Galatians 1:1-9

1Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2and all the brothers with me,

To the churches in Galatia:

3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.No Other Gospel

No Other Gospel

6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!



Dig Deeper

When I coached high school basketball at an inner city school in Milwaukee we always had an issue with many, if not most, of the basketball players also being associated with one gang or another. There was one year in particular when our team was dominated by two gangs. The numbers were almost split down the middle between Latin Kings and Black Gangster Disciples. As the coach, I spent an incredible amount of time working on their unity. At every opportunity, we taught them that they had committed to play basketball and their commitment to the team outweighed any gang associations they might have. It took awhile but the message worked and they became quite unified, overcoming the fact that they should have been enemies. Imagine though, if I had accomplished all of that and then left them for a few months, during which time, some other coach came in and segregated the team based on gang ties. What if they told them that I didn’t know what I was doing and that their gangs really did matter and really were more important than team? This would undo everything that we had taught them and would have destroyed the incredible team that had been built.

This is something of the situation that was happening in the churches of Galatia as Paul writes his letter. Paul had preached the gospel and planted the Galatian churches in an area that was mixed with both Jews and Gentiles. He had spent a great deal of time, presumably, teaching them that all that truly mattered was that they were in Christ, that any previous distinctions such as Jew and Gentile did not take supremacy over their position in Christ. Paul had built a beautiful building of unity on the foundation of Christ and had moved on to start more churches. In his absence, however, some ultra-conservative Jews from Jerusalem had come to town claiming they were sent by the church there but apparently were not (Acts 15:24). They swept into town with the message that Paul was confused and didn’t have authorization from the real authorities to do what he was doing. Rather than all racial and other distinctions being superceded by the supremacy of their status in Christ, these teachers claimed that non-Jews must first become full Jews, following all the laws of Moses including circumcision.

Paul had taught the Christians in Galatia that the true creator of the universe had finally revealed His long-promised plan to deal with evil in the world. He had done it through a seemingly ordinary Jew named Jesus. Jesus had faced evil’s most powerful weapon, death, and had walked out the other side. This resurrection meant that God had fulfilled His promises and was now building a new a family, a new people of God. This new family was one without divisions and without race. All were welcome and equal at this table. Paul laid the foundation for this family and then moved on but these men from Jerusalem had come in and said that he didn’t know what he was doing. He was not a real apostle, they said. He’d gotten his strange ideas by mucking up what other people had taught him. He got his so-called position of apostleship from other people, not from Jesus himself. They, on the other hand, claimed to have been sent by the real authorities, the real apostles in Jerusalem, and so were the bearers of the real gospel. They taught the young Galatian Christians that in order to be a part of the real family of God that they had to enter in through circumcision and the laws of Moses rather than entering in through Christ. If they wanted to be a part of God’s family, they needed to keep the law, the thing that kept the Jews and the Gentiles neatly divided and separated.

Thus, as Paul begins his letter, he stresses that he is an apostle but that his authority does not come from man, it does indeed come from Jesus. Ultimately, his apostleship comes from God the Father. We can see within this opening greeting that Paul does two things in particular when it comes to talking about God. First, he inextricably links Jesus and the Father together. Whatever is true of one is true of the other. They always act and are described in perfect unity. The other is that he follows a very Jewish practice of describing Jesus and the Father by their actions. Thus, who is the Father? The One who raised him from the dead. Who is Jesus Christ, the One who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present age. Paul is thus reminding them that through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Father has made available the life of the age to come.

After the standard greeting, Paul normally moves into some prayer or commendation for the local church, but in this letter he is so shocked there is no time for that. Paul is astonished, not that they have slowly drifted off or been persuaded, but that they have willingly deserted the true gospel. They hadn’t even put up a fight but had, apparently, embraced this new gospel with blinding speed. In doing so, they had not simply abandoned some theoretical theological position, but had deserted a personal, loving God, the one who called them by the grace of Christ. By not teaching that the gospel is about entering into the life of the Messiah and becoming one family, the new people of God, Paul says that these men are not just perverting the gospel but twisting it to such a point that it is no gospel (good news) at all.

Paul makes it clear in verse 8 that the status or reputation of the messenger does not validate the message. It is the message that validates the messenger. In other words, it doesn’t matter how impressive or authoritative the speaker might be, if they are not speaking the true gospel, then they need to be rejected. That means even if an angel preached a different gospel, they should be rejected. In bringing up angels in this instance, Paul is probably referring to the Jewish belief that the Mosaic law had been delivered through angelic mediators (based on a particular reading of Psalm 68:17). It is quite possible that these Jerusalem teachers had stressed the importance of following the law by stressing its angelic, and thus heavenly origins. But Paul wants them to know better. They have allowed their itching ears to be scratched by this false gospel (2 Tim. 4:3) because they valued the messenger over the message. Paul warns them against this even when it comes to him. The messenger is unimportant but the message cannot be changed. If anyone, says Paul, preaches a different message than the true gospel, then let him be eternally a curse before God.



Devotional Thought

Paul worked hard to build a single family of people that had entered into the life of Jesus and left behind any human and social distinctions. This is as much a challenge for us today as it was in Paul’s day. Has your community of disciples truly embraced that and become a single family of believers? If not, what can you do to embrace that vision?

Out of the Driveway, Into the Game: Chapter 10

Note: On Monday, January 14th, we will get back to the Bible commentaries with a expository commentary on Galatians.

Chapter 10 – Coming With the Clouds

From the very beginning, the early church was dealing with false teachers, false teachings, inventive, and creative methods of interpreting the Scriptures. This could not have been much of a surprise to the members of the early church community, as the writers of the New Testament had repeatedly warned them about the very real danger of false teachers. Peter went so far as to say that false teachers would be among them that would teach destructive heresies (2 Peter 2:1).

By the mid-second century, a false teacher named Montanus began what he called the New Prophecy movement. Montanus, a native of Phrygia, declared that he was the sole spokesperson for the Holy Spirit. He convinced his followers that Christ had promised a spokesperson for the Holy Spirit and he was it. This was the beginning of a new era. Montanus claimed that he was the lyre (WHAT IS A LYRE) of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, said Montanus, would play his new tunes for humanity through his instrument in Montanus.

Montanus convinced his followers that the end of the world was at hand. He told them that a universal war that would destroy the earth was inevitable; Christ's thousand year reign was near and would soon begin. To this point this was probably a rather novel interpretation of Scripture, particularly the book of the Revelation.

The charismatic leader told his followers to abstain from marriage and separate from their spouses if they were already married. The community instituted strange practices of certain fasts, feasts and consuming unique combinations of food. Many other strict rules were undertaken as a way of preparing for the Millennium. Convinced they were living in the so-called last days, Montanus' followers often left their jobs, some sold their homes, and they prepared for Christ's final return. As time passed, the group readjusted the signs and kept pushing off the return of Christ by a few years. Following his death, two women, Maxmilla and Prisca took over the movement. The movement sputtered on in Phrygia for another century or so before finally fading away. The original group had been so focused on their false teaching of the imminent and dateable return of Christ that they never really planned for the future for themselves or for the world. In the end, they died out and had little to no impact on the world around them.[i]

Since that time, various groups have popped up claiming that the signs of Christ's return were immanent. At nearly every turn of the century since the Montanist movement, religious groups have whipped up hysteria about the coming of Christ. In 1941, the Watchtower, the official magazine of the Jehovah's Witnesses began predicting that Armageddon would take place within a matter of months. By 1944, the Armageddon hysteria had reached a fever pitch for the Witnesses. According to Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, former member, "So firmly did Jehovah's Witnesses believe this to be true that there were those who, in 1944, refused to get their teeth filled, postponing all care of their bodies until God saw to their regeneration in His New World. (One zealous Witness I knew carried a supply of cloves to alleviate the pain of an aching molar which she did not wish to have treated by her dentist, since the time was so short till Jehovah would provide a new and perfect one. To this day, I associate the fragrance of cloves with the imminence of disaster.)"[ii]

A similar but even more pronounced situation occurred in the 1960's and 1970's when the Watchtower began to again predict the end of the world. This time, they said, the end would come in 1975. Witnesses began to sell their homes and give away their possessions en masse. They gave away canned goods to neighbors because they wouldn't need them anymore. Many witnesses quit their jobs so that in the closing months they could spend all of their time witnessing and preaching about the coming of Christ. No thought or attention was given to the future because there was no earthly future according to their interpretation of the Scriptures. Some witnesses were so devastated by the failed prophecy that many left the movement and still others turned to suicide.[iii]

There is a reason why a majority of people in the United States identify themselves as Christian and yet, have little cultural influence. A large part of this is, believe it or not, related to the way that Christians interpret the book of Revelation. Let me preface this by stating that I am not implying that a differing interpretation of the Revelation or the end-times constitutes a heresy or a cult. There are, however, certain similarities between the heretical beliefs of the Montanists and Jehovah's Witnesses concerning their interpretation of the end times and the end times expectations of large portions of Christendom today.

There have been many different ways of interpreting Revelation throughout the ages and there continue to be many today. We will not take the time here to consider all of the different interpretive camps of the end times and Revelation. For the purposes of this chapter we will look at two primary groups. The first interpretive group is the futurists. Futurists are the most popular and influential group in American evangelicalism today. This view has been championed of late by the Left Behind series that is heavy on excitement but light on good biblical exegesis. The futurists teach that the book of Revelation describes a time yet to come and predicts the end of the world. They believe that the Revelation and other passages in the Bible predict a coming tribulation for mankind and a rapture of the church. After that time, Christ will rule in His Kingdom on earth for a literal period of one thousand years. The futurists break down into those that teach pre-tribulation rapture of the church; mid-tribulation of the church; and post-tribulation of the church.

The second interpretation that we will consider is the partial-preterist view. Preterism teaches that the book of Revelation was a prophecy of the first century destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Old Covenant times when it was written. Partial-preterism is similar to classic preterism except that it interprets the final portions of the book of Revelation yet to be fulfilled while claiming that most of the book has to do with the first century. This view proclaims that the Kingdom of God was fully instituted at the day of Pentecost and that the thousand years is a symbolic number, indicating that God's Kingdom rule would be complete.

So what does all of this have to do with the worldview of Christian young people? Believe it or not, it has a lot to do with it. As stated before in this work, what we believe effects how we act. Because our culture has been so dominated by futurist thinking in the last one hundred years, the futurist worldview has seeped into many parts of the modern Christian mindset. How one views the end times has a major impact as to how they behave and plan now.

The prevailing belief that biblical signs are unmistakably pointing towards an at-any-moment-now return have had huge negative effects on the biblical worldview of much of Christendom and our young people. Because this is such a prevalent view in America, those who have not given the subjects of the end times and Revelation much thought probably tend to fall into the futurist worldview of the end times.

The futurist worldview has had a negative impact because it leads to Christians that for the most part have no solid plan for the future. It also saps any personal incentive to prepare for the future or change the culture. It offers an extremely pessimistic view of the future. According to the futurists, the culture will be lost to Satan and the church will only overcome when Christ returns. This view of the future is so pessimistic that it offers no reason to commit resources to long-term plans and programs of cultural capture and transformation.

God did not form the church to sit in the back of the Secular Humanist or Islamic bus, careening out of control until we are bailed out by the return of Jesus. A careful reading of the Bible, especially Revelation, will show that God has promised victory to His people. Our job is not only to save the world but to transform and exercise dominion over it as well. Futurists have never had much of a stomach to change culture. The best they muster is a desire to escape from our culture's more negative aspects. Rather than being on the offensive, futurists don't expect to achieve anything culturally. Why rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic? Rather than fixing the ship, the mindset becomes to get as many people off before it sinks. There has to be a balance between transforming culture and saving souls. For an example of that truth, look at countries like Iran that have not been transformed by the biblical worldview. The ability to even get into that country and save souls is extremely limited.

Fear of some great tribulation still off in the future is illegitimate and unfounded scripturally. It has served as a major disincentive for Christians to sacrifice time and resources to build up a comprehensive kingdom of God here and now. Most of the passages cited to support a rapture doctrine actually have to do with the final judgment with no hint of a rapture or still-future tribulation period. For starters, a promised rapture of the church and a great tribulation has some major theological problems when considered in the light of Matthew 13 in which Jesus says that the wheat and the tares will not be separated until the final judgment.

The futurist views deny that the kingdom of God includes the civilization of God. They deny that we can or are called to change the culture. They teach that all civilizations will necessarily be God-haters during the church era. This is not, however, the message of Revelation as we will see shortly. When the defeats in the church life come, and they will, the futurist view encourages the adherent to accept it as part of the inevitable. When people expect to be defeated they will be. Expecting to lose saps your strength and your will to fight. The futurist view leads to the logical conclusion that the work of Christ on the Cross is virtually irrelevant to history and culture, as is His ascension to the right hand of God. Also relegated to virtual irrelevance in history and culture is the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. Did Jesus not promise that the gates of Hades would never overcome His kingdom? (Matthew 16:18). Why should Christians assume that Satan's kingdom is more powerful than Christ's? Why should we believe that Satan's kingdom will continually overcome Christ's kingdom throughout history until such time as He returns in the future? Rather than seeing the church as overcomers, we often take on the view that the church is on the defensive and will be besieged by Satan until Christ returns. This is a backwards view of the biblical message to the church.

The theology of dominion of the church has always led to great strides in history and culture while the pre-millennial view has led to the church virtually dropping out of society while waiting in the corner for Jesus to come rescue us. There are two keys that we will discuss to a proper understanding of the biblical worldview of the present and future of the church. The first is a proper interpretation of Revelation. The second is an understanding of the role of dominion for Christians.


Interpreting Revelation

One of most important aspects of correctly interpreting Revelation is to understand the date when it was penned. There are two main views regarding the date of authorship. One is that it was written before 70 A.D. and the destruction of the Temple, and probably before 68 A.D. and the death of Nero. The other, and more popular pre-millennial date, is 96 A.D. during the reign of Domitian. The question comes down to whether Revelation was written during the reign of Nero or Domitian.

Although less popular currently, the earlier date is to be preferred for many reasons. First, is the lack of evidence for any great period of persecution under Domitian. While Domitian was demonstrably cruel, there is no mention of an alleged widespread persecution of Christians by Domitian until the 5th century. Domitian did briefly banish some Christians but they were eventually allowed back into the Empire. John Robinson remarks: "When this limited and selective purge, in which no Christian was for certain put to death, is compared with the massacre of Christians under Nero in what two early and entirely independent witnesses speak of as 'immense multitudes,'[iv] it is astonishing that commentators should have been led by Irenaeus, who himself does not even mention a persecution, to prefer a Domitianic context for the book of Revelation."[v] Robinson's reference to Irenaeus refers to Irenaeus' writing in Against Heresies in the late second century that the prophecy of the Revelation had been seen around 96 A.D. The sentence in which that information appears is difficult in the original language and could just as easily be read that it was John who was seen in 96 A.D., not the prophecy. This one sentence from Irenaues, provides the only hard alleged evidence for the date during Domitian's reign. Regardless of the ambiguity of the language, it is also possible that Irenaeus was mistaken if he was claiming a later date for the prophecy of John.

Second, the familiarity that the author demonstrates with specific Temple worship practices suggests that the Temple was still standing when written. As the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., this would favor the earlier date.

Third, when interpreted properly, the book of Revelation is primarily dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem. This would clearly put the date of authorship before September, 70 A.D.

Fourth, Scripture teaches that the particular type of special revelation that resulted in the Bible would end by A.D. 70. "The angel Gabriel told Daniel that the "seventy weeks" were to end with the destruction of Jerusalem (Daniel 9:24-27); and that period would also serve to 'seal up the vision and the prophecy' (Daniel 9:27). In other words, this special revelation would stop – be sealed up – by the time Jerusalem was destroyed.[vi] The brilliant, fourth century church father, Athanasius understood this to be the meaning of Daniel 9. "When did prophet and division cease from Israel? Was it not when Christ came, the Holy One of holies? It is, in fact, a sign and notable proof of the coming of the Word that Jerusalem no longer stand, neither is prophet raised up nor vision revealed among them. . . For the same reason Jerusalem stood until the same time, in order that theie men might premeditate the types before the truth was known. >So, of course, once the Holy One of holies had come, both vision and prophecy were sealed. And the kingdom of Jerusalem ceased at the same time."[vii]

There are many other items that point to the earlier date for Revelation but the fact seems clear. God warned that the kingdom would be taken from the apostate Jews (Matthew 21:33-43). He held off his final judgment on the nation of Israel until the writing of the New Covenant document was complete. Once that was accomplished, God terminated the Old Covenant once and for all with the destruction of Jerusalem.

To understand the book of Revelation, and really the whole Bible, we must understand that the Bible is a book about the Covenant. The Bible is not a complete theological treatise, an encyclopedia of religious knowledge, a collection of moral tales, or a grouping of studies of spiritual heroes from times past. The Bible is the record of God revealing Himself to mankind and creating a relationship with man through His Covenant. The Covenant is the meaning of biblical history, biblical law, and biblical prophecy. "The prophets were God's legal emissaries to Israel and the nations, acting as prosecuting attorneys bringing what has become known among recent scholars as the 'Covenant Lawsuit.'"[viii]

The prophets did not give prophecies that would fit our culture's definition of what a prophecy is. In other words, they are not a prediction but more of an evaluation of man's response to the warnings of the Word of God. For example, look at God's words through Jeremiah: "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it" (Jeremiah 18:7-10). The words of the prophets were only predications in the sense that they relayed what would happen if the people did not respond humbly to the warnings. This is why Jonah's prophecy that Ninevah would be destroyed in forty days did not come true, so to speak. The Ninevites repented, and so disaster was averted.

Like so many other Biblical writings, the Revelation is a specific covenantal prophecy. The only way to properly understand the images in Revelation is through the understanding of the covenantal context. If it is ignored, the intent of John's message is lost and Revelation becomes open to the latest fanciful eschatological flavor of the day. The book of Revelation is a covenant document not a predictive look at the very near future. If it is not read in the proper context of covenantal understanding it, loses its continuity with the rest of the Bible and becomes little more than a disturbing appendix to the rest of God's Word.

God's relationship with Israel was described in covenantal terms throughout the pages of the Bible. Israel was God's bride, bound to Him through covenant. The Covenant was a legally binding contract between Israel and the Lord God. It should be of no surprise, then, that the structure of many of the Old Testament Covenantal books in the Old Testament are extremely similar to the accepted form of peace treaties and covenants in the ancient Near East. It is not as if the biblical writers copied the old world's form of treaties, rather it would seem the other way around.

Treaties in the ancient world were pretty simple. A conquering king would make a covenant with their defeated enemy. In the covenant certain promises and stipulations would be made that would guarantee protection for the defeated vassal. The vassal also agreed to obey and respect the authority of their new lord. If the vassal or inferior king violated the covenant terms, the lord would send messengers to warn the vassal to remind him of the curses and consequences of breaking the sanctions. This was the function of the biblical prophets. They were reminding Israel of the curse-sanctions if they did not quickly repent of their covenant-violating activities.

The standard treaty in the ancient world consisted of five parts, all of which appear in the biblical covenants:


1. Preamble (identifying the lordship of the Great King, stressing both his transcendence and his immanence);


2. Historical Prologue (surveying the lord's previous relationship to the vassal, especially emphasizing the blessings bestowed);


3. Ethical Stipulations (expounding the vassal's obligations, his "guide to citizenship" in the covenant);


4. Sanctions (outlining the blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience);


5. Succession Arrangements (dealing with the continuity of the covenant relationship over future generations).[ix]


We need look no further than the book of Deuteronomy to find a biblical example of this treaty form.


Deuteronomy

1. Preamble (1:1-5)

2. Historical Prologue (1:6-4:49)

3. Ethical Stipulations (5:1-26:19)

4. Sanctions (27:1-30:20)

5. Succession Arrangements (31:1-34:12)[x]


Once the covenant had been set in place it was God's expectations that the stipulations be followed. When they were not, the prophets were sent as prosecuting attorneys. The pattern of the lawsuit was always patterned after the same structure of the original covenant. This means that the biblical prophecies follow the five-part treaty structure. The book of Hosea, for example, is laid out according to the covenant outline:


Hosea

1. Preamble (1)

2. Historical Prologue (2)

3. Ethical Stipulations (4-7)

4. Sanctions (8-9)

5. Succession Arrangements (10-14)[xi]



In the tradition of many other biblical prophecies, the Revelation is a prophecy of the Covenant demonstrating God's wrath against Israel and a reminder of the covenantal curses that will follow as a result of their violation of the stipulations. By rejecting Jesus Christ, Israel had rejected the Covenant and now the curses would kick in. The Revelation is written in the same five part treaty structure style in which many other biblical prophecies are written:


Revelation

1. Preamble: Vision of the Son of Man (1)

2. Historical Prologue: The Seven Letters (2-3)

3. Ethical Stipulations: The Seven Seals (4-7)

4. Sanctions: The Seven Trumpets (8-14)

5. Succession Arrangements (15-22)[xii]


Another indicator that Revelation is covenant lawsuit is the fact that it so closely mirrors and follows the structure of Ezekiel, one of the clearest covenant lawsuits in the Bible. Revelation is very dependent upon the language and imagery of Ezekiel.[xiii] According to Albert Vanhoye there are at least 130 separate references to Ezekiel found in the Revelation.[xiv] John does more than just make some allusions to Ezekiel; it appears that he follows him step-by-step. Phillip Carrington says, with just a slight hint of hyperbole: "The Revelation is a Christian rewriting of Ezekiel. Its fundamental structure is the same. Its interpretation depends upon Ezekiel. The first half of both books leads up to the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem; in the second they describe a new and holy Jerusalem. There is one significant difference. Ezekiel's laments over Tyre is transformed into a lament over Jerusalem, the reason being that St. John wishes to transfer to Jerusalem the note irrevocable doom found in the lament over Tyre. Here lies the real difference in the messages of the two books. Jerusalem, like Tyre, is to go forever."[xv] Look at the obvious parallels between the two books.


The Throne-Vision (Revelation 4/Ezekiel 1)
The Book (Revelation 5/Ezekiel 2-3)
The Four Plagues (Revelation 6:1-8/Ezekiel 5)
The Slain under the Altar (Revelation 6:9-11/Ezekiel 6)
The Wrath of God (Revelation 6:12-17/Ezekiel 7)
The Seal on the Saint's Foreheads (Revelation 7/Ezekiel 9)
The Coals from the Altar (Revelation 8/Ezekiel 10)
No More Delay (Revelation 10:1-7/Ezekiel 12)
The Eating of the Book (Revelation 10:8-11/Ezekiel 2)
The Measuring of the Temple (Revelation 11:1-2/Ezekiel 40-43)
Jerusalem and Sodom (Revelation 11:8/Ezekiel 16)
The Cup of Wrath (Revelation 14/Ezekiel 23)
The Vine of the Land (Revelation 14:18-20/Ezekiel 15)
The Great Harlot (Revelation 17-18/Ezekiel 16, 23)
The Lament over the City (Revelation 18/Ezekiel 27)
The Scavengers' Feast (Revelation 19/Ezekiel 39)
The First Resurrection (Revelation 20:4-6/Ezekiel 37)
The Battle with Gog and Magog (Revelation 20:7-9/Ezekiel 38-39)
The New Jerusalem (Revelation 21/Ezekiel 40-48)
The River of Life (Revelation 22/Ezekiel 47)[xvi]

This step-by-step "pegging" of Revelation with Ezekiel demonstrates more than just a literary relationship. "Level pegging is not usually a feature of literary borrowing. . . Level pegging is a feature rather of lectionary use, as when the Church sets Genesis to be read alongside Romans, or Deuteronomy alongside Acts. . . Furthermore, it is plain that John expected his prophecies to be read aloud in worship, for he says, 'Blessed is he who reads the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear' (1:3)."[xvii] The fact that John repeatedly refers to his book as 'the prophecy' indicates that he was aligning himself with the Old Testament prophecies. David Chilton sums this up saying that, ". . . the Book of Revelation was intended from the beginning as a series of readings in worship throughout the Church Year, to be read in tandem with the prophecies of Ezekiel (as well as other Old Testament readings).[xviii] M.D. Goulder further describes the purpose of Revelation, ". . . both books divide into about fifty units, and the Jewish (Christian) year consists of fifty or fifty-one sabbaths/Sundays. So we have what looks like material for an annual cycle of Ezekiel inspiring a year's cycle of visions, which could then be read in the Asian churches alongside Ezekiel, and expounded in sermons in its light."[xix]

Another insight into properly interpreting Revelation is to understand the symbolism in the book. As stated above, prophecy is not strictly predicting the future. It is primarily a message from God reminding the hearers of their violation of the Covenant and the proclamation of a covenant lawsuit. The prophets did predict future events but they did not do so in historical form. They predicted the natural results of the way events were going. They used symbols and figures from history, the surrounding culture, and creation. Most errors in interpreting books of biblical prophecy, including the Revelation, are due to misunderstandings of the nature of symbolism in prophecy.

It is important to remember that the Bible is literature. It is divinely inspired, but it is literature, nonetheless, and must be read as literature. When one reads poetry, it must be read differently than if it was the Wall Street Journal. In the same way, prophetic symbolism cannot be interpreted anyway you would like. Think of how silly it would seem if we were to expect to read Psalm 23 literally. Is there literally a valley of the shadow of death? Does Jesus make us lie down in green pastures? I know of no one that would suggest the twenty-third Psalm be read that way, yet these same people have little problem in attempting to read prophetic symbolism like that found in Revelation that way.

From the very first prophecy in the Bible we already see the tendency to use symbolic language: "And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15). This is clearly not as simple as being history written before it happens. This is a symbolic statement, as is most biblical prophecy.

John tells his readers from the first verse of Revelation that this is a book of revelation and signs: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified [it] by his angel unto his servant John" (KJV). The Revelation was signified or "sign-ified" by the angel. John wants his readers to know that this is a book of signs and symbols and should be read that way. "The symbols are not to be understood in a literal manner. We can see this by St. John's use of the same term in his Gospel (12:33; 18:32: 21:19). In each case, it is used of Christ 'signifying' a future event by a more or less symbolic indication, rather than by a prosaic, literal description. And this is generally the form of prophecies in the Revelation. It is a book of symbols from beginning to end."[xx] John did not intend for the Revelation to be read as "tomorrow's newspaper today." He expected that his readers would read his prophecy in the terms of the Old Testament symbolic language with which he wrote the book.

The key here is to use the Old Testament symbolism that John intended. We must interpret symbols using the system the author intended and used. We cannot make symbols mean whatever we wish them to. This is irresponsible and dangerous. David Chilton agrees that we cannot interpret symbols however we choose. He says, ". . . nor did St. John create the images of the Book of Revelation out of his own imagination. He presents Christ to his readers as a Lion and Lamb, not because he thinks those are a pretty picture, but because of the connotations of lions and lambs already established in the Bible."[xxi] It is obvious that John used allusions to Old Testament language and symbols as a starting point for his own symbolism. Merrill Tenney says that if looked at conservatively, John makes 348 clear references to the Old Testament, although he never once quotes the Old Testament. This includes 57 from the Pentateuch, 235 from the Prophets, and 56 from the historical and poetical books.[xxii]

The earliest Christians would have easily understood John's language, references, and symbols. By the late second and early third centuries, the Hebrew influence had largely vanished from the Church and so did the ease in understanding such a Hebrew book. Our current difficulty in finding the key to unlocking the Revelation lies in our inability to understand the Old Testament references and symbolism. We simply cannot, however, fall into the trap of interpreting Revelation's symbols without an understanding of the Old Testament references.

One clear example of the misinterpretation of symbols in Revelation is that of the seal or mark on the hands and/or foreheads of people (Revelation 7, 9, 14, 22). These are clear references to the Old Testament concept of the seal or mark (Genesis 3:19; Exodus 28:36; Deuteronomy 6:6-8; Ezekiel 9:4-6). The symbol mark or seal is a clear allusion to the Old Testament symbol of the mark or seal referring to man's total obedience to whomever or whatever he was sealed by. Yet, this symbol has been interpreted to mean all kinds of fanciful and fantastical things. We must read the symbols in the way that John intended them to be read which is according to the Old Testament language. When we do this, we see that the book is a covenant lawsuit, not some fanciful prediction of the end of all things.

Another example is the often-misinterpreted phrase "coming on the clouds" (Revelation 1:7). This should not be taken, as it often is, as Jesus riding gloriously down from heaven to scoop up His people. There is no biblical precedent to interpret this symbolic phrase in that way. A quick look through the Old Testament will show us that God coming on the clouds is one of the most familiar biblical images for judgment (Genesis 15:17; Exodus 13:21-22; 14:19-20, 24; 19:9, 16-19; Psalm 18:8-14; 104:3; Isaiah 19:1; Ezekiel 32:7-8; Nahum 1:2-8; Matthew 24:30; Mark 14:62; Acts 2:19). When God comes on the clouds it is not generally a happy event, this is judgment language and people should tremble. Several times throughout the opening chapters of Revelation, Jesus says that He will come to the churches if they do not repent (2:5; 2:16; 2:25; 3:3). I hardly think that Jesus is threatening the churches with His Second Coming. When we see the Bible talk about God coming or coming on the clouds it is almost always in judgment; it is not referring to some sort of rapture scenario.

The final category through which we can understand that the Revelation is a message to the first century church and a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem due to Israel's Covenant violations is the contemporary focus of Revelation.

The Revelation was written to remind a suffering and battered church that Christ was Lord. John wanted them to not forget during the coming times of turmoil that Jesus had claimed "all authority on heaven and on earth," (Matthew 28:28) that He was in control, and that He was the King of all things. John wanted them to understand that their suffering was a part of God's plan, that they were an integral part of the great war of history. Israel would soon be punished as a Covenant breaker. The sufferings of the Church and the coming destruction of Israel was not a sign that Jesus had abandoned the world to Satan; rather it was part of the plan to exalt the Church. They were no abandoned by God; they were on the front line of the battle of the ages. The battle was won at the Resurrection, everything since then has been nothing more than a mop-up operation. The message was for the church to have heart and overcome the world because Christ has already conquered it and has passed off His dominion to His bride.

The true message of the Revelation can only be understood if it was written to John's contemporaries. Of what comfort would the Revelation be to the persecuted church if it was concerning events over 2,000 years in the future? Is it logical to consider that the book of Revelation would be irrelevant and unintelligible for 2,000 years of Christians? Interestingly, since the time of Montanus, all groups have interpreted Revelation futuristically, and have assumed that their own generation was the end of all things.

The early church's biggest enemy was an apostate Israel. The message that God was soon about to clearly terminate his ties with the violators of His Covenant was exactly what the first-century church needed to hear. The message of Revelation for Christians since the first-century is not futuristic, but is instead, that Christ has already defeated our enemies, now it is up to us to exercise dominion and transform the world. Some would claim that a contemporary understanding of Revelation would make it irrelevant for today, but that could not be further from the truth. If this were the case then all of the epistles would also be irrelevant as they were written to deal with first-century problems. In fact, although not addressed specifically to us, the Revelation's message of dominion and overcoming is just as relevant for the Church today as it was 2,000 years ago.

There are at least four specific areas that point to the contemporary nature of the Revelation. First is simply the contemporary focus of the book. John seems to address the martyrs throughout the book (6:9; 7:14; 12:11). When we realize that the Revelation was written to comfort a suffering church, we realize that John was addressing the needs of the first-century martyrs. What would have been the point of writing a book to a suffering group of people that were told to read and ponder the book that was full of futuristic references that would have made no sense to them?

Second, John himself says that the Revelation would "soon take place," (1:1) and that the "time is near" (1:3). The words shortly and near would be nonsense if they were referring to events 2,000 years in the future. Some might be tempted to trot out 2 Peter 3:8 which says "a day is like a thousand years." They forget that Peter cancels that out with the end of the sentence, "and a thousand years are like a day." Plus, the context of this passage is completely different.

Third, John clearly references several events and situations as contemporary. In 13:18, he tells his readers that if they have insight, they can calculate the number of the beast. This would be a cruel hoax if the beast were not to arrive for another 2,000 years. In 17:10, a passage that is clearly referring to ancient Rome, John informs his readers that the sixth king is still on the throne. Further, in 17:18, John says that "The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth." The present tense used indicates a contemporary situation.

Fourth, the angel tells John to not seal up the prophecy of the book because the time "is near" (Psalm 22). This again implies that the prophecy is about events in the near future. In addition to that, compare this with the command Daniel received at the end of his book, "close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end" (Daniel 12:4). Daniel's prophetic vision concerns things in the distant future so he is told to seal it up until the time of the end of the Old Covenant. John, in contrast, is told not to seal up his prophecy because the time to which it refers is near.

We will look at the specific areas in which properly understanding Revelation effects the worldview of our young people, but at this point it will suffice it to say that properly interpreting Revelation has a major impact on the worldview of the reader. Before we consider the specific impact on worldview, however, we first need to look at the biblical concept of dominion.


Dominion

To really understand the role of the Christian in the world today, we must understand the concepts of dominion and sovereignty. A sovereign is one that exercises supreme or permanent authority. Dominion refers to a territory or sphere of influence or control. One can only be given dominion over a certain sphere by one who is a sovereign. For instance, a dictator of a country is a sovereign over his country. Because he is sovereign he has the ability to grant to dominion to other men to rule specific areas in his stead. The one with dominion has authority in that realm but only in so much as he keeps in line with the will of the sovereign. If the one with dominion does not follow the wishes of the sovereign then he will most likely be stripped of his dominion.

My older son and I have had many discussions lately about this concept of dominion and sovereignty. I have explained to him that he has dominion over his bedroom. He has the freedom to put things where he would like and hang things that are important to him on the walls. He can even have friends into his tiny realm of dominion. What he cannot do, however, is challenge my sovereignty. He has a certain amount of freedom but if he goes against certain hard and fast rules of the house, he violates my sovereignty and will lose his dominion. His dominion does include freedom but with it also comes certain responsibilities. He needs to keep his room clean and in order, for instance. This may not match up exactly with my idea of clean, but I have given him dominion, so he has the freedom to vary somewhat from how I would do things. Basically he has the responsibility of being my representative in his realm of dominion. He can do things a little differently as long as he sticks to the overall heart of my will as sovereign. When he has friends over, he is in charge, for the most part, in his room. It is his responsibility to enforce the rules of the house with his friend. This is what having dominion is all about. It means that you represent the sovereign and exercise his authority for him. You only have that authority, though, because it was given to you by the sovereign.

Deuteronomy 4:35 says "You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other." It is not as if there was a host of lesser gods over whom God is supreme. It is not as though there is pantheon of equal gods. God was informing the Hebrew people that He was it. He is the only God, the sovereign over the universe. God made the universe and everything in it. It is His; He is sovereign. God is sovereign and that can never be changed or lessened.

When God created man He gave him dominion over the earth. We learn in Genesis 1 that humans are made in the image of God. The word translated 'image' here is the Hebrew tselem which means literally idol or representative. From the very outset of the earth God has retained sovereignty but He gave man dominion over the earth. We were to be His representatives and exercise His authority over His creation. Man had dominion over the realm of earth as long as he continued to do so under the auspices of God's sovereignty.

Shortly after God created man, He charged him with naming the animals. God could have done that. He could have pre-programmed man with knowledge of the names of all animals and plants. Yet, God charged man with that responsibility. Man was given dominion over all the animals in God's original plan, and naming them was part of that dominion. God charged mankind with the command to be fruitful and populate the earth. Again, God could have done this on His own. He could have created enough humans to fill the earth. There would have been no need for us to do so. Man was given dominion over the things of the earth. Man was to be the steward of the earth. God gave man the freedom and responsibility to build cities, create governments, and order societies. He gave us certain limits that kept in the bounds of His sovereignty but as long as we remained in right relationship with Him, we had dominion.

The key words in the preceding paragraph are, "as long as we remained in right relationship with Him." As stated earlier, one can only exercise dominion as long as it is in keeping with the standards of the sovereign. Adam and Eve were given dominion and were to fill the earth with offspring and pass that dominion on to them. They were deceived by the Serpent, however, and disobeyed God. That act of disobedience meant that they were no longer in a right relationship with God and could no longer act as His representative. They had forfeited their dominion. God tells them as much in Genesis 3 following their decision to eat from the forbidden tree. Eve would have pain in childbirth and Adam would have to work hard for everything he would eat. No longer would things come easy because they no longer had authority. Death was ushered into the world; God gave them clothes to cover their nakedness, and they were banished from the Garden of Eden.

Man sinned and surrendered dominion to Satan. Satan snatched it away. God could have stepped in at this point and taken it right back, but then what would be the point of giving it to man in the first place? Man had to learn the hard lessons that come along with failing to exercise the proper dominion. With responsibility comes the need to experience the consequences of failing in that responsibility. Mankind surrendered the dominion that they were supposed to have and now they must deal with the consequences of those actions. They would live in a world ravaged by the destructive power of sin. Rather than man ruling over the earth and having communion with their creator, dominion was surrendered to Satan. Man had made his bed and now God would let him lie in it. This is why Satan is called the prince of the earth (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). Man was no longer in control of the earth. Satan was free to roam, and to tempt and test man (Job 1:7).

Satan surely has a kingdom. Jesus tells us that in Matthew 12:26. Satan's kingdom is vast and his main weapon is death. It was his main weapon against man (Romans 5:12) because it is what will keep us from God forever. There are passages that indicate that Satan's kingdom in organized into a hierarchy (Ephesians 6:12; Daniel 10). Satan's main problem is that He is always trying to be like the most high God (Isaiah 14:14). He has convinced himself that he had sovereignty when he really only had dominion, a stolen dominion at that. The fact that Satan had wrested dominion from mankind coincides the fact that man ceased to be God's representatives. In Genesis 1, we are told that man was made in God's image and likeness. After the Fall, though, we discover that man was now having offspring "in his own likeness, in his own image." Adam and his offspring were no longer the representatives of God in this world. Their dominion and authority had been forfeited to Satan.

This really explains what Satan was doing in the wilderness with Jesus. Satan was clearly concerned that Jesus was the one promised by God that would crush his head (Genesis 3:15). He came to fix that problem before it got out of hand. Satan comes in Matthew 4 to the wilderness trying to figure out exactly who Jesus is and what He is up to. At one point in their encounter, Matthew records the following exchange: "Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 'All this I will give you,' he said, 'if you will bow down and worship me.' Jesus said to him, 'Away from me, Satan! For it is written: 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only'" (Matthew 4:8-10). What exactly was Satan up to here? Some have offered that Satan was trying to offer something to Jesus that he could not deliver. Satan offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, yet, Jesus never disputes the fact that he could do so. If this was a false offer, wouldn't Jesus have made the claim that the earth and everything in it was God's? Although this is still a true statement, Satan did have the ability to offer the kingdoms of the world because he was in possession of dominion. Satan was offering Jesus dominion over the earth. Jesus refused, not on the grounds that Satan was offering what he could not deliver, rather He recognized that sovereignty was God's and so was the worship due Him. Only One who is sovereign is worthy to be worshipped. Jesus knows that He was here to represent God's will. No deals for dominion would be made apart from God's will. He knows that the Sovereign God will soon deliver dominion to Him, but it must be done according to God's will.

Jesus' work on the Cross wrested dominion away from the pretender, Satan. Jesus defeated Satan's main weapon, death. Paul wrote very clearly that Christ had taken away Satan's main weapon by defeating death on the Cross (1 Corinthians 15:12-22). We will still die, but death is no longer our master. The sting and victory have been taken out of death by Jesus. It is important to note that Jesus defeated death but did not destroy it.

When Jesus died on the Cross and rose from the dead, He took back dominion from Satan and defeated his kingdom. Shortly after that, Jesus opened the Kingdom of God for all men. Jesus told His disciples just before His ascension to heaven that, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me." In other words, Jesus had taken back dominion for mankind. This dominion, however, was not turned over to all men automatically. It is, in some sense, a partial dominion. God values free will, so being part of His Kingdom must be chosen. Satan has been defeated but is still allowed to have dominion over those who choose to remain in the dark. We must be citizens of the Kingdom of God in order to take part in that Kingdom and be God's representatives once again. Sharing in Christ's dominion is a choice but for those who choose, He will bring us out from under Satan's dominion and under His. "For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves" (Colossians 1:13).

Once we have been rescued, Jesus allows us to freely share in His authority and dominion. Being one who has earned the authority and dominion that He has, Jesus is free to share that with His co-heirs. In Matthew 28, just after He says that all authority has been given Him, Jesus tells His disciples to "go." This is a word of shared authority. If I have power and tell you to do something, I am imparting a certain amount of authority to the person to whom I am talking. When I tell one of my sons to go and tell the other one something, I have given the message bearer a certain amount of authority on my behalf. If the other son disregards the words of the message bearer, he is really despising my authority. Jesus gave us the authority to be His ambassadors to the world (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are God's representatives and are to exercise his dominion authority through the auspices of His kingdom. He gave clear orders to expand the borders of His kingdom wherever we and increase the realm of Christ's dominion. Consider the following passage:


That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Ephesians 1:19b-23



Christ has been raised so high that He is above things like authority, power, and dominion. This is not to imply that He doesn't have those things, though. They are under his feet. He has them and has given to His church. If I stand on a chair, my head is over, but so is my body. Whatever my head is over, my body is over. If something is under my feet then not only my head, but my body is also over it. If Christ has all dominion, power, and authority, and all things are under His feet, then his body, the Church, also has been given that dominion, power, and authority, and all things are under the feet of the church.

One day, in the age that is to come, Christ will return and destroy all dominion, power, and authority. Right now, He is exercising his dominion through His church. One day that will no longer be necessary. Look at the way Paul puts it:


But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he "has put everything under his feet." Now when it says that "everything" has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

1 Corinthians 15:23-28


When the end comes, Christ will destroy all dominion, power, and authority to the Father when He hands the Kingdom of God over to Him. Dominion, power, and authority are no longer needed when the sovereign is directly present and running things. There need be no concept of dominion when the sovereign God is directly at the reigns of His Kingdom. It is at that time that death, which has already been defeated, will be completely destroyed. Those who are in God's Kingdom at that point can never be removed from it.

Let me make one final cautionary note regarding this concept of dominion. I am not espousing the sort of dominionism that morphs Christianity into a political movement to set up theocracies around the world. What I mean by this term is that we are to transform culture from the inside out, not through laws or politics. This is not to say that Christians should not be involved in politics if that is part of their life or the area to which they feel they are called; it simply means that this should not be the focus of the church in transforming society. We are to live authentically, love our neighbor and to be good stewards of the earth. In so doing, we will transform the culture. The focus goes far beyond the pietism of withdrawing from the world and only engaging it in order to convert a few people. It means that every member of the body of Christ realizes that they can turn every aspect of their lives into sacred space. Everything that we do can be done for Christ to increase the influence of His Kingdom on earth. The primary goal of dominion, then, is to expand the Kingdom of God into the realm of Satan's Kingdom. It is to go into every area of life in which we see Satan's Kingdom ruling, defeat it, and claim it for God's Kingdom. This means that when something negative in our culture happens that clearly expands Satan's Kingdom and influence, that rather than sitting back and waiting for the rapture because Jesus must be coming soon, we fight. We do so because it is our job to take dominion over this world for Christ, the King.

This ties into the message of the Revelation, which is for the Church to overcome because her enemies have already been defeated. We, as the body of Christ, have had all things put under our feet. The clear question remains, however? What does this have to do with creating a sound and comprehensive biblical worldview in young people? We will answer that in the conclusion of this chapter.


Conclusion

In many ways the information in this chapter is the key to unlocking a true biblical worldview. That is not to imply that someone must view the Revelation from the partial preterist perspective in order to live like a Christian, only that a proper understanding of John's prophecy and the doctrine of dominion help us to truly grasp what it means to be a Christian.

A very real danger for the Christian community is for there to be a disconnect between knowledge and action. The Christian worldview cannot be reduced to a mere construct of a set of facts or a philosophical viewpoint. It is an embodied community committed to faithful discipleship. If Christianity is reduced to a set of beliefs then it is hardly any better than any secular worldview. There is such a thing as truth, however, and that cannot be abandoned. There is a new emerging view of Christianity that completely rejects the biblical worldview concept and embraces only the embodiment of Christian living. There must be a balance between these two views. Neither extreme is particularly healthy.

I believe that the Revelation and the doctrine of dominion presented earlier in this chapter provide that middle ground. Revelation is a difficult read, no doubt, but there are certain truths that can be gleaned from it. We may never know precisely what John was trying to say in every verse, but the overall message to the church is clear truth: Christ has defeated His enemies, now hold firm to the truth and overcome. How that is done must be worked out by each Christian community over time but the message stays the same.

The message of Revelation is important because it ties together the truths of the Bible such as the resurrection of Christ and His victory over Satan (truths that need to be defended apologetically at times) and the need to put those truths into action, to overcome. It is the message to exercise dominion over the world that protects us from drying into a congealed wad of facts. It keeps us from being an inactive group of Christians that don't impact the world and just sit around waiting Jesus to come back and fix a world that the followers of Christ have allowed to sadly deteriorate. There are at least four truths concerning the Revelation and the dominion of the Church that have an impact on the worldview of young people.

First, teens need a cause. They need something bigger than themselves for which to fight. Growing up, my father used to always tell me, "If you don't have something to die for, you don't have anything to live for." Overcoming the world and exercising the dominion of the Kingdom of God is a fight that we have been called to and one worth fighting. A Christian worldview with an empty eschatology that calls us to watch the world around us go to pot and wait for the Second Coming (and maybe even cheer for it because it will hasten Christ's return) hardly inspires the drive within young people to take up and fight for a cause beyond their own world. Taking dominion for the Kingdom of Christ is a tangible battle for young people to fight. Rather than watching the world around them crumble and waiting for a rapture rescue, we are called to reform. This means that young people are to be a light wherever they go. They don't have to slip quietly through their halls at school hoping to find a friend or two to witness to. It means that they transform their schools in the same way a bright light transforms a dark room. They can boldly fight in their schools against Satan for the battle of dominion because this is what Christ expects of them. The Christian life becomes about reform not waiting for rescue.

Second, a proper eschatological worldview leads to a healthier view of the Christian community and the purpose of salvation. And what is the purpose of our salvation? "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (Ephesians 2:10). Getting to heaven is the result of our salvation but not the purpose. We were saved for the cause of transforming the world. We are called to be salt and light, to change the world. A waiting-for-Jesus-to-come-any-minute mentality causes young people to become self focused.They will assume that there is little more to Christianity than going to heaven, so what is the real rush. Why hurried to be justified before God? Why hurry to help anyone else be saved? All they would need to know is the signs of Jesus' return so that they can quickly repent and go to heaven. Christianity is much more than that. We are called to finish the battle that Christ already won. He wants us to transform the world so that it can be saved. Without transformation, salvation becomes less and less likely for millions of people.

Third, the futurist view causes a complete lack of planning for the future. When I was high school teacher I spent considerable time planning for the school year. I was also careful to keep everything that I taught so that I could access it in future years. I even kept extra work for the kids that had been copied so that they could be used the next time I taught that subject. In my own, small little way I prepared for the present and the future. I knew that I would be teaching for years to come so I prepared for them whenever possible. This changed, however, during my last year. I knew I was leaving, so I did not need to prepare for the following year. I did not keep or save much. I gave things away that I did not want to take with me. I no longer saved articles or items that I might use in the future. I still taught in class the same way but everything else about how I prepared and went about teaching changed because of my view of the future.

The same is true for the church and its young people. As mentioned earlier, churches that don't think they'll be here in a hundred years are not preparing for that possibility. What if Jesus does not return for another thousand years? If we think He is coming back in the next twenty years or so, then the condition of the culture is of little import to us. But what if He doesn't come back then? What will our culture be like in five hundred years if it keeps going down the road it is heading? The job of the church is not merely to go make disciples. It also includes being good stewards of the dominion that God has given us. It means transforming the culture.

This phenomenon also impacts the lives of specific young people. When I was younger I grew up in a church that taught futurism. I have a specific memory of sitting in the pew one night and truly assuming that I would never have to worry about things like going to college or getting married because Jesus was coming back at any moment. Even then, I knew that I was not yet saved, so I paid close attention to the signs of Jesus' return so that I could quickly repent before the rapture. I am not implying that every young person will drop out of school and not get married if they believe in futurism, but there is a real danger in them becoming self-focused and not having the proper perspective of the Christian faith. Exercising God's dominion is about making the lives of other people better. I do not believe that it is possible to be unhappy when we are truly focused every day on making the lives of other people better for the cause of the Kingdom.

This futurist mindset exists in the young people in our churches, even if we don't always realize it. On the scale of 1 to 5 with 5 signifying the highest level of agreement the average score was 4.0 in agreeing with the statement that the job of Christians is "to save the world not to transform the culture in any way." Identical scores of 3.8 were scored in response to the statements that the "end of the world is coming very soon," and "Jesus will return before the end of my lifetime." This is in a church that teaches partial-preterism to its adults. This demonstrates that the cultural Christian influence has affected them to a greater degree than the beliefs of the church. This aspect of our teaching has not been stressed enough to impact their worldview.

Fourth, the pre-millennial view of eschatology causes undo fear and bitterness. Most of my peers growing up were scared to death of the rapture and the tribulation and all of the supposed end time events. Many of us were worried every time we came home and our parents weren't there that the rapture had happened. We lived in constant fear. This has caused bitterness in two ways. One is that now, over twenty years later, Christ still hasn't returned. We were told at the time that it was very unlikely that the world as we know it would be around that long. Many of the kids who buy into that teaching now reject Christianity on the grounds that Christ never has and probably won't ever return. Many mock the apostles because it is claimed that they expected the Second Coming at any moment even back then. This is a misreading of the Scriptures and opens the Bible up to unfair criticism. The other obvious cause of bitterness for many is that they were kept in constant fear of the near future with no hope. The pre-millennial view is hopeless in many ways. A proper understanding of Revelation gives us hope. It lets us know that our king has already won and we are now to overcome and transform the world.


Conclusion
We all know the basic story of the Israelites in the Old Testament. After over four hundred years of servitude and mistreatment in Egypt, God heard the cries of the descendants of Abraham and rose up Moses to deliver them. Let's imagine the story from a bit of a different perspective for a few minutes. Imagine if you were a five year old when Moses first came to the children of Israel. You have grown up in Egypt your whole life. It is all you know. You may have heard of the God of your fathers, but the reality of everyday religious life is dominated by the gods of the Egyptians all around you.

Think of the awe and wonder that would fill your five-year-old mind as you heard the adults talking about this man Moses who was claiming to be there to free all of you. Free you to what, they wanted to know. Now there were all kinds of strange and terrible things happening to the Egyptians, but everything was fine where you lived. Then one day you heard that the firstborn of all the Egyptians had died. Suddenly everyone was bustling around grabbing their possessions. You hear that you are leaving and going to your homeland. Where is that? What is that? This is all you've ever known. On the way panic begins to run through the crowd as they realize that the Egyptians have changed their mind and our now chasing after all of these people following Moses. Then comes the Red Sea. Would that not have been the most amazing sight for a five-year-old? Your young mind would have been swimming, so to speak.

Shortly after that Moses disappears on a mountain. No one seems to know what he is doing or if will come back. Things break down quickly. Perhaps all of this revelry and idolatry are a bit confusing because after crossing the Red Sea, all of the adults talked about the one true God, Yahweh. They had sworn off the thoughts of any other God and told you that this was the only God. Now, they seem to be contradicting themselves.

Now flash forward two years. It seems that the time has come despite many hardships and much complaining, you've heard that God has told Moses that it is time to enter the Promised Land. He has sent out twelve scouts and they have returned with a report.


They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: "We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan."

Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it."

But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

Numbers 13:26-33


We've all probably read this passage many times, but have you ever thought about it from the perspective of a now seven-year-old seeing this? What would this do for your faith? Ten of the men come back with a faithless and evil report. First they claim that the men are huge, which they may have been. Then, as if that might not be good enough, they begin to really exaggerate and claim that these men were so big they must be descendants of the fabled Nehpilim. This was a land that God had told them was theirs for the taking (Deuteronomy 11:22-24). The response of the adults was so faithless that God determined that no adult would enter into the land. What lessons did those young people learn that day? Our faith is so much more than personal. Young people look, and see, and calculate, and measure. The sins of this faithless generation would continue to cause problems in the next generation.

It would be thirty-eight years before they were allowed to enter again. In Joshua 1:3, they are told, "I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses." This is the same promise from thirty-eight years before. Now it was finally time. Moses had died and Joshua was the new leader that would take them into their inheritance. By this time, those who were young children when they left Egypt were in their mid-forties. Although they had followed Moses and now Joshua, it seems that the lack of faith demonstrated by their parents had carried on in their ethos. The time of the conquest was marked with great victories but also many instances of faithlessness and disobedience.

By the time of Joshua's death, the cumulative effect of not having full faith came to fruition. "Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the LORD, died at the age of a hundred and ten. And they buried him in the land of his inheritance, at Timnath Heres in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel" (Judges 2:8-10). The people, through their lack of obedience and faithlessness, had turned God's gifts into curses. It couldn't be possible that this passage is implying that this next generation didn't know God, meaning that they had never heard of Him. They didn't know what He had done for Israel. What I think this means is that the adult generation that conquered the Holy Land may have told their children about God but they never explained His influence in every area of life. They left their children with the impression that they had conquered the Holy Land by their own power. They never taught a comprehensive view of God in every area of life. They probably relegated God to a certain time of the week and kept Him in that box. The next generation then grew up, and although they had heard of God and were familiar with Him, they did not "know" Him.

Paul described what the lessons of the Israelites recorded in the Old Testament means for us:


For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.

1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 11


Paul gives the ingredients that can turn a people of God into a people of faithlessness. We are given these examples so that we may avoid the same mistakes that they made. They raised a generation of children who did not understand that God is in every area of our life. Being a Christian is not about just believing the right things. It is about seeing God in every area of life and living as though He is there. The adults of Israel knew God but they did not pass that on to their children. They did not present a comprehensive picture of God in every area of life and so their children received a compartmentalized view of God. This limited understanding of God will lead to a God that does not meet the experiences of life. A God like that will quickly be abandoned to do what is right in your own eyes.

That is really what this book has been about. It is an attempt to help us present a comprehensive God that will affect every area of their life, a God that matches their experiences. Not matter what they experience or learn in school, they will not only know about God and how to defend their faith but they will "know" God. They will be able to meet the challenges of life and the attacks of Satan because they view the world and everything in it through the lenses of a biblical worldview.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Chapter 10


[i] Chas S. Clifton, Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics. (New York, NY: Barnes and Noble Inc., 1992), pp. 98-99.

[ii] Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, Visions of Glory (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 16.

[iii] Randall Watters, "When Prophecies Fail: A Sociological Perspective on Failed Expectation in the Watchtower Society", Bethel Ministries Newsletter, May/June 1990.

[iv] Robinson is referring to the writings of the early church father Clement (1 Clement 6), and the ancient historian Tacitus (Annals xv.44).

[v] John A.T. Robinson, Reading the New Testament (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), p. 233.

[vi] David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance (Horn Lake, MS: Dominion Press: [1987] 2006). p. 5.

[vii] Athanasius, On the Incarnation

[viii] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 11.

[ix] Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King: The Covenant Structure of Deuteronomy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., second ed., 1975).

[x] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 15.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid, p. 17.

[xiii] Ferrell Jenkins, The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, [1972] 1976), pp. 54.

[xiv] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 20.

[xv] Phillip Carrington, The Meaning of the Revelation (London: SPCK, 1931), p. 65.

[xvi] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 21.

[xvii] M.D. Goulder, "The Apocalypse as an Annual Cycle of Prophecies." New Testament Studies 27, No. 3 (April 1981), pp. 342-367.


[xviii] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 22.

[xix] Goulder, "The Apolcalypse as the Annual Cycle of Prophecies," p. 350.

[xx] Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, p. 53.

[xxi] Ibid, p. 29.

[xxii] Merrill C. Tenney, Interpreting Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1957), p. 101.

Out of the Driveway, Into the Game: Chapter 9

Chapter 9 – Mind Control

Shortly after the standard greetings in his letter to the Romans, Paul proceeds to enlighten his readers as to what is the cause of the human condition. For the last half of the first chapter and the first half of the second chapter, Paul details the root cause to an obvious truth. Something has clearly gone wrong with humankind. This is not how it was supposed to be. The mere fact that all worldviews try to explain what has gone wrong with the world demonstrates that something has indeed gone wrong. All of mankind feels it and knows it. Paul also knows that something has separated man from God and caused all kinds of evil. In his opening words of discussing this topic, Paul says:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Romans 1:18-32

What is perhaps surprising from this passage is that the diseased condition in which man finds himself was not caused by man’s evil behavior. The evil behavior will come later but it is not the cause of the condition according to Paul. The cause of the human condition was and continues to be the result of futile or distorted thinking. The fact that most psychologists and philosophers in our world have missed is that there are healthy and unhealthy ways of thinking. Wrong thinking will lead to wrong actions. There is an old saying that says, “Sow a thought; reap an action. Sow an action; reap a habit. Sow a habit; reap a character. Sow a character; reap a destiny. But it all begins with a thought.”

The next thing that comes after distorted thinking is a darkened heart. The word Paul uses here for heart is kardia, which is Paul’s normal word for heart. In the ancient world the heart was seen as the center of emotions and motivation. Once thinking is distorted, says Paul, the motivations are corrupted and the deal is already done. What should be the source of light, the human heart, has instead been twisted into darkness. It is not as though the real problem is the actions that are to follow. Actions are merely a symptom of the real disease of distorted thinking.
The next step, according to Paul is that humans fall into a state of self-deception. Once the thinking has become distorted and the heart darkened, humans don’t even realize it. What they believe to be wise thinking is actually foolish. Humans are completely unaware of this folly in their logic and worldview because their hearts have become darkened. What began as a choice, distorted thinking, has now snowballed into self-deception that is beyond the control or awareness of man. Paul demonstrates this same concept in his second letter to Timothy, “For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). Paul tells Timothy that men will first willingly turn their ears away from the truth which leads to distorted thinking and a darkened heart. They will then be deceived by myths because of the condition of their distorted thinking. Once we willingly turn to twisted thinking we will fall for anything. Or as G.K. Chesterton once said, “When men cease to believe in God, rather than believing in nothing, they believe in anything.”

The first action that results from the distortion and darkening of the mental realm is the failure to properly worship God. Paul says that men gave up worshipping the Creator and exchanged it for the lie of worshipping the created. Throughout the history recorded in the Bible, mankind has gotten itself into serious trouble by favoring the creation over the Creator. Eve believed the serpent. The children of Israel built a golden calf. Pagan cultures worshipped all forms of creation. Even in the final book of the Bible, the Revelation, the enemy of Christ is referred to as the beast. Humans were made to worship God and have dominion over His creation as His representatives. We were not made to worship the creation. Distorted thinking is undoubtedly dangerous. One of the great tragedies of the universe, perhaps the greatest, is that the only creature that God made in His image to represent and be like Him, has used his God-given intellectual powers to deny his very creator.

What follows the actions that result from distorted thinking is truly frightening. Paul says three times in the remaining word of this first chapter that God “gave man over.” First God gave man over to sinful desires, then to shameful lusts, and finally a depraved mind. Once we engage in improper thinking, our hearts are darkened and we turn to worshipping anything other than the true God. Next, comes the truly disturbing part when we think of the consequences for the human race. God will turn us over to the things towards which we have turned. He will remove his presence, protection, and grace from our lives. God has given man the responsibility to rule over His creation and to be a proper representative of God. When we blow that responsibility, God gives us over to what we have asked for with our decision to think improperly and act on those thoughts. Once God turns us over to our sinful and fleshly desires, those desires take root and turn into full blown lust. Once we have been turned over to our lusts and act out on them, the result is a confirmed case of a depraved mind.

Paul ends this section by showing the true depths to which mankind can sink. Not only will humans be turned over to a depraved mind to commit all types of evil, immoral, and unnatural acts. They will actually approve of others who commit those acts. This is the sure sign of the loss of conscience. What started as distorted thinking has progressed into a total loss of conscience. There is no longer remorse, repentance, or recognition of wrongdoing but it is actually celebrated. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed God’s anger at approving of sin: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). This is the lowest to which mankind can sink. Pure evil is the end result when the mind becomes twisted out of shape. The real battle is in the mind, the actions of the body merely go along for the ride.

James describes a similar but slightly less detailed process: “but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death” (James 1:14-16). James affirms that temptation is the starting point. It all begins in the mind with a mental temptation. James agrees with Paul that once we give Satan permission into our mind, we are “dragged away and enticed.” What starts as a choice quickly moves past our ability to control. James describes this out of control desire as sin, plain and simple. This is the point which Paul describes as God giving us over to our desire. Once that happens, we are sadly on our way to what James says is death. What began as a mere thought has ended in spiritual death.
This is a spiritual topic that is extremely important to helping teens develop a proper biblical worldview and have the tools to live it out. There is a very real spiritual battle going on in the world today and we do our young people a disservice if we don’t make them aware of the realities of the battle at hand.
As we saw above, the cause for the evil humanity can be traced to distorted thinking, but now is the time to ask, “What is the cause for that distorted thinking?” Is there some defect that God put into the human mind that causes us to think unreliably, or does the answer lie somewhere else?
In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminds his readers that they are in a spiritual battle. In chapter 6, verses 13-18, Paul implores them to take up the whole armor of God. In using military metaphors to describe the spiritual defenses and weapon, Paul informs the Ephesians, and us, that we are engaged in a serious spiritual battle. This is no day in the park; it is not a game. The lives of all of us and our children’s lives are at stake.
In this passage concerning the spiritual warfare of which we are all a part, Paul makes two things abundantly clear. One is that Satan will attack us with his “flaming arrows.” The other is that the only offensive weapon that Christians have is the Word of God (which was demonstrated by Jesus when He was attacked by Satan in the wilderness).
Satan will certainly attack us in this world, but the important question here is, “What are those flaming arrows?” How will Satan attack us? The truth is that Satan’s weapons against us are precisely at the point at which Paul describes in Romans 1 as the point where humankind has gone astray; it is in the mental realm. Satan attacks us in the mind. His flaming arrows are thoughts, ideas, concepts, and suggestions. We can sum this up with the acronym, T.I.C.S. Satan begins his assault on us with his T.I.C.S.
Young people must know that the terrain on which they are fighting the spiritual battle is in the battlefield of the mind. The battle is not in the physical world. Every action that you and I have ever taken is a result of a preceding mental action and decision. Far too many people, including young people, think that the real spiritual battle is at the point of action rather than in the mental realm. The fact is, that the battle has already been won or lost before it gets to the point of action.
If Satan is going to attack us through the mind then it makes sense that the weapon God has given us is a mental weapon. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. A lack of knowledge leads to destruction (Hosea 4:6). Knowledge wins battles. To be accurate, however, that last sentence is not entirely true. Knowledge by itself does not win battles. Knowledge used properly is what wins battles. There are many people that have knowledge of the Word of God but have never figured out how to use it. Only a proper understanding of the Bible’s teaching on how to be successful in the battle for the mind will allow us to overcome Satan’s T.I.C.S.
Anyone who has been a Christian for any length of time knows that Satan will attack us. Peter compares our adversary to a lion looking for someone whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). This seems silly though in light of Jesus’ words recorded by John: “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand (John 10:27-29).” Why would Satan bother prowling around if Jesus’ sheep cannot be snatched from His hand? Perhaps Satan only devours the unsaved. Yet, that would be curious, then, for Peter to write this serious warning to Christians if it did not apply to them. The fact is, these two passages do not contradict each other at all. Satan is prowling looking for victims, including Christian victims, to devour. He cannot snatch us, but we must give him permission to attack us. But, you may ask, who would ever give Satan permission to attack them. Paul already answered that in Romans 1. All people are attacked by Satan’s T.I.C.S. but those who let them burrow into their thought life actually give Satan permission to attack them. This is the beginning of the distorted thinking. It is, then, Satan who starts man down the road of distorted thinking which ends in certain destruction.
From where, however, did Satan get this idea of attacking man through our thought life? Does the Bible give us any clue as to how Satan would know that this avenue would be so effective? It, in fact, does. We find these words from the prophet Isaiah in the fourteenth chapter:
How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
You said in your heart,
"I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.
I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High."
Isaiah 14:12-14
In this passage Isaiah, in speaking against the King of Babylon, compares the King to Satan. In so doing, we learn some valuable information about Satan’s motives. Satan once had an exalted position in heaven but he was cast down to the earth. Why? He did not control his thought life. While in heaven, Satan began to let his thoughts become distorted. He makes five “I will” statements that each display the distorted thinking that he was allowing to take control of his mind. He thinks that he will: ascend to heaven; raise his throne above God; rule as greater than God; be higher than the clouds (Scripture often depicts God ruling from the clouds); and in his own mind, he will be like God. Satan did not control his thought life. His thinking was distorted and he allowed himself to entertain those thoughts. His heart was darkened. The next step was the self-deception of thinking that he could be like God. As a result of the self-deception, Satan began to worship himself, a created being, rather than the living God. Finally, God gave him over to his self-deception which led to Satan thinking that he could somehow overthrow God. This attempted rebellion led to Satan being punished, cast out of heaven, and thrown to earth.
It does not take too much speculation to assume that it wasn’t too long after being cast down to earth that Satan began to ponder what had led to this result. It was those “I will” statements. Satan did not control his thought life. Now God had become his enemy, but he had already discovered that he could not really attack God. So, he went after the thing that was most like God and closest to His heart; mankind. In the Garden of Eden, Satan planted T.I.C.S. in the mind of Eve that led her to a distorted way of thinking. When David saw Bathsheba bathing, it was Satan’s T.I.C.S. that burrowed into his mind and led to the kind of wrong thinking that eventually resulted in the visible action of adultery and murder. Satan is a quick learner. It did not take him long to learn that T.I.C.S. would be his most valuable weapon against man. Once he distorts the thinking of our young people, the rest is relatively easy.
Just as Satan’s schemes led Eve’s thinking astray, so it will do to our children if we let it. Paul wrote, “But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent's cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” Satan’s T.I.C.S. will lead us astray from our proper devotion for and worship of Christ. The reality is that every foolish thing we have done in our life goes back to T.I.C.S. on which we have acted. Every sin that has ever been committed goes back to an individual that did not control their thoughts. The real battle is not in the physical realm at the point of action, it is in the mind. Martin Luther once wrote “It is impossible to sin without first thinking wrongly about God.” Luther’s point is that every sin begins with distorted thinking. It we don’t control our thought life, we will be devoured.
This is especially true for young people. It is so easy for young people to get themselves into situations they never thought they would be; situations of rebellion; crime; pregnancy; drugs, etc. All of these situations find their root in the uncontrolled thought life of the young person. As they are attacked and unprepared for the assault on their mind, their minds become blinded. Paul describes this process, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). Distorted thinking becomes a viscous circle because once people give themselves over to Satan’s T.I.C.S., their hearts become darkened or as Paul put it in this passage, their minds become blinded. The person in the condition of having a blinded mind doesn’t know they’re blind. They don’t realize that their thinking has become so convoluted that they can no longer think properly. Because their thinking has become distorted they are prey to further blinding of the mind.
If we are going to fight off Satan’s T.I.C.S., we have a responsibility to control our thought life. To be Christ-like involves the process of learning to control our thought life. The earlier we can teach our children to do this, the better off they will be.
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22). The last thing we want to do is to neglect the mental activities of our children and allow them to become enemies of God in their mind. Paul that this is the very real condition of those who are not in Christ: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds as shown by your evil behavior” (Colossians 1:21). We literally become the enemies of God when we don’t control our thought life. Because of the resulting danger that comes with distorted thinking, God is as concerned with our mental sin as our physical sin.
This was the point Jesus was making in His Sermon on the Mount recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. In verses 13-16 of chapter 5, Jesus reminds Israel that their God-given purpose was to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. He then assures them in vv. 17-20 that He has not come to abolish the Law rather He has come to fulfill and further explain it. If anything, Jesus takes the Law to a more difficult level as He explains that the real intent of the law is to apply to the mental level, not just the physical action level. No longer should they limit the meaning of “do not murder” to the physical. Jesus expands it and says that they should not even hate their brother, because murder and hate stem from the same attitude of the heart. In the same vein, “do not commit adultery” is expanded to include the mental activity of lust. The assumption of Jesus’ original hearers would have been that this new mental interpretation of the Commandments applied to the other eight as well.
The reality that most young people are confused about this truth is demonstrated clearly in the survey of local Christian youth to which we have referred throughout this book. An average score of 4.9 out of 5.0 agreed that “Satan is most likely to tempt me in my mind rather than through the physical world.” Kids understand that Satan will attack their mind but don’t see the real danger of that as evidenced by their 4.1 average score agreement that thinking about sin is better in God’s eyes than doing sin. What they fail to see is that thinking about sin is doing sin according to Jesus.
When helping young people to follow Christ we must make sure that at least as much time is spent converting the mind as converting the soul. This is difficult for many parents because it is easy to fall into the trap of pragmatic parenting. The temptation is to do what works for the moment, and that usually is limited to their actions. If we can get them to stop doing whatever we don’t want them to and “act right,” then we tend to be satisfied. Too often, the dark closet of their mind is left unexplored and unconquered. This can be extremely dangerous for their spiritual development because everyone, including perhaps themselves, will be convinced that they have been converted by the message of the Gospel. If the mind has not been truly transformed, though, the victory will be illusory and temporary. They will think that they have been converted and been swept clean but their minds have not been converted. A conversion that does not involve a transformation of the mind is a conversion that has not gone far enough. The danger is that the T.I.C.S. that had distorted their mind before their supposed conversion “will return to the house. . . [and find] the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43-45). The conversion of the mind is every bit as important as a converted soul, it only takes more time. As Augustine said, “It only takes a minute to convert the soul, but a lifetime to convert the mind.”
The fact is that anyone who would suppose to follow Christ and be His disciple must be prepared for spiritual battle; “Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled” (1 Peter 1:13). The battle must be fought in the right place; this is a huge aspect of proper preparation. The real spiritual battle is fought in the thought life not at the level of actions.
The average football team begins a drive for a touchdown on its own 20-yard line, a full 80-yards away from a score. Most defenses, even the bad ones, will keep a team out of the endzone from this distance. Imagine, though, how a team would do if they allowed the opposing offense to begin each drive on the 1-yard line, just one yard away from a score. Even the best of defenses fail more often than they succeed in these goal-line-stands. The defense may be able to make a valiant goal-line-stand occasionally and keep the team out of the endzone, but more often than not the offense will score a touchdown.
So it is with the mental spiritual battle. We must make sure that we are not passing the message on to our children that sin depends on whether we act out or not. To attempt to fight the spiritual battle at the level of action is to give Satan the ball on the 1-yard line and hope for a good goal-line-stand. The battle must be fought where it begins, in the thought life. Any physical sin signifies a spiritual battle that was already fought and lost in the mind. Satan loves us to physically act out on our sinful thoughts, but he still wins if we simply entertain and enjoy his T.I.C.S. and don’t control our thought life.
This is why Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to “take every thought captive.” God doesn’t program our minds with instinct like He does animals. He gives us the free will to think and to choose. We can either control our thought life or leave it open to Satan’s T.I.C.S. To truly take every thought captive we have to carefully examine each thought and measure it according to the Word of God. The fact is that Satan’s T.I.C.S. will come. We can’t keep thoughts from coming; having an evil thought pass through the mind does not make us evil or mean we have sinned. As the old proverb says, though, “you can’t keep the birds from flying overhead but you can keep them from nesting in your hair.” We can’t control the attacks on the thought life but we do make the decision to examine and disregard those thoughts or let them stay around in our head and consider them valid.
We have to examine every thought as it measures up to the Word of God because Satan’s T.I.C.S. sound just like our own voice. It sounds rational and reasonable. If it didn’t sound rational, or didn’t sound like us we would know to disregard it right away. Satan’s T.I.C.S. are subtle. We don’t intend to think in an evil manner intentionally, but if we do not examine every thought against the propriety of God’s Word, we will quickly get into trouble. The fact is that right intentions will lead to wrong outcomes without proper instructions. The most well-intentioned line of thinking will go astray if not kept in line with God’s Word.
Satan’s T.I.C.S. come one small step at a time as well. Very few teens would be tempted with an idea to commit fornication or get high as a first thought. They come one small thought at a time. When each successive thought is not immediately examined and kept or discarded based on its agreement with scriptural principles, distorted thoughts are allowed to rattle around in our head. Soon they come to be viewed as valid thoughts and the mind is now ready for the next step. Suddenly a teen find themselves in a mess that they never thought they would be in. It happened one small thought at a time.
Most parents go to incredible lengths to protect their children from harm. We ensure that our houses are safe places for everyone. We really live in a society that has gone nuts with this. We protect ourselves from any conceivable type of toxin or virus. We have antibacterial wipes and soaps, and even anti-bacterial hand lotion in case we can’t get somewhere to wash our hands. We lock our doors at night to ensure that no one will break in and harm us or our children. Yet, we are not nearly as discerning when it comes to what goes into the minds of our children. I am constantly shocked by the things that Christian parents allow to influence the minds of their children. This includes TV, movies, books, peer influences, etc. It is as though some parents assume that it doesn’t matter what their kid’s minds are exposed to. They won’t let them eat without washing their hands but won’t think twice about allowing their child to watch Saw II or listen to the local pop-music radio station.
The standard of the early ante-Nicene church was quite different. They held, for instance, that is was unequivocally wrong for a Christian to attend or even approve of gladiator games because they involved murder. Their stance was that if a Christian went to an event like that, then they were condoning murder, and if they were condoning it, then they were participating in it. They felt that there was no difference in guilt between those that arranged and promoted the gladiator murders and the Christian who watched them. How much different would our thinking be if we held to that same standard when it comes to what we let into the minds of our children and, indeed, our own minds?
We must watch what is going into our minds and be careful to examine every thought, to take them captive. This may seem like a lot of work but let me ask you one question. What is more difficult and time-consuming, to take every thought captive and examine it for its worth, or to clean up the mess of an uncontrolled thought life? Put another way, is it easier to teach kids at a young age to examine their thought life or to attempt to help them clean up their lives after years of an uncontrolled mental realm?
In his letter to the Romans Paul writes, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). In other words, the person who would be Christ-like must fight with different weapons than does those who follow the way of the world (2 Corinthians 10:4). The person who has learned to transform and control their mind will be able to test what God’s will is. The person whose thinking has been corrupted by Satan’s T.I.C.S. will not be capable of discerning or following God’s will. An uncontrolled thought life will lead to an uncontrolled eternity.
In all of his writing about the importance of the mental aspect of the spiritual battle, Paul does not leave us without guidelines to be successful in this battle. The most complete of these is found in Philippians 4:8. Paul says: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Right here Paul has given us the standard about which thoughts to reject and which to hold to. He lists eight separate criterion for examining thoughts. Is the thought, (1) true; (2); noble; (3) right; (4) pure; (5) lovely; (6) admirable; (7) excellent; (8) praiseworthy?
Every thought that goes through our minds should be examined according to the biblical definitions of these concepts. If a thought violates any of these eight standards then it must be rejected. That is an important detail to comprehend. It is not good enough if a thought meets only one or even two of the criterion that Paul gives us here. It is very easy for a thought to sink into our mind that is true. For instance, it may be true that someone in your teen’s youth group is annoying and not the coolest kid in the world. Even though this thought is true, it should be rejected because it does not meet the other eight criterions. This is a strict standard but one that will serve young people well if they live by it.

Conclusion
I am convinced that this concept of mind control is true through every aspect of our lives. This morning the television in my room was on and at the top of the hour a program came on about people dealing with anxiety and depression. One of the expert doctors on there said something that exhilarated me. He said that anxiety is caused by internal thoughts, not external events. It is our interpretation of events, he said, that cause anxiety. He went on to say that if people could learn to control their thoughts and re-train their thinking, they could eliminate most anxiety from their lives. Did you get that? My point is not specifically about anxiety or depression. The thing is that even in the secular realm, people recognize that the real battle is in the mind.
Keeping our own mind focused on Godly things is a full-time and difficult job. The thought of teaching someone else to do it can be nearly overwhelming. I believe that it can be done, though. God will give us the strength and will complete the work He has begun. As we saw above, Paul gave us eight standards by which we can judge our thoughts and stay focused. Much of the mental battle comes down to our knowledge of the Word of God. We have already spent considerable time talking about the importance of the knowledge of God, so it is not necessary to go into any great detail here. I will, however, suggest seven ways that we can keep our thoughts focused on the standard of God’s Word.
First, we have to read it and understand it. Our minds will never be more holy than our knowledge of the Scripture will allow. We cannot know and apply what we do not read. We have the perfect ruler with which to measure all of life. Why not use it?
Second, memorize it. This means different things for different people but the more we know the Word without having to open the book the better off we will be. Reading the Bible is invaluable, but it is not always available to us when Satan’s T.I.C.S. attack. When tempted by Satan in the desert, Jesus did not apparently have a scroll with Him that he needed to open. He knew the Word of God.
Third, we must use it. Jesus didn’t just know God’s Word and leave it at that. He used it. He used it to defend His own mind and protect Himself from Satan’s T.I.C.S. Often we know God’s Word but decide the world’s way seems more attractive at the time. The Bible does us no good if we do not utilize its life-giving words.
Fourth, we need to watch and pray. Prayer is an indispensable portion of protecting our mind. It helps to enlighten the Scripture and steel our mind against Satan’s schemes. Prayer is far more effective, though, when used to ask God to protect our thoughts before any attacks come rather than asking Him to clean them up after our minds have already been infiltrated. Prayer needs to be an inoculation more an antibiotic.
Fifth, substitute one thought for another. We don’t get rid of evil or inappropriate thoughts by focusing on getting rid of them. We must substitute evil with good (Romans 12:21). We simply cannot stop thinking about something if that is all we focus on. For example, don’t think about red fire trucks. Seriously, stop it. Don’t think about red fire trucks. So, how did you do? Have you stopped thinking about red fire trucks? Chances are, you did not. I have found that asking God to keep my thoughts pure and focusing on holy thinking has been vastly more effective than constantly praying to keep me from thinking about the very thing I don’t want to think about.
Sixth, be honest. We need to be honest with ourselves when it comes to what we’re thinking about and the reality of obtaining it. Often times, Satan’s T.I.C.S. are more rooted in our ridiculous desires or hang-ups than they are in the actual truth. An honest assessment of the facts and truth of the situation will quite regularly help clear things up.
Seventh, teach young people to confess their thoughts to one another rather than just actions. Many Christians know that they should confess their sins to one another, but limit it to their actions. This is not effective because, as we have already seen, the actions are just the symptoms. The thoughts are the cause. We need to make a practice of honestly examining and confessing our distorted thinking to one another. Remember, every sinful action signifies a spiritual battle in the mind that was fought and lost.





















Chapter 10 – Coming With the Clouds

From the very beginning, the early church was dealing with false teachers, false teachings, inventive, and creative methods of interpreting the Scriptures. This could not have been much of a surprise to the members of the early church community, as the writers of the New Testament had repeatedly warned them about the very real danger of false teachers. Peter went so far as to say that false teachers would be among them that would teach destructive heresies (2 Peter 2:1).
By the mid-second century, a false teacher named Montanus began what he called the New Prophecy movement. Montanus, a native of Phrygia, declared that he was the sole spokesperson for the Holy Spirit. He convinced his followers that Christ had promised a spokesperson for the Holy Spirit and he was it. This was the beginning of a new era. Montanus claimed that he was the lyre (WHAT IS A LYRE) of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, said Montanus, would play his new tunes for humanity through his instrument in Montanus.
Montanus convinced his followers that the end of the world was at hand. He told them that a universal war that would destroy the earth was inevitable; Christ’s thousand year reign was near and would soon begin. To this point this was probably a rather novel interpretation of Scripture, particularly the book of the Revelation.
The charismatic leader told his followers to abstain from marriage and separate from their spouses if they were already married. The community instituted strange practices of certain fasts, feasts and consuming unique combinations of food. Many other strict rules were undertaken as a way of preparing for the Millennium. Convinced they were living in the so-called last days, Montanus’ followers often left their jobs, some sold their homes, and they prepared for Christ’s final return. As time passed, the group readjusted the signs and kept pushing off the return of Christ by a few years. Following his death, two women, Maxmilla and Prisca took over the movement. The movement sputtered on in Phrygia for another century or so before finally fading away. The original group had been so focused on their false teaching of the imminent and dateable return of Christ that they never really planned for the future for themselves or for the world. In the end, they died out and had little to no impact on the world around them.
Since that time, various groups have popped up claiming that the signs of Christ’s return were immanent. At nearly every turn of the century since the Montanist movement, religious groups have whipped up hysteria about the coming of Christ. In 1941, the Watchtower, the official magazine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses began predicting that Armageddon would take place within a matter of months. By 1944, the Armageddon hysteria had reached a fever pitch for the Witnesses. According to Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, former member, “So firmly did Jehovah's Witnesses believe this to be true that there were those who, in 1944, refused to get their teeth filled, postponing all care of their bodies until God saw to their regeneration in His New World. (One zealous Witness I knew carried a supply of cloves to alleviate the pain of an aching molar which she did not wish to have treated by her dentist, since the time was so short till Jehovah would provide a new and perfect one. To this day, I associate the fragrance of cloves with the imminence of disaster.)”
A similar but even more pronounced situation occurred in the 1960’s and 1970’s when the Watchtower began to again predict the end of the world. This time, they said, the end would come in 1975. Witnesses began to sell their homes and give away their possessions en masse. They gave away canned goods to neighbors because they wouldn’t need them anymore. Many witnesses quit their jobs so that in the closing months they could spend all of their time witnessing and preaching about the coming of Christ. No thought or attention was given to the future because there was no earthly future according to their interpretation of the Scriptures. Some witnesses were so devastated by the failed prophecy that many left the movement and still others turned to suicide.
There is a reason why a majority of people in the United States identify themselves as Christian and yet, have little cultural influence. A large part of this is, believe it or not, related to the way that Christians interpret the book of Revelation. Let me preface this by stating that I am not implying that a differing interpretation of the Revelation or the end-times constitutes a heresy or a cult. There are, however, certain similarities between the heretical beliefs of the Montanists and Jehovah’s Witnesses concerning their interpretation of the end times and the end times expectations of large portions of Christendom today.
There have been many different ways of interpreting Revelation throughout the ages and there continue to be many today. We will not take the time here to consider all of the different interpretive camps of the end times and Revelation. For the purposes of this chapter we will look at two primary groups. The first interpretive group is the futurists. Futurists are the most popular and influential group in American evangelicalism today. This view has been championed of late by the Left Behind series that is heavy on excitement but light on good biblical exegesis. The futurists teach that the book of Revelation describes a time yet to come and predicts the end of the world. They believe that the Revelation and other passages in the Bible predict a coming tribulation for mankind and a rapture of the church. After that time, Christ will rule in His Kingdom on earth for a literal period of one thousand years. The futurists break down into those that teach pre-tribulation rapture of the church; mid-tribulation of the church; and post-tribulation of the church.
The second interpretation that we will consider is the partial-preterist view. Preterism teaches that the book of Revelation was a prophecy of the first century destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the Old Covenant times when it was written. Partial-preterism is similar to classic preterism except that it interprets the final portions of the book of Revelation yet to be fulfilled while claiming that most of the book has to do with the first century. This view proclaims that the Kingdom of God was fully instituted at the day of Pentecost and that the thousand years is a symbolic number, indicating that God’s Kingdom rule would be complete.
So what does all of this have to do with the worldview of Christian young people? Believe it or not, it has a lot to do with it. As stated before in this work, what we believe effects how we act. Because our culture has been so dominated by futurist thinking in the last one hundred years, the futurist worldview has seeped into many parts of the modern Christian mindset. How one views the end times has a major impact as to how they behave and plan now.

The prevailing belief that biblical signs are unmistakably pointing towards an at-any-moment-now return have had huge negative effects on the biblical worldview of much of Christendom and our young people. Because this is such a prevalent view in America, those who have not given the subjects of the end times and Revelation much thought probably tend to fall into the futurist worldview of the end times