In fact, you never hear of anything like God-fearers anymore after, I guess, maybe the Zoroastrians—who have continued since that time—might be a continuation of God-fearers—assuming that early Zoroastrianists were God-fearers—and that’s what the wise men were. . . .
We still have Jews, but they’ve been starved out as far as their relationship to the Old Covenant is concerned. They don’t follow the Bible. They follow the Mishnah and the Torah. They’re starved out, and the gospel remains. And then, in A.D. 70, they’re ended—and no more temple, no more sacrifice.
Modern Judaism—Judaism since A.D. 70—has been a completely different religion from the one in the Old Testament. There are no sacrifices; not only not any sacrifices in Jerusalem, but they don’t build altars anywhere else, either. Remember that before the tabernacle was set up, the Jews made altars anywhere they wanted, and worshipped—and that was fine. And after the tabernacle was torn down, for a hundred years before the temple was built, they made altars on high places—and that was fine. Then the temple was set up, and they had to go back to worshiping in only one place.
Well, when the temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, why didn’t they go back to just setting up altars anywhere and worshiping on high places? According to the logic of the Old Testament, that would have been perfectly reasonable. But they didn’t do it.
Judaism since A.D. 70 has not been Old Testament religion. It’s been a different religion altogether. It uses the Old Testament. Mormons use the Old Testament, Islam uses the Old Testament, Judaism uses the Old Testament. But it doesn’t have any connection to ancient Judaism any more than Islam or Mormonism do. We are the true continuation of the Old Testament: the churches.
So that’s the order of things—and it happens every time the gospel comes in. And any time there’s a revival, you have some situation like: there’s deadness all over the church, and you have a revival, and then you’re going to have conflict, and you’re going to have a starving out of the old and an establishment of the new, and then you’re going to have some type of killing off of the old: a definitive time when it’s clear that the new has come.
That’ll happen in times of revival, in times of evangelism, and missionary work; just as it happened here. This history is a microcosm or an example of all the big histories later on.
(James Jordan, Revelation in Detail # 84: Mid-course Overview of Revelation)
Jesus is on the horse. He rides forth to conquer. Therefore, the church also conquers. . . .
As far as the whole history of the New Covenant is concerned, [we]’ll therefore make disciples of all nations. Not just a witness in the nations, but every nation is to become a theocracy; every single nation.
Uzbekistan has to become a theocracy, a Christocracy.
Kyrgyzstan has to become a Christocracy.
Bosnia has to become a Christocracy.
Every nation has to become a Christocracy.
And so the conquest is going to continue, and that is what’s going on [here].
(James Jordan, Revelation in Detail # 35: The White and Red Horse Rider: Revelation 6:1-4)
[Girardian sacrifice:] it’s how civilization works. Now, if you’re not allowed to put the blame on somebody else, and you have to put the blame on yourself, then you have to kill yourself, right? That’s what we call mortification. Mortification is killing yourself. Instead of killing somebody else, putting all the blame on him and killing him, and instantly feeling good, you kind of have to wrestle day by day killing yourself: mortification of sin; dying to self.
That’s not something that happens all at once in a big crisis, and you just go out the other side and build your city. That’s something that’s hard to do, and it takes a long time to do; but gradually, the city is built. So, Christianity functions the same way, but because we have to kill ourselves and we have to have discipline in the church, it builds much more slowly. But it’s the same principle. Our city is built on the cornerstone of the death of Jesus Christ, just as the false cities of the world were built on human sacrifices.
Sometimes, quite literally: we read that Jericho was rebuilt by [Hiel of Bethel]. It says he laid the foundation with the death of his firstborn son. He killed his son, put him as a foundation stone; the city was built on him. That’s called a threshold sacrifice. And Cain’s [son’s] death is the foundation of Enoch. Remus’s death is the foundation of Rome. Remember, Romulus killed Remus and built Rome.
Jesus’ death is the foundation of the new Jerusalem.
But, see, we’re not allowed to get into this scapegoating thing. When there’s a crisis of culture, and there are distresses, and pressure is building up, we’re supposed to turn to the Psalms and interact with God. And we’re supposed to lay hold of the true Pentecost, which is the coming of the Holy Spirit. And we’re supposed to go back to the true old ways, which is the Bible and not some culture myth. That way we don’t get involved in fanaticism and crusades.
You know, it’s kind of interesting that people who are Christians find it much harder to get sucked up into movements than other people do. The more mature you are as a Christian, the more stable you are; the more you tend to be just a little bit nervous about big crusade-type things. You go to a Promise Keepers’ meeting, and there’s 10,000 charismatics there and 200 Calvinistic pastors. The charismatics all find it real easy to get into this. The Calvinists were saying, “well, I don’t know.” You know, they kind of get into it, and they’re kind of not sure. Some of the songs they feel like getting into, and some of them they don’t, right?
Because the more mature you are as a Christian, the more the gyroscope inside of you spins faster and faster, and you’re more stable. That’s the analogy I use. We all have gyroscopes inside ourselves, and the more mature we are, the faster the gyroscope spins, and the more stable you are; the less you are tossed about by every wind of doctrine, and the more difficult it is for you to get sucked up into mass movements. The more mortification you practice on the inside, the more you know of the Scripture: the more difficult it is for you to get sucked up into mass movements.
So at this point, we’re different. We don’t go out on a crusade and kill a bunch of people. We’re not supposed to. That’s not the way we relieve pressure on ourselves and on our society. But that’s the way they do, and that’s what’s happening here in Revelation chapter 13. The Jews experienced a big revival of what they think is their traditional religion, the oral law. That’s the problem. We had strayed from it. And a whole bunch of people who had become Christians undergo this experience. And what do we call those Christians who convert back to the oral law tradition? Judaizers. And Paul talks about them. He says, Demas is apostatized. There’s a big apostasy that happens that Paul talks about. It says it’s happening; it’s about to come: the big apostasy. A bunch of people who become Christians, and then all of a sudden they say, you know, “this was a mistake,” and they go back. They’re part of this revival, revival of false religion. And then there will be a persecution of those who don’t go along with it, which is the massacre of the two witnesses or the massacre of the 144,000. But then things don’t turn out the way they expect: because God acts.
One last point. . . . If the scapegoats in this activity turn out to be really innocent, sooner or later their killers feel guilt and become open to the message of the scapegoats. That’s why martyrdom leads to conversion. The Christians refuse to go along with what’s going on, so the Christians are massacred. But a lot of people begin to think, “maybe we shouldn’t have done this; these people were innocent.”
Remember what happens in Revelation chapter 11. Those who dwell on the land rejoice over the massacre of the believers, but: the people from the tribes and tongues and nations and peoples contemplate their dead bodies for three and a half days, don’t allow them to be buried. And then—we read that a lot of them are converted.
Rome had the same revival. When Nero burns Rome, the Romans had a big revival of the old ways, which of course were not old ways at all, but they became, “Rome, Rome is the answer. Rome this, Rome that.” And anybody who wouldn’t go along with it was put to death—which meant the Christians were. And Nero blamed the Christians for burning Rome; he started putting them to death. So, Christians are martyred. But what happens? Romans see Christians dying, they see that they’re innocent. They think about it, and then they’re converted. The blood of the martyrs becomes the seed of the church.
And that’s why, folks, historically it’s only through martyrdom that the church grows. It may be martyrdom in the big sense of being thrown to the lions, or it may be martyrdom in the sense that you practice self-mortification and killing yourself as you mortify sin. But it’s only as Christians mortify sin—and frequently it’s as Christians are actually put to death—that God brings pressure on the world and brings people to himself.
Well, I’m sorry, our time is way up. We’ll probably touch on this again next week, but then we have to move further into other aspects of what’s going on here. Take away from here: this is the way history moves—crisis, big Pentecost, mass movements, scapegoats. That’s what happens, and that’s what happened here.
Let’s pray. Father in heaven, we ask that you would spare us from going through this kind of thing in our day. We can see the pieces of the puzzle.
(James Jordan, Revelation in Detail # 77: A False Pentecost: Rev. 13:13)
The Dutch nation, according to its origin and history, is a baptized, Protestant reformed nation; this Christian, Protestant, Reformed character of the nation should be respected and maintained.
The church should be recognized by the government as a divine institution which in its origin and existence is independent of the state. The government should protect the church in acting in accordance with Scripture and respect it in fulfilling the vocation assigned to it in Scripture. The government has the right to apply the truth, which the church professes, in its own field as it sees fit. (Hoedemaker, as quoted by James Wood, “How Abraham Kuyper Lost the Nation and Sidelined the Church”)
And for yourself, may the gods grant you Your heart’s desire, a husband and a home, And the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, When a man and woman live together With one heart and mind, bringing joy To their friends and grief to their foes.” —Homer, Odyssey, Book 6, trans. Stanley Lombardo
John Knightley made his appearance, and “How d’ye do, George?” and “John, how are you?” succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the other. (Jane Austen, Emma)
Here we come to a kind of reductio ad absurdum, or personalist cosmological argument. Every person is dependent upon prior persons to be a person. But where does this end or where does this begin? Is it conceivable that there is an infinite regress of finite persons to account for the reality of any given personality? What accounts for each prior personality that gives rise to the one following? Is prior personality sufficient to completely account for any personality at any given time? We have two choices, and, ultimately, only two. Either we owe our existence to ourselves (which carries within it some manifest impossibilities), or we owe our existence to God. Now my contention is quite simply that we, on a daily basis, are faced with the starkest contradiction imaginable. If we do not acknowledge the reality of the God of the Bible—if he does not exist—then neither do we. On the other hand, if we do exist, then he does too. Now the introduction of this stark contradiction may be ab it breathtaking and perhaps even shocking. But I would contend that our very existence brings us to this cliff, and to this very sharp either/or. In real life, however, it is ameliorated a bit by the recognition that if he does exist, and if we exist, but we refuse to acknowledge his existence, we don’t go up in a puff of smoke and cease to be. Rather, the result (because of God’s mercy and long-suffering with our foolishness) is both cognitive dissonance and existential confusion. Our existence will be at best “thin,” and it will be incomprehensible. We will have no ground at all for our very being and personhood.
John Calvin opened his Institutes of the Christian Religion with this very beautiful paragraph:
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, whose blessings, which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain.
Human consciousness necessarily involves consciousness of God. If the consciousness of God could be eradicated, then human self-consciousness would also disappear. Self-knowledge is possible only in God.
Of course, grant the premise of creation and a creator God, and everything I say follows. But why should I grant the premise? You should grant the premise because we either exist as a free creative act of this perfect God, and thus participate as created analogues in all of the real existent perfections of God, or we exist ultimately by chance, and partake in all of the analogues of that mistress. There is no third alternative. The analogues of God are (briefly) truth, goodness and beauty. The analogues of chance are chaos, confusion, and disorder. Pure chance is perfectly unknowable. If you or I, or everything and anything, is the product of pure chance, this would be completely unknowable, and the purely unknowable is no different from nothingness.
If you are driven mad by this conclusion this is exactly what the Bible itself would expect, and not a conclusion that the Bible would expect any man to take contentedly or serenely. the Bible (which is a long and difficult book) frankly diagnoses man, in his current state, as functioning everywhere with this epistemological glitch. To be an unbeliever is the natural state of man, and to be otherwise is attributed to nothing short of a miracle. A man’s unbelief is not simply neutral, or a state of being where one chooses to believe or not believe as one would choose a meal from a variegated menu. Unbelief occupies a religious position in a man’s life, and is as decisive for the unbeliever as belief is for the believer.
There are two accounts of unbelief. The first account is that of the unbeliever himself. This is a necessary perspective, and it is not a simple, completely unified voice that speaks. Unbelief has as many voices as there are unbelievers. Not every voice is unique, though, and the absolute variety is not infinite. There are a certain number of objections to the Christian faith that cohere together, and not an uncountable number. Then, there is the diagnosis of the Bible itself concerning unbelief. the Bible has its own internal theology of unbelief and its own X-ray to offer. While the voice of the unbeliever itself ought to be heard, the most important voice is the voice of the Bible. The reason the voice of the unbeliever needs to be heard is in order to demonstrate that the voice of unbelief is really the voice of caviling or of disputing with the judgment that God has already handed down in the court that he has called. This is what “doubt” is: diakrinomoi. The unbeliever is a “debater of this age” (1 Cor 1:20), and his unbelief is closely associated with bringing accusation and bringing charges of an ethical nature against God. The doubter is, in fact, someone who himself calls God to account before his own bar of justice. The doubter is a judge who dares to question God, or dares to question that God, rather than he, ought to be the final judge. In other words, when we doubt God’s existence and his governing power over all things, what we are really doing is ruling him out of court, and inciting that we have the final word. This brings us to all of the above contradictions and epistemologically reduces us to the necessity of self-existence, which is the same as nothingness. Undeniably, man almost compulsively wants to get on in life without this surrender and this necessary belief—man is ethically offended by this. Let me invite you to the next chapter, which examines man’s penchant to always play the judge, even over God. (Rich Bledsoe, Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?, 23-25)
In Rousseau, we especially find ourselves awash with so much that is modern. There is bathos, sentimentality, and the relish of pity that has its origin in self-pity. He nearly succeeds in making the self absolute as the feeling self, and then very quickly loses that same self as it drowns in its own self-felt concern. He is lost in self-pity and in self-importance in petty tragedy. Anything can be a tragedy—a toothache, the smallest unrequited love.
Rousseau didn’t invent anything absolutely new. He simply placed an emphasis on certain aspects of life that had never before been given such importance. Everybody has always known about feelings. Bathos and sentimentality have been around for a long time, but mostly as comedy. Rousseau made self-concern, in a deepened way, the end of life; for literary Europe, however, he managed to make it respectable. The importance of romance is not the glory of the beloved. The importance of romance is the glory of my own feeling of being in love. He was in love with being in love, and the beloved is a really quite secondary self-extension. He glorified the self’s importance by making the smallest self-pity seem as immense as the tragedy of King Lear.
What Rousseau accomplished was a lineage that is very old, and is deeply tied, ironically, to the love of death. The final glory, one begins to suspect, would be suicide over the tragedy of a toothache. Hopefully others will notice. My tragedy makes me overwhelmingly notable and important. . . .
Who was this lover and this beloved inside of Rousseau? Is this one who feels love for the self, sensing a prior self, or does he create this self? Did Rousseau exist before he felt himself in love, or did this love create this person?
There is a manifest contradiction here. Rousseau makes a good deal of “virtue.” The self is a “virtuous” self. But Rousseau is very interested in maintaining the utter independence of his existence. This good or virtuous self is only good because Rousseau loves this self. He creates himself by loving himself, and makes himself “virtuous” because he loves himself, and then “feels” this self-creation. He, in other words, creates himself out of nothing. Did he authentically exist before he loved himself? Where was he before he discovered this love? Apparently nowhere. He did not exist. Then he who did not exist began to exist and brought himself into existence by love. But how? By loving himself. Unfortunately, there was no one there to carry out the act of loving. Which is prior: self-love, or existence of the self? One cannot be without the other. This is creation out of nothing, creation ex nihilo. . . .
The United States—my own country—is, at this moment, in grave danger of falling into a final and irreversible sinkhole of Rousseauian sludge. Some years ago, the American education system adopted the “middle school” philosophy, which replaced the old-fashioned junior high school. The purpose of junior high was quite simply to prepare students for high school; the purpose of high school was to complete a basic and foundational educational curriculum that would enable one to enter the work and domestic force of the country, and also prepare some of those students for higher education at the nation’s colleges and universities. One, in other words, had to submit oneself to a particular body of learning. However, by the 1970s and 80s, America had been extensively psychologized. The purpose of education for adolescents ceased to be submission to a curriculum for life preparation, and was replaced with collective therapy to enable students to develop a “healthy self-esteem.” School, in other words, became “student-centered,” making the development of the students ego the central reality. The student, then, no longer submits him or herself to something larger than and outside of themselves, but the entire educational establishment submits itself to them. School became “ego-centric” in the most literal way. This was the essential purpose of middle school as opposed to junior high.
The middle school is an entirely Rousseauian institution, and has built into it all of the contradictions and conflicts that are outlined above. Not surprisingly, it has, over time, issued in all of the above contradictions. . . . If God cannot be one’s final and ultimate audience (as with Augustine in his Confessions, who gave himself to, but did not pander to, a public), then one can only “play to the crowd” as with Rousseau. The result is a world of constant offense, extensive hypocrisy, and a societal “anti-covenant” in which harmonious relationship is nearly impossible. In short, the Rousseauian “middle school” philosophy is a recipe for a completely neurotic society, one dominated by psychiatry and a legal profession with an inordinate number of people involved in lawsuits over absurd and petty offenses. What should have been a passing moment in the development of the adolescent’s personality in junior high school (with the constant sense of seeking to be “in” and “popular”) is now elevated to the final meaning of life and as grist for an everlasting therapy mill. It is a recipe for an adolescent society in which everything coalesces around nothing. (Rich Bledsoe, Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?, 14-17)
You asked if there was anything in my congregation that could not be naturally accounted for by an unbelieving skeptic. My answer would be emphatically yes, but you will think me cheating when I tell you what they are. My congregation is filled with people who have been washed in the blood of the lamb, who have had their sins forgiven, who have been justified, and sanctified. No naturalist can account for any of these things. They have come to participate in the salvation of God. You will accuse me of begging the question, and of assuming what I need to prove, but my point is that the naturalist begs the question himself. He pretends he is searching for evidence that his epistemological grid has already ahead of time dogmatically declared cannot exist. So even if a man were to rise from the dead there would be a natural explanation for it and could not mean what, say, the Apostle Paul says it means. . . .
I can sympathize with your account of spending (I assume) heart-breaking time trying to find a miracle, or a clarity and experience of God in your earlier years, and not finding it. I went through something very similar, and spent a number of years close to despair at the “brass heavens.” God was nowhere. For all of my desperation, I could not “find” him. Then I met some people who were able to help me. What they helped me to see was that if we are to find God, and to find a real and living experience of Christ, it will be in the midst of a moral war that I must wage with myself. The only way that Christ can ever be found is when I’m thrown on, most specifically, an utter need for a Savior who can save me from sin. That meant I had to begin to take sin seriously in a way that I never had before. Before (and I was raised in the church), I was caught up in seeking “experiences,” and happiness, and (in a youthful way) success (of which I had little of any adolescent sort). (Rich Bledsoe, Can Saul Alinsky Be Saved?, 115-116)
I gotta have my orange juice. 