Category: Theology

The end… past?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

And then the end will come! That is pretty definitive, and on the lips of Jesus. It will come after ‘this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations’ (Matt. 24:14). And it seems the ‘then’ did not envisage a protracted period of time. This will happen and then the end.

Lifting material from a previous post I think Paul considers that (at least) part of the task was already completed. Here is the extraction from that post:

Paul seems to have thought that in his lifetime Matt. 24:14 (‘to all the nations’) was already fulfilled (and of course Jesus said all these things in a generation). Here are four examples of this perspective:

But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed they have; for
“Their voice has gone out to all the earth,
and their words to the ends of the world” (Rom. 10:16-18).

At the end of Romans 10 Paul jumps between addressing the Jewish and the Gentile situation; here he is addressing the Gentile situation. The message has (not will eventually) gone throughout the whole earth and to the extremity of the oikoumene. That final word was a very common way the civilised world of Rome was described. The oikoumene was the Roman world, and here he adds the ‘extremities’ of it, suggesting that this was indeed the whole earth.

There is a second text in Romans (16:25-26, though it is not in every manuscript I include it here, for it accords with Paul’s perspective, and even if it was added it represents an early perspective):

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed, and through the prophetic writings is made known to all the Gentiles.

To ‘all the Gentiles’ (ta ethne: same word as in Matthew 24:14). Indeed rather than refer to ethic groups it was the most common way that those who were not Jews were described. The Gentile world was the ‘ta ethne’ world.

Then there are two in Colossians.

You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God (Col. 1:5-6).

The ‘whole world’, and in a book that is fairly ‘cosmic’ the use of the word kosmos is quite fitting here.

[P]rovided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven (Col. 1:23).

Which has been proclaimed to every creature (literally ‘all creation’); same as in the disputed passage of Mark 16:15 where we read on the lips of Jesus:

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.”

So Paul uses ‘the whole earth’, ‘the extremities of the oikoumene‘, ‘all the ethne‘, ‘the whole kosmos‘, ‘all creation’. That is a fairly strong perspective and I don’t think we can really push Jesus’ words in a different direction. We might wish to use them as a missiological imperative, but it does not seem to be what Jesus meant in that context.

Might not fit with our ideas but we have to come to see that in some way ‘the end’ is past; or some kind of end has already taken place. An age has ended, could this be what Jesus is referring to when he addressed his first disciples:

And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.

In Jesus’ teaching about the ‘end’ there is a continual focus on ‘this generation’, and we have to see the years of 66-70AD (the Jewish Wars) as being so critical. I find it hard to believe that they are not central to any understanding of Jesus’ teaching about the ‘end’. Something definitively ended in those years of great crises. (As per the original Exodus the entry to the land 40 years later started something for the nation, so in this situation 40 years after Jesus’ exodus something truly came to an end.) The ‘coming of the son of Man’ (or maybe better ‘the sign of the coming of the Son of Man’ fit into that context. The original vision in Daniel 7 is of one ‘like a son of man’ coming to the Ancient of Days and that to the Son of Man was given

dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed (Dan 7:14).

In Matthew 24 (and parallels) the sign of the Son of Man having received this kingdom would take place immediately after the suffering of those days, with the Son of Man coming (not to earth) but in the cloud – the same as in Daniel 7. Jesus received all authority (past tense) not will receive all authority. Those references are past tense, hence Jesus could say to the assembled Jewish authorities that

“You have said so. But I tell you,
From now on you will see the Son of Man
seated at the right hand of Power
and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Matt. 26:64).

Something of an end has taken place, and I understand why there are those who suggest every aspect of the end has already taken place. I still look to a future ‘end’, in that way I am very conservative, and have written in the previous posts about what I do not see (future antiChrist, millennium etc.) as I do not see those as being very conservative! No offence intended should you passionately see them in Scripture, I don’t. And I do not see them as very important. The end has always been about a Person not a series of events. By insisting on certain things will take place, a kind of ‘signs of the times’ we can be in danger of looking for the signs and missing the activity and presence (after all parousia means presence) of the one who is the ‘End’, the first and the last.

I think understanding the nature of the Person has to greatly shape us with regard to how we see the end. I say that because the misunderstanding of what God would come to do seemed to be why the many Jews of Jesus’ time missed the opportunity of seeing him as their Messiah.

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Millennia

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

There are some commentators in the early Centuries who interpreted the millennium in what could be termed ‘historic pre-millennialism’, that Christ will return and there will be an interim 1000 year reign before the final wrapping of things up. This though has to be distinguished from the material put out by Darby, Scofield, Lindsey and most of the popular literature today. (On historic pre-millennialism someone like George Ladd was a proponent of it, having previously been brought up under the common Dispensationalist teaching.) So in saying I do not look for a millennium there is some measure of early historic push-back that could come my way. (And of course as always my defence is ‘I could be wrong, and there seems to be aspects more important than making sure we are correct at every point’.)

I likewise push back against an expectation of a future millennial rule with it appears in one book, a very non-literal book (in the same chapter are the ‘chains’ and the ‘pit’ for the devil also literal?); a book that is full of ‘chiasmi’ structures. Coming from the Greek letter Chi (X) the structure is to start and end in the same place with the middle being the place where it comes to a conclusion. A structure that runs like this (and the letters below could be extended, and there can be a chiasmus inside a chiasmus – don’t underestimate John, there is creativity in there beyond creativity!):

A
    B
        C
             D
        C’
    B’
A’

Those structures mean we are not reading something that is simply historically progressive, and so I do not think that we should not be looking for some sort of historical future outworking. The wider setting is from 19:1-21:8 and we have repetitions, summaries, conclusions all tumbled in together. To read it as a historical progression is beyond challenging! After all it is all over by 19:20,21, before we get to a millennium:

These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth; and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.

To make it all some sort of proceeding fulfilment along a time line one really has to make some incredible contortions. I simply do not wish to do that, and do not see prophecy as ‘history written in advance’ but as adaptive and expanding promise to enable us to cooperate with heaven in advancing heaven’s agenda.

[If interested an article by Ed Christian on the chiastic structure might be helpful. He does not make any conclusions on what does John ‘believe’, simply he addresses the structure:
https://digitalcommons.andrews.edu/auss/vol37/iss2/47/ ]

In all this I am not seeking to argue for a point, if you wish to believe in a future millennium that’s OK by me. I am more interested in how you and I are living now: which seems always to be the purpose of any future comment in Scripture, a kind-of ‘how then should we live’ line seems to be very prominent when the future is spoken of.

Given that 1) I do not see a future millennium, 2) that the future is open and not fixed, not by divine decree nor by biblical prophecy, 3) that the Bible is silent on future prediction beyond AD70 (but far from silent about 2022 or whatever year I am alive in) it will not be surprising that I do not see Jesus returning to set up government in Jerusalem.

Jesus’ actions in that final week are so in tune with the apocalyptic chapter of Zechariah 14. Apocalyptic literature uses extreme language and imagery to communicate the reality that is happening, not to describe what is happening in ‘real, observable’ ways. (Maybe like ‘you frightened the life out of me’ is not a request to ‘please organise my funeral’, but a non-literal way of describing the inner, unseen effect. Exaggerated language at one level, but only exaggerated language can come close to describe the reality.)

In making those comments about Zechariah 14, and other passages that could be quoted (even NT ones) I am essentially saying that I do not approach prophecy, and in particular apocalyptic prophecy in a way that is trying to find a literal fulfilment. I do not see such imagery as a photograph of the future that we will one day view, but rather as (political) cartoons that expose the inner reality.

This post along with the ones that have gone before have been very brief as I do not consider a belief in the millennium nor a future antiChrist (or as in my case a non-belief) is that important. It seems I am free to hold my non-belief and anyone else is free to hold to their belief. There are, as always, matters that are more critical in the here and now that should take our focus regardless of our beliefs concerning the elements of the future that could be considered as falling within ‘events that will take place’.

The next post will look at the ‘end that has already taken place’.

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No, not future, and yet of course maybe

There could be one, but!

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I do not believe the Bible prophesies that there will be a future antiChrist. Interestingly, for example, Hal Lindsey has a chapter on the antiChrist in his book ‘Late Great Planet Earth’, but nowhere does he quote the verses (all in 1 John) that actually use the term ‘antiChrist’ in that chapter! The teaching of a future antiChrist has to put together ‘man of lalwlessness’ and ‘false prophet’ alongside each other and then suggest somehow that is what John was referring to.

In John the use of the term is of a spirit that ‘denies the Father and the Son’. If there was some early expectation of ‘an antiChrist’ we also have the very real issue that anything future in the NT we would have to show is still future for us – cf. the man of lawlessness was future for Paul’s readers in Thessalonians, one of his early letters, but is fulfilled in the entry to the Temple in Jerusalem in AD70… the sacrilege that brings desolation (from Daniel referring to Antiochus Epiphanes, and to AD70 that Luke helps decipher the biblical language with ‘armies surrounding Jerusalem).

Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and you know that no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; everyone who confesses the Son has the Father also (1 John 2:18-23).
And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world (1 John 4:3).

Could there be a future ‘one-world-ruler’? Yes, there could. Could we quote many Scriptures to show what kind of person that was, once he (and more likely to be a ‘he’ than a ‘she’) was visible? Yes indeed… in the same way that Judas Iscariot was a example of a friend who betrayed and the OT Scripture was quoted to show what was going, an OT Scripture that did not prophesy Judas’ existence.

A one-world-government. OH yes. That is / and was always the conflict we are caught up in. The do-not-eat of that tree set up the conflict; it set powers in place that have always been pushing for a full manifestation of such a scenario. The tower of Babel is another wonderful story that illustrates so much that gives us hope – God had to come down to see this big tower that was reaching into heaven (the irony is not to be missed) and the unimpressive project remained unfinished. Add to that the day of Pentecost and the reversal of the God-set boundary and we should really not have too much to be worried about. Pentecost was to release the imagination of a new world, one shaped from heaven and manifesting on the earth… seems we have been keen to reverse that with the fear of a big ever-getting-badder world with our only hope to escape. (Now what was that prayer of Jesus? The prayer connected to glory? I think it might be something like ‘I pray you do not take them out of the world’?)

Loads to imagine and yet! We as body of Christ have not really got hold of living counter-culture to the world. Where there is active persecution (thankfully) the church has sought to be true in their allegiance and suffered enormously. None of that goes unnoticed and is certainly ‘adding to the afflictions of Christ’; but in the more comfortable West we have so often retreated to ‘we’ve lost our privileges (Christendom) and want them back so we can rule (have our way)’. That does not add to the afflictions of Christ, but rather inflicts suffering on those we are here to bless… Christ-like or antiChrist-like? To deny the Father and the Son probably has some element of not acknowledging their true core identity: not surprising as the ‘fall’ was a desire to be like the god they imagined, not living out their true humanity, that is truly God-like.

We really should have a critical eye open to the mark of the beast, not as some implant or tattoo but as an ever-present reality. I guess if we could have transported someone from the first Century to our day and explained to them how our economic system works they would freak out with thoughts of 666 flashing in neon lights through their heads. Part of the freak might be simply the inability to come to terms with the huge change in the past 2 millennia, but part of the freak I suspect might be justifiable biblically. Just as Babylon is always present, and is always incomplete, we should not totally freak out ourselves, but we do need our eyes open. Following Jesus does not start with a set of private beliefs with no impact on our lives; indeed for a certain rich young ruler it was to begin with a change to his bank account!

Conscience, yours is not mine; convictions, yours are not mine; honest assessment, honest over where I am compromising, and then honestly asking if it is in order to move today closer to tomorrow (redemptive) or is my compromise submitting tomorrow to that one-world-government reality.

I am so glad that (as I see it) AD70 sets such a wonderful ceiling to the vast majority of the NT, saving me from speculation, fearfully trying to avoid the world to stay clean, but anchoring me in the questions of ‘OK Martin so how are you going to live then’ – much more relevant that a future antiChrist, are the questions of whether I am more Christ-like or antiChrist-like. I am not called to avoid antiChrst as a person; I think I am instructed to avoid imbibing of antiChrist at all levels.

Maybe I should add I do see one book that goes beyond the AD70 scene; the ‘cartoon’ book of Revelation, probably the best critique of power that has ever been, after all it is an unveiling, taking away the facade, the mask. Written to minority groups within the huge matrix system of the day, the only time a Babylon has been manifest to that level, truly one that was the machine that enabled that era to be labelled as ‘the fullness of times’ giving all the oikoumene (inhabited, civilised world) into the hands of the ‘devil’. Thank God that in Jesus the offer of taking that over was refused. His kingdom is not of this world(-system / -order). Never was, never is, and never will be – the will be bit is a challenge to a lot of eschatology. Years ago I read the Reconstructionist writings. Turn the other cheek was explained as simply a response that was necessary now, but then… there will be another response. That teaching (by non-charismatics) influenced so much of charismatic theology in the decades post-80s. Jesus, ‘the Coming King’, but not king as you know it.

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And the end comes

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I had an encouraging and provocative email a few days ago with some comments in it that I took as a stimulus to push on with something I had thought about doing for some time. I’ll probably try and spin out a few posts over a number of days. Here is the outline I will try and follow in three progressions.

1) I am pretty conservative with regard to the parousia (commonly called ‘second coming’) of Jesus, but just to be clear there are aspects that I cannot buy into that sadly have been thought to be ‘conservative’!

2) Given I am conservative I will write about where I am settled and why.

3) Understanding that Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was not exactly as expected (and not to mention his death!) what if we are going to be also surprised. We might be pretty settled in our viewpoints (my point 2 above) but what if our expectations are going to be pointing us in a wrong direction. So the third aspect I will try to write on will be open to perspectives that might be surprise.

Conservative… I take Scripture as authoritative, hence I am conservative; the interpretation and understanding of the texts are where the challenge comes in. If we have always read texts a certain way then it is very difficult to read them another way. I realised this recently when I was reading about how to handle when a wealthy person showed up at a NT gathering. James instructs his readers (Jas. 2:1-4) not to give them the best seat, not to move someone from a lower social class out of the way to accommodate them. Although I know that the early church did not gather in a church building I still somehow kind of transport the text into a culture I know… with a kind of ‘come sit at the front’ response being critiqued. The context though, as was the case in the early church, was a meal. Meals, ever so important in the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman culture, and not only meals but banquets (deipnon). The gathering was around a meal, a deipnon, specifically the deipnon of / honouring the Lord. In contrast to the meals of the Imperial world where class was everything, dictating who was invited, where people were seated as it was a major key to maintain the social structures, the Lord’s deipnon, subverted social norms. (The references not only to seating but to ‘stand over here’, ‘sit at my feet’ etc. only fit the description of the meal table, with people reclining there.)

We, as I reference above, so often read back from where we are and in so doing we impose what we know / have experienced back into the text. Secondly, we can easily miss the references to culture and history, particularly in terms of the Lordship of Jesus the very specific Imperial language used; and thirdly, I suspect could well be meanings intended by the Holy Spirit that were not the author’s expected (‘intended meaning’?) interpretation.

In this first post a quick push back against an idea that I have no time for. The idea of a ‘secret rapture’. No time for it (and this is only a quick response) because it

a) is a fairly new invention (1831 with J.N. Darby / 1829-30 if one wants to see it within Margaret MacDonald’s vision that probably fuelled Darby’s belief). There are no advocates for this in the history preceding this time.

b) It gives the wrong direction to biblical movement. Movement in Scripture is from heaven to earth, even creation (Genesis 1) itself is that way directed. Heaven is not the goal, a renewed creation is the final horizon in view.

c) It results in a nonsense answer to the question Paul is being asked in 1 Thessalonians 4, that question being ‘what about those who have died’. According to the rapture theory the answer is we will be raptured, so be encouraged! Such an answer is great for us, but for those who have died. The question is the common Jewish question that brought about the answer ‘resurrection’, for the expectation was of the kingdom to come here, and for the righteous to be rewarded here; those who had died… resurrected… HERE.

d) In that passage (and the other Pauline passages) it is to miss the strong Imperial language and imagery. The very words, parousia – the arrival of the figure of honour such as the emperor, apantesis (1 Thess. 4:17) the meeting, used of meeting the emperor as one of the invited ones who went out of the city in order to come back into the city as part of the honoured group. The movement is toward the location not away from it.

e) The one taken, the other left… If we push that into some future event I think we fail to consider what Jesus was addressing, the events that would take place to the generation following his words. We have to consider AD66-70 as the time of major trauma for Jews (tribulation in the extreme, with up to 500 a day being crucified by the walls of the city) and not only trauma for the Jews but for the world system that had brought peace, for the year (68AD) proved to be the year of the four emperors, with the whole of the civilised world (the oikoumene) being threatened to fall apart, caught up in plot, counter-plot and civil war. The chaos helped raise beliefs in Jerusalem that God was about to deliver the city! Sadly for those inside that belief proved to only fuel a false hope. Meanwhile those who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah left the city, in line with his instructions (in Luke’s Gospel even one we would understand) to flee when they ‘saw the city surrounded by armies’.

The success of the ‘rapture’ teaching was given a great boost when the Billy Graham of his day, Dwight Moody, embraced it, then came the publication of the Scofield Bible, the development of Dallas Theological Seminary and the Moody Bible Institute, and the embracing of the theology by the Pentecostal Movement post-Azusa Street. Hence in many parts of the world it would seem that the only teaching about eschatology is centred in on the secret rapture – after all there are around 300 million classical Pentecostals worldwide.

I consider that a smart move is to put notes in a Bible. The effect is to read the text, realise I don’t quite get that, look at the notes, now I get it, with the result that the text becomes the Bible! If we add to that the writing of novels (they are advertised as only novels) but once read they become the guide to interpretation.

What about an antiChrist, a tribulation or a millennium… or Jesus coming to ‘reign’ from Jerusalem? This post is long enough so I will get to those soon!

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I delegate to you

Delegated... or Distributed?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Delegation… Not always bad, certainly a lot better than holding it all to myself. But sometimes we have to go beyond delegation and then the dangers arise, for we enter the world of ‘oh no I have lost (quality) control’.

The next day Moses sat as judge for the people, while the people stood around him from morning until evening. When Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, “What is this that you are doing for the people? Why do you sit alone, while all the people stand around you from morning until evening?”… Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “What you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out… You should also look for able men among all the people, men who fear God, are trustworthy, and hate dishonest gain; set such men over them as officers over thousands, hundreds, fifties and tens… Let them sit as judges for the people at all times; let them bring every important case to you, but decide every minor case themselves. So it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you. If you do this, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all these people will go to their home in peace.” (Exod. 18:13-26).

Good practical advice, delegate the work load to competent people, maintain the quality control… maintain the centre also?

Delegated authority, and a component part of many organisations, understandably so.

Jethro’s advice comes from someone who is outside the community that has travelled and is pre-New Testament. Maybe the New Testament takes it a level further, beyond delegated authority to distributed authority?

‘All authority’ was given to Jesus and that authority is at a very serious level distributed to those who ‘go’. Distributed with all the possibilities of it being abused (the post before this one).

At the ‘last supper’ Jesus distributed the bread and wine as a symbol (sign – contains / draws the reality it points to into the situation) and invited all to take. There is an implication in it that the answer to where now is Jesus has to be wherever anyone who took that bread and wine has gone. There was a distribution of authority from Jesus to the community. Surely that is behind the ‘whose sins you forgive will be forgiven’ (Jn. 20:23). Strange that that is a Scripture that is harder to swallow while ‘touch not the Lord’s anointed’ is fairly easy to quote.

On the day of Pentecost (a ‘new’ creation day, complete with day, wind, sound, speech) the Spirit comes to all equally at the same time. There was no order of gift (first Peter, on this rock) and then he could pass the Spirit on to some others who passed the Spirit on… The tongues of fire were distributed to one and all equally. [And a challenging day, for they spoke, presumably to speak into the chaos rather than create a whole lot more chaos?]

If I just take a little aside to at least put out there my wisdom that I could offer at this point to the God of all creation. Delegation would work better. Check out how we behave, take it back if the behaviour is bad, hire and fire, make sure it all matches up to the standard required. And I offer a humble observation we might not have created the mess we have.

However, God seems to work through distribution much more than delegation. S/he goes where we go; the abuse tarnishes his / her character. (Pronouns do I use a plural? Maybe OK if our Trinitarianism is close to Tritheism… not settled on this yet.)

Distributed authority can always be misused; it also leaves an awesome responsibility with us. God will go where I go, standing behind what I do and say. I can evangelise but fail to witness, fail to testify to who God is. I can say – don’t look at me look at Jesus; Paul said follow me as I follow Jesus (and by implication, at least my implication, and kick me up the proverbial where I do not).

Ownership does not stack up. In the New Testament there were no streams, the apostles / apostolic teams did not own churches. There might have been relational priorities, but no ownership. The apostolic distributed what had been granted to them, and in that distribution they declared that all ministries were ‘servants’ of the body; they belonged to the body, not vice-versa.

In this next messy phase (and very aware of this in this season between 12/12 and 21/12 for personal reasons) apostles rising who will be faceless, working in… God knows where! Not owning, many not visible, but a trademark will be much more distribution than delegation. Delegation produces what can be replicated and predicted. Distribution what can be multiplied, and even like a virus mutate (for good and bad) and is certainly less predictable.

2022 beckons. Something is bubbling!

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BIG effect

All authority - big responsibility

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

We are in touch with a number of situations where health is being threatened, ‘accidents’ seem to happen too often.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Matt. 28:18.

Those are strong words… not a lot of authority, nor more authority than anyone else / any other power. ALL authority. The context indicates that what follows, at some level at least, that the authority is with those who go. [An aside – probably more we go (and by this a term more than geography is meant… Peter went to Cornelius, not vice versa) the more authority.] Authority – the challenge is what do we do with it?

If, as parents, you were to end up living opposite an active group that targeted your family that would be a challenge. BUT if one were to teach and act that the one in you was greater, and that we bless anyone that curses us, the result would be that your family would actually become more mature. The intended curse would prove to be a blessing!

However, if as parents, you were to talk down your kids achievements, and always be on their backs the effect on them would be ever so negative. They would need to be set free from that – from your actions. You, as nice beautiful Christians… and a anti-Christian group in opposition. One would definitely cause a bondage, the other could even turn round to be a blessing. The difference?

The level of (relational) authority.

We affect one another. Many times we have seen people healed physically once we have broken the spirit of jealousy that has come against them from with the household of God.

Offences will come. Betrayals take place. That is life. I love the phrase in Paul that ‘it was on the night he was betrayed that he took bread…’ What a context. How we respond to offences and betrayals is important. But if we are unawares those ‘curses’ can really stand.

Pray for those who curse us. Take the low path, but be careful about making an apology simply to bring about peace, for such apology might not bring freedom; an apology that is not thought through can simply re-enforce the authority of those that have cursed us. If so, it will not bring freedom but strengthen the hold.

Time for breakthroughs. Contributions from both ‘sides’ of the equation. Slow, ever so slow to criticise. ‘Are you for us or for our enemy?’ kind of makes sense, but ‘Are you for me or for those (brothers / sisters) who take a different view?’ really does not cut it. Clarity of praying blessing, not responding with self-justification.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see the ALL authority releasing an increasing level of blessing, and pushing back the curses that seem to be so prevalent.

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Big people and small vision

Probably the wrong title

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

I was involved in hosting a small group on zoom last night where, with our combined wisdom and knowledge of everything important, we took on a look at Luke and his political emphasis, with a ‘so what does this mean?’ kind of tentative conclusions. I enjoyed and benefitted from it, though cannot speak for the others who were involved.

Before my very clever post for today, just a note that when we use the word ‘political’ in the context of above / the Bible we are not thinking of political party, nor of focusing the word into politics as we know it today – national, regional or local. It really is the whole of a contribution to how society is and interrelates. In the context of Luke (and so of Paul) it is seeking to discover the vision they had to see a one-world dominating system be transformed into a society where one and all can prosper in their humanity.

The title of the post? Yes… seems that’s the way round we get it. Only the gifted will prosper, and the vision extends to… but never extends to the whole world being transformed, or at least the whole world being transformed through the honouring of the other, the promotion of ‘love your neighbour’. No I am not talking of the ‘social gospel’ but of the political gospel that proclaims a re-ordering of the whole world, through a core who are living from heaven, those who are ‘like the wind’, unpredictable.

I am convinced the title is wrong. It should be something like crazy, totally unrealistic, are you really out of your mind, level of vision, and who do you think you are. Are you serious? Maybe your much learning has driven you crazy (that was addressed to Paul, not the rest of us!!)…?

I cannot read the NT without thinking, hold on a minute I am not sure I can go there. Certainly I don’t think someone could make it up, or if was made up it would never have legs to travel anywhere. It really blows a hole in the whole pessimism that so often the eschatologies we grew up with / read books on. Seems rather than a message of antiChrist coming in to Christ’s space, we really have Jesus as Messiah came into antiChrist’s space. I think a little better / a lot better approach.

And then it is small people. Now I can breathe. Me / you. And the whole of life is political – I sow where I want the world to go… How I treat the guy I met on the street this morning sleeping in his cardboard box, who does not know where he came from – Russia or Ukraine he told me. What can I do? Small people, like me, feel disempowered as we do not know what to do. But maybe I can start with ‘humanising’ him. Political.

In the hearing of all the people he said to the disciples, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honour at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

When some [Matthew indicates this at least includes the disciples] were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Luke 20… 21, with comments and emphasis added.

What a passage! Take out the chapter division and here we have a few interesting developments:

  • Religious leaders, who (by default / design) devour widows’ houses.
  • He also saw a poor widow.
  • The impressive temple – occupying around 1/4 of the land that made up the city of Jerusalem, and even among the elite of Rome it was marked as being full of splendour and glory.
  • A remarkable prophecy!

I actually consider that the prophetic was released by what Jesus saw, released by the widow’s act. To prophesy the end of Jerusalem as was might have been expected. John the Baptist was certainly on track with that, the High Priest was worried about that, after the time of Jesus, the historian Josephus was well aware that this was a distinct possibility… but not one stone on another? That really pushed it, but here it is ‘adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God‘ and those beautiful stones were going to be totally dislocated.

We love to be in the know! Making a prophetic act of ‘I will put my 2 coins in here as a sign and then make my declaration’ cos I know what I am doing. Or as per the widow, probably not even thinking for a minute that her act was significant, innocuous, small… Small people, clueless people. Unknowingly political.

A little footnote… these scribes were those were ‘loving honour at the banquets‘ (deipnon: same word Lord’s Supper, also the banquet meals to honour the empire in the Imperial world of Rome, etc) . Banquets were a big part of holding the Empire together. Who one invited and where they were seated was really important. By so doing you were showing your allegiance to the way things were. Contrast, Jesus’ instruction to invite those who cannot invite you back, that instruction was hugely political and disruptive to society’s status quo; or James’ instruction not to give the person with the rich clothes the best seat – no he is not thinking the ‘best pew’, or sit near the elders!!! It is a meal setting. The Lord’s Supper, so political! And when it was not expressing something that was anti-Imperial-order Paul said ‘in the following (your behaviour when you eat together) I can give you no praise at all’. When you eat, you proclaim the Lord’s death till he come… death of all imperial power and a proclamation of one’s non-allegiance to it. Till he come, the true Prince of Peace.

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The broad way… to life

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Jesus warned that the path to destruction was broad and easy.

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matt. 7:13,14).

Absolutely true. So why the title? I have been drawn back again and again to the creation narratives. Tempting people to become like God when they were created in the image of God is as crazy as suggesting to someone who is sitting at the wheel of their car, pulled up at the traffic lights, that if they ate a specific fruit they could drive on once the lights changed. A simple reply with ‘You had better come up with something else, for that one will definitely not stick!’ Though stick it did.

The part that has stood out to me about the garden has been the generosity of God. Eat whatever you want. It’s easy, the path is broad. All the fruit is for you. Enjoy. Ah… don’t eat of that tree over there. What just avoid one tree and its fruit? Yes the path to death / destruction is narrow, narrowed down to one tree in the whole garden, or to misquote the words of Jesus (or really simply quote Jesus but in a different context) ‘for the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to death’.

What a change eating from that one tree made. Overnight the motorways / freeways became dust tracks, and the dust tracks became highways. Not only that but where those original routes led to was changed.

Let’s jump forward though. Redemption changes everything. Conversion is no small thing. Paul moved from being ‘righteous’ pre-conversion, and not righteous through some kind of good works, but through allegiance to Scripture, to (a post-conversion) understanding that all that time he had been a blasphemer, someone who misrepresented God, acting on God’s behalf, in line with his Scriptures and in doing so taking God’s name in vain. Little wonder he had a few years in the desert working through the implications of his conversion. Peter moved from having clarity on what was clean and unclean to a few days journey trying to reconcile how he had made the mistake of thinking he had just passed the test that he had revised for all his life to realising he had turned up in the wrong exam room, and that the old exam was redundant. Redemption transforms!

I am convinced that when our ancestors left the garden, trudging eastward that Someone went with them. Many times unseen, for if one loses sight that they are in the image of God it is then very difficult to see the Invisible. [Ezekiel saw this, with his vision of the water flowing eastward from the Temple (the Garden of Eden was a Temple) and wherever that water went it brought life.] Cleopas and Mary on the road to Emmaus eventually saw that he was with them, once they ate (of the tree of life, for Jesus is the bread of life). They were a visible ‘incarnation’ (not literally) of those first couple. En route the God who trudged with them from the Garden, carried the death sentence, from there to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, to the cross. They knew what they were doing, or so they thought. They released Cain (Barabbas: ‘son of the father’) and sentenced Abel (Jesus) to death. The leaders, the crowd, the Romans, the ‘you’ and the ‘me’ we knew what had to be done, for we also had eaten along with all those before us of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In so doing we killed the ‘author of life’. But God raised him up… raised him up for all of us, who truly did not have a clue, for ‘we did not know what we were doing’.

What were we doing? We thought we could be like God because, first we would decide what God was like… A distorted view. A God who is above life, above struggle, above… A God untouched, unmoved. A God who rules all and every situation with power, a click of the fingers and it is all done. Now the temptation has some traction, for we want to be like that god. You will be like ‘the god of your imagination’ once you eat of this tree. The tree of… but they don’t have a clue what they are doing. It’s not really about the fruit, it’s about pausing when coming close to that tree, and then saying ‘no need for that fruit’. No need to settle on one fruit, all, ALL the others are there for us.

Conversion does not seem to be a one off experience, in the sense of turning and being changed. Every time we approach or are tempted to pull from that tree we can pause and find a conversion moment.

So back to my title. I need to make sure I am on that broad road, the one that leads to life. If I am going to stay on it it probably means I need to check I have the right view of myself.

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Sect or Cult?

A bit of fun with terms... maybe provocative?

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

Moving away from the safe territory of the previous set of posts I thought I would jump into a little foray on sects and cults. The post is a little (but only ever so little) provocative.

‘Sectarian’ although strictly just meaning to belong to a particular sect often manifests in prejudice, discrimination and hatred. Sects can breed sectarianism in this sense of opposition to others, but a sect does not necessarily have to mean that is the outcome.

A sect is recognised as a sub-set within a broader classification (more later on this). A cult though is viewed as having deviant beliefs (or behaviour / practices) and therefore not true to the core beliefs of what it is loosely connected to. Traditionally, for example, Mormonism has been viewed as a cult, with sufficient beliefs that made it different to ‘orthodox’ Christianity. Some ‘cults’ are later rehabilitated and accepted (and maybe if we have a particular political allegiance and someone from that former cult is running for a position of power that just might influence the push for acceptance?).

There are three core monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All three connect in some way to the biblical stories. Judaism has the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (although this latter term is late, originally it was known as the Mikra, meaning that which is read). The Tanakh, we can say, corresponds to our ‘Old Testament’, and Christians add a ‘New Testament’ (and of course within the big Christian traditions there are different authoritative writings (canons)). Islam has the Quran and holds respect for prophets such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus; Muhammad being the final prophet. The Quran being the words from Allah that he communicated to Muhammad via the angel Gabriel.

Islam, the most recent of the three monotheistic faiths, has an interesting beginning. The context is of Arabia where Muhammad receives a revelation in a cave. In an animistic / polytheistic culture he proclaims there is one true god (Allah being the Arabic word for ‘god’). Into that context that is quite a proclamation.

Was his revelation from heaven? Was there any part of it that came from heaven? Or was it simply ‘demonic’?

A sect is a distinct grouping within a wider context; essentially believing that they are more faithful to the worldview and beliefs of the wider group they belong to. In the Jewish world there are, and certainly were in Jesus’ day numerous Jewish sects. We come across two main ones in the NT, with the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There were others, certainly the Essenes (maybe they based themselves at Qumran with the Dead Sea Scrolls being related to them); the Herodians might be more a political distinction than religious; and likewise the Zealots might be a term more related to their proposed methodology than to their religious party affiliation. It is for this reason we cannot really say ‘the Jews believed’. In the time of Jesus the Sadducees were the dominant group inside the Sanhedrin. They were less in favour of oral tradition than the Pharisees, who in turn were further divided dependent on which of the Rabbis was viewed as the one to follow (in Jesus’ day the schools of two rabbis, Hillel and Shammai were well established and their different views on divorce lay behind the question posed to Jesus about divorce, a question that was intended to set him up). Pharisees believed in resurrection, the Sadducees did not (which shows how much we read into Scriptures when we insist that such beliefs are there in the Old Testament). Probably the Pharisees carried greater weight among the people and influenced the common understanding; and certainly post AD-70 it was their approach that became the dominant one, with Rabbinic Judaism becoming mainline Judaism.

Paul was a Pharisee, and he excelled within that. He was righteous, zealous for the Law, such zeal being in line with Old Testament action, such as the ‘righteous’ actions of the sons of Levi who slaughtered 3000 fellow-Jews, in order to keep the people pure. (Did the later Paul have the same interpretation of their action as he would have held before his conversion?) He persecuted followers of Jesus… Jewish-followers of Jesus as there were no other kind of ‘Christians’ at that time. He would not have been interested in whether a bunch of renegade Gentiles developed some kind of faith in Jesus, for after all they never were part of the chosen people. I think his attitude would have been ‘believe what you want, you’re damned already’. On the other hand if Jews were to proclaim that Jesus (crucified and therefore evidently cursed and not the son of God) was the Messiah that would only provoke God to anger. Paul knew that he and his fellow Jews were already in trouble, so to prevent compounding the problem, he being devoted to the law, was motivated to persecute any unfaithful person in Israel. He went house to house to cleanse the people.

His own reflections were:

  • He was righteous according to the law and his traditions.
  • He now understood that he was a blasphemer (he had been misrepresenting God),
  • and was formerly ignorant (so says Mr Highly Learned Saul of Tarsus!).

His conversion was no small thing. It was more than a tweak, and perhaps there is real value in suggesting that he found the solution (Jesus) so had to then work backwards to find out what the problem was.

We could describe Christianity (followers of the way) as another Jewish sect, though perhaps Paul would have seen them as a cult.

Here are a few wacky suggestions.

  • Maybe Islam is a non-Jewish Jewish sect / cult, with a belief in Abraham et al.
  • Probably Islam drinks from the well that much of Christianity became, the Christianity of power, control and Christendom.
  • The revelation that is in Jesus of who God is (and also who humanity at core is) positions faith in Jesus in an interesting place. Islam the god of power, sovereignty… I pause for a moment, so how different is that from the god of much of Christianity / certainly the god of Christendom?
  • Maybe Islam (some forms of) and Christianity (some forms of) even go beyond that of a Paul-as-Pharisee response to not only purifying the people of faith, but wanting to purify one and all, and produce a Christian (or Islamic) nation. Shock… I don’t see that as being very smart. Going beyond the one who claimed his behaviour was blasphemous?
  • Jesus, the Incarnation, the humility, the eternal servant-nature. Scripture does not suggest the Incarnation is a temporary revelation, for we read that ‘being in the form of God’, Jesus, being God, acts in a God-like way and empties himself.
  • Maybe there are forms of Islam, Judaism (the one that Paul adhered to that later he said was a misrepresentation of God) and Christianity that are all from the same well. Do they have a revelation from heaven… in part?… or simply demonic? That well being ‘God sovereign over all, and we live from that basis’?
  • What if we are all sects of the big worldview that there is only one true God? All thinking we represent the God we believe in just believing we are doing it better than all other sects.

I used to think I was part of a sect (Protestantism is full of sects) that was pushing to be true to what Jesus had revealed (centred on ecclesiology: the right form of church). I wonder if I should push it wider and ask if we are all just a variation, a sub-set of a bigger monotheistic belief, and perhaps we would do well to seek avoiding crossing the line and becoming a cult. And finally how deviant do we have to be (belief and / or behaviour) to no longer be a sect but to become a cult?

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Sexuality, Same-sex, Transgender PDF

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by Martin Scott
Posted in Theology

In response to the millions who have requested the recent posts in one place here is a pdf of the posts. For those who want to take it further I also recommend that stories are listened to, that we hear what is being said before we seek to push back.

https://3generations.eu/posts/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Sexuality-Same-sex-Transgender.pdf

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