Archives_VIII

Midweekly Reality Check: Meditations on the Mountain
Archives VIII
June-July '06

He looks like a middle-linebacker just past his prime, with a wide, light-up-the-room smile in a round ruddy face half-framed with sandy hair, mounted, without benefit of a neck, on shoulders that fill a doorway. His belt buckle resides in moderate shade. Beefy hands overwhelm yours in a handshake, and if he blesses you with a bear hug you’ll quit breathing till his exuberance passes. But Lord a’mighty, those unlikely he-man hands can finesse a keyboard. When this graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary sits down at the piano, I hear Roger Williams, Nina Simone and Jerry Lee Lewis rolled into one great gifted artist making beautiful music for his God.

In my protestant denomination, so sure of the seriousness of worshiping God that debate over permissible music never ceases, Greg Hill is the best argument I’ve heard for contemporary worship music. Greg can coax new meaning and nuanced feeling out of the great old church hymns of our fathers, but he also writes his own. He composes new music to old lyrics as well as original words and music that come “immediately wed” into a mind he describes as a “dangerous place.” He confesses this usually occurs during a sermon. Once he sang and played the new hymn to the congregation as soon as the sermon was over. His multi-tasking mind can improvise background music while he reads scripture, the musical equivalent of patting your head while rubbing your belly.

It is a rare thing to see such passion transposed onto ivory, but there’s even more to this music ministry. There’s an angelic voice standing behind the baby grand, unhidden by a raised lid (Greg’s music has no trouble finding its way out of that ornate box when it's closed). Kristi is Greg’s wife and mother of a busy 2-year-old with bountiful blonde curls named Cooper, and theirs is a musical and marital union made in heaven.

They were both with us this week at Ridge Haven as Mission to the World held its summer conference for missionaries back in the States on home leave. It's always been a high point of my year in this wilderness cathedral. Serving missionaries on R&R from what too often is literally a war zone these days is the most fulfilling thing I do as Resident Manager. Hanging around such committed Christians always leaves me wrestling with extreme ambivalence. It's a battle between my sense of satisfied servitude of the most rudimentary variety (I’m an MBA errand boy for God’s real warriors) and the feeling of guilt about my puny productivity for the Kingdom compared to theirs. There’s no biblical justification for a burned out businessman skating to glory. Try a biblical word search with “retirement,” or “semi-retirement” or “part-time work.” I’m a blessed man to be exposed to such Godly servants, and I am called to work this all out with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), and I will.

My new friend, Greg Hill, is Director of Music Ministries at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Gainesville, GA, moving to Christ Church in Atlanta next month. Kristi and Greg’s presence here this week just heightened the spiritual mountaintop for the missionaries and me. For the first time in over a decade, I purchased a music CD. You can go here and do the same. I can’t wait for their return to Ridge Haven—twice more before the year is out!

The pagan press is having a heyday with the tragic life and sudden death of Ken Lay. The fallen corporate chieftain called himself a Christian, you see. At the Huffington Post, where I found myself by accident, Dr. Peter Yost gleefully headlined his snarky screed about Lay and other corporate crooks who called themselves Christians: “God's Men: Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!” The NY Times, in its obit, was quick to point out his biblical quote to the press after his conviction: “We believe that God in fact is in control, and indeed he does work all things for good for those who love the Lord.” The grey lady must have been dancing in the editorial aisles with her literary sucker punch to those dangerous Christians. Personally, I have no trouble believing the providential God who used Balaam’s ass to speak the truth (Numbers 22:28) can just as easily use a convicted swindler to remind us moderns of eternal verities.

They say there are no atheists in foxholes, nor (I can vouch) in the cockpit when dancing in the crosshairs of the enemy, nor apparently on the courthouse steps after the guilty verdict is read. If only Lay, instead of prefacing his Romans 8:28 quote with, “I firmly believe I am innocent of the charges against me,” had followed that scripture with a statement of repentance. But such a confession would have precluded any earthly appeal in the courts, I suppose. Quoting God’s absolute truth with an unrepentant heart must surely stir the infinite wrath of an infinitely Holy God. Now Ken Lay faces the court of no appeal.

Peggy Noonan, an outspoken former Reagan speechwriter who often showcases her Catholic faith in her usually excellent columns, strangely took a sabbatical from same in her WSJ OpinionJournal piece on his death, inexplicably titled, On Finding Peace. She chose to focus, sans a hint of God, on incorrigible humanity’s need for third and fourth chances. Now Ken Lay is out of chances. I pray that with his dying breath he begged the God of third and four and seventy times seven chances for forgiveness for making such a hash of his life and ruining so many others.

There are lessons in this tragedy for those with eyes to see. Following so closely after our attendance at Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project Training Conference in Colorado Springs, it reinforced in my mind Dr. Del Tackett’s worldview admonition that, if “you really believe what you believe is really real,” then it will really be reflected in everything you do, including, not least, your work. In spite of postmodern protestations to the contrary, a Christian worldview applies to every facet of our lives, not just to Sunday morning when we paste on our beatific smile and piously perch in our pew for an hour. There is no direction we can go where God has not spoken, as Del Tackett passionately declares.

Sadly, the Barna polls reveal that the pernicious lies of the culture have so infiltrated the ranks of Christian soldiers that the lifestyle of one who considers himself a Christian is indistinguishable, statistically, from the unbeliever, and Ken Lay is the media’s current poster boy. Only 9% of those who said they “had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior” also believed the most basic tenets of the Gospel (see note below), which is, by definition, a Christian worldview. Thus 91% of those who call themselves Christians are not living out God’s truth in the world. The crux of our culture’s decline is the desperate need for reform within the ranks of Christians. I shudder when I remember that quote by Jesus.

Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven…. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not…do many mighty works in your name?' And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness' (Matthew 7:21-23).

Godspeed to The Truth Project and the thousands of change agents it is training, of which I am enthusiastically one.

Noonan lamented the gold fish bowl in which Lay spent his last days. “Now, with modern media, there's no place to hide.” Real Christians know there never was a place to hide from God, and if those who claim the title would remember that, they could avoid the ash heap of wrecked lives. A few thousand years ago a king who committed some heinous sins—adultery and premeditated murder—repentantly prayed (Psalms 139:7-10):

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell
in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.

Peggy thinks “it’s obvious Ken Lay died of a broken heart.” If so, it was self-inflicted. Fallen man, including especially this writer, has always been his own worst enemy. That’s why a merciful God sent his Son to atone, with a horrible sacrificial death, for sins that we are not really sorry for, if we acknowledge them at all, and could never pay for, absent a divine work of amazing grace on a cross and in our hearts. No one is beyond His grace, including Ken Lay and Peggy Noonan and you and me.

The only relief in this area will be here: when every embarrassment is famous for a day and every scandal known worldwide for a week, they'll all start to blend into a big blur. And you can hide in a blur for a while.

There’s no redemption in a momentary blur. It’s not exactly a Christian solution to what is clearly a sin issue. I go with one of her heroes… and mine. A guy named Augustine, 16 centuries ago, said,

Everlasting God, in whom we live and move and have our being: You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

Therein I shall restfully, gratefully, joyfully hide for eternity—no momentary blurs, no embarrassment, no shame, no broken heart.

No fireworks for me, thanks
July 4, 2006

I’ll be as joyful as any American today, and more grateful to God than most just to be here to celebrate our nation’s birthday, but count me out for the fireworks. They hold neither beauty nor thrills for a vet whose gray matter holds enough vivid images of war.

In the spring of 1969 my wingman and I were young fighter pilots sitting alert through a sweltering tropical night at Tuy Hoa Air Base on the beach of the South China Sea in South Vietnam. Sometime after midnight the command post called, "Scramble." The enemy was overrunning a Special Forces camp in the Central Highlands and if we didn’t hurry a hundred Green Berets might not see the light of another day.

We sprinted across a dimly lit apron toward the revetment where two F-100's squatted, armed and “cocked” for quick takeoff. Moments later we were climbing through 5,000 feet into a moonless sky. My wingman’s plane was snuggled in so close to my wing tip that he could spit on it were it not for a Plexiglas canopy and a 400-knot airflow rushing by his cockpit. Over my shoulder the Big Dipper pointed at the North Star at two o'clock high, and an awesome Milky Way proclaimed God’s handiwork, but the task at hand prevented my appreciating heaven’s declaration of the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). This was the scariest kind of graveyard shift work, an interactive fireworks display with maximum carnage as the objective of all parties. Under our wings hung silver canisters of napalm, the most ghastly kind of sound and light show. Each could generate a tidal wave of fire that could incinerate everything on a football field.

The beleaguered special forces camp sat atop a hill in a clearing surrounded by trenches and accordion folds of concertina wire. A C-130, flying above the range of small arms fire, dropped flares under parachutes, attempting to take the night away from the enemy. It lent an eerie illumination, as if from a giant flickering candle, to the desperate scene. From the inky sea of the surrounding jungle we saw the flash of mortar rounds and rockets arcing into the camp and exploding.

At the direction of the Forward Air Controller—the “FAC”—in his small plane circling overhead, we prepared to drop our napalm inside the concertina wire, just fifty meters from where our soldiers hunkered in their secondary line of trenches. The enemy already held the first line.

With “friendlies” so close there was no margin for error. The key to survival and accuracy was intense concentration at high airspeed, low altitude and shallow dive angle, releasing the napalm at fifty feet above the ground, the logic being that if you are standing close enough to the back side of the bull, and you’re swinging a base fiddle, you can’t miss. I dove out of the protective blackness of the sky, dodging the parachute flares and fervently praying that no burned out ones would float unnoticed into my path. An F-100 ingesting a nylon parachute reacts like a sprinter inhaling a sock. Hundreds of fireflies—muzzle flashes from enemy AK-47 rifles—were winking at me. Their small bullets were invisible, but just one hit in the lips and plane and pilot would be interred in the same grave. As my dimly glowing gun sight moved up to the first line of trenches, my right thumb mashed the pickle button and released a napalm bomb. Immediately I buried the control stick in my crotch and rocketed back up into the sanctuary of the night, peering over my left shoulder to check my work. A boiling avalanche of fire engulfed the outer trench. It was a real-time view of hell on earth. Twenty sweat-soaked, hyperventilating minutes later the hillsides were covered with the ashes of the enemy and the grateful Green Berets were celebrating their salvation at the summit.

Cruising home at 15,000 feet, we met the sun at twelve o'clock level. The eastern horizon was a spectacular divine work of abstract art, a celestial canvas of broad horizontal brush strokes of orange and yellow and red on a purple and black background. Nature’s light show blotted out the man-made terror of the night while residual adrenaline staved off exhaustion. Ecstasy reigned. I felt born again with the dawn and thankful beyond words for the Lord’s amazing grace that saved us all. Thirty-seven years later I still feel that way at sunup in my mountain aerie…and I miss nary a one.

So I’ll opt instead for the Wood Thrush vespers at twilight from my back porch pew at Ridge Haven on the Fourth, giving thanks to God that by His grace I am alive, free and residing in the best part of the best possible country to endure this troubled world. Then I’ll rise on the fifth with that same avian choir singing to the muffled applause of a waterfall in deep woods down the mountainside, and celebrate my favorite sound and light show—the birth of a new day. Its glory far exceeds the fireworks of the Fourth, yet its only a faint precursor of the greater glory to come, when the sun will be superfluous as a choir of angels leads the grateful host surrounding the throne of grace.

…for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.
John 18:37

This week’s Midweekly Reality Check: Meditations on the Mountain comes to you from a different mountain. This one is Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado, on the front range of the majestic Rockies—1,243 miles WNW of, and 4000 feet higher and 70 % less humid than our Blue Ridge aerie. As I sit on my mother-in-law’s deck under an orange and black predawn sky, the twinkling lights of Colorado Springs sprawl to the eastern horizon at 12 o’clock low, Pikes Peak towers at 6 o’clock high and the jagged red rocks of Garden of the Gods stand mute at 8 o’clock level. I’ve been enjoying delightful interludes here for 40 years now, ever since Brigadier General John E. Frizen escorted his eldest daughter, a stunning brunette, up the aisle of what used to be the Ent Air Force Base Chapel, just below the horizon on the other side of town, and delivered her to my side for life. The following Monday morning in 1966, after a memorable sojourn in the The Broadmoor honeymoon suite a little further up the mountain, I was 20,000 feet over Oklahoma with my tail on fire, trying to master loops and Immelmann turns as an Air Force student pilot, my bride was ensconced in a tiny apartment in Enid, and the general was back at work inside Cheyenne Mountain, in a massive steel box on giant coil springs called NORAD Headquarters. Two years later, we men were both fighting a war on the other side of the world while mother and daughter lived together here as war widows. A lifetime of memories lived at mach one…but this blog is not about me.

It’s a spiritual mountaintop that I want to share with you this week, one that has my head still spinning and my brain unwilling to shutdown and sleep through the night three days after the event. My bride and I spent last Friday night and all day Saturday at the Focus on the Family’s magnificent campus, on the north side of Colorado Springs, in view of the awesome silver spires of the USAF Academy Chapel, for The Truth Project Training Conference. Twelve hundred people from 39 states and five countries filled the high-tech “cafetorium” to hear our host and Truth Project founder, Dr. Del Tackett, also an alumnus of that steel box inside Cheyenne Mountain and former White House staffer in the first Bush administration, passionately define the mission and the strategy for fighting the “cosmic battle” that faces Christians. It’s the battle of truth versus the “pernicious lies of the culture.” Christianity has been losing this battle because these lies have infiltrated the ranks of its soldiers. The Barna Research Group has “found that only nine percent of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.” Christians are “living with an increasingly secular mind-set,” a pagan worldview.

To stem this alarming tide, “Focus on the Family is launching one of the most ambitious and powerful projects in its 28-year history of ministry”—The Truth Project—comprehensive biblical worldview training with the goal of “exponential change within the body of Christ, as thousands will be transformed through this curriculum.”

Twelve hundred folks with a heart to see this change come about and obviously willing to spend significant sums to get to this training for “Impact Partners,” were spellbound by the presentation. These were not Sunday morning pew potatoes and this was not your average bible conference. My wife and I, along with a Silicon Valley headhunter and his wife from San Jose, CA, and an early retiree from Proctor & Gamble in Baltimore, sat front row center (a first for this rear-pew-loving Presbyterian) as we were instructed how to live “in truth while living in the world.” And further, to witness to the truth to which Jesus bore witness (John 18:37), the truth the culture blindly calls “relative.” This was the third of many training conferences that FotF is holding around the country.

In the words of Del Tackett, my reaction was, “WOW!” Here am I Lord, send me! If everyone who attends these conferences is as pumped as I am, there could be, God willing, true revival in America and the world. I can’t wait to get back to the front lines of my Blue Ridge rainforest, armed with a battle plan, burnished armor, specific prayer cover and excellent logistical support for this cosmic battle for truth. Go here and view the long trailer, then click on “LAUNCH Interactive lesson guide” and get a glimpse of the program, then sign up for a training conference nearest you in the coming months. Hitch hike if that’s the only available option. …be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2), and “make an eternal difference in our world.”

I have a son-in-law I could not be more proud of if he were my own flesh and blood. He’s in the US Air Force flying an important desk, but soon will be a civilian executive. From his well-spoken words below, it is clear the Lord has been teaching him humility lessons at the same time as He’s been teaching me. This really tugged at my heart. I hope it does the same for you. JDW

It was just one of those days. Even before I had a chance to plant my feet on the floor and rub the sleep from my eyes, Satan attacked. Not to imply that he ever telegraphs his blows, but this one in particular caught me off guard, and was distinctly malignant. Slung from the Bow of Despair, Satan’s arrow must have been well saturated with the poisons of unrighteous anger and self-righteous pride, for nothing seemed to be sufficient for me that morning. Even my beloved cup of coffee tasted sour, and was consumed not out of gratitude or joy, but merely out of lust for the drug. Not only was the proverbial rain cloud suspended above my head, but there was a thunderstorm raging in my heart. It was just one of those days, when the last person I wanted to cross paths with was David…whose path I crossed almost immediately upon arriving at work.

David is the “happy guy” at work. You know who I mean. He’s the guy who, no matter the circumstance, epitomizes the role of the joyful worker. If he’s not smiling ear to ear, it’s because he’s quietly singing or humming a pleasant tune. David is not simply joyful at work, but in his work. As a matter of fact, to say I admire the delight he takes in his job would be a lie; I covet it. The best part: David is a janitor (or sanitation engineer as we prefer to call him because it makes us feel better). In addition, David is mentally challenged, or in the crudest of terms, retarded. Normally I really enjoy being around David, but on that day it was reminiscent of staring into the sun after having just awakened from a long nap in a very dark room. Well, that morning I was in David’s office (the bathroom) when I looked up in the sink-mirror to see David entering. In an effort to evade his piercing glow, I quickly dried my hands, hastily made for the door, and in passing, mumbled, “Good morning.” At that moment, David could have selected anyone of his usual greetings from his repertoire, ranging from: “Hullo,” to his favorite: “Have a grrrreat day!” Nope. Neither of those. Instead, David uttered the most astonishing words: “Jesus loves you.” I was so shaken that I literally hit my head upon opening the door, and the most profound reply I could conjure up was a garbled, “Yeah.” I’d love to say that I cheered up immediately and went about my day glorifying and honoring God. However, as I walked towards my office Satan gave a twist to the arrow by whispering in my ear, “What does he know?” Rather than taking delight in the words of encouragement from a friend, I excused them as gibberish, and reduced them to the mumblings of an inept fool.

It wasn’t until the next morning, broken on my knees, did I realize that God’s glory was right in front of my face; revealed by, and contained in a most beautiful and precious vessel. In our society David is handicapped, incompetent, and weak. However, through the stirring of the Spirit within my soul, and in light of the Gospel, I came to realize that I’m the handicapped, inept fool. Standing before an unexpected preacher in the halls of a most humble sanctuary, the sweet tones of the Gospel rang in my ear, but instead of savoring its beautiful chimes, my sinful pride interpreted it as nonsense. In this life, David may be the subject of pity, but in the Kingdom of God, he’ll be the authority over many.

Oh Lord, destroy our pride that we may be more aware of your glory. As your children, fill us with spiritual wisdom and understanding, and make us competent; not in the schemes of this world, but in the wonders of your grace that we may truly hallow your name.

Folly and Self-Delusion
June 13, 2006

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives
generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
James 1:5

He was a somewhat scruffy, curmudgeonly old Air Force fighter pilot with the gold oak leaves of a major on the shoulders of his never-ironed flying suit. When his conversation became intense, which was often, he unconsciously removed his flight cap with his right hand, and with the same hand scratched his salt and pepper crew cut with the intensity of a dog with flees.

Major Ferguson was approaching 20 years in the service and it was obvious to all, even to him, that there would not be another promotion in his Air Force career. It made for one relaxed old throttle jockey who cared for nothing more than flying his beloved F-100 for as long as the U.S. government would let him. He was my instructor in fighter pilot school at Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis, New Mexico, situated in the midst of a thousand square miles of beach with no water. There was a stockyard at both ends of town, and no matter which way the wind blew you knew Clovis was cow country. The airborne cowboys of our training squadron all worshiped the ground the old ramrod walked on and imprinted his love for inanimate flying objects.

One day I was number four in a four-ship flight of single-seat F-100's—three student wingmen with Major Ferguson leading—taking off headed for the gunnery range, a large bull’s-eye painted in the desert. It was only my fifth flight in an F-100, and I was far from one with the aircraft. We had taken off five seconds apart. Major Ferguson went first and was in a climbing, shallow-banked turn to the left circling the airbase while waiting on the rest of the flight to join up on his wing. Now it may sound simple as you visualize three airplanes catching up with another circling airplane. It is not. It requires an acute recognition of just the right cutoff angle and rate of closure, and making the airplane do what you want it to do to achieve that, a real challenge for a rookie fighter pilot who had not yet mastered life in three dimensions.

I was enthusiastically giving it my best shot when I heard that gruff, gravely old voice of Major Ferguson over the radio, where God, my erstwhile rookie associates, and anyone else on that frequency could hear: Number Four, can't you see what you're doing to yourself? (His language was far more salty than this sanitized paraphrase.) The unspoken answer to the question was no. I had just graduated first in a class of 50 pilots at basic flight school, and this was maximum mortification for my inflated ego—I might not ever have the nerve to show my face at happy hour again.

A few seconds later even I could see what I was doing to myself. Instead of sliding gently up in formation on his wing tip, I went screaming right on by Major Ferguson's plane, a confused passenger in an out-of-control F-100. What courage it must have taken for him to sit there watching me closing on him at a far-too-great speed and cutoff angle, prepared to duck in whatever direction to avoid my ballistic F-100. After the flight, Major Ferguson, with sweeping motions of his flattened hands and X-rated epithets, explained to me (and my smirking co-wingmen) precisely how I did what I did to myself.

I have lost track of the number of times I have repeated this lesson in my life, how I have been my own worst enemy, how my self-delusion kept me from seeing what was self-evident to others, until it was too late. Spurgeon said, “I am a mass of folly.” Chuck Colson said, “Man is the master of self-delusion.” Both are right on. I have likewise lost track of the innumerable times I have watched others, even in church, come to ruin in this same self-delusional mode.

Most churches are governed by committee, in the slower pace of church life, to mitigate these errors of self-delusion. There are those who say committees make the same mistakes as individuals, it just takes them longer. But if that committee (or board or session) is much in prayer, is open, honest and above board with one another in all their dealings, humbly seeking consensus without manipulation, the collective wisdom of Holy Spirit filled minds will do great things for the Kingdom.

The authoritarian leadership essential in air combat has no place in a committee structure. A few years ago, the wingmen on one of our nation’s premier military flight demonstration teams unquestioningly followed their errant leader to their deaths in a fiery four-plane collision with the ground. I have witnessed the same, figuratively speaking, in church committees.

Pride and ego—the ravages of sin in a fallen world—while not as blatantly obvious in church committees as in the fighter squadron, are nonetheless there and even more insidious. Absent grace, they can lead to self-delusion that even hindsight will not cure, from which mistakes provide neither learning nor contrition, and from which no good thing comes to glorify God—the Christian’s mandate.

Major Ferguson had a problem with his eyes—he needed glasses—but he had a bigger problem with his ego. It would not allow him to admit to himself that he was not immune to the aging process. He refused to wear glasses. In the end my mentor was defeated by the same malady he pointed out in me when I was a rookie fighter pilot—he could not see what he was doing to himself. As a Forward Air Controller—a FAC—in Vietnam (his third combat tour of duty), he flew a small, slow, unarmed plane the size of a Piper Cub over the battlefield, controlling air strikes. In an effort to better see the enemy on the ground, he flew too low and was shot down and killed.

As in all of life, God’s Word has an answer for avoiding personal ruin from folly and self-delusion.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him (James 1:5).

C. H. Spurgeon says of this truth, “No man will ask for wisdom till he knows that he is ignorant.” Pride is the devil’s disease that prevents acknowledgement of ignorance. We must abandon the broken cisterns of our own wisdom and earnestly, humbly seek the only Fountain of Truth, whether we are church members or leaders. The man who would be a great leader in the Lord’s battalions is the man who sincerely shares the Apostle Paul’s self-abasement—wretched man that I am (Rom. 7:24a)—and distrusts all human judgment, including his own.

…say unto Him, “Lord, I have discovered now that I am not so wise as I thought I was; I am foolish and vain. Lord, teach me.” Make a full confession, and this shall be a good beginning for prayer.

… the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
Matthew 24:44b
[Jesus] said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons
that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”
Acts 1:7

I am sure Jesus said these words, and I am sure he meant them. There are many more like them. Jesus Christ went to great lengths to make it plain that God did not want anyone to know when Christ was to return in judgment so that we might be watchful and live each day of our lives as if this were the day. Why then do today’s self-styled prophets try so hard to figure out what God has so clearly said man cannot ascertain? Could it be for the profits? It must be. The biblical prophecy business is booming. Even Ann Coulter’s new sure-to-be bestseller, Godless, comes out today—6-6-6—in a clever marketing spoof, but I doubt the antichrist or any other beast will be revealed (Rev. 13:18). With each new mini-Armageddon or tortured date based on numbers from Revelation passing without the predicted cataclysm, another best-selling book explains how it fits the re-revised end time scenario.

Hal Lindsay spawned the modern version of this centuries-old industry when he wrote The Late Great Planet Earth in 1970. Events proved him wrong but did no harm to sales of the genre—quite the opposite in fact, and he’s as popular as ever. The Left Behind series, based on Tim LaHaye’s similar end time theories and written by Jerry Jenkins, has rocketed Christian literature into the mainstream, topping the charts. Imitators abound. Advertisements for prophecy seminars are sprouting like old Burma Shave signs on country roads in my beloved Blue Ridge boondocks.

But there’s an exegetical problem with this abundant cash flow—the prophecy on which it hinges may well have substantially all come to pass a long time ago. The key biblical prophecies are found in Jesus’ Olivet Discourse recorded in three Gospels—Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21—John’s Revelation and the Book of Daniel.

Jesus vividly describes an apocalypse that will leave “not one stone upon another” in the towering white granite Temple and buildings in Jerusalem, preceded by extraordinary supernatural signs. He said, “This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” John introduces his apocryphal “revelation of Jesus Christ…to show his servants what must soon take place…because the time is near” (Rev. 1:1-3).

The prophecy entrepreneurs ignore first century history and redefine Jesus’ term, “this generation,” as well as John’s Revelation time references to make these prophecies seem applicable to events today, 2000 years later. Jesus ties his prophecy to that of Daniel, who accurately foretold the end of Jerusalem in 490 years. With the most convoluted reasoning, these zealous capitalists contend Daniel’s prophetic time clock has been halted for two millennia at the 483-year mark.

There is an another interpretation, called preterism, that makes a powerful case for the fulfillment of all or nearly all (partial preterism) of these prophecies in 70 A.D., when the Jews were slaughtered and Jerusalem leveled by Roman legions, forty years after Jesus’ prophesied it. It fits Daniel’s 490-year prophecy of Israel’s apocalypse. Modern theologians R.C. Sproul (The last Days According to Jesus), Kenneth Gentry, Jr. (Before Jerusalem Fell), and Gary Demar (Last Days Madness) have examined preterism and the supporting evidence is compelling.

Jewish historian Josephus, an eyewitness to that first century holocaust with no axe to grind for Christianity, wrote about it in The Jewish Wars, a word picture as gripping and grisly as any modern thriller. To read it is to be overwhelmed with the prophecies of Jesus, John and Daniel and the divine inspiration of the Bible. Sproul, who classifies himself a partial preterist, calls Josephus’ magnum opus “…a chronicle of fulfilled biblical prophecy,” and his description of Jerusalem’s destruction “a radical fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy in the Olivet Discourse.”

Some of Revelation’s most mystifying and gruesome metaphorical depictions of the apocalypse become clear reading Josephus’ work. For example, Revelation 14:20 foretells of blood “rising as high as the horses’ bridles.” Josephus narrates a Roman massacre of the Jewish multitudes on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that turned it red with mutilated bodies of humans and horses (Wars 3:10:9).

In Revelation 16:21 John prophesies, “From the sky huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell on men.” Josephus writes of white stones from Roman catapults, each weighing a talent (75-125 pounds), that rained devastation on besieged Jerusalem (Wars 5:6:3). Supernatural signs like those Jesus predicted are chillingly described by both Josephus (Wars 6:5:3 et al) and pagan Roman historian Tacitus (History 1:3). There is much more to this centuries-old preterist debate that is worthy of a Christian’s time and effort to explore, as the above mentioned tomes attest.

In the Olivet Discourse Jesus emphasized that “the day or the hour” of his return is unknowable, yet the for-profit prophets persist in their presumptuous prognostications, unabashed by failure, consequent ridicule by non-Christians, and embarrassment by fellow Christians.

Literature that keeps folks mindful of judgment day can be beneficial in God’s providence, but the primary message of Jesus’ Olivet Discourse and Revelation is the manner in which Christians are to live in a difficult, dangerous and uncertain world in preparation for Jesus’ return. Focusing their entrepreneurial prophet motive on that, rather than the impenetrable subordinate issue of timing, would be much more in step with Jesus’ marching orders to “make disciples…teaching them to obey,” to “love one another” and live as if he were returning today in judgment. But it probably wouldn’t pay as well…as the world knows pay….

“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.”
(Matthew 25:13)

No fireworks for me, thanks July 4, 2006

Folly and Self-Delusion June 13, 2006

No fireworks for me, thanks
July 4, 2006

Folly and Self-Delusion
June 13, 2006