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  Thoughts of a Restored Mind 
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brought
in the New Year with wonderful friends that we’ve had for a lifetime
– well a half-life anyway.
After catching up with some that we hadn’t seen in a while,
we gathered together as a group to reflect upon the past year. As we went around the room
those that offered their thoughts spoke in fairly affirmative
terms as to how they saw God working in their lives. No doubt this was a time of
enrichment and thankfulness because it was abundantly clear that God
had given us so much.  
As is always the case there were a few silent souls, with one usually
being me. This rare
moment I anteed up a few words and thankfully didn't cave
in emotionally as I am prone to do whenever expressing issues of the
heart. The skeptic in me wonders what’s really going on in the
deepest recesses of those quiet ones but don't you also wonder
like I do about the ones who seem to always be able to put a
triumphant spiritual spin on even the most challenging moral and/or
spiritual dilemmas.
We seem to learn at a very early age how to
fool even the closest of friends when in fact most of us
occasionally experience those sleepless nights filled with
thoughts of inadequacy & doubt and feelings of hurt and
fear. In an inaudible
whisper we think aloud, “Does God really love me? Is He
still there?
Unfortunately uttering those kinds of questions in a group
setting make folks very uncomfortable. Certainly we need to dwell on
the “good things” but I have learned that God can indeed handle
those questions of uncertainty & insecurity. We just need to be honest
and genuine with Him.
The group disassembled and as the evening
began to wear down I heard a fellow say that he was reading a book
on preterism, which is a fancy word for believing that most if not
all of the prophesies found in the Scripture had been fulfilled by
A.D. 70. So oh dopy me
chimed in and said, “I believe some of that stuff”. Can you say stupid, stupid,
stupid?
Well,
you’d have thought I just detonated a dirty bomb in
New
York City! There are a few certainties
in life and one of them is never to question the validity of the
pretribulation rapture in hearing distance of a hard core
rapturologist whose been studying & honing his views on said
subject for the better part of a quarter of a century. To start with you have no
chance but the odds are reduced to below zero when you are as ill
prepared as I was especially when you sense that an ambush
has been cleverly prearranged.
It’s
like getting into an impromptu street fight with Mike Tyson when he
was in the prime of his boxing rampage, directly after you come
off a 26-mile mid-summer jaunt through the bowels of the
vulture-laden heat-scorched Grand
Canyon. First of all, you are
thoroughly outmatched because he’s 238 pounds of raw violence, and
second, he knows how to take you out with the precision of a Swiss
watchmaker. Once he
lands the first blow to your glass-like chin you find yourself
prostrate on the ground wondering if your undergarments are
hospital-worthy. 
As you begin to hear the ref count down
from 10, your dignity kicks in and somewhere between 7 and 5
you pull yourself back up by the ropes to a semi-vertical
position. And before
you are nearly seaworthy, wham!―you take a severe body shot to the
solerplexus with something like, “how can you possibly believe
that”? And just when
you think it can’t get any worse and you can’t look any more foolish
you get hit with a non-stop combination of “what about this?” and
“how in the world can that be so?” After your 4th knockdown you
rise to your feet again hoping for one last opportunity to save face
but now he really smells blood. He begins to wind up his
hammer of an arm like a windmill and he begins to grin at you like,
“are you totally out of your mind?”. Then he
methodically proceeds to pummel you into
oblivion like a Johnny Damon bobblehead
doll in the clenches of an angry die-hard Red
Sox fanatic when he hears on ESPN that J.D. has defected to the
dark side. You may not be down for the count yet but you’re
done. Just pack up your thoughts and get out of there before the
carnage worsens - because at that point all you can hope for is that
you “make like a tree and leaf” before you get your ear bitten
off by Iron Mike.
When I arrived home and began to recount
this eschatological debate nightmare I really felt as though I’d
been battered and beaten - metaphorically for sure but tagged
nonetheless. Whoever
thought up that old “sticks and stones” garbage ought to be held
down and severely licked by my little black dog, Fenway, who has a
tongue longer than Kiss rocker, Gene
Simmons!
Life is a great teacher and at this point
I want to share with you two life lessons that I learned from this
rather vexing experience.
The first is that “winning” should be of
little to no consequence.
I can’t believe those words are actually coming from my
nimble little fingertips.
Demonstrating the love that has been so freely given to us by
our Creator should be our utmost goal. Sure it’s fun to feel that
we are right. There’s
some power in that but don’t you think it just acts like petrol on
the fire of our foolish pride?
When you think about it, from the time you are old enough to
utter your first words like, Tinkertoy or prestidigitation, being
right is the name of the game.
Hey, listen, there’s nothing inherently wrong with espousing
truth (may it never be!) but there’s a way to do it while allowing
those that might be in discord with us to feel like they haven’t
been taken behind the woodshed. So lesson number one is
debate
with dignity - edify,
don’t tear down.
The second lesson was the hardest. As Peter writes in his first
epistle “…always
be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the
hope that is in you, with meekness and fear.” Was I prepared?
Was I able to wield the sword of the Spirit with such speed
and precision through a spirit of humility? Not
really.
My counterpart surely was ready and eager
but was he able to challenge me while maintaining a gracious
spirit? I surely didn’t
feel grace flowing from his left jabs but who
knows - that’s up to God to deal with. I was so
badly beaten that I don’t even have a complete recall of the
massacre. So often we
as Christians are so interested in being morally accurate that we
forget to accompany our rightness with gentleness. As I’ve begun to objectively
analyze the “religious right” label I realize that we relish the “us vs. them” dichotomy that
is nowhere lionized or extolled in Jesus’ teaching.
The
reality is that we are all accountable for our responses and that
night mine were ineffectual – they were defensive, indecisive
and they lacked clarity. There's no doubt that my heart
was void of the spirit of comradery
at least in part because of my lack of preparedness both
Scripturally and emotionally.
It was more than apparent to me that my
jouster left that night feeling quite victorious and that’s
o.k. – I think in his mind he’d defeated another one of those
heretics who had the audacity to question the holy grail of Left Behindology. I could feel him scratch a
clear notch into his belt of Scriptural correctness.
But I didn’t do him any favors. Even though I am now more
than ever convinced of the preterist position with which I attempted
to bestow, I am saddened because this fellow didn’t get the benefit
of how God may have graced him with new and challenging
information. For as
Paul wrote in his second letter to Timothy in chapter 2 verse
15, “Do your
best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does
not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of
truth”. So too we
should we be able to handle the sword with this kind of
confidence.
Much of the impetus for creating this
website came from that New Year’s Eve experience. My sincere desire is to
honestly and humbly share the hope that Christ has given me. I came out of a rather
severe 10-12 year spiritual slump/fog about a year ago. As I look back, there were
three tangible events that catapulted me over the wall of apathy and
indifference and ultimately helped soften my heart to the Lord.
One involved God’s miraculous work in the
lives of my sister-in-law and brother-in-law that could not be
explained by any amount of skepticism that I could muster up. That truly was a timely
heartening touch from Heaven.
The next involved an escapade in the
study of Job. I read,
listened to on my mp3 player, and studied the book of Job countless
times in a span of just a few weeks. It was extremely difficult
to come to grips with some of the deeper messages in Job but
nonetheless quite enlightening. I learned that outside a
personal vibrant relationship with our creator life doesn’t exist in
any meaningful way.
Well, that brings me to the third event
that still has me scratching my ever more balding head. I had been
studying eschatology (you wouldn’t know it by the outcome of the
above New Year’s party episode) and finally came to the conclusion
that the “Late Great Planet Earth”/“Left Behind”/Ryrie/Scofield doom
and gloom theology did not square with Scripture.
At this point you ask, “Why in the world
would a change in eschatological position have anything to do with
spiritual depression”?
The answer is simply complex. Shaken but not stirred. Less filling but taste
great. Sorry for the
digression. The
futurist worldview is so negative in terms of Christ’s death &
resurrection in that it in a sense denies the significant impact
that it should have on all of creation. God’s redemption should
permeate the whole earth! His salt and His light should flavor every
facet of society.
They (sorry for the us vs. them theme that I
abhor but I must use it in this context) say that Satan
truly is “Alive and Well on Planet Earth” (a Hal Lindsey paperback
written in the early 70’s soon after “The Late Great Planet Earth”
burst onto the scene.
But does Satan truly have dominion over the earth? Is the war still
raging? Sure there are
countless skirmishes but wasn’t Christ declared the winner when He
arose from the tomb? And wasn't it the end for Beelzebub's run
on evildoing when he was crushed into tiny unrecognizable
pieces and the temple in Jerusalem was annihilated along with the
bondage & curse of the law which was embodied in entire
sacrificial system? For in Romans 16:20 it says, "The God of peace will
soon crush Satan under your
feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with
you." (Let use not miss the critical word "soon" found in
the above text and not violate key principals of hermeneutics understanding that Paul
wrote this letter to the Romans in approx AD 58, not to
Americans in
2006!)
Paul further wrote, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your
sting? The sting of
death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God!
He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ.”
Christ said, “It is finished”. Then on the 3rd
day he arose from the grave forever conquering sin and ultimately
spiritual death. Peter
proclaimed, “The end of all things is
near” and 40 years after Jesus’ ascension to Heaven, the
temple and the entire sacrificial system was utterly destroyed. Paul further wrote that
“…the
form of this world is passing
away.”
Today
most of us live as though it was never finished and unknowingly our
eschatology affects every facet of life. Unlike the gentlemen at the
New Year’s party, most of us say we have no clear position on the
“End Times” and we are frightened and perplexed by the imagery of
John’s Revelation. I
humbly submit that most everyone has a catastrophic view of the
“end” with a battle of all battles waged in the the
valley
of Megiddo. This view I submit has
potentially dangerous fallout.
Let me share two recent examples and how I think it not only
damages our credibility to a world that is in desperate need of
Christ, but also renders our witness less
effectual.
In a February 2005 article entitled, “Are We Doomed? Insanity Now
Mainstream -There Is No
Tomorrow”,
Bill Moyers writes, “Remember
James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's
first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental
journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how
James Watt told the U.S. Congress
that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the
imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony, he said,
"after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." (Read the
whole article – it’s quite illuminating and informative to see how
others outside the evangelical beltway perceive us and our science
fiction-like end of the world
theology.)
I’m certainly no fan of Bill Moyers but
he makes a valid and quite disturbing point. To cap off this whole line
of what I believe to be misguided and ill-conceived exegeses, I have
heard devout dispensationalists say things like, “Why polish brass
on a sinking ship” or “why waste valuable time attempting
to stem the tide of abortion on demand when there are souls to
be won.” I’m sorry but
that grates at the core of my spirit and it raises the hackles on
the back on my neck!
How insensitive!
Did Christ not come to redeem all of
life?
How can we
be salt and light to a world in desperate need if we don’t give a
darn about the moral conditions that we all live
in? Oh sure we preach
the “good news” to “them” as if the only thing that matters is
getting them to sign their confession of Christ on the dotted
line. Do we give water
to the thirsty, clothe the naked and feed the starving? To a point, but even that
seems quite conditional.
We want to meet our quota of the great commission by
preaching
the gospel to everyone on the planet so that we can usher in the 2nd coming of
Christ. Do we really
care about the environment?
Do we want to break down racial barriers? Do we want to change our
world? Do we want to
build buildings to last more than 30 years? Do we believe there are
grace atoning solutions in the Middle
East? Palestinian Christians are being
persecuted and are fleeing the Occupied territories
by the droves? The more
militant Muslims have a blood-thirsty desire of eliminating all
Christians & Jews from the region & ultimately the face of
the earth. Are there any solutions or is God unwilling or
incapable of changing even the hardest of hearts? We are told
that enmity has existed for thousands of years and that's not going
to ever change. Is it true that all hope of
peace is preordained for failure? I'm saddened to say
that my guess is that most would say, yes, because they believe that
the bible clearly states that short of Jesus' 2nd return that
things will only worsen.
It seems that we are more fixated on “Anti-Christ is
coming’ then “Christ is coming”. We are told, “What’s the use”,
referencing our impotent efforts to change a doomed world. It’s plainly written in the
footnotes of our Ryrie and Scofield Bibles and Tim Lahaye spells it
out ever so clearly - and I thought the Left
Behind series was fiction? So many
treat this series like a God-ordained extension of
Scripture?
The mantra goes on...You see the
evil one is coming and all our efforts to make a difference will be
for naught so just save as many as you can before by the skin of our
teeth we get taken out of this God-forsaken existence. I’ve been hearing much of
the same since the early 70’s.
My goodness, when the 1973 oil
crisis
broke out over our support for Israel in
the Yom Kippur war, my roommates and I considered quitting school
and doing whatever you do “in the last days”.
Then in the 1982, when my wife was
pregnant with our first child, we were warned by a friend, “"For indeed the days are coming in which they will say,
'Blessed are the barren, wombs that never bore, and breasts which
never nursed!'”
How sensitive & comforting! This liked to scare my wife
half out of her wits.
Then Edgar Whisenant bounded onto the scene with his
4.5 million copies of “88 Reasons Why the Rapture
Could Be in 1988.
I remember
it vividly. He was boldly
predicting the time when all Christians would exit the earth in
flight. It was supposed to happen between
September
11-13, 1988. On the 12th my
wife and I were tooling around the Gulf
of Mexico on
a cruise ship to nowhere during one of the fiercest hurricanes of
all time. (that’s another story I’d like to forget). Well HE never returned and
It would appear that Whisenant finally gave up after numerous date
revisions. Today no Whisenant website exists, and he and his 88
Reasons have now entered the lore of false prophecies of the 20th
century.
And the beat goes
on...
The 2nd area of heartburn comes from a
situation involving a candidate I backed for president some 18 years
ago. In the first few
days of January this year a CNN article read, “Television evangelist Pat
Robertson suggested
Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was
divine retribution for the Israeli withdrawal from
Gaza,
which Robertson opposed.”
Robertson was quoted as saying, “He was dividing God's land,
and I would say, "Woe unto any prime minister of
Israel
who takes a similar course… God says, This land belongs to me, and
you'd better leave it alone.”
Is this what it’s come to? Wishing or at least
expecting that world leaders should die because they are trying
to facilitate peace!
If you want to know more about the incredible impact of
Christian Zionism just listen to the CTOTRTA
series on the “Audio” page of this site. And if you think that
Israel’s becoming a nation in
1948
was divinely fulfilled prophecy then you
have no clue how those in the futurist movement have been “helping”
God get this done since the late 1800s. In my view, self-fulfilled
prophecy seems a more accurate depiction of Israel's
nation status.
You see, it does matter how you view eschatology. It makes a difference in
more ways than you can ever imagine. I personally think that the
premillennial dispensational rapture theories have done a great deal
to damage the church’s influence in the world and I’d like to see
that changed. I know it will but it must begin with us.
My exhortation is that when we read His word that we do so with
the following thought in mind. The Scripture was written
for us but it was not written to us.
Certainly we understand that, "Every Scripture is God-breathed (inspired) and
profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for
instruction in righteousness" - but we also must be clear
that it was written to specific people for specific
purposes.
Well, one thing's for sure. The next time I am engaged
in a discussion regarding the “hope that is within me”
I will attempt to “divide the word of God correctly” with humility
and meekness. I may
fail miserably but I pray that a glimmer of grace might leap from my
heart to theirs. And
let's always remember that “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but
have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging
cymbal.”
Sometimes it’s pretty noisy out there.
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