The Vapour of this Little Time

‘The Entombment’ by Daniele Crespi 1620’s

“For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time,
and then vanisheth away.” James 4:14 (AV)

I write within 24 hours of the death of a friend. I write on New Year’s Eve. I inflate my connection by calling him my friend. I think we only ever talked about Kentucky basketball. I was pastor to his missionary family during their Budapest years. He died when his truck left the road early yesterday morning in Atlanta. He was twenty-two. He knew the Lord Christ savingly. Dear God, what a difference that makes.

When we contemplate the Being of God we are inevitably staggered by mysteries, complexities, impossibilities. Eternity, Infinity, Trinity. Try wrapping your brain around that. Yet the moral dimension of God’s character is also a mystery to fallen flesh. Our vantage point is clouded. Our judgment is corrupt. The primary theological enterprise in the moral realm is the accommodation of our understanding of divine goodness to our experience of human pain. Grace is sorely needed. We would like more answers. We would like more faith. It is harder to be orthodox when our hearts are crushed.

I knew another young man, the son of intimate friends, who died in 2009. It is a fellowship with God, a stewardship from God which no one wants, this business of losing sons.

God will not prove His love for us by preventing the suffering or death of someone we love. I did not say He would not protect those we love. Is there anyone we care about still alive and prospering? It is because God protects them. We believe in Providence. I said God will not prove His love to us by Providence.

I did not say we cannot ask God to protect those we love. We believe in prayer. I said that God will not prove His love for us by answered prayer.

I make these emphatic declarations for the simple reason that God proves His love in a way quite different. He proves His love by refusing to protect the One He loves.

“He who did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all,
will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32

To doubt God’s love when those we care about are taken is to deem the crucifixion of God’s only Son an insufficient demonstration of favor. Of course we don’t mean to. But sorrow is a suffocating thing.

Probably the greatest thing, the hardest thing, we trust God with is who dies first and who dies next. The best man in the world once cried out,
“O my son, Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom!
Would God that I had died instead of thee…” 2 Samuel 18:33

We want to insist that heaven be adorned exclusively with the aged. We want to, but we can’t.

If I knew what God knows, and I do not, and if I were good, and I am not, I would do what God does. I would allow what God allows.

2009 is soon gone.
So shall our lives be.
It is therefore all the more urgent that we secure a life which cannot be forfeited.
A life purchased by the Dread Ransom of the Blood Royal.
We draw One Year Closer.

The Clothes God Wears

..and she brought forth her first-born Son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes
Luke 2:7

Clothes are important. Clothes may be an expression of character, an insignia of rank, or an index of economic station. Clothes are also a consequence of the Fall. Practically the first question asked by the first human pair after the Fall was, "What shall we wear?" Of course their solution was inadequate. It was God, newly offended, newly estranged, who provided the covering. Even that covering was temporary. The great theological term 'atonement' is taken from the simple Hebrew word for 'covering.' That first physical covering provided by God for Adam and Eve foreshadowed the spiritual atonement only God Himself could provide.
On the Island of Patmos John sees and reports that the glorified Second Person is "clothed in a robe reaching to His feet and girded about His breast with a golden girdle." (Revelation 1:13) Quite a contrast to the swaddling clothes. The Son of Man came unclothed into the world and had to be covered. The Lord Jesus would make atonement for sinners by becoming a substitute for them. That meant being uncovered Himself.
At the Cross He was stripped.
Before they put Him on the Cross they gave Him a crown of thorns. Before they put Him on the Cross they took His covering. While he hung there they gambled for His clothes. Thorns are an emblem of the curse -another consequence of the Fall. He took the curse upon His head. He gave the covering off His back.
In Bethlehem His back was covered
Deity was swaddled and laid down.
He came to make His blessings flow.
Far as the curse is found.

Mythology and History

A few days ago I was reading an on-line article in the Times of London. It was written by Jeremy Clarkson, a regular who normally writes about automobiles. This time he was writing a review of Bob Dylan’s Christmas CD. Though I was a Bob Dylan fanatic in my (long ago) youth I don’t think I could bring myself to listen to a Bob Dylan Christmas CD.I much admired more than one of Dylan’s early voices but even early on I enjoyed hearing Peter Paul and Mary rescue Bob Dylan’s songs from Bob Dylan’s voice. (We lost Mary Travers in 2009. A lamentable subtraction that.) Still I loved Dylan’s sneering scornful intonations so well suited for classics like Positively Fourth Street and Like a Rolling Stone. Dylan’s voice has significantly degenerated over the years (a thing Jane always maintained was impossible). Now, in my dotage, I can’t bear the thought of Silent Night in any of Dylan’s voices though I’m glad he at least wants to do something for Christmas.
But it’s Clarkson I’m interested in at the moment not Dylan. And Jeremy Clarkson regards both Dylan and Christmas with boundless cynicism. He insists that most people (right thinking people which of course includes himself) regard all the Christmas nonsense as a fairy-tale. He may be correct to insist that most of our contemporaries regard the biblical account in just that way. But he embraces error if he takes his stand with the majority.
Fairy tales usually begin something like this:
Long ago and far away…
But this story starts out when Caesar Augustus (63 BC-14 AD) was Emperor of Rome. To narrow it down a bit more it was during that part of Augustus’ reign when Quirinius (51 BC-21AD) was governor of Syria. I‘m aware that there is a controversy about the date of Quirinius’ rule. If you are aware of the controversy I subscribe to the two term solution. Then there is the matter of place. It happened in Bethlehem. Travel south-east from Rome. When you reach latitude 31 degrees 05 North and Longitude 34 degrees 48East you're in Jerusalem. Hang a right and take the road south. Almost anyone will be able to tell you which road. Five miles and you're there. It's a real place.
Have you ever noticed how some of the most apparently impossible (all miracles are impossible without God. That's part of what 'miracle' means) of Jesus' miracles are either public (e.g. the feeding of the 5000) or are amply fortified with authenticating detail? Surely the greatest miracles are the resurrections. Apart from Jesus' own resurrection we have three reports in the Gospel accounts. You will recall the case of Jairus’ daughter. Jairus was a synagogue ruler in Galilee. Synagogue rulers in Galilee were not exactly thick on the ground back then. (There were probably only about 50 houses in first century Nazareth). If the report were false it would have been easily repudiated. Then there was the widow of Nain’s son. Nain was a tiny village. There could have been only one widow there about that time whose son predeceased her. If such an event took place every resident of Nain would have known all about it. It would have been madness to make the thing up if it didn't happen. Then there was the raising of Lazarus. Not everyone in Jerusalem would have known someone in Bethany (though it was quite close by), but it’s a good bet everyone in Bethany would have known someone in Jerusalem. And everyone in Bethany would have known either Mary or Martha or Lazarus. If it were claimed that Lazarus was raised from the dead, and he was not, in fact raised, it would have been a particularly damaging lie, a lie useless to perpetuate. If these claims were lies why were enough details supplied to make it possible for the claims to be disproved? In 1872 a German archaeological team digging in Bethany unearthed a family burial crypt 18 centuries old. The tomb was sealed. Upon the seal were three names: Mary, Martha and Lazarus. Fairy tales do not normally leave artifacts in the ground.
But back to the birth narrative. For a skeptic, among the most difficult things to choke down in the Creation and Nativity accounts are the claims about Eve and Mary. At the beginning of the Old Testament sin entered the world because the first woman was deceived by the devil and did his bidding. The New Testament begins when a Virgin girl supernaturally conceives without male agency and gives birth to a Child who is, in fact, the Son of God. By secular reasoning it’s a pretty far stretch on the face of it. But let’s not leave it at a superficial level. If the two accounts are myths why is the import of the second myth so contradictory to the first myth? What possible motive or mindset originated and perpetuated the contradiction? What I mean by contradiction is simply this. Women were universally marginalized and trivialized in the ancient world. This was painfully true among the Jews even until comparatively recent times. One of the three things a pious Jew thanked God for was that he was not a woman. That it was naïveté on the part of a woman which effected the entrance of sin into the world is not surprising even if we regard the story as mythological. But what of Mary’s role in birthing Jesus? SHE brought forth HER first born. The woman is the star. Not THEIR first born HER first born. I am Protestant. I do not believe it is either desirable or wise to assign to Mary a role larger than what Scripture declares, but even by the most modest Protestant estimates her stature is gigantic. See how Woman is elevated. See how spectacularly God’s favor rests upon her in contradistinction to the males in the cast of players. See how she shines. But whence cometh this shining? And why? Of course it seems a commonplace role for a woman in our feminist generation but in first century Jewish culture it constitutes a glaring anachronism. Unless...unless the provenance of the story is neither naturalistic nor mythological.
And it was not. Nor could it have been.

The Festival of the Born King (Part 2)

Where is He Who is BORN the King of the Jews?
Matthew 2:2

This is an elaboration of the theme for the Christmas reflection of 2008 slightly different, somewhat expanded. We never get to the end of this story do we?

Even David was not born King of the Jews. Nor Saul nor Solomon. Hardly anyone is actually BORN a King. Hardly anyone at all.
Victoria was not born a Queen. She became Queen a month after her 18th birthday. When she was born George III was on the throne. Her son Edward VII was not born a King. When he was born his mother was on the throne. She was also on the throne when her grandson and great grandson George V and George VI were born. No one is born a King or Queen. You must wait. One day, when it's time, he or she ascends the throne.
Herod was a tyrant with strong views about who should be King. He believed there should be no successors on the horizon or in the imagination. His two unusually winsome sons, Alexander and Aristobolus not only made a great impression in the provinces but were justly celebrated in Rome as well. Their celebrity flamed the paranoia of a father who dispatched them with assassins. His own sons! Can you imagine entering Jerusalem to extol a fresh rival to Herod? Herod was not born a King. He was not even born a Jew. He was an Idumean. He converted to Judaism to make his reign more palatable. He kept a Kosher table. It was said that Herod's pigs were more safe than Herod's sons (a play on words in Greek).
Only faith or courage or ignorance or insanity would have moved anyone to enter Jerusalem to inquire about another King, a higher King, a King born as King. These Magi were moved by divine impulse. They sought a King attended by stars
There was only one King Who brought a Crown to His birth. There was only one Who stooped to a human throne, One Who condescended.
That King bartered power for weakness with informed consent fully apprised of consequences.
That King was born in Bethlehem.
Born on Christmas Day.

Birthday of a Phenomenon

Martyn Lloyd-Jones (December 19, 1899-March 1, 1981)

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was born this day in Cardiff 110 years ago, the year Dwight L. Moody died. In my opinion he was the greatest expository preacher in English in the 20th Century. He was one of three sons born to Henry Lloyd-Jones a Welsh dairyman who moved his family to London during Martyn's childhood. His story is remarkable because of what he walked away from and the brilliant effectiveness he sustained as an auto-didact. As for ministry preparation he was entirely self-taught with no formal theological training.
He qualified in medicine and a brilliant career loomed. One of the Medical Professors at St. Bartholomew's Hospital where he trained was Lord Thomas Horder the most famous doctor in Britain. Lord Horder was the physician to Prime Ministers and the glitterati of London society. He was also Physician-in-Waiting to the King. His fame rested largely on the fact that as King Edward VII lay dying, in 1910, he called for Lord Horder. During his training M L-J disputed a diagnosis of the great man. L-J was able to make his diagnosis by a manual external probing of the patient’s spleen, something Horder was not able to do. Time proved the student right and the teacher wrong. Though Horder was not a Christian, he responded with magnanimity and invited L-J to join his prestigious Harley Street practice upon graduation. At about the same time (1926) L-J married Bethan Phillips, the only child of a Welsh doctor and a physician in her own right. As women physicians were rare in those days one can only guess at how over-qualified she must truly have been.
Sometime in his student days Martyn Lloyd-Jones came to know Christ personally. A sense of a call to ministry began to grow. One hundred per-cent of his counselors urged him to stay in medicine, though some suggested medical missions. His own pastor at Charing Cross Welsh Chapel assured him that if he had his life to live over he would have been a physician! It was during the Christmas season that the crisis came. Some honeymooning friends from Wales visited the recently married Lloyd-Jones' in London. The two couples decided to attend the Theatre. Exiting the performance a Salvation Army band approached ringing their bells and beating their drums. Some would be understandably embarrassed as the shabbily dressed gospelers drew close to the fashionable West End theatre crowd in their furs and finery. At that moment Martyn Lloyd-Jones realized he KNEW. The juxtaposition of the two competing fellowships was overpowering. Later he compared the experience to the scene in Wagner's Tannhäuser when there is a call from the Pilgrims competing against the pull of the world. Looking upon the down market evangelists M L-Jones said that he realized "These are my people" Looking upon his fellow theatre goers he realized, "These are not my people."
Immediately he resigned his Medical Practice and left London for a struggling Mission Church in a poor Welsh mining town called Aberavon. The decision must have been excruciating because his wife gave up her career as well. It was all the more surprising because they realized later that she wasn't a Christian at the time.
He stayed in Wales for 12 years before becoming G. Campbell-Morgan's co-Pastor at Westminster Chapel in London (near Buckingham Palace) in 1939. He became Senior Minister in 1943. He never had a formal welcome to the church because the weekend he began England declared war on Germany. He never had a formal goodbye because he resigned quickly in 1968 due to impending heart surgery. His ministry was remarkable for many reasons including:
1) He preached the Bible, verse by verse through books, a rare thing in those days. Even Spurgeon hadn't done that.
2) He resurrected and relished the powerfully theologized pulpit emphases of the Reformers and the Puritans whose doctrines he loved and whose holiness he imitated.
3) He was an activist who catalyzed movements. He helped Inter-Varsity in their critical early days. He helped bring the Evangelical Library to London and established the Westminster Conference, an annual lecture series on Puritan history and theology. He encouraged the launch of the Banner of Truth Trust in 1957, the foremost publisher of Puritan and Reformed literature in the world.
4) Although he published little while in active pastoral ministry after his retirement a steady stream of books began to flow.
He was not perfect. He could be hard to get along with. And he could be narrow. One of the first things he did at Westminster Chapel was to abolish the choir. His book Joy Unspeakable (published posthumously without his oversight) shows that even a great mind and arduous study cannot always compensate entirely for a lack of theological training.
But he was a giant and a great man.
He should always be studied.
My own favorites are his expositions of Roman 5 and volume two of Romans 8.
Real experts on his writings usually list ‘Spiritual Depression’ and ‘Studies in the Sermon on the Mount’ in the first rank.
He should always be honored.
It would be hard to imagine 20th Century evangelicalism without him. We would have been much the poorer; of that there can be no doubt.
May God be praised for giving him to the Church.
And may God raise up more like him before it's too late.

Christmas as an Evangelistic Opportunity

Christmas is one of the easiest times to talk about the Lord Jesus. He is, after all, the whole point, though it's easy for the point to be lost in the froth of the inconsequential. If the percentage of Christians who share their faith on a regular basis is a trustworthy gauge, then apparently talking about Jesus is not easy. It's not as if we need a special reason to bring up the Creator of the Universe from time to time with those who owe Him every breath and heartbeat. If we have specific commands from God, do we need special concessions from sinners? I think not. It is not as if the Lord said, “Go out into all the world and wait for the right moment.”
We will do well, though, to consider how best to begin. Many Christians feel the need to engage the unbeliever on neutral ground at first and then hope for a segue which doesn't jar or alienate. May all who opt for indirect approaches be fruitful in evangelistic labor. But a direct approach attracts me most.
"Have you ever heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?" is a question blessed in my generation."If you were to die tonight do you know for certain that you would go to heaven?" is the first of two diagnostic questions made popular by D. James Kennedy. The second question is "What would you say to God if He asked you why He should let you into His heaven?"As an unbeliever Dr. Kennedy heard those words spoken on the radio by a Philadelphia Pastor named Donald Grey Barnhouse. It seems likely that Barnhouse learned the approach from CH Spurgeon who asked the questions to his cab driver in 19th century London. The cabs were pulled by horses in those days. People get along in cabs much faster now. But they still get to heaven or hell at pretty much the same pace and by the same familiar routes. Our apathy or activism may play a role in hastening progress in one direction or another.
"Have you ever thought about becoming a follower of Jesus of Nazareth?" is my own favorite opening. No hidden agenda there. No wasted time. That way the Holy Spirit can bring honor to the Name of Jesus from the outset.
Whether the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ we follow with "Would you allow me to tell you how I began to follow and why I've never regretted that step?"
If we don't speak of the Lord at Christmas when will we speak of the Lord?
If not now when?
If not ourselves, who then?
How will they believe unless they hear?
Because the Lord has come we go.
I relish all the down-time at Christmas.
But Christ did not come to make us passive.

The Incarnation

;...and the Word became flesh." John 1:14


Less than two weeks until Christmas.
When we were children it pained us that Christmas came so slow. Now that we are adults, it surprises us that it comes so fast.
The Incarnation is a permanent thing.
God Became Man.
When Jesus was born on earth He never ceased to be God. When He ascended into heaven He never ceased to be Man.
It is a Man (God too, of course) who intercedes for us at the Father's right hand.

"For there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the MAN, Christ Jesus..." (I Timothy 2:5).

Strong comfort that. He was touched by our infirmities. He KNOWS. Not by some remote intellectual knowing but by the knowledge of shared experience. He is Immanuel, God with us. He knows what it is like to live in a fallen place (with 'mosquitoes, tapeworms and rabies' in the words of Vern Poythress' apt summary). He knows us not as an astronomer knows a planet by peering through a telescope. He knows us as a Son knows a family by being conceived in a human womb and sleeping in a crowded room.

He came to set His people free ---far as the curse is found. And the curse is found everywhere.

There is no patch under the sun uncontaminated by the curse of sin. He provides the antidote by swallowing the poison Himself. He tasted death for every man. He was born with us that He might die for us.
And so He did.
O come let us adore Him.
Born the King of Angels.

The Way Jesus Launched

A few years ago I was talking with someone who knows a lot more about Christian ministry than I. Such folk are not hard to find, but this mentor is especially sagacious, and I relish his insights. We were lamenting the tendency of one celebrated and wildly successful (if numbers, popularity and resources count as success) Christian group to focus almost exclusively on the fashionable and the well heeled. My friend noted that Jesus practiced the exact opposite. For proof he cited that incident in the region of Gadara on the far side of the lake. You will remember that the case involved madmen, demons and pigs. Decorous it was not.
I thought back to that conversation as I spent a little time in Matthew 8 and 9 yesterday.
The Sermon on the Mount stretches across the whole of Matthew 5-7, preceded by the Temptation in Chapter 4 and the Baptism in Chapter 3. Working our way back to Chapter 2 we are already at the Birth Narrative. So effectively the beginning of Jesus’ ministry proper, at least after that stunning inaugural sermon, commences at Matthew 8.
How then does He begin?
What emphases does He foreshadow?
Is there an intentional (could Jesus ever be unintentional?) pattern here meant as a model for us?
Those initial signals constitute a kind of gauntlet thrown down. He begins by cleansing a leper. Then He heals a Centurion’s servant from a distance after offering to enter the man’s home. While that Centurion had gained some favor with the Jews he was still a Gentile and an occupier. Jesus extols the Gentile’s faith noting that it was especially praiseworthy compared to the faith of Israel. This from the Jewish Messiah! Impolitic that. Not at all what was expected. At the beginning of Chapter 9 Jesus calls the author of the First Gospel, Matthew himself, to become a member of the Twelve. He thus renders permanent His association with the despised for the balance of His biological Life. His was not a perfunctory ministry to the outcast. He actually invited a tax-collector to live with Him and become His permanent envoy.
Can we see a pattern yet?
He appears to actually favor the Low and the Loathed.
Do you think these memoirs were contrived?
Impossible!!!
If these accounts were spun from fancy they would have been crafted in a far different way.
The agenda of Jesus of Nazareth did not originate in the First Century.
The language of Jesus of Nazareth was not originally spoken on this planet.
And that was just the way He started out.
Outreach to fallen women, Samaritans and the Zaccheus-like wretches of the earth follow in their turn.
Chesterton said we ought to sing “Glory to God in the Lowest” when we hail the coming of this Christ.
He seemed always to specialize in the unfashionable and the counterintuitive.
In Chapter 8 we learn that Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law. Mark informs us that about the same time the paralytic was lowered from a roof rudely peeled off someone’s home. That house was likely Peter’s. Would it be amiss to imagine that Simon Peter may have been among that vast number of the married and the male who secretly prefer a healthy roof to a healthy mother-in-law? The very presence of Jesus seemed always to precipitate the unexpected. And often the uninvited. That’s one reason we’re sure the Gospel accounts were not made up. Men don’t make up that which they cannot imagine. The life and teaching of Jesus would have settled no First Century controversy in a hoped for direction. He vindicated no cherished position. He enfranchised no school of thought.
The message He brought, the model He showed pleased neither the Scribes nor the Pharisees. Not the Herodian or the Sadduccee, neither the Essene nor the Zealot would have been attracted to His teaching. Their prior convictions and commitments ruled out such a possibility. Only an Anna here or a Simeon there would have been pleased, and those two rare and worthy ones were in heaven well before He approached young manhood.
No, the thing cannot have been contrived.
“Cui bono?” the ancients sometimes asked. For whose good? Who would have profited from the doctrine and actions of this Jesus?
Nobody.
No one but the hopeless sinner.
None but the Sovereign God.

The Capital of Darkness

Last week Jane and I traveled to Krakow, the beautiful “Little Prague”, on the Vistula, Poland’s former capital and home to John-Paul II. While there I spent an afternoon at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp.
Auschwitz is one of those places many want to visit once and nobody wants to visit twice. I was amazed at the size of the crowds so late in the season.
Samuel Johnson said that we are more concerned about a pain in our little fingers than the suffering of thousands we do not know. In the main I suspect he was right. The exception may be Auschwitz. It marks us. It inspires a kind of ultimate sobriety and changes the way we look at the world. We’ve grown accustomed to endless analyses of the Holocaust and its lessons. Still the lessons should not be ignored. We may uncover new lessons if we refuse to forget.
1) Anti-Semitism in any form is a thing to be opposed. This species of iniquity is particularly malignant and has a tendency to metastasize quickly. And anti-Semitism is still alive and well in Eastern Europe. A European poll conducted a few years back showed that a plurality of Europeans believe that Israel is the chief cause of terrorism. One of Hungary’s two major parties, appealing at one level because it champions more conservative and religious causes, still fosters a dark tolerance of anti-Semitism. This alone is sufficient ground for the Christian to withhold support.
2) Of course Hitler did not reserve his malice exclusively for the Jews. Thousands of Slavs and Gypsies were murdered at Auschwitz and other camps. Secular saviors tend to become advocates of liquidation sooner or later. It is likely that his racial obsessions cost him the War. The Ukrainians initially welcomed the Germans as liberators. That soon changed when the Nazis treated them as sub humans because they were Slavs. The Germans lost a valuable ally who could have turned the tide against Russia. Had Jewish genius been enlisted on the side of Germany it is hard to imagine Germany losing. But if the Nazis had honored the Jews they wouldn’t have been Nazis
3) The capacity for human evil is apparently unlimited. You know you are beginning to think theologically when you hear the phrase “The Fall” and think of Genesis 3 instead of Autumn. We are fallen. The sin nature asserts itself. If that nature proceeds unrelieved by regeneration and the restraining power of the Holy Spirit the consequences can be dire. Cicero remarked that in war all law is suspended, but there’s no doubt that the Nazis would have continued their extermination program after the war. Dachau was built before the war began. Our potential for wickedness is staggering. Chesterton wrote that it is surprising that the doctrine of human depravity is so universally rejected because it is the one Christian doctrine which can be proved empirically.

4) To sin against spiritual light and privilege invites woeful results. The Germans as a nation were the first to embrace the Bible through the Reformation. It may be claimed that they were also the first to reject biblical authority through Liberal Theology and the Higher Criticism. It’s only fair for a fiercely Protestant observer like myself to note that the Nazis appropriated many of Martin Luther’s anti-Jewish rants for their own purposes. I have no inclination to defend Luther on this score except to quote his biographer Roland Bainton who pointed out that most of those abysmal utterances came in the last two years of Luther’s life when he had, in Bainton’s words, “lost his emotional poise.”
5) We may thank God for the noble few who stood up. We remember the Dutch family who sheltered Ann Frank. Corrie ten Boom and her sister stand out. At Munich University there were those intrepid students called The White Rose, who along with Professor Kurt Huber, were decapitated for their courage. Let us note that 40,000 Germans were executed for opposing the regime including the heroic Dietrich Bonhoeffer who could have saved himself at the end by playing along with Himmler’s plan to make a separate peace with the Allies. He refused and was hung for his principles.

Religion itself is no cure for the world’s murderous tendencies. It is a false religion which convulses the world as I write. It was a professedly religious people who insisted that the Savior be crucified. Pilate, the representative of the secular power was quite satisfied to beat Jesus and let Him go. And let us be honest. Untold savagery has been prosecuted in the name of Christ in the history of the world.
But those who use the name of Christ as a pretense for slaughter do not employ the doctrine of Christ Who laid down His life for the nations.
The Lord gives us no promise that there will not be another Holocaust, perhaps next time directed against Christians. We are only assured of wars and rumors of wars. No vague religious sentiment or specific religious enterprise will help. It is that personal relationship entered into by faith in Christ’s promises which we need. The specific trust in Jesus that leads to actual Christ-likeness is the only hope for us as individuals.
Corporately the only hope is the actual return of Jesus Himself.
It can’t come too soon for me.

The Mustering of the Host

“The Lord of Hosts is mustering a host for battle.” Isaiah 13:4

One day I may write a book called “Errors of the Quiet Time.” It would be mainly autobiographical. My qualifications as author include an habitual underachievement in the devotional realm. It is something I wish to mend.

One error is coming to prayer keen to involve God in my plan. Most will know Bill Bright’s Four Spiritual Laws, the most effective evangelistic tool of my generation. As a new Christian it was one of the first things I was taught. As an older Christian it may be the last thing I learn. The first law reads, “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.” I fear I often imperfectly incorporate that truth into my approach to God.

Too often I treat God as a prospect for my current enthusiasms. It is as if I say: “Dear God, I know you love me, therefore I’m sure you’ll want to bless my plan.” Thus Law One is turned upon its head.

How can we forget that God has a plan?

In January I wrote of God The Amazing Star-Breather (Louie Giglio’s term). Louie masterfully expounded the theme of God the Creator--the God who fills the vastness of the inter-stellar reaches and fashions the stars in their magnitude. Let us also remember that God manages the microcosm, including that microcosm called me. He manages the microcosm of my days and nights. The God who has a plan for eternity has a plan for the hours. Let us then celebrate The God who Numbers Hairs on Heads, The Knower of Sparrows, The Tailor to Lilies. As we get to know this God, we will discover His plan for us.

When I began the Christian life it felt like enrolling in a class. As I go on it feels more like preparing for a war. Years ago I heard a professor lecture about the run-up to the Trojan War. He told of the enlistment phase. There was reluctance on the part of the Greek champions to risk their safety for an unfortunate husband in pursuit of a faithless wife. Odysseus, the most resourceful, feigned madness, while Achilles, the manliest among them, disguised himself as a woman! After being unmasked by Agamemnon, both Odysseus and Achilles took their places in the expedition to Troy. Classical scholars have a name for that enlistment phase. They call it The Mustering of the Host.

The Great Apostle compares the Christian life to the life of a soldier (2 Timothy 2:4). With those who rise early to march and to fight, we share a kindred calling. In its current and cosmic phase Christian experience takes on the shape of battle. As I read the reports of the G-20 Summit and the speeches before the U.N. General Assembly, I thought of Psalm 2. The heathen rage and the peoples imagine a vain thing. The rulers still take counsel against the Lord and against His anointed. What are the toxic rants of Gadhafi and Achmedenejad but a raging? There are those who submit to God’s rule. Most do not. We are a minority against the armed and the powerful. God’s plan for us may necessarily include collisions. Our part is not to take the life of another. We are advanced beyond Old Testament warfare. We are New Testament believers. Our weapons are of a different kind (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). We take up our life to lay it down.

A few step forward boldly. Others must be wooed. Some shrink back.
So it is in the world. So it is in the Church.
May we enlist among the eager.
When we do God will reveal His plan and assign our role.

We go with those sensitive to God’s honor and jealous for God’s glory.
May our sense of privilege be obvious.
We start at break of day.
That’s when the muster begins.

Five Things About September 1rst

‘He maketh peace in thy borders…’ Psalm 147:14

It’s a beautiful September morning in the old Hungarian capital. We hope to visit Krakow this month, perhaps next week. A missionary who was in our wedding lives there and we’ve never been.
Seventy years ago today Adolph Hitler fulfilled his own wish to visit Poland. Before daylight that morning he sent 40 divisions over the frontier and the Second World War was on .It was less than 21 years after the Armistice which ended the previous war.

What have we learned?
1) There will always be war. Jesus said there would be wars and rumors of wars. Jesus also declared the poor would always be with us. At the beginning of the 20th Century many of the most celebrated thinkers in the English-speaking world (men like HG Wells and Bernard Shaw) believed that the end of war and poverty was not only possible but near. The great hope was socialism. The founding of the Soviet state appeared to those people to make that dream even more plausible. How did a Galilean Carpenter born in the First Century know more about the 20th Century than the leading intellectual lights who entered the 20th Century as adults?
My guess is that it is because long before He made anything in that Nazareth shop He made the world and everything in it.
2) Pacifism is an admirable ideal. It is seldom a practical possibility. A very high percentage of European Christians are pacifists. Our greatest living preacher (my opinion) is a pacifist, a unilateralist and was a conscientious objector in WW II. His name is John Stott. Nearly all Eastern European and Russian Christians are against capital punishment. There are good historical reasons for that. But should our fathers and grandfathers have allowed Hitler to kill ALL the Jews, ALL the Gypsies, and All the courageous people in Germany who stood up? Should Hitler have been allowed to enslave all the Slavs? Would it have been better if we had not even tried to rescue Ann Frank and Dietrich Bonhoeffer before they perished? Is that what God wanted? I don’t think so. It would be possible to make a nearly airtight New Testament case for pacifism were it not for one verse: “… he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.” It’s a position we don’t normally associate with Jesus but there it is in Luke 22:36. While we are in Krakow we will make the obligatory visit to Auschwitz. The place holds a lesson which begs to be mastered.
3) Some forms of evil are intransigent. Perhaps I should say that evil by its very nature is intransigent. Hitler could not be TALKED out of Austria, the Sudetenland, Prague or the Danzig corridor. He had to be evicted by force.
4) Moral clarity is elusive in war. Both sides accumulate considerable guilt. Stalin helped Germany carve up Poland as Hitler’s admiring accomplice. At the end of the War Poland was still enslaved, not by the Germans but by the Soviet Union.
5) The answer individually is regeneration. The answer globally is the Coming of the Son of Man. It is a tired objection that some of the worst wars have been religious wars. Jesus did not exempt religious wars from His prophecy. It was religious people who killed Him. When professing Christians are guilty of aggressive warfare or wanton slaughter they are not being faithful to the New Testament. Indulge my prejudice please but I don’t think either Communist ideology or the Koran can be said to offer comparable safeguards against all which leads to war.
May peace come soon to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Sudan, and to all the earth’s habitable spaces.
And a September full of peaceful and pleasant things to you all.
Even so come quickly Lord Jesus.
Selah.

Freedom: 20 Years On

The first time I visited Eastern Europe I baptized 12 Hungarians in secret at Lake Balaton at 10:30 in the evening. They were mostly students. For security purposes we arrived suddenly and departed even more suddenly. The words pronounced over the students in the water were echoed antiphonally in Hungarian on the shore by someone now a colleague in Budapest. He had (and has) a heavy South Carolina accent. I’m sure the startled loiterers on the beach remember that night even more vividly than I.
“Because of your profession of faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord
And because you’re trusting in His death and in His shed blood alone to save you from your sins
I baptize you my brother Gabor (or my sister Anna)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit
Amen.”
Last Saturday I said those same words over 9 Czech and Slovak university students in a little lake in Moravia, Czech Republic. We were right out in the open at the end of a week-long Conference also in the open. I drove over two borders to get there and was never asked to show my passport. Such are the new realities which accompany freedom in Eastern Europe.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. With it the Iron Curtain dissolved. It had stretched, in Churchill’s famous formula, “from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic...”.
What seemed like a permanent fixture in our lives was suddenly gone. The disappearance of the Soviet Bloc was not one of those gradual Roman Empire-like decays with barbarians finally at the gates. It was more like Belshazzar’s feast. In a moment it vanished. And anyway the barbarians had always been ruling from inside the gate.
Can it have been 20 years?
The Hungarians have always received too little credit. Our memory is settled on the Germans thronging each side of the wall shouting “Freiheit!, Freiheit!, Freiheit!”. I am grateful that our family was in Germany that unforgettable day.
But the thing was actually precipitated in Sopron, Hungary, at an obscure crossing into Austria. The Hungarians opened the border and let everyone through without challenge. Ernst Honecker the East German leader and Nicolai Ceausescu the Romanian ogre begged Gorbachev to send the tanks in as they did during the ’56 rising. He refused and the game was over. In a startlingly short time the Soviet Empire disappeared.
The vestiges of socialist conviction and Communist idealism are alive all over the world. In China, fast becoming the most consequential nation on the planet, the Communists still rule. It’s important to remember that political and economic theories are just that: theories.
It was the Communists themselves who always insisted we look to the verdict of History.
Agreed.
And the verdict of history is this:
No one ever died trying to escape from the West side of the Iron Curtain to the East side.
In one of the first blogs I told you about Lenka, a remarkable Czech songwriter. I’ve attached two of her songs sung after the baptism last Saturday for you to enjoy.
You won’t understand the words but I think you will agree they are beautiful.
They may even help you to worship as you reflect upon God’s providence among the nations in 1989.
Lenka became a believer soon after the events of those days.

On the Reading of Old Books

Andrew A Bonar

Benjamin B. Warfield
Warren Wiersbe warned against forsaking the books of the ages for the books of the hour. We are reading books now which will not be read 50 years hence. If a book will not be read in an after-generation it is doubtful whether it should be read as a contemporary edition. The obvious problem with this thesis is that the classics were new in their own generation, and the only way to determine which books should endure is to read them. That notwithstanding, it would seem prudent to bulk our reading diet with volumes which have endured. CS Lewis (who else?) recommended that we read two old books for every new one. Sound counsel that.
It is possible of course to take our preferences for the old to an extreme. If I opposed everything new and ephemeral I would be a hypocrite to write this blog. For a very brief period Lewis and his colleague JRR Tolkien succeeded in eliminating every book published after the death of Keats from the Oxford English syllabus! Their argument (which I won’t go into) took some funny turns and (unlike most of their arguments) was easily refuted. Owen Barfield (Lewis’ best friend while an Oxford undergraduate) condemned what he called “chronological snobbery’ which meant prejudice against something because it was old. But the thing can work in reverse as well. We of an antiquarian bent run the risk of rejecting something of value simply because it is not old. Still I prefer the old, and am convinced, that “…the old is better…” (Luke 5:39)
It’s the same with music. Many years ago I was listening to Twila Paris (then a contemporary favorite). Most of her recorded songs are her own. In the middle of one CD though, I was startled by the words:
“Rise up my soul arise
Shake off thy guilty fears
The bleeding sacrifice on thy behalf appears”
Much as I admire her it was immediately obvious that she did not write the song. And not only that, I was convinced THE SONG COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WRITTEN IN THE 20th CENTURY.
“Before the throne thy surety stands
My name is written on His hands.”
I read the liner notes to confirm the obvious.
The thing was done by Charles Wesley.
(By the way, Twila’s updated version was terrific.)
Even CS Lewis confessed to enjoying the novels of his contemporary EM Forster. He was also a great fan of PG Wodehouse (my own favorite secular author- candy for the mind and highly addictive) who outlived Lewis by over 11 years. CSL himself was contemporary with some of us and it would be a dreary year if we couldn’t read him. Plus sometimes we have to read the new to appreciate the quality of the old. And (returning to my theme), I again insist: THE OLD IS BETTER.
Rather than simply plead let me commend. I offer two books unfamiliar to some.
The first is by AA Bonar (1810-1892) who came from a remarkable family of Scots Presbyterians. Bonar combined real scholarship (he wrote a commentary on Leviticus which is still in print) with arduous labor in pastoral ministry. His was a godliness which showed itself chiefly by a deep humility. Bonar’s most fervent aim was to please God in all he did, and his most sincere conviction was that he’d fallen woefully short of the mark. He was the friend and biographer of Robert Murray M’Cheyne who is generally regarded as Scotland’s greatest preacher, though he reached heaven before he reached 30. Iain Murray, the Founder/Editor of Banner of Truth Publishers, knows a thing or two about old books. When he was asked to list the most important book Banner had republished he named two. One was Bonar’s biography of M’Cheyne. (The other was Spurgeon’s Autobiography). But it is Bonar’s journals, published in a volume called ‘Diary and Life’, which I put forward. My wife calls it the most spiritual book she ever read, and I would agree.
Though he was a high Calvinist and thus believed everything profitable to us eternally comes solely because of God’s gracious initiation, he could still write:
“I see that we must make EFFORTS if we are to be blessed.” March 29th 1847
Prayer was his great preoccupation yet he warns, “We must not talk about prayer-we must pray in right earnest. The Lord is near. He comes softly while the virgins slumber.”
He knew that it was possible to live with privilege and yet to languish. Consider this: “Last night…nothing shamed me more than the sin of praying little when we might ask in Christ’s Name so much and receive so much. We have stood at the well all day and scarce drawn up a few drops.”
The book is laden as a feast of hearty things like “wine on the lees well refined.”
I also commend ‘Faith and Life’ by BB Warfield (1851-1921) the great Princeton theologian. If Bonar’s book is for the serious Christian then this second volume is for the serious Bible student. The two ought necessarily to go hand in hand should they not? But I fear in practice it is not always so. The book is a record of Warfield’s addresses to his students at Princeton Seminary during informal gatherings on Sunday afternoons. In written form the addresses appear as essays on varied texts linked by a common profundity but otherwise unconnected. For breathtaking insights on verses we thought were familiar the book stands alone in my experience.
When I read the chapter called ‘Light and Shining’ I wondered if I’d ever even remembered anything I’d learned in Bible study. That essay examines the reasons Jesus taught in parables. While reading I realized that still by my mid-fifties the true explanation had eluded me. Most of the teaching is quite accessible e.g. why did the Lord commend child-likeness? Not, Warfield argues, because innocence is the thing desired but rather it is the qualities of dependence and trust which advance us toward the Kingdom. Other lessons are not as easily appropriated and the reader is required to yield something like seminary study itself to benefit from all Warfield offers.
“Not,” he writes, “as if knowledge were the end --life, undoubtedly, is the end at which the saving processes are directed….”
Insights like those served up by Bonar and Warfield are seldom encountered in contemporary writing or preaching.
But because such treasure is still available we must avail.
By availing we may help to mend the age.

Calvin at the Half-Millennium

John Calvin (1509-1564)

About the time I became a Christian one of the first teachers I heard warned, "Never form an opinion of anyone based on data supplied by their enemies." In context he was speaking of the Puritans. It’s especially important to heed that warning in the case of John Calvin (whom the Puritans revered) who was born July 10, 1509 in Noyon, France. I remembered that when I read William Manchester's book 'A World Lit Only By Fire.' I admire Manchester’s work as a historian. As a theologian he is not to be recommended. Doubtless his theology improved just after his death a few years ago. Manchester ripped Calvin unmercifully and, I would guess, inaccurately. Calvin is one of the most vilified figures in Western history.
He is also one of the greatest.
He is to theology what Shakespeare is to literature.
Sadly Calvin is mistrusted and even reviled by large numbers of Evangelical Christians. For these and other reasons it is important to read Calvin himself. It’s even more important for those inclined to oppose him.
Full disclosure demands that I confess I have not read all of Calvin's Magnum Opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion, but what I have read is thrilling. Calvin maintains a variety, pace and intensity unparalleled in theological writing. Calvin speaks of what he calls "the exuberant goodness of God," and he himself writes with an exuberance which never flags. Other apologists cede much to unbelievers in seeking common ground for dialog and witness. Calvin conceded nothing. Every paragraph Calvin wrote burns with the conviction that the God of Israel is immaculate, matchless in His perfection, and unassailable in His judgments, while the sinner has nothing to commend himself in the face of God's holiness. For the sinner then the only hope can be a grace never merited, never deserved. Calvin was THE apologist of the Protestant Reformation par excellence. As a proclaimer, defender and expositor of God's sovereignty and majesty he has no peers.
In the Fourth and Thirteenth Centuries God gave the Church Augustine and Aquinas. That he would give Luther and Calvin in the same generation is proof of the grace which marked the era of the Reformation.
The greatest quote I know is from Calvin. I only learned it from a secondary source and if anyone can help in locating the original I'd be grateful. Nicholas Woltersdorf the distinguished Yale philosopher shared the quote in the volume "Philosophers Who Believe." Quoting Calvin he wrote:
"To be human is to be that point in the cosmos which responds to the goodness of God with gratitude."
One reason that insight rocks me is that it is so difficult to define what it is to be human. The Marxists claim the key is economic, the fascists racial, the Freudians psycho-sexual, and the Darwinians biological, but none of these keys fit the lock. The Bible teaches that Man (by which we mean man as male and female) is a steward, a fallen image-bearer who can be rescued only by a Wounded Healer. That Man is fallen accounts for the horrors even Christians are capable of. That Man is an image-bearer accounts for the nobility detectable in all, even those who don’t believe.
And here is Calvin nailing it. We are created for God's glory. To give Him glory we must find Him good. If we find Him good we must give Him thanks.
And the definition is not a mere abstraction. Prof. Woltersdorf was gripped by what Calvin wrote during the season of his own son's death at 25. When I read his essay he seemed to ask the question: "My son is dead. Is God still good? And am I still grateful?"
Whether we FEEL it to be so or not, the answer to the first question is always “Yes.”. God grant that we would always be able to give a “yes” answer to the second question as well even if sorely tested.
As much as any Christian who ever wrote Calvin helps move us toward the right answer.

Israel - Again

Two of the more thoughtful Christians I know wrote short enigmatic responses to the entry of June 23rd.
I’m not sure what they meant exactly (perhaps we’ll talk soon) but I can guess.
One has spent his adult life as a Missionary to the Turkish people. The other is ethnic Lebanese (fully American in every sense) and Christian.
By emphasizing Israel I want to avoid understandable but erroneous inferences. There are two camps which define opposite perspectives on Israel among American evangelicals. One is the Replacement Camp. This view insists that the promises to Israel have been forfeited due to the national rejection of the Messiah. Those promises (amounting to prophecies in the Old Testament) which have to do with future Kingdom benefits to the Jews are spiritualized and rolled over to the Church. The promises to Israel are therefore rendered symbolic. This is in fact the majority view of Christian scholars since the Reformation. Recently I read a powerful exposition of this point of view by Herman Bavink the great Dutch theologian who died in 1921. Most who hold this position would deem it a grave error to posit any correlation at all between any current or future resurrection of national Israel and biblical prophecy. Dazzled as I am by many who hold this view I can’t get there. There are lots of reasons. I will mention only two.
After forty days of post-Resurrection instruction the Apostles had one last pre-Ascension question for the Lord. We may assume that many topics were addressed during those forty days. The Holy Spirit inspiring Luke the historian reveals only one. They were taught about the Kingdom of God. And that’s what the last question was about. The disciples wanted to know when the Lord was going to restore the Kingdom TO ISRAEL. The question (after being catechized for forty days) was not about replacement but restoration. Now if the view just outlined were the correct one I would have expected the Lord to say “Don’t you guys ever pay attention? There’s not going to be any restoration to Israel.” But He doesn’t say that at all. What He does say in effect is”The timing is not important for you to know.” (Acts 1:6-7). Also, if we spiritualize the promises to Israel and assign those promises to the Church, huge tracts of Holy Scripture are rendered unintelligible. This is true not only in the Old Testament but in the New Testament as well. Where are the correspondences to the 144,000 in the Church? On what conceivable basis could the Tribes mentioned in Revelation 7 and 14 be identified within the Church?
I would describe the other camp as Israel Boosters. It’s not a designation I wholly disdain for myself because I believe we can see good arguments not only for Israel’s right to exist but for Israel’s right to certain disputed territorial claims POLITICALLY. If we restrict ourselves to political arguments then I think Israel can make a very strong case indeed.
The problem is that the favor Israel enjoys among American evangelicals is not based exclusively or even primarily upon political arguments. The favor is tied to the notion that the Jews are God’s chosen people and we must favor Israel for that reason. Because I do expect a future for (a fully converted and Christian) Israel it would be easy to assume that I am planted firmly in this camp. But it is not so. It is a great mistake to rubber stamp with approval any policy adopted by an Israeli government. Let me reiterate that if we argue politically Israel may make strong cases. But if we approach the question from the biblical point of view alone (which as Christians we must do) then I draw the conclusion that Israel ought to give the land up. I know this seems inconsistent with a Premillennial perspective (the perspective I embrace). I would argue that it is not inconsistent at all, though it is certainly not in line with the way most premillennialists approach the question.
Israel is a socialist state dominated by secularists who have no theistic convictions at all. Those who do have religious convictions are mostly Orthodox Jews who believe that Jesus of Nazareth was an imposter. It is a grave error to think that God favors in any way whatsoever an Israel so disposed toward His Son. In writing this I realize that Romans 3:1ff must be carefully and faithfully interpreted because it can be construed so as to offer a refutation to what I have just written.
“Then what advantage has the Jew…
Great in every way…”
But instead of taking the space to try and explain Romans 3 in context I will simply offer the following: Those Israelis who reject Christ want the Kingdom without the King. It cannot and ought not to be. I believe the critical parable of Matthew’s Gospel is the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen in Matthew 21. Let us be careful here. We must steer clear of any temptation to blame the Jews for the death of the Lord any more than we blame ourselves. I live in a part of the world where the history of anti-Semitism is shameful to a hellish degree. And the poison is not dormant. Often I plead with my Eastern European friends that however much they may be attracted to a political platform if that platform gives in to anti-Semitism in the slightest the thing must be condemned and resisted. That said, the Zionist Jews who spurn Jesus are in the precise position of the tenants in the parable (Matthew 21:33-46). You can’t have the Kingdom without the King. That’s why it’s a real Kingdom. There lives a real King. His Name is Jesus. The promises are only valid in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20).
On June 23rd my emphasis on Israel was purely to make the point that hope in the Lord’s soon coming has been based on real events in every generation. Before 1948 AD (the year Israel was reconstituted as a political entity) Christians found reasons to hope upon grounds which may have had little or nothing to do with Israel. But hope they did. My two correspondents because of who they are and what they do are vitally concerned with the evangelization of currently Islamized peoples. Any positive regard of Israel among those peoples is bound to offend and alienate. But we mustn’t abandon truth to placate unbelief. No lost people whether Jews or Muslims should dictate Gospel emphases. Our responsibility is to declare the whole counsel of God including Israel’s past favor, current condemnation, and future restoration. As for modern, not-yet-Christian Israel the dry bones are not yet alive. But they have been reassembled, are upright and walking. God grant that one day this walking skeleton may receive a heart of flesh. Meanwhile let us love, regard and highly esteem Arab believers, Christian believers in non-Arab Muslim countries and especially the Palestinian Christians who must surely feel like the loneliest and most forgotten Christians in the world at times.
It is certain that no Christian group or individual has flawlessly projected the coming prophetic scenario. After all John the Baptist (distracted by his own suffering) voiced doubts even about the First Coming (see Matthew 11) and he was the Forerunner of that Coming. It is folly not to allow for our own fallibility in this regard. We can be humble and irenic without retreating to a waffling tentativeness. The brunt of our apologetics ought always to rest on prophecy already fulfilled not that broad span of prophetic truth which awaits future fulfillment.
We believers may disagree on the particulars of prophecy but we are united around the larger reality.
This same Jesus, crucified, buried, risen and ascended will come again!
Personally, universally, finally, and undeniably He will return in the same body which hung upon the cross.
WHETHER IT WILL BE IN OUR GENERATION OR NOT WE DON’T KNOW.
But we can ask.
Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus

The Power of Pop Culture (part 2)

This morning in Budapest we awoke to look out upon a world without Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. They have joined what Woody Allen called “The Great Majority.” Like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson they died on the same day. And in America they are at least as well known as our second and third Presidents. Whether it will be so a hundred years hence I like to think not. The receptionist at my Hungarian doctor’s office asked me if I had heard Michael Jackson died. She looked stricken and on the verge of tears. She is about 75 years old. Such is the reach of American Popular Culture.
Michael Jackson came to Moscow while we lived there. Katie was a ninth grader in a secular German school. It seemed the end of the world for her not to go to that concert, not only because everyone else was going, but because Michael Jackson was, she informed me, “the best dancer in the world.” In Moscow it was an Event. For a 14 year old exiled from Munich to live in Moscow it was Everything. I had a bad feeling. It wasn’t just the revulsion of a Christian father over exposure to Michael Jackson. It was the concern of any father about what could happen in a crowd that size on a Moscow night. Moscow was a bit like the Wild West in those days. I could have handed down a decree from on high, but I didn’t. I negotiated. Finally she relented. I don’t remember what her compensation was, but it must have been stupendous. She may still think I owe her one. Maybe I do.
Did we ever hear the word "iconic” 20 years ago? I think rarely. Today the term is ubiquitous. First I read of the iconic television show Charlie’s Angels. I never saw the show. That may be the only boast I can make about a misspent youth. Then I read of Farrah’s iconic hair and her iconic 1976 poster. This morning I am told of Michael’s iconic 1993 Thriller Tour. That must have been the one which came to Moscow. To think that in Russia of all places I could have deprived my daughter of an iconic experience is ironic if I may be allowed to use a word that rhymes.
To my low Protestant understanding an icon is a thing invested with a kind of regard which ought only to be reserved for Deity. Not that I worry that it’s as bad as all that in most cases. It is certain though that the pain suffered by masses of secular people at the loss of celebrities would be substantially mitigated if a fit object for worship could be found. Are there many feeling that loss at this moment who would be pleased if a son or daughter made the choices Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett made? And speaking of sons and daughters Farrah’s son was in prison the day his mother died. They last met on a restricted prison visit in April. Now THAT’S sad.
And is it possible that Ed McMahon could have died the very same week? He and Johnny Carson (on the iconic Tonight Show remember?) used to play out a running gag where Carson pretended to be an old woman. One of the recurring jokes was that the woman would not allow any reference to death. Such references are always uncomfortable and seldom allowed in secular discourse. That we all die is a great embarrassment to non-transcendent philosophies which refuse to reckon with death.
But we all die anyway.
Even the rich and the famous.
Even the iconic.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Thus passes the glory of the world.

Plausibility and Unbelief

Bart Ehrman, the Moody and Wheaton grad turned apostate, delights in explaining the "reasons" why biblical Christianity cannot be true. Not long ago I heard him being interviewed on NPR's 'Fresh Air.' Ironic title that. As he spoke the atmosphere grew noticeably stale.
One of his arguments majored on the number of Christians in every generation who believed the Lord would come in their lifetime. Inside Prof. Ehrman’s formidable brain this constitutes a kind of “proof” which delegitimizes faith. For some reason the same phenomenon inclines me toward the opposite conclusion.
Is it not striking that the center and burden of prophecies separated from us by a distance measured in millennia should remain so frightfully current? That there could be multi-generational scenarios which plausibly fuel biblical hope is itself a kind of verification of Christianity’s truth claims. In the last few days three issues dominate the news-cycle:
1) The Israeli Prime Minister has conceded the possibility of a Palestinian State.
2) The validity of the reelection of a particularly rabid anti-Jewish savage in Iran is being disputed.
3) Al-Qaeda and the Taliban continue their grisly work of theologically inspired murder, including aid workers (women and children among them) in Yemen none of whom were American.
Does anybody still remember why these stupefying fiends began to hate us in the first place? It was because of an American presence on the Arabian peninsula. And it was because of an American sympathy for Israel.
Why do the heathen rage, and the peoples imagine a vain thing?
What are the chances that the relevance of prophecies about Israel would survive the passage of time when Israel itself did not survive between 70 and 1948 AD? It would be an odd coincidence that current geo-political realities could be construed by ingenious exaggeration to adhere so closely to ancient prophetic forecasts.
Yet they do.
Israel matters.
Jerusalem matters, not just to the Jews and not just to those who live nearby.
There are two kinds of hearts. One believes the witness and opens itself up to what God is saying and showing in all ages. Such hearts incline toward a reverent but (hopefully) also sober and even scholarly calibration of what God proclaims in Scripture and what God performs in history.
By human reckoning two thousand years is a long time to wait for Jesus to come back. Just so two thousand years is also a long time to sustain any resemblance between the world of 2009 and the world now buried in the abyss of time where the original prophecies were uttered. In fact we are warned not to measure this particular expectation in terms of human notions of time. With the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day...
The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness...
Forty days was too long for some to wait on Moses to return from the Mountain. There were skeptics then though they'd been favored with the spectacle of miracles. There are skeptics now though some, like Professor Ehrman, have been favored with study at places like Moody and Wheaton.
The cleavage between the believing and the skeptical constitutes a divide more profound than that between the genders or the races.
One group will see the sky opened.
In Moses' generation the other group saw the opening of the ground.

A Phenomenon at Sunset

Every three years Inter-Varsity holds a meeting on the campus of the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. The goal is to encourage students to give themselves to Great Commission enterprises. I urged a group of new Christians to attend Urbana ‘76 with confidence they would be bowled over by at least one of the two great speakers featured that year. When they returned they could only rave about Helen Roseveare. I was mystified. I’d never heard of HR. Of course I asked for tapes. After listening I became a serious fan.

In 1983 the Ben Lippen Conference in Asheville, North Carolina, hosted Helen Roseveare at one of their Summer Conferences. Sadly Ben Lippen Conference is no more. It was operated by Columbia Bible College which is now called Columbia International University. In Britain Inter-Varsity has changed its name to Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. This year the meeting will be in St. Louis not Urbana. The trend toward name-changes among Churches and Christian Institutions is rampant. My own Mission, ‘Entrust’, used to be called BEE (Biblical Education by Extension) International. It’s a trend with which I sympathize having been sorely tempted to change my own name on numerous occasions. I don’t even have the option of retreating to the more serious “Ronald” as “Ronnie“ is the name on my birth certificate. Those of us born in the American South are often saddled with the names of young children which must be borne through adulthood. Just ask Billy Graham. In one Church I was informed that I would have to abandon “Ronnie” because it didn’t fit the sophisticated international city where I’d just landed. Initially I leaped at this opportunity. The prospect of having a name consonant with a nature as romantic and intellectual as my own (so obvious to all who know me) as well as a name worthy of that great city excited me immensely. Sadly I had to give it up in the end. However much I admitted the need, and however much I wanted to go through life being called “Sebastian Paradise” or “Crispin St. Cyr” (those were the two finalists- I decided that if I was going to change my first name I should go ahead and change my surname as well) I couldn’t imagine that it would go down well on my visits back to Norcross, Georgia. Where I grew up we usually leave these prerogatives to the mom and dad. Inter-Varsity and Columbia Bible College were held back by none of the considerations which inhibited me and I wish them well.

But I digress.

After hearing Helen Roseveare speak six times on Jonah I concluded that she was the best speaker I’d ever heard. I knew it grated whenever I expressed that opinion. Comparisons, as Will Shakespeare noted, are odious. Plus she’s a woman. When I gave the Jonah tapes to a Marine Sergeant in our North Carolina Church he protested “Why are you giving me tapes by a woman?” I simply asked him to fasten his seat belt and pay attention. The next day he called and said “You told me about the seat belt; why didn’t you tell me about the crash helmet?” That Marine (who’d not attended college at the time) now holds a PhD and is on the Faculty at a Christian College. I like to think Helen Roseveare inspired him on his way.

It’s probably not wise to say that Helen Roseveare is the best speaker I’ve ever heard because of the way the opinion provokes controversy and comparisons. Better to say she moves me more than anyone I’ve ever heard. The question is “why?” Three things stand out:

First: Great gifts. This is pretty much a commonplace. We would expect great gifts from those invited to speak at Urbana. We run into great gifts fairly often though we’d like to encounter them even more. She is a gifted thinker. She is a gifted theological processor and, supremely, she is a gifted speaker. Her sense of dramatic moment, intonation and emphasis are perfectly calibrated and combine for maximum effect.

Second: Great commitment. Her intellectual gifts earned her an MD from Cambridge University. Women had to be overqualified to be considered for Medical School in the 40’s. But it was her great commitment which brought her into the great danger where she made her impact. Instead of settling down into the middle class routine which physicians could expect in Post-War socialist Britain she set out for Africa. From 1953 to 1973 she practiced Medical Missions in the Belgian Congo which was later called Zaire which is now called Congo .(Our name change motif persists). She built a clinic in a place called Nebabongo where she embraced obscurity, danger and difficulty as a way of life.

The third great element is suffering. Great gifts plus great commitment plus great suffering. The first two we may frequently witness but how seldom the three in combination. We are all dealt a measure of suffering, but for her it has been GREAT suffering. Helen Roseveare was kidnaped and tortured by rebel soldiers in the mid-sixties and during the five months of her captivity was subjected to ordeals worse than death.

In that crucible was forged a witness to Christ’s sufficiency in the cruelest of situations. She faced her agony with this prayer, repeated like a refrain in a hymn of praise:
“Lord, I thank You for trusting me with this experience, even though You haven’t chosen to tell me the reason why.”

Two years ago I told some fellow-missionaries that HR was the best. It never occurred to me that we should invite HR to our next Conference for the same reason it never occurred to me to invite the Beatles to my birthday party. I thought it would be overreaching. I knew it would be futile. But two of my colleagues did invite her and she accepted. And so we heard her in Sopron Hungary on April 22-26. When she was invited neither she nor we knew that Sopron would be her last speaking engagement. It’s a decision we pray God overrules but the reality invested our time with a solemnity and sense of occasion we’d not anticipated. We heard Helen Roseveare in the sunset of what has been a remarkable career of faithfulness to the King of Kings.

I thank God for Helen Roseveare. And I thank God that the state of media technology in the 20th and 21rst Centuries make it possible to hear her voice after retirement.

I wish I could have heard the voices of Edwards and Whitefield and Spurgeon.

But the voice of Helen will suffice.

Passing It On

Skip and Barbara Ryan were the featured speakers at the first annual Danube International Church Retreat in Cserkeszőlő, Hungary April 17-19. Skip is the Chancellor of Redeemer Theological Seminary in Dallas.

His messages connected here. We don’t want to hoard the insights in our part of the world. They need to be circulated. Here are some thoughts which appealed to me especially:

Fear is a refusal to live in the present.
It costs us much to lose everything but when we lose everything we begin to live.
While you’re lying to God you can’t experience His love.
Adversity introduces me to myself.
Every addiction leads to stealth. And stealth makes betrayal inevitable.
It is the love of Christ which breaks us.
Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die (I’d heard this said of blame).
Humility was not considered a virtue in the ancient world. For Paul to elaborate upon Christ’s great humility in emptying himself and refusing to cling to the prerogatives of Deity (Phil. 2:4-11) was counter-cultural to a considerable degree.
Manual labor was not considered an acceptable occupation for a man of consequence. For Paul to publicize that he made tents was equally counter-cultural.
What somebody else thinks of me is none of my business.

Personally I find the first and last insights to be the most provocative. I find the last to be especially liberating. It’s one thing to be reminded (as we often have been) that we oughtn’t to worry about what other people think. It delivers a fresh jolt to be told that what others think is actually none of our business!

One confirmation of Christian truth comes when we meet people of widely divergent backgrounds who share the same experience of having the core of their personality and history dissected and defined by what Scripture reveals .That happens when we compare notes with our other believers. Further confirmation comes when we see a commonality of experience with those figures we encounter in Holy Scripture. It is certainly possible to gain marvelous insights about human personality when we read other ancient literature like the Odyssey or the Aeneid. But the Bible takes us to another level. Those other ancient writings do not unmask and convict us. Nor do we find in them the power to effect personal transformation.

The proper word a (bit overused in recent years) is resonance. Much of our shared experience would remain static, discrete, random and ultimately lost if not clarified by the infinite reference point which is the Word of God mediated by the Spirit of God. Skip led us in those kind of shared discoveries and affirmations. For that we are grateful.

And from that we share.

The Power of Pop Culture

Wednesday night Beyoncé performed at the Sport Palace in Budapest. Earlier that day I boarded a train for the Czech Republic. In my early youth I would have cursed my fate. At age 58 I simply view it as good timing. I’m not familiar with Beyoncé’s music, but I did catch her in the first Pink Panther movie which starred Steve Martin. Probably Beyoncé is not familiar with Exodus 3. If she were she would not have called her spring travels the “I Am Tour”. At least I hope she wouldn’t. Seems I remember that in 2008 Beyoncé and her husband earned only slightly less than the gross domestic product of Paraguay. Such is the power of Pop.

Speaking of the new Inspector Clouseau, a Christian leader who never comments on my sermons rushed forward to congratulate me for quoting Steve Martin in my opening remarks a few Sundays ago. (A banjo was featured in our worship that morning.) That kind of thing happens quite often. People are more likely to talk about something not related to the exposition of Scripture. A wonderfully effective women’s teacher once confided to me that nearly 100% of the women who wanted to speak with her after she taught were seeking counsel on personal and family problems. They almost never registered interest in implications and applications from the text. Of course, if we hope to help anyone with their problems we’d better be ready with implications and applications from the text. It’s always amazed me that if I mention a film or a line from a song it almost never fails to elicit comment.

Popular culture is a force to be reckoned with. It is often a negative thing. It can be a neutral thing. It is seldom a positive thing, though its lessons can be shaped for edifying purposes by thoughtful believers. I realize that I too am influenced by popular culture, but I hope not as much as I used to be. I have no desire to listen to Beyoncé, but I’m glad I saw the Beatles live when I was 14. When I was a university student I had not one but two posters of Bob Dylan on my wall. Almost any jingle-jangle morning I would have followed him. Then one day I realized he wasn't kidding when he sang "...there is no place I'm going to” (Mr. Tambourine Man). Whether the change came about because I became a Christian or because I was growing up, I don’t know; maybe it was a bit of both.

As far as ministry in the 21st century goes we may take more than one approach to popular culture. Some churches gauge the direction of the cultural wind and begin to pedal hard in that direction. We may congratulate them for their alertness. But there’s a difference between heeding and leading. Those churches are much more likely to show a clip from a film than they are to quote from someone like Augustine or Calvin. Another approach is to always learn from culture but never give in to it. It is prudent and it is sometimes necessary to note cultural markers which a majority of the congregation are thinking about. Then, having duly noted those cultural influences which affect our thinking, we give ourselves to the hard task of bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.

I vote for option two.

Between Sunday and Friday

Someone (if you know who tell me) said that civilization is a thin veneer stretched across an ocean of barbarism.
Is it just me or is the fabric of civilization fraying?
Seven maniacs have gunned down over 50 Americans in the last 30 days. And that’s only the mass shootings. A few hours ago pirates captured an American vessel which has at this moment been retaken by its crew.
It’s almost Easter.
In years past I asked my Congregation the same question on Palm Sunday. Did Israel go from civilization to barbarism in the space of five days? How could the same crowd which hailed the Lord in adulation on Sunday demand His execution on Friday? The question is complex, but I now believe it was misconstrued. Complex because we can’t be sure how many of the same people who shouted “Hosanna” on Sunday shouted “Give us Barabbas” on Friday.
The Chief Priests allied with the Pharisees would have been perfectly capable of producing a rent-a-crowd at a moment’s notice on the Friday morning. But the mood on the street could actually have turned against Jesus as well.
I believe the question was misconstrued because I’m no longer sure the crowd did change. The word Hosanna means’ Lord Save!’ The tragedy is that most who shouted the word weren’t pleading for the salvation Jesus of Nazareth came to offer. They didn’t mean “Deliver us from the dread power sin has over us, because we have transgressed against the God of Israel and cannot save ourselves.” It was rather “Throw the Romans out. Remove the heel of Rome from the neck of Israel.” It was a political and military deliverance they were after. In short they craved the solution Barabbas was offering.
On Palm Sunday with Jerusalem at a fever pitch the Greeks asked for a word with Jesus. At the critical moment there came a word from Jesus: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies it abides alone. But if it dies it bears much fruit.” We are prone to abstract those words from their context and preserve them in memory as a kind of general spiritual principle. But in context Jesus was speaking about Himself. He came not to kill the enemies of Israel but to die for them. That wasn’t quite what the crowd had in mind
Jesus’ plan of salvation must be paramount. It supplants all salvation strategies of our own devising. The Gospel stands alone. By its very nature it can never be one choice among many.
Timothy Keller has observed that the Lord Jesus left us with a choice most stark: “Crown Me or kill Me.”
The Friday mob made its choice.
We must make ours as well.
The Cross is still our only hope 2000 years after The Event.
To embrace the message of the Cross is to make God our Father and Heaven our home.
Anything less means the Abyss.