No Half Measures

Tal Bachman is a 54-year old Canadian writer who had a cup of coffee with pop music success back in 1999, not all that surprising given he’s the son of legendary Guess Who guitarist and BTO-founder Randy Bachman. Since 2020, he mostly covers politics from a conservative perspective, but he’s written everything from a four-part analysis of the band U2’s influence on the political landscape to a brilliant 25-parter called “We Have Met the Enemy” that unearths the origins of the lucrative, transparently fraudulent, unbelievably evil and powerful transitioning industry. You can find his archive here, and it’s well worth it.

Tal is an ex-Mormon, the “ex” part being his rejection of the prophetic posturing of Joseph Smith. But his latest post at SteynOnline strongly suggests his belief in God and interest in what the Bible teaches about him did not get jettisoned along with his former confidence in the founder of the LDS Church.

“Dear Old Testament God …”

The post is called “Dear Old Testament God, Maybe It’s Time for a Comeback Tour”, and it starts with the declaration that Tal is starting to warm up to the God of the Old Testament big-time, notwithstanding complaints from atheists like Richard Dawkins about said deity’s genocidal tendencies; in fact, it’s God’s capacity for destruction Bachman finds appealing. This leads into an eight-paragraph defense of the occasional well-timed genocide that opens with what I consider a very promising line: “Let’s see what the Bible says.” And so he does, rationalizing the Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah and the plagues of Egypt, not to mention the Red Sea annihilation of the Egyptian army, all from the text of scripture itself.

Then Tal gets right to the point: “Hello, God. I’m just going to come right out and say it: How about a comeback tour?”

The would-be target of Tal’s imprecatory ‘prayer’ is the cabal of globalist billionaires currently promoting Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, and the “control-freak politicians” all over the West who danced to the Davos tune during the pandemic and continue to do so today. Bachman blames these folks for most of the current evils in this world, and if he’s wrong about that, he’s not far wrong. We have posted about the ambitions of the Great Resetters here, here and here, for starters. Frankly, if you’re going to single out the purveyors of “patronizing, self-serving, technocratic megalomaniac globalist totalitarian ‘beneficence’ we never asked them for, and don’t want, and which they’re imposing on us against our will” (Tal’s description) for a violent and bloody end, you could hardly have picked a more deserving crew.

Tal’s rant is a fun read. Of course, that’s not my real point.

The Day of Reckoning

My point is that Christians don’t need to pray for the Old Testament God to make a “comeback tour” in order for the wicked of this world to get what’s coming to them. Our theology already has its own day of reckoning built right into it, not centered around the Old Testament God, but rather around his Son, Jesus Christ, through whom God has chosen to make himself known to the world, through whom he redeemed a people from slavery and certain death, and brought us into his family.

Yes, that Jesus, the one Tal mentions only once in the entire post, and only in passing. (At least he quotes him authoritatively, which is something.) As Luke puts it, “this same Jesus”, whom angels promised his disciples “will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” Or as John puts it in Revelation:

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.”

The Lord Jesus is called “The Word of God”, among other reasons, because God doesn’t have a single thing to say to our world that he can’t and won’t say through Christ. God has seated Jesus at his right hand, made him Lord of all, and intends to judge the nations of this world through him.

The Breath of His Mouth and the Appearance of His Coming

Those runaway politicians who don’t do what they were elected to do, and choose to lie to and oppress those who elected them? He’ll take care of them. Those would-be masters of the universe who would remake earth in their own image? Not a problem. The beast, the false prophet and Satan himself? As good as done and dusted, with the mere breath of his mouth and the appearance of his coming. He’s just that glorious and just that splendid.

And then he will set up his kingdom and reign for 1,000 years.

Tal Bachman doesn’t talk about that part. I don’t know whether that’s a conscious or unconscious omission, but it’s an understandable one. We all want a God who will deliver us from our enemies, and Tal doesn’t really care what the Old Testament God does with those enemies, “as long we never have to see them, hear them, or be tyrannized by them ever again”. I think he has in mind a scenario where God shows up, does his thing, rids the world of its evil overlords, and then goes away and leaves us peace-loving little people to get back to business as we see fit.

After all, the sinful things we do to one another on a day-to-day basis are just trivial little peccadilloes, right? The infelicities, infidelities, little white lies, temper tantrums, substance abuse problems, short-changing our employers or our employees: when we compare those sins to the evil machinations of would-be tyrants, they look to us like pretty small potatoes. But they may not look so insignificant to God, who says, “None is righteous, no, not one.”

There Will Be No End

So then, the millennial reign of Jesus Christ can’t and won’t stop with the top brass. Isaiah writes, “Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end.”

No end, really? Yes, no end. The kingdom of God’s dear Son is slated to expand well beyond the political sphere. That kingdom is going to intrude into education, finance, agriculture, architecture, medicine, art, literature, music, sport, the recording of history, technology, philosophy, science, manufacturing, all workplaces, eating and drinking habits, self-expression, interpersonal relationships, marital relations, child-rearing, and the hearts and minds of everyone alive during it, especially in the religous sphere, from which all fakery, self-promotion and institutionalism will be banished forever. Well, come on, it would have to, wouldn’t it? How could it not, if the Creator of the universe and Savior of the world is present on the planet for thirty-odd times as long as his last go round, and is running the show to boot? Christ’s millennial reign is going to transform the way people live and how they behave — like 1,000 years of Prohibition, except applied to every area of life in every nation on earth.

Godly people will love it. Ungodly people will hate it. The Bible predicts both scenarios. But by the end of the millennial reign of Christ, the dissenters and haters who want a change of government will be “like the sand of the sea”. As the song goes, they will be willing to “fight for their right to party”, and when Satan is released from his prison and offers them his leadership, they will march on the throne of the Lord Jesus in Jerusalem, even at the risk of being incinerated by fire from heaven. That’s how badly the unregenerate flesh wants to “do it my way”.

The Times of Ignorance

So, no, we don’t get the Old Testament God back to reprise the way he did things prior to the cross, leaving us to our own devices once he has dealt with the worst of the worst among us. In the Old Testament, God overlooked the times of ignorance. He destroyed those who made it impossible to ignore their egregious, oppressive misbehavior, then continued to overlook the everyday sins of the masses until the next major outcry of the downtrodden.

But we are not in those “times of ignorance” anymore. We never will be again. Christ came and died for the ungodly, offering us eternal life, fellowship with God and the indwelling presence of his Holy Spirit. God “now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead”. It’s our job to share that message with the world.

That day is a “coming”, not merely a comeback tour. When this King comes, he will be here to stay.

And there will be no half measures.