Mining the Minors: Joel (6)

Some people can find the church just about anywhere. Mike Fuhrer finds the church in Jerusalem during the great tribulation, and he gets this from today’s passage in the second chapter of Joel.

Now, there is no doubt he’s right about the Jerusalem part. Joel unambiguously locates the majority of his prophecy right in Israel’s capital. Throughout his three chapters, the prophet makes mention of Israel three times, Judah six, Jerusalem six and Zion seven. Unless all these 22 references are allegorical, there is no doubt about the geographic location in view. When Joel speaks of walls and houses, it is the walls and houses of Jerusalem he has in mind.

But the church? Really?

Too Hot to Handle: Filling the Vacuum

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Nature abhors a vacuum. This includes a spiritual vacuum.

Tom: The LA Times reports that when asked about their religious affiliation, millennials overwhelmingly answer “none”. That answer is not entirely accurate. As it turns out, a growing number of younger, nominally secular people are embracing practices like meditation, tarot, astrology, energy healing and the use of crystals.

Are you surprised, IC?

Immanuel Can: Not at all, actually. It fits perfectly with what we should expect.

The Disaster of the Misled Middle

“Better to have an enemy who slaps you in the face than a friend who stabs you in the back,” goes the old saying.

It’s true. And the worst part is it that when your friend stabs you, he’s stabbing from behind your defenses already. An enemy’s danger you can see coming; a friend’s you cannot. An enemy you can fight with all you’ve got. But when it’s a friend that one must fight, there’s grief, self-doubt, hesitancy, restraint and a profound sense of loss at every step. You hang on longer to hope of a reconciliation, of healing and of forgiveness, even when those things don’t appear. That’s why friends can hurt friends in ways no enemy can.

Darkness and Light

Let’s face it, Christianity has never been a major attraction for the cool kids. These days, some churches have no kids attending at all. Young people from Christian homes who continue to accompany their parents to church throughout their teens and early twenties often find themselves with a very short list of prospective candidates for dating or marriage. It is increasingly common for these young people to head off to college and come back for Christmas or Thanksgiving with an unbelieving boyfriend or girlfriend. Absent a successful intervention from fellow believers, we all know where that path ends.

Why does this happen so often? Surely not because the scriptures are unclear.

Not Peace but a Sword

The popular notion that lemmings in the wild commit mass suicide by leaping off cliffs is a sixty-five-year-old lie that has attained the status of myth. So says the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. The perpetrators were employees of the Disney Corporation in a 1950s documentary called White Wilderness. They staged the fake lemming migration with a combination of tight camera angles, judicious editing and a turntable, of all things. For the legendary cliff scene, they hurled lemmings into an Alberta river from off camera and captured them on film thrashing and drowning.

The reason? It made for good TV. Seriously.

Anonymous Asks (267)

“Can a Christian be a stay-at-home dad?”

All “Can I” questions from Christians provoke much the same reaction in me, which is something along the lines of “Why do you want to do something you already suspect is questionable?”

In this case, really questionable.

Flyover Country: James

Paul wrote the majority of New Testament letters. These almost exclusively take the form of one or more persuasive theological arguments buttressed by proofs of various sorts, usually sandwiched between greetings and salutations. Peter’s first epistle follows a similar pattern, as does Hebrews. Others, like Jude and 2 and 3 John, were written with a single evident concern or focus.

James, not so much. He is all over the map.

Mining the Minors: Joel (5)

Joel chapter 2’s appeal to return to the Lord has a timeless quality.

Unusually for prophetic scripture, Joel has left undescribed the specific sins of Judah for which God is calling her to account. We can only guess the “when” and the “what” he feels compelled to address. The prophet could be calling any generation of Israelites to return to behavior suited to a covenant relationship with their God — any generation, that is, that still understands the meaning of fasting and mourning, of grain and drink offerings, of the trumpet blown to call together the solemn assembly.

Israelite worship came with a lot of baggage.

Too Hot to Handle: The Pendulum Swings

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Pride Month in Canada has come and gone, but there are still rainbows everywhere: in banks, fast food outlets and all sorts of corporate venues where you wouldn’t have seen them a decade ago. Our office building had a display in the lobby. If we were to judge the general acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle on the basis of such evidence, we would have to conclude public support for a practice the word of God condemns as an abomination has never been higher.

Not so, say the polls. Interestingly, it’s Millennials who most egregiously dissent from the “conventional wisdom” of their peers.

A Nation of Useful Idiots

This isn’t going to be a nice post. It’s going to be rude, pointed and blunt. It’s definitely going to offend a lot of people … maybe as many as half of our readers. But that’s also one difference we at Coming Untrue have long prized in comparison to some other, more diplomatic sites: we’re not going to back down on principle in order to stroke an audience.

If political correctness and flattery are what you like, you’d maybe better move on now.

Wandering Spirits

In my perambulations far from home the other day, I came across yet another educational institution with a new and utterly unpronounceable indigenous name, replacing the original and admittedly blander “Eastern Commerce School”, which could mean anything at all, including an experiment in Chinese democracy. The sign in the photo to the right was on prominent display.

For those readers not up to speed, our Canadian government has taken upon the State the burden of generations of corporate guilt with respect to its ancient predecessor’s dealings with the native Canadian population. That’s a load that does not sit lightly on its bearers, or conveniently evaporate in the sun when we tire of bearing it.

What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (28)

Judd is writing a letter to the editor at one of his frequently visited websites. He finds it suboptimal that despite “signaling moderate distaste” for Donald Trump, its editor would actually consider voting for the man should he run for president in the 2024 election. Judd’s counterproposal is that the Republican Party seek out a candidate who epitomizes biblical values rather than a divisive individual sporting a well-acknowledged plethora of warts and wrinkles.

By way of correction, Judd offers a familiar proverb. To his mind, the teaching of scripture should be conclusive: “When a man’s ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”

Anonymous Asks (266)

“Does God still perform miracles?”

We often hear expressions like “the miracle of birth” or “a miracle of engineering”. Such things may be impressive to the senses or sentiments but they are not, properly speaking, miraculous. Calling something a miracle that occurs naturally every eight seconds or so in the U.S. alone stretches even figurative language to the point of absurdity.

The first step in answering the question “Does God still perform miracles?” is to ensure we are all talking about the same thing.

Flyover Country: Galatians

Justification before God is by grace alone through faith in Christ alone. Any requirement beyond the exercise of faith reduces the Christian gospel to the level of the world’s false religions, making salvation to whatever degree a work of man rather than a work of God.

In Galatians, Paul argues that to import even the smallest human work into salvation is to be severed from Christ and to desert God. Christ-plus-anything is a recipe for spiritual disaster and eternal loss.

That makes Galatians one of the most important letters ever written. It is literally a life-saver.

Mining the Minors: Joel (4)

Prophetic scripture is full of difficult passages, and this second chapter of Joel is right up there with the most bewildering among them. Interpretations offered for the locust horde the prophet describes include: (1) literal locusts in the time of Joel; (2) the Babylonian army of 607 BC; (3) four different invading armies over a period of hundreds of years; (4) a bunch of proselytizing Jehovah’s Witnesses (no, I’m not kidding); and (5) the demonic affliction of apostate Christendom in some future day.

There are compelling textual reasons to reject all these interpretations (not just the patently silly ones) and look for a future fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy, not in the spiritual realm, but right in the heart of Israel.

Too Hot to Handle: Churches in the Crosshairs

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

Tom: Last week, IC, Bernie and I discussed the 2018 Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Toronto, Canada, which consisted of 8,000 Catholics, Buddhists, Baptists, Bahai, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans and indigenous spiritualists. They gathered to complain about Donald Trump and disseminate tactics for effectively infiltrating evangelical churches in order to convert us to the globalist / ecumenicalist cause.

Since they’ve been so kind as to warn us of their intentions in advance, I thought maybe we could consider how best to keep them out, or perhaps how to bring them in while thwarting their efforts.

College / University Survival Guide [Part 3]

My father always said he would prefer I never had a motorcycle. He had ridden when he was young, and he said it was very dangerous. He certainly was not going to buy me one. But I was fascinated with them, and by the time I was nineteen I owned one — a dirt bike.

I crashed it on my first day out; no real damage, just a good mud bath. After that, I got the hang of it, and was off. I never really crashed again. Sure, I came close a few times, but that was half the fun. Being young is about taking on those risks and seeing how far you can push your limits. That’s how you grow up and find out what you’re capable of.

The Commentariat Speaks (28)

Over at Blog & Mablog, Justin has a question about a difficult passage at the end of James:

“What is the purpose of anointing with oil [James 5:14]? Does it make our prayers extra powerful? Is that for us in this day and age?

I am genuinely curious due to the fact that in our church there is a sister that has just been diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. We do pray and have been praying for her, her husband, and their children.

This past Sunday during our announcements after the service our pastor stated that he and another elder were going to fulfill the James 5 principle and personally go and anoint her head with oil for healing.”

Oddly enough, we just discussed this passage in our weekly Bible study.

Qualified to Forgive

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, biblical forgiveness (as discussed in this recent post) is not a state of mind or a particular emotion; rather, forgiveness is a verbal transaction between two parties in which one requests relief from a felt obligation and the other grants it. Letting go of anger, resisting bitterness, and getting over old hurts are simply not the same thing as genuine forgiveness asked for and received.

But there is another aspect to genuine biblical forgiveness worth exploring: it requires that the correct parties show up to the table.

Anonymous Asks (265)

“Should Christians give out of their gross or net income?”

In my twenties when the Lord got hold of me, I was for a time the spiritual equivalent of a fire-breathing dragon. I was VERY gung-ho about the things of God. Sometimes that was a good thing. Other times I was way too dogmatic about truth I had yet to live out and about areas of experience in which I had yet to be tested.

If you had asked me today’s question every year of my twenties, I would’ve answered “gross income” every time. Today, not so much.