Judgment Biblical Quotes

Our task as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to a world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to a world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion...The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even--heaven help us--Biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically-rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way...with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom. I believe if we face the question, "if not now, then when?" if we are grasped by this vision we may also hear the question, "if not us, then who?" And if the gospel of Jesus is not the key to this task, then what is?

Because you are a born-again believer, the prayers that come out of your mouth carry the authority of heaven. You now have all the angels and the arsenal of heaven on your side, ready to do battle to execute the judgments of God upon the devil and his kingdom.

In Greek mythology, Pallas Athena was celebrated as the goddess of reason and justice.1 To end the cycle of violence that began with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, Athena created a court of justice to try Orestes, thereby installing the rule of law in lieu of the reign of vengeance.2 Recall also the biblical Deborah (from the Book of Judges).3 She was at the same time prophet, judge, and military leader. This triple-headed authority was exercised by only two other Israelites, both men: Moses and Samuel. People came from far and wide to seek Deborah’s judgment. According to the rabbis, Deborah was independently wealthy; thus she could afford to work pro bono.4 Even if its members knew nothing of Athena and Deborah, the U.S. legal establishment resisted admitting women into its ranks far too long.

Political realism refuses to identify the moral aspirations of a particular nation with the moral laws that govern the universe. As it distinguishes between truth and opinion, so it distinguishes between truth and idolatry. All nations are tempted — and few have been able to resist the power for long — to clothe their own aspirations and action in the moral purposes of the universe. To know that nations are subject to the moral law is one thing, while to pretend to know with certainty what is good and evil in the relations among nations is quite another. There is a world of difference between the belief that all nations stand under the judgment of God, inscrutable to the human mind, and the blasphemous conviction that God is always on one's side and that what one wills oneself cannot fail to be willed by God also. The lighthearted equation between a particular nationalism and the counsels of Providence is morally indefensible, for it is that very sin of pride against which the Greek tragedians and the Biblical prophets have warned rulers and ruled. That equation is also politically pernicious, for it is liable to engender the distortion in judgment which, in the blindness of crusading frenzy, destroys nations and civilizations - in the name of moral principle, ideal, or God himself.

Believing in no ultimate Judge who will separate the sheep from the goats, they take it upon themselves to mete out perfect justice. They believe that every moral grievance must be immediately redressed until we have perfected society. The tens of millions of people starved to death, executed, imprisoned, and aborted under communism testify to the harsh reality of this kind of human judgment. Such utopian visions have no basis for grace or mercy. Despite the well-known track record of horrors produced by this kind of godless mindset, we are seeing it return in the form of a redefined “justice” that goes by the name “social justice.” As we will see, it isn’t just at all.

After a long and happy life, I find myself at the pearly gates (a sight of great joy; the word for “pearl” in Greek is, by the way, margarita). Standing there is St. Peter. This truly is heaven, for finally my academic questions will receive answers. I immediately begin the questions that have been plaguing me for half a century: “Can you speak Greek? Where did you go when you wandered off in the middle of Acts? How was the incident between you and Paul in Antioch resolved? What happened to your wife?” Peter looks at me with some bemusement and states, “Look, lady, I’ve got a whole line of saved people to process. Pick up your harp and slippers here, and get the wings and halo at the next table. We’ll talk after dinner.” As I float off, I hear, behind me, a man trying to gain Peter’s attention. He has located a “red letter Bible,” which is a text in which the words of Jesus are printed in red letters. This is heaven, and all sorts of sacred art and Scriptures, from the Bhagavad Gita to the Qur’an, are easily available (missing, however, was the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version). The fellow has his Bible open to John 14, and he is frenetically pointing at v. 6: “Jesus says here, in red letters, that he is the way. I’ve seen this woman on television (actually, she’s thinner in person). She’s not Christian; she’s not baptized - she shouldn’t be here!” “Oy,” says Peter, “another one - wait here.” He returns a few minutes later with a man about five foot three with dark hair and eyes. I notice immediately that he has holes in his wrists, for when the empire executes an individual, the circumstances of that death cannot be forgotten. “What is it, my son?” he asks. The man, obviously nonplussed, sputters, “I don’t mean to be rude, but didn’t you say that no one comes to the Father except through you?” “Well,” responds Jesus, “John does have me saying this.” (Waiting in line, a few other biblical scholars who overhear this conversation sigh at Jesus’s phrasing; a number of them remain convinced that Jesus said no such thing. They’ll have to make the inquiry on their own time.) “But if you flip back to the Gospel of Matthew, which does come first in the canon, you’ll notice in chapter 25, at the judgment of the sheep and the goats, that I am not interested in those who say ‘Lord, Lord,’ but in those who do their best to live a righteous life: feeding the hungry, visiting people in prison . . . ” Becoming almost apoplectic, the man interrupts, “But, but, that’s works righteousness. You’re saying she’s earned her way into heaven?” “No,” replies Jesus, “I am not saying that at all. I am saying that I am the way, not you, not your church, not your reading of John’s Gospel, and not the claim of any individual Christian or any particular congregation. I am making the determination, and it is by my grace that anyone gets in, including you. Do you want to argue?” The last thing I recall seeing, before picking up my heavenly accessories, is Jesus handing the poor man a Kleenex to help get the log out of his eye.

No weapon formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue which rises against you in judgment, you shall condemn.

The disastrous result of this is seen in human societies where sexual passion knows no restraint, where homosexual perversions are celebrated, and where each individual’s conscience is terminally warped and full of corruption. Though man continually and blatantly rebels against Him, God patiently withholds the outpouring of His holy wrath against sin (Romans 1:18,24-32). Yet judgment is certainly coming.

God’s glory is not always immediate, but it is certain. He will be glorified for His holiness, for His defeat of Satan, for His righteous judgment, and for His grace to redeemed sinners (Revelation 5). This glory must have a backdrop of sin to be fully realized.

Many of these omnibuses were driven, oddly enough, by male models who had retired from the business, which meant that Parisians of Manet's day were transported around the city by men who had once posed as valiant biblical heroes or the vindictive deities of classical mythology.

However, once the freedom of private judgment was enshrined in the American Constitution, nothing could stop the avalanche of new denominations: Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Theosophists, Spiritualists, Christian Scientists, Seventh-Day Adventists, and a host of others rapidly emerged.

The Christian mind...is not a mind which is thinking specifically about Christian or even religious topics, but a mind which is thinking about everything, however apparently 'secular', and doing so 'Christianly' or within a Christian frame of reference. It is not a mind stuffed full with pat answers to every question, all neatly filed as in the memory bank of a computer; it is rather a mind which has absorbed biblical truth and Christian presuppositions so thoroughly that it is able to view every issue from a Christian perspective and so reach a Christian judgment about it.

Religious people forgive only because they trust that sweet revenge is deferred until judgment day. They conjure up satisfying fantasies about watching God settle the score on their behalf. They find comfort in the biblical assurance that they’ll one day watch the agony of their enemies as a reward for denying themselves the satisfaction of taking immediate revenge.

I personally love the Bible. I read it all the time, in the original Greek and Hebrew; I study it; I teach it. I have done so for over thirty-five years. And I don’t plan to stop any time soon. But I don’t think the Bible is perfect. Far from it. The Bible is filled with a multitude of voices, and these voices are often at odds with one another, contradicting one another in minute details and in major issues involving such basic views as what God is like, who the people of God are, who Jesus is, how one can be in a right relationship with God, why there is suffering in the world, how we are to behave, and on and on. And I heartily disagree with the views of most of the biblical authors on one point or another. Still, in my judgment all of these voices are valuable and they should all be listened to. Some of the writers of the Bible were religious geniuses, and just as we listen to other geniuses of our tradition—Mozart and Beethoven, Shakespeare and Dickens—so we ought to listen to the authors of the Bible. But they were not inspired by God, in my opinion, any more than any other genius is. And they contradict each other all over the map.

Most of us may intuitively agree about right and wrong, but we also, and far more significantly, differ enormously in the ways in which we rank the virtues and the vices. ... To put cruelty first is to disregard the idea of sin as it is understood by revealed religion. Sins are transgressions of a divine rule and offenses against God; pride - the rejection of God - must always be the worst one, which gives rise to all the others. However, cruelty - the willful inflicting of physical pain on a weaker being in order to cause anguish and fear - is a wrong done entirely to another creature. When it is marked as the supreme evil it is judged so in and of itself, and not because it signifies a denial of God or any other higher norm. It is a judgment made from within the world in which cruelty occurs as part of our normal private life and our daily public practices. By putting it unconditionally first, with nothing above us to excuse or to forgive acts of cruelty, one closes off any appeal to any order other than that of actuality. To hate cruelty with utmost intensity is perfectly compatible with Biblical religiosity, but to put it first does place one irrevocably outside the sphere of revealed religion. For it is a purely human verdict upon human conduct, and so puts religion at a certain distance. The decision to put cruelty first is not, however, prompted merely by religious skepticism. It emerges, rather, from the recognition that the habits of the faithful do not differ from those of the faithless in their brutalities, and that Machiavelli had triumphed before he had ever written a line. To put cruelty first therefore is to be at odds not only with religion but with normal politics as well.

Assuming for the moment that I am right, and that the asteroid Apophis is biblical Wormwood and therefore 2029 represents a time around the middle of the Great Tribulation period when the trumpet judgments begin, Monday, October 13, 2025 (April 13, 2029, minus three and a half years), would be the approximate start date of the seven years of Tribulation foreseen in Scripture (see Matthew 24:21; Revelation 7:14; and Daniel 12:1).

In modern street-English, we use “hell” as a catchall term to describe the bad place (usually red hot) where sinful people are condemned to punishment and torment after they die. This simplistic, selective, and horrifying perception of hell is due in large part to nearly 400 years of the King James Version’s monopoly in English-speaking congregations (not to mention centuries of imaginative religious art). Rather than acknowledge the variety of terms, images, and concepts that the Bible uses for divine judgment, the KJV translators opted to combine them all under the single term “hell.” In truth, the array of biblical pictures and meanings that this one word is expected to convey is so vast that they appear contradictory. For example, is hell a lake of fire or a place of utter darkness? Is it a purifying forge or a torture chamber? Is it exclusion from God’s presence or the consuming fire of God’s glory? While modern scholarship acknowledges the mis- or over-translation of Sheol, Hades, and Gehenna as “hell” - especially if by “hell” we refer automatically to the eternal punishment of the wicked in conscious torment in a lake of fire - the thoroughly discussed limitations of hell language and imagery have been slow to permeate the theology of pulpits and pews in much of the church. Why the reluctance? Do we resist out of ignorance? Or are we afraid that abandoning infernalism implies abandoning faithfulness to Scripture and sound doctrine? After all, for so long we were taught that to be a Christian - especially an evangelical - is to be an infernalist. And yet, not a few of my friends have confessed that they have given up on being “good Christians” because they can no longer assent to the kind of God that creates and sends people to hell as they imagine it.

Whatever response we draw, we’ve got to know this: evangelism is not easy. It’s not supposed to be. It’s challenging to tell someone that he or she is lost, in danger of coming judgment, and in need of wholehearted repentance. That’s not a light and airy message. It’s a world-changing message, one that calls our entire lives into question. It’s a loving message, but love in a biblical sense is not mushy or weak. Biblical love is transformative, powerful, renewing, redeeming, cleansing.

Or maybe it was my definition of “perfect” that had changed. Somewhere between the chicken soup and the butter-bleeding pie, I’d made peace with the God of pots and pans—not because God wanted to meet me in the kitchen, but because He wanted to meet me everywhere, in all things, big or small. Knowing that God both inhabits and transcends our daily vocations, no matter how glorious or mundane, should be enough to unite all women of faith and end that nasty cycle of judgment we get caught in these days.

The word “righteous” used to grate on my ear; for years I was able to hear it only in its negative mode, as self-righteous, as judgmental. Gradually, as I became more acquainted with the word in its biblical context, I found that it does not mean self-righteous at all, but righteous in the sight of God. And this righteousness is consistently defined by the prophets, and in the psalms and gospels, as a willingness to care for the most vulnerable people in a culture, characterized in ancient Israel as orphans, widows, resident aliens, and the poor.

APRIL 19 MY TRUTH WILL REMOVE EVERY FALSE MINISTRY IN HIGH PLACES MY CHILD, BE aware that in these days there are false teachers among you who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who saved them, and will cause many to reject My teachings and My way of truth. Their judgment has been idle for a long time, and because they have grown cold to the truth, they will bring on themselves—and others—My swift destruction. Do not listen to their lies, and reject their teachings. They must be removed from their lofty seats of comfort, and the results of their disobedience will become an example to any who might be swayed to follow their ways. Rise up like my servant Josiah, and stand for Me in truth, leading all who know you to turn from evil and to do what is right in My eyes, not turning aside to the right or to the left. 2 PETER 2:1–3; 2 KINGS 22:1–2 Prayer Declaration Lord, remove every false ministry and strange god from the high places. Let righteous men with Your wisdom sit in the high governmental places of my city and nation. Let the spiritual foundations that were built in my city, community, and nation be restored. Use me to walk in the spirit of Josiah and lead the people into righteousness.

Creator and Sustainer. Men are to make their own mistakes and successes. Each man is to work out his salvation (or damnation) in fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12). Other men are to sit in judgment over him only when he commits public evil. They are not to command him as imitation gods. They are not to issue comprehensive commands and monitor him constantly. That is God’s job, not man’s. Thus, God’s hierarchy produces social freedom. It relieves mankind from any pretended autonomy from God’s total sovereignty. Men are not to seek to create predestinating hierarchies. They can leave their fellow men alone, so long as God’s institutional laws are obeyed in public.

Then I read the sermon. The shocker hit when I realized that Edwards’s audience was the church! He spoke not from the street corner but from the pulpit. Not to the passersby outside but to the parishioners inside. The sinners in the hands of an angry God were the people who bore his name! This was judgment for God’s people, directed at a church filled with idolatry, apathy, and sin. I began to realize that God’s coming judgment is not so much an evangelistic tool used to frighten outsiders into the kingdom as it is a housecleaning tool used to weed out hypocrisy and call insiders back to the faith they proclaim. It starts at home. I love Edwards’s sermon now. There are a few parts I disagree with, that conflict with aspects of the biblical story we’ve observed in this book (though brilliant as all get out, he couldn’t be right all the time).4 But in the bigger picture, Edwards’s sermon is a reminder to me that I cannot slide by on the coattails of calling myself a Christian.

As I look hard at the Bible, however, and at the two thousand years of church history since the Bible's completion, it seems evident that God has accommodated himself over and over to the weakness and even the sin of human beings. He also has called his faithful ones to a similar accommodation. The 'already but not yet' tension is clear not only with the coming of Christ but also throughout the Old Testament story of redemption. God chooses a people as a vehicle for global salvation and then works with them in a convoluted trajectory of obedience and blessing, disobedience and punishment, first this way and then that way. God puts up with a compromised plan for the conquest of Canaan, blesses a monarchy he did not want, forestalls the prophesied judgment on both northern and southern kingdoms for generations, and even then preserves a remnant and reestablishes it in Jerusalem. God works not only through Israel but also through the empires of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Rome. God works not only through prophets and saints but also through Joseph's brothers, Balaam and his donkey, Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, Caiaphas and Pilate.

APRIL 30 EXECUTE JUDGMENT AGAINST MY OPPRESSORS MY CHILD, HEAR my words, for I am the Lord your God. I will execute judgment in the morning and deliver those who have been plundered out of the hand of the oppressor. I will punish them according to the fruit of their doings and will judge them according to My righteousness. I will hold you up in mercy, and in the multitude of the anxieties within you, My comfort will delight your soul. I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away. I will bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick. I will make a covenant of peace with you and cause showers of blessing to come down in your season. You will know that I am the Lord who has broken the bands of your yoke and delivered you from the hand of those who oppressed you. JEREMIAH 21:12; EZEKIEL 34:16, 25–27 Prayer Declaration Father, because I am Your sheep, You will deliver me from all the places where my oppressors have scattered me. You will feed me in good pasture and shelter me on the high mountains of Your grace. I will no longer be a prey for the wicked but will dwell safely, and no one will make me afraid. For You are my Lord, and You have broken the yoke of oppression and delivered me from my oppressors.

JANUARY 25 THE EVILS OF THE DAY WILL NEVER ENSLAVE YOU MY CHILD, I will visit you every morning and will show forth My salvation in your life from day to day. My judgments will come upon your enemies morning by morning. Because of My great mercy toward you, your enemies will not enslave you. My compassions will not fail you; they are new every morning. My faithfulness will never cease, and I will be your portion forever. Therefore, place your hope in Me. I will be with you, and I am mighty to save. I take great delight in you, and I will quiet you with My love. I will rejoice over you with singing. I will remove sorrow from you, and I will deal with all who oppress you. I will rescue the lame and gather those who have been scattered. I will give you honor and praise and will restore your fortunes before your very eyes. PSALM 91:3–5; LAMENTATIONS 3:22–23; ZEPHANIAH 3:17–20 Prayer Declaration Jesus, just as You stood on the shore early in the morning and called out to Your disciples, You will make Your presence known to me in the morning hours and will call out for me to come into Your presence. Direct my steps to my miracle, Lord, just as You guided the disciples to a miracle catch of fish that morning. Feed me, as You fed them.

Neither Jesus nor Paul nor John point to activity in the church or miracles as evidence of regeneration. They rather point to character traits in life. In fact, immediately after the verses quoted above Jesus warns that on the day of judgment many will say to him, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?” But he will declare to them, “I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers” (Matt. 7:22–23). Prophecy, exorcism, and many miracles and mighty works in Jesus’ name (to say nothing of other kinds of intensive church activity in the strength of the flesh over perhaps decades of a person’s life) do not provide convincing evidence that a person is truly born again. Apparently all these can be produced in the natural man or woman’s own strength, or even with the help of the evil one. But genuine love for God and his people, heartfelt obedience to his commands, and the Christlike character traits that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit, demonstrated consistently over a period of time in a person’s life, simply cannot be produced by Satan or by the natural man or woman working in his or her own strength. These can only come about by the Spirit of God working within and giving us new life.

What is instructive about these examples is that a similar pattern is emerging today regarding people who are homosexual. Those who oppose homosexuality claim that (1) the Bible records God’s judgment against the sin of homosexuality from its first mention in Scripture; (2) people who are homosexual are somehow inferior in moral character and incapable of rising to the level of full heterosexual “Christian civilization”; and (3) people who are homosexual are willfully sinful, often sexually promiscuous and threatening, and deserve punishment for their own acts. The church is once again repeating the mistakes of the past. And, as I will show in subsequent chapters, the reason why many people fail to apply Jesus’ gospel to the issue of homosexuality is that they are once again using a “commonsense” method of biblical interpretation and are following the lead of fundamentalist theologians whose methods are similar to those of Turretin. We are thankful that most Christians no longer believe in racial and gender hierarchy. Why? What changed our minds? How was the church able to change? In the next chapter we will review the way in which a new, Christ-centered approach to biblical interpretation carried forth the best insights of the dissenting abolitionists and expanded and applied them. This christological approach, which used the whole Bible, with Jesus as its central character and interpreter, enabled the church to change its mind and heart on issues of race and women. Let us examine this new approach.

What are some of the concerns regarding the penal substitutionary metaphors? Some of this debate is theological and exegetical, often centering upon Paul and the proper understanding of his doctrine of justification. Specifically, some suggest that the penal substitutionary metaphors, read too literally, create a problematic view of God: that God is inherently a God of retributive justice who can only be “satisfied” with blood sacrifice. A more missional worry is that the metaphors behind penal substitutionary atonement reduce salvation to a binary status: Justified versus Condemned and Pure versus Impure. The concern is that when salvation reduces to avoiding the judgment of God (Jesus accepting our “death sentence”) and accepting Christ’s righteousness as our own (being “washed” and made “holy” for the presence of God), we can ignore the biblical teachings that suggest that salvation is communal, cosmic in scope, and is an ongoing developmental process. These understandings of atonement - that salvation is an active communal engagement that participates in God’s cosmic mission to restore all things - are vital to efforts aimed at motivating spiritual formation and missional living. As many have noted, by ignoring the communal, cosmic, and developmental facets of salvation penal substitutionary atonement becomes individualistic and pietistic. The central concern of penal substitutionary atonement is standing “washed” and “justified” before God. No doubt there is an individual aspect to salvation - every metaphor has a bit of the truth —but restricting our view to the legal and purity metaphors blinds us to the fact that atonement has developmental, social, political, and ecological implications.

I have come to believe that our culture’s popular understanding of these difficult doctrines is often a caricature of what the Bible actually teaches and what mature Christian theology has historically proclaimed. To Laugh At, To Live By What do I mean by a caricature? A caricature is a cartoonlike drawing of a real person, place, or thing. You’ve probably seen them at street fairs, drawings of popular figures like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Caricatures exaggerate some features, distort some features, and oversimplify some features. The result is a humorous cartoon. In one sense, a caricature bears a striking resemblance to the real thing. That picture really does look like President Obama, Marilyn Monroe, or your aunt Cindy. Features unique to the real person are included and even emphasized, so you can tell it’s a cartoon of that person and not someone else. But in another sense, the caricature looks nothing like the real thing. Salient features have been distorted, oversimplified, or blown way out of proportion. President Obama’s ears are way too big. Aunt Cindy’s grin is way too wide. And Marilyn Monroe . . . well, you get the picture. A caricature would never pass for a photograph. If you were to take your driver’s license, remove the photo, and replace it with a caricature, the police officer pulling you over would either laugh . . . or arrest you. Placed next to a photograph, a caricature looks like a humorous, or even hideous, distortion of the real thing. Similarly, our popular caricatures of these tough doctrines do include features of the original. One doesn’t have to look too far in the biblical story to find that hell has flames, holy war has fighting, and judgment brings us face-to-face with God. But in the caricatures, these features are severely exaggerated, distorted, and oversimplified, resulting in a not-so-humorous cartoon that looks nothing like the original. All we have to do is start asking questions: Where do the flames come from, and what are they doing? Who is doing the fighting, and how are they winning? Why does God judge the world, and what basis does he use for judgment? Questions like these help us quickly realize that our popular caricatures of tough biblical doctrines are like cartoons: good for us to laugh at, but not to live by. But the caricature does help us with something important: it draws our attention to parts of God’s story where our understanding is off. If the caricature makes God look like a sadistic torturer, a coldhearted judge, or a greedy génocidaire, it probably means there are details we need to take a closer look at. The caricatures can alert us to parts of the picture where our vision is distorted.

But since our sluggish minds rest far beneath the height of divine providence, we must have recourse to a distinction which may assist them in rising. I say then, that though all things are ordered by the counsel and certain arrangement of God, to us, however, they are fortuitous,—not because we imagine that fortune rules the world and mankind, and turns all things upside down at random, (far be such a heartless thought from every Christian breast); but as the order, method, end, and necessity of events, are, for the most part, hidden in the counsel of God, though it is certain that they are produced by the will of God, they have the appearance of being fortuitous, such being the form under which they present themselves to us, whether considered in their own nature, or estimated according to our knowledge and judgment.

Knowing that God both inhabits and transcends our daily vocations, no matter how glorious or mundane, should be enough to unite all women of faith and end that nasty cycle of judgment we get caught in these days.

Is there still time for us to repent, or is it already too late? Before we continue, a word to those who do not believe we have time to repent, who believe that God must judge us because of what we already have done—and not done. Such beliefs are not biblical, and those who hold them are themselves enjoined to repent. To sulk like Jonah at what seems to be God’s forbearance with those we deem irredeemably wicked is only to become the enemies of God ourselves. Those who petulantly have decided that nothing we do now can avert judgment are themselves participating in bringing about that judgment by doing nothing. Their unwillingness to fight now will likely be the very thing that makes the crucial difference. It is ironic and tragic that they sit on the sidelines alongside those they blame for the situation.

My judgment is that as long as the pastors of the church are embarrassed by this urgent language to God and assume in our Enlightenment model that such rhetoric has no actual force, we will not get very far in the struggle for justice.

The modern church has lost its ability and even willingness to discern truth from error. Churches are not interested in standing for the truth or preaching and teaching the truth. We are told that truth divides and needlessly offends people. Instead we should focus on unity, love, purpose, and more positive things. Tough subjects like sin, hell, wrath, judgment, repentance and the righteousness of God are not only neglected but avoided entirely.

THESSALONIANS 4:13-5:10 AND THE GOSPEL SAYINGS OF JESUS Christ returns 1 Thess 4:16 Matt 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27 descends from heaven 1 Thess 4:16 Matt 24:30; Mark 13:26; Luke 21:27 a commanding shout 1 Thess 4:16 John 5:28-29 accompanied by angels 1 Thess 4:16 (an archangel) Matt 24:31; Mark 13:27 with a trumpet call 1 Thess 4:16 Matt 24:31 the Christians who have died will rise 1 Thess 4:16 John 11:25-26 believers gathered to Christ 1 Thess 4:17 Matt 24:31; Mark 13:27 caught up in the clouds 1 Thess 4:17 Mark 13:26 (= Matt 24:40-41; Luke 21:34-35—one taken, another left) to meet the Lord 1 Thess 4:17 Matt 25:6 be with the Lord forever 1 Thess 4:17; 5:10 John 17:24 (cf. Phil 1:23) time unknown 1 Thess 5:1-2 Matt 24:36; Mark 13:32 coming like a thief 1 Thess 5:1-2 Matt 24:43 the Parousia will be sudden 1 Thess 5:3 Matt 24:37-39; Luke 21:34 judgment comes as labor pains 1 Thess 5:3 Matt 24:8; Mark 13:8 believers should be watchful and on guard 1 Thess 5:4-6 Matt 24:42-44; Mark 13:35-37; Luke 21:34-36 warning against drunkenness 1 Thess 5:7 Matt 24:48-50; Luke 21:34 live in the light 1 Thess 5:8 John 8:12; 12:35-36 chosen for salvation, not for God’s wrath 1 Thess 5:9 Matt 24:13; Mark 13:13

As Miroslav Volf argues, “Every construction of innocence and guilt partakes in the corruption of the one undertaking the construction because every attempt to escape noninnocence is already ensnared by noninnocence. Just as there is no absolute standpoint from which relative human beings can make absolute judgments, so also there is no ‘pure’ space from which corrupt human beings can make pure judgments about purity and corruption.

This complex stance signals, for James K. A. Smith, “a complete reconfiguration of the place and status of political authority,”10 because all that a state can now achieve, all the judgments it can pass, all the power it can exert, all the possessions it can safeguard, and all the values it can seek to uphold are exceeded and succeeded by the dawning kingdom of God in a way that means earthly political power cannot be the mediator of God’s triumphal rule, for this was secured in the ascension and will be revealed at the parousia.

For this reason, the rainbow may represent the bow (weapon) of God and that it has been placed at rest in the clouds as a symbol of God’s rest from judgment (see Deut. 32:23, 42; Pss. 7:12[13]; 18:14[15]; Hab. 3:9). It is also worth noting that the rainbow is a feature associated with the throne of God and the divine presence: “Like the appearance of the [rain]bow in the clouds on the day of rain, so is the appearance of the brightness around him” (Ezek. 1:28). This theme is picked up in the book of Revelation, where the clouds and the rainbow attend the divine presence: “And I saw another strong angel coming down from heaven clothed with a cloud and the rainbow was around his head” (Rev. 10:1; see 4:3). Perhaps the rainbow represents God’s royal presence as the one who rules this world and sustains the covenant of common grace.55 We know that Yahweh sits enthroned over the flood,

Care of the poor, vulnerable, weak, destitute, and isolated is the biblical standard of a just society. No society is just or healthy if the weakest aren't protected, if you need money to get a fair hearing in a court, or if the poor are denied opportunities to flourish. the king's justice especially blesses the needy and poor (Ps 72:4, 12-14). He passes judgment in their favor and saves the helpless by crushing their oppressors, as Yahweh crushed the head of Rahab, the Egyptian sea monster (Isa 51:9). The king's justice is summed up by the lovely phrase: 'The king is like rain upon the mowing, like showers that water the earth' (Ps 72:6; my translation). Without the rain of justice, everything dies--the garden withers to a wasteland. When a just king reigns, grain stalks stand tall and spread like cedars of Lebanon, and cities flourish like green fields, fresh as Eden (Ps 72:16). Rain refreshes and cleanses, glorifies and brightens. Rain on the mowing promises a future harvest beyond today's harvest. Blessed by Yahweh, the just king baptizes the land. Justice rolls down like waters, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5:24).

Imprecatory psalms. Imprecatory psalms (Ps 12; 35; 52; 57—59; 69; 70; 83; 109; 137; 140) are usually lament psalms where the writer’s bitterness and desire for vindication are especially predominant. This leads to such statements as Psalm 137:8- 9, “[Happy is] he who seizes your infants / and dashes them against the rocks.” Such statements are shocking to modern sensitivities and cause many to wonder at the ethical standards of the biblical writers. However, several points must be made. The writer is actually pouring out his complaint to God regarding the exile, as in Psalm 137. He is also heeding the divine command of Deuteronomy 32:35 (Rom 12:19), “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.” Finally, as Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart note, the author is calling for judgment on the basis of the covenant curses (Deut 28:53-57; 32:25), which make provision for the complete annihilation of the transgressors, even family members (2003:221). The hyperbolic language is common in such emotional passages. In short, these do not really contradict the New Testament teaching to love our enemies. When we can pour out our animosity to God, that very act opens the door to acts of kindness akin to Romans 12:20 (Prov 25:21-22). In fact, meditation on and application of these psalms could be therapeutic to those who have suffered traumatic hurt (such as child abuse). By pouring out one’s natural bitterness to God, the victim could be freed to “love the unlovely.” We must remember that the same David who penned all the above except for Psalm 83 and Psalm 137 showed great mercy and love to Saul. When you have called out for justice after being deeply wounded (like the martyred saints in Rev 6:9-11), Romans 12:19 is actually being fulfilled because the vengeance is truly left with God, freeing you to forgive your enemy.

We can hardly say that the Pharisees had an accurate ‘knowledge’ of man when they pointed to the sins (the real sins) of publicans and sinners. This judgment, which separated knowledge of man from self-knowledge, was as nothing in God’s eyes. The Jew did not have a better understanding because he was able to judge the heathen. In the sphere of abstract morality this could possibly be said, but this is not Biblical morality - O man, who judgest others!

On the final day of 1999, an immaculately suited Jesus and a Bukowskiesque Devil warily circle each other through a series of sleazy bars and chilly law offices, trying to cut a deal that centers on Christ’s PowerBook. This contains the biblical Seventh Seal: Unlock the file and the Judgment Day program will launch, and then all hell will break loose.

Wanting to reflect an idol of ourselves and to make ourselves appear greater leads to being made small because of judgment.

The biblical view of the body, on the other hand, is quite positive. God created us as physical beings. We are both material and immaterial (see Genesis 2:7). The importance of the body is extensively illustrated in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. Our bodies were redeemed by the blood of Christ, no less than our souls (v. 20). Our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit (v. 19). Our bodies are designed “for the Lord” (v. 13). Our bodies are members of Christ himself (v. 15). Our bodies are capable of being sinned against (v. 18). Our bodies are to be used to honor God (v. 20). Finally, our bodies will be resurrected and glorified. In other words, we will spend eternity as physically glorified beings (see Romans 8:11, 23; 1 Corinthians 15:35–49). At the judgment seat of Christ, we will have to give an account for what we have done in our bodies. There is no escaping the fact that spirituality is physical. Although God is spirit, he created the physical, material world and pronounced it good (Genesis 1:4, 12, 18, 21, 25). When God created us in his image, he gave us bodies. On

Are we so invested in the Western cultural captivity of the church that we are unable to accept God’s right judgment on the broken system of oppression? The Western church elevates values of Western culture, even at the expense of biblical values. Western cultural values and how we live out Christian faith in the United States are presented as theologically normative and oppress voices from outside of the Western context.

When we reclaim the biblical story of God’s purpose to bless, reconcile, and heal the nations through his international, multiethnic kingdom, the subtopic of judgment against those forces that stand opposed to this kingdom begins to come into clearer focus. When we reclaim the biblical story of God’s identification with the weak against the oppression of the strong, the subtopic of holy war begins, again, to make more sense. So we will spend time reclaiming the biblical story from its distortions, reframing these topics back within that story, and demonstrating the difference this makes. The beauty of this method is that dealing with these topics can give us fresh insights on not only these questions, but our faith as a whole. It can provoke paradigm shifts that help us look afresh from new angles at the bigger picture where our vision has been distorted. Pulling out the skeletons can be more than just an exercise in cleaning closets; it can give us a fresh appreciation for the house as a whole.

baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. Biblically only God could pour out his own Spirit, as he promised to do at the time of the coming restoration (Isa 32:15; 44:3; Eze 39:29; Joel 2:28). In contrast to the Spirit, the “fire” here presumably signals end-time judgment (see notes on vv. 10, 12).

Many evangelical tellings of the biblical story, especially those designed to deliver an evangelistic message, effectively began with Genesis 3: the fall of humanity. And they ended with Revelation 20: the casting of Satan and all his works into the lake of fire. Understood this way, the gospel runs an abbreviated gamut from original sin to final judgment. The original good creation and the glorious new creation are afterthoughts when they are mentioned at all.

In the caricature, God creates hell in order to torture sinners. But in the biblical story, we are the authors of hell’s fury. God does not create the power of hell; we do. God does not rape kids and murder his neighbors; we do. God is not the one with skeletons in his closet; we are.

in my judgment, Frame, akin to Aquinas, is viewing the Christian story in accord with the logical construction and the empirical experience of language. If he actually followed Van Til, he would perceive that language has meaning only in the context of the biblical story. In other words, language has meaning only in the context of a philosophy of history as defined by Van Til and Vos.

Happiness is a mark of the righteous- not frustration, boredom, or a judgmental attitude.

At the heart of Christian theology there lies a personal relationship with God. Like all personal relationships, it is based on a degree of knowledge undergirded by trust. What we do not know we leave to God’s judgment, because we believe that we can trust him to act in ways consistent with what he has told us. In human relationships we trust people all the time, even though we are fallible creatures and liable to disappoint others and be disappointed ourselves. How much more should we be prepared to trust God, who is infallible and will never let us down? The Bible is the record of a relationship between God and man. It

As with the other Pauline passages that I have analyzed, similarities surface: (1) each moment is held as distinct but integrally connected to the others; and (2) salvation is not viewed as fully completed at the moments of redemption accomplished or redemption applied, but remains an eschatological hope. In addition to these similarities, Romans 5:9–10 reveals a new link, an unbreakable bond. Paul’s whole argument for the believer’s assurance of salvation at the final judgment rests on the connection between redemption accomplished and applied on the one hand, and redemption consummated on the other. As in Titus 3:3–5, redemption applied occurs through redemption accomplished, but now the synergy of redemption accomplished and applied together guarantees redemption consummated: if God has already done the most difficult thing—reconcile and justify us by Christ’s death—how much more (πολλῷ οὖν μᾶλλον) will he rescue us on that last day of his wrath. Paul stresses his point by twice using this greater-to-lesser argument.

The gospel of Jesus points us and indeed urges us to be at the leading edge of the whole culture, articulating in story and music and art and philosophy and education and poetry and politics and theology and even, heaven help us, biblical studies, a worldview that will mount the historically rooted Christian challenge to both modernity and postmodernity, leading the way into the postmodern world with joy and humor and gentleness and good judgment and true wisdom.

America has been blessed materially beyond all other nations. God has called on our blessed nation for decades to come back to Him. Each year, each day, we have ignored His loving entreaties to repent and be healed. So, what should He do? Cancel His call to repentance? Overlook fifty five million slain innocent children? Ignore America’s betrayal of Israel, when it happens? He actually covered this question in two of the Daughter of Babylon prophetic verses in Jeremiah:             “Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over   her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed.               ‘We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be           healed; let us leave her and each go to his own land,    for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as          the clouds.’ ” (Jeremiah 51:8-9)

Reflecting our condition as a body of believers, recently in the same week a U.S. Senator and a Governor, both recognized Christian leaders, admitted extramarital affairs. “For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (I Peter 4:17)

Folks who are hell bent on having an angry God have difficulty swallowing the idea that God doesn’t want to destroy sinners. Another proof text for them would be Romans 5:9, “Having now been justified by His blood, we will be saved through Him from the wrath. …” “But that still does not mean that Christ’s death propitiated God,” continue the authors. “For Paul the wrath of God is God’s judgment which destroys all unholiness and sin. In the light of the threatening wrath of God, the need of sinners can be said not to be the transformation of God’s attitude toward them but the transformation of their sinful existence before God.” This accurate understanding that God’s wrath is against sinfulness and not sinners, helps us to get a clearer picture of what is going on. It is more like a doctor fighting a patient’s disease, or a freedom fighter liberating slaves from bondage. That God’s wrath is redemptively aimed against sinfulness itself finds solid Biblical support. “The wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18).

matter what their differences on the details, all Christians who take the Bible as their final authority agree that the final and ultimate result of Christ’s return will be the judgment of unbelievers and the final reward of believers, and that believers will live with Christ in a new heaven and a new earth for all eternity. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will reign and will be worshiped in a never-ending kingdom with no more sin or sorrow or suffering.

preterism Full preterists are a relatively small minority. “The true preterist view is that the second coming of Christ was to finally judge and remove the last vestiges of the Old Covenant system and fully establish the kingdom and the New Covenant system by 70 A.D.”393 They also view the resurrection as spiritual not bodily, and that the resurrection, the day of the Lord, and the judgment all occurred in AD 70.394 Most Christians hold that full preterism is heretical because it denies the bodily resurrection of believers and the future second coming of Christ. Partial preterism Partial preterism, particularly in its mild variety, has a well-established history. Mild partial preterism “holds that the Tribulation was fulfilled within the first three hundred years of Christianity as God judged two enemies: the Jews in A.D. 70 and Rome by A.D. 313.”395 Moderate partial preterism, such as that advanced by R. C. Sproul, “sees the Tribulation and the bulk of Bible prophecy as fulfilled in the events surrounding the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in A.D. 70; but they still hold to a future second coming, a physical resurrection of the dead, an end to temporal history, and the establishment of the consummate new heaven and new earth.”396 Moderate partial preterists believe that “in the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 there was a parousia or coming of Christ [but] it was not the parousia.”397

All normative judgments about worship must be avoided. Attempts to use biblicism as a guideline, as we shall see, tend to be abandoned in the course of time or lead to biblicism of only certain portions of scripture. After all, there is more biblical authority for snake handling (Mark 16:18) than there is for confirmation! Historically, attempts to deduce norms for worship from scripture fail because the Bible was not written for such a purpose.

In a world of finite gods (often supported by one pantheistic deity), cyclical views of history, sub-biblical understandings of sin, multiplied idolatry, dualism that declares all that is material to be bad and all that is spiritual to be good, tribal deities, and not a little superstition, Paul paints a worldview of the true God, a linear view of history, the nature of sin and idolatry, impending judgment, the unity of the human race and the oneness of God-all as the necessary framework without which his proclamation of Jesus makes no sense. What does that mean for evangelism today?

Arrogant worship is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. Yet we see it throughout Scripture. The gospel was given to Adam and Eve. As redemptive history unfolded, the people of Israel continued to recite the promise and to demonstrate it with their liturgy, their signs, their sacraments, and their cultic worship. But the judgment of the prophets that came upon the house of Israel was this: “Your worship has become idololatria. You are not putting your faith in God; you are putting it in Baal, in the temple, in the rituals you are doing, in your heritage, in your biology. You are trusting in everything else but God.

Annie Dillard saw that all of nature is based on violence. Yet we inescapably believe it is wrong for stronger human individuals or groups to kill weaker ones. If violence is totally natural why would it be wrong for strong humans to trample weak ones? There is no basis for moral obligation unless we argue that nature is in some part unnatural. We can’t know that nature is broken in some way unless there is some supernatural standard of normalcy apart from nature by which we can judge right and wrong. That means there would have to be heaven or God or some kind of divine order outside of nature in order to make that judgment. There is only one way out of this conundrum. We can pick up the Biblical account of things and see if it explains our moral sense any better than a secular view. If the world was made by a God of peace, justice, and love, then that is why we know that violence, oppression, and hate are wrong. If the world is fallen, broken, and needs to be redeemed, that explains the violence and disorder we see. If you believe human rights are a reality, then it makes much more sense that God exists than that he does not.

At every point in the story of the transmission of biblical material from the original text to today we are dealing with the interaction of men and women with God. At every point, human judgment and human fallibility are involved, as they are in every attempt we make today to act faithfully in new situations. The idea that at a certain point in this long story a line was drawn before which everything is divine word and after which everything is human judgment is absurd.

[gospel is that the] right and proper judgment of God against our rebellion has not been overturned; it has been exhausted, embraced in full by the eternal Son of God himself. . . . God uses words in the service of his intention to rescue men and women, drawing them into fellowship with him and preparing a new creation as an appropriate venue for the enjoyment of that fellowship. In other words, the knowledge of God that is the goal of God's speaking ought never to be separated from the centerpiece of Christian theology; namely, the salvation of sinners. This is certainly not elementary theologizing, but a grounding of even the very philosophy and understanding of human language in the gospel. The Word of the Lord (as we see in Jonah 1:1) is never abstract theologizing, but is a life-changing message about the severity and mercy of God. Why is this so important? First, in a time in which there is so much ignorance of the basic Christian worldview, we have to get to the core of things, the gospel, every time we speak. Second, the gospel of salvation doesn't really relate to theology like the first steps relate to the rest of the stairway but more like the hub relates through the spokes to the rest of the wheel. The gospel of a glorious, other-oriented triune God giving himself in love to his people in creation and redemption and re-creation is the core of every doctrine--of the Bible, of God, of humanity, of salvation, of ecclesiology, of eschatology. However, third, we must recognize that in a postmodern society where everyone is against abstract speculation, we will be ignored unless we ground all we say in the gospel. Why? The postmodern era has produced in its citizens a hunger for beauty and justice. This is not an abstract culture, but a culture of story and image. The gospel is not less than a set of revealed propositions (God, sin, Christ, faith), but it is more. It is also a narrative (creation, fall, redemption, restoration.) Unfortunately, there are people under the influence of postmodernism who are so obsessed with narrative rather than propositions that they are rejecting inerrancy, are moving toward open theism, and so on. But to some extent they are reacting to abstract theologizing that was not grounded in the gospel and real history. They want to put more emphasis on the actual history of salvation, on the coming of the kingdom, on the importance of community, and on the renewal of the material creation. But we must not pit systematic theology and biblical theology against each other, nor the substitutionary atonement against the kingdom of God. Look again at the above quote from Mark Thompson and you will see a skillful blending of both individual salvation from God's wrath and the creation of a new community and material world. This world is reborn along with us--cleansed, beautified, perfected, and purified of all death, disease, brokenness, injustice, poverty, deformity. It is not just tacked on as a chapter in abstract "eschatology," but is the only appropriate venue for enjoyment of that fellowship with God brought to us by grace through our union with Christ.

And he called out, 'Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!'" Notice how little is in that message. Jonah is establishing the reality of divine justice and judgment, of human sin and responsibility. But that's all he speaks of. Later, when the Ninevites repent, the king says: "Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish" (3:9). The king isn't even sure if God offers grace and forgiveness. It is clear that the Ninevites have very little spiritual understanding here. And though some expositors like to talk about the "revival" in Nineveh in response to Jonah's preaching, it seems obvious that they are not yet in any covenant relationship with God. They have not yet been converted. And yet God responds to that: "When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it" (3:10). He doesn't say to them "You are my people; I am your God." There's no saving relationship here--but there is progress! They have one or two very important planks in a biblical worldview, and to God that makes a difference.

But is Christian faith the place to turn for logic? Is not logic the domain of scholars and philosophers? The British philosopher John Locke condemns this common misconception: “God has not been so sparing to men to make them barely two-legged creatures, and left it to Aristotle to make them rational.”[2] In other words, Locke recognized that logic existed and people reasoned and used the critical faculties of their minds before any philosopher came along to teach about it. God created logic and reasoning as he created man, and he created it for man, and therefore, we should find it reasonable that God’s Word has something to say—if not a lot to say—about logic, rationality, and good judgment.

At the heart of Christian theology there lies a personal relationship with God. Like all personal relationships, it is based on a degree of knowledge undergirded by trust. What we do not know we leave to God’s judgment, because we believe that we can trust him to act in ways consistent with what he has told us. In human relationships we trust people all the time, even though we are fallible creatures and liable to disappoint others and be disappointed ourselves. How much more should we be prepared to trust God, who is infallible and will never let us down?

The Dictionary of Biblical Languages (DBL) admits that another interpretation of iyyim other than howling desert animals is “spirit, ghost, goblin, i.e., a night demon or dead spirit (Isa. 13:22; 34:14; Jer. 50:39), note: this would be one from the distant lands, i.e., referring to the nether worlds.”[12] One could say that siyyim and iyyim are similar to our own play on words, “ghosts and goblins.” The proof of this demon interpretation is in the Apostle John’s inspired reuse of the same exact language when pronouncing judgment upon first century Israel as a symbolic “Mystery Babylon.

Lincoln, who wrestled like a biblical prophet with God's purposes in history and his judgment on this nation, grew because of his public service in his ability to bring together, always tentatively, the law he defended finally with his own life and God's word which, like a two-edged sword, cuts through the rhetoric of public as well as personal deceit.

In one of his essays William Placher comments on a time when the theological use of the Bible presupposed a deep knowledge of what the Bible says.1 The example he serves up is from the final pages of Calvin’s Institutes, where the Reformer thinks through the issue of what Christians should do if they find themselves under a wicked ruler. Placher notes that Calvin reflects on Daniel and Ezekiel regarding the need to obey even bad rulers; he weighs the command to serve the king of Babylon in Jeremiah 27. He quotes from the Psalms, and he cites Isaiah to the effect that the faithful are urged to trust in God to overcome the unrighteous. On the other hand, he evenhandedly notes episodes in Exodus and Judges “where people serve God by overthrowing the evil rulers,” and texts in 1 Kings and Hosea where God’s people are criticized for being obedient to wicked kings. He cites Peter’s conclusion before Gamaliel, according to Acts: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). From these and other biblical passages, he proceeds to weave nuanced conclusions. We should disobey what governement mandates if it violates our religious obligations. By contrast, Christians should not normally go around starting revolutions. But those who are in positions of authority should deploy that authority to deal with those who exploit others. Even violent revolutionaries may in mysterious ways perform the will of God, though of course they may be called to judgment on account of their evil. Placher then comments: My point is not to defend all of Calvin’s conclusions, or even all of his method, but simply to illustrate how immersion in biblical texts can produce a very complex way of reflecting within a framework of biblical authority, compared to which most contemporary examples look pretty simple-minded. We can’t “appeal to the Bible” in a way that’s either helpful or faithful without beginning to do theology. Theology begins to put together a way of looking as a Christian at the world in all its variety, a language that we share as Christians and that provides a context rich enough for discussing the complexities of our lives. Absent such a shared framework, we can quote passages at each other, but the only contexts in which we can operate come from the discourses of politics and popular culture.2

According to Shiites, there were twelve Imams who lived through the seventh and eighth centuries AD. The 12th Imam, Muhammad ibn al-Hassan, is said by Muslims to have disappeared as a child in the year 941, and has been hiding alive in a well since that time. When he returns, as the Imam Mahdi, The Savior of Times, they believe he will reign on earth for seven years, before bringing about a final judgment and the end of the world.

Not in a five year, lingering war; not in a several month conflict; not even destruction over several days, but instead in a single day, in an hour, in a moment. “How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken? How does Babylon become a desolation among the nations?” (Jeremiah 50:23) “Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed.” (Jeremiah 51:8 a) “Therefore, shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning…?” (Revelation 18:8). “For in one hour your judgment has come” (Revelation 18:10) “In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin” (Revelation 18:17). “In one hour she has been brought to ruin” (Revelation 18:19) “But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood.” (Isaiah 47:9a – KJV). In the history of the world, how many world empires or nations have been totally destroyed, in one day, in one hour, in one moment?

Bible scholars have observed that the Book of Revelation’s prophecies are not set forth in a strict chronological order, though chapters 19-22 do progress in order once Jesus returns to earth (Revelation 19:11-16). There is however contained within the Book of Revelation a mini series of prophecy clues, in one part of one chapter, which, like a good mystery, give us an insight into solving the mystery. A revealing lineage of events is found in Revelation Chapter 14. In verse 7 the angel proclaims that “the hour of His judgment is come”. The next verse, 14:8, proclaims: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.” Following verse 8, verses 9-12 prophesy details concerning the Antichrist, the mark of the beast, those who worship him, etc. The final battle of Armageddon and widespread deaths accompanying it follow in verses 14:14-20.

Thus, John presents a time line of the end times, in chronological order: a.) God proclaims that judgment time has arrived (not the final Great White Throne Judgment in heaven, but judgment on the earth of earth’s inhabitants); b.) Babylon, as a part of that judgment, is destroyed; c.) the Antichrist follows the fall of Babylon, as his allied forces take over Europe (Revived Roman Empire nations) under the threat of doing to them what was done to Babylon if they don’t agree to his leadership over their nations; d.) the final battle of Armageddon commences; and e.) Jesus returns to earth, to reign. Therefore, even though John was given the Book of the Revelation to write in a manner that was not chronological from chapter 1 through 22, the above section of prophecy contained within chapter 14 is helpful in unlocking the clues and solving the mystery of the identity of the Daughter of Babylon/Babylon the Great. (See Attachment C for a listing of end times events.)

Ezekiel spells it out: “This is what will happen in that day: When Gog attacks the land of Israel, my hot anger will be aroused, declares the Sovereign LORD. In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the beasts of the field, every creature that moves along the ground, and all the people on the face of the earth will tremble at my presence. The mountains will be overturned, the cliffs will crumble and every wall will fall to the ground. I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Sovereign LORD. Every man’s sword will be against his brother. I will execute judgment upon him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him. And so I will show my greatness and my holiness, and I will make myself known in the sight of many nations. Then they will know that I am the LORD.’” (Ezekiel 38:18-23)

Second, the Holy Spirit endues the church with God's authority. In responding to some Pentecostal exegetes who emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit only in empowering believers for witness, Max Turner makes the observation that several of the key manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts are not linked to an empowerment-for-witness theme.' In several texts people are filled with the Holy Spirit to give service or direction to the church. For example, in Acts 6 the seven deacons are filled with the Holy Spirit to serve the church (6:1-7). Similarly, in Paul's farewell to the elders at Ephesus, he acknowledges that it was the Holy Spirit who had appointed them as overseers of the church (20:28). In Acts 11:27-28, Agabus is filled with the Holy Spirit to inform the church that a severe famine will spread over the entire Roman world. In Acts 15 the Holy Spirit directs the church in their decision regarding the terms through which Gentile believers were to be admitted into the church (15:28). The Holy Spirit extends the judgment of God on both the church and on the unbelieving world (5:3, 9; 13:9-12). Thus, the Holy Spirit serves not only to empower the church to witness but also is the "teacher of the church" and the "executor of Christ's will in the world" (John 15:26; 16:14-15).7 The Holy Spirit conveys revelation to the church by communicating to the church the will of God, thereby helping to bring the church under the authority of Christ. The early church regularly confesses that it is the Holy Spirit who inspired the biblical authors and, thereby, delivered to the church the Word of God (Acts 1:16; 4:25).

Deists and theists both believe in the existence of a personal God. The deist, Immanuel Kant said, believes in a God, but theists believe in a living God, an acting God, such as is seen in the familiar biblical stories, while deists do not. So with regard to the intervention and presence of God in human life, deists believe much as atheists do—except old-fashioned deists often held the belief that God has a moral claim upon human lives and even that “in the end” they would stand before his judgment. In practical terms, however, contemporary deists are indistinguishable from atheists. The often rather intense moral interest of earlier deists2 has now vanished.

Wouldn’t it be great if attacking others to feel better about ourselves was something we outgrew like acne or crying when we have to go to bed? The fact is, many men still exhaust themselves in critiquing and attacking others. Maybe we fear that other people’s success will somehow diminish ours. Maybe we take responsibility for more than we really need to and have appointed ourselves protectors of some kingdom. Deeper down, though, men are driven to stand in judgment of others because we have a deeply engrained bent and a pesky, persistent pattern of seeming to be wise in our own eyes. This makes love an impossibility.

Do We Need a Eulogy or a Birth Announcement? Like most African-Americans my age and older, I have been touched by the virtue and disturbed by the failures of the African-American church. I have had some of the richest times of celebration and praise in local black churches. And I’ve also experienced some of the most perplexing and discouraging situations in this same institution. It was an African-American preacher who vouched for me when I was facing criminal charges as a rising junior in high school, making all the difference in my future. And it was the membership of a black Baptist congregation that nearly poisoned my love for the church when, as a new Christian, I witnessed the “brawl” of my first church business meeting. The preaching of the church gave me biblical tropes and themes for building a sense of self in the world. But a low level of spiritual living among many African-American Christians tempted me to believe that everything in the Black Church was show-and-tell, a tragic comedy of self-delusion and religious hypocrisy. I left the Black Church of my youth and converted to Islam during college. I became zealous for Islam and a staunch critic of the Black Church. I welcomed much of the criticisms of radicals, Afrocentrists, and groups like the Nation of Islam. I cut my teeth on the writing and speaking of men like Molefi Kete Asante, Na’im Akbar, Wade Noble, and Louis Farrakhan. The institution that helped nurture me I now deem a real enemy to the progress of African-Americans, an opiate and a tool of white supremacy. I had experienced enough of the church’s weakness to reject her altogether. The immature and undiscerning rarely know how to handle the failures of its heroes, to evaluate with nuance and critical appreciation. That was true of me before the Lord saved me. In July 1995, sitting in an African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ) church in the Washington, DC, area, a short, square, balding African-American preacher expounded the text of Exodus 32. With passion and insight, he detailed the idolatry of Israel and exposed the idolatry of my heart. As he pressed on, more and more I felt guilty for my sin, estranged from God, and deserving of God’s holy judgment. Then, from the text of Exodus 32, he preached Jesus Christ, the Son of God who takes away the sin of the world and reconciles sinners to God. He proclaimed the cross of Jesus Christ, where my sins had been nailed and the Son of God punished in my place. The preacher announced the resurrection of Christ, proving the Father accepted the Son’s sacrifice. Then the pastor called every sinner to repent and put their trust—not in themselves—but in Jesus Christ alone for righteousness, forgiveness, and eternal life. It was as if he addressed me alone though I sat in a congregation of eight thousand. That morning, under the preaching of the gospel from God’s Word, the Spirit gave me and my wife repentance and faith leading to eternal life. I was a dead man when I walked into that building. But I left a living man, revived by God’s Word and Spirit.

The point? Heaven’s primary counterpart in the gospel story is not hell; it is earth. Heaven and earth are threaded throughout the biblical drama of creation, rebellion, and redemption. If we want to confront the caricature of hell and reclaim the photograph, we must reframe it back within this biblical story of heaven and earth. We should first ask, “What is the biblical story of heaven and earth?” And as we shall see in the pages to come, when this broader story is in place, the logic of hell begins to arise as a smaller subplot in a broader story that proclaims loudly and clearly the glorious goodness of God.

To summarize, in the biblical storyline we’ve looked at thus far, heaven and earth are created by God, torn by sin, and destined for reconciliation. This provokes the question: What is it heaven and earth need to be reconciled from? It is here that the logic of hell naturally arises, that the puzzle piece starts to fit. For the world to be reconciled to God, it must be reconciled from the divisive and destructive powers that have caused the problem in the first place. It must be rescued from hell.

But in the biblical story, we are the authors of hell’s fury. God does not create the power of hell; we do. God does not rape kids and murder his neighbors; we do. God is not the one with skeletons in his closet; we are. So how do we join Jesus’ fight against the power of hell in God’s good world today?

When we recognize that there are unbelievers in the visible church, there is a danger that we may become overly suspicious. We may begin to doubt the salvation of many true believers and thereby bring great confusion into the church. Calvin warned against this danger by saying that we must make a “charitable judgment” whereby we recognize as members of the church all who “by confession of faith, by example of life, and by partaking of the sacraments, profess the same God and Christ with us.”9 We should not try to exclude people from the fellowship of the church until they by public sin bring discipline upon themselves. On the other hand, of course, the church should not tolerate in its membership “public unbelievers” who by profession or life clearly proclaim themselves to be outside the true church.

Grace forever removes from us the peril of Christ’s judgment, but it never releases us from the missional obligations of Christ’s love for ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.

The Code of Hammurabi Detailed legal pronouncements for numerous situations can be found also in the Code of Hammurabi, which dates to the 18th century BCE and in which four of the 10 biblical commandments appear repeatedly. For example, the ninth of the Ten Commandments or Decalogue is, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” whereas in the Code of Hammurabi, we read: “1. If a man bring an accusation against a man, and charge him with a (capital) crime, but cannot prove it, he, the accuser, shall be put to death…. 3. If a man, in a case (pending judgment), bear false (threatening) witness, or do not establish the testimony that he has given, if that case be a case involving life, that man shall be put to death.”833

The second Christian doctrine that speaks so well to our hearts is that of the final judgment and the renewal of the world. Many people complain that they cannot believe in a God who judges and punishes people. But if there is no Judgment Day, what about all the enormous amount of injustice that has been and is being perpetuated? If there is no Judgment Day, then there are only two things to do- lose all hope or turn to vengeance. Either it means that the tyranny and oppression that have been so dominant over the ages will never be redressed, and in the end it will make no difference whether you live a life of justice and kidness or a life of cruelty and selfishness, or it means that, since there is no Judgment Day, we will need to take up our weapons and go and hunt down the evildoers now. We will have to take justice into our own hands. We will have to be the judges, if there is no Judge. And so the biblical doctrine of Judgment Day, far from being a gloomy idea, enables us to live with both hope and grace. If we accept it, we get hope and incentive to work for justice. For no matter how little success we may have now, we know that justice will be established- fully and perfectly. All wrongs- what we have called moral evil- will be redressed. But it also enables us to be gracious, to forgive, and to refrain from vengefulness and violence. Why? If we are not sure that there will be a final judgment, then when we are wronged, we will feel an almost irresistable compulsion to take up the sword and smite the wrongdoers. But if we know that no one will get away with anything, and that all wrongs will ultimately be redressed, then we can live in peace.

In fact, one of the great blessings of the final judgment will be that saints and angels will see demonstrated in millions of lives the absolutely pure justice of God, and this will be a source of praise to him for all eternity.

The transformation the church needs is the kind that results from beholding the glory of God in the face of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18–4:6). This glory of God is a saving and judging glory—an aroma of life to those being saved and death to those perishing (2 Cor. 2:15–16), and this saving and judging glory is at the center of biblical theology.

As a result of the rebellion, ensuing battle, and ultimately God’s judgment, God’s original creation became a “formless void” characterized by “darkness” and covered by “the deep.” Since this concept of a pre-creation battle was widely known among ancient Near Eastern people and among the Jews, as evidenced by the other creation passages that involve conflict, the Genesis author picked up his account where these other accounts left off. He began his narrative with the earth in its destroyed state. He then emphasized the ease with which God re-created his world, thus expressing the victory and sovereignty of the Creator over all forces that oppose him. No other reading of Genesis 1 and 2 can as easily harmonize itself with the biblical data about God’s conflict with forces of evil prior to creation. Fourth,

So, the question that contemporary Christians should ask when evaluating whether this thing or that circumstance is God’s blessing should be: Does this “blessing” draw me closer to the triune God? Does this need being met bring me nearer to the giver, or is it a distraction? No perceived “good gift” will ever drive you away from the Lord, because in God’s economy that is not good. And Romans 8 tells us that he is working good for his people. In God’s economy, wealth can be a precursor to judgment (Ps. 73), and poverty can be a sign of godly surrender (Mark 10). However, God can bless the godly with wealth to better meet the needs of others, while sinful decisions can often lead to pain and loss. There is no simple answer to these questions.

However, God’s deliverance from Egypt is not out of mere covenant obligation to a place—he is bringing his people to himself!2 Ex. 4:23: “Let my son go that he may serve me.” Ex. 6:6–7: “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” Ex. 19:4: “You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” Ex. 20:24: “In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you.

The LORD says to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool … The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations” (Ps 110:1, 5-6).[111] As the New Testament also identifies, there is an Adonai at the “right hand” of Yahweh, who is Yahweh’s man of war to execute judgment on the earth.[112]

There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in [their reactions]. They come from the heart, whereas you would expect the judgments to come from the brain. . . . As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications. . . . For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. [Jastrow 1978, 113–16]

What would we think of a pollster who issued a definitive report on how the American people felt about a new television special, if we discovered later that he had interviewed only one person who had seen only ten minutes of the program? We would dismiss the conclusions as frivolous. Yet that is exactly the kind of evidence that too many Christians accept as the final truth about much more important matters-matters such as answered prayer, God's judgment, Christ's forgiveness, eternal salvation. The only person they consult is themselves, and the only experience they evaluate is the most recent ten minutes. But we need other experiences, the community of experience of brothers and sisters in the church, the centuries of experience provided by our biblical ancestors. A Christian who has David in his bones, Jeremiah in his bloodstream, Paul in his fingertips and Christ in his heart will know how much and how little value to put on his own momentary feelings and the experience of the past week.

All the preachers I heard would have affirmed, at least theoretically, the biblical claim that “God is love.” Nevertheless, there was a remarkably consistent undertone (and, frankly, too often an overtone) of judgment and condemnation present in virtually every sermon.

I believe we have arrived at a time when many of the end-time biblical prophecies will be fulfilled. Some are positive in their fulfillment, and others are quite troubling. When the time comes for a global government, a universal tracking system, currency changes, and selective judgments, we must all learn how to be strong and take lessons from faithful believers in the past. They learned how to fast, pray, endure persecution, and remained true to the faith until the end.

Prayer helps us to regain the proper priorities, discern biblical wisdom, and make right judgments. Without prayer, Glaspey might say, we live as temporal people with temporal values. Prayer pushes eternity back into our lives, making God ever more relevant to the way we live our lives. PRAYER PUSHES ETERNITY BACK INTO OUR LIVES, MAKING GOD EVER MORE RELEVANT TO THE WAY WE LIVE OUR LIVES.

If our best judgments incline us in one way but our best understanding of what God calls us to do leads us in another direction, which path will we follow? What if the life and teaching of Jesus really do turn our normal conceptions of power and strength upside down? Can we allow ourselves to be formed by the biblical narratives if they undermine common sense? If not, one has to wonder in what sense we would claim our positions to be Christian in the end.