.jpg)
“Is there any way the new heavens and new earth could be happening now?”
The idea that the new heavens and new earth prophesied in scripture exist today “in seed form” is a concept embraced by a subset of the post-millennialist prophetic school. They would say this seed “grows and spreads and becomes more and more manifest until it finally culminates in the Final Coming of Christ, which introduces the Eternal State”.
I feel like that’s a major stretch.
Before we can ever enter into a relationship with God, we must understand certain fundamental truths about him. The writer to the Hebrews makes this explicit: “Whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”
He exists. He rewards. These things are about as basic as it gets. Unless we entertain some hope, however microscopic, that there is a God to be known and that there is something to be gained by knowing him, we will never seek him out or respond to the convicting work of his Spirit in our hearts.
.jpg)
The New Testament writers quote, allude to, or possibly allude to Zechariah more often than any other Minor Prophet. Given the sheer number of passages that reference his writing, I will only attempt to deal in any depth with direct quotations or obvious repurposings of the prophetic word.
It seems as the time grew shorter for Messiah to enter the world, the Holy Spirit was all the more eager to testify to his coming at every possible opportunity.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Last week we were discussing how we can best live out the truth that, denominations notwithstanding, the church of God remains one Body, not many.
Tom: I do think the number of available evangelical church options out there can be beneficial in some ways, especially for elders. For instance, when you find that great new couple who want to join your church but can’t restrain themselves from talking about the glories of speaking in tongues, or the blessed benefits of Reformed Theology, or why women ought to worship audibly, the multiplicity of options allows you to easily point them to the gathering in your neighborhood that might suit them better in that respect without a lot of hard feelings.
After all, it's not like you’re saying, “If you don’t like the way we do it, there’s no place for you in the Church.”
One of our most popular features is our weekly Too Hot to Handle post.
Tom and I started it because we wanted to get beyond safe topics. If the word of God is really our guide, we decided, how can we confine ourselves to applying it to the sorts of tame issues that keep us all feeling comfortable? Isn’t it a sharp and quick sword, a sword of division? And doesn’t it have to be our guide in all things, not just in those that are polite, conventional and suitably religious?
We wanted to push those limits, to see how far the word of God can take us. Pretty far, we’re guessing.
.jpg)
For years, conservatives have conserved next to nothing, hamstringing their own cause by refusing to use the very effective cancel culture tactics of the militant left. These are certainly unpleasant, but a philosophy that maintains it is better to lose nobly than win ugly and which disapproves of what you say but defends to the death your right to say it (even when it’s rank wickedness) simply does not work in war, however dignified and mature it may appear.
That includes culture war.
As the world gets nuttier and nuttier, so do the popular theories about what’s really going on. As I write, it’s been about twelve hours since a twenty-year old man was killed by Secret Service snipers at a rally in Pennsylvania after shooting at President Trump, injuring the former president and killing at least one member of his audience. Or so we are told. It might even be true.
What is certain is that the narrative will evolve. Initial reports that Thomas Matthew Crooks was Antifa were quickly amended to claim he was a registered Republican.
.jpg)
“What does it mean to take communion unworthily?”
Today’s question comes from 1 Corinthians 11:27, which reads, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.”
At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus established a base of operations near the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum, about 40 miles from Nazareth where he had grown up. Matthew tells us he made this move right after the arrest of John the Baptist, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
It was near Capernaum that he called his first disciples, preached the Sermon on the Mount and calmed the storm. It was from the same region that he sent out the Twelve into the rest of Israel to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.
.jpg)
As we have discussed several times in the process of trying to interpret the prophecies of Zechariah, commentators have tried a variety of approaches to the text. One of the least successful (but most respectful) of these remains Martin Luther, who wrote, “I give up. I am not sure what the prophet is talking about.”
Hey, better than blabbering on without any idea where you are going.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
For the last fifty years, the media has quietly endorsed it. Politicians in every country in the world have worked tirelessly to build public support for it. Mega-corporations love it: who wouldn’t like to have the entire planet to choose from when optimizing for low taxes, inexpensive manufacturing and cheap labor?
Tom: Globalism is officially out of the closet, Immanuel Can. The Economist declares: “The danger is that a rising sense of insecurity will lead to more electoral victories for closed-world types. This is the gravest risk to the free world since communism. Nothing matters more than countering it.”
“Nothing matters more.” That’s pretty clear. So tell me, IC, is it possible to be a Christian globalist? Can we hold such an ideological position coherently and biblically?
“There are three types of lies,” Mark Twain famously quipped, “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
I know he was overstating the case somewhat, but my time in higher education has given me plenty of opportunity to see that he was not far off. Statistics have a way of impressing people with the apparent solidity of the numbers they generate. Many of us, especially the numerically inclined, tend to think they’re telling us something profound, truthful and scientific. But I have discovered that often they are not, and until you know how the numbers were obtained and how they are being interpreted, you can never be quite sure how solid they really are.
Anyone who has attempted to maintain an email subscription to ComingUntrue over the years knows Blogger’s email tool is notoriously unreliable. Often, we do not even receive our own posts. Substack is basically a newsletter subscription service that is proving increasingly popular and much more reliable.
Effectively immediately, I’m going to try publishing each post to Substack as we create them in hope this may make life easier for our friends who prefer email delivery to browsing the web. You won’t get all the features available at the regular website (sidebars, archive pages, topical studies, search box, etc.), but you’ll get the content of each post seven days a week (we hope) in a clear, readable form.
When truth is revealed, men have an obligation to hear it. The Lord will judge those who claim to speak it, and he will also judge the hearers for the way they receive it, which is to say that we need to accept and respond to the things we hear that are true, and reject the things we hear that are not.
What scripture doesn’t talk about all the time is how difficult that process can be for the onlooker.
Today I am going to generalize, because there’s no way to discuss the topic at hand usefully without doing so. Since it is my occasional, bitter experience that some people detest generalizations, I will dutifully warn you up front that you are in for endless amounts of them if you read on. Best come back another time if you find yourself emotionally triggered by statements about averages offered in the absence of hard evidence.
You heard me right. I’m not even going to offer statistics to support the assertions that follow. Why not? Because people of a non-generalizing disposition who dislike what I have to say will simply dispute the data. Again, bitter experience. That, and those capable of pattern recognition don’t need statistics to back up what they already know.
.jpg)
“Why are Christians homophobic?”
Homophobia is a ridiculous pejorative that applies literally to almost no Christians in the real world. It fails miserably as language, in that if it means anything at all, it means “fear of that which is the same”. The term is a convenient way to deflect arguments that address the dangers and evils of a lifestyle that exalts sodomy. I do not use it.
That said, if you don’t celebrate perversion, anyone who inquires why that might be will probably use the word, so we may as well formulate an answer for them.
From the department of straining at gnats and swallowing camels, The Standard Bearer ran a series of posts by David Englesma in 2017 and 2018 criticizing the standard premillennial interpretation of Romans 11, culminating in this one and this one. Based on this chapter (though not exclusively), premillennialists anticipate (in Englesma’s own words), “a mass conversion and salvation of Jews, and their restoration as an earthly kingdom of God in Palestine”.
That’s a fair representation of my beliefs, an exegetical hill I’ll happily die on.
.jpg)
We are coming down the home stretch in Zechariah, moving topic by topic, though not necessarily in the order these future events will take place. Today’s four verses are set in millennial Israel, describing the geographic upheaval that will take place at the second coming of the Lord Jesus and continue into the millennium, as well as a couple of statements concerning the rule of Christ during this period.
That rule is a well-established Old Testament fact. Zechariah can sum it up in two sentences.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Joel Kotkin of The Daily Beast coins the term “Great Rebellion” to describe the phenomenon of eroding trust in elite opinion-shapers: scientists, politicians, economists, corporatists and the media. He’s not alone: Village Voice and even the Huffington Post have just run similar articles.
Tom: The peasants are revolting, Immanuel Can.
I’m going to start this post with an apology. I’m sorry.
I usually don’t go all egg-headed and philosophical in this space. I think that usually truth can be spoken plainly and simply, and it’s my aim to do that. Every now and then, though, I run into something that is bugging a whole bunch of people — Christians among them — and that just can’t be treated without going off the grid. This is one of those issues. If I lose you, don’t worry; this probably isn’t an issue that’s come up for you, and it needn’t worry you. Tomorrow there may well be a post that suits you more directly.
On the other hand, if you’ve run into the arguments below, you might be very glad for some help with them even if it takes us into deeper waters. So I’m going to risk it.