Home » Posts tagged 'spiritualization'
Tag Archives: spiritualization
Eschatology and Political Activism from the Right and the Left
Living in the Last Days
If you travel in evangelical circles, you might hear language especially today that says, “We’re living in the last days.” Those words, “last days,” occur eight times in the King James Version. These are two prominent usages:
2 Timothy 3:1, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.”
2 Peter 3:3, :”Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts.”
“Last days” in the Bible is not very specific. When the Apostle Peter uses the words in his sermon on the Day of Pentecost, he refers them to a partial fulfillment now over 2,000 years ago:
Acts 2:17, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.”
The phrase, “living in the last days,” did not start appearing in written material until the middle of the nineteenth century, when men would write something like the following:
There are features of the last days of the last times, and they are characteristic of these days and these times; we are therefore, living in the last days of the last times, and, consequently, expect the speedy appearance of the coming of the Son of Man.
This was from an article, “Elements of Prophetical Interpretation,” by J. W. Brooks in a book, The Literalist, published in 1841. As popularly used, most refer these “last days” to a seemingly very short time before the rapture from the earth of the saints.
A Vision of the Reign of God on Earth
Many, many and from various factions oppose the literal approach to biblical prophecy and that everyone presently abides in the last days as such. They reject the concept that the world will degenerate until the return of Christ. If that be the case, political activism is of little point. On the other hand, if persistent human effort might bring the reign of God on earth, then reasons exist for lobbying, campaigning, protesting — violent or non-violent, community organizing, and political action.
Early Roman Catholicism by envisioning the church as New Testament Israel also saw the church as the kingdom of God on earth. Instead of circumcision as the entrance requirement to the kingdom, water baptism became that, a New Testament circumcision. A false form of millennialism, this position says the church is already God’s kingdom with a view toward its ultimate perfection on earth. Roman Catholic theologian Augustine in AD413 wrote in his City of God:
The Church is already now the kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of heaven. Accordingly, even now His saints reign with Him. . . . It is then of this kingdom militant, in which conflict with the enemy is still maintained, and war carried on with warring lusts, or government laid upon them as they yield, until we come to that most peaceful kingdom in which we shall reign without an enemy.
Spiritualizing Old Testament Israel and finding in its Old Testament prophecies a fulfillment in the New Testament church subscribes to advocation of positions of power for realizing God’s kingdom on earth. According to this eschatological position, the church inherits Old Testament mandates for domination over the earth.
Postmillennial Liberation and Dominion Theologies
Mirroring Viewpoints
The left and the right both compete for power with the divine charge of liberation on the left and dominion on the right. These two mirroring viewpoints easily find support for the replacement of Israel. This might also adapt into justifiable eradication with an underlying disposition of antisemitism. Both acquire their ordination from a form of postmillennialism and a hermeneutic of spiritualization and allegorization, the latter the rationalization for Roman Catholicism.
The left and the right become strange bedfellows with relationship to Israel under the same umbrella of eschatology. Palestinian Liberation Theology buttresses a decolonization theme and advocates Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea.” Thomas Ice writes then concerning postmillennial reconstructionism:
The danger lies in their misunderstanding of God’s plan concerning the future of the nation Israel. Reconstructionists advocate the replacement of Old Testament Israel with the church, often called the “New Israel.” They believe that Israel does not have a future different from any other nation.
Corrupted Views of Israel
Ice continues:
While Reconstructionists do believe that individual Jews will be converted to Christ in mass in the future, almost none of them believe that national Israel has a future and thus the Church has completely taken over the promises of national Israel. In contrast to the eventual faithfulness and empowerment by the Holy Spirit of the Church, Reconstructionist David Chilton said that “ethnic Israel was excommunicated for its apostasy and will never again be God’s Kingdom.”
John MacArthur also tied together these two theological ideologies, saying:
There is another kind of theology that’s existing today, it’s called Liberation Theology. It is a form of theology that says that the church is to take dominion over the institutions of the world. That’s another form of dominion theology or kingdom theology. And what it basically says is that the church’s mandate is to take over the institutions of the world. That’s the liberation theology side. And what dominion theology says is that we are to take over the powers of darkness.
Dovetailing of Leftist and Rightist Values
Harvey Cox writes in an article in The Atlantic:
By far the most striking discovery I made . . . was the remarkable similarity between the rhetoric . . . of liberation theology. Both (postmillennial dominion theology and liberation theology) focus on continuing the ministry and work of Jesus. Both place the concept of the Kingdom of God, albeit interpreted quite differently, at the center of their respective theologies.
Leftist and rightist values dovetail around eschatological belief. Neither provide a true and real solution for the present or for the future. Instead of depending on a plain reading of the text of scripture, they spiritualize it and read into it a false vision of the future. This then reflects on a relationship with Israel.
Judaizers followed the Apostle Paul into his churches after his first missionary journey and attempted to turn the churches of Galatia into a form of New Testament Israel. They removed required distinctions between the church and Israel to make the church into Israel. This confused the real solution for man’s problems found only in Jesus Christ. It corrupted the church. A kind of Judaizing continues perverting the church through its insidious false eschatological vision for the world. In so doing, it also assaults Israel and annuls the promises God will still fulfill for this chosen nation.
The Purposeful Contortion and Confusion of End Time Truth
A primary way Satan keeps people deluded about life and the world is by his contortion and confusion of either origin or end time truth. God reveals with pristine clarity the beginning and ending of everything. Both of these revelations are vital for faith and practice. Satan wants people deceived on how they got here and what will happen to them in the future.
Naturalism breeds more lust. I like to say, it means we got here by accident. No one’s your boss, so you’re your own boss. That sounds great to most people, doing what they want to do. Since they just happened, no design, they aren’t accountable to anyone or anything. They live like they want, which, based on the nature of man, means following lust.
Origins
Even if someone contemplates a possibility of God, that isn’t strong enough to replace the dominion of lust in a life. All the truths about God transmit from Him as origination of everything. Other truths about God diminish when He didn’t create us. The elimination of God creating man for HIs glory greatly decreases the power and importance of everything else scripture says.
The perversion of beginnings relates most to its compatibility with the theory of evolution. Modernists of the nineteenth century began rethinking the meaning of Genesis to fit with Darwinism. An allegorical interpretation of the first three chapters of the Bible allows to read evolution and an old earth into Genesis.
With people unsure about the beginning, it’s no wonder they doubt the ending. Even theologians turn eschatology into a non-essential now. They relegate prophecy to ambiguity. Many churches have removed most of their eschatology from their doctrinal statements. You don’t need a position to fit into a church. It’s too uncertain to require for even professing Christians.
Endings
On a recent prophecy post I wrote here, an anonymous commenter (whom I did not publish) called crazy (he used “nutjobs”) churches that talk about or preach prophecy. Opinions and speculation abounds on end time events.
The doctrines of Christ, salvation, man, and angels dovetail with prophecy. When Jesus arrived in the first century, very few were ready or awaited His coming, because they had detached from prophetic reality. The promises of God become of no effect as people falsify what He says will happen in the future. This then deadens their anticipation and smothers their hope.
History functions in a chiliastic manner. You could call it “going full circle.” Paradise lost and paradise regained. The destruction of the first necessitates the destruction of the last. This renders meaningless everything in between. Why believe anything if you can’t know how it starts and how it ends?
Many theologians and church leaders have capitulated to the attack on the origin and the ending. This relegates most everything to what people call, living in the present or living in the moment. I understand that concept in a positive way to a certain degree. Living in the moment requires mindfulness and focus on the task at hand and perhaps gratefulness for what you’re experiencing in the present. However, God wants futuristic living for the saints, an outlook of expectation.
A Forward Look
Scripture requires a forward look. Paul in Philippians said, “reaching forth unto those things which are before” (3:13) and “we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20). Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33). If we can’t know our beginning or ending, we lose the basis for living like scripture says. An ultimate motivation for Paul was “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
‘Putting on the helmet of salvation’ (Ephesians 6:17) relates closely to last days events. Salvation is complete in the future. If people can’t be sure about most of the details, what can and do they mean? How would we be sure that these uncertain things could be true? This is where it stands in most ways today in eschatology.
Spiritualizing
The fastest growing view of the future is to spiritualize or allegorize the future. People allegorize almost all of the prophetic passages and they take on numerous different possible meanings. This has become not just possible but the preferred take in many places.
Now men spiritualize and allegorize the first few chapters of the Bible and the last book of the Bible. People can make it mean what they want. It’s no wonder people won’t take God’s Word seriously and churches are apathetic. If people can’t really know the beginning and the ending, why care about everything in between?
Recent Comments