A very compelling case that God’s faithfulness, not, pinpointing exact dates, should be the focus and hope of Eschatology. Thoughts?

UPDATE: thanks to Jonah’s comments, I have tried to clarify the intent of this post. As a result, I have updated the title of this post from “A Case Against the Rapture” to its current title “The Rapture and the Second Coming - Are They One in the Same?” Also, I include the this link for further consideration and discussion. Have a great day!

“Some of the inherited categories of (modern) “Christian” thinking are so out of sync with the Bible that they work against the very obedience they are designed to promote.”

- John Piper in his book Future Grace

I commented on how lame I thought this was in December, but with it appearing on the front page of the Albuquerque Journal this morning, I can’t help but touch on it again. Sooooo….

Question.

Am I the only one not drinking the kool-aid? Does anyone else (especially any fellow Christians) see anything wrong with this approach? It’s littered with deadly moralization, dozens of causal fallacies and reeks of shameless self promotion. (Wow, I think I just inadvertently summed up American Evangelicalism. Good job, Brandon. By the way, I do like referring to myself in the third person from time to time.)

Anyway, my favorite line from the newspaper article is “We don’t think the Internet was created for pornography. The pornographers have intruded and used it for evil. Skip wants to reclaim the Internet.” HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yeah, because your only two choices on the Internet are porn and this guy named Skip.

Unintentionally hilarious.

Oh, yeah, and because I forgot that external influences are what corrupt and defile me. Guess I had better stop writing and add a line to my “do’s and dont’s” list. Or…..

I could just read this.

(Hint, hint, maybe some of you “anti-secular,” “anti-culture” mega church pastors should read it too. Might help straighten your wacked theology out just a smidge. Actually, come to think of it, you shouldn’t “maybe” read it, you should most seriously and most definitely read it. It’s just a click away and it might help change your life.)

When will we realize as a church that this approach is so overly tired, so contrived and so just-plain-dumb? Please? Anyone?

It is times like this that I find all the more comfort in biblically accurate, God-centered, Christ-exalting theology from which words such as these are penned:

“Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the house of mirrors and leads us out to the mountains and canyons of his majesty. Nothing satisfies us – or magnifies him – more.”

Taken from here, although it was originally published in the Dallas Morning News.

Here’s an interesting article by John Piper detailing why he believes it is not.

It’s already February and I have yet to post any part of my “book”. Instead of delaying any longer, I have decided to start posting brief synopses of my observations. Hopefully, you don’t find them too boring. It is my sincere hope that these observations and any resulting discussion will help make clear the character and nature of God as described in the Bible. Comments and discussion are most definitely welcome, regardless of your religious view points. So without further adieu…

Clearly, the Bible encourages accountability among believers via involvement in each others lives through the local church. This cannot be disputed. However, in my ten years of working at and attending three churches, I have seen undesired implications result from our practice and implementation of holding one another accountable. Specifically, I have made the following five observations. When done incorrectly If we are not careful I have noticed that accountability partners can:

1) become a hindrance to recognizing the omnipresence of God;
2) confuse the source, nature and biblical means of forgiveness;
3) promote secrecy between spouses. (I believe this is very wrong.);
4) encourage the ranking and categorization of various sins;
5) lead to creating a moral standard that competes with trusting Christ alone.

Over the coming days and weeks I will expand on each one of these observations in a condensed format. If you are asking “I waited two months for that? What an incredibly short summary!” I promise that I will expand on each of these points in a way that (hopefully) relates to your experience and offers suggestions for how to avoid these common pitfalls. In the meantime, have a nice weekend and blessed Lord’s day!

Looking through my journal over the last 10 years I notice an interesting tension between being thankful to the Lord and trusting in the Lord. It seems as though I trust the Lord in difficult times and am thankful to the Lord in easier times, yet rarely vice versa. In fact, their seems to be an inverse relationship between ease and trust and difficulty and thankfulness. As I approach my third decade this year I am giving serious consideration to reversing this trend.

I’m not too sure where you lovely folks fall on several issues, Christianity being one of them, but one thing is for certain: I despise sloppy logic when it comes to argumentation. Let me state, briefly, for clarification purposes, that I view argumentation, or debate, as a positive thing. Sadly, in our society today many view argumentation as negative or intolerant. I propose the main reason for this is that we, as a nation, have grown lazy in our reasoning and logic and have replaced these good practices with a love for scandal and immediate conclusion drawing. As a result, we are becoming a people comfortable with (or perhaps even worse, unaware of) hasty generalizations, band wagoning, red herrings, ad-hominem character assassinations and a slew of other logical fallacies.

Why do I bring this up? Well, perhaps in no other topic than Christianity is lazy thinking and bad conclusion drawing most prevalent - both in the “pro” and “anti” camps. That is why it was so refreshing, if for no other reason than good thinking and accurate topic representation, to receive a copy of the The Big Picture Story Bible from Amazon two days ago. Some of you know that for the last 3 years my wife and I have been going through the Shorter Catechism Explained From Scripture with our boys. It is a question and answer explanation of the Westminster Shorter Catechism designed to educate people on sound theological principles about reformed Christianity. Although the content, reasoning and logic are very solid, some of the answers can be a bit lengthy for 3 and 5 year old minds. Considering several of the alternatives consist of “you’re SO special and you’re SO good that God can’t help but love you. Just ask Jesus into your heart and your good” silliness (good luck finding that in the Bible) we have stuck primarily with the SCEFS.

That is up until now. The Big Picture Story Bible has been great at accurately representing biblical stories in a way that avoids seeker-friendly and man-centered spin. For instance, last night in dealing with the biblical account of the flood the BPSB simply said “God judged the world. God sent a big flood of water. Everything that lived on land died.”

Harsh? Yes.
Difficult to comprehend? Yes.
Biblically accurate? Definitely.

Now before anyone familiar with Christianity objects, “That sounds like every other account of the flood I’ve heard,” stop for a moment and think of all the extra commentary that is often injected to explain away accounts of God’s judgment - especially in the Old Testament - or nervously fiddle with obvious questions such as “How can a loving God judge people?” The BPSB avoids this extra commentary and simply restates, albeit in a condensed format, the biblical account of the flood.

So with that said, why do I find such glum (and perhaps rather obvious) words refreshing? Simply because no commentarial baggage is interspersed within the account. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is. In our day of instant experts who are overflowing with pre-conceived ideas and hidden agendas, we forget that people used to (and still today, but in declining numbers) study topics for months and even years before drawing any conclusions (read my Favorite Quote by Milton Friedman that I posted earlier this morning).

Take global warming for example. The media begins to cite supposed examples of the effects of global warming. They bring in experts to back up this claim. Famous people get on board with the cause. Anyone who denies or contests the global warming claim is marginalized and positioned as a right-wing, Bush supporting, pro-war mongering, big business fanatic that doesn’t care about raping the world and destroying it for future generations so long as he or she can pad his or her pockets.

Or on the other side of the coin (or political spectrum) another segment of the media begins to endorse the war effort in Iraq. Experts are brought in to defend the pro-war position. Another set of famous people get on board. And anyone who denies or contests the claim is marginalized and positioned as a left-wing nut job that doesn’t give a damn about national security and couldn’t care less if bad people blow up stuff so as long as those bad people have their freedom to fight for what they believe in and everyone is being included in a warm global toleration hug.

Ok, admittedly, both examples are a bit embellished. But sadly, by only a little more than what is reality.

So how do I get from the Bible and its account of the flood to global warming and Iraq? Well, first, I am not here to push either of those agendas, but rather to promote logic and good reasoning. Second, I believe that it is only after a clear delineation and understanding of the issues at hand are made, that intelligent debate surrounding said issues can follow. I don’t care if the topic is biblical, political, financial, social or otherwise. It is absolutely imperative that the content of any topic is accurately represented for there to be any chance of arriving at logical conclusions.

So in relation to teaching our children Christian theology, in hopes of not ending up with a confusing, poorly related, weakly justified and contradictory theological mess, we will, at the very least, engage the issues as they are laid out in the biblical text, only then attempting to pursue conclusions.

What conclusions my sons draw as they continue to unwillingly concede to the effects of time (i.e. age) is unknown. And perhaps more importantly (and comforting), beyond my control. Will my sons accept the fact that God killed everything on earth? I have no idea. Heck, if I’m honest, I have a hard time accepting that. I mean, seriously, vast tragedies alone, whether they be the biblical flood or the 2004 Tsunami or the bridge collapse in Minnesota last year are hard enough to grasp and deal with independent from wrestling with the concept that God reigned sovereign over “the flood that killed everything on earth”.

So, no, I have no idea where my sons will fall on the issue of the flood and how it relates to the character of God as accounted for in the rest of the Bible. I also don’t know where they will fall on thousands of other issues, some biblical, some not. But instead of assuming the role of supposed expert and pushing certain pressure filled agendas their way, my wife and I will strive to approach each topic (biblical or not) bluntly and vigorously in an effort to clearly determine what is being said and accurately form what the resulting issues are, then, and only then, pursuing possible conclusions.

I have greatly enjoyed the last 5 1/2 years of being a parent. I look forward with tremendous anticipation to the continued growth and development of my sons and am very excited to know them when they reach adulthood.

Until then I will encourage my children to investigate, explore, question, reason and wrestle with any and all topics that pique their fascinating little minds.

(See, I told you it was the longest post ever.)

This is so ridiculously cheesy I don’t even know what to say about it. In trying to “reach” people you would think that they would 1) realize that the real Homeland Security threat level system is widely ridiculed and made fun of and would therefore 2) pick something that “unreached” people didn’t find dumb. I know their excuse for people not liking it will consist of quoting “the gospel is foolishness to those that are perishing” but last time I checked, lame seeker friendly promotions do not comprise the gospel. This is one of a half-dozen or so aspects of American Evangelicalism that I hate. It makes me want to vomit.

Some of you are aware that I spent close to 5 years working in what some like to call “full-time ministry.” Many of my good friends continue to find their employ in this field. Many have gone on to attend seminary and make it “official.” I on the other hand was compelled to pursue my interests in business and have done so under a carefully crafted statement of purpose I penned in 2004 while in business school.

As I have observed the different paths chosen by myself and various friends (or if you are reformed as I happen to be, the paths chosen by God) I have seen several logical, theological and practical mistakes made on both sides of the “full-time ministry” and “Christian businessman” fence.

Unbeknownest to all but my wife and a few very close friends, I have been wrestling with these observations, the resulting implications and any and all solutions that might exist to these errors in the form of a book. My intent is for this book to be beneficial to the group of people that comprise the Church and any others that may be interested.

Since 2003, I have written numerous chapters and paragraphs on topics that directly impact theological and practical aspects of being a Christian. I have cycled through 3 different titles for the book. (Two of which were pretty good. One of which - I think - was not fit to print.) I have wrestled with the lack of “credibility” (lack of me having an M-Div, time away from “full-time ministry”, etc) some leaders in the church will no doubt point to as a critique of my writing. I have given careful consideration to my arguments to ensure as best I can that they are sharp, pointed and effective while being free of unnecessary cynicism and frivolous disagreement.

Dealing with the “credibility” concern as well as a lack of a publisher have been the biggest obstacles to releasing some of these thoughts. However, I have concluded that the “credibility” issue is moot. If a certain group of people refuse to engage my arguments based on a set of initials that do not follow my name or an absence from the ministerial profession, then, in my estimation, they only prove themselves to be the arrogant and illogical megalomaniacs many pastors I know have become.

The concern regarding a lack of a publisher has proven to be unfounded. With blogs and services like Blurb, I have no excuse to continue to refrain from sharing my thoughts. So, without further adieu, today I officially announce that I will begin to publish some of these thoughts at the beginning of 2008. Stay tuned for more information, such as, the blog title, domain name, etc.

I have been quiet for too long. The frustrations are rising to such levels that I simply must speak. Hopefully, by the grace of God, these musings will be beneficial to family, friends and anyone else who may be interested.

From John Piper’s website this morning “Christians are secure, not because they are strong, but because God is sovereign and faithful to his new covenant promises.” You can read the entire article here.