Restoration Biblical Quotes

The appropriate response to this gospel proclamation is to rethink everything in the light of the risen and ascended Christ and live accordingly. We rethink our lives (which is what it means to repent) not so we can escape a doomed planet, but in order to participate in God’s design to redeem the human person and renovate human society in Christ. Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project!

For Christians to influence the world with the truth of God's Word requires the recovery of the great Reformation doctrine of vocation. Christians are called to God's service not only in church professions but also in every secular calling. The task of restoring truth to the culture depends largely on our laypeople. To bring back truth, on a practical level, the church must encourage Christians to be not merely consumers of culture but makers of culture. The church needs to cultivate Christian artists, musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, attorneys, teachers, scientists, business executives, and the like, teaching its laypeople the sense in which every secular vocation-including, above all, the callings of husband, wife, and parent--is a sphere of Christian ministry, a way of serving God and neighbor that is grounded in God's truth. Christian laypeople must be encouraged to be leaders in their fields, rather than eager-to-please followers, working from the assumptions of their biblical worldview, not the vapid clichés of pop culture.

Jesus is not a heavenly conductor handing out tickets to heaven. Jesus is the carpenter who repairs, renovates, and restores God’s good world.

Salvation is a restoration project, not an evacuation project! Or as Thomas Merton put it, “Eschatology is not an invitation to escape into a private heaven: it is a call to transfigure the evil and stricken world.

Laboring in the name of Jesus to make the world a better place does not undermine faith in the Second Coming; rather it takes seriously God’s intention to repair the world through Christ and anticipates this hope by moving even now in the direction of restoration. This is what it means to be faithful to the kingdom of God even while we await the appearing of Christ and the culmination of our hope.

Feminine language occurs in the text repeatedly of God; this means that feminists and womanists advocating for inclusive and explicitly feminine God-language are not changing but restoring the text and could be considered biblical literalists.

Repairing what’s broken is a distinctly biblical concept, which is why as people of faith we should be leading the way into redemption, restoration, and reconciliation.

God’s justice is higher than merely punishing someone who has committed an injustice—He desires to restore everything that was lost.

People, place, and presence. What humanity lost through Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the garden will be regained through the promise made to Abraham and his descendants.

Some people claim we have a Christian heritage in America that needs restoring, but such a claim is debatable and is not well supported by the evidence. We have no biblical warrant to deify the past. Consequently, I find it difficult and possibly wasteful to try to identify just what part of our heritage was Christian in hopes that we can somehow get back to it.

The unbiblical idea of "spirituality" is that the truly "spiritual" man is the person who is sort of "non-physical," who doesn't get involved in "earthly" things, who doesn't work very much or think very hard, and who spends most of his time meditating about how he'd rather be in heaven. As long as he's on earth, though, he has one main duty in life: Get stepped on for Jesus. The "spiritual" man, in this view, is a wimp. A Loser. But at least he's a Good Loser.

There is a very important connection between the Church's worldview and the Church's hymns. If your heart and mouth are filled with songs of victory, you will tend to have an eschatology of dominion; if, instead, your songs are fearful, expressing a longing for escape-or if they are weak, childish ditties-your worldview and expectations will be escapist and childish. Historically, the basic hymnbook for the Church has been the Book of Psalms. The largest book of the Bible is the Book of Psalms, and God providentially placed it right in the middle of the Bible, so that we couldn't miss it! Yet how many churches use the Psalms in musical worship? It is noteworthy that the Church's abandonment of dominion eschatology coincided with the Church's abandonment of the Psalms.

The model provided by biblical parables is strongly influential in the following story, from Scivias I, 2, 32, in which Hildegard develops her motif of the ‘pearl’ as a symbol for humanity: The same lord who lost his sheep but so gloriously restored it to its life, also owned a costly pearl. The same happened again: the pearl was lost, and it fell into the ugly dirt. But he did not leave it lying in the dirt. He lifted it out carefully, and he cleaned it of the mud into which it had fallen, like gold purified in the furnace. He restored it to its former beauty till it gleamed even brighter than before. The probable sources of this story reveal something of Hildegard’s methods as a maker of new narratives. The basic message is the same as that of the parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:12–14), but she draws on other New Testament passages such as the parable of the Costly Pearl for which a merchant sold everything he had (Matthew 13:45–6). There is perhaps also an echo of the command not to ‘cast your pearls before swine’ (Matthew 7:6), since if they lie in the mud they are useless. Taken together these echoes of Hildegard’s biblical reading blend into a new motif which she can add to the storehouse of her memory and bring out for use when appropriate.18

are certain things we will be required to suffer to equip us to fulfill our purpose. 1 Peter 5: 10 (ESV) states, “after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

Atonement theology assumes that we were created in some kind of original perfection. We now know that life has emerged from a single cell that evolved into self-conscious complexity over billions of years. There was no original perfection. If there was no original perfection, then there could never have been a fall from perfection. If there was no fall, then there is no such thing as “original sin” and thus no need for the waters of baptism to wash our sins away. If there was no fall into sin, then there is also no need to be rescued. How can one be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can one be restored to a status of perfection that he or she never possessed? So most of our Christology today is bankrupt. Many popular titles that we have applied to Jesus, such as “savior,” “redeemer,” and “rescuer,” no longer make sense, because they assume

I get the sense that many in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement feel that the tasks associated with homemaking have been so marginalized in our culture that it’s up to them to restore the sacredness of keeping the home. This is a noble goal indeed, and one around which all people of faith can rally. But in our efforts to celebrate and affirm God’s presence in the home, we should be wary of elevating the vocation of homemaking above all others by insinuating that for women, God’s presence is somehow restricted to that sphere. If God is the God of all pots and pans, then He is also the God of all shovels and computers and paints and assembly lines and executive offices and classrooms. Peace and joy belong not to the woman who finds the right vocation, but to the woman who finds God in any vocation, who looks for the divine around every corner.

Western definition of adolescence, as we’ll soon see, does align remarkably well with the biblical definition of childhood.

Doing justice” meant not only “not doing wrong,” but also actively doing right and restoring what is broken.

God’s justice is satisfied when there is restoration.

Jesus is building his Church, not only by constitutions and codes, but by shaping hearts and minds to his way of life. We are a family, not a firm, scattered and yet gathered. Biblical equality is not the endgame; it is one of the means to God’s big ending: all things redeemed, all things restored. Jesus feminism is only one thread in God’s beautiful woven story of redemption. Begin here: right at the feet of Jesus. Look to Love, and yes, our Jesus—he will guide you in your steps, one after another, in these small ways until you come at last to love the whole world.

There was no heat in these buildings, partly because the earliest meetinghouses also served as powder magazines, and fires threatened to blow the entire congregation to smithereens. They were bitter cold in winter. Many tales were told of frozen communion bread, frostbitten fingers, baptisms performed with chunks of ice and entire congregations with chattering teeth that sounded like a field of crickets. It was a point of honor for the minister never to shorten a service merely because his audience was frozen. But sometimes the entire congregation would begin to stamp its feet to restore circulation until the biblical rebuke came crashing down upon them: “STAND STILL and consider the wonderous work of God.” Later generations built “nooning houses” or “sab-baday houses” near the church where the congregation could thaw out after the morning sermon and prepare for the long afternoon sermon to come. But unheated meetings remained a regional folkway for two hundred years.

John Houghton, in his article on Augustine and Tolkien, has made the point that there are in fact “two moments in the task of theology.” On the one hand, the theologian must “de-mythologize” and so render intelligible to his audience the meaning of divine revelation or sacred scripture by explaining it in terms of what they already know.2 It is this first task of theology with which St. Thomas was primarily involved, translating, as I suggested in the Introduction, the mythos of biblical revelation into the logos of Aristotle and the “vernacular” of late medieval scholasticism. “On the other hand,” Houghton continues, “the theologian faces the task of recovery, of restoring the power of images and stories that have grown weak from cultural change or from mere familiarity. In this sense the theologian’s task is not demythologizing but mythopoesis as...‘re-mythologizing’...

Peter makes clear in an early sermon in Acts. You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, “And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways. (Acts 3:25–26) So before Jesus is the savior of the world, he is the savior of Israel, restoring them to their status and role as God’s elect people.

THERE HAS BEEN A SILENT DIVORCE IN THE CHURCH, SPEAKING generally, between the Word and the Spirit. When there is a divorce, sometimes the children stay with the mother, sometimes with the father. In this divorce you have those on the Word side and those on the Spirit side. What is the difference? Those on the Word side stress earnestly contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, expository preaching, sound theology, rediscovering the doctrines of the Reformation—justification by faith, sovereignty of God. Until we get back to the Word, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. Those on the Spirit side stress getting back to the Book of Acts, signs, wonders, and miracles, gifts of the Holy Spirit—with places being shaken at prayer meetings, get in Peter’s shadow and you are healed, lie to the Holy Spirit and you are struck dead. Until we recover the power of the Spirit, the honor of God’s name will not be restored. What is wrong with this emphasis? Nothing. It is exactly right, in my opinion. The problem is, neither will learn from the other. But if these two would come together, the simultaneous combination would mean spontaneous combustion. And if Smith Wigglesworth’s prophecy got it right, the world will be turned upside down again.

Telling someone they shouldn’t judge is not biblical. In fact, Scripture actually commands us to judge but to do it carefully, rightly, humbly, and without hypocrisy. And the whole point of judging one another is to protect the church and restore the sinner in repentance.

This is the mission of God: to restore the creation and the life of humanity from the ravages of sin.[45] The church’s function in this story is to participate in God’s mission; we are to be caught up in God’s own work of restoration and healing. This defines the identity and role of the church.

Our hope is not in being beamed up to heaven upon death with suddenly perfected bodies. Our hope is informed and colored by John’s vision in Revelation 21: the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven. Hope in suffering is never for a disembodied day when we can finally escape the bodies, relationships, and circumstances that have caused us so much pain. Biblical hope is expressed not in certainty but in curiosity, hearts that acknowledge and accept Jesus is already King, lives that look for the restoration of his rule right here, people propelled by a willingness to see Jesus turn every inch of creation from cursed to cured. The relationships that were broken will be made right; our relationship to our bodies, each other, the earth, and God will be fully and finally restored. The kingdom is already and not yet; living in its tension rather than panicking for release is the only way to be pulled into the trajectory of hope.

The genius of the biblical story is what it tells us about God himself: a God who sacrifices himself in death out of love for his enemies; a God who would rather experience the death we deserved than to be apart from the people he created for his pleasure; a God who himself bore our likeness, experienced our creatureliness, and carried our sins so that he might provide pardon and reconciliation; a God who would not let us go, but who would pursue us—all of us, even the worst of us—so that he might restore us into joyful fellowship with himself; a God who in Christ Jesus has so forever identified with his beloved creatures that he came to be known and praised as “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:3).

Zoroaster was the prophet of the Persians, the people who restored the Jews to Jerusalem, the same Persians who later gave rise to the Chaldeans. The basic idea in Zoroaster’s teaching is that there are two Gods, one good, the other evil. The good God is a God of Light, of Justice, of Wisdom, who created a perfectly good world. His name is Ahura Mazda, “First Father of the Righteous Order, who gave to the sun and stars their paths.” The Mazda bulbs were named after this God of Light. Against him stands a God of Evil, Angra Mainyu, “the Deceiver,” who is the god of lies, darkness, hypocrisy, violence, and malice. He it was who threw evil into this good and well-made world. Thus the world in which we live is a mixture of light and darkness, of good and evil. This worldview is the mythology of the Fall. In its biblical transformation, it is the Fall. There is then a nature world that is not good and one does not put oneself in accord with it. It is evil and one pulls out or away in order to correct it. From this view arises a mythology with this sequence: Creation, a Fall, followed by Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), who teaches the way of virtue that will bring a gradual restoration of goodness. On the last day, after a terrific battle known as Armageddon, or the Reckoning of Spirits, Zoroaster will appear, in a second incarnation, the evil power will be wiped out, and all will be peace, light, and virtue forever. This mythology is surely familiar to all.

the plan of salvation is no halfway fix-it job. God’s plan of restoration brings us back to the pristine state of Eden—in a world now much better and much greater. Augustine once said that he feared to entrust his soul to the great physician lest he be more thoroughly cured than he cared to be. God’s plan of salvation is absolutely thorough, and he is not going to be satisfied with some half job of reformation and renewal in our lives.

Since the local church is “the pillar and support of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15b), its leaders must be rock-solid pillars of biblical doctrine or the house will crumble. Since the local church is also a small flock traveling over treacherous terrain that is infested with “savage wolves,” only those shepherds who know the way and see the wolves can lead the flock to its safe destination. An elder, then, must be characterized by doctrinal integrity.

Inexplicably, Newton’s prediction lines up with the end of the biblical Shemitah in September 2015 and the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” on September 23, 2015—Yom Kippur. If one takes the Newton’s riddle calculation—beginning June 7, 1967, with the restoration of Jerusalem—and adds seven, seven-year Shemitah cycles in biblical or prophetic years of 360 days, the date comes out to September 23, 2015—the beginning of the “Super-Shemitah” of 2015–16.

The only basis for genuine human rights and dignity is a fully biblical worldview. Because Christianity begins with a transcendent Creator, it does not idolize any part of creation. And therefore it does not deny or denigrate any other parts. As a result, it has the conceptual resources to provide a holistic, inclusive worldview that is humane and life affirming. This is good news indeed. It is the only approach capable of healing the split in the Western mind and restoring liberty in Western society.

In virtually every spiritual tradition, suffering is seen as a doorway to awakening. In the West, this connection can be seen in the biblical story of Job, as well as the dark night of the soul in medieval mysticism. The transformative power of suffering finds perhaps its clearest expression in the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha. Though suffering and trauma are not identical, the Buddha’s insight into the nature of suffering can provide a powerful mirror for examining the effects of trauma in your life.

I don’t know how I didn’t see it for so many years of Bible reading, but I didn’t.  Paul didn’t teach the Gentiles not to follow the law, he didn’t teach people not to have their sons circumcised (in fact he himself had Timothy circumcised in Acts 16:3).  And Paul himself kept the law.  Otherwise, James would have been telling Paul to lie about what he was doing.   So we traded Christmas for Sukkot, the true birth of Messiah during the Feast of Tabernacles, which is a shadow picture of Him coming back to reign for a thousand years.  When we keep that feast, we are making a declaration that we believe He was, is, and is coming.  We keep Yom Kippur, which is a declaration that we believe that Yeshua is the salvation of the nation of Israel as a whole, that “all Israel shall be saved.”  We keep Yom Teruah, the day of Trumpets, which occurs on “the day and hour that no man knows” at the sighting of the first sliver of the new moon during the 7th biblical month of Tishri.  We traded Pentecost for Shavuot, the prophetic shadow picture of the spirit being poured out on the assembly, as we see in the book of Acts,  just as the law was given at Mt Sinai to the assembly, which according to Stephen was the true birth of the church (Acts 7:38) – not in Jerusalem, but at Sinai. We also traded Easter for Passover, the shadow picture of Messiah coming to die to restore us to right standing with God, in order to obey Him when He said, “from now on, do this in remembrance of Me.”  We traded Resurrection Sunday for First Fruits, the feast which served as a shadow of Messiah rising up out of the earth and ascending to be presented as a holy offering to the Father.  In Leviticus 23, these are called the Feasts of the LORD, and were to be celebrated by His people Israel forever, not just the Jews, but all those who are in covenant with Him. Just like at Mt Sinai, the descendants of Jacob plus the mixed multitude who came out of Egypt.    We learned from I John 3:4 that sin is defined as transgression of the law.  I John 1:10 says that if we claim we do not sin we are liars, so sin still exists, and that was written long after the death of the other apostles, including Paul.  I read what Peter said about Paul in 2 Peter 3:15-16 – that his writings were hard to understand and easily twisted.  And I began to see that Peter was right because the more I understood what everyone besides Paul was saying, the more I realized that the only way I could justify what I had been doing was with Paul’s writings.  I couldn’t use Yeshua (Jesus), Moses, John, Peter or any of the others to back up any of the doctrines I was taught – I had to ignore Yeshua almost entirely, or take Him out of context.  I decided that Yeshua, and not Paul, died for me, so I had to

In fact, we are living in an age of biblical prophecies come true. What would have seemed miraculous in the Middle Ages is now commonplace: the blind restored to sight, cripples who can walk, and the dead returned to life. Take the Argus II, a brain implant that restores a measure of sight to people with genetic eye conditions. Or the Rewalk, a set of robotic legs that enables paraplegics to walk again. Or the Rheobatrachus, a species of frog that became extinct in 1983 but, thanks to Australian scientists, has quite literally been brought back to life using old DNA. The

Christians in this country (and elsewhere) are deeply divided by different understandings of a shared language. About half (maybe more) of American Christians believe that biblical language is to be understood literally within a heaven-and-hell framework that emphasizes the afterlife, sin and forgiveness, Jesus dying for our sins, and believing. The other half (maybe less) puzzle over and have problems with this. Some have moved on to another understanding of Christian language. The differences are so sharp that they virtually produce two different religions, both using the same Bible and the same language.

I believe that the time is ripe for contemporary Christians to engage in serious reflection on the shape of our eschatology. This eschatology must be grounded firmly in the entire biblical story, beginning with God’s original intent for earthly flourishing and culminating in God’s redemptive purpose of restoring earthly life to what it was meant to be—a purpose accomplished through Christ. We especially need to grapple with the robust ethical implications of this biblical eschatology, exploring how a holistic vision of the future can motivate and ground compassionate yet bold redemptive living in God’s world.

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.

Repentance is not verbal only. It is always demonstrated consistently in a life over time. And true repentance is a process that requires time and more time to be made evident. When humans are caught in sin, they will say anything to make it better, including using biblical language to keep life running normally, especially when there is a lot at stake. The self-deception of the one who is exposed works overtime in an attempt to deceive his/her questioners, who also have the capacity to be deceived and sometimes in considering the potential outcomes conclude that deception is the better alternative than messy, exposed truth.

We have trouble digesting a narrative that doesn’t fit our worldview. It’s actually easier for us to believe a false narrative that fits our outlook on the world than a true narrative that shakes and shatters our perspective. And that is true regardless of where we stand. However, a Christian worldview, marked by the biblical storyline, stands apart from ordinary, conventional storylines. It shows that in the grand scheme, we are all guilty. We are all villains, the bad guys. The true evil is sin showing its face through broken humanity, and it touches every one of us. The one true hero is Jesus and his power to restore broken hearts and repair the infrastructures corrupted by sin.

Every religion offers an interpretation of the world, a worldview, a counterpart to the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption. Translated into worldview terms, creation refers to a theory of origins: Where did we come from? What is ultimate reality? Fall refers to the problem of evil: What’s wrong with the world, the source of evil and suffering? Redemption asks, How can the problem be fixed? What must I do to become part of the solution? These are the three fundamental questions that every religion, worldview, or philosophy seeks to answer.16 The answers offered by Romanticism were adapted from neo-Platonism.17 In neo-Platonism, the counterpart to creation, or the ultimate source of all things, is a primordial spiritual essence or unity referred to as the One, the Absolute, the Infinite. Even thinking cannot be attributed to the One because thought implies a distinction between subject and object—between the thinker and the object of his thought. In fact, for the Romantics, thinking itself constituted the fall, the cause of all that is wrong with the world. Why? Because it introduced division into the original unity. More precisely, the fault lay in a particular kind of thinking—the Enlightenment reductionism that had produced the upper/lower story dichotomy in the first place. Coleridge wrote that “the rational instinct” posed “the original temptation, through which man fell.” The poet Friedrich Schiller blamed the “all-dividing Intellect” for modern society’s fragmentation, conflict, isolation, and alienation. And what would redeem us from this fall? The creative imagination. Art would restore the spiritual meaning and purpose that Enlightenment science had stripped from the world.

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.

Ultimately the reason for both the work of evangelism and the work of justice is not simply the relief of suffering, whether present or eternal. It is the restoration of God’s true image in the world, made known in the one true Image and Icon, Jesus Christ, and refracted and reflected in fruitful, multiplying image bearers set free by his death and resurrection to reclaim their true calling. Our mission is not primarily driven by a calculation of which suffering, present or eternal, we need to relieve most urgently; it is the fruit of glorious promises that call us into a new kingdom where the world is full of truth-bearing images. No image bearer can fully return to their true calling without finding themselves rescued and redeemed by the true Image Bearer, so no serious Christian witness in the world can fail to call people to put their trust in Jesus and the true God he makes known. And no image bearer can bear full witness to the glory of the Creator without the conditions for flourishing that are summed up in the rich biblical conception of justice. “He comes to make his blessings flow / far as the curse is found.” Because idolatry and injustice are the twin fruits of the curse, the work of evangelism and the work of justice are one.

APRIL 22 LET THE EAST GATE OF GOD’S GLORY BE REPAIRED I WILL GUIDE you continually and satisfy your soul and strengthen your bones. You shall be like a watered garden and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations, and shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In. Just as My servant Nehemiah repaired the east gate of My house in Jerusalem, so will the east gate in your life be repaired and opened to allow My glory to fill your life. My Holy Spirit will bring restoration to all the gates of your life, and I will come and dwell within your temple in the fullness of My glory. ISAIAH 45:1–3; EZEKIEL 11:1; NEHEMIAH 1–6 Prayer Declaration Lord, let the gates of my life and city be repaired through the Holy Spirit. Let the gate of the fountain through which Your Holy Spirit flows be repaired in my life. Let the sheep gate of the apostolic and the fish gate of evangelism be restored. Let the old gate of the move of Your Spirit be repaired and active in this present day. Let the dung gate of deliverance be restored, and let many walk through to their deliverance. Let the water gate in my life allow me to preach and to teach of Your great mercy, love, and salvation.

Consider, too, that slavery, totalitarianism, and apartheid have been challenged, and in places overcome, not by Christians who sat back and blithely said, “It’s all going to burn,” but by Christians who believed that Jesus is Lord here and now. Such Christians believe that the program of restoration is already underway. Laboring in the name of Jesus to make the world a better place does not undermine faith in the Second Coming; rather it takes seriously God’s intention to repair the world through Christ and anticipates this hope by moving even now in the direction of restoration. This is what it means to be faithful to the kingdom of God even while we await the appearing of Christ and the culmination of our hope. Tikkun olam. Repairing the world. Healing wastelands. Laboring to make a dying world livable again. This is the vision of the apostles and prophets. This is the prophetic paradigm the people of God are to coordinate their theology and lives with. We are not to be macabre Christians lusting for destruction and rejoicing at the latest rumor of war. It’s high time that a morbid fascination with a supposed unalterable script of God-sanctioned–end-time–hyperviolence be once and for all left behind. A secret (or not-so-secret) longing for the world’s violent destruction is grossly unbecoming to the followers of the Lamb.

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.

Sadly though, this side of heaven, we can only attempt to have a fore-shadow of the romance to come. Even the best marriages and the men and women who valiantly strive to follow the Bible’s model of marriage fall short. I am sure many of us have failed in obtaining the type of earthly relationship God planned and intended to display His love. Pre-marital sex, extra-marital sex, homosexuality, sex outside of a marriage covenant, and love-less, dysfunctional marriages are just the beginning. Many have been abused, sold, objectified, molested, even raped. All manner of perversion and depravity have marred the beauty God intended. We are broken, injured, hurt, marginalized, left feeling like so much less than what God requires. If you are one broken, please hear this: It should not have been. It was not God’s way or His will that you were treated like anything less than His highly valued, flawless beauty—His beloved. If you are one who lost your way and engaged in things beneath your royal standing, He died, arose and lives to forgive and restore. Yes, we know a good and solid Biblical marriage gives the closest representation of godly intimacy. But let’s get real for a minute. So few of us have ever experienced that for ourselves or grew up in homes where that was our example, we desperately need to trust God for our own healing and restoration in this area before we can ever hope to experience it in our relationships. I am convinced God’s priority for us is to learn about spiritual intimacy with Him. He can restore marriages, liberate from sexual addictions, save spouses, give us a godly man. But I think, for the most part, those things happen after we realize and accept our need for Christ. His priority will always be our spirit intimately one with His, because He puts the spirit above the flesh. We have to lay our souls bare and ask for His touch. God alone can reclaim our perception of intimacy for His holy and righteous glory. He can restore our hearts and minds to righteousness, clean and pure so we might experience holy intimacy through the Spirit until we see Him face to face in glory.

What if I say to the church, “God chose you for salvation and Jesus died for you,” and then some of those people fall away and apostatize and end up in hell? Haven’t I lied to them? No, I haven’t. I have spoken the truth. In Scripture, truth is more than just conformity to the facts. It is trustworthiness and faithfulness.10 I have spoken to these people in a trustworthy manner. I have spoken to them in a faithful manner, a manner that they can bank their whole lives on, because I have spoken to them in accordance with God’s revelation. There is a tough, challenging, and surprising passage in Ezekiel 33:13 and following. The Lord says there: When I say to the righteous, he will surely live, and he so trusts in his righteousness that he commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds will be remembered; but in that same iniquity of his which he has committed he will die. But when I say to the wicked, “You will surely die,” and he turns from his sin and practices justice and righteousness, if a wicked man restores a pledge, pays back what he has taken by robbery, walks by the statutes of life [NASB margin] without committing iniquity, he will surely live; he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed will be remembered against him. He has practiced justice and righteousness; he will surely live.11 Yet we want to say to God, “You said to the righteous man, ‘You will surely live’—living you will live, in the Hebrew idiom—but he died. You said to the wicked man, ‘You will surely die’—dying you will die—and he lived. You lied to them, didn’t you? You didn’t tell the truth to them.” But who are we to teach God how to speak the truth? This is how God speaks. He says to people, “You will surely live,” and then they die because they trust in their own righteousness instead of trusting in Him. But God was telling the truth when He said to them, “You will surely live.” He was not lying to them. He was saying something trustworthy. When He says to the wicked man, “You will surely die,” He’s saying something trustworthy to that man and the man takes heed to what God has said. He trusts what God has said. He believes that if he stays on the path on which he is going he will surely die. In faith he trembles at the warning and he will surely live. God speaks this way and we must learn from him how to speak. God speaks to His people and He calls them elect, and therefore we also need to speak to God’s people this way. We must. We have no other choice but to let God teach us how to address his people, even if we don’t have it all worked out in our minds. If we are not comfortable with biblical language, not only hearing it but also saying it, if biblical language sounds strange to us, and if our theology gets in the way of our speaking and receiving the language of Scripture, then what has become of us—we, who are to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord?

New Testament, Christianized elders are not mere representatives of the people; they are, as the passages above show, spiritually qualified shepherds who protect, lead, and teach the people. They provide spiritual care for the entire flock. They are the official shepherds of the church.

Saxon Chronicle, ‘except what was in captivity to the Danish men’.13 So he seems to have felt himself, inspired by Bede’s History. He referred to his people not as Saxons but as ‘Angelcynn’ – ‘Englishkind’ – a term first used in Mercia. Their language was ‘Englisc’. Alfred, at first described in royal charters and on coins as rex Saxonum, duly became rex Angul-Saxonum in recognition of the union of Mercia and Wessex. He pursued a policy of what today we might term nation-building: ‘he sought to persuade [his subjects] that he was restoring the English, whereas, albeit following a model provided by Bede, he was inventing them’.14 He commanded a law code combining the customs of Wessex, Mercia and Kent and decked out with biblical teachings and Church laws – an important symbol of unity and status more than an instrument of rule, as in practice most law was oral and customary – ‘folk right’. He sent English coins to succour the poor of Rome. He wanted to increase Christian piety so as to ward off divine punishment in the form of Viking invasion,

The eldership must clarify direction and beliefs for the flock. It must set goals, make decisions, give direction, correct failures, affect change, and motivate people. It must evaluate, plan, and govern. Elders, then, must be problem solvers, managers of people, planners, and thinkers.

and says, “Deliver (pada, פְּדָעֵהוּ) him from going down into the pit; I have found a ransom (kopher, כֹפֶר); let his flesh become fresh with youth; let him return to the days of his youthful vigor”; then man prays to God, and he accepts him; he sees his face with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness.

It’s like he becomes reborn: “His flesh becomes fresh with youth” (33:25).  God then “accepts him; he sees his face[164] with a shout of joy, and he restores to man his righteousness” (33:26). And the man

Instead, Jesus explains that his kingdom is about forgiveness, reconciliation, and restoration

In the same way, it is through the Christian’s overflow that the Gospel is shared with the lost, and in order to overflow there must first be the filling.

This is how it is with so many children of God. The water is within them – the well is there – but it is choked; the water is not springing up, and so they are reduced to dependence on a bottle! Oh, to have anointed eyes in our heads to see the rubbish, and for grace in our hearts to deal with it, to judge it, and to cast it out. Then we would soon have eyes to see the well of water. May he break every bottle and open every eye to see the well.

So my thoughts are never more gloomy, My faith is no longer dim, But my heart is strong and restful, And mine eyes are unto Him.

We are more than conquerors, for when Jesus cleanses the heart, he cleanses the springs of our action and our being, so that our very desires are purified; the desire to sin, the “want to,” is taken clean away.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed

Fruit grows, and the fruit will grow if only we make sure the conditions are present that are favorable to growth. That man who expects full growth without attending to the conditions of growth does not manifest much wisdom.

If self is at the root of our motives at all, God will most surely block our way to fullness of blessing. If we think that it would be a good thing for us to get this blessing for our own happiness or satisfaction, or even that we might be more useful, or that in any way we might have the preeminence, we are not sincere.

Joey Tomlinson, in his much-needed and timely book, The Day of Trouble: Depression, Scripture, and the God Who Is Near, masterfully tackles the issues of mental health and well-being from a Christian and biblical perspective. Speaking with a pastor’s heart, Tomlinson helps his readers wrestle with the spiritually, mentally, and physically debilitating scourge of depression. In seeking to help hurting people, Tomlinson draws from years of pastoral ministry as a counsellor, as well as drawing from the Bible, current medical and pharmaceutical studies, and tried-tested-and-true insights from other godly writers, preachers, and pastors both past and present. The result is a book that gives readers a well-grounded, balanced, applicable, and effective dose of biblical wisdom, godly encouragement, and convicting exhortation. This book is extremely helpful for all Christians–whether you’re managing personal challenges with mental health or helping others in treating theirs. Tomlinson doesn’t mince words in his direct and honest dealings with the subject, but his Christ-like love for his readers is evident on every page. The Day of Trouble is a well-written, sincere, and highly practical gift to the church, a book that sheds gospel-transforming light on an often overlooked and ignored area of the Christian life. I hope and pray that it is widely read among God’s people, for I know it will be a healing balm used by the Triune God to restore Christian joy to the minds and hearts of suffering souls.

The basic rule is that the flimsier the claims to power, the more insistent and extravagant the signs and portents had to be. Vespasian, who became emperor in 69 CE in the civil war after the death of Nero, an outsider with no direct links to earlier rulers, was even credited with performing miracles in almost biblical style. In Egypt, on his way to Rome to take up the throne, he is said to have restored sight to a blind man with his spit, and to have made a lame man walk with his touch. It was one way of compensating for a lack of imperial connections.

In addition to wartime strategic interests, a complex combination of motives led to the final decision to issue the Balfour Declaration. Contemporary explanations tended to stress the Biblical romanticism of British officials’ interest in the restoration of the Jewish nation in Palestine and their sympathy for the plight of Jews in eastern Europe. The first scholarly accounts focused more on the political and diplomatic context in which British officials came to see Zionism as an ally. These early interpretations stressed the Balfour Declaration as a product of the activities of the Zionist Organization, or specifically of Dr Chaim Weizmann, the most prominent Zionist spokesman. Weizmann was engaged during the war in biochemical research for Britain’s Ministry of Munitions. His influential contacts and skilful persistence were credited with convincing British officials of the wartime propaganda value that a gesture of support for Zionism would carry in the United States and Russia, where Jews were believed to wield great power.

It’s time for Christianity to rediscover the deeper biblical theme of restorative justice, which focuses on rehabilitation and reconciliation, not punishment.

The emphasis on masculine language continued throughout English bibles until Zondervan's attempt to restore gender-inclusive language to the text. From this perspective, gender-inclusive language isn't distorting Scripture. Gender-inclusive language is restoring Scripture from the influence of certain English Bible translations.

We love to talk about the repentance of the prodigal son and the forgiveness of the father, but we seem to miss the part about the son's restoration.

If we want to know a culture then we need to listen carefully to its stories. And since all human narratives take place within the more grounded biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, good human stories tend to follow the same pattern.

To live and to love like this points us toward our true selves, which are part of a greater whole. If unholy religion has contributed to our fragmentation, healthy faith can point us toward our restoration. Faith gives people language and stories with which to draw meaning from their experiences, to see their lives as part of a larger narrative of wholeness and healing. At its best, faith teaches us to live without certainty and to hope without guarantee. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for," wrote an anonymous biblical author, "the conviction of things not seen." At its best, faith teaches us to take risks. To live and to love like this is to live and to love in holy danger. Sometimes we can see love as construction material for spiritual cloisters-safe spaces for our hearts, our souls, our egos. In fact, it's the opposite. Love tears down the walls, and it beckons us out into the wildlands of human existence.

One does not need to be a Luddite—and I am not one—to see that the offers of a virtual society are a feeble substitute for serious human engagement that requires critical thought and genuine care.

Repentance confesses to God, “God, forgive me. The allure of this temptation was more real to me than the beauties of your promises and presence.” Repentance implores God, “Please graciously restore the reality of your care into my heart and life, so that your love will be so precious that I cannot further exist with my betrayal of you. Help me to meditate more upon the character of your love revealed by Christ’s sacrifice than upon the circumstances of my life that make me doubt you.” Repentance petitions, “God, I want to seek you the way simple people do when they say that they know you are near by the way that your Word has become alive in their souls.” None but the biblically repentant heart seeks after God with such unashamed love.

The rulers of this age crave order above all. They have learned that silence is the way to preserve order, even if that order is unjust and dysfunctional. Where there is no speech about grief and suffering, there can be no hope.

Where grief is denied and suffering is kept isolated, unexpressed, and unprocessed in a community, we may be sure hopelessness will follow.

The liberal Christian temptation is to accommodate dominant culture until faith despairs. The conservative Christian temptation is to fashion an absoluteness that stands disconnected from the dominant culture. Neither of these strategies, however, is likely to sustain the church in its mission.

Prayer is not an occasion just for pious little children on their way to bed. Prayer is not simply for neurotic people who are excessively and sadly too religious. It is rather the core gesture by which we stay in faith, by which we hope for the world, by which we keep justice as the issue before God and ourselves. To “pray always” means to hope always for justice, to nag always the judge, to trust always in the power of God.

quotas. We are pursued by peer pressure, debts to be paid, social expectation, the daily drive for food. We endlessly produce, and it is never enough. That world of pressured production is deeply without hope, a dead place without promise. At the edge of that dead place, however, if we listen carefully, we can hear a new, faint piece of music that, while we listen, grows louder and more compelling. The music has an odd beat, the sound of liberated tambourines. We rush to the edge of the empire from where the sound is coming.

Serious preaching that evokes change aims not at doctrinal clarification or moral rectitude (either conservative or liberal), but at a weaned, newly authorized, and hope-filled imagination.

If we want to understand Christian elders and their work, we must understand the biblical imagery of shepherding. As keepers of sheep, New Testament elders are to protect, feed, lead, and care for the flock’s many practical needs.

Although they never can fall from the state of justification, yet they may, by their sins, fall under God’s fatherly displeasure, and not have the light of His countenance restored unto them, until they humble themselves, confess their sins, beg pardon, and renew their faith and repentance.

the New Testament offers more instruction regarding elders than on other important church subjects such as the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s Day, baptism, or spiritual gifts. When you consider the New Testament’s characteristic avoidance of detailed regulation and church procedures (when compared to the Old Testament), the attention given to elders is amazing.

A narrative style of preaching is very biblical and very important in bringing about an understanding of God’s ways and purposes. I believe that this is what Paul was doing when he was teaching the whole counsel of God, and that this narrative is reflected in all of his letters, as we have illustrated already by referring to the epistle to the Ephesians. Laying an apostolic foundation means that people understand this narrative, how it is fulfilled in Christ, what God’s purposes are for the world and how their individual lives and churches form part of this grand story. I do not think it is possible to genuinely lay an apostolic foundation without this understanding.

If counseling is to be restored to the church, affection must be restored to reflection. If counseling is to be restored to the church, delight in God must be restored to doctrines about God. Savoring Christ must be restored to seeing Christ. Tender contrition must be restored to tough conviction. Communication with God must be restored to contending for God.

THIS chapter I shall argue that Jesus, in his Messianic role, fulfils the calling of Israel in his own person. In his death Israel’s exilic curse reaches its climax, and in his resurrection Israel returns from exile. Jesus is also the second Adam who reverses the curse of expulsion from Eden by his execution and enables the restoration of humanity by his resurrection. As in the Isaianic plot, this restoration of Israel in the Servant precipitates the restoration of Zion and the pilgrimage of the Gentiles. However, unexpectedly, this true Israel, this new humanity in Christ composed of Jew and Gentile, is restricted to the church. These insights are not unusual in biblical scholarship and hardly amount to universalism. What is usually missed, though, is that the church is only a foretaste of the redemption of Israel and the pilgrimage of the nations. We shall see that the New Testament anticipates a future fulfillment in which “all Israel will be saved” and the nations will come to worship before the one who sits on the throne and the Lamb.

If the men are supposed to be the heads of the family, they must also be the heads of the community. The community must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the family, and the family must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the community

If the men are supposed to be the heads of the family, they must also be the heads of the community. The community must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the family, and the family must be structured in a way that supports the pattern of the community.

First, the Bible says that an elder must be of irreproachable moral character and capable in the use of Scripture because he is “God’s steward,” that is, God’s household manager (Titus 1:7). An elder is entrusted with God’s dearest and most costly possessions, His children. He thus holds a position of solemn authority and trust. He acts on behalf of God’s interests. No earthly monarch would dare think of hiring an immoral or incapable person to manage his estate. Nor would parents think of entrusting their children or family finances to an untrustworthy or incompetent person. So, too, the High and Holy One will not have an unfit, unqualified steward caring for His precious children.

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).

Christianity, the humblest of all faiths, degenerated into the most power-hungry and hierarchical religion on the face of the earth. After the emperor Constantine elevated Christianity to the status of a state religion in A.D. 312, the once-persecuted faith became a fierce persecutor of all its opposition.

Thankfully, our God is not only a God of forgiveness and grace, but also a God of atonement and restoration.

As I started to learn more about biblical justice and righteousness, my picture changed from an angry, faraway, law-obsessed king to a loving Creator who would go to any length to restore relationship with His sons and daughters and to make the world right again.

From the beginning, God’s justice has been transformational -- restoring the world back to right again and covenantal -- restoring our relationships with Him and others.

Biblical love is not an emotion, it is a commitment.  Ern Baxter once said we would understand the New Testament better if we went through and crossed out the word “love” and replaced it with LOYALTY.

When God set out to redeem his creation from sin and sin’s effects on it, his ultimate purpose was that what he had once created good should be utterly restored, that the whole cosmos should once again live and thrive under his beneficent rule.

John’s vision in Revelation, indeed, in the whole New Testament, does not depict salvation as an escape from earth into a spiritualized heaven where human souls dwell forever.5 Instead, John is shown (and shows us in turn) that salvation is the restoration of God’s creation on a new earth. In this restored world, the redeemed of God will live in resurrected bodies within a renewed creation, from which sin and its effects have been expunged. This is the kingdom that Christ’s followers have already begun to enjoy in foretaste.

As we have seen, Jesus’s mission centered in the coming of God’s kingdom, the restoration of God’s rule over all creation and all of human life, the day of God’s salvation. Though today some Christians believe that Jesus came to enable us to escape this creation and live eternally in an otherworldly and heavenly dwelling, such an understanding of salvation would have been entirely foreign to Old Testament prophets, to first-century Jews—and to Jesus himself. Salvation is not an escape from creational life into “spiritual” existence: it is the restoration of God’s rule over all of creation and all of human life.

Authoritarianism is evil, anti-social, anti-human and ultimately anti-God (for self-deifying pride is at its heart), and I have nothing to say in its favor.11

When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but with the humble is wisdom” (Prov. 11:2;

May we men dare to rediscover the power God has given us to raise the sword of truth against the unbridled stallion within us. That is, may we submit our male sexuality to Jesus, who offers us the “yoke” (Matt. 11:29) needed to harness it for the good of ourselves and our nation— that we might then celebrate this biblical benediction: To him who is able to keep you from falling and to bring you faultless and joyful before his glorious presence—to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, might, and authority, from all ages past, and now, and forever and ever! Amen. (Jude 24)

A church that truly understands the implications of the biblical gospel, letting the “word of Christ dwell in [it] richly” (Col 3:16), will look like an unusual hybrid of various church forms and stereotypes. Because of the inside-out, substitutionary atonement aspect, the church will place great emphasis on personal conversion, experiential grace renewal, evangelism, outreach, and church planting. This makes it look like an evangelical-charismatic church. Because of the upside-down, kingdom/incarnation aspect, the church will place great emphasis on deep community, cell groups or house churches, radical giving and sharing of resources, spiritual disciplines, racial reconciliation, and living with the poor. This makes it look like an Anabaptist “peace” church. Because of the forward-back, kingdom/restoration aspect, the church will place great emphasis on seeking the welfare of the city, neighborhood and civic involvement, cultural engagement, and training people to work in “secular” vocations out of a Christian worldview. This makes it look like a mainline church or, perhaps, a Kuyperian Reformed church. Very few churches, denominations, or movements integrate all of these ministries and emphases. Yet I believe that a comprehensive view of the biblical gospel — one that grasps the gospel’s inside-out, upside-down, and forward-back aspects — will champion and cultivate them all. This is what we mean by a Center Church.

If we conceive of the question in the second way, to ask all that God is going to accomplish in history, we explain where the world came from, what went wrong with it, and what must happen for it to be mended. This is a message about the world. The answer can be outlined: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. These are chapters in a plotline, a story. As we will see in the next chapter, there is no single way to present the biblical gospel. Yet I urge you to try to be as thoughtful as possible in your gospel presentations. The danger in answering only the first question (“What must I do to be saved?”) without the second (“What hope is there for the world?”) is that, standing alone, the first can play into the Western idea that religion exists to provide spiritual goods that meet individual spiritual needs for freedom from guilt and bondage. It does not speak much about the goodness of the original creation or of God’s concern for the material world, and so this conception may set up the listener to see Christianity as sheer escape from the world.

Following the Lord's authority, one of the distinctives of Christian cultural understanding is that it also is minimally concerned with politics. The restoration of the nations is not, in any important sense, a political process. Rather, the process is one of baptism and catechism. The means given for the conversion of the heathen were the waters of baptism and the words of instruction. When the lessons have been learned, there will of course be some political consequences. But they will be minimal for the simple reason that the state itself, in a nation that has come to repentance, will also be minimal. For the Christian, the political realm is a creature to be redeemed, sinful like the rest of us and with a long way to go before it retires to more biblical proportions.

RADICAL MUSLIM LEADERS BELIEVE THEY HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO RESTORE THE CALIPHATE AND THUS BRING ABOUT THE END OF WORLD HISTORY

From the biblical teaching on adoption, we learn that we are restored to a familial intimacy with God the Father, through which we are assured of his eternal fatherly care and provision, a love and indulgence that exceeds our imaginations. We learn that our relationship to God is so radically changed that we go from being “children of wrath” (Eph. 2:3) to his beloved sons and daughters, a relationship in which the Father vouchsafes to care for our every need. Perhaps even more amazing, we learn that by sharing in the Son we share in his rights as the Firstborn and only begotten Son of God—we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17). Our minds and hearts should surely stagger under the weight of this reality. It simply exceeds our comprehension.

The Lord warned the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem and the cities of Judah well before Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion that they should flee from Jerusalem and not try to remain as residents. Jeremiah warned Jewish residents that the Lord had told him Jerusalem and the cities of Judah would become a “desolation without an inhabitant.” (Jeremiah 34:22) Those who heeded His words were safely secured in Babylonian captivity for seventy years. “This is what the LORD says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the sword, famine or plague, but whoever goes over to the Babylonians will live. He will escape with his life; he will live.’” (Jeremiah 38:2) “Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, whom you now fear. Do not be afraid of him, declares the Lord, for I am with you and will save you and deliver you from his hands. I will show you compassion so that he will have compassion on you and restore you to your land.” (Jeremiah 42:11-12)

FOR GOD AND COUNTRY: TIME FOR MORE TEA PARTIES! Strike them with terror, Lord; let the nations know they are only mortal. Psalm 9:20 Ronald Reagan promised to restore America as a shining city on a hill. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to “fundamentally transform” our nation. He wanted to fundamentally change America—and alarm bells went off all across our nation, and patriotic folks rose up and found their voices. The great grassroots movement known as the Tea Party was born. The Tea Partiers have taken a lot of media flack. I guess you could say I know something about that too. But for all the media hubbub, all the Tea Partiers want is for America’s government to follow American law; they want a return to constitutional principles, inspired by biblical wisdom. Who can forget Benjamin Franklin’s eloquent request for prayer before each session of the Constitutional Convention? In part, it read: “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth, that God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a Sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without His Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without His Aid?” At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention, a lady approached Benjamin Franklin with a question. Had a monarchy been born, or a republic? “A republic,” he told her, “if you can keep it.” This profound statement reflects the heart of the Tea Party. SWEET FREEDOM IN Action Our Founding Fathers knew that battles are won with reliance on God. Meditate on Scripture daily. Pray for our nation and her leaders. Defend constitutionalists when you see them besmirched. We serve a faithful God who hears and answers prayer!

[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.

But he makes a similar comment in one other important place, toward the beginning of his public ministry (Matt. 10:6). After seeing the readiness of the fields for harvest and the scarcity of workers (Matt. 9:37), he commissions the twelve disciples (symbolizing the core of a restored Jewish remnant of the twelve tribes) to aid him in his mission to Israel (Matt. 10:1–16). In this first mention of disciples as apostles (Matt. 10:2)—that is, as “sent ones”—Jesus explicitly enjoins them, Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. (Matt. 10:5–8a)

Christians should actively engage in efforts to make every societal institution assume its own responsibility, warding off the interference of others. That, too, is participation in the restoration of creation and the coming of the kingdom of God.

If one were to opine that the Daughter of Babylon is, in reality, in our times, a reference to a restored city on the site of ancient Babylon, concluding then that those restored mud and brick buildings are really what Jeremiah meant when he described the “hammer of the whole earth”, that would not be a currently defensible position. Neither the Vatican nor any other Christian denomination has a military budget. No Church or Christian denomination could conceivably be described today as “the hammer of the whole earth”.

At least two facts may be deduced from these verses: The merchants of the world would require a deep water port in which to bring the world’s goods for purchase and consumption by the residents of this great nation. Neither Iraq nor Vatican City have deep water ports. A restored Iraq cannot be the nation contemplated in these prophetic scriptures, nor the Catholic Church, but the description is quite apt when applied to port-heavy America.

The time has come to revise this enigmatic and most important term “Aryan.” It need no longer be flagrantly and prejudiciously bandied by anyone wishing to claim exalted racial status. It need no longer be used as an appellation by those deviants brandishing pseudo-scientific ideologies, and by those who have long misunderstood the facts concerning the origin, identity and fate of the various Indo-European and Semitic races. Importantly, recent discoveries made by Jewish and Gentile investigators alike conclusively prove that the so-called “Israelites” (those arch-enemies of would-be Aryans) were not racially Semitic after all. Like the “Aryans,” they too were racially Indo-European. Their language, Hebrew, was identical with Egyptian. Therefore, in our mind, the term “Semite” must henceforth be dropped as a racial appellation for the Bible’s “Chosen People.” As we show in Volume Two, the terms “Israelite” and “Judite” do not denote races. The terms were religious and theological, and defined cult rather than race. Israelites and Judites were conglomerated groups closely affiliated with and probably blood-related to the Hyksos Pharaohs of old, a fact confirmed by top Jewish historians. Thanks to the researches of Sigmund Freud, Comyns Beaumont, L. A. Waddell, Ahmed Osman, Ralph Ellis and Moustafa Gadalla, the true identity of the Israelites has finally come out into the open. Obviously, the fact that the alleged ancestors of the Jews were racially Indo-European, and of the same racial stock as the antagonists defamed and condemned in the name of spurious racial superiority, has poignant ramifications. It assists us to immediately and swiftly restore the grievously abused term “Aryan.” The term has simply been dragged through the mud by perfidious fools of the same race as the “Israelites” whom they gullibly believe to be inferior. Now that the hydrochloric acid of reason has been applied, now that the term has been thoroughly excavated from its bed of filth, its unadulterated and original meaning may be discerned. They were not an ethnic group or a nation as such, but rather a social category with a common lifestyle – Robert Cornman and J. M. Modrzejewski (The Jews of Egypt: From Rameses II to Emperor Hadrian) Not until Jacob in a somewhat obscure manner was told to call himself Israel was that name adopted and accorded to his twelve “sons:” but if we accept the explanation of Sanchoniathon, a Phoenician of Tyre, Cronus “whom Phoenicians called Israel” was king of Phoenicia, and it signified that these Chaldeo-Phoenician tribes were worshippers of Cronus-Saturn...for Jehovah was a far later importation. The name Israel has subsequently been misappropriated, for those Biblical Christians who term themselves Israelites in fact label themselves followers of a pagan deity – Comyns Beaumont (The Riddle of Prehistoric Britain)

Muhammad said the Mahdi, who would someday come, would be a descendant of one of his wives (Fatimah), and would bear his name, ruling over Arabs. Across the Muslim world today, there is a call for the Islamic Caliphate to be restored, which has been vacant since Turkey abolished the Caliphate in 1924.

Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has frequently called publically for the Caliphate to be restored, and to rule over the world. The Iranian president, in a speech in 2006, emphasized his theme that “the return of the Shiite messiah, the Mahdi, is not far away, and Muslims must prepare for it.” Ahmadinejad also said, “We must prepare ourselves to rule the world and the only way to do that is to put forth views on the basis of the Expectation of the Return [of] the Mahdi.” Efforts to convince Jihadists that America has the best of intentions toward Islam, or that the nation “isn’t at war against Islam”, are wasted words and irrelevant to Jihadists who are preparing to “rule the world”.

Noah, who remained innocent and just, God decided to open a path of salvation. In this way he gave humanity the chance of a new beginning. All it takes is one good person to restore hope! The biblical tradition clearly shows that this renewal entails recovering and respecting the rhythms inscribed in nature by the hand of the Creator. We see this, for example, in the law of the Sabbath. On the seventh day, God rested from all his work. He commanded Israel to set aside each seventh day as a day of rest, a Sabbath,

When we try to establish justice apart from worship of the true God, at best we will, as Jayakumar reminded me, simply replace one set of god players with another. What will never be addressed by these thin, secular conceptions of justice is the heart of the biblical understanding of justice: the restoration of the human capacity to bear the image in all its fullness.

APRIL 18 ALLOW MY HOLY FIRE TO BURN UP THE HIGH PLACES IF YOU WILL be like my servant Josiah, whose heart was tender before Me and who humbled himself before Me when I spoke to him of the desolation and curse that would come to those who allow wickedness to dwell in high places, then I will give you peace and keep you from the calamity that will come upon the wicked. Covenant with Me to keep instructions and take a stand for righteousness. Command your people to burn the idols of wickedness that rise up in this land. Do all that you can to see that the evil leaders of wickedness in your nation are brought down out of their high places, and put away those who consult with mediums and spiritists and who lead My people into perversion. I will cause My holy fire to consume their wickedness and will restore righteousness to My people. 2 KINGS 22:19–20; 23:19–24 Prayer Declaration Lord, let Your holy fire burn up all the high places of wickedness in our land. Purge us from the powers of darkness that invade our airwaves and bring perversion into the hearts of Your people. Cause me to be a firebrand of Your righteousness, and allow me to be a catalyst for a return to Your ways in our land.

Prior to the Reformation the church generally regarded sex — even within marriage — as a necessary evil. Tertullian regarded the extinction of the human race as preferable to procreation. Ambrose said that married couples ought to be ashamed of their sexuality. Augustine was willing to admit that intercourse might be lawful but taught that sexual passion was always a sin. Many priests counseled couples to abstain from sex altogether. The Catholic church gradually began to prohibit sex on certain holy days, so that by the time of Martin Luther, the list had grown to 183 days a year.1 Thank God for the Reformation, which began to restore sexual sanity by celebrating the physical act of lovemaking within marriage. According to my father, “The Puritan doctrine of sex was a watershed in the cultural history of the West. The Puritans devalued celibacy, glorified companionate marriage, affirmed married sex as both necessary and pure, established the ideal of wedded romantic love, and exalted the role of the wife.”2 In other words, they promoted a more Biblical view of human sexuality.

These two visions of Christianity—one emphasizing the next world and what we must believe and do in order to get there, the other emphasizing God’s passion for the transformation of this world—are very different. Yet they use the same language and share the same sacred scripture, the same Bible. What separates them is how the shared language is understood—whether within the framework of heaven-and-hell Christianity or within the framework of God’s passion for transformation in this world. The latter framework, I am convinced, is more biblical, ancient, and traditional (even as it is not conventional, but subversive). It takes seriously the ancient meanings of Christian language in ancient context. The former is the product of a process that began when Christianity became allied with dominant culture, initially in the Roman Empire in the fourth century and then gradually in all of Europe and parts of the Middle East. The result was that Christianity became largely a religion of the afterlife and the postmortem fate of us as individuals. It was no longer about changing the way the world is, for the world was now ruled by Christian authorities. Heaven-and-hell Christianity domesticates—indeed, commonly eliminates—the political passion of the Bible.

The ‘Oberge des Mailletz’ is by far the oldest tavern of which any record can found in the City archives. In 1292, Adam des Mailletz, inn-keeper, paid a tithe of 18 sous and 6 deniers.This we learn from the Tax Register of the period. At the time it was founded, the Trois-Mailletz was the meeting place of masons, who under the supervision of Jehan de Chelles, carved out of white stone the biblical characters destined to grace the north and south choirs of Notre-Dame. Underneath the building, there are two floors of superimposed cellars: the deeper ones date from the Gallo-Roman period. What remains of the instruments of torture found in the cellars of the Petit-Châtelet have been housed here, along with some other restored objects. A modest bar counter, a long-haired patron who bizarrely manages never to be freshly shaven or downright bearded. A stove in the middle of the shabby room; simple straightforward folk, less drunk than at Rue de Bièvre, and less dirty. Just what we needed.

Why would God do this?" you may ask. If God loved Adam and Eve, why didn't he just forgive them and restore them to blessing? Because God's gifts cannot be enjoyed without obedience to him as the Giver. In sin, Adam and Eve would seek to find love with each other in the absence of love for God, and in God's creation this simply cannot work.

So, we can clearly see that to profess that you have faith but lack the corresponding action to validate your faith, is really having no faith at all.  We can and often say many things, but the old adage, "put your money where your mouth is," is a worldly expression for a biblical truth.  You cannot say that you have faith in God and lack the activity that should flow from that profession.  If you are believing God that

The Theonomists—otherwise known as Dominionists; in other words, people who believed in taking “dominion” over society and the world in the name of Jesus—believed in restoring American law to its strictest Puritan origins. They wanted to make America into a modern-day Calvin’s Reformation Geneva. They were our version of the Taliban. They were antitax, antigovernment libertarians (when it came to economics), but on social issues were working to replace secular law with Old Testament biblical law. The

MARCH 7 NO ENEMY WILL BE ABLE TO STEAL YOUR JOY BECAUSE YOU LOVE My name and rejoice in Me, you will take refuge in Me and will be glad. I will cause you to sing for joy as I spread My protection over you. I will bless My righteous servant and will surround you with My favor. I will make known to you the path of life and will fill you with joy in My presence and with eternal pleasures at My right hand. I will be your strength and your shield. I will be your shepherd and carry you forever. I will turn your wailing into dancing and will remove your sackcloth and clothe you with My joy. PSALMS 5:11–12; 16:11; 126:5–6 Prayer Declaration In the name of Jesus I bind and cast out any spirit that would try to steal my joy. I will shout to God with cries of joy. How awesome is the Lord Most High, the great King over all the earth. You have restored to me the joy of my salvation and have filled me with Your spirit. Therefore I will joyfully teach transgressors Your ways and will declare Your praise.

No matter how greatly sin has damaged your life … no matter how many dull, ugly layers of paint and veneer you may have applied in an unsuccessful attempt to cover the cracks … no matter if the colors are faded or the picture is so obscured that you can barely see the original … God is in the restoration business. He is a great, redeeming God who is making all things new, through the work of Christ on our behalf. His divine power and love can re-create and restore your life to its original design—that beautiful work of art intended to display the loveliness of Christ!

But don't ever forget: adultery is also biblical grounds for forgiveness, healing, and restoration.

Divine blessing in the Bible is always physical and spiritual because it is fixed upon the reality of the fullness of life in the presence of God. The message of this book is that divine blessing in the Bible looks like God’s creatures experiencing the fullness of life—both physically and spiritually—in his presence. The way human beings experience God’s blessing changes with the redemptive storyline that traverses the major peaks of creation, fall, redemption, and final restoration. However, blessing always flows out of God’s benevolent creative design for his creatures and coincides with obedience to his will.

In typical fashion, Peter jumps in and clarifies how much he and the disciples have given up to follow Jesus: “See, we have left everything and followed you” (Mark 10:28). Jesus responds with a significant explanation of self-denial and kingdom blessings: Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first. (Mark 10:29–31) Is Jesus teaching us a simple formula that if we give up our possessions, we can receive the kingdom? Is this a divine promise that if you forsake family and lands, God is obligated to restore family and lands, like he did at the end of Job? No. Jesus is applying a kingdom filter to his disciples’ understanding of blessing in the present age. As we saw in the Old Testament, a growing family and fertile land were both ideas frequently associated with divine blessing. However, Jesus redefines these very images based upon a transformed vision of blessing in Christ’s kingdom. “Jesus speaks of the extended family of his followers (cf. 3:34–35) with new familial relationship and the sharing of possessions (cf. Acts 2:44–45; 4:32–37)—a new reality whose value is far greater than the security that personal possessions can ever give.”23

Now what was true for those believers there in Ephesus long ago is equally true for all believers on God’s footstool today.

From these four cases – the apostles, the Samaritans, Saul, and the Ephesians – we conclude that in New Testament times people actually lived as Christians, were saved, converted people, and yet knew nothing of the filling with the Spirit. This knowledge, this blessing, came to them some time after they were born again. Yet this is the very thing some people deny today!

That curve is also the containing narrative shape of the Bible, because the mythical shape of the Bible, if we read it from beginning to end, is a comic one. It's a story in which man is placed in a state of nature from which he falls—the word "fall" is something which this diagram indicates visually.7 At the end of the story, he is restored to the things that he had at the beginning. Judaism focuses upon the story of Israel, which in the Old Testament is to be restored at the end of history, according to the way the prophets see that history. The Christian Bible is focused more on the story of Adam, who represents mankind as falling from a state of integration with nature into a state where he is alienated from nature. In symbolic terms, what Adam loses is the tree and the water of life. Those are images that we'll look at in more detail later. On practically the first page of the Bible we are told that Adam loses the tree and the water of life in the garden of Eden. On practically the last page of the Bible, in the last chapter of the Book of Revelation, the prophet has a vision of the tree and the water of life restored to man. That affinity between the structure of the Bible and the structure of comedy has been recognized for many centuries and is the reason why Dante called his vision of hell and purgatory and heaven a commedia.

Biblical reconciliation is the removal of tension between parties and the restoration of loving relationship.

each person has a particular secret desire which they think will bring fulfillment—restored youth, sex with the beauty of their fantasies, athletic prowess, lots of money.118 But when they sell everything to get their dream, they are enslaved by it rather than satisfied. That fits with the biblical teaching of idolatry. Anything more important to you than the real God is an alternate god. Idols have no power (verses 5–7) to give you the love, forgiveness, and guidance you need. But paradoxically they do have power to make you like them (verse 8) and to keep you both spiritually blind and unable to see as well as spiritually lame and unable to change. Prayer: Lord, I confess that I make an idol out of people’s approval. Let me be so satisfied with your love that I no longer respond to people out of fear of displeasing them but only in love, seeking what is best for them. Remove my idols of approval—which can never give me the approval I need. Amen.

The “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” thus, is not either a personal spiritual transformation or the communal event that gives birth to the church. It can only be understood as both together; separately, the ideas do not make sense. The reality of church is expressed in the lives of its individual members, but individual members only encounter God because there is a “community of encounter” that gave them that opportunity. When we embrace God's sanctifying work with our full consecration, we participate in the ongoing reality of Pentecost. We become a part of the church when we accept God's offer of relational restoration in salvation, our initial sanctification, and the Holy Spirit begins working on us right away. We should not think that God withholds the Spirit until we are entirely sanctified because there would be no way for us to grow toward Christian perfection without the Spirit's active and ongoing presence. However, there is a difference between surrendering to the Spirit's presence in our lives and surrendering to the Spirit's full control. There is a difference between being in the church and being the church, the holy people of God who make God known to the world. The first, however, naturally leads to the second as God uses our participation in God's holy community to foster and deepen our own recovery of God's image.

Once again we see that holiness and sanctification are essentially communal realities. This is no surprise since they represent on one level the restoration of the image of God in us that is our communal creaturehood, our reflection of the God who is a Trinitarian community of love. God empowers this work in both communities and individuals through a baptism of the Holy Spirit, and God nurtures it through the community's life of worship and mission. When the church functions as it was intended, it shows the world what God is like and it shapes the world to be more and more like the world God created it to be.

Contrary to what many people think today, punishment as such is not what satisfies the demands of justice. Justice is satisfied by repentance, restoration, and renewal. Punishment serves as a mechanism for helping to promote such restoration.

Intentional, historic liturgy restores our imagination because it sanctifies our perception—it implants the biblical story so deeply into our preconscious that the gospel becomes the “background” against and through which we perceive the world, even without “thinking” about it.

The people in power want a Great Reset, but what we are going to give them instead is a Great Restoration

Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria who began the persecution against Arius, describes Arius’ belief regarding Christ being called Wisdom, saying: [Arius teaches that] he is neither like the Father in regards to his essence, nor is he by nature either the Father’s true Word, or true Wisdom. He is one of the things made and produced, but he is called Word and Wisdom inexactly, since he himself came into being by God’s own Word and by the Wisdom of God, whereby God made not only all things, but him also.68

Christianity involves the claim that Jesus was anointed by God to represent both God and humanity in the restoration of a broken relationship existing between the Creator and his creation.

In 1985 E. P. Sanders wrote Jesus and Judaism. In this work, Sanders, who has taught at Duke, Oxford, and Vanderbilt, argues that Jesus was a restoration prophet for Israel.

Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage, which dwell solitarily in the wood, in the midst of Carmel: let them feed in Bashan and Gilead, as in the days of old .” (Micah 7:14)

The Old Testament does not spiritualize salvation, but rather understands it as God’s deliverance of people and land from all that destroys life and the consequent restoration of people and land to flourishing.

The inner logic of this vision of holistic salvation is that the creator has not given up on creation and is working to salvage and restore the world (human and nonhuman) to the fullness of shalom and flourishing intended from the beginning. And redeemed human beings, renewed in God’s image, are to work toward and embody this vision in their daily lives.

But the distinctive concern of biblical justice is not to punish sinners, but to restore shalom by clarifying and dealing with the damage caused by wrongdoing. Punishment was a tool for helping to achieve this.

Justice flows from God’s own being and designates the way God intends the world to be. But things have fallen into disorder; the shalom of creation has been ruptured. God responds by seeking to restore the world to the way it ought to be.

Step 3 brings us to an action step: We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Whatever your understanding of God, that is where you begin. We all begin with some incomplete understanding of who God is, and the point is to grow in our experience of God from that point. But notice also that this step doesn't just ask that you turn over your life. It demands you turn over your will as well. I remember, while growing up, hearing pastors tell us to turn our lives over to God. I tried that many times, all to no avail. I think, now, that the idea of turning my life over to God was too abstract. I didn't know what it meant to turn my life over (beyond becoming a missionary). But if they had urged me to turn my WILL over to God, that would have been specific. There is no way of misunderstanding what it means to turn my will, my decisions, and my choices over to God: it means a life of obedience. Only God can restore us to sanity. And the only thing required is that we are willing to obey Him and keep our eyes on Him.

The Biblical view of things is resurrection—not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.

The logic of the language of poetry brings Amos to glimpse for a moment a new order of reality. Strictly speaking, this is not yet eschatology as it would be developed seven or eight centuries after Amos, but the imagination in prophetic poetry of restored national existence without want or pain or danger is an important way station to explicit doctrines of a radically new era that will replace earthly life as we know it.

Power is like saltwater; the more you drink the thirstier you get. The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It’s difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below.

In his remarkably penetrating booklet, The Mark of the Christian, Francis Schaeffer reminds us that the real issue to be dealt with in most of our conflicts is not the issue at hand but our lack of Christlike love toward our fellow Christians:

The Bible has been described as the “story” of God’s plan for his creation. In this analysis “creation” refers to God’s design, God’s original intent for the world he created. In the Bible this is told as a narrative in Genesis 1 and 2, and as I said it is celebrated in some of the psalms. The “fall” refers to the damage done to the world by the entrance of sin and its effects. The narrative for this is in Genesis 3 and its immediate aftermath in the succeeding chapters, through chapter 11. “Redemption” refers to God’s plan to undo that damage, beginning with the call and promises to Abraham in chapter 12. Almost the whole of the rest of the Bible is the story of the execution of that plan, climaxing in the death of Jesus on the cross and his victorious resurrection, and going forward to and beyond our own day. We live in the time when the effects of the fall are still very much with us, but we already witness signs of the transformational power of redemption through the lives changed by the proclamation of the gospel and the impact of those lives upon society. Finally, “restoration” refers to the complete elimination of all the damaging effects of the fall through the renewal of the whole of creation. The biblical chapters that describe this still-future scenario in a visionary way are chapters 21 and 22 of the book of Revelation. This “restoration” is the renewal of God’s creation where all things, including all of redeemed humanity, will be eternally reconciled to God.

Church is a regular invitation to proclaim truth through worship, and church is how we grow spiritually. It is where we can be restored in relationship with the one true God and where we learn to serve for all the right reasons. Church restores our hope.

Our seeing and our hearing need to include, forgive, and reconcile what the rest of the world rejects, dismisses, and punishes. Now that is new! And that is also the ancient Enneagram. The New Zealand bishops call it moving “from retributive justice to restorative justice” in their 1996 pastoral letter. Such new thinking could rearrange our entire penal system, which is their reason for writing this letter, but it could also rearrange our pattern of human relationships. It was all contained in the biblical pattern of transformation, but up to now most of us just could not hear it, could not see it. God saves humanity not by punishing it but by restoring it! We overcome our evil not by a frontal and heroic attack, but by a humble letting go that always first feels like losing. Christianity is probably the only religion in the world that teaches us, from the very cross, how to win by losing. It is always a hard sell. Especially for folks who are into strength, domination, winning, and enforcing conclusions. God’s restorative justice is much more patient, and finally much more transformative, than mere coercive obedience.

Looked at another way, the myth of the stealing of the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is very like the myths of the Greek Prometheus or the North American Haida, Raven, who both steal fire from heaven: they are the great thieves who bring knowledge into the world. Likewise, in the Gnostic scriptures, the great figure of wisdom, Sophia, departs from the pleroma or fullness of heaven, and from her is born the world that we inhabit.60 It is only the Western churches' theological insistence upon the guilt and retributive judgment within the biblical account that essentially changes the focus. These thieves of sacred powers—Prometheus, Raven, Sophia—do the world a great favor, for they bring down knowledge that we learn to live with and use properly without burning our fingers.

Favor isn't fair. You've probably heard that saying a thousand times before, but did you know that it is a biblical truth? That's right, God's favor is not fair. And I, for one, am extremely grateful that it's not. If God gave us what we deserved, that would be fair. If He gave us the proper and earned wages for our sin, that would be just. But, He said, “No! I will send My Son to receive the remuneration of their sins so that I can close the book on their accounts." And once that price was paid, God was free to lavish His goodwill and loving kindness all over us. However, it is only available to those who allow Jesus to receive God's wrath in their stead.

Can we Christians simply dare to tell men, “We are the body of Christ. If you want to know Jesus Christ, receive His power, be healed of your brokenness, and do His work in this world, join us”? Or are we afraid that the desire to know Jesus, be healed, and do His work is just not strong enough in men to warrant forming His church? Biblical faith understands that God “created the world” (Heb. 1:2 RSV) through Jesus. So the desire to know Jesus must exist in all of God’s creation—including men—no matter how deeply hidden.

Some have objected that if Jesus did not sin, then he was not truly human, for all humans sin. But those making that objection simply fail to realize that human beings are now in an abnormal situation. God did not create us sinful, but holy and righteous. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before they sinned were truly human, and we now, though human, do not match the pattern that God intends for us when our full, sinless humanity is restored.

[Concerning the 'over-extended domain' of Yahweh:] It is very interesting to observe that, in the Bible, Yahweh is not exclusively linked to Israel. This point is clearly stressed in the book of Amos, where it is claimed: 'On that day...they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations who are called by my name, says the LORD who does this' (Amos 9.11-12). Indeed, it appears from many biblical sources that Yahweh also 'protects' the Canaanite alliances of Edom, Moab and Amon, sometimes against the political interest of the Israelite Alliance. [61] Even more intriguing is the special attention, in the book of Jeremiah, devoted to the far country of Elam: I [Yahweh] will terrify Elam before their enemies, and before those who seek their life; I will bring disaster upon them, my fierce anger, says the LORD. I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them; and I will set my throne in Elam, and destroy their king and officials, says the LORD. But in the latter days I will restore the fortunes of Elam, says the LORD (Jer. 49.37-39). This oracle is amazingly similar to those devoted to Judah and Israel. Such a commitment concerning Elam suggests that the Elamites were also regarded here as a 'people of Yahweh'. In this case, however, one has to assume a homology (if not an identity) between Yahweh and Napir ('the great god'), the main deity of Elam, who was also the god of metallurgy. (pp. 401-402) (from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404) [61] It is especially mentioned that the Israelites cannot conquer the lands of Edom, Moab and Ammon, since Yahweh has given them forever to the sons of Esau (Deut. 2.5) and Lot (Deut. 2.9, 19). In Jer. 9.24-25, Edom, Moab and Ammon are considered together with Judah as the circumcised, the peoples of Yahweh. The Amos oracles against Amon, Moab, Damas or Edom (Amos 1 and 2) not only mention their 'cimres' against Judah and Israel, but also all the 'crimes' perpetrated between and among them in regard to Yahweh.

Each theme employs elements of the Restoration Narrative, opening up each work for serious theological consideration. T. S. Eliot once observed that “mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal.”17 The greatest writers in the world have stolen the greatest Story ever told, time and time again. Christians should recognize this Story and seize the opportunity presented by this towering influence.

Christians obtain yet another benefit in seeing Jesus in his Jewish context, for the recognition of Jesus’s Jewishness and of his speaking in a Jewish idiom can also restore faith in the New Testament. Doing just a bit of historical investigation provides a much-needed correction to America’s Christ-saturated, albeit biblically ignorant, culture.

In any case, we can speak of a single “salvation” in the Old Testament, understood as entering the promises of God, which consist of God’s dwelling with his people, in his especially prepared place and under his reign. The form of that promise can vary from Adam to Ezra, but the substance remains consistent. Israel’s “gospel” announces that God’s grace precedes human action, faith is the appropriate response to God’s promises, obedience to divine commandments permits the perpetuation of divine blessings, and the goal of salvation is the restoration of communion between Creator and humanity through the chosen people. It is from this story, and not despite it, that we encounter the gospel of God, the gospel of Christ, the gospel of the Son, the gospel of the kingdom, the gospel of salvation, and the gospel of peace.

APRIL 27 I WILL BE YOUR REFUGE FROM THE OPPRESSOR MY CHILD, NEVER forget that I am a refuge for you from those who would attempt to oppress you—either from without or from an evil spirit within. I will be your refuge in times of trouble. I will never forsake you when you seek Me and will administer judgment for you because of your uprightness. I am the Lord your God, and I will be with you. 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 will deal with all who oppressed you. I will give you honor and praise among all the people of the earth and will restore your fortunes before your very eyes. PSALM 9:8–10; ZEPHANIAH 3:17–20 Prayer Declaration Father, You have promised to defend the cause of the weak and fatherless and to maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. You will rescue the weak and needy and will deliver me from the hand of the wicked that seek to oppress me. You uphold the cause of the oppressed, and You have set me free from oppression.

(1) Karl Barth was not an evangelical. He was a European Protestant wrestling with how to salvage Protestant Christianity in the wake of World War I, which exposed the debacle of liberal theology. Barth was not an inerrantist or a revivalist, and he was wrestling with a different array of issues than the “battle for the Bible.” (2) Karl Barth is on the side of the good guys when it comes to the major ecumenical doctrines about the Trinity and the atonement. Barth is decidedly orthodox and Reformed in his basic stance, though he sees the councils and confessions mainly as guidelines rather than holy writ. (3) Karl Barth arguably gives evangelicals some good tips about how to do theology over and against liberalism. Keep in mind that Karl Barth’s main sparring partner was not Billy Graham or the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, but the European liberal tradition from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Albert Ritschl. For a case in point, whereas Schleiermacher made the Trinity an appendix to his book on Christian Faith because it was irrelevant to religious experience, Barth made the Trinity first and foremost in his Church Dogmatics, which was Barth’s way of saying, “Suck on that one, Schleiermacher!” (4) Evangelicals and the neoorthodox tend to be rather hostile toward each other. Many evangelicals regard the neoorthodox as nothing more than liberalism reloaded, while many neoorthodox theologians regard evangelicals as a more culturally savvy version of fundamentalism. Not true on either score. Evangelicalism and neoorthodoxy are both theological renewal movements trying to find a biblical and orthodox center in the post-Enlightenment era. The evangelicals left fundamentalism and edged left toward a workable orthodox center. The neoorthodox left liberalism and edged right toward a workable orthodox center. Thus, evangelicalism and neoorthodoxy are more like sibling rivals striving to be the heirs of the Reformers in the post-Enlightenment age. There is much in Karl Barth that evangelicals can benefit from. His theology is arguably the most christocentric ever devised. He has a strong emphasis on God’s transcendence, freedom, love, and “otherness.” Barth stresses the singular power and authority of the Word of God in its threefold form of “Incarnation, Preaching, and Scripture.” Barth strove with others like Karl Rahner to restore the Trinity to its place of importance in modern Christian thought. He was a leader in the Confessing Church until he was expelled from Germany by the Nazi regime. He preached weekly in the Basel prison. His collection of prayers contain moving accounts of his own piety and devotion to God. There is, of course, much to be critical of as well. Barth’s doctrine of election implied a universalism that he could never exegetically reconcile. Barth never could regard Scripture as God’s Word per se as much as it was an instrument for becoming God’s Word. He never took evangelicalism all that seriously, as evidenced by his famous retort to Carl Henry that Christianity Today was Christianity Yesterday. Barth’s theology, pro and con, is something that we must engage if we are to understand the state of modern theology. The best place to start to get your head around Barth is his Evangelical Theology, but note that for Barth, “evangelical” (evangelische) means basically “not Catholic” rather than something like American evangelicalism. Going beyond that, his Göttingen Dogmatics or Dogmatics in Outline is a step up where Barth begins to assemble a system of theology based on his understanding of the Word of God. Then one might like to launch into his multivolume Church Dogmatics with the kind assistance of Geoffrey Bromiley’s Introduction to the Theology of Karl Barth, which conveniently summarizes each section of Church Dogmatics.

Midrash, with its imaginative engagement of the Bible’s stories, reminds us that biblical interpretation need not be reduced to a zero-sum game, but rather inspires endless insights and challenges, the way a good story does each time it is told and retold. Our relational God has given us a relational sacred text, one that, should we surrender to it, reminds us that being people of faith isn’t as much about being right as it is about being part of a community in restored and restorative relationship with God.

In this light, sanctification—the restoration of our capacity to point back to God—is more about rearranging good things and adding to them than about removing evil.

In the work of sanctification, God restores the possibility of not sinning but the possibility of sinning is never taken away.

Third, the church must recognize and teach that marriage is grounded not in feelings of love but in the practice of love. Nor is the marriage bond contingent upon self-gratification or personal fulfillment. The church has swallowed a great quantity of pop psychology that has no foundation in the biblical depiction of marriage; consequently, critical discrimination is necessary in order to restore an understanding of marriage based on the New Testament.

Maintaining biblical priorities and a godly balance is necessary to take good care of your body while also maintaining a healthy relationship with your savior.

The Biblical view of things is resurrection—not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life you always wanted.

Time spent in worship of God restores the balance of human nature. The Biblical Jubilee allows the earth to lay fallow and rest; it restores the balance of physical nature.

Lesson Focus God shows compassion where he wills. • God is responsive to small steps in the right direction. • God’s compassion is not earned and never deserved. Lesson Application God sometimes shows compassion on us by giving us a second chance when we don’t deserve it. • We respond to God’s Word by taking steps in the right direction. • We recognize that God’s compassion is great. Biblical Context The book of Jonah is about how people respond to the Lord and how the Lord responds to them. Both the sailors and the Ninevites, though pagans, were responsive to what they saw the Lord doing. Jonah, a prophet who should have known better, was the least responsive and had to be taught a lesson about God’s compassion. Interpretational Issues in the Story Jonah’s prophetic mission (Jonah 3:4). Jonah was sent to denounce Nineveh, not to save it. His word to them was a word of judgment. He did not even name Yahweh and he did not confront them with their offenses, instruct them as to what they ought to do, or offer any hope for them to avoid the judgment. If the text does not offer this information, we cannot read those things between the lines and assume that they occurred. Great fish (Jonah 1:17). Nothing in the text indicates the species of the creature, and while a whale cannot be ruled out (they would not have distinguished sea-dwelling mammals from fish), the text is vague. Fish as rescue, not punishment (Jonah 2:6, 9). Jonah’s prayer demonstrates that he saw the fish as deliverance, not judgment. He was drowning, and the Lord used the fish to save his life. Jonah’s prayer (Jonah 2:4, 7–9). Jonah offered no repentance and did not ask forgiveness when he prayed inside the fish. He assumed that since the Lord had saved him from death, he had been restored to favor. He spoke ill of those who worship idols, which apparently included the sailors (whose response had been far better than his own) as if he was insisting, “At least I’m not a pagan idol-worshiper!” He made no mention of his disobedience and indicated no willingness to go to Nineveh. The vows he referred to (v. 9) would have involved sacrifices of thanksgiving at the temple for his rescue. This prayer was a farce, and Jonah was still unchanged (as the rest of the book demonstrates). Ninevite response (Jonah 3:5). The Ninevites believed what Jonah said, but that does not mean they converted to his God. He never even told them the identity of his God, and there is no indication that they got rid of their idols or understood the law. They repented, but any Assyrian would have done so under these circumstances. If they had been convinced that some god was angry at them and about to destroy them, they would have sought to appease that god. That is how they took Jonah’s warning. In the ancient world people believed that there were all sorts of powerful gods, but they only worshiped the ones they believed had power over their lives. Jonah was informing them that a God they had not recognized had noticed them and was going to act against them, and they were grateful for this information. Likely they checked Jonah’s message against their omens and afterward were eager to respond. Sackcloth (Jonah

put it plainly, your biblical theology is on the right track when you see how all of Scripture points you to the gospel. The Bible is about Jesus Christ and what he did for us in order to restore us to a right relationship with God.

As you grow in your intimacy with God, your ability to hear his voice grows. To help develop your conversational intimacy, start with yes or no questions. Pull away to a quiet place. Keep your heart open to whatever answer he has for you. (This is a beautiful part of learning to listen. Being open deepens your holiness and deepens your intimacy with God.) Repeat the question as you pray and listen—that keeps you focused. Bring your heart into a place of surrender, which prepares you to hear. Another helpful practice is to first ask God a question you know the biblical answer to. For example, ask him, “Do you love me, Jesus?” The Scriptures have answered that—yes—beyond all doubt he does. Jesus will immediately say, Of course I do. It will help you and God go to the core of your relationship. He loves you. From there, you’ll be confident with more specific questions.

In broadest terms, the Bible’s plot can be summarized in four words: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration.

Every small gain in this life, every moment of intimacy with God gives us a glimpse into what the full restoration of his plan for us will be in eternity.

Let’s remember that once the day of Pentecost had come, and a person has been baptized with the Spirit, he must not continue praying for the baptism, for that cannot be repeated, whereas he may ask and obtain a fresh filling, a refilling with the Holy Spirit every day of his life.

In the wake of the golden calf debacle, God gave Moses a liturgy and a lifestyle to implement that would institutionalize freedom for his people. The sacrifices, laws, and especially the liturgical patterns—the cycle of Sabbaths and Sabbath years—culminated in the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the year of rest, where the sins of Israel were atoned for and forgiven, the family was fully restored, debt was erased, slaves were released, and ancestral land was

For Christians, this is clearly established in biblical law. Exodus 21:12, “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.” On the other hand, if you steal, you don’t get put to death. Exodus 22:1, “If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.” The same is true for our nation as it derived the basis of our laws from scripture. So, stealing is a lesser penalty than killing someone. In North Korea, on the other hand, stealing food is a capital crime. Most westerners believe that it is insane to execute a man for stealing food, but that belief is found rooted in a biblical hierarchy of moral value.[77]

The true gospel stands in clear contrast to the false teachings that abound, calling sinners to repentance and faith in Christ's finished work. Those who propagate error face a grave accountability before God unless they turn from their ways. Genuine repentance would be marked by a willingness to abandon false doctrine, close down misleading ministries, and humbly submit to biblical authority. True transformation involves surrendering to the teachings of Scripture and aligning one's life with the truth of the Gospel. Without this radical change, their ministries remain a stumbling block to the flock and a discredit to the name of Christ. Only a return to sound doctrine and a life reflecting the fruit of repentance can restore integrity and honor to their witness.

Specifically, I want to bring these songs and texts to bear on the ecological crisis. It seems to me that the environmental crisis is, at heart, a failure and a perversion of the human imagination. Our imaginations have been taken captive by an ecocidal ideology of economic growth that invariably will render us homeless in a world unfit for habitation. If imagination is the issue, then a redirection of our lives toward creation care will not emerge out of statistics of ecological despoliation, as important as those statistics might be. What we need is liberated imagination, imagination set free to envision an alternative life, an ecological imagination that engenders a life of restorative homemaking in our creational home. Cockburn’s art, especially when interpreted in dialogue with biblical visions, is a rich resource for funding such an imagination.[206]

During the judgment against Gog and his hordes, the Israelites will remain under God’s protection. Despite the terrifying events raging around them, only the enemies will suffer.

From the moment the prophecy was proclaimed, Gog from the land of Magog was not to manifest himself in relation to Israel until the return of the Jews to their land and the restoration of their statehood.

Heart" in this context is to be understood in the Semitic and biblical sense rather than the modern Western sense, as signifying not just the emotions and affections but the totality of the human person. The heart is the primary organ of our identity, it is our inner-most being, "the very deepest and truest self, not attained except through sacrifice, through death." According to Boris Vysheslavtsev, it is "the center not only of consciousness but of the unconscious, not only of the soul but of the spirit, not only of the spirit but of the body, not only of the comprehensible but of the incomprehensible; in one word, it is the absolute center." ... The aim is not just "prayer of the heart" but "prayer of the intellect in the heart," for our varied forms of understanding, including our reason, are a gift from God and are to be used in his service, not rejected. This "union of the intellect with the heart" signifies the reintegration of our fallen and fragmented nature, our restoration to original wholeness. ... For the heart has a double significance in the spiritual life: it is both the center of the human being and the point of meeting between the human being and God. It is both the place of self-knowledge, where we see ourselves as we truly are, and the place of self-transcendence, where we understand our nature as a temple of the Holy Trinity, where the image comes face to face with the Archetype. In the "inner sanctuary" of our own heart we find the ground of our being and so cross the mysterious frontier between the created and the Uncreated. "There are unfathomable depths within the heart," state the Macarian Homilies. ... usually prayer of the heart comes, if at all, only after a lifetime of ascetic striving. There is a real danger that, in the early stages of the Jesus Prayer, we may too readily assume that we are passing from oral prayer to prayer of the heart. We may be perhaps tempted to imagine that we have already attained wordless prayer of silence, when in fact we are not really praying at all but have merely lapsed into vacant drowsiness or waking sleep. ... Prayer of the heart, when and if it is granted, comes as the free gift of God, which he bestows as he wills. It is not the inevitable effect of some technique. St. Isaac the Syrian underlines the extreme rarity of the gift when he says that "scarcely one in ten thousand" is counted worthy of the gift of pure prayer, and he adds "As for the mystery that lies beyond pure prayer, there is scarcely to be found a single person in each generation who has drawn near to this knowledge of God's grace." One in ten thousand, one in a generation: while sobered by this warning, we should not be unduly discouraged. The path to the inner kingdom lies open before all, and all alike may travel some way along it. In the present age, few experience with any fullness the deeper mysteries of the heart, but very many receive in a more humble and intermittent way true glimpses of what is signified by spiritual prayer.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean you pretend the harm never happened. It doesn’t mean the pain was small or insignificant. Forgiveness doesn’t require you to trust someone who has shown they are unsafe. It doesn’t excuse abuse, betrayal, or repeated wrongdoing. Forgiveness doesn’t cancel accountability or consequences. It doesn’t mean reconciliation is required. Forgiveness doesn’t ask you to stay in places or relationships that damage you. It doesn’t silence your voice or invalidate your truth. Forgiveness doesn’t rush healing or deny emotional wounds. It doesn’t mean you forget the lessons learned. Forgiveness means you release the right to be controlled by the offense and choose peace for yourself. Forgiveness doesn’t mean you approve of what was done. It doesn’t mean boundaries are no longer necessary. Forgiveness doesn’t erase justice or the need for wisdom. It doesn’t mean you owe access to your life again. Forgiveness means you choose freedom over bitterness, even while honoring your healing process. According to the Bible, forgiveness is releasing a debt that someone owes because of their wrongdoing. Forgiveness is an act of obedience to God, modeled after how He forgives us through Jesus Christ. It is a decision of the will, not merely a feeling, to let go of resentment and revenge. Biblical forgiveness flows from love and mercy, even when the offense is serious. Forgiveness does not deny justice but entrusts judgment to God. It brings freedom and healing to the one who forgives. Forgiveness reflects the heart of God and restores peace in our relationship with Him and with others.

Genuine repentance is Conviction by the Holy Spirit True repentance begins when the Bible says the Spirit brings conviction (John 16:8). It is not human pressure; it is God revealing truth to the heart. Godly sorrow, not worldly regret Second Corinthians 7:10 teaches that godly sorrow leads to salvation, while worldly sorrow leads to death. One grieves over offending God, not just over consequences. Confession without excuse There is honest acknowledgment of sin. No blame-shifting, no minimizing, no justification. Taking responsibility A repentant person owns their actions fully instead of blaming circumstances or others. Turning away from sin Repentance is not only feeling sorry; it is changing direction. It involves abandoning the behavior. Turning toward God Repentance restores fellowship. It draws the heart back into obedience and intimacy with the Lord. A change of mind and heart Attitudes shift. What was once justified is now seen as wrong. Visible fruit Gospel of Matthew 3:8 says to bear fruit worthy of repentance. Real change produces consistent, observable transformation. Humility Pride breaks. The heart becomes teachable and submissive to God’s authority. Desire for restoration There is an effort to make things right where possible—seeking forgiveness and reconciliation. Perseverance in change Genuine repentance is not temporary. It continues in obedience even when emotions fade. What Is Not Genuine Repentance Feeling sorry only because you were caught That is damage control, not heart change. Fear of punishment without hatred of sin Being afraid of consequences is not the same as loving righteousness. Verbal apology without behavioral change Words alone do not equal repentance. Blaming others or circumstances “If they hadn’t…” is not repentance. Temporary emotional reaction Tears alone are not transformation. Continuing in the same pattern deliberately If there is no effort to change, repentance has not occurred. Self-condemnation without turning to God Shame that isolates is not repentance; it is despair. A biblical example is King David after his sin with Bathsheba. In Psalm 51, he confessed, humbled himself, and sought a clean heart. In contrast, Judas Iscariot felt remorse but did not turn back to God in surrender. In summary, genuine repentance changes direction, not just emotions. It realigns the heart with God and produces lasting fruit.