I gotta have my orange juice.

Camping and hiking in the Pisgah!

I have this idea for a Superman serum. I need you to take it and then I will become Superman.

We have seen that there are several ways in which we can speak of the day of the Lord. We have also seen that to participate in the Lord’s weekly service, especially the Lord’s supper, is to be taken up into the heavens, to be taken out of space and time. Psalm 73 links these two ideas together:

When I thought how to understand this,
It was too painful for me—
​​Until I went into the sanctuary of God;
​​Then I understood their end.

There is a kind of telescoping of the days of the Lord going on in worship. When we come to worship, we participate in a foretaste of the marriage supper. But we also participate in a prophetic foretaste of the end of the wicked, of their utter exclusion.

James Jordan writes:

The Church has always limped in history, and it always will. People look at the manifest weaknesses of God’s Bride, and they spit on her. Yet, while God avenges His saints, He still keeps them limping.

God told Satan in the beginning that the righteous One, Jesus Christ, would crush his head, but that in the process, the heel of the Lord would be bruised (Genesis 3:15). Thus, Jacob, the father of Israel’s twelve tribes, wrestled with God and prevailed, but limped ever after (Genesis 32:31). The limp was a sign of his victory in righteousness! The apostle Paul, father of the gentile Church, was given a thorn in his flesh (and since thorns grow on the ground, it was symbolically in his foot), which kept him limping in the eyes of men (2 Corinthians 12:7). Thus, in union with her Lord Jesus Christ, the Church limps through history, in apparent weakness, so that it is “with a scornful wonder, men see her sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed.” Yet her victory is assured. How can that be? Because her enemies have had their heads crushed, and thus their resistance is short-lived.

Peter Leithart writes in a recent In Medias Res newsletter:

When “despicable” men rule (Daniel 11:21), the saints get mowed down—not for their sins but for their faithfulness. There are times when the saints’ hope isn’t rescue but resurrection.

For hundreds of millions of Christians, that time is now. Some estimate that two-thirds of all martyrs in the history of the church have been killed since 1900. Every day, brothers and sisters around the world face harassment, violence, and the real possibility of death.

Ask our Father to hear their cries and avenge the blood spilled in North Korea, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Iran, and that faithful U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia. Ask Him to shake the world until the despicable are thrown from their thrones.