The Last Days

 I have believed in the past that a Preterist interpretation of “last days” language in the New Testament was the most reasonable understanding of it, holding that the “last days” were the end of the Old Covenant. But it was something I had never given the time it deserved, and I don’t think my broader understanding of Scripture was sufficient to come to a conclusion on the matter. I’ve spent some time looking at 1 Peter recently, examining the Greek, comparing it with other passages that speak of “the end”, and taking in passages that speak of the bodily resurrection (1 Corinthians 15 and 1 Thessalonians 4). And I don’t believe the Preterist reading of that language is full enough to cover everything the New Testament means by it. It seems to me now that a more Biblically accurate reading to be made of this is to see the “last days” as referring to the final period of God’s eternal plan of salvation - that is, the whole scope of history stretching from the incarnation of Christ on into eternity. This includes the overlapping of the Old Covenant and the New Covenant that occurred in the the first century, but does not refer simply to the end of the Old Covenant. This still leaves place for a Partial Preterist understanding of the fulfillment of prophecy, including the Book of Revelation. A part of Christ’s work was that of bringing the Jewish system to an end, in fulfilling it by doing what it could not do and by bringing in the Gentiles so that, with Jewish believers, all the nations of the earth might worship Him as His Church. This also includes a positive, Postmillennial view of history - Jesus is victorious, and will continue to be so, through His Church, until all people bow to Him. Peter’s letters are filled with this positivity, emphasizing it as a reality to be seen even in the midst of suffering. 

A full consideration of this would take more than I’ll attempt right now. After all, pages upon pages have been written about it throughout history. Whether I will try to cover some of my reasoning in the future only time will tell.

But, I will note, the Lord tells us that “the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” ( Rom. 16:20), and “soon” is according to God’s perfect judgment, not our own limited view. “Jesus Christ...has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Peter 3:21-22). He is “seated...in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named“ (Eph. 1:20-21). And He is currently “destroying every rule and every authority and power” (1 Cor. 15:24), even through us, as we “tear down strongholds” (2 Cor. 10:4) by the example of our lives and as we “make a defense to anyone who asks (us) for a reason for the hope that is in” us (1 Peter 3:15).

“To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:11). Jesus is King, and He reigns now over all things from His throne in Heaven. And He will do so until “the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet”(1 Cor. 15:24-25), when finally God will “be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).

WandaVision - Hate Makes No Art

If only WandaVision had gone for a more heavy-handed Cultural Marxist allegory.

Here’s what I don’t understand about the WandaVision show. So far the show has been predictable and, to me, boring. It has been a recap of classic sitcoms for the most part, too familiar and overplayed to be entertaining. But even this newest episode was derivative to the point of boredom. The acting was bad, and the dialogue was uninteresting. The characters were predictable and stuck in classic tropes. It followed the pattern of classic adventure TV shows in a staid way. One might even suggest it came off as a mockery of similar shows, even of Agents of Shield. Is the mind-warping aspect of the show intended to take on a breaking the fourth wall aspect, extending beyond the borders of Wanda’s artificially created reality into your own livingroom? Are they trying to be that creative? Or is the show just really bad? Given that young Cultural Marxists are notorious for making this sort of bad art as a regular practice, I suspect the latter. Marxism always makes terrible art, because it begins with a denial of the created order and, hating that order and the God of Creation and Providence behind it, they seek to destroy it.

At what point do cynicism and nihilism ruin the artistic endeavor, pursuing creativity in self-contradiction as they trudge on in despair?

Art can only be made as it is born out of love. Anything else descends the direction of anti-art, that is, of death.

At the Critical Moment

1 Peter 1

Vs. 5 - “ἐν καιρῷ ἐσχάτῳ” - “in the last time”, “in the last critical moment”

Vs. 11 - “εἰς τίνα ἢ ποῖον καιρὸν” - “into who (what) or what manner of time”, “unto who or what kind of critical moment”

Vs. 20 - “ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων” - “in (on, upon) the last times”, “in the furthest of times”, “in the very last of times”

In 1 Peter 1, Peter has a certain number of thoughts that he repeats throughout the chapter. And it is clear that whatever he meant by these three phrases, he intended them to parallel each other - they all refer to the same thing. What they refer to can be determined by looking more at the chapter.

In vs. 20 he is bracketing time at its extreme points, the beginning and the ending of history: “προεγνωσμένου μὲν πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου, φανερωθέντος δὲ ἐπ᾽ ἐσχάτου τῶν χρόνων δι᾽ ὑμᾶς”. Christ was foreknown before the very beginning of time, and was made manifest (or made to shine forth) at the very end of time. And for Peter, that very end at least included the first century, the time in which he wrote.

Prayer For The Pretender

“Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” - Ps. 109:8

Or, as a friend said, “I see some Christian friends exhorting us to pray for our new President. I agree, and I recommend praying Psalms 5, 35, 83, and 94.”

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“Because the [Roman] people were virtuous they were magnanimous. Because they were free, they scorned power. 

But when they had lost their principles, the more power they had, the less carefully they managed it, until finally, having become their own tyrant and their own slave, they lost the strength of liberty and fell into the weakness of license.”

Montesquieu, “The Spirit of the Laws” (1748)

Let’s Impeach (Twist) Again

 It’s like the Catholic Church digging up the bones of dead “heretics” after they’re long gone and burning them, just to show them. Whenever he finally kicks the bucket they’d better bury his body in an unknown place, or some loony enraged Leftist will try to do that to him too. Or maybe some “Republican”, given the Rinos out there.

Maybe they should work in a third impeachment, you know, just to complete the trilogy.

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Based on Fascistbook’s ads I’m getting, they think a war is coming and I’m going to partake. They also think I have a smoking problem and my nonexistent dog needs high-quality vegan bacon treats.

They are quite happy to benefit financially off of the social unrest. But there are no branches of the Federal Reserve in Hell, shocking though that may be.

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“And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.“

Poor, naive deplorables that they were.

How incredibly familiar. I wonder how many “shepherds”, particularly among the NeverTrumper scholars, looking snobbishly down their bespectacled noses at the rubes supporting Trump, still have their jobs, their houses, their health insurance? 

But he is so distasteful. So unsophisticated. He eats MacDonalds and says not nice things.

At what point do we enter the territory of “tithing mint and cumin”? I dare say with some we’re awfully close.

I can’t help but keep thinking of The Name of the Rose. As the people suffered in squalor and ignorance outside the monastery walls, inside the scholars debated the penultimate theological question of whether or not Jesus owned the robe He wore.

The whole thing is nauseating.

This sort of cluelessness from the scholars is why the average Christian will listen to the subpar or even heretical theology of some guy wearing a ball cap and pontificating in a video behind the wheel of his truck about things he barely understands, rather than listening to the better theology of the scholars.

He bears their flesh. And the scholars don’t.

One Plan, Not Two

 The key idea of Dispensationalism is that God still has two plans in play, one for Israel and one for the Church. What makes this so odd is that the New Testament not only goes to great lengths to say the exact opposite, but that the exact opposite, that Jew and Gentile are united in the Church and there is only one plan in play now, is the central message of the New Testament.

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Romans 1:17 - “ἐκ πίστεως εἰς πίστιν”. I understand the difficulties of translation, but I don’t understand why there would be an impulse to translate this any other way than “out of faith and into faith”. Contextually it clearly seems to be a reference to motion from the Jewish era into the era of the Church, from Old Covenant into New Covenant. The just in the predominantly Jewish past lived by faith, as with Abraham, and the just in the New Covenant, whether Jew or Gentile, equally lives by faith. As such the phrase parallels “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” in the previous verse.

This then has to be seen as leading to Romans 9-11.

Desecrating Our Sacred Halls

What really profaned the Temple in Israel? Was it the physical breaching of its walls? No. God allowed its walls to be breached because Israel through her sin had destroyed the sanctity of her worship and service of God over and over again. She had violated her covenant with God repeatedly, angering and grieving God until finally He gave her over to what she wanted- to abandon Him and worship idols like the nations. What happened at the Capitol building, as in Israel, was merely the physical manifestation of what spiritually has already happened - the death of a people, a nation, a civilization - the giving over by God of a people to their desired judgment and destruction. We, as a people and with our representatives, have destroyed ourselves. We have desecrated ourselves.

As Filthy Rags?

 “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away” (Isaiah 64:6). It’s an oft quoted verse, or at least partially quoted. But it’s clearly speaking of Israel as having been unfaithful in her covenant with Yahweh, and that before the coming of Christ. It is referring to a particular matter in history, not a condition of all saved people throughout their lives and throughout history.

When you then turn to Romans 3, which is a parallel to it, you see the same thing. Paul is speaking of a condition of all peoples before the work of Christ has had bearing upon their lives, even moreso, before the work of Christ was accomplished. Paul even seems, in chs. 2 and 3, to be taking Isaiah 64 and applying it not only to Israel but to all people. All people, whether they had the Law or not, were subject to the penalties that come in violating it. And so the passage has to be read redemptive-historically, or maybe better, covenantal-historically. It’s a misappropriation to jump in and pull out this notion of works as filthy rags and apply it to all the works of all Christians, ignoring the context. Beyond this, such an application would have to ignore Romans 6-8, in which Paul makes it clear that living in sin is not the normal state of a redeemed man. A Christian’s works are not all as filthy rags before God, but rather are generally pleasing and acceptable to God. To suggest this is not true would be to cast doubt upon the work of God in salvation. The general direction of all Christians is to walk in holiness and obedience to God’s Law, with sin being an exception in ones life. If that exception ever seems to become the rule, it’s at that point that his salvation comes into doubt.