Author Archives: Steven Anderson

The decline of Christianity in the United States: Whose fault is it?

13 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in Current events

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A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that the percentage of Americans who identify their religion as “Christianity” dropped by eight percent from 2007 to 2014. This finding comes as no surprise to anyone living in the United States. Among Christian groups, the number of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics dropped sharply, while the number of evangelical Protestants rose slightly. Most of the people who stopped identifying themselves as “Christian” now identify themselves as irreligious (or “unaffiliated”).

Various “experts” have given their opinion about the reason for the decline in Christianity in the United States. Political commentators tend to paint the decline as a political phenomenon, usually by claiming that conservative Republican Christians have turned people off to their religion by mixing religion with politics. One problem with this theory is that most of the decline has been among politically liberal Christian denominations, not among politically conservative Christian denominations. And politically liberal denominations are often as political as conservative denominations, if not more so. While it is a common fallacy for people to have a higher commitment to political principles than to biblical principles, it is also true that political activism can energize Christians who are genuinely defending their faith in public forums. Political commentators who blame the decline in the population of American Christians on political activism among conservative evangelical Christians are apparently only expressing their own distaste for the application of biblical principles in the sphere of public life.

An “expert” from the Christian Reformed Church who was interviewed on a local television station attributed the decline partly to the church’s failure to listen to what millennials want the church to be, and partly to the church’s failure to give sufficient attention to social issues. The problem is, mainstream churches have been trying for decades to reshape themselves in accordance with the culture, and the more they do this the more they lose numbers. In fact, while the ultra-contemporary church that does not even want to use traditional terms like “church” and “pastor” has had an appeal to a generation of people who grew up in traditional churches and did not like them, some surveys indicate that Christian millennials actually would prefer a traditional-style church. If a contemporary church looks just like a coffee shop or a bar, millennials don’t feel any sense of sacredness about it. As for the claim that a lack of focus on social issues is driving people away from the church, it is in fact the churches that focus the most on social issues who are losing the most members. This is because the gospel which Jesus and the apostles preached was not a social gospel, but was rather a gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins—a spiritual gospel. Churches which ignore or disparage soulwinning are inauthentic and are bound to die out sooner or later.

A columnist for the New York Times points to “low levels of Christian affiliation among the young, well educated and affluent,” and cites “economic development” as one of the causes for the decline in American Christianity. Here we may be on to something. Jesus spoke of the great difficulty of a rich person being saved (Matt 19:23-26), since the ultimate loyalty of the rich is usually to their money. In general, people who feel that they are able to meet their own physical needs, or to have these needs met by the government, tend to think that they do not need God. Education is certainly also part of the reason for the decline in American Christianity. The problem is not education in and of itself, but the atheistic, anti-biblical philosophies which are being force-fed to students at all levels of the American educational system. The more educated a person is in modern America, the less chance there is that he will still believe the Bible or attend a church.

It is no secret that the moral values in American culture are moving farther and farther away from the Bible. There is virulent cultural opposition to such biblical principles as the sanctity of life, sexual morality, modesty, male leadership, eternal punishment for the unsaved, and the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus Christ. There is a major push from the media, the government, and the educational system to make Christianity a religion that people just believe and practice in private, while acting and talking like everyone else in public. While every individual unbeliever is responsible for his own unbelief, the leading anti-Christian voices in America bear the greatest responsibility for pushing people away from the offer of salvation in Jesus Christ. No man bears greater blame for the decline in American Christianity from 2007 to 2014 than the President of the United States, who has adamantly opposed biblical principles on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, the right of the Jewish people to control the land of Israel, the true nature of Islam as a violent and false religion, and many others. Mr. Obama identifies himself as a Christian, but seems only to criticize Christianity in public, while defending Islam and atheism. The Supreme Court justices and other judges appointed by Mr. Obama are also causing considerable trouble for American Christians. While the President has the lion’s share of influence in the country, there are many other leaders who may be blamed, such as the leaders of the nation’s major media outlets, who helped President Obama win two elections and continue to support his anti-Christian outlook. In addition, the Pew study documented the first-ever major decline in American Catholics, and surely some of the blame for this lies with Pope Francis, who seems to be transforming the Roman Catholic Church into a socio-political organization with little or no theological or biblical foundation. The mainline Protestant denominations are also becoming or have become socio-political organizations whose Christian religious aspect no longer seems necessary, and might even be counterproductive to their mission.

So who is to blame for the decline in American Christianity? Certainly not God, who has spared no cost to save the human race, and has offered salvation as a free gift. The American church has many problems, and so do American Christians. But churches and Christians have always had many problems. Ultimately the blame falls squarely on the individuals who reject God’s way of salvation, whether they profess to be Christians or not. Unbelievers are responsible for their own rejection of the Christian gospel. Romans 14:12 says, “Each one of us will give an account of himself to God.” The truth is, there have always been anti-Christian voices in American culture; the reason why they are now ascendant is that the majority of people in the United States are attracted to this message and approve of this message. If millennials and other Americans are leaving the church, it is not, ultimately, due to the failures of the church or of Christians; it is the unbelievers themselves who are responsible for their own deliberate actions.

Postscript: Society’s ongoing rebellion against Christ and His church is a great tragedy, but it is also a sign of hope, for the Bible predicts a great worldwide rebellion against God at the end of history, culminating in the rise of the antichrist (2 Thess 2:1-12, etc.). The antichrist leads man’s rebellion against God to its ultimate expression, after which Jesus will return to earth to judge the nations of the world and seize political power over the world. Christians ought to be encouraged by the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, knowing that the Christ’s return is drawing closer every day, and that God is still directing events in the world in accordance with His plan.

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America’s sacred animal

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Current events, Theology

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It is well known that cattle are sacred to the Hindus of India. Recently there have been news stories about a law passed in the west Indian state of Maharashtra which prohibits the killing of cattle and the sale, possession, or consumption of beef. Even tigers and other carnivores at the Mumbai zoo are being made to eat white meat instead of red meat.

While the sacredness of cattle to the Hindus seems ridiculous to many people, and rightly so, I would like to suggest that the United States is in the process of making dogs (and their biggest wild relative, the wolf) a sacred animal. It seems that at least once a week I see a story on the local news in which someone is being prosecuted for killing a dog or for failing to properly care for a dog. Recently an overwhelming majority of voters in Michigan voted against allowing wolf hunting, even though biologists say that the wolf population is as high as or higher than it should be. Most people in Michigan and other states view the shooting of a wolf as something qualitatively different than the shooting of a deer, even though deer are docile animals and wolves are predators. (The wolves are eating so many deer that the DNR may cancel this year’s deer hunt in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for the first time ever.) This is not just an American phenomenon, either—recently a group of Chinese animal rights activists laid down on the road in front of a truck that was carrying Tibetan mastiffs to a slaughterhouse, and proceeded to provide medical care for the dogs after “rescuing” them. (The popularity of Tibetan mastiffs in China declined sharply after numerous instances where they attacked and killed people.) Animal rights groups also objected several years ago when Baghdad police began to shoot some of the 1.25 million stray dogs in the city after they had developed a taste for human flesh and had begun attacking humans.

In the United States, it is illegal to sell dog or cat meat. In some states, it is illegal to eat dog meat for any reason. This is not too much different than laws in India which prohibit the butchering of cattle. Although I have never personally tasted dog meat, some of my Korean friends say that it is their favorite kind of meat, that it tastes like beef but is more tender. They can’t understand why it is illegal to sell and eat dog meat in the United States.

Since I don’t have pets, I am not exactly sure what the law requires of dog owners. But I wonder if someone could go to jail for not paying for surgery and chemotherapy if his dog has cancer. It seems that dog hospitals and clinics with 24-hour emergency rooms and advanced medical equipment keep proliferating, and health insurance for dogs is becoming commonplace. I would not be surprised to see the next version of Obamacare make health insurance for dogs mandatory. Nor would I be surprised to see hate speech laws expanded to criminalize derogatory remarks about dogs. Already in Michigan there are frequent rallies in defense of the pit bull, which is the most dangerous of all dog breeds.

I do not advocate unnecessary cruelty to animals, but at the same time it should be recognized that there is considerable confusion today about the difference between man and animals, due largely to the teaching of Darwinian evolution. I do not understand why people think that stray dogs and cats should be captured, then neutered and spayed or put in cages in the Humane Society, rather than shot and buried. I do not understand why a man who accidentally leaves a dog in a hot car, resulting in its death, should go to jail. That is an unfortunate accident, but from a biblical point of view killing a dog is not morally different than killing a rat.

The Bible teaches that man is qualitatively different than a dog or any other animal, because man alone was created in the image of God (Gen 1:26-27; 9:5-6). People who talk about their pet dogs as their “children,” as many now do, are seriously mistaken. The word “murder” is used less and less today where it should be. Where news headlines used to read “Police investigating murder” they now read, e.g., “Police investigating shooting death” or “Police investigate fatal stabbing.” A murderer is now called a “homicide suspect” or a “man convicted of killing.” Perhaps this is because the word “murder” implies moral guilt, whereas problems today are said to be the result of environmental or psychological factors and not willful sin. But where I do hear the word “murder” used with greater frequency is with respect to people killing dogs. From a biblical point of view, animals can be killed, but they can never be murdered. Only man can be murdered, since only man is created in the image of God.

In the Bible, dogs are portrayed as among the basest of all animals (cf. 1 Sam 17:43; 24:14; 2 Sam 3:8; 9:8; 16:9; 2 Kgs 8:13; Job 30:1; Ps 22:16; Isa 66:3). Male prostitutes are called “dogs” in Deuteronomy 23:18. Paul calls false teachers “dogs” in Philippians 3:2. Jesus warned more than once against giving good things to “dogs” (Matt 7:6; 15:26; Mark 7:27). The book of Revelation uses the term “dogs” to represent people who are loathsome and unclean (Rev 22:15).

While as an unclean animal dogs could not be eaten under the Mosaic Law, the New Testament affirms that all types of animal meat—including dogs—are now permissible to eat, since the Law was fulfilled in Jesus Christ (Mark 7:19; Acts 10:9-16). Before the Mosaic Law, as well, it was perfectly permissible to eat dog meat (Gen 9:2-4). Dogs can make fun pets and can be useful for such tasks as protection and hunting, but they are animals—they are not human. Even in comparison to other animals, dogs do not have superior status; they are, in fact, singled out in the Bible as among the most despicable of all animals. The veneration of dogs in the United States would seem, then, to be a mark of a society that has departed from God and from a biblical way of thinking.

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The greatest missionary report in the history of the church

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Bible, Missions

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Most of us who have spent a significant portion of our lives in an evangelical, Bible-believing church are used to hearing missionary reports. According to the usual pattern of things, local churches give monthly financial support to many missionaries, and each missionary is expected to return to his supporting churches every four years or so to give a report of what he has done while serving as a missionary. Often these reports include an impassioned call for people in the sending church to become missionaries themselves. Many missionaries say that they were originally inspired to do missionary work through the testimony of a missionary who spoke at their church.

Many modern missionaries have delivered extraordinary reports of God’s work through them in foreign lands, and have motivated new generations of missionaries. But for the most impactful missionary report ever told, we must turn to chapter 15 of the book of Acts. The events in that chapter occurred just after the apostle Paul, together with Barnabas, returned from their first great missionary journey, which was to Cyprus and Galatia. That first journey, of course, was not prompted by the inspiring report of another missionary—it was made in response to the direct call of Paul and Barnabas by the Holy Spirit during a church meeting in Antioch (Acts 13:1-3).

When Paul and Barnabas returned from their successful missionary journey, they first gave a report of their mission work to the church at Antioch, which had commissioned them (Acts 14:26-28). But trouble quickly arose, when Christians with a background in rabbinic Judaism came to Antioch and began to argue that the Gentiles who had believed through the work of Paul and Barnabas had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses (Acts 15:1). Paul and Barnabas were unable to convince these “Judaizers” otherwise (Acts 15:2).

While schism in the church is, in itself, a bad thing, this particular quarrel resulted in something very positive, for it led the church at Antioch to send Paul and Barnabas to meet with the apostles and elders at Jerusalem (Acts 15:2-3). There at Jerusalem, a church council was called to resolve the theological dispute (Acts 15:4-6). One positive result of this council was the promulgation of an official statement by the church on the issue of salvation by grace through faith, apart from the works of the Law (Acts 15:22-29). But the detailed report given by Paul and Barnabas to the other apostles of the mass conversion of Gentiles through their Spirit-empowered ministry (Acts 15:12) had another very significant result.

When Paul and Barnabas arrived in Jerusalem early in AD 49, they found the original group of Twelve apostles (minus James the brother of John, who had been murdered) still living in Jerusalem, ministering to the Jewish church that was there (Acts 15:6; cf. Acts 8:1). Peter had had a temporary ministry in some coastal towns in Palestine, but had returned to Jerusalem. The apostles basically had not moved at all from the place where the church had originally begun. They knew that Jesus had commanded them to take the gospel to the farthest parts of the earth (Acts 1:8), but in the sixteen years since Jesus’ resurrection their missionary efforts had not advanced beyond Jerusalem.

It is evident from church history, as well as from circumstantial evidence in the New Testament, that, shortly after Paul and Barnabas left Jerusalem, the other apostles followed Paul’s lead and scattered from Palestine to take the good news about Jesus Christ to the whole world, some traveling as far as Ethiopia (Matthew) and India (Thomas). It seems that it suddenly occurred to the apostles that it was indeed possible for a Gentile church to exist apart from Jewish support. Paul’s stories of the rejection of the gospel by the Jews and the acceptance of the gospel by the Gentiles must have made the other apostles decide that the time had come for them to give up on their efforts to reform institutional Judaism through a mass conversion of the Jews, and to instead focus on building up the church as a transnational entity. They were also stirred up and impassioned by the missionary report given by Paul and Barnabas, and they determined to go forth and do the same sort of work themselves.

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Thomas, the greatest missionary of the Twelve

12 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by in Bible, Easter

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This is the time of year when many Christians in the United States travel to the Mediterranean for a tour of the lands of the Bible. One popular type of tour is a “footsteps of the apostle Paul” tour which aims to visit the places where Paul preached in the book of Acts. These tours typically stop at sites in Turkey, Greece, and Italy.

One tour that I have never heard offered is a “footsteps of the apostle Thomas” tour. Although Thomas’ travels are not recorded in the New Testament, Thomas is known to church historians as the most celebrated missionary of the original group of Twelve apostles. Few tourists, if any, would have the stomach to retrace the apostle Thomas’ footsteps from Jerusalem, through Syria, Iraq, and Iran, down the southwestern (Malabar) coast of India, and up the southeastern (Coromandel) coast of India, all the way to the city of Chennai (Madras), where Thomas was stoned to death for preaching the risen Christ. The places where Thomas traveled, preaching the gospel, are dangerous, foreign, and spiritually dark today, but so were they when Thomas originally traveled to them.

To an outside observer, Thomas might seem like the most unlikely of all the apostles to become a great missionary. Thomas began his apostolic career as a skeptic, a pessimist, and a doubter. He almost seemed hesitant as a follower of Jesus. In John 11:16, as Jesus set out for Bethany to raise Lazarus from the dead, Thomas made a comment that showed that he was predisposed to belief in the worst possible outcome, unless it could be absolutely proven otherwise. In that verse, John translates Thomas’ name (an Aramaic word) into Greek as “Twin” (Greek Didymus, like the English word dittography), which shows that he was so undistinguished among the Twelve that he was not even called by his real name. One Eastern church tradition remembers Thomas as “Judas Thomas”; since there were two other Judases among the Twelve, the disciples evidently decided to call one of the three by his nickname.

The best known vignette of Thomas in the Bible is in John 20, which occurs after Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Although Jesus appeared to women at the tomb and to the majority of the disciples, Thomas was for some reason absent when Jesus made His appearances on that first Easter Sunday. In spite of the testimony of the other ten apostles, the women who were at the tomb, and the two disciples who were walking to Emmaus, Thomas famously pronounced himself unconvinced of Jesus’ resurrection. In John 20:24-25, Thomas insisted that he would not believe unless he could not only see Jesus, but could also physically put his finger into the nail prints in Jesus’ hands and put his hand into the mark of the spear on Jesus’ side. Everything about Thomas changed when Jesus appeared to him some eight days later and gave him just the opportunity he had asked for to verify absolutely that He had indeed risen from the dead (John 20:26-27), leading Thomas to confess on the spot that Jesus is Lord and God (John 20:28).

Thomas, once the greatest skeptic among the Twelve, became the most celebrated missionary of the group after having been persuaded beyond all doubt of the fact of the resurrection. After leaving Palestine, Thomas first preached the gospel in Syria, then left Roman territory to preach the gospel in the Parthian Empire (modern Iraq and Iran). Determined to press the gospel to the ends of the earth, Thomas proceeded to sail to the Malabar Coast of southwestern India, planting churches which remain to the present day. After establishing these churches, Thomas continued on around the southern tip of India, and was preaching the gospel in Hindu cities along India’s eastern coast until he was at last stoned to death near the city of Chennai (Madras). A monument remains to this day on a hill outside Chennai to mark the site of Thomas’ martyrdom, some 5,027 km (3,124 miles) from Jerusalem. The only explanation for Thomas’ unstoppable zeal and unshakeable faith after his skeptical start is an experience just like that described in the twentieth chapter of the Gospel of John.

Thomas’ missionary efforts are a great testimony to the fact of the resurrection of Jesus, of which Thomas was a witness. But Thomas’ work is also a great challenge to the church, and a censure of the church. Why was there not one person in the second generation of Christians who was as driven as Thomas to take the gospel to the ends of the earth? Surely the entire world would have been evangelized in a hundred years with only a dozen Thomases in each generation. Why is it not until the 18th and 19th centuries that we finally read of Christians leaving Europe to take the gospel to unknown lands and unreached peoples? Although today there are indeed Christian missionaries and churches throughout the world (though not nearly enough), the church today all too often seems sluggish and halfhearted. If we really do believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, this truth should stimulate in us the same kind of all-out, lifelong dedication to the work of the Lord that that it stimulated in the apostle Thomas.

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The Sign of Jonah

04 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by in Apologetics, Easter

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What does the historicity of the Old Testament book of Jonah have to do with Easter? Quite a bit, actually. In Matthew 12:39-41, Jesus said, An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet: for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, a greater than Jonah is here.

Jonah was a sign to the people of Nineveh in that he came back from the dead in a sense—not literally, but after having spent three days under the ocean, in the stomach of a fish. In the context of this quotation from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is arguing that His resurrection would prove the unbelief of the Pharisees. The people of Nineveh repented at the sign of Jonah, but the Pharisees would not repent at the greater sign of the Son of man’s resurrection from the dead. But if there never was a Jonah who spent three days and three nights in the belly of a fish, and if he never did preach in Nineveh and lead the city to repentance, the comparison would be imaginary and would prove nothing about the Pharisees. And if Jonah wasn’t literally in the belly of a fish for three days, then maybe Jesus wasn’t literally in the grave for three days, either. Jesus’ assertion that “a greater One than Jonah is here” would also be an empty claim if Jonah never actually preached at Nineveh.

There are, however, strong reasons to believe in the historicity of both the prophet Jonah and the events in the biblical book which bears his name. The strongest reason is, of course, the fact that the book of Jonah is a part of inspired Scripture, as acknowledged by both the ancient Jews and the Lord Jesus Christ. The man Jonah is mentioned in another part of the Old Testament, in 2 Kings 14:25. The historical context in which Jonah is mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 corresponds to a period of weakness and disorder in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, during which Jonah’s warning that Nineveh would be overthrown in forty days would have been particularly believable. During this period, there was a time in which the administrative control of the Assyrian king was reduced to “greater Nineveh,” which explains why Nineveh is the main focus of Jonah’s prophecies (rather than “Assyria”). There are good reasons to believe that when Nineveh is described as a journey of three days in breadth (Jonah 3:3), with 120,000 young children (Jonah 4:11), it is the district of Nineveh that is referenced, and not just that part of Nineveh enclosed by the city wall.

Many critics have also asserted that it is impossible for a man to survive for three days and three nights in the belly of a fish. While this fish is said to have been specially prepared by God (Jonah 1:17), it still was a real fish, and it really did swallow Jonah alive. The common idea that this fish was a whale is nowhere stated in Scripture; in fact, whales are very rare in the Mediterranean, and this was more likely a great white shark, which has a much slower metabolism than a whale. It is also important to realize that the term “three days and three nights” does not necessarily refer to a full 72-hour period, but only to parts of three days. “Day and night” is a Hebrew idiom for what we would call a “day.” Among other references to “day and night” in the Bible, Jesus said that His body would be buried for three days and three nights (Matt 12:40), yet He was buried late in the day on Friday and raised at early dawn on Sunday, a period of about 36 hours.

For more detailed argumentation regarding the historicity of the book of Jonah, see my new Kindle book, The Historicity of the Book of Jonah, and Why It Still Matters.

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Where is Harry Houdini?

28 Saturday Mar 2015

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Harry Houdini was the world’s greatest escape artist. He routinely escaped from handcuffs, locked jail cells, straitjackets, nailed coffins, and all sorts of other restraints that were supposed to be secure. One of his most famous acts was escaping from an airtight, locked glass-and-steel cabinet that was filled with water. No one could create a system of locks and chains that was so secure that Houdini could not free himself from them.

Harry Houdini born on March 24, 1874 as Ehrich Weiss, the son of a Jewish rabbi, in Budapest, Hungary. Though a Jew, Houdini was not very religious. He spent much time in his later years trying to debunk mediums and spiritists. He was unsure about life after death, however. Before he died on October 31 (Halloween Day), 1926, he agreed with his wife that if it was possible to communicate from the other side of the grave he would send her a message. He also made his wife promise on his deathbed that she would try to communicate with him on the anniversary of his death, making contact with him wherever he might be. His wife held séances for him every year on October 31, for ten years, with no success. Magicians around the world have continued to hold yearly séances for Houdini, but they have never received a message from him. Harry Houdini’s body was buried in Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, and his body remains in the ground. Harry Houdini was unable to come back from the other side of the grave, whether as a spirit or in the body, and he has not even been able to send a message. The fact that Houdini has not sent a message is itself a clear message: Houdini can’t send any message back to the earth, and he can’t escape from the place where he now is.

Luke 16:19-31 tells the story of another man who, like Harry Houdini, wanted to send a message to his family from the other side of the grave. Like Houdini, this man was a Jew, but was not very religious. He was wealthy, however, and enjoyed a “good life.” Yet when he died, he went to a place of great torment, called Hades. While in the torments of Hades, he saw, far off in another realm, a beggar named Lazarus who had once sat under his table, eating crumbs. Lazarus was in Paradise, taking comfort in the arms of Abraham. Somewhat surprisingly, the rich man found that he was able to communicate with Abraham. He first asked Abraham to send Lazarus to put a drop of water on the tip of his tongue to cool it, but was told that not only would it be impossible for Lazarus to travel to Hades, it would also be unjust for the rich man not to suffer the torment he deserves. The rich man then asked Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth in order to warn his brothers about the place of torment. Abraham refused once again, telling the rich man that it would do no good—if his brothers would not listen to the witness of the Scriptures, they would not listen to the witness of a man who came back from the dead, either.

Jesus did something that neither Harry Houdini nor the rich man of Luke 16 could do—He escaped from death! Jesus came back from the dead in His own body, and He proved it by repeated appearances to hundreds of different people who were extremely skeptical. Many of these people were later killed for their belief in the claims Jesus made for Himself, which shows that they were convinced beyond all doubt of Jesus’ resurrection. While many people in the world had, and still have, great respect for Harry Houdini and his views on life and death, there is only one man whom we can trust when it comes to matters of life, death, and eternity, and that is the Man who rose from the dead.

Postscript: for a more detailed discussion of the Bible’s teaching concerning the underworld and life after death, see my Kindle book The Bible’s Teaching on Endless Punishment, and Objections to It.

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Is death inevitable?

22 Sunday Mar 2015

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There is an old saying that two things in life are inevitable: death and taxes. This is said tongue-in-cheek, since of course not everyone in the world pays taxes—Kuwait, for example, is a tax-free country—but nearly everyone in the world pays taxes. Taxes seem like an inevitability, though circumstances are conceivable in which they are not (for example, if one is destitute). Death, however, does appear to be inevitable. Even with all of our scientific and technological advances, no one in modern history has lived past the age of 122, and most people in the world’s most developed countries are dead before they reach the age of 80. Further, there is, from the human point of view, the possibility that anyone who is now alive could die at any time. The Bible teaches that death was not part of God’s original plan for the human race. Death entered the world as a direct consequence of sin (Gen 2:17). The human race was placed under a sentence of death as punishment for the sin of Adam, who was the forefather of the human race. Romans 5:12 states, Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin. It may be surprising, then, to know that the Bible does not teach that everyone will die. The Bible teaches that Jesus Christ, as the second Adam, has conquered death, and has overcome the power of death by rising from the dead (Rom 5:17; 1 Cor 15:21-22). The Bible teaches in 1 Corinthians 15:52-53 that not everyone will die, although all men will have their mortal bodies changed. Specifically, when Jesus will take those who have believed on Him during the Church Age to heaven, living Christians will simply have their bodies changed, rather than raised from the dead (cf. 1 Thess 4:13-18). It seems, as well, that believers who are alive at the end of the thousand-year reign of Christ (the millennium) will also have their bodies changed before the final judgment, rather than dying and being raised from the dead (see Revelation 20). One could also note the famous Old Testament story of Elijah being taken to heaven alive in a whirlwind, rather than dying (2 Kgs 2:1-12). However, Elijah evidently will return to the earth during the tribulation period, and will be killed at the midpoint of this period (cf. Mal 4:5; Matt 17:11; Rev 11:1-13). But there is another great man of God in the Old Testament who was also taken to heaven without dying, specifically so that he would not see death (according to Hebrews 11:5). This was Enoch, the father of Methuselah (Gen 5:21-24). Enoch was taken to heaven a mere 57 years after the first man, Adam, succumbed to the sentence of death. Although Adam’s lifespan of 930 years seems extraordinary by today’s standards, in fact the death of Adam must have dealt a terrible blow to the human psyche. Because Adam lived so long, perhaps some were holding out hope that he would never die, that the curse would not come to pass, and that men could, possibly, just keep on living indefinitely. After Adam’s death, hope seemed to end; the futility of life had sunk in like a hard reality—when suddenly the principle of death was violated in Enoch’s case. The translation of Enoch so short a time after the death of Adam showed that death was not the final sentence for the human race. Death will not prevail in the end, by God’s grace. Easter Sunday is now only two weeks away. What does the “translation” of someone who lived so long ago as Enoch mean to us today? Here is the question from a different angle: what would it mean to you if you found out that one of your own ancient ancestors had never died, but was still alive? In fact, everyone in the world today is descended from Noah, and Enoch was Noah’s great-grandfather. The story of Enoch ought to be a great encouragement to every one of us, because Enoch was an ancestor of every one of us. That means that every one of us has in Enoch an ancestor who did not die! Christian, take heart! Let no one tell you despairingly that everyone who has ever lived has died. Yet if we can draw hope from the fact that one of our ancestors did not die and will never die, how much more hope can we take from the fact that Enoch’s endless life was made possible by the fact of Christ’s (then-anticipated, now-fulfilled) conquest of death through His resurrection from the dead? Whether we live or die, those of us who have believed in Jesus will someday live with Him forever in glorified, immortal bodies.

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What is the Bible about?

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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I recently published a revised edition of volume 1 of my Interpretive Guide to the Bible, in which I added a short introduction that deals with “big picture” questions. One of these is the subject of the Bible, which answers the question, “What is the Bible about?”

A popular response to this question by an older generation of Bible expositors was “Jesus Christ.” In fact, this seems to be affirmed in Article 1 of the doctrinal statement of Dallas Theological Seminary, which includes the following sentence: We believe that all the Scriptures center about the Lord Jesus Christ in His person and work in His first and second coming, and hence that no portion, even of the Old Testament, is properly read or understood until it leads to Him. Some Bible teachers have gone so far as to say that the main point of every book of the Bible, and even of every chapter of the Bible, is to reveal Christ (the Christo-centric hermeneutic). This then forces them to allegorize the text in order to find how Christ is revealed in, for example, the life of Joseph or the Song of Songs.

It is better to develop the subject of the Bible from a study of the biblical text itself, rather than developing the subject through a seemingly arbitrary theological assertion, and then trying to find a way to read the Bible to fit one’s theology. It is also best to view the Bible as a whole when developing a statement of its subject, since the main subject of a book may not be the main subject of every paragraph or every section of the book. A biography of Abraham Lincoln, for example, could include a chapter on Lincoln’s wife or a chapter on social conditions in the antebellum South. Such chapters, in which Abraham Lincoln would not be the main subject, would not destroy the subject-unity of the book; they would simply function to give background information that is necessary to more fully understand and elucidate the overall subject of the book, to which the book would always return.

As a career Bible scholar who has read through the Bible more than twenty times, I have no hesitation when identifying the subject of the Bible. Clearly the subject of the Bible is God. The Bible is a book about God, about who He is and what He does. Since the Bible was written to man, in order to reveal God to man, it has much to say about God’s dealings with men and His plan for the human race. Since God exists in trinity, the Bible reveals God as triune, and contains a considerable description of each member of the holy Trinity. It especially has much to say about God the Son (Jesus), since He bridges the gap between God and man by becoming incarnate, and He is the perfect revelation of the Father. Persons and nations who occupy a central place in God’s historical dealings with men also receive much attention in the Bible—positively, the nation of Israel, the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, and other men of God; negatively, Satan, the antichrist, great world empires, and other notable opponents of God’s people. Theological (rather than historical) issues are a greater focus in the New Testament than in the Old. In the New Testament the church arises as a non-national people of God, the Holy Spirit is sent to indwell every believer in Jesus, and the theological mysteries of salvation and last things are more fully revealed.

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Will Iran destroy Israel? Will Israel destroy Iran?

06 Friday Mar 2015

Posted by in Bible prophecy, Current events

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Iran’s nuclear program has been in the news for a long time, most recently because of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. It is an open secret that Iran has been trying to develop nuclear weapons for more than a decade, with some help from North Korea and Russia. Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have continued almost for the entire Obama presidency. At first, the goal of the negotiations was to end Iran’s nuclear program. However, Iran seems unwilling to end their nuclear program, since the Islamic rulers of Iran need nuclear weapons to realize their political ambitions of conquest. If Iran’s nuclear program was solely for generating electricity, the Iranians would have ended it many years ago or agreed to allow inspections in accordance with international law, since economic sanctions have done great damage to the Iranian economy. By the same token, it has become evident that President Obama will not even consider destroying Iran’s nuclear program with a crippling airstrike. Mr. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have therefore been trying to get the Iranians to agree to something that will limit Iran’s nuclear program in some way.

The rulers of Iran, who are not Arabs, belong to a sect of Islam that is considered a heterodox fringe or cult by the majority Sunni sect of Islam, although probably the worst Islamist groups today are actually composed of radical Sunnis (ISIS, al-Qaida, and affiliated groups). The Iranian form of Islam has a strange apocalyptic eschatology revolving around the supposed coming of the “twelfth imam” and some sort of world conquest or world war. Some people think that Iran’s religious rulers might use nuclear weapons in order to bring about the events that they believe will be associated with the coming of the twelfth imam.

The Iranian regime hates the state of Israel, and has said again and again that they are committed to destroying Israel. Iran is an active supporter of the anti-Israel terrorist group Hezbollah, and in the past Iran has been a strong supporter of Hamas. It comes as no surprise, then, that Israel is working hard to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. But I personally doubt that Israel would be the first target of a nuclear Iran. Iran knows that Israel has a powerful military and nuclear missiles, and Iran knows that Israel would use its nuclear weapons against Iran if necessary. Iran’s archrival in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, and neither the Saudis nor their Gulf allies have nuclear weapons. The Saudis and their allies are therefore very concerned about a nuclear Iran.

There is a lot of uncertainty about the Iranian nuclear issue. For one thing, no one outside of Iran knows for sure exactly how developed Iran’s nuclear program is, and it is possible that Iran already has a nuclear bomb. The Iranians have a history of hiding as much of their activity as possible, and they would not be the first country to have developed nuclear weapons well before Western intelligence agencies discovered them. The increasingly polarized rivalry between Vladimir Putin and the West could also result in Russia taking a much larger role in supporting Iran and its Shiite allies (primarily Bashar Assad and Hezbollah). Perhaps Mr. Putin will provide more direct support to Iran’s nuclear program in order to gain a powerful ally against the United States and Europe.

But while we can speculate about what may or may not happen vis-à-vis Iran’s nuclear program, there is no need for Bible-believing Christians to be in suspense regarding the outcome of events in the Middle East. Ezekiel 38–39 describes prophetically a great invasion of the Middle East by Russia and its allies at the end of the present age (3½ years before the return of Jesus Christ to the earth). Curiously, it describes Israel as “the land that is restored from the sword, whose inhabitants were gathered out of many peoples to the mountains of Israel” (Ezek 38:8). It further calls Israel “the land of unwalled villages . . . those who are at rest, who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls, and having neither bars nor gates” (Ezek 38:11). In other words, Ezekiel 38 portrays Israel as so completely and totally at peace with its neighbors that it has actually disarmed and torn down all of its security walls and fences. Ezekiel 38:13 also seems to portray Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states as unarmed. (Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are not mentioned, while Jordan is said in Daniel 11:41 to successfully resist end-time invasions.) Incredible as it may seem, the Bible portrays the peoples of the Middle East as living in complete peace and harmony, without violence, in a future day! That is not to say that the violence that now exists in the Middle East will not continue or worsen for a while, but it will not last. Further, Israel will not be destroyed by Iran (nor will, it appears the Gulf states); the nation of Israel will remain in its land and prosper until the final few years of world history, when the antichrist will invade the Middle East and will launch a fierce pogrom to attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.

Iran, for its part, is evidently not going away, either. Iran (Persia) is listed in Ezekiel 38:5 as an ally of Russia when Russia invades the Middle East at the end of history. The Bible does not say whether there will be some sort of previous military conflict between Iran and Israel, but it does indicate that Iran will continue to exist, and also that Iran will be brought firmly within the Russian orbit. (For a more detailed description of Ezekiel’s prophecies, see the analysis of Ezekiel 34–39 in volume 4 of my Interpretive Guide to the Bible.)

I am not saying that Christians, or American politicians, should not be concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, or that Christians should not pray for Israel’s protection. But the Bible gives us assurance that Israel will indeed survive the present conflict, and that peace will come to the Middle East.

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David’s mighty men

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Bible

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I posted on the my website yesterday a chart of David’s mighty men, based on 2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 11. David was Israel’s greatest and paradigmatic king, and a man of many talents. He won worldwide fame for his great victories on the battlefield, which expanded Israel’s borders all the way from Egypt to the Euphrates River.

From the beginning of his reign, David kept a cadre of thirty elite warriors who were known as “The Thirty” or “The Mighty Men.” In modern terms, the Thirty would have been something like the U. S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6. These were the go-to soldiers that David could count on to turn the tide of the fiercest battles. Although both 2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 11 refer to the Thirty as a unit, 2 Samuel 23:39 states that the total number of mighty men was thirty-seven. This is because there were seven super-elite warriors who outranked the Thirty. One of these seven super-elites was King David, who was a great warrior in his own right but also Commander-in-Chief. Then there were two tiers of three elites, each of which was ranked from greatest to least. One of these two groups of three consisted of what were evidently the three most capable Israelite warriors—Jashobeam, Eleazar, and Shammah. This group of Three was virtually unbeatable on the battlefield. The other group of Three—Joab, Abishai, and Benaiah—consisted of three men who were greater warriors than the Thirty, though not than the other unit of Three. The second tier of Three, however, had exceptional leadership capabilities, and so were given command over the army. The other great warriors were also given leadership positions, since in the days of hand-to-hand combat officers had to be capable of physically leading their men on the battlefield.

Second Samuel 23 lists thirty-one men in the group of Thirty, but with one duplicated from the list of the Three (Shammah the Hararite). First Chronicles 11 also lists more than thirty names, although the first thirty names in both lists are only slightly different. There are many slight differences in the forms of the names, which are easily explained by common copying mistakes; in some cases, men may have taken more than one name or may have been called by slight variations of the same name. The extra sixteen names in the list in 1 Chronicles 11 probably occur because there were different men in the group of Thirty at different times, due to age, death, injury, and so forth.

In addition to the Thirty, David also had two units of personal bodyguards, “the Cherethites” and “the Pelethites,” and by the end of David’s reign there were two new elite warriors, Shimei and Rei (1 Kgs 1:8). The famous group of Thirty itself does not seem to have outlasted David’s own fighting days.

There are a number of interesting names in the list of mighty men. One is Eliam the son of Ahithophel the Gilonite (2 Sam 23:34). Ahithophel, once David’s closest advisor, betrayed him when David’s son Absalom rebelled (2 Sam 15:12; 16:15–17:23). One wonders whether Eliam followed David when his father sided with Absalom. On the one hand, 2 Samuel 16:6 states that the mighty men went with David out of Jerusalem. On the other hand, it would be difficult for Eliam not to side with his father, and it is unlikely that Ahithophel would have proposed leading an army against David’s retinue were his own son in it. Since 1 Chronicles 11:36 names a different man in Eliam’s place, it is probable that Eliam sided with Absalom and was replaced after the rebellion was put down.

It is remarkable that there were a number of Gentiles among David’s mighty men—Zelek the Ammonite, Uriah the Hittite, Igal of Zobah, Ittai the Gittite, and perhaps others. It is evident that David’s deeds on the battlefield had made his God famous, and that David actively sought to convert foreigners to faith in Yahweh, the God of Israel. Missionary activity did exist in the OT period, and this is one example of it.

The description of David’s mighty men and their heroic deeds in 2 Samuel 23 and 1 Chronicles 11 certainly makes for interesting reading. But, more than that, the greatness of these men and their deeds reflect the greatness of the glory of David’s kingdom, which reflects the greatness of the glory of God. The men who fought for David were warriors for God, and their heroic feats were a demonstration of God’s power in exalting His people and the king whom He anointed.

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