The Priority of Teaching in the Household Style Church

Ask many Christians, especially church leaders, about "house church" and sooner or later you will hear concerns raised that such churches are prone to being weak on bible teaching. Some criticisms will go even further and portray such simple expressions of church as potential hotbeds of heresy.

The reality is however that household-style churches, if they are understood and operating according to principles set out in the New Testament, actually have the potential to be centres of strong bible teaching and learning.

Here's what I mean.

In any midsize or large local church there will often be a number of gifted bible teachers and preachers. Some of these will be elders or leaders in the church - indeed, one of the apostolic requirements of an elder is that they must be "able to teach". In practice, however, many of those with this ability will not exercise it very often - at least not outside of individual pastoral situations. A typical church will have a weekly Sunday morning service, with bible teaching and maybe an evening service as well. There may be a midweek bible study group - though in many churches these have been replaced by home groups lead by church members - and there may be occasional courses, conferences or one-off events at which the bible is taught. Some churches, following a pattern established in north American churches, may also have a Sunday School - meaning an adult biblical education programme supplementary to the main weekend service.

In such a church setting, the total public/group teaching work of the church may amount to no more than a few hours each week. 

This reality raises a number of issues. One of them is a practical question: if a pastor or church leader is only preaching once a week (at the most), what are they meant to be doing the rest of the time? The answer varies from church to church, but in my own experience of being in full-time church leadership for twenty years, non-preaching time often consists of some or all of the following: 

• preparation and study; prayer; 


• meeting individuals; 


• attending planning meetings; 


• strategic thinking; travelling; 


• troubleshooting; 


• interfacing with the wider community; 


• practical acts of service; 


• emails and other administration. 

The question is, are the church's teachers and pastors meant to be doing these tasks? Or are these activities the result of a church system that unwittingly minimises bible teaching and elevates organisational management? 

When the early apostles were arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin, they were accused of having filled Jerusalem with their teaching. How had they managed to leave themselves open to such a charge? 

The Book of Acts tells us that the pattern of the Jerusalem church was to meet in the temple courts (the large setting) and in homes for more intimate fellowship, meals and breaking of bread. What is often missed, however, is that the early apostles taught in both settings - the large and the small. 

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah.      (Acts 5:42)

Let's try a maths exercise. Luke (assuming he wrote Acts) records that the number of men in Jerusalem who believed in Jesus at this time was around five thousand. The text makes it fairly clear that this figure did not include women and children. Let's speculate that this number of men represents a total church population of at least 15,000 people. Let's then speculate that an average Jerusalem home could accommodate about thirty people at one time.  If the total number of believers (including children) were equally divided between such homes when they met, we would discover about 500 "house churches" in Jerusalem in the middle of the first century. None of this is provable through historical means of course. It is a thought exercise resting on a number of suppositions. 

The twelve Jerusalem apostles are portrayed in Acts as spending their days teaching about Jesus in the temple courts and from house to house. In a typical week, therefore, if each apostle visited a house church every day, they might have taught publicly about Jesus at least seven times a week - in addition to any preaching they may have done in the larger temple court setting. This amounts to a total of at least 84 teaching sessions a week in Jerusalem by eye-witnesses of Christ and his resurrection - over 4,000 interactive sermons a year. If we compare this figure with a possible number of home churches of 500, we could envisage a scenario in which each house fellowship received a teaching apostle approximately every three to four weeks. 

This level of apostolic teaching (if it bears any relation to what actually took place) may help shed some light on the claim that the apostles had filled Jerusalem with their teaching. I wonder how many contemporary home groups or house churches are fortunate enough to receive that level of apostolic input in a typical year. I suspect very few. 

The thought exercise outlined above does not prove anything historically. It merely illustrates the fact that, if those with the gifting and calling to teach the word of God were released to do so as the primary activity of their working week, there is no inherent reason why such teachers, apostles, pastors or prophets could not be actively and fruitfully deployed in small household style churches if they moved around between them on a regular basis. Such a model actually allows for more bible teaching from those able to teach rather than less. By contrast, the current system of larger Sunday services, with all their inefficiencies of size, resource and administration, leads inevitably to less bible teaching, as those primarily gifted and called to do it find themselves spending time on maintaining an organisation rather than equipping believers in their homes and places of work.  



Church history actually gives us a working model of such a system of widespread decentralised itinerant bible teaching. Early Methodism, under the leadership of John Wesley, had a very well-worked-out system of such teaching with ministers assigned to several local "societies", "classes" (groups of about 6) and "bands" within a geographical area or territory.  



Many of these itinerant preachers and bible teachers were commissioned by Wesley not by the official Church of England to which they nominally adhered in the movement's early years. The effective use of such itinerant ministers went hand-in-hand with the growth of the Methodist movement - from around 15,000 people in the 1780s to 130,000 a decade later and around one million within 50 years of its founding. 



One writer of Methodist history notes that:

“Moving to and fro, the itinerant was a bond of union between the societies in the circuit, and his appointment in several circuits with the passing years knit them together in the connexion of which he was the representative. The system helped also to secure uniformity in teaching and administration......His doctrine and discipline and those of his predecessor and successor had been derived from Wesley and the Conference. To these he and they were all amenable. Different times and conditions may necessitate modifications; but for securing the unity. homogeneity, and happy co-operation of a new, scattered, varied, and rapidly-growing community, perhaps nothing better than the itinerancy within the circuits and from circuit to circuit could have been devised. Wesley's preachers had the mobility of Wyclif's itinerating poor priests and laymen, or recalled the Friars of the Middle Ages without their hampering vows.”

Decentralised models of church (call them "house church" if you want) both require and facilitate the emergence of bible teachers who focus on that activity as a priority, without the encumbrances of a settled organisational model of church congregations and Sunday services. 

Beyond Information Sharing: Preaching that Reveals Secrets

The prophet Jeremiah faced a challenge unlikely to be encountered by most modern preachers in the western world: his family were plotting to kill him.

...the men of Anathoth...are seeking your life and saying 'Do not prophesy in the name of the LORD or you will die by our hands'. (Jeremiah 11:21)

According to Jeremiah's own account of the incident, he was unaware of the conspiracy before it became an immediate threat. His insight into the plot came about, he claims, as a result of God revealing it to him:

Because the LORD revealed their plot to me, I knew it, for at that time he showed me what they were doing. (Jeremiah 11:18)  

The exact reasons for his family's extreme hostility are not fully given in the passage (Jeremiah 11:18-12:6) but it centred around their strong dislike of the prophet's message.

Great bible scholars whose opinions I respect and whose qualifications greatly exceed my own suggest that Jeremiah may have come to an understanding of the murder plot through a message being passed on to him by someone who was aware of it. The late John A Thompson, for instance, cites the influential archaeologist and biblical scholar Dr John Bright when he writes:

A sympathetic relative who brought the news may well have been Yahweh's informant. 

(JA Thompson, The Book of Jeremiah, p. 350, NICOT series)

While it is quite possible that this was the case, there is an alternative view at least worth considering: that the news of the plot on Jeremiah's life came to the prophet through immediate divine revelation, without any human intermediary.

The following factors seem to suggest that this was in fact the case:

• the repeated insistence in 11:18 of the agency of Yahweh in disclosing the deeds (“revealed”, “he showed me”)


• the inclusion of the possible word-for-word content of the revelation (12:6)


• the absence in the passage of any reference to a third party 


• the use of the word “reveal”; its only other use in the book indicates an immediate disclosure, without human means (38:21) 

The frequency in the book of auditory and/or visual messages as a means of divine communication with the prophet, messages which included the prediction of invasion, defeat and exile at the hands of the "enemy from the north", also suggest that the revealing of a secret conspiracy was not outside the scope of the spiritual possibilities experienced by Jeremiah as he sought to follow and discharge his call to be a "prophet to the nations" (1:5).

Taking a wider biblical view, we can see the revealing of secrets as an aspect of many of the great teachers, prophets, reformers and apostles of both the Old and New Covenants. These include Daniel's ability to describe both the content and the meaning of Nebuchadnezzar's unspoken dream (Daniel 2), the insight Jesus had of the Samaritan woman's five previous husbands and her current domestic arrangements (John 4), Peter's discernment of the motives and action of Ananias and Sapphira in their financial dishonesty (Acts 5).

A striking example from church history is from the preaching of Charles Spurgeon. The person on the receiving end of the revealed secrets explains:

Mr. Spurgeon looked at me as if he knew me, and in his sermon he pointed to me, and told the congregation that I was a shoemaker, and that I kept my shop open on Sundays; and I did, sir. I should not have minded that; but he also said that I took ninepence the Sunday before, and that there was fourpence profit out of it. I did take ninepence that day, and fourpence was just the profit; but how he should know that, I could not tell. Then it struck me that it was God who had spoken to my soul through him, so I shut up my shop the next Sunday. At first, I was afraid to go again to hear him, lest he should tell the people more about me; but afterwards I went, and the Lord met with me, and saved my soul. 

The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon [Curts & Jennings, 1899], II:226-27)

Commenting himself, Spurgeon says:

I could tell as many as a dozen similar cases in which I pointed at somebody in the hall without having the slightest knowledge of the person, or any idea that what I said was right, except that I believed I was moved by the Spirit to say it; and so striking has been my description, that the persons have gone away, and said to their friends, ‘Come, see a man that told me all things that ever I did; beyond a doubt, he must have been sent of God to my soul, or else he could not have described me so exactly.’ And not only so, but I have known many instances in which the thoughts of men have been revealed from the pulpit. (ibid)

The link between revealing secrets and the power of the word of God is stated explicitly by the writer to the Hebrews:

For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. 

(Hebrews 4:12-13)

Jeremiah, like some evangelists and pastors today in parts of the Muslim-majority world, experienced such extreme hostility to his message that his life was at risk. It was through an act of divine disclosure that he come to know of this danger and was able to take preventative measures (Jer 12:6).

In the age of encryption and Wikileaks, secrets are everywhere and feature powerfully in the activities of governments, corporations and nations. Individuals also carry secrets, for good or evil. As Christian believers read, hear and (especially) speak the word of God, may we do so not as mere conveyors of general information but as those who speak with that revelatory edge to our communication, confident that "there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries." As Daniel expressed this discovery:

He reveals deep and hidden things;

    he knows what lies in darkness,

    and light dwells with him.

(Daniel 2:22)

As the church learns to speak with such insight, may the hearers respond not with adulation of the human messenger but as Nebuchadnezzar did when he fell prostrate, with reverence for the God who reveals:

"your God is the God of gods and the Lord of kings."

Star Dust: Being True to our Clay-like Calling

Human beings are made of dust.

This is both scientific fact and theological proposition. 

Our physical bodies are 65% oxygen, 18% carbon, 10% hydrogen, 3% nitrogen and about 4% "other" - as illustrated by the pie charts below, courtesy of Wikipedia. 

Sand or soil, meanwhile, are composed of many of these similar substances, albeit rearranged in radically different proportions and states. 

The bible affirms our dust-likeness in numerous ways:

• Adam is made by God from the dust of the earth - his name being derived from the Hebrew word for ground, earth or clay. 
• Following his fall, Adam is told that death awaits him in the future -  "for dust you are and to dust you will return."
• King David celebrates God's mercy towards mankind - "For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."
• The apostle Paul, meanwhile, portrays the relationship of the believer towards God as that of clay in the hands of a potter - dependent on the creation and shaping of the skilled craft-worker.
• The glory of the new covenant is expressed by Paul as "treasure in jars of clay" - contrasting the magnificence of God's salvation with the mundane nature of its recipients.

Professor Brian Cox explains the science of our dust-like qualities in this classic clip from the BBC's 2011 series Wonders of the Universe. 

Our dust-like existence has some important consequences: 

1. We have a profound connection with the physical soil 

Our original calling as human beings was to "work and take care of the garden"; every seed-bearing plant and every fruit tree are our staple diet. As Satish Kumar puts it, we are to be about agriculture not agri-business. 

Such an eco-theology may seem hopelessly naive in the digital age of globalisation and genetic science. However, the original calling of men and women to work the garden has not been removed; we remain stewards of the soil from which we were made and to which we will return.

2. We have confidence before God because of his grace

Our frailty, our humanity and our vulnerability do not disqualify us from God's plans and purposes. On the contrary, God remembers that we are dust. He knows our frame. Therefore, we can learn to live with our limitations - and indeed to see them as the context and setting for God's glory to be displayed and revealed. 

We are not crushed by the magnitude of God's glory and power, compared with our own physical, spiritual and psychological weaknesses. Rather, we are honoured and included in his great plan and purpose.   

3, We are to be submissive to God's shaping of us

Shall the clay tell the potter what to do? There is an inner peace that can be experienced by submitting to the hand of God in our lives. Whether he chooses to make us for "noble or ignoble purposes", we can find dignity in our relationship with him.

Furthermore, we can celebrate that whatever the differences in our day-to-day circumstances and existence, our clay-likeness is shared by all human beings. There are no real super stars - just a glorious God who is at work in all of his creation, shaping and working towards the fulfilment of his eternal purpose - bringing all things in  heaven and earth together under Christ. 

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The Problem of Suffering, Christian Faith, and the Hebrew Mind

When confronted with the twin realities of evil (destructive human action) and suffering (destructive natural phenomena), the Christian believer often feels under pressure to "explain" them in the light of God's goodness, love and sovereignty. We are in fact at the receiving end of nearly 2,000 years of reflection, philosophy and apologetics within the Western Christian tradition that seek to address these issues and respond to the (atheist) question: how can a loving god allow this to happen?

Those of us who are Christian believers may have our various responses to the questions raised. We may have refined and developed them over the years to a point where we at least feel reasonably satisfied with our own explanations.

It is worth reflecting, however, that the Hebrew mind, revealed in the Scriptures, often approaches the question in a different way. Instead of seeking explanation, we find the writers asking questions without apparently seeking to provide answers.

Taken together, this question-asking approach develops into a type of literature that has come to be described as "complaint". It's not "having a moan", but rather asking "why" in an engaged and personally involved way.

The Hebrew scriptures are full of this type of literature.

Speaking thousands of years ago, the God-fearing Job demanded similar answers to those asked by Stephen Fry and other prominent atheists. His questioning of the character of God is breath-taking and audacious. Think about this series of "complaints" for a while, recorded in the Bible for all time for our edification:

"How then can I dispute with him?
How can I find words to argue with him?"

"Even if I summoned him and he responded,
I do not believe he would give me a hearing.
He would crush me with a storm
and multiply my wounds for no reason.
He would not let me catch my breath
but would overwhelm me with misery."

"He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.

When a scourge brings sudden death,

he mocks the despair of the innocent.

When a land falls into the hands of the wicked,

he blindfolds its judges.

If it is not he, then who is it?

"Why does the Almighty not set times for judgement?

Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?

"The fatherless child is snatched from the breast;

the infant of the poor is seized for a debt.

Lacking clothes, they go about naked;

they carry the sheaves, but still go hungry.

They crush olives among the terraces;

they tread the winepresses, yet suffer thirst.

The groans of the dying rise from the city,

and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.

But God charges no one with wrongdoing."

The emotional intensity and challenging, almost accusatory tone of this line of questioning may lead some to see it as the speech of an unbeliever. Nothing could be further from the truth. Evidently, the Hebrew mind allowed for the possibility of challenging questions to be put from a position of faith, as Job did, not only from a position of unbelief. 

In a follow-up post, we'll consider what the Hebrew mind does next with these questions, and how it prioritises wisdom (knowing what to do in different circumstances) over watertight philosophical answers in the face of evil and suffering.

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Foreign Policy Realism and the Prophetic Summons: Jeremiah, Syria, Ukraine and the West

Fools rush in to apply Biblical principles to the complexities of contemporary foreign policy - an exercise which often results in the espousing of bizarre and impractical opinions, and a lack of critical analysis, making the word of God look ridiculous.

It is with some trepidation, therefore, that I offer the following analysis of Jeremiah 27 and apply it retrospectively to the current situation in Ukraine and Syria. 

In the passage cited, the kingdom of Judah finds itself invaded by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, who has defeated the army and entered the city of Jerusalem. Having deposed the king (Jehoichin) and replaced him with a puppet ruler (Zedekiah), the Babylonian tyrant then forcibly removes from Judah the economic and social elite of Judean society, taking them into exile, and leaving behind "only the poorest people of the land." (2 Kings 24:14). Nebuchadnezzar, who was personally present in Judah during this military campaign, also removes the royal treasures from Jerusalem, as well as the precious metal artifacts from the Temple. 

 The best-preserved image of King Nebuchadnezzar II, standing next to one of the ziggurats built during his reign. 

Against this backdrop, the prophet Jeremiah (born c. 642 BC) addresses the new vassal king of Judah as well as the envoys of the surrounding nations - Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon. These foreign secretaries have gathered in Jerusalem to discuss a possible coalition against Babylon, the new dominant power in the region.

Jeremiah's message to this would-be coalition summit is unambiguous: he urges them to abandon their plans and to submit to the king of Babylon as vassals. The following is typical of the prophet's approach:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “Tell this to your masters: With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please. Now I will give all your countries into the hands of my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon; I will make even the wild animals subject to him. All nations will serve him and his son and his grandson until the time for his land comes; then many nations and great kings will subjugate him.


The consequences of pursuing the planned rebellion are severe, according to the prophet:

“If, however, any nation or kingdom will not serve Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon or bow its neck under his yoke, I will punish that nation with the sword, famine and plague, declares the Lord, until I destroy it by his hand. So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your interpreters of dreams, your mediums or your sorcerers who tell you, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’ They prophesy lies to you that will only serve to remove you far from your lands; I will banish you and you will perish. But if any nation will bow its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and serve him, I will let that nation remain in its own land to till it and to live there, declares the Lord.”

On the one hand, Jeremiah is preaching a message of God's sovereignty in the rise and fall of governments and nations. At the same time, he is urging what could be seen as a "realist" approach to international relations - a recognition that the practical consequences of rebellion will be far worse than the consequences of submission and vassal status. 

It is far too easy to engage in armchair politics and analyse contemporary and complex situations from a safe distance. Nonetheless, to the extent that the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria are directly impinging upon Britain - military intervention against IS, trade sanctions against Russia, and the vast numbers of displaced peoples resulting from the upheavals -  it is important to have a view on our nation's policy in these conflicts, not least of all in order to be equipped to respond to future scenarios.   

Initial support from some western countries for anti-Assad groups in Syria and for pro-western factions in Ukraine before and during the Euromaiden demonstrations are matters of record. In both cases, ideological motives combined with claims that such western support would reduce the numbers of civilian causalities affected by the two upheavals. An important question to ask therefore is whether, on balance, the civilian populations of both countries are better off or worse off as a result of these rebellions, and whether on humanitarian grounds alone, western support for them has been justified, quite apart from ideological considerations.  

In Syria, the statistics of the five-year war are staggering: 

• a quarter of a million people have been killed 
• 7.6 million Syrians have been displaced 
• 4 million of these have fled the country - a number equal to about 20% of the pre-war population 

The conflict has also seen widespread human rights abuses on all sides, massacres of civilians and combatants, and the rise of Islamic State who have made brutality a defining hallmark of their rule.  


Although overall casualties in Ukraine have been far lower, the displacement of over one million civilians within Ukraine, and the involvement of Russian "irregular" forces in the east of the country and the Crimea make the Ukraine crisis the most serious military situation in Europe since the Balkan Wars.    

Jeremiah's position was that submission to the tyrant provided better outcomes for the subjugated nation as a whole than armed rebellion. This claim had several related strands:

1. The "realistic" view that it was Babylon's time to be a world power - a reality wrapped in the mystery of God's sovereignty.
2. The "realistic" view that the minor nations of the near-middle east were going to come under Babylonian domination by the will of God
3. The claim that subjugation by Babylon was not the same as annihilation. It was in Babylon's interest to extract wealth from its subject kingdoms, not to massacre them or render them economically bankrupt
4. The time-limited nature of Babylonian domination. This prediction was fulfilled by the defeat of Babylon by the ascending Persian Empire under its ruler Cyrus the Great in 539 BC.

Looking at the carnage in Syria, and the fragmentation of Ukraine along nationalistic lines, it is difficult to argue against the view that. on practical grounds alone, the outcomes for the citizens of these two different countries would have been better if armed rebellion against a tyrant (in the case of Syria) or the forcible removal of an elected President (in the case of Ukraine) had not taken place when they did. Furthermore, it is hard to argue that the west's support for these developments has turned out to be in the best interest of the populations most affected by them.

Aristotle taught the virtue of slow revolutions in political life. Not all fundamental political change has to be sudden. The al-Assad regime could not have lasted for ever. The strengthening of civic society within Syria and Ukraine may have been a less dramatic but potentially more sustainable and judicious approach to supporting the democratisation of these nations.


Hard-nosed, biblically-informed realism should not be ignored when formulating policy in these complex arenas. The well-being of the people, combined with a measured assessment of the risks and outcomes, must be central to western responses. Ideology alone will deliver more pain, not less. 

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Snow: a Biblical Perspective

 
Those of us who do not live in the middle east may be surprised by the frequent biblical references to the white powdery stuff most associated with cold northern climates. We do not tend to automatically associate snow with hot, desert environments.

Such a perspective, of course, lacks an appreciation of the influence of the mountain ranges in and around Palestine, as well as the temperature fluctuations throughout the year.

An early incidence of a biblical snow story involves Benaiah, one of King David's mighty men. Snow days were presumably as rare in Judah as they are now in southern England, resulting in people taking days off work to engage in other recreational pursuits. In the case of Benaiah, to whom Facebook was not available, we are told that he

  

"went down into a pit on a snowy day and killed a lion"

This made a change from the warrior's more usual pursuits of striking down Moab's two mightiest warriors or dispatching a "huge Egyptian" by attacking him with a club and spear.

Four of the references to snow in the Hebrew Bible occur in the book of Job, where the term symbolises the unreliability of people (6:15), the temporary nature of human life (24:18), the power of God to command the weather (37:6) and the inappropriateness of mankind in challenging the justice or sovereignty of God (38:21):

Surely you know, for you were already born!
    You have lived so many years!

 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow
    or seen the storehouses of the hail, 

  which I reserve for times of trouble?"

These twin uses of the word continue through the wisdom literature and the prophetic books. Snow is referred to both symbolically and literally. Symbolically, it represents the thoroughness of the cleansing from sin sought by David as he confesses to God his sins of adultery and murder (Psalm 51:7). This same image is mirrored in God's promise through Isaiah that though the sins of Israel are "like scarlet", they shall through repentance and forgiveness be made "like snow." (1:18).

A reliable messenger is like a "snow-cooled drink in harvest time", refreshing the spirit of the one who sent him (Proverbs 25:13). The incongruity of snow at harvest is used differently elsewhere in the Book of Proverbs to illustrate the inappropriateness of giving honour to a fool (26:1)

Snow is often cited as revealing the majesty and power of God in his creation. 

"He spreads the snow like wool, and scatters the frost like ashes" (Psalm 147:16)

It is but one of the elements of the weather ruled by Almighty God:

"lightening and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding." (148:8)

The moisturising effect of snow is compared with the effect of God's word by Isaiah; both of them accomplish the purpose for which they were sent forth (55:9).

As the Hebrew Bible concludes, snow is employed as a metaphor for the indescribable glory of God himself, a theme which is picked up by Christian writers centuries later. Although, like his predecessor Benaiah, the prophet Daniel also encountered a lion in a pit, in the latter case it did not take place on a snowy day. Babylon may or may not have experienced snow during Daniel's exile there, or he may have had a childhood memory of snow-capped peaks from Judah. Whatever the visual association, the prophet's vision of God is extraordinary by any measure. Daniel describes the Ancient of Days in his heavenly glory as seated on a flaming throne and wearing clothing "as white as snow." (7:9)

Matthew the gospel writer uses similar imagery when recounting the events surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an experience witnessed first hand by two of his female disciples. On arriving at the tomb where Jesus had been buried on the previous Friday, the two Marys witnessed:

  

"a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow." (28:3)

Continuing the motif of snow representing the transcendent glory of God in heaven, the final book of the Bible sees the combined use of both fire and snow to attempt to convey an idea of what the glory of God looked and felt like to John as he was captured up in his remarkable vision. When reading this highly symbolic language, I am reminded of the words of Bruce Milne when he said that, in attempting to describe the divine essence, "human language is inevitably placed under considerable strain."

Let's leave John with the final words on this snowy day, focused on the Son of God:

I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lamp stands, and among the lamp stands was someone like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. (Revelation 1:12-14)

Photo credit thisreidwrites 

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A Response to Dr Andy Woods of Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr Dr Woods,

I have recently read your interesting article on the Bible Prophecy Blog entitled , How an Evangelical Christian President can Support a Mormon for President. I was sufficiently  concerned about some of the premises that you say you hold that I thought I ought to make some sort of response.

I should stress at the outset that I have no issue with who you vote for in November. I am more concerned about the underlying assumptions that are shaping your decision. 

Please allow me to respond to some of the points in the order you raised them:

Economic Matters

Firstly, I find your definition of economic policies to be too narrow. Like you, I value Biblical teaching against stealing and in favour of economic self-sufficiency through labour (excuse the British spellings!) These values, however, are not the only things that the Bible has to say about economics, wealth and labour. The Pentateuch not only prohibited theft, it also created the conditions for Israel under which economic self-sufficiency could be achieved by all. This was through the equitable distribution of the primary means of production - land - to tribes and extended households (Num 26:52; 33:53, et passim)  This aspect of Biblical economics appears lacking from your analysis. 

It is a challenge to think through what such a Biblical value might mean in a pluralist society today. But, since we both agree that Biblical values should influence public life, I think we need to do the hard thinking about what a fair distribution of the means of production looks like in a post-industrial society.

Traditionally, those on the political left have sought to tax wealth as a means of re-distribution. However, it is questionable whether this approach goes far enough in ensuring genuine economic opportunity for all. Not only that, it has a tendency to create a vast and bureaucratic state apparatus, which itself can be problematic.

It is apparent that wealth is generated primarily through the judicious management of assets. In both the United States and Britain, the long-term trend has been for assets such as land, factories, property, businesses, and more recently, copyrights and patents to become increasingly concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The result of this trend over centuries is that the vast majority of citizens find themselves not as owners of potentially-productive assets, but as wage labourers. Their only "asset" is their time and skills. This employer-employee model of work has become so embedded in developed capitalist economies that we often find it difficult to imagine how "work" could be widely conceived in any other way. This model contains in-built vulnerabilities. A widely distrubitist model, by contrast, is more secure, just and sustainable, as an asset holder will never put themselves out of work.

In seeking to think about who to vote for, I would want evangelical Christians to also give consideration to the candidate most likely to empower the asset-less through the re-distribution of the economic means of production. 

Distribution

Your concern about wealth being distributed to the non-earner (the 47%, I believe they were recently controversially described as by Mr Romney) also requires modification, in my view. While I agree that people who refuse to work should not be supported by those who do, you must surely recognize the Biblical category of those who are brought into poverty through adversity,  injustice, (Prov 13:23)  illness, and a whole range of economic and environmental factors outside of their direct control (Lev 25:35). 

Government

The conservative view that such individuals should be helped through their own savings, families and/or private charity (more on that later) does not, in my view, do justice to the Biblical teaching on the matter. Rather, the prophets who denounced Israel's sin in the pre-exilic period often focused their preaching on economic injustice (Isaiah 1:16-18, et passim) and, significantly, called on the rulers (Isaiah 10:1-3) and kings (Isaiah 32:1-3) to act. The issue of poverty in Israel was not to be solved solely through private philanthropy but also through government intervention. One of the tithes mentioned in the Pentateuch, moreover, was specifically designed for distribution to the poor (Deut 26:12-13).  This was not private charity, but a form of co-ordinated and compulsory proto-taxation, to be directly used for assisting the needy. 

On the issue of charity-versus-the-State (your second paragraph under the heading of economic matters), you seem to miss the very obvious point raised in Romans 13:1-7, that governments are mandated to protect their citizens through the "punishment of the wrongdoer". While this certainly implies protection from criminals and foreign powers, it also implies protection from internal predators who would harm those who seek to live peaceful and quiet lives.

It is difficult to see how those greedy financial institutions largely responsible for the current economic crisis should not have the sword of the state wielded against them, and that "God's servant for your good" should not seek to ameliorate the human damage caused by these evil-doers. The same could be said about the idea of limited-liability companies - such as BP - who will be emboldened to take economically and environmentally reckless decisions as long as they know that the state will not hold them responsible for the full economic effect of their carelessness.

Family

On the matter of the family, I agree with you that a Biblical value in politics will be to strengthen families not only relationally but also in economic terms. My comments above about the re-distribution of assets, should be incorporated into this pro-family agenda. It is not enough to merely roll back regulations, as if they in themselves are the cause of unemployment, without looking at the larger economic context. The Joads, if I may throw in a cultural anecdote, were not helped by and did not need greater de-regulation. They needed assets.

Inheritance

On the subject of inheritance taxes, I would be interested to discover your views on the Year of Jubilee principle (Lev 25), which set a structural limit not only on debt, but also on the handing down of wealth and assets, through the requirement for all land to be handed back to the descendants of its original owners. 

Such a system would have (if faithfully implemented) prohibited the creation of a permanent class system, and restrained the unlimited accumulation of capital and assets and the corresponding driving down of incomes on the part of the dispossessed. Unpopular though such a system may be to some on the right, here we find in scripture a structural economic policy intentionally designed to limit the accumulation of wealth over the long term. Would you agree that, compared with this Biblical law, Adam's Smith's invisible hand is a far less effective mechanism in restricting the vast accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands? 

Environment

I found your comments on the environment particularly disappointing. Firstly, your quoting of Genesis 8:22 as some kind of proof text disproving anthropogenic global warming is, frankly, unworthy of an evangelical scholar. The verse merely states, in context, that God will not destroy the earth again through a flood and that the seasons, including "heat and cold" will be features of life on the planet until its end. This can be interpreted in both a micro-scale (day to day) and a macro-scale (the ice-age, for instance). The text does not tell us whether and to what extent human activity can increase strain on the planet, locally or globally, nor whether mankind will or will not in fact do so in the future. The doctrine of sin certainly suggests that such action is at least a strong possibility! 

The Bible does, elsewhere, have things to say on the inter-relationship between human activity and the physical environment, at both a micro and macro scale.

What do you make, for instance, of the shout of the 24 heavenly elders declaring that the time has come, 

"for destroying those who destroy the earth" (Rev 11:18)?

Or God's declaration through Jeremiah that:

“I am against you, you destroying mountain,

    you who destroy the whole earth,” (Jer 51:25)?

Truth

As an evangelical Christan concerned about man-made climate change, I obviously recognise the reality of seasonal and long-term variations in the earth's climate. I also take seriously our call to think truthfully about life's issues (Psalm 15:2 et passim). This commitment to truth requires us to use our God-given minds to consider and weigh claim and counter-claim. 

The overwhelming scientific consensus (summarised below by the US National Research Council) is that the 

"climate is changing and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities."

I infer from your article that you are somewhat mistrustful of international and inter-governmental bodies. Nonetheless, the scientific consensus on the role of human activity on climate change is also summarised in the findings of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change here. 

For the Christian, this reality is both an issue of stewardship, and also one of justice. I have written elsewhere of the relationship between global warming and global poverty. The real victims of this current environmental crisis are the world's poorest and, frankly, it is very unedifying to hear a gospel minister apparently overlooking their suffering in order to enable American Christians to continue to drive their SUVs with a clear conscience.

  

Evil Days

The apostle Paul calls us to "be careful how we live - not as unwise but as wise...because the days are evil." One of the evils being carried out by the global oil conglomerates is the deliberate feeding into the public discourse misleading suggestions and pseudo-scientific research over the issue of global warming (source). Research shows that these wealthy billionaires - including Koch Industries who also support Mitt Romney's campaign as it happens - have been remarkably successful in their PR efforts. 

This is an area where discernment is needed to see what is really taking place - a reckless and ungodly destruction of God's world in order to ensure financial profits for a small cadre of billionaires. As Christians, we need to oppose this ungodliness and defend the rights of the poor in the face of the Koch brothers and their ilk.

Debt and War

I agree with your concerns about public debt. The only sane and Biblical way forward is to reduce it. I hope, therefore, that you will continue to be vocal in your opposition to expensive and ill-founded military campaigns in Asia. The Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns have cost many lives and, according to research from Brown University, have also cost the American economy approximately 4 trillion dollars. That's trillion, please note, not billion.

I was intending to go on to compare social matters and foreign policy, but I think this may result in an overly-lengthy article, so perhaps I will leave it there for now. Suffice to say, I agree with many of your conclusions on social matters - though, briefly, I must ask you to seriously search your conscience and consider whether Jesus really meant what you have represented him as meaning in Luke 22:36. 

On foreign policy, I confess to being, like Stephen M Walt  "a realist in an ideological age." But perhaps that is for another day. 

As I said at the outset, I am not writing to challenge your conclusions about who you or others should vote for. I am more concerned about some of your premises. 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read (if you have) and I wish you God's blessing.

Yours respectfully in disagreement,

Al Shaw

Bristol, England

          

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