Barton Jahn's Blog, page 12

Sign of Things to Come

This blog normally does not enter into the discussion of current politics. When politics has been covered, it usually involves the first-century decision by the religious leaders to choose the worldly conventional status quo over following Jesus of Nazareth (Jn. 10:47-48)…which produced a catastrophic outcome forty years later in 70 A.D. with the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman general Titus and his army (Mt. 24:2).

Politically I am a conservative Democrat. I believe Christians want the least interference from our government while providing the most help possible to its people through social programs that mitigate the extreme edges of poverty, inequality, and despair. I think there is a sweet-spot of wise laws that provides just the right balance between guidance, stability, and opportunity without interfering in our lives and not spending too much of the tax-payer’s money. Every four-way street crossing does not need a traffic signal…but some do if we are going to provide safety, fairness, and common sense for the people living in our communities…rural and urban.

Christian foreign missionaries operating in third-world countries often complain about the dilemma of having to provide both material assistance and the spiritual gospel of salvation at the same time…and posing the very real question as to which comes first…solving the debilitating material poverty before even being able to offer the positive gift of salvation…or starting with saving grace through faith in Christ and then attacking the specific ills that keep people in poverty and worldly-challenging despair…all while working with finite and limited physical and financial resources.

I believe the gospel message of salvation through Jesus Christ is uninhibited and can break-through in any political, economic, and social environment (Mt. 24:7-14)…as individual repentance and the recognition of our need to accept Christ can occur for natives living in the deepest regions of the Amazon rainforest, and for powerful and successful people living in the most affluent countries in the world (Jn. 19:38-42).

We have as our biblical model the growth of the early Christian church in Jerusalem in the most hostile environment imaginable. The bold, fearless, and uncontainable enthusiasm that sprang up in Jerusalem following the resurrection of Jesus Christ…over-powered and overcame the political and religious resistance to the “new way” of Christianity that was fueled and energized by the stronger force of the Holy Spirit.

I see the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016 as a canary in the coal mine…as the inevitable result of the vertical graph-line continuum of goodness and light…with absolute goodness and brilliant pure light at the top…and worldly conventional normalcy and thinking somewhere down this spectrum line where light and darkness are mixed and intermingled.

God-composed journeys of faith such as Abraham and Sarah’s wait for the birth of Isaac the son of promise, Joseph’s unique preparation to become governor of Egypt during a great famine, the incredibly unconventional calling of Moses to deliver the Israelites from bondage in Egypt and to lead them through their wilderness experience to the Promised Land of Canaan, David’s difficult apprenticeship to becoming king in Israel…and on and on throughout the narrative stories of faith in the Bible…all occur higher up the vertical graph-line spectrum of goodness and light…far above the zone of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking below.

In the zone of worldly conventional normalcy many good works occur. In this zone is where “occupy till I come” (Lk. 19:13) is found. But also in this sphere is found self-sufficiency and self-sovereignty in rebellion against God. In this sphere is found prejudice, hate, and the self-centeredness of “me, myself, and I.”

The point of this blog post is simply to say that at the confluence of increasing automation in the manufacturing industries, the disparity in wages in developed counties and third-world countries, our shrinking world in this age-of-information, and human greed…the inevitability of the zone of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking at some point in time has to catch up with humanity’s pride sitting on top of our thrones of self-reliance…and expose our inability to function as junior gods in charge of our world and our destinies.

The desperation seen in the American electorate to choose someone clearly unqualified experientially and temperamentally to head-up the leading nation on earth…based mostly on the promise to solve the problem of job-stability located squarely in the middle of worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…should be a tip-off that the world is already at the place of being vulnerable to the entry on the world scene of the antichrist of Daniel chapters 7 and 8, and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12.

With the birth of the nation of Israel in 1948, the current regime changes and instability in the Arab nations in the Middle East, and the rise in power of Iran and Russia…any changes in the political wind on the world scene should get the attention of Spirit-born Christians to have their eyes wide open and their spiritual ears in-tune to the events that must very soon accelerate into the end-times that are prophesied in the Bible to occur.

A Mid-Tribulation Rapture

In the study of the history and development of eschatology, emphasis is placed upon the importance of the recovery of last-days biblical prophetic truths during the time period following the Protestant Reformation. This has occurred alongside the parallel discovery of other key doctrines such as salvation by grace, justification through faith, and becoming spiritually reborn (John 3:3), which were partially lost during the dark and middle ages of history.

One of the key biblical doctrines that still has not made a full recovery in practical application to this day, in my opinion, is the concept of a divinely planned and guided challenge of adversity contained within a God-composed journey of faith, which beneficially separates the believer from debilitating self-sovereignty. The Christian set free from self-in-control in a walk-of-faith through the cross and the resurrection is then able to step into a biblical quality of life to match on some level the experiences of an Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, David, Ruth, Esther and Mordecai, Daniel, Peter, and Paul.

In the current emphasis in developed countries for “church growth” and the effort to find the right tone to reach out and successfully evangelize the “unchurched”, one key element of our discipleship…of picking up our cross and following Jesus…is all too often homogenized out of the message for the sake of not offending worldly-minded potential converts. Sadly, in too many churches today the idea that every Christian can have an individualized adventure of faith composed and guided personally by Jesus Christ starting at the foot of the cross is not even clearly and powerfully taught as applying to our everyday lives here and now, much less factored into the calculus of the upcoming tumultuous end-times prophetic scenarios.

In my opinion, the Christian church must experience some portion of Daniel’s seven-year tribulation. As I interpret the narrative stories of faith in the Bible, this viewpoint does not adversely affect our blessed hope, or undermine the doctrine of imminence at any time of an immediate rapture of the church, or call into question the purity of God’s love for us (Psalm 34:19). Confronting and overcoming dark challenges is an integral and inseparable part of the process of a journey of faith life-script that God lovingly composes for our eternal good, as patterned in the narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible.

Jesus Christ actually tells Peter at the beginning of Peter’s ministry that he will someday in the future be martyred through crucifixion rather than be raptured (John 21:18-19), yet this seemingly negative prophetic information does not discourage Peter, diminish the power of his ministry, or destroy his blessed hope in the slightest (1 Peter 1:3). Paul tells Timothy (2 Timothy 4:6) he suspects that he (Paul) will be martyred, not raptured, soon. Yet Paul presses forward in this knowledge with unwavering hope and determination to honorably complete his mission and calling (2 Timothy 4:17). Because Paul enjoys the status of being a Roman citizen, historical tradition tells us that Paul is finally executed by beheading (parallels Revelation 20:4) in Rome under Nero’s decree sometime around A.D. 62-64, instead of being crucified like Peter, a Jew and a non-citizen of Rome.

If two of the greatest Christians and chosen authors of New Testament letters to the churches, Peter and Paul, did not allow a foreknowledge of their future deaths as martyrs to adversely affect the commitment to their calling and their fidelity to Jesus Christ, how is it that many Christians today believe that experiencing some portion of the tribulation will destroy their blessed hope of Titus 2:13?

In John 15:11, Jesus says: “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” Moments earlier, Jesus told the disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” These words Jesus spoke the night before His crucifixion the following day.

In John 11:7, upon hearing of the death of His friend Lazarus, Jesus says: “Let us go into Judaea again.” The disciples respond by saying: “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou there again?” In verse 16, one of the disciples Thomas (the much maligned “doubting” Thomas who would not accept the resurrection until he saw Jesus with his own eyes) then says with characteristically clear-sighted appraisal of the situation: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

Yet the disciples do not perish with Jesus during His trial and crucifixion, but after Pentecost go on to preach courageously of the bodily resurrection of Christ in the very heart of danger in Jerusalem. The narrowest of gates opens for the disciples to form the early Christian church, amidst the most lethally adverse circumstances, a church which has flourished and survived down to our present day to provide salvation and deliverance from sin to Spirit-born Christians worldwide.

Jesus Christ fills all-in-all so that we can follow Him safely into the deepest valley and up to the highest mountaintop, in our singular and unique callings. We must factor this honest and straightforward reality into our interpretation of biblical end-of-time prophetic scripture if we are to come reasonably close to what God intends us to understand ahead of time as God prepares us for the upcoming end-times.

Peter and Paul exemplify the true, biblical, divinely authorized foreglimpse of the overcoming attitude of faith and trust in the Rock that is Christ, in response to whatever challenges lie ahead in the future for Christians. This is the hope-built foundation of our faith, no matter what is occurring in the outer world.

For the Spirit-born Christian, our eternal life with Jesus Christ in heaven is forever, without end. It is already secure. The cross of Christ experience, therefore, in our short-lived lives now is priceless beyond reckoning (Romans 8:18). This is the part of the discussion relating to eschatology that has not yet been fully recovered. It is certainly an opinion and a viewpoint worthy of examination, discussion, and argument from scripture. The cross of Jesus Christ in our lives, as it applies to the end-times, is the theme of this book.

Our Relationship with Jesus Christ is Paramount

From The Cross in the End-Times

The most important immediate question regarding the last days is not whether we have all of the prophetic events clearly identified, sequenced, and completely figured out in advance, but whether or not we are mature Christians in terms of faith and trust in God in order to be spiritually ready for whatever lies ahead. Christians who are surrendered and yielded to the will of God, and are currently engaged in Spirit-filled service, are by definition in a state of watchfulness and will be raptured no matter when it occurs in relation to end-time events (Matthew 24:46).

What Christians must avoid at all costs is a mere head-knowledge of some particular end-times scenario of events, which in our minds satisfies and displaces the requirements regarding our discipleship responsibility to watch and to be ready. Intellectual head-knowledge of end-times prophecies will not fulfill the need for active interaction with Jesus Christ in the present moment, as the required element for watchfulness. Christians cannot afford to become complacent and over-confident because we confuse intellectually subscribing to a particular well thought-out end-times scenario, with actually being in the midst of faithful service to Jesus Christ the King as our living proof of watchfulness (James 1:22).

If our particular current, for-the-moment chosen end-times interpretation turns out in fact to be partially wrong, if we are nonetheless “in Christ” in terms of a genuine journey of faith and service according to our unique talents and abilities, then a transitional adjustment to a more correct view of prophetic events will not be that difficult. If however, we are unwise and coasting along in the false expectation of the master of the house coming back at the first watch of the night (Mark 13:35), we could end up without having purchased through faith enough oil in our lamps to make it through a potentially long duration of the night (Matthew 25:8).

The Apostle Paul, in Philippians 1:6, 1:10, and 2:16, is trying to get the Philippians ready for the “day of Christ.” Paul does the same thing with the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:8, 1 Cor. 5:5, 2 Cor. 1:14), the Thessalonians (1 Thes. 4:13-17, 2 Thes. 2:2, 2 Thes. 2:8), Timothy (1 Tim. 6:14, 2 Tim. 1:18, 2 Tim. 4:8), and Titus (Tit. 2:13). If this is important to Paul in the first century, how much more so is it important to the present-day Christian church twenty centuries later? We are certainly closer to the “day of Christ” than the first century church that Paul is addressing in his letters. We should have the same message today as the Apostle Paul, yet with even more urgency.

If everyone knew the exact day and hour of the rapture, sadly many people would cruise along in sin until the last minute, and then suddenly attempt to turn pious. Paul says that the successful Christian life is a foot race that requires steady, lifelong training in order to win (1 Corinthians 9:24).

Jesus knows that the most important thing, which overrides all other considerations, is to complete the work of salvation on the earth down to the very last person who will respond to the gospel message at the close of this age and the beginning of the eternity to come.

Those Christians in past centuries who did not experience the rapture have not been overlooked. Their treasure is in heaven where it does not rust or decay. The promise of their resurrection to eternal life is secure. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says that the dead in Christ shall rise first, and that we who are alive and remain will be caught up to join them in the air. The promises of God are and have been true for every generation of believers.

There is an old saying: “Fate does not call upon us at the moment of our choosing.” That is why we are to watch and always be ready. The one true approach that will work well for the Christian believer no matter how the end-of-world-history events actually unfold is to stay close to Jesus Christ in our daily lives, and to keep our eyes and ears open to the Holy Spirit at all times. Being spiritually prepared for any potential end-times scenario has no down-side.

God Has Not Revealed Everything Yet

From The Cross in the End-Times

The seven-year tribulation period is traditionally understood by many Christians to begin with the “covenant” that the Antichrist makes with the nation of Israel described in Daniel 9:24-27. For purposes of this book I am assuming a seven-year tribulation period, recognizing that many past and present Christians have suggested a three and one-half year tribulation, and that there is disagreement as to what to do with the second half of the 70th week of Daniel after the messiah is “cut off” and the sacrifice caused to “cease.” Every Christian knows from the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and the book of Revelation, that there will be an end-times great tribulation. The question of how long the tribulation will last, and when the rapture would occur, is still open.

The scenario of world events that would lead to the nation of Israel signing such a peace agreement with the involvement of the Antichrist is currently not known. The idea that the chaos following a worldwide rapture would precipitate the series of events that would facilitate the rise of the Antichrist, is speculative conjecture based upon one plausible scenario among many other possible alternatives. No human being has all of this completely figured out at this time. We currently do not know what would be the magnitude of the impact that a worldwide disappearance of hundreds of millions of Christians and underage children, through the rapture, would have upon the psyche of the world’s current 7-billion population.

The only real expert here is the Holy Spirit. It is not an article of faith to accept the viewpoint that the rapture is required to set up the conditions for the rise of the Antichrist. This particular viewpoint does not have to be taken as gospel. There are a number of possible events that could create the environment conducive for the rise of the Antichrist, some of which may be revealed already in Matthew 24:4-7 depending upon the order, magnitude, and timing of their particular occurrence. The ancient hatred of the Arab countries for the nation of Israel alone has enough explosive political energy within it to propel a deceptive, smooth-talking, outwardly charismatic peacemaker into world prominence and power.

Christians, at this time, do not have to commit to anyone’s particular end-times interpretation, including my own viewpoint as expressed in this book. Nowhere in the Bible, that I can find, does it say that we must have all of the last days events completely figured out one-hundred percent ahead of time. It is allowable, even divinely purposed (Joel 2:28-29), to hold some questions in suspension for a while until actual events begin to unfold. The teaching that because the Bible is one-third prophecy that this automatically infers that we can put all of the jigsaw puzzle pieces of the end-of-time biblical prophecies together completely ahead of time, sounds commendably logical on its surface according to horizontally conventional thinking, but this viewpoint is not biblically correct (the subject of chapter five).

The parable of the fig tree (Matthew 24:32-35) suggests that Christians must watch for the sprouting of the leaves (end-times events) to know when the end is near. Joel 2:28-32 tells us that in the last days our sons and daughters will prophesy, young men will see visions, and old men shall dream dreams. This implies that there is additional, fill-in-the-gaps, Holy Spirit breathed and validated prophetic information to be revealed at the appropriate future time when this information begins to become applicable. This divinely promised, definitive revelation will be a timely and welcome improvement over the varied opinions and interpretations that have been commendably and honestly debated over the past several centuries.

Evangelism Takes Precedence

From The Cross in the End-Times

In the debate over the timing and sequence of end-times events, this tension between the hope of an imminent rapture at any time in the church age, and the on-going work of salvation on the earth to draw in each and every lost sheep destined for eternal life in heaven, often takes a backseat in recent times to the more high-profile argument of the timing of the rapture in relation to the seven-year tribulation period. Yet this issue of the end-of-the-ages worldwide evangelism is paramount. Matthew 24:14 reads: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” The Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) takes precedence over the timing of the Rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Second Coming of Christ, and the Millennium. The work of salvation, the sharing of the good news of the gospel, stands front and center above all other considerations.

The eternal salvation of even one person is so important to God it can hold in abeyance the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth. If Christians cannot agree on this point, regarding the overriding importance of worldwide evangelism coming first and foremost within the scheme of end-time events, then the basis for our end-times theology may be out of balance. People can argue for a pretribulation rapture of the Christian church, or conversely for a return of Christ after the millennium, because these differing scenarios fit smoothly into systematically constructed viewpoints. But the emphasis in the mind and heart of God has always been the harvest of lost souls right up to and including the very last person pre-destined for salvation. This reality is strongly evidenced today by the explosion of Christian evangelism and salvation in many parts of the world, alongside the parallel fact that we are still looking for the rapture and the second coming of Christ. As time marches relentlessly on, the Holy Spirit is convicting lost sinners and saving souls around the world.

Only God knows who these last final converts are, when they will exercise salvation quality faith in Jesus Christ, and what will be needed in terms of external situations and circumstances to bring them to the point where they recognize their need for God. And only God knows how many Spirit-led Christians will be needed on hand to speak the words of Life to match the number of people who will respond to God’s final call at the end of the ages.

That is why the times and the seasons must belong to God alone. If Christians knew in advance who the last few people were to be saved at the end of human history, we might rush out ahead of the Spirit with our own program, and attempt to convert them before the Holy Spirit had the opportunity to generate the external circumstances to correctly prepare them to receive Jesus Christ through genuine repentance and faith. The same process of internal conviction over our sin, which brought us to salvation quality faith, must actualize for the last-days convert as well.

There is a finite list of people, compiled through God’s eternal foreknowledge (Romans 8:29), who will come to salvation faith throughout the long span of Old and New Testament history. Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Mark, Luke, Stephen the martyr, Paul, Phoebe, Priscilla and Aquila, Timothy, Barnabas, and Titus, to name only a few first century Christians, were on that list. The Old Testament men and women of faith, the early church fathers, the reformers, the missionaries and their converts in previous centuries were on that list. Those of us who are born-again Christians today are on that list. We have not reached the bottom of this list yet. Each generation of Christians in past centuries, within its own unique historical context has worked on completing the Great Shepherd’s list of lost sheep to be found and saved, not knowing how close they were to the bottom of this list.

Every person named on this list had to work through their lives within the time-frame and context of their own personal situations and circumstances, to reach the point of choosing through their own free-will volition to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts. The Holy Spirit is capable of reaching all of the people who are called to salvation faith in every generation. But events must follow their proper course.

From our limited viewpoint, we simply do not know when this list of people will finally be exhausted. This is how the watchfulness and expectation of Christian disciples for the second coming of Jesus on the one hand, and the evangelical outreach through the Holy Spirit to the lost sheep on the other hand, can appear to be contradictory yet in fact proceed down through the ages in harmonious tension. From the time of that important question to Jesus by the disciples regarding the setting up of the final Messianic kingdom in Acts 1:6, down to our present time, the work of salvation takes precedence over the rapture or the second coming of Christ. The rapture and the second coming of Christ are held in suspension in time until the work of evangelism reaches a point somewhere down the list, where those people called to salvation make their decision to accept Jesus Christ, at the correct appointed times in their lives.

Then at some point in God’s divine time-line, in coordination with the Holy Spirit empowered work of evangelism, the colossal end-times events definitely begin to occur. This ushers in an intensified period of chaos and upheaval that will set up for the last final group, at the bottom of the list of people called to salvation within the due course of time, to be motivated by end-times catastrophes to reject this world and to make their decision for Christ. The long history of human salvation, and the promised momentous end-times prophetic events, both running along parallel tracks, finally converge at their appointed time. Somewhere along this time-line, the last “great” push for the most stubborn converts intensifies to a final crescendo, the tribulation kicks into a higher gear, most if not all of the evangelical work is complete, and in my opinion the promised rapture then occurs.

A Promise of Hope for Every Generation

“Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, in which dwelleth righteousness. Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless.” (2 Peter 3:13-14)

From The Cross in the End-Times

In the Apostle Paul’s letters to the churches, like Peter’s quote above, part of the message to these new Christians was to look forward in hope and anticipation for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in their lifetimes. This was consistent with the commands of Jesus given in several teachings and parables scattered throughout the gospels, for His disciples to always watch and be ready for His return (Matthew 24:42, 25:13, Mark 13:37, Luke 21:36).

The question can then be asked, if the teaching of Jesus, the preaching of the apostles, the doctrine of the early church, and the scriptures of the New Testament all uniformly say that not only first-century but all subsequent believers should look for an imminent second coming of Christ, was this inconsistent with a pre-condition, for example, that Israel would have to become a nation again, as actually occurred in 1948, before the end of time (Isaiah 11:11-12; Jeremiah 31:10)? In light of the past two thousand years of recorded history, during which the rapture or the second coming did not take place, were all of the Christians who lived and died throughout the centuries between the first century and the twenty-first century, partially misinformed about looking in earnest expectation for the rapture of the church (1 Corinthians 15:51-53) and the second coming of Jesus?

At the time of the ministry of Jesus, and the subsequent writing of most of the New Testament in the following decades, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the nation of Israel by the Romans in 70 A.D. had not even happened yet (Luke 19:41-44). The fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish people throughout the world would obviously have to occur before a re-gathering could happen sometime in the future, as a sign that the last days were approaching. When the disciples ask the recently resurrected Jesus in Acts 1:6 “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel” (the Messianic reign), Jesus answers “It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.”

This discussion with Jesus, concerning His restoring the kingdom in Israel and thus bringing about the end of the old world system, was occurring before Paul the Apostle was even converted, and before much of the New Testament theology and doctrine was fully formulated. It would be almost two decades before Paul would write 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. This discussion with Jesus about the end-times was occurring before the Apostle John had even written his gospel, much less the book of Revelation. Yet Jesus did not say at that time, to stop watching and looking for His second coming, but instead said that the disciples would receive Holy Spirit power to become witnesses of Christ to the uttermost parts of the world (Acts 1:8). It was a fair question by the disciples to ask of the resurrected Jesus at that time, and the answer then was that there was evangelical work to do, which stretched in time far beyond the vision of the early disciples to our present day.

Many people use the above-mentioned scriptures and early church doctrine to argue that the rapture of the Christian church is imminent today, and could happen at any moment, and I believe they are correct. The concept that there would be millions of Christians living through twenty centuries of time without this promise actually coming true, yet living their lives as if the rapture and the second coming could happen any day, is not inconsistent. The expectation of the second coming of Christ and the beginning of a new earth and a new heavens where peace and justice will reign, is a hope that is rightly supposed to reside within the hearts of Christians in the second century, the fifth century, the tenth century, through the middle ages, and in each of our previous four or five centuries leading up to today. The fact that the rapture and the second coming did not occur in these past centuries, even though many Christians were faithfully watching and looking for these events, is due to some overriding considerations that are more important than the timing of the rapture or the second coming of Christ.

One of these important considerations is the salvation of the many sheep that Jesus speaks about when He says He has other sheep to call that are not of this first century flock: “And other sheep I have, that are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16). Those sheep that Jesus is referring to, at this current time, happen to be us.

If the rapture and the second coming had both occurred in the 8th century, for example, we could not now be saved because we would never have been born. You could not be reading this book, if the rapture occurred in the 9th century, because the world and the millennium would have ended already. If the rapture had occurred in the 11th century, there would have been no John Wycliffe, no Martin Luther, no Protestant Reformation, no invention of the printing press that allowed Bibles to be available in hundreds of languages to be read by the common people, and no great missionaries of the 18th and 19th centuries. If the rapture had occurred in the 15th century, there would have been no Salvation Army, no Red Cross, no Billy Graham crusades around the world, no classic debates with brilliant antagonists resulting in the creation of modern theology and apologetics, and no intense searches for truth over the past recent centuries within philosophy, science, history, archaeology, politics, and Christianity.

Even though the earnest expectation for the end of this world and the beginning of a new world has been the proper hope of every Christian since the first century, this hope has correctly and rightly been put on hold until the very last sheep have heard the gospel message and made their decision for Christ. This viewpoint is consistent with 2 Peter 3:9, which says: “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”

Stepping-Out of Worldly Conventional Thinking

The more radical the departure from worldly conventional normalcy in the biblical narrative stories of faith, the greater is the apologetic value of the argument for the divine authorship of these biblical journeys of faith life-scripts.

“God has a plan for our lives” must at some point in time contain the component of the displacement of our own ways, for a journey of faith to functionally work.

If we are in our own ways then we “run the show.” If we are in our God-composed life-script then God is running the show. Letting go allows God to take over and demonstrate experientially who and what He is.

The biblical narrative stories of faith describe in action what the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14 means. The falling away of our worldly conventional thinking, in “taking up our cross” (Mk. 8:34-35) is part of the cost of the ticket to gain entrance into an adventure of faith. Releasing our faith and fate into the hands of God in matters small and large, as previewed for us correctly being done in the biblical narrative stories of faith, clarifies what the scripture means when it says that “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb. 11:6).

The existence of the one, true, living God active in the affairs of mankind is necessary for the creative invention of the biblical narrative stories of faith. Birds could not fly unless there was something real and substantial in the composition of air and wind. If God was not intimately involved as Redeemer, Waymaker, and King within the complex environment of our fallen, broken world, the creative, imaginative invention of a journey of faith as recorded in the Bible would never get off the ground…there would be no “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn. 14:6) spiritual composition of air and wind to fly through.

This is the main theme we should take away from the biblical narrative stories of faith.

We Cannot Do It All, Part 5

Truth by definition is exclusive.
Abraham cannot become the “father of faith” inaugural example of a God-led journey of faith, for all of mankind, by staying in the city of Haran. The practical time constraints and the physical limitations of not being able to occupy two places at once, exclude the option of staying behind in Haran if Abraham is to fulfill his purpose and destiny in life.

Joseph cannot fulfill the two prophetic dreams foreseeing his rise to eventually becoming the governor of Egypt during a great famine, if he had somehow managed to stay behind in his homeland of Canaan. The incredible narrowness of his God-composed life-script excluded any other options other than a difficult apprenticeship in management and leadership in Potiphar’s house and Pharaoh’s prison.

Moses is decades too early in “running ahead of the Spirit” when he presumptuously kills the Egyptian and must flee to the land of Midian. By contrast, the calling of Moses at the burning bush is specific, narrowly defined, and comes with the promise of God to lead the way in this taunting challenge of delivering the Israelites from Egypt.

The calling and preparation of the 17-year old David to become king 13 years later contains no portion of the worldly conventional normalcy that David would have experienced had he stayed in his father’s house as the youngest and least important son.

Peter cannot, on his own, jettison his impetuous self-led nature without his precipitous fall in the courtyard of Caiaphas on the night of the betrayal of Jesus. A genuine journey of faith having the supernatural guidance of God’s leadership allows no room for the competing character trait of self-confident self-reliance. This part of Peter’s character would not fit through the narrow gate of the exclusivity of truth, in his calling to be a leader in the early Christian church.

The large chunk of stone marble that is chiseled out of the life of Paul on the road to Damascus…the persecution of the early church…is amazingly turned around by God into a positive. The highly educated Paul the Pharisee, now the new Christian evangelist and apostle after his conversion at Damascus, could not thereafter look down his nose at the idol-worshipping, polytheistic Gentiles because of his own misguided actions in persecuting the church.

The point here is that God composes perfect life-scripts for non-divine, imperfect people. The purposeful destinies of our lives reaches fulfillment only when we hand over the chisel to God and allow Him to carve out the contrary, excess material of worldly conventional thinking.

We Cannot Do It All, Part 4

To borrow from a lecture by Ravi Zacharias…”the definition of sin reduced to its simplest form is the violation of God’s purpose for our lives.”

The New Testament tells us that Jesus Christ was the blemish-free, Lamb of God sacrifice for the sins of the world…Himself being perfect and without sin. Using the basic definition given above, Jesus fulfilled His purpose and destiny perfectly in following the will of His Father in His unique life-script of being the light of the world, the bread of life, the way, the truth, and the life, and the savior of mankind.

Quoting from Seven Days That Divide the World, by John Lennox, page 74: “What the incarnation tells us is that human beings are unique---they are so created that God himself could become one.”

What the narrative stories of faith recorded in the Bible tell us is that non-divine people can fulfill their purpose through God-composed and managed adventures of faith.

Using the analogy of the sculptor chipping away the excess pieces of marble to arrive at a portrait masterpiece, Jesus is unique in that the humanly typical waste material of wrong desires according to world conventional thinking, which are contrary to and will not fit within God’s purpose for our lives…did not have to be chipped away from the life of Jesus.

Because we cannot satisfy our every want and desire due to the practical constraints of time, energy, and the physical reality that we cannot be at two places at once, things have to be cut out of our lives.

The perfectly sinless life…in complete non-violation of God the Father’s purpose for the life-script of Jesus the Son of God…identifies for us what is meant by the narrow gate of Matthew 7:13-14 and the taking up of our cross of Mark 8:34-35. Jesus had no extraneous worldly conventional thinking to be chipped away. Jesus was a finished portrait masterpiece from birth.

The biblical narrative stories of faith give us a pattern of fulfilled lives…having focused life-scripts with un-fillable wants and desires chipped away by the Master Sculptor.

This is one of the keys to understanding the divine inspiration of the Bible and a God-invented walk-of-faith that chips away the non-essentials from the called-out, Christian life today.

We Cannot Do It All, Part 3

We can’t do everything in life, because of the constraints of time, energy, and the physical reality that we can only be at one place at a time...but we somehow sense that we could and want to do more. The Bible says that we are created in the image of God…so we have the sense that being omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent is possible yet just out of reach.

This is one explanation for our impatient jump at the chance for the “knowledge of good and evil” during the temptation in the Garden of Eden. “Ye shall be as gods” was a half-truth too enticing to pass up. Adam and Eve could have simply answered the tempter: “there is no hurry…we will discuss this with God, and then get back to you,” and our world today would have been a different place.

The hard reality for non-divine beings who have the created capacity for moral reasoning, is that there is no easy shortcut route to an understanding of good and evil. Some amount of challenge, suffering, and hardship is required to separate the subtle issues that divide right from wrong. This is where the cross of Christ becomes the chisel that God uses to chip off the chunks of worldly conventional thinking and living, which then leads to the original and innovative, eternally fulfilling journey-of-faith walk through life with God.

Only the true and living God knows what to chip away to achieve a masterpiece portrait-in-action in our lives. This is the divinely creative genius we see in the biblical narrative stories of faith from Abraham through Paul. This is the example for new covenant believers in Jesus Christ today, who have the promise from Jeremiah 31:31:34 that all who follow God will know Him from the least to the greatest.

God, brilliantly and precisely removing the unnecessary and distracting options from our journey of faith life-scripts…is the genuine coin-of-the-realm that authenticates its divine origin. Creating both the harmony of commonly shared characteristics of the cross of Christ, and the discontinuity of the diversity of walk-of-faith storylines to match our individual abilities and callings, is the reality we see mirrored in the biblical narrative stories of faith.

The perception that the biblical narrative stories of faith, containing the cross, are unique in all of religion, philosophy, and literature is further enhanced and clarified by the discontinuities between the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Deborah, Ruth, Samuel, Daniel, Jeremiah, Ezra, Hannah, Huldah, Peter, James, John, Barnabas, Paul, Silas, and Timothy, to name only a few. Although the theme of the cross commonly runs through each storyline, the varied portions of worldly conventional normalcy that are chipped-off and removed by God the master sculptor reveals in each case a diverse portrait.

This is one part of the biblical message of redemption and liberation from sin that validates its divine origin. This is all-important evidence for purpose and meaning in the Christian worldview.