sentiments are not anything like the underlying themes of the life-scripts of the biblical narrative stories of faith. They are in two entirely different zones of reality.
This should raise some red-flags…get our attention in the apologetics debate now centuries long and still going strong…in determining the origin of these biblical narrative stories of faith.
Becoming the “father of faith” by traveling from one city to a new region that in the future will be called the Promised Land (Heb. 11:8)…according to the promise of God to Abraham that He will start a new nation of people through Abraham as numerous as the dust of the earth…does not fall anywhere within any ancient version of the list of what we normally want in life…described above.
Being sold into slavery into ancient Egypt…in order to begin a novel and innovative graduate MBA program lasting 13 years in business management and leadership training for Joseph within a God-composed journey of faith life-script…that eventually leads to becoming a divinely inspired, first-rate governor of Egypt during the crisis of a great famine…again does not come anywhere near the list of normal goals and aspirations listed above.
How about the backstory of the uniquely innovative preparation for the calling and mission-plan of Moses…initially educated and trained for leadership at the highest level in Egypt…yet spending 40 years in exile as a shepherd of sheep on the hillsides of Midian…prepared to become the deliverer of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt…and the “shepherd” to lead his people across the desert and to the boundary edge of the Promised Land?
We will not find this life-script theme of extraordinary goals and grandeur-of-mission on any conventional list of things we normally want in life.
Would anyone normally want to be the king of Israel in ancient times like David…if it involved the arduous route of 13 years of near-death escapades fighting the Philistines and evading the deadly opposition of King Saul? We might if we were David…but the narrow way God designed for David is not on the list of things defining a conventionally normal life.
The life of the apostle Peter is a great example of the contrasting dichotomy of self-sovereignty according to worldly conventional normalcy…versus a totally different life-script according to God-sovereignty.
Jesus sees the future potential in Peter to lead the early Christian church in Jerusalem…just as God sees a hidden potential in all of us…because He created us.
But after the resurrection of Jesus…and before His ascension…Jesus does not instruct Peter, James, and John…and the other disciples to sign-up to attend rabbinical school in Jerusalem and then fit-in with the Jewish religious community.
Peter is called to stand up on Pentecost to powerfully preach Jesus Christ as Savior and Messiah to thousands gathered in Jerusalem…through the power of the Holy Spirit…at the risk to his life in the very city where a short time ago Jesus was crucified.
Peter and John are then enlisted…through the cascade of events following the miraculous healing of the crippled man at one entrance into the temple called the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:2)…to stand and testify before the august and intimidating Sanhedrin Council in Jerusalem…again at the risk of their lives…and boldly proclaim Jesus as Savior, King, and Messiah…to the very religious elites who rejected Jesus and instigated His death on the cross…only weeks earlier.
This is not horizontally conventional normalcy, recommended for human living…by any definition.
The calling and mission-plan for the apostle Paul is about as far from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking as is possible.
The incredible mixture of high scholastic erudition…being taught by the renowned rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem…and the contrary ingredient of radical humility obtained by Paul in the supernatural revelation of Jesus as the Christ…in a blinding light on the road to Damascus…producing an indispensable ingredient of humility in Paul’s evangelical mission to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world of the first-century…is premeditated, advance preparation that has the end-goal of creating new Christian churches…and writing his New Testament letters…that does not exist anywhere within the contemplation of ordinary, commonplace, worldly conventional aspirations (1 Cor. 4:9-13).
None of the callings of God recorded in the Bible are on the list of things defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…as things we want in life…as things that people are normally pursuing in life.
Jesus said in The Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This is a commonsense Christian apologetic argument for the uniqueness of the biblical narrative stories of faith…which actualize…in some measure and on some varied level…the altogether unique concepts of The Sermon on the Mount…above and outside of…and in many cases in total contrast…to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
These biblical narrative stories of faith would never be the product of humanistic literary invention.
How could…or would…a human literary genius invent the concept of God-sovereignty in the life-scripts of the positive people of faith recorded in the Bible?
How could any human being invent this unconventionality? It must originate from the viewpoint…from the direction…of God alone. Any other explanation is shallow and nonsensical.
We do not see first, second, and third-graders in elementary schools out in large numbers picketing their schools on the weekends…with signs reading: “Down With Division”…or: “No More Multiplication”…or: “Forget Reading…Play Video Games”…while shouting chants of “Unfair” and “Heck No…We Won’t Go!”
Children at that young age have no idea of the importance of reading, writing, and mathematics for their upcoming adult lives. Grown-ups set the agenda for our early childhood education…and as children we go along with this through childlike faith placed in our parents…our teachers…and in grown-ups in general.
There exist no other practical options in childhood education. Adults are by default simply in the position to know more than children…to have the knowledge and the facts…in this critical area of what we need to learn as children…to get from where we are as children to where we need to get to…as we grow up into adults.
How is it that we would then assume to know anything about godliness? Godliness belongs exclusively to God. It is not found anywhere within conventional human living and thinking.
Godliness must come from top-down…not from bottom-up.
Godliness is defined and actualized through the biblical narrative stories of faith…coming from the singular perspective of God.
Biblical Narrative Stories of Faith are not “Religious”
An amazing thing about the biblical narrative stories of faith…for the most part…is that they are not religious in nature. This should also get our attention.
The Old Testament lists 613 laws…including the Ten Commandments…and has religious observances and celebrations like the Passover. Male circumcision begins with Abraham and Isaac. The Old Testament has the animal sacrifices in the temple conducted by the priests.
The New Testament has the Lord’s Supper communion for believers.
But the biblical narrative stories of faith themselves are not built around anything like pilgrimages to “holy sites,” or the veneration of relics, or the sale and possession of paper documents like indulgences insuring salvation, or elaborate religious rituals like a universal practice of praying toward a geographical location every day (Dan. 6:10).
The biblical narrative stories of faith provide no opportunity for salvation through the self-effort of “good-works” and the “self-realization” of religious practices and rituals.
Through God-composed journey of faith life-scripts…God goes boldly into the realm of human life…cutting across the grain of the conventionality of our standard dreams, goals, and aspirations…according to His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9).
In the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness it is recorded in Luke 4:6-8:
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore will worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
“Worshipping only God”…tells us that the world still belongs to God. Worshipping only God is the correct optional choice for human beings…and it is an option we can willingly choose.
God can craft life-scripts having events and circumstances that cross-over into human life in any way that He chooses in order to set up the context for biblical faith to actualize.
Judging from the narrative stories of faith in the Bible…this novel and innovative approach goes much deeper than the religious rituals designed for worship.
Becoming the “father of faith”, the governor of Egypt during a great famine, the deliverer of the Israelites from bondage as slaves in Egypt, becoming a godly (yet imperfect) king of Israel like David…being a prophet like Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or one of the “minor” prophets, restoring the walls around Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple…like Ezra and Nehemiah…becoming the leader of the early Christian church in Jerusalem like Peter…or being called-out to be the premier evangelical missionary to the first-century Greco-Roman world like Paul…all of these things fall right in the very heart of human living…yet transcend above and outside of “religion” in a way that is entirely unique to the Bible.
These journeys of faith inexplicably have little connection to religious practices and rituals…an odd and elevated feature which looking back in hindsight we might expect to find in life-scripts leading toward “spiritual adulthood”…composed by a “grown-up” God for us…who obviously knows more about godliness than we do…and has set-out a course for life and for study for each of us…taking us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ…through the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…described in The Sermon on the Mount.
But equally revealing is that the callings of God in the Bible are not “religious” in nature.
According to modern conventionality we want the best education, a great job that we enjoy working at…with a high salary…so that we can afford to travel and take vacations…and to purchase the things that we want.
We want to buy a house in a good location, have a loving marriage, raise a family, have friends, enjoy hobbies, play sports, have good health, drive a nice automobile, send our children off to college at Harvard, NYU, or Oxford, have a secure retirement, and avoid warfare and natural disasters.
There is nothing wrong with any of these goals and aspirations. They are commendable and admirable when translated into any culture starting in ancient times going forward…progressing up to today.
But these goals, dreams, aspirations, and sentiments are not anything like the underlying themes of the life-scripts of the biblical narrative stories of faith. They are in two entirely different zones of reality.
This should raise some red-flags…get our attention in the apologetics debate now centuries long and still going strong…in determining the origin of these biblical narrative stories of faith.
Becoming the “father of faith” by traveling from one city to a new region that in the future will be called the Promised Land (Heb. 11:8)…according to the promise of God to Abraham that He will start a new nation of people through Abraham as numerous as the dust of the earth…does not fall anywhere within any ancient version of the list of what we normally want in life…described above.
Being sold into slavery into ancient Egypt…in order to begin a novel and innovative graduate MBA program lasting 13 years in business management and leadership training for Joseph within a God-composed journey of faith life-script…that eventually leads to becoming a divinely inspired, first-rate governor of Egypt during the crisis of a great famine…again does not come anywhere near the list of normal goals and aspirations listed above.
How about the backstory of the uniquely innovative preparation for the calling and mission-plan of Moses…initially educated and trained for leadership at the highest level in Egypt…yet spending 40 years in exile as a shepherd of sheep on the hillsides of Midian…prepared to become the deliverer of the Israelites as slaves in Egypt…and the “shepherd” to lead his people across the desert and to the boundary edge of the Promised Land?
We will not find this life-script theme of extraordinary goals and grandeur-of-mission on any conventional list of things we normally want in life.
Would anyone normally want to be the king of Israel in ancient times like David…if it involved the arduous route of 13 years of near-death escapades fighting the Philistines and evading the deadly opposition of King Saul? We might if we were David…but the narrow way God designed for David is not on the list of things defining a conventionally normal life.
The life of the apostle Peter is a great example of the contrasting dichotomy of self-sovereignty according to worldly conventional normalcy…versus a totally different life-script according to God-sovereignty.
Jesus sees the future potential in Peter to lead the early Christian church in Jerusalem…just as God sees a hidden potential in all of us…because He created us.
But after the resurrection of Jesus…and before His ascension…Jesus does not instruct Peter, James, and John…and the other disciples to sign-up to attend rabbinical school in Jerusalem and then fit-in with the Jewish religious community.
Peter is called to stand up on Pentecost to powerfully preach Jesus Christ as Savior and Messiah to thousands gathered in Jerusalem…through the power of the Holy Spirit…at the risk to his life in the very city where a short time ago Jesus was crucified.
Peter and John are then enlisted…through the cascade of events following the miraculous healing of the crippled man at one entrance into the temple called the Beautiful Gate (Acts 3:2)…to stand and testify before the august and intimidating Sanhedrin Council in Jerusalem…again at the risk of their lives…and boldly proclaim Jesus as Savior, King, and Messiah…to the very religious elites who rejected Jesus and instigated His death on the cross…only weeks earlier.
This is not horizontally conventional normalcy, recommended for human living…by any definition.
The calling and mission-plan for the apostle Paul is about as far from worldly conventional normalcy and thinking as is possible.
The incredible mixture of high scholastic erudition…being taught by the renowned rabbi Gamaliel in Jerusalem…and the contrary ingredient of radical humility obtained by Paul in the supernatural revelation of Jesus as the Christ…in a blinding light on the road to Damascus…producing an indispensable ingredient of humility in Paul’s evangelical mission to the polytheistic, idol-worshipping Gentiles in the Greco-Roman world of the first-century…is premeditated, advance preparation that has the end-goal of creating new Christian churches…and writing his New Testament letters…that does not exist anywhere within the contemplation of ordinary, commonplace, worldly conventional aspirations (1 Cor. 4:9-13).
None of the callings of God recorded in the Bible are on the list of things defined by worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…as things we want in life…as things that people are normally pursuing in life.
Jesus said in The Sermon on the Mount: “Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than raiment?” (Mt. 6:25).
This is a commonsense Christian apologetic argument for the uniqueness of the biblical narrative stories of faith…which actualize…in some measure and on some varied level…the altogether unique concepts of The Sermon on the Mount…above and outside of…and in many cases in total contrast…to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
These biblical narrative stories of faith would never be the product of humanistic literary invention.
How could…or would…a human literary genius invent the concept of God-sovereignty in the life-scripts of the positive people of faith recorded in the Bible?
How could any human being invent this unconventionality? It must originate from the viewpoint…from the direction…of God alone. Any other explanation is shallow and nonsensical.
We do not see first, second, and third-graders in elementary schools out in large numbers picketing their schools on the weekends…with signs reading: “Down With Division”…or: “No More Multiplication”…or: “Forget Reading…Play Video Games”…while shouting chants of “Unfair” and “Heck No…We Won’t Go!”
Children at that young age have no idea of the importance of reading, writing, and mathematics for their upcoming adult lives. Grown-ups set the agenda for our early childhood education…and as children we go along with this through childlike faith placed in our parents…our teachers…and in grown-ups in general.
There exist no other practical options in childhood education. Adults are by default simply in the position to know more than children…to have the knowledge and the facts…in this critical area of what we need to learn as children…to get from where we are as children to where we need to get to…as we grow up into adults.
How is it that we would then assume to know anything about godliness? Godliness belongs exclusively to God. It is not found anywhere within conventional human living and thinking.
Godliness must come from top-down…not from bottom-up.
Godliness is defined and actualized through the biblical narrative stories of faith…coming from the singular perspective of God.
Biblical Narrative Stories of Faith are not “Religious”
An amazing thing about the biblical narrative stories of faith…for the most part…is that they are not religious in nature. This should also get our attention.
The Old Testament lists 613 laws…including the Ten Commandments…and has religious observances and celebrations like the Passover. Male circumcision begins with Abraham and Isaac. The Old Testament has the animal sacrifices in the temple conducted by the priests.
The New Testament has the Lord’s Supper communion for believers.
But the biblical narrative stories of faith themselves are not built around anything like pilgrimages to “holy sites,” or the veneration of relics, or the sale and possession of paper documents like indulgences insuring salvation, or elaborate religious rituals like a universal practice of praying toward a geographical location every day (Dan. 6:10).
The biblical narrative stories of faith provide no opportunity for salvation through the self-effort of “good-works” and the “self-realization” of religious practices and rituals.
Through God-composed journey of faith life-scripts…God goes boldly into the realm of human life…cutting across the grain of the conventionality of our standard dreams, goals, and aspirations…according to His higher ways and thoughts (Isa. 55:8-9).
In the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness it is recorded in Luke 4:6-8:
6 And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it.
7 If thou therefore will worship me, all shall be thine.
8 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.
“Worshipping only God”…tells us that the world still belongs to God. Worshipping only God is the correct optional choice for human beings…and it is an option we can willingly choose.
God can craft life-scripts having events and circumstances that cross-over into human life in any way that He chooses in order to set up the context for biblical faith to actualize.
Judging from the narrative stories of faith in the Bible…this novel and innovative approach goes much deeper than the religious rituals designed for worship.
Becoming the “father of faith”, the governor of Egypt during a great famine, the deliverer of the Israelites from bondage as slaves in Egypt, becoming a godly (yet imperfect) king of Israel like David…being a prophet like Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, or one of the “minor” prophets, restoring the walls around Jerusalem and rebuilding the temple…like Ezra and Nehemiah…becoming the leader of the early Christian church in Jerusalem like Peter…or being called-out to be the premier evangelical missionary to the first-century Greco-Roman world like Paul…all of these things fall right in the very heart of human living…yet transcend above and outside of “religion” in a way that is entirely unique to the Bible.
These journeys of faith inexplicably have little connection to religious practices and rituals…an odd and elevated feature which looking back in hindsight we might expect to find in life-scripts leading toward “spiritual adulthood”…composed by a “grown-up” God for us…who obviously knows more about godliness than we do…and has set-out a course for life and for study for each of us…taking us through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ…through the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14…described in The Sermon on the Mount.
Thoughts on Apologetics
Finally, when atheists and skeptics assert that scientific investigation cannot include any mention or reference to the supernatural…they are not saying anything new, insightful, or profound.
The modern Scientific Revolution started about 450 years ago…generally credited to Francis Bacon…with the express goal to dispel and refute the errors of folklore, superstition, old-wives tales, and witchcraft…using an entirely new and novel concept of obtaining empirical facts about the natural world through observation…and the testing of hypotheses through repeatable experimentation.
The unimaginable and unexpected irony in the twenty-first century is that modern science has not only scrubbed away unsubstantiated folklore and superstition…but it has also scrubbed away Scientism…the crown jewel of the atheistic philosophies of naturalism and materialism.
The current Age of Information has added information as a third fundamental property in nature alongside matter and energy…thus raising the question of where did complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated programs of information come from.
The pursuit of answers to this question have basically eliminated as a plausible consideration the gradualism of successive, incremental, trial-and-error, unguided, random chance search strategies as an explanation to produce complex functional systems…in the non-living and living natural world.
By discovering in recent decades the massive amounts of coherently integrated systems of information in every area of the natural world…science has come full-circle in re-introducing the need for an intelligent designer God to explain the origin of all of this information.
In the process of attempting to explain the origin, existence, and functional coherence of this complex information…this search automatically refutes the concept of Scientism…that “nature” is all that there is…the basis for the atheistic philosophies of naturalism and materialism.
Scientism is too simplistic in this Age of Information to “hold water.” A plausible explanation for the origin of information…like the ink that is intelligently arranged on paper to create the headlines for the New York Times newspaper each day…to convey information…falls outside of the materialistic explanation of how ink chemically bonds to paper.
Likewise, when atheists and skeptics assert that the Old and New Testament stories of faith in the Bible are imaginary myth…are the creation of human literary invention…this requires a defense of these biblical narrative stories based on the parallel to our Christian experience today.
If after closer scrutiny, these biblical narrative stories of faith demonstrate a radically divergent contrast with the normalcy of worldly conventional thinking…in contrast with the autonomous nature of going our own way as junior gods sitting atop the thrones of our lives…then the notion that these Bible stories of faith are myth is also eliminated as a plausible consideration to explain their origin.
This realization that the biblical narrative stories of faith are too complex, too sophisticated, too brilliantly unusual and original, and too contrary to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to be the product of human literary invention…has enormous implications for answering the fundamental questions of why we are here…and what is the meaning and purpose of our existence.
If commonsense Christian apologetics discovers within the biblical narrative stories of faith the necessity of the script-writer God as the only plausible explanation for their composition…to compliment the scientific discovery of the necessity of an intelligent designer God as the only plausible explanation for the existence of complex systems of information in the natural world…these two realities of rational thinking coalesce into a positive force for truth…that in the humble opinion of this Christian author…is making a compelling case for the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, and Jesus Christ in fact being “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
The modern Scientific Revolution started about 450 years ago…generally credited to Francis Bacon…with the express goal to dispel and refute the errors of folklore, superstition, old-wives tales, and witchcraft…using an entirely new and novel concept of obtaining empirical facts about the natural world through observation…and the testing of hypotheses through repeatable experimentation.
The unimaginable and unexpected irony in the twenty-first century is that modern science has not only scrubbed away unsubstantiated folklore and superstition…but it has also scrubbed away Scientism…the crown jewel of the atheistic philosophies of naturalism and materialism.
The current Age of Information has added information as a third fundamental property in nature alongside matter and energy…thus raising the question of where did complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated programs of information come from.
The pursuit of answers to this question have basically eliminated as a plausible consideration the gradualism of successive, incremental, trial-and-error, unguided, random chance search strategies as an explanation to produce complex functional systems…in the non-living and living natural world.
By discovering in recent decades the massive amounts of coherently integrated systems of information in every area of the natural world…science has come full-circle in re-introducing the need for an intelligent designer God to explain the origin of all of this information.
In the process of attempting to explain the origin, existence, and functional coherence of this complex information…this search automatically refutes the concept of Scientism…that “nature” is all that there is…the basis for the atheistic philosophies of naturalism and materialism.
Scientism is too simplistic in this Age of Information to “hold water.” A plausible explanation for the origin of information…like the ink that is intelligently arranged on paper to create the headlines for the New York Times newspaper each day…to convey information…falls outside of the materialistic explanation of how ink chemically bonds to paper.
Likewise, when atheists and skeptics assert that the Old and New Testament stories of faith in the Bible are imaginary myth…are the creation of human literary invention…this requires a defense of these biblical narrative stories based on the parallel to our Christian experience today.
If after closer scrutiny, these biblical narrative stories of faith demonstrate a radically divergent contrast with the normalcy of worldly conventional thinking…in contrast with the autonomous nature of going our own way as junior gods sitting atop the thrones of our lives…then the notion that these Bible stories of faith are myth is also eliminated as a plausible consideration to explain their origin.
This realization that the biblical narrative stories of faith are too complex, too sophisticated, too brilliantly unusual and original, and too contrary to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…to be the product of human literary invention…has enormous implications for answering the fundamental questions of why we are here…and what is the meaning and purpose of our existence.
If commonsense Christian apologetics discovers within the biblical narrative stories of faith the necessity of the script-writer God as the only plausible explanation for their composition…to compliment the scientific discovery of the necessity of an intelligent designer God as the only plausible explanation for the existence of complex systems of information in the natural world…these two realities of rational thinking coalesce into a positive force for truth…that in the humble opinion of this Christian author…is making a compelling case for the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, and Jesus Christ in fact being “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).
Are We Ready?
If we extend and apply the concept of the initiation of God’s callings…to the contemporary Christian church…what might this mean for Christians in the upcoming end-times?
If the Christian church is not raptured pretribulation…but instead is raptured at some point in time after the colossal end-times spiritual battle begins…Christians will find ourselves right in the middle of the Joel 2:28-29 prophecy that says God will pour out His Spirit upon the earth.
At Pentecost, Peter did not prepare in advance his speech to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem that day…that converted thousands of people (Acts 2:41). This speech was already inside Peter waiting to be energized by the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, Peter and John did not foresee the miraculous circumstances that led to their standing before the august and intimidating governing body the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem…and therefore had no opportunity to politely excuse themselves or to otherwise wiggle their way out of what turned out to be an explosive and pivotal moment of Holy Spirit boldness that severed the new Christian church from the old leadership in Jerusalem (Acts 4:5-22).
Certainly Stephen did not premediate what he was going to say before this selfsame Sanhedrin council some short time later…as he is carried away into totally liberated and self-abandoned boldness of speech that is characteristic of this time period in the formulation of the early church…and that is described as the latter rain to be poured out upon the earth during the end-times (Joel 2:23; Zech. 10:1). Stephen had these words already within his mind and heart…waiting to be expressed at the right time and place (Acts 6:15).
When the end of time actually arrives…when human redemptive history comes to a close at a definite point in time…worldly conventional normalcy has no relevance. The commendable and admirable instruction to “occupy till I come” (Lk. 19:13) that has applied for past centuries universally for all Christians…no longer has meaning and purpose.
When the actual end of time is in view…the salvation of lost souls becomes the immediate imperative. Evangelism is the first priority for Christians in the end-times (Mt. 24:14). What color to paint the kitchen, who to elect city mayor, and where to go on vacation next summer all become superfluous…for Christians and non-Christians alike.
This end-times prophecy of God taking the initiative…like He does with all of His callings…to pour out His Spirit upon the earth according to Joel 2:28-29…may transform every Spirit-born Christian on the face of the earth into bold evangelists like we find in the early church…carried along by the energy of the Holy Spirit and unable to contain themselves like the prophet Jeremiah described (Jer. 20:9).
So the question is…are we ready? Have we done our part? Do we have a testimony to share of God’s grace and mercy in our lives? Do we know Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord? Do we have a walk of faith with Jesus, and can we point to a transformed life as our evidence for the presence of God in our lives? Do we spend time reading the Bible…memorizing scripture…mastering the issues? Do we possess the basics that the Holy Spirit can move upon in an instant to craft powerful words of life to give to the final lost souls on earth as the clocks ticks towards the final end-point in time…and the surrounding cascade of momentous events of biblical-proportion escalate and intensify?
This concept of the divine origin of journeys of faith…containing the cross of Christ embedded at the core of every storyline…speaks volumes as to what we can look forward to from a biblical perspective of what God can do and what believers can accomplish…above and outside of the limited confines of skeptical unbelief found within worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is one of the main themes in the Bible that argues for its divine origin…and should therefore be expected to continue at an even more accelerated and enhanced rate…anticipated by waiting and watching Christians (Lk. 21:28).
If the Christian church is not raptured pretribulation…but instead is raptured at some point in time after the colossal end-times spiritual battle begins…Christians will find ourselves right in the middle of the Joel 2:28-29 prophecy that says God will pour out His Spirit upon the earth.
At Pentecost, Peter did not prepare in advance his speech to the crowd gathered in Jerusalem that day…that converted thousands of people (Acts 2:41). This speech was already inside Peter waiting to be energized by the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, Peter and John did not foresee the miraculous circumstances that led to their standing before the august and intimidating governing body the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem…and therefore had no opportunity to politely excuse themselves or to otherwise wiggle their way out of what turned out to be an explosive and pivotal moment of Holy Spirit boldness that severed the new Christian church from the old leadership in Jerusalem (Acts 4:5-22).
Certainly Stephen did not premediate what he was going to say before this selfsame Sanhedrin council some short time later…as he is carried away into totally liberated and self-abandoned boldness of speech that is characteristic of this time period in the formulation of the early church…and that is described as the latter rain to be poured out upon the earth during the end-times (Joel 2:23; Zech. 10:1). Stephen had these words already within his mind and heart…waiting to be expressed at the right time and place (Acts 6:15).
When the end of time actually arrives…when human redemptive history comes to a close at a definite point in time…worldly conventional normalcy has no relevance. The commendable and admirable instruction to “occupy till I come” (Lk. 19:13) that has applied for past centuries universally for all Christians…no longer has meaning and purpose.
When the actual end of time is in view…the salvation of lost souls becomes the immediate imperative. Evangelism is the first priority for Christians in the end-times (Mt. 24:14). What color to paint the kitchen, who to elect city mayor, and where to go on vacation next summer all become superfluous…for Christians and non-Christians alike.
This end-times prophecy of God taking the initiative…like He does with all of His callings…to pour out His Spirit upon the earth according to Joel 2:28-29…may transform every Spirit-born Christian on the face of the earth into bold evangelists like we find in the early church…carried along by the energy of the Holy Spirit and unable to contain themselves like the prophet Jeremiah described (Jer. 20:9).
So the question is…are we ready? Have we done our part? Do we have a testimony to share of God’s grace and mercy in our lives? Do we know Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord? Do we have a walk of faith with Jesus, and can we point to a transformed life as our evidence for the presence of God in our lives? Do we spend time reading the Bible…memorizing scripture…mastering the issues? Do we possess the basics that the Holy Spirit can move upon in an instant to craft powerful words of life to give to the final lost souls on earth as the clocks ticks towards the final end-point in time…and the surrounding cascade of momentous events of biblical-proportion escalate and intensify?
This concept of the divine origin of journeys of faith…containing the cross of Christ embedded at the core of every storyline…speaks volumes as to what we can look forward to from a biblical perspective of what God can do and what believers can accomplish…above and outside of the limited confines of skeptical unbelief found within worldly conventional normalcy and thinking.
This is one of the main themes in the Bible that argues for its divine origin…and should therefore be expected to continue at an even more accelerated and enhanced rate…anticipated by waiting and watching Christians (Lk. 21:28).
