Having fun on Youtube these days...

A new song for you:

Incomplete.

From an article about Richard Rorty, whose ideas I sometimes like to try and wade through:

But in his zeal to embrace American pragmatism and democracy, Rorty has adopted—perhaps inadvertently at first, but now more intentionally—a new religious faith that gives him the unified picture of the universe he has always longed for. Rorty has come to accept that all competing worldviews are ultimately competing commitments to some orienting faith, and that no conflict between worldviews can be resolved by an appeal to reason or objective standards of truth. At their core, all worldviews require faith and hope.

The return

Hey folks. I have been busy working on other blog sites because we just finished an album and I am working on getting the word out. So check it all out if you are so inclined...

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Words to ponder from C.S. Lewis

From the essay "The World's Last Night":

...But there is worse to come. “Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”

It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side. That they stood thus in the mouth of Jesus himself, and were not merely placed thus by the reporter, we surely need not doubt. Unless the reporter were perfectly honest he would never have recorded the confession of ignorance at all; he could have had no motive for doing so except a desire to tell the whole truth. And unless later copyists were equally honest they would never have preserved the (apparently) mistaken pre­diction about “this generation” after the passage of time had shown the (appar­ent) mistake. This passage (Mark 13:30-32) and the cry “Why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) together make up the strongest proof that the New Testament is historically reliable. The evangelists have the first great character­istic of honest witnesses: they mention facts which are, at first sight, damaging to their main contention...

A Call to Christian Anarchy

Ho boy, those two books were at the center of my focus just about ten years ago. But I haven't talked much about them for a long time, gets one too many frowny looks. Here comes round 2??

Jacques Ellul was a brilliant French thinker who saw profound similarities between Anarchism and the view of government espoused by Jesus (and, he argues, the rest of the Bible as well). Of course, the secular anarchists were too optimistic in thinking humans could ever govern themselves. But they were right about the evils of government. Government is ruled by Satan and the rebellious principalities and powers (which, unfortunately, Ellul thinks are mythic symbols of human evil).

The Kingdom Jesus established is anarchistic in that it recognizes God alone as the arche (supreme power). It thus lives free from all other powers (an-arche [anarchy] means without authority). Governments are part of the fallen, oppressed world system that has been done away with in Christ.

In Ellul's estimation, it's not appropriate for Kingdom people to either support or revolt against governments. This gives them too much credit. Rather, following the example of Jesus, we should ignore them as much as possible, put up with them as much as we need to, and stay focused on living out the radical Kingdom. If we do this, then we, like Jesus, will find ourselves revolting against the government (and culture). We are, most fundamentally, called to be non-conformists. Our service to the world is the way our counter-cultural lives expose the invalidity of all forms of government by manifesting the reign of God.

I would add Christi-anarchy by Dave Andrews to the two titles that Greg Boyd mentions in this post.

2007 Pictures

We made a (very simple) music video!!

When Will Christ Return

Hey Graham, sorry to basically repost your entire post over here, but I wanted to keep it here for later. So in case anyone is wondering, all credit to Graham for his excerpt from David Kroll's When Will Christ Return:

Is the coming of Christ on clouds to be taken literally? How is this expression used in scripture? In Isaiah 19:1, in a prophecy concerning Egypt, it is written, “See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt.” In Psalm 18:9, David, in a psalm of praise to God for deliverance from his enemies, writes, “He parted the heavens and came down; dark clouds were under His feet.” In another psalm of praise, David speaks of God in this manner: “He makes the clouds His chariot and rides on the wings of the wind” (Psalm 104:3). Coming in the clouds, riding on the wings of the wind, like many other expressions concerning the activity of God in the scriptures, are simply expressions of God’s magnitude of power and presence as He intervenes in the affairs of men. These are not literal expressions of how God appears.

...Christ uses an object lesson to demonstrate to His disciples that when they see come to pass all the things He had just predicted; the wars, famines, earthquakes, the gospel going to the world, etc., His coming would be at hand. Christ said just as they would know that summer is near when they see leaves come out on a fig tree, so they would know that the end was about to occur when they see all these events taking place. Christ then dates the events He is discussing by saying that the generation He was addressing would not pass until all the things He was speaking of would come to pass. All “these things” included His return (verse 30). What generation is Christ addressing? To what time was He dating these events?

It must be remembered that Christ is addressing His disciples in the Olivet discourse. He is answering their questions about when the temple will be destroyed and His return will take place. In addressing His disciples, He says to them, “Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.” Christ then makes the statement about their generation not passing until all these things are fulfilled. The “you” Christ is addressing are his disciples. Christ is not addressing us or anyone else. It must be understood that when we read the Olivet discourse, we are reading a record of Christ addressing His disciples. When Christ tells them “when you see all these things,” He is telling them that it is they who will see all these things, not others living thousands of years into the future.

The scriptural evidence strongly indicates that it was the generation that was living during the time of Christ’s ministry that lived to experience the events Christ prophesied. A spiritual return of Christ in judgment, through the vehicle of human armies, is not out of line with other similar events in Scriptural history. The Old Testament is full of accounts of God’s coming in various ways to bring judgment upon nations. Did God physically appear in these events? No, He didn’t. Instead, He appeared through human armies and other natural phenomena to accomplish His purpose.

Every disciple whose writings make up the New Testament addressed their audiences from the perspective that Christ would return during their lifetime. They believed and taught this because of what Christ taught them. The written record of Christ’s teachings strongly point to a first-century return and establishment of the Kingdom. This return was not a physical return. It was a spiritual return whereby Christ facilitated His purpose through the Roman armies. That purpose was to bring judgment upon those refusing to accept Jesus Christ as Messiah and the New Covenant system that He came to establish.

There is no doubt that the death and resurrection of Christ caused the sacrificial system to become obsolete. Through His death and resurrection, Christ became our High Priest. There no longer was a need for the priestly system of the Old Covenant. For Gentiles converting to Christianity, the Christ event was confirmation enough that a new system was being established. For many Jews converting to Christianity, the Old Covenant was still felt to be of significance. This obsolete system did not pass away at the death of Christ. While it no longer held any spiritual significance before God, it nevertheless continued to function physically for another forty years. Those who continued to adhere to this system believed it still to be a viable system and necessary for a proper relationship with God. This included Christian Jews who still wanted to cling to many aspects of the old system. This misplaced adherence to an obsolete system would end only when the means to facilitate this system would be destroyed. This destruction would confirm that the new had replaced the old in its entirety.

Therefore, the establishment of the New Covenant was a gradual process that took place between the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ and His return in the destruction/judgment of A.D. 66 to 73. The Old and New Covenants co-existed during this period of time. The Old Covenant would not be wiped out until the destruction of the temple, which was the centerpiece of that covenant. There is good scriptural evidence for this position.

...The conclusion to this matter is that the last days are past. The New Testament last days were a specific time frame relating to the transition from the Old to the New Covenant. This transition facilitated the movement from death unto life. This transition facilitated the establishment of the spiritual Kingdom and our ability to be reconciled to God and to be given eternal life. As Paul said, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). Paul said that the sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. The death and resurrection of Christ provide for the forgiveness of sin and thus facilitate the removal of death. The victory over death has been accomplished through the death, resurrection and return of Christ. The return of Christ is as critical to this process as His death and resurrection. The scriptures clearly show that the victory over death was not complete until the complete removal of the Old Covenant system. This didn’t happen until the destruction of the temple and the judgment upon Israel.

Graham asks, "Are we living in the last days"

I have had discussions lately about Matthew 24:34 and the problems it poses for what I was raised to believe about what we called the "end times". That particular verse has become a good example for me of the lengths evangelicals are willing to go to make a verse say things it clearly does not, because it doesn't fit with their view of the end times. With that in mind, Graham's post today was an interesting read:

I don't hold very popular views on the end times. That is, I didn't think I did. Around the turn of the Millenium, I wrote my Spurgeons College thesis on the significance of the fall of Jerusalem in AD70. At the time, any one who got into discussion with me on the subject, soon began to look at my like I had two heads.

The 'star' of my disseration was J.S. Russll, who wrote his classic The Parousia in 1878. Russell concluded that Jesus returned, as he had promised, in the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem. The thing is, this view is becomming more and more acceptable, thanks to the likes of N.T. Wright, Scot McKnight and Tim King...

He then quotes an article by Tim King that goes into detail on why we are living in the first days of the new creation, rather than the last days of the old one. Makes one think.

I am not sucking up, I actually think there is something to this...

“Women are the peacemakers. The world will not achieve peace without the energy and the work of women.” So writes Dolores Huerta of the United Farmworkers. Gandhi said the same thing in 1947: “Women are the natural messengers of the gospel of nonviolence, if only they will realize their high estate…. It is for American women to show what power women can be in the world. You can become a power for peace by refusing to be carried away by the flood-tide of the pseudo-science glorifying self-indulgence that is engulfing the West today and apply your minds instead to the science of nonviolence…. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with women.”

From Godspace