Our World Today
July 7 2013
Final Phase: Ultimate Message.
Looking back 2000+ years
When Israel – or what was left of it and was ready to repatriate – returned from the 70 year exile in Babylon, present day Iraq, those seven decades of absence from the holy land had proven to be a real soul searcher for them. Their time away from formal temple worship made them search their roots and gave them and us much of what is known as the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament. It also instilled in them a new vision for the future. However the period of radical change was short-lived. Soon after their return, tradition triumphed over renewal. Tradition is so attractive because it keeps people from thinking, which is hard and dangerous work. Once tradition is embedded it becomes merely a matter of moving with the stream. That’s the mood Jesus encountered and caused him to engage in some subtle subversion by challenging the church laws of his days, including the sabbatical prescriptions.
After Jesus’ ascension the new era needed a new message. Slowly the Sabbath was replaced with the Sunday as the day for worship, signifying the Day of Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and baptism took the place of circumcision. Faith replaced the law.
The birth of Christianity took place at the perfect time. The then known world was unified, something like the United States of the Roman Empire. Then access to even the remotest areas was guaranteed by the Pax Romana, enforced by the legions, consisting of the always battle-ready professional soldiers who had made an art of warfare. The world too was ready for the gospel as the idols of that day were in disregard and people were open for something new.
The Jewish diaspora was a great help in spreading the Good News. It is estimated that the Judaic segment of the Roman Empire amounted to ten percent of the total population, a portion that, just as now, exercised influence far beyond their numbers. The apostles, especially Paul, an educated Jew with Roman citizenship, when arriving in a foreign city, always first approached the Jewish synagogues before venturing into the pagan world.
The later New Testament church experienced the same sort of development as the post-exile period before Jesus’ arrival. Gradually Rome became its centre. Again the church established certain rules and regulations and again tradition became Holy Writ, until again revolt resulted which was slow in coming, due to such events as the Fall of Rome, the Crusades and the Black Plague.
Going back 500 years
Around the year 1500 the church experienced severe rumblings. Another new era dawned again clamoring again for a new message. This time the catalyst was money.
In the early years of the Sixteenth Century, with Rome enjoying a religious monopoly, the mother church needed money to complete the Saint Peter’s Basilica. When authorities design grandiose structures often the cost outpaces the resources. When a few decades ago in Ottawa the Museum of Civilization took shape, the price tag of the beautiful structure ballooned from an initial estimate of approximately $80 million to more than $340 million. This too was the case with the most holy of churches, the Saint Peter Basilica in Rome. Construction on it began under Pope Julius II in 1506 and was completed in 1615 under Pope Paul V. Many famous artists worked on the “Fabbrica di San Pietro” as the complex of building operations were officially called. Michelangelo, who served as main architect for a while, designed the dome, and Bernini designed the great St. Peter’s Square. To obtain the needed funds the Vatican sold indulgences: the more people paid to the building fund the greater the forgiveness of sins, a direct offence against the gospel. Canada’s government did not have to have to resort to that method of financing the extra $260 million. For Ottawa it was just another entry on the account of future generations. However the blatant abuse by the Roman clergy to exploit an attribute that only belongs to God – the forgiveness of sins – moved Luther to question the entire church business and drove him to take a closer look at Scripture. So something good came out of this deception. The Reformation was the result: a new era with a new message.
The 16th century Reformation also occurred at a time of totally new circumstances due to the invention of the printing press which allowed access to resources previously only available in monasteries via hand-produced manuscripts. The ultimate consequence of the printing press is the World Wide Web, which, together with the secularization of society has put a stop to the influence of the Reformation. Now there’s little difference between the core message of the Roman Catholic Church and her Christian offspring in their various forms.
The Final Phase- the Ultimate Message.
For the first time in human history there is something totally new under the sun. The discovery of new energy sources and the invention of motorized movement both on the roads and in the factories have accelerated development to the point where we now have reached a crucial juncture in history. Something totally unexpected is happening: the planet we are living on is falling apart: our world is dying, withering, slowly sinking into nothingness. We are experiencing Climate change, frightening desertification and fanatical atheism hiding under the cloak of religion. All the frantic efforts to come to terms with the increasing pace of deathly disasters are failing. We have come to the point where only the Gospel of the Kingdom offers hope.
Death is always a scary matter, especially the death of the planet which involves us all. In Noah’s time people ridiculed Noah and his helpers building a gigantic ship in the centre of the desert. The ark today is the Coming of the Kingdom, also an object of derision.
Two thousand years ago Jesus’ message was accepted only by a few. It is happening again. In spite of Jesus continuously pleading to “Seek first the Kingdom”, in spite of us praying “Your Kingdom Come” the Kingdom concept is seldom mentioned in the church, and when it is heard it usually misses the point. What the Kingdom really represents is seldom proclaimed and therefore needs constant repetition because it contains the ultimate message.
Today a most timely book is about to appear. The Kingdom: Speed Its Coming written by Johan Herman Bavinck will soon be published by the One Hundred year old publisher Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. in Grand Rapids, Mich. Just a sample from its chapter `The Kingdom“:
The concept of the Kingdom contains a number of elements that are of the highest significance for our inquiry.
In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dissonant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality.
A bit further Bavinck writes that all is not well, something we experience every day:
The Kingdom is in shatters. That is the profound tragedy confronting the life of the world. This goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up its cohesion: it actually means that God has surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers, whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it. The Kingdom, after all, comprises all things, all plants, all animals, all people, all angels. The Kingdom includes the sea and the land, the mountains and the valleys, all that was and is and is to come; and all of it is incorporated in a great and mighty whole. The Kingdom is the place where all things are in their rightful place and where everything can fulfill its function and deploy its potential in complete harmony with all that surrounds it. The Kingdom is synonymous with light, peace, joy, service to God, in harmonious veneration. Where the Kingdom is being destroyed, where this structure comes apart at the seams, there is decomposition, brokenness, fragmentation, enmity, contradiction, meaninglessness, darkness, death. The Kingdom is the smile of God’s good pleasure: “See, it was very good.”
Bavinck’s description is only a human attempt to describe the magnificence that awaits us in the New Creation, the next phase of God’s plan. To be part of that newness means that in these last days some final changes are called for, and the churches with their rich heritage of biblical thinking must now carry the Banner of renewal.
Just as the Jews formed the nucleus of the new Christian church, the Jewish impact then can somewhat be compared to the influence Dutch immigrants have had on post-war Canada with their Christian education system, from grade school to high school to Redeemer University College and the Institute for Christian Studies, as well as founding the Christian Labour Association of Canada and CPJ- Citizens for Public Justice. This reforming thinking still alive in the Dutch-dominated church has the potential to perpetuate the ultimate message of the Kingdom to come.
The church must see this final phase and its ultimate message as a marriage preparation course: we, as humanity, will be united with the earth – the Kingdom to come- as in marriage, a bond that will never be broken. It means a change from the hate-rape relationship with God’s earth we now experience to a love-embrace engagement in preparation for the final marriage. When the Christ of God appears he will unite himself with us as the true Son of Man, as Humanity personified, so that he can teach us how to live fully in the world, the well-ordered cosmos he created. It is for that very purpose, for its redemption (John 3:16) that he gave his life as a payment to buy the earth back from the Satan to whom we, cursed humanity, had surrendered it.
Today all signs point to catastrophes of cataclysmic proportions. No matter where we are in the world, nobody can guarantee whether some sort of disaster will not strike us, thanks to human-induced climate change. Repentance, Repentance, Repentance is called for continually. Hope, Hope, Hope is what the Kingdom offers.
The church in Jesus’ time did not heed his call. Jesus continually had to convince even his disciples that his Kingdom was not the liberation of Israel from the Roman yoke. Later it required a sudden conversion of the church-hater Paul to clarify the gospel in more detail, soon to be distorted again. The schism caused by Luther and Calvin resulted in a 30 year war between North and South Europe without settling much. Protestant Germany hailed a Hitler. Greek Orthodox Russia sired a Stalin, and Catholic Italy bred a Berlusconi. Today the Western world embraces Capitalism hook, line and sinker. Everywhere the church is weak and what there is has little insight. Jesus himself lamented that (Luke 18:8) “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”
A change in the church’s focus is sorely needed. It will come. There is a solid core out there, aware of Jesus’ words as recorded in Luke 6: 21: “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now for you will laugh”.
You will laugh because God has prepared the new. Everything will become new. The opposite is true as well: “If you laugh now you will end up crying. If you celebrate life as it is today you will not enjoy what is to come. If you are deeply committed to the old world that is now ending, you won’t be there when the new world appears: his glorious kingdom.”
Next week: If you want to be part of the approaching perfection, prepare now.
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