Since this conference is a pastors’ conference rather than one designed for Christians in general, I will focus on the need for what I call a framework pulpit approach to shepherding and teaching in the local church (Eph. 4:11). The first part explains why we need a framework approach. What things are happening today in local churches and on global mission fields that make such a framework so needful? Why are faithful pastors preaching their hearts out only to find an appalling immaturity in their flocks, especially in their young people? Why has the musical expression of pop culture so invaded the Church that it has essentially become the accepted form of “praise and worship”?
On many fronts we Bible-teaching, Bible-believing Christians are being strategically out-maneuvered because we lack an overall framework for thinking God’s thoughts after Him. The spiritual environment in which we all minister the Word of God has a powerful darkness to it. Since this darkness appears to be increasing today, we’d better learn how to see through it. It’s a darkness that deceives the most well-intentioned persons. It tries to envelop and pervert every message of light. It is a darkness that is deeply insidious because it easily takes root in our own fallen nature. And where do we go to obtain light in such darkness? David told us over three millennia ago, “in thy light shall we see light”(Psa. 36:9). In that light we see the darkness for what it is, that which lacks substance, or, as the Bible calls it, “vanity” (Eccl. 1:2). In the Scripture we discover the aim point for our teaching and evangelizing.
The second part surveys the light God has given us, not just in what He has revealed but in how He has progressively revealed His thoughts and plans through out human history—how He used certain historical situations with perfectly-timed additional revelation. I will point to three historical periods in particular: the period of Moses when he confronted Egyptian culture, the period of the exile when the Jews when were going to have to live within Babylonian culture, and finally the period of the book of Acts when Paul led the gospel’s invasion of Roman culture. What were the spiritual conflicts believers faced in each of these three periods? What truths did the Holy Spirit emphasize during these three periods of history?
The believing contemporaries of Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, and Paul faced intense political and social challenges to major truths of the faith. Unbelief, then as now, attacked miracles by trying to “explain” them within the pagan perspective (Ex. 7:11) or by elaborate cover-ups involving the media of the day (Matt. 28:12-15). Then as now, pagan nature worship made the Creator-creature distinction almost inconceivable (Ex. 32:1-4; Deut. 8:14-17; Isa. 40:18-20; Dan. 2:46-3:11; Acts 14:8-18; 17:22-31). Ancient political leaders branded early biblical faith an enemy of the state long before modern Communists, Wahhabi Muslims, and ACLU lawyers (Ex. 1:8-16; Dan. 3:4-7; 6:5-9; John 11:48-53; Acts 4:13-22; 6:11-15; 17:5-9; 19:21-41; 21:27-31). Unbelieving family members questioned the faith of believers (Num. 12:1; I Pet 3:15). Present-day unbelievers, in spite of their misplaced self-confidence, are no more intelligent than their pagan predecessors centuries ago. Thank God that He has preserved in Scripture sufficient revelation for us to manage each of these circumstances (II Tim. 3:16-17).
Finally, the third part sharpens the idea of a biblical framework, what it is and what it isn’t. It explores further how we must teach the Bible in such a way as to keep a proper relationship between general and special revelation. The framework approach combines the disciplines of exegesis, theology, and apologetics but replaces none of them. It is one way to provide an integrated family-centered teaching ministry, especially for families with multiple children at different age levels. Used correctly, the framework approach keeps us fully engaged with the enemy and makes it very difficult for him to out-maneuver us. It’s a way of thinking that can help us in many areas of ministry. It can help the task of Christian education so that, should the Lord tarry, we will leave a Biblically solid legacy when our ministries end. Finally, it can embolden us to follow out the implications of classic dispensational, premillennial theology instead of succumbing to various academic and publishing peer pressures.
I have a particular burden for the young Christian men who are being called to prepare for pasturing and teaching. We are in desperate need of thousands of new pastor-teachers not only in this nation but also throughout the world—men who must be trained to minister in some very dark and hostile places. Hundreds of local churches right now go begging for trained pastors who can and will teach the Word of God effectively. Yet young men who face such a calling also face within our own evangelical community the siren songs of syncretism—franchise business approaches to local church ministry, self-worshipping counseling protocols, nearly total dominance of a value-neutral musical agenda for contemporary worship, and too many seminary professors whose first love seems to be academic recognition rather than training pastors for Bible teaching ministries. Add to these ministerial snares inside our camp, the sea of naturalism pervading every segment of the external culture, and we must have deep concern for young aspiring pastor-teachers. How are these young men, as well as their older counterparts already functioning as pastor-teachers, to submit to the Word of God in choosing their path, sorting out their priorities, picking their battles, and teaching to equip the saints (Eph. 4:12)?
The Root of It All.
We begin on the wrong foot if we respond to the contemporary cultural darkness with an analytical approach borrowed from that very same culture. Let’s use the framework approach here to diagnose the root of cultural unbelief. The correct diagnosis of the problem cannot come from current sociology, anthropology, philosophy, or public opinion polls for each of these areas are controlled by the (often) unarticulated doctrine of the autonomous self-sufficiency of man’s perceptions and thought.
Thankfully, we are in a position to understand this doctrine fairly well. Its implications have increasingly been exposed through the dynamics of the third kingdom foreseen in Daniel 2 and 7, the era of Hellenic dominancy. While a post-exilic Jewish remnant under Nehemiah was regathering in the land of Israel (under Gentile hegemony), a thousand miles to the northwest, the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece began a new way of thinking.[1] A key figure who later brought together many of its features was Socrates. Socrates expressed the doctrine of self-sufficiency in his famous dictum, “know thyself”. For this accomplishment he has long been considered the “saint” of Western philosophy.[2] When Paul visited Socrates’ city of Athens four centuries later, he sharply contradicted this doctrine by his insistence that Socrates’ progeny were blind and ignorant (Acts 17:22, 27). Paul replaced “know thyself” with knowing God in Christ, in whom are hid all treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). God, said Paul, has made Socratic wisdom foolishness (I Cor. 1:20). Following Paul, therefore, we cannot analyze the contemporary culture with a perspective founded upon the autonomous self-sufficiency of man’s perceptions and thought. We utilize the framework approach of “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (II Cor. 10:5).
With Paul we reject the view that man is normal, and with it the view that man’s reasoning is normative. Only in God’s light do we see light, and God’s light tells us that mankind is fallen; he is abnormal. His reasoning has been contaminated since Eden. Let’s remind ourselves how that happened. Adam and Eve challenged the Word of God, taking the position of independent self-proclaimed authorities to insist that verbal revelation would have to pass their evaluation. The words of God and the words of Satan about the law of cause-effect contradicted each other. So these contradictory claims had to be weighed under the guise of “neutral” reason with its definitive interpretation of experience. The couple conceived of a “scientific” test to prove which of the two contradictory accounts of cause-effect was true. Of course they could not perform their scientific test without simultaneously violating the words of God. And when the words of God after all proved to be the correct account of real cause-effect—when as the federal head of the human race Adam caused the greatest destruction of the environment that man has ever done—then they experienced moral guilt, spiritual death, and the beginning of physical death (Gen. 2:15-3:7).
Although the fall had occurred, sin and its consequences absolutely failed to alter God’s historical control of the situation and the ubiquitous revelation of His glory in man and nature. It also failed to blot out God-consciousness in the couple. A sense of their calling to exercise dominion remained. But now a new, abnormal state of affairs had begun. Faced with the ubiquitous revelation of God in and around them, their guilt, combined with the drive for dominion, began a total reinterpretation of Creator and creature. The fallen fleshly mind, Paul taught, cannot be anything but intensely hostile to the things of God (Rom. 8:7). It will not submit to authoritative revelation (I Cor. 2:14). In an attempt to make the world safe for themselves as sinners, Adam and Eve immediately re-engineered their theology to transform the omniscient and omnipresent Creator into a less threatening deity—one they could hide from. Using later biblical terminology, we call the result idolatry.[3]
Reinterpretation of the Creator simultaneously involved reinterpretation of the creature since the former determines the meaning of the latter. The joining together of a less-threatening deity and a problematic creation has ever since yielded a corollary to the doctrine of man’s autonomous self-sufficiency: the doctrine of the continuity of being.[4] In the world of investing there’s a saying, “follow the money.” In these spiritual matters, we could invoke a new saying, “follow the implications”. Following the implications of this perverted dominion we discover that the agenda is always the same: man now thinks of himself as a “victim” no longer responsible to his Creator. I will show the vulnerabilities or “vanity” to all this re-engineering below.
Once we reject all analytic attempts based upon the ancient doctrines of the self-sufficiency of man and the continuity of being, we discover the root of it all: sin. No strange, new sociological or psychological forces have suddenly come into existence in our day. Although sinful intelligentsia, like all communities of sinners, rarely admit this fact, occasionally they let down their guard and state the matter forthrightly. I am indebted to Professor J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas for his research and publishing of the following quotes.[5] Here is what the Harvard population biologist, Dr. Richard Lewontin openly confessed in the New York Review of Books.[6] Dr. Lewontin, a prominent member of the contemporary science community, has admitted that there really is a spiritually-rebellious agenda behind the entire enterprise. He’s not alone. Consider what philosopher Thomas Nagel reveals in his book, The Last Word.[7] Note that he’s not putting up the usual pretexts that no intelligent person subscribes to theism. Rather, Nagel quite candidly states that some of his most intelligent acquaintances are theistic thinkers. Cultural darkness, even in areas seemingly remote from spiritual considerations, isn’t some modern intellectual problem; it’s merely the expected fruit that has grown from the age-old root of man’s sin.
If the diagnosis is sin, what does that tell us about sin’s cultural fruit? Remember what I said earlier: the fall did not do away with man’s divine imagehood (Jas. 3:9). Man was designed as a lord over creation with the capacity for interpreting it such that God’s glory would be discovered more and more in it (Job 38-41; Pss. 8, 19, 33; Prov. 8, 25:1; Matt. 6:26-30; Rev. 4:11). As the Genesis narrative reports, first God spoke the universe into existence step by step (Gen. 1; Ps. 33:6,9). He then named its major components and told these names to Adam.[8] Next, Adam was to continue the naming process within the framework of God’s prior naming (Gen. 2:19-20). Adam was to exercise his God-given mind to derive from creation’s design thoughts that would redound to ever deeper appreciation and worship of his Creator. He was to use these reflections upon the world about him to manage his life and environment wisely (Gen. 1:26-30; 2:15; Ps. 8:6-8). He was to build a human culture to the glory of God. This is the biblical “cultural mandate.”
Rather than disappearing after the fall, the cultural mandate became re-directed under a new, alien, sinful spirit of disobedience and autonomy. An early indicator of where human civilization would go occurred during the re-colonization of the planet after the global flood of Noah. At Babel the cultural mandate emerges powerfully in perverted form. All of then-existing civilization was to be created according to the designs of man independently of God. “Let us make a name for ourselves,” they said (Gen. 11:4). Babel was a brilliant attempt to direct civilization according to the spirit of disobedience. This project employed architectural and engineering capabilities that would impress us even today, but spiritually it was corrupt. Throughout the rest of history we can often observe this same strange mixture of high technology and prideful myth-making. A framework for the pagan counterfeit culture had already emerged at the very beginning of the present civilization.
Not only did God inject “linguistic friction” into man’s one-world cultural machinery, but He began a new thing: a divine counter-culture. Out from the heart of pagan civilization in Iraq, He called Abraham whose name He, not man, would make great (Gen. 12:2). Abraham’s Hebrew progeny would live under a unique set of historical controls that would give the world the canon of Scripture, the Incarnate God-Man Savior, and the eventual fulfillment of man’s original purpose. God also stopped the flow of special revelation outside of this Hebrew counter-culture (Deut. 4:19-20). Thus forever after the call of Abraham the spiritually deteriorating post-flood civilization would be left with but a partial memory of the “Noahic Bible” (Gen. 1-11). It would experience the vexation of having to rely upon the Hebrews for all further special revelation.[9]
Failure to consider the structure of paganized Noahic civilization has allowed it to neutralize much of our Bible teaching. Here are some examples.[10]
The
Universal History Project
For the most flagrant example of how cultural apostasy reaches virtually every person in every area we need only to look at what I call the “universal history project”. This project really started with the so-called Enlightenment a few centuries ago. It is the working out of the implications of the old Socratic notion of the self-sufficiency of man with its corollary of the continuity of being. If we follow out the implications, we soon see the agenda: it’s a blatant attempt to unite all the disciplines in strategically enveloping and neutralizing once and for all the authority of divine revelation. It’s a “revisionist” movement that tries to generate a sanitized history of man and nature either by writing new chapters or by re-writing those chapters that have already been written by the “unenlightened”. Witness the disciplines of biology, anthropology, and cosmology. Witness the recent secular revisionism of American history so that all traces of biblical Christianity are carefully erased.[11] Through the constant coverage in the press, in books, and classrooms this pagan notion of a purposeless universe distorts whatever fragmentary knowledge of the Bible our contemporaries might have.
For the past two centuries biblical higher criticism has spread from Germany to our universities and through them to very influential and powerful pulpits, to our young people studying at universities, and to key writers and producers in the media. Left unchallenged, these ideas of higher criticism logically transform our Bible teaching into the naïve repetition of mere ancient opinion. Why should our more educated constituents and media contacts take seriously our teaching when we must seem to them to be unfamiliar with what all “educated” people know? Watch what happens to our Bible teaching credibility this Spring after the De Vinci Code hits theaters! Without some response to its anti-supernaturalism and dependence upon the universal history project, we leave our listeners either vulnerable or unconvinced.
“Happy”
Evangelism
Coming closer to our home ground of local church ministry, observe the way much of contemporary evangelism operates. Instead of the biblical gospel that comes as the only answer to law-induced conviction of guilt before our holy Creator, we hear invitations to faith designed to make the receiver psychologically comfortable regardless of the state of his or her conscience. In the desire to grow local churches there seems to be more pressure than ever before to adopt sales psychology rather than biblical theology. This comes, of course, just at the time when moral and epistemological relativism has seized control of the cultural mainstream. Why worry about sin if no moral judgment threatens? Moral relativism in a godless universe effectively undercuts the true gospel. Or, take the case of epistemological relativism. In this perspective the gospel might be good for me, but not for you. Its objective truthfulness has been enveloped in subjectivity. The only absolutely true and morally correct thing that seems to be left today is that the exclusivity of biblical counter-culture from Abraham to Paul can’t be true or ethical.
Value-Neutral
Artistry
Side
by side with naturalism’s universal history project, we face its moral and
epistemological fallout throughout society.
Relativism of truth and values leads even evangelical Christians into
error. This past winter we watched a
Christian group join Hollywood to bring to the screen the story of the martyred
missionaries of Equador with the film, End of the Spear. After offering the lead role to a recognized
Hollywood actor, it was discovered that he was an openly practicing
homosexual. What to do? Instead of witnessing to the ethical
standards of Scripture and the grace of God in resolving the sin problem, the
production group continued with him as lead actor. Their response to criticism was the
following: “We did not know Chad was gay when we offered him the roles of Nate and
Steve Saint. We learned just before he accepted the roles, and then faced the
decision of whether we should love him and include him in the journey....”[12]
Christian effort and funding for cultural witness was thus swallowed up in this embarrassing syncretism between the gospel and Hollywood culture.
And finally, we come to certain kinds of music that pass for “contemporary praise and worship” in many evangelical churches today. While it is good to encourage Christian artists to express the faith with contemporary musical creations, it ought to be done with biblical discernment. Borrowing naively the secular notion of neutrality in musical form and importing that into local church worship for its pragmatic results is another example of neutralization of the pulpit’s Bible teaching ministry. The argument is made that godly lyrics “transform” ungodly musical style. Makujina, however, shows how most musicologists acknowledge that it is the other way around: musical form transforms the meaning of the lyrics.[13] While it is true that throughout Church history, Christians created hymns and songs from music in the surrounding pagan culture, they did not think of music as value-neutral. They accepted certain forms of music and rejected others. Most of early Christian music originated in the Jewish synagogue.[14] The Church fathers nearly universally condemned pagan music.[15] To communicate the Word of God, especially to youth, Luther wrote hymns and songs in the “contemporary” German music of his day, but Makujina notes that Luther’s hymnody showed:
“good taste and selectivity in that he carefully matched the text and the melody and made whatever adaptations were necessary to align the music to the sacred text. . . .In developing his chorales, Luther managed to discard dance songs altogether and limit the rhythm in other songs”[16]
In discussing the vast contributions of the Wesley brothers to the “contemporary” English music of their day, Makujina points out that John exercised considerable control over the innumerable creations of Charles. He cites John’s platonic-like view of music and how he wrote about how music had the power “to raise various passions in the human mind. . . .and to vary the passion just according to the variation of the music.”[17] None of these writers of contemporary music of their times thought that they could import any old form of secular music under the assumption of its value-neutrality.
To summarize what each of these examples shows us, I like to use this diagram of an amoeba assimilating a piece of food.[18] Here we see how unbelief reinterprets pieces of the Word of God within its own categories. It transforms and assimilates our sermons and Bible lessons—a piece at a time—into something no longer threatening to fallen man. This is the process that so often thwarts our ministries. The next slide was given t me by a veteran missionary to Muslims. It illustrates how this process operates in Islam to neutralize the verse John 3:16 when it is given out as a fragment isolated from the rest of the biblical framework.[19] The isolated John 3:16 Scripture verse is totally neutralized by a framework of unbelief and religious deception. Islam lacks any concept of incarnation, total depravity, necessity of substitutionary blood atonement, imputed righteousness, and assurance of salvation. Standing alone John 3:16 is “eaten up” by this form of unbelief.
Modern forms of unbelief are vastly improved and far more sophisticated than the original perverted dominion begun by Adam and Eve. Thankfully however, although more sophisticated, this unbelief has the same vulnerabilities its prototype had and that surface in the early Greek tragedies and philosophic writings. If we are to counter its strategic envelopment and neutralization of biblical preaching, we must learn to exploit these vulnerabilities.
SEEING
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
The
Vanity of It All
We
noted the cultural darkness that can so easily swallow up pieces of biblical
truth. Let’s now turn the light of
Scripture on this darkness and discover what we can see. Already we noted that it is rooted in a
fundamental guilt problem.[20]
Guilt in the heart of dominion man who constantly faces revelation always
results in some form of re-engineered theology to make a “safer” god. Changing one’s picture of the Creator God,
however, inevitably changes one’s picture of creation. To describe the resulting mess Biblical
authors use Hebrew and Greek words translated by the English term
“vanity”. It is a term of mockery that
amounts to saying something is an illusion; the thing has no abiding substance;
the Emperor has no clothes. Apparently
Solomon was responsible for a thorough biblical exposition of vanity in the
book of Ecclesiastes four centuries before Socrates. Solomon challenged the concept that the human
mind can comprehend all things, that it can claim to comprehend the linkage
between cause and effect, work and reward, skill and advancement, long-life and
righteousness. In one great passage he
writes: “He has put eternity (HOLAM)
in their hearts, except that no one (HA-ADAM) can find out the work that God
does from beginning to end” (Eccl. 3:11)
Think upon this passage for a moment. No member of the human race can comprehend the totality of God’s work. No human has ever or will ever be able to “see the big picture” of God’s glory. Yet we have an inborn God-consciousness. We have this sense of eternity in our heart, but we can only glimpse pieces of it. In the end, we must: “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12:13). This strikes at the heart of unbelief as it is so clearly articulated by Socrates.[21] Contrary to Solomon Socrates taught that man inside the universe (as it is conceived by the unregenerate mind) must have within himself some sort of self-sufficient “knowing” capacity in order to plan his daily life. As Van Til puts it, “the Socratic spirit of Inwardness. . .[is] the concentration of all interpretation upon man as the final reference point.”[22]
This self-sufficiency, argued Solomon, is not located in man but in God. And God Himself is incomprehensible (cf. Isa. 40:28 quoted by Paul in Rom. 11:33). We can conceive only what He reveals to us in His Word (Deut. 29:29) and what that Word implies about ourselves and the creation around us. As the omniscient One and our Creator, God has the right to tell us how to think regardless of whether modern sophisticates find it distasteful or not! Apart from His commandments no one’s thinking has a compass or reference point. Such is the implication of the Creator-creature distinction over against the illusion of the continuity of being. Let’s review the contrast.[23] I can’t over emphasize this fundamental difference between the Bible and all unbelief. It differentiates everything and thwarts all attempts to invent a workable form of unbelief.
Unbelief since the time of Adam and Eve has had fundamental flaws which always appear in every non-biblical culture. Perverted dominion means just that; it is out of line and fails to fit the world that it was originally made to manage. We now look at the three categories of vulnerabilities or “failures-to-fit.” These are the chinks in the armor of pagan culture that we can exploit with a biblical framework.
Experience
and Empiricism
We can think of unbelief’s vulnerabilities in terms of a child’s see-saw.[24] It pictures the three categories. Weighing it down on one end is the need to face the details of life, the endless diversity of experience, what is called the problem of the “many.” This problem arises out of trying to justify the validity of human sensory experience apart from the Word of God. To zero in on this end of the see-saw I often show this diagram that was originally composed by a Spanish creationist.[25] It pictures the limits of sensory experience—the details that we see, hear, touch, and taste. It pictures the world of material appearances. Notice three things about this chart:
(1) The rightmost boundary is the temporal limit of our lifetime. No one has direct experience of history prior to his or her birth. Apart from divine revelation we are shut up to only two kinds of data: accurate reports by other humans who lived prior to us and mute artifacts subject to a multitude of interpretations. God rightfully questioned Job about his concept of past history: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4). Nor does anyone have direct experience of the future. God mocked the heathen idols and their makers in Isaiah’s day: “Show us the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods” (Isa. 41:23). No human being—whether scientist, philosopher, or religious leader—has ever exceeded these limitations using their natural capacities of sensory perception.
(2) The leftmost boundary is the limit of the quickest sensible phenomena, those that happen so fast they challenge our highest-speed photography. The upper and lower boundaries are the spatial limits of observation. While our direct experience can be extended spatially and in ever faster units of time through scientific instrumentation, such instrumentation always brings with it additional layers of theory. How do we interpret properly the signals reported by our sensors? Radar, for example, only provides return signals that tell us very little about the target without added information from theory that is independent of the radar system. Telescopic systems register spectral red shift in starlight that must be interpreted via cosmological theories before it means anything. Such sensory experience becomes ever more indirect and mediated through increasing layers of theory. God exposed these limits when he asked Job about celestial and atmospheric processes: “Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that an abundance of water may cover you?” (Job 38:33-34).
(3) The main thing to appreciate from this chart is that all knowledge derived solely from sensing the details of experience is contingent. If we have “n” pieces of data, we have no assurance from the world of appearance that the discovery of the “n + 1 th” piece of data won’t overturn all our previous knowledge. Empiricism, the theory that all knowledge originates in experience, has always suffered from this problem of contingency. The early Greeks called it the enigma of “flux” or “chance”. They realized it ultimately destroys all of the self-sufficient man’s knowledge and lands him in utter skepticism. Modern education too often venerates empiricism by identifying it with the so-called “scientific method”. Then it speaks of supposedly purposeless processes operating in a universe of unintelligent chaos while all the time refusing to draw the implications so clearly foreseen by the Greeks over two millennia ago.
Few have the courage to point out that when you emphasize this theory of knowledge, it tips the see-saw toward chaos and skepticism. [26] But it’s not just a theory. Emphasis on the details of life and experience is also one pole of our sin nature. It expresses the trend toward licentiousness, freedom from restraints, mysticism. When expressed politically, it shows up as anarchy.[27] This sort of thinking easily leads to the feeling of being over whelmed with resulting depression and pessimism.
Reason
and Rationalism
Returning to the see-saw, we see the competing weight at the other end, the need to get a handle on reality, to put one’s feet on something solid, to find some sort of unity in it all, what is called the problem of the “one”. After all, everyone uses nouns in their language, and nouns do imply the existence of universal categories. So it was early on that the Greek thinkers like Socrates realized the danger of basing ethics and knowing on sensory experience. He sought therefore to attain abiding truth that transcended his individual sensory experience of the details of life. This meant, however, that there had to be a reality beyond the world of appearance that possessed eternally unchanging forms. It also meant that to share such knowledge in a human community, all men must somehow participate in this world of supra-sensory forms. Thus there arose the doctrine of the self-sufficiency of man’s reasoning powers through which all men could at least potentially enter into this “divine” realm. Concurrently, there also appeared the doctrine the continuity of being whereby the gods, men, and all of nature somehow participated together in this transcendent world of Being (contrasted with the world of changing appearance or Becoming).
Rationalism, the theory that reason is in itself a source of knowledge superior to and independent of sense perceptions, has its own vulnerabilities. It has problems justifying itself apart from the Word of God. Let’s look at a few slides that picture its vulnerabilities. [28]
(1) Reason itself is really nothing but an empty calculating machine: garbage in, garbage out. It requires pre-existing imported categorical terms and propositions in order to operate. Logical reasoning relies on propositions, sentences with nouns in them. That’s why Aristotle wrote The Categories as a fundamental part of his work. So reasoning must start with some sort of categorical knowledge before it can discover implications from that knowledge on its way to yet greater knowledge. But where do the pre-existing categories come from? If from sensory experience, the categories must be contingent and therefore local, accidental, and superficial. That is why Socrates resorted to the claim that man’s soul somehow participated in the divine and obtained its categories from “above” the flux of individual experience. Yet if categories come from a realm above, they remain separated from the world of sensory data. Who knows? Maybe following Kant’s reasoning they come from our cerebral chemistry! Reason’s starting points, apart from the Word of God, must be arbitrary abstractions separated from the concrete world of verification. Thus Paul warned the Colossians: “Beware let anyone cheat you through philosophy and vain deceit, . . . according to the [stoicheia – a Greek term referring to the basic categories of reality conceived by the ancients as fire, water, earth, etc.] and not according to Christ” (Col.2:8). Reason is definitely not theologically neutral!
(2) Reason tries to rely upon the test of logical consistency to discern truth from error. But many times this test fails in the real world of details. A series of propositions can be self-consistent yet not true.[29] Classroom science and philosophy instructors almost never point out the elementary problem with so-called scientific “proof” so often mentioned in textbooks and in the media. Observe this slide.[30] If, for example, uniformitarian geology theory implies abundant sedimentary rock layers, and such layers are found, how does this fact prove uniformitarianism? There could be a multitude of other theories, periodic catastrophism, Flood Geology, etc., that likewise imply the same sedimentary rock layers.[31] One’s choice of which scientific theory is thereby proven remains a philosophic preference, not something rigorously proven. The popular concept of scientific proof violates one of the most elementary principles of logic!
Rationalism tips the see-saw toward an imaginary world of abstract certitude and order. [32] Again we’re not talking just about theory. Emphasis on trying to find unchanging categories plagues every accountant and senior manager of an organization. To guide a company or a government agency the managers must establish goals on the basis of certain stable concepts. Accountants must categorize different pots of money. Yet every accountant and manager knows very well that situations inevitably arise that don’t fit the pre-established policies, regulations, and accounts. We all can remember situations where stubborn adherence to regulations that didn’t fit reality paralyzed our efforts to get things done. The gospels recount incidents where Jesus refuted his opponents’ reasoning by challenging their assumed categories.[33] Rationalism strongly appeals to one pole of the sin nature: the trend toward legalism and control. When expressed politically, it shows up as totalitarianism. This sort of thinking often accompanies naïve optimism and meshes well with those personalities that crave orderliness and certitude, aka “control-freaks.”
If empiricism leads to knowing nothing about everything in view, rationalism leads to knowing everything about nothing in view! Such are the built-in trends of “vanity” whenever man tries to exert dominion with a carnal mind at enmity with his Creator. We now come to unbelief’s third vulnerability.
Creation,
Providence and Conscience
This brings us finally to the light in the midst of the darkness: the so-called “point-of-contact” our Bible teaching has with every human. In the see-saw illustration we see that the two weights of vulnerability rock back-and-forth on a fulcrum or pivot. This pivot represents the self-sufficient man trying to seek breadth of knowledge in the innumerable details of life while at the same time he is trying to find stability of knowledge in his own imagined powers of reason. This would-be “Atlas” holding up his idea of the world faces deeply rooted opposition to his whole program.
Deny it though he does, he is a creature made in God’s image (Jas. 3:9). He is unavoidably conscious of God’s ubiquitous revelation in and around him. He knows deep down the God of creation (Rom. 1:18-22), including His righteous standards (Rom. 1:32; 2:14-15). You can observe this in everyday life: when folks enjoy the things of nature, it’s “Mother Nature”; but when something bad happens, it’s an “act of God.” When disaster strikes, even the atheist damns God. Deep down all men are aware of divine providence.
Unbelieving man daily bumps up against creation design whether unacknowledged or not. Bits of truth keep intruding into his framework of unbelief. Paul spoke repeatedly to Gentile believers of God’s design getting in the way of would-be perversions (Rom. 1:26; 2:14; 11:24; I Cor. 11:14). Human sexual anatomy gets in the way of sodomy. Human chemistry no longer functions properly when doused with illicit drugs. Conventional behavioral ideals of most people everywhere express the main outlines of the biblical lifestyle. In so-called “primitive” tribes across the globe evidence exists that they know of one Supreme God who left the earth after man sinned.[34] Millions of post-modern people still love TV programs and books that feature police and mystery stories that end with justice being served. Some leading feminists now in their sixties realize too late the long-term benefits of marriage and family. In the midst of the fray, we teachers of the Word of God need to remember that we have a “Trojan horse” inside the city of unbelief: it is the creation design that includes the conscience within and the laws of cause-effect without. Regardless of the unbeliever’s protestation to the contrary, we may rest assured he knows far more about God than he is willing to admit.
The fly in the ointment of this universal God-conscious is that the conscience tells us that we all fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). There lingers real fear that judgment is coming for every violation of the moral law (Rom. 1:32; 2:14-15). As a graphical illustration of suppressed God-consciousness and the resulting fear of His justice I am indebted again to Dr. Budziszewski—this time for the solar eclipse imagery in this slide.[35] When sinful man suppresses his deep-down God-consciousness, like the moon blocking the sun, the impact of God-consciousness doesn’t go away. It is severely altered. Instead of pleasant sunlight that supplies warmth, nourishment and healing, in a solar eclipse there is darkness and coldness. The only part of the sun now visible is its fiery corona. Just so, the ever-present God-consciousness changes from a source of wisdom and assurance to an inner fury of condemnation. One in such a state is like the earlier Prodigal Son who has not yet “come to himself” (Luke 15:17) and must devise more and more protections from an accusing conscience. When Job came to know himself more fully (because he first came to know God more fully), he said, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. . . .Now my eyes see you. Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42,3,5-6).
Our point of contact for penetrating the cultural darkness with the Word of God , therefore, is the light that enlightens every man (Jn 1:9). We’ve learned the world system’s dirty little secret: it’s an extravagant hypocrisy on a culture-wide scale—vanity, if you will. It’s a vast delusion that in the end has never been able to succeed with its perverted forms of dominion (I Jn 2:17)[36] It’s a virtual see-saw that tips back and forth while fallen man tries desperately to keep it balanced. Whenever he has tried to account for individual experience of the details of life apart from the Word of God, he has always arrived at unacceptable skepticism. Whenever, to escape the chaos of ever-present change and limited experience, he has invested reason with imagined powers of transcendental perception, he inevitably lands in a detached world of abstraction. When these same opposing trends emerge politically, the world system oscillates between anarchy and totalitarianism and usually winds up with a bit of both. When the trends occur on a personal level, you observe an unstable rocking back-and-forth between licentiousness and legalism. Perverted dominion never succeeds. Well did Isaiah write: “The wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” (Isa. 57:20)
Thus, in spite of this façade of attempted manliness, the square peg of arrogance has to bow down and compromise if it wants to fit in a round hole of the creation. To live life on a daily basis within God’s creation design and under His providential control the unregenerate man reluctantly must act as if the Bible is true. The most ardent unbeliever really does interpret his personal experience as though it makes sense—even when he can’t justify how on the basis of unbelief it could possibly make sense. The greatest opponent to the gospel uses his reason as though it fits the world—even when he has destroyed its basis by his assertion that all is unintelligent chaos. The most fanatical relativist keeps on making moral judgments as though right and wrong really exist and aren’t mere private opinion. These are what I call “pop-ups” of God-consciousness. They show bits of truth in unbelief, where it fails to fit reality. In his well-known devotional, A. W. Tozer wrote of this systematic hypocrisy:
“The idealists and relativists are not mentally sick. They prove their soundness by living their lives according to the very notions of reality which they in theory repudiate and by counting upon the very fixed points which they prove are not there. They could earn a lot more respect for their notions if they were willing to live by them; but this they are careful not to do. Their ideas are brain-deep, not life-deep. Wherever life touches them they repudiate their theories and live like other men.”[37]
The point-of-contact for our Bible teaching, therefore, lies in the conscience of every man that inwardly reminds him of the ubiquitous and continuous revelation of God’s creation and providential working and which drives him to some vain form of systematic hypocrisy. Here is the target for our Bible teaching.
In the first part I addressed the nature of the unbelieving culture that surrounds us and envelops our Bible teaching when we do it in a fragmentary manner. I traced it back to the post-fall perversion of the dominion mandate in Genesis 1. I also exposed its serious vulnerabilities that we should exploit in our ministries: that unbelief never can arrive at a truthful resting place but rather like the waves of the troubled sea oscillates back and forth intellectually between rationalism and empiricism (or irrationalism), behaviorally between legalism and licentiousness, and politically between totalitarianism and anarchy. But most importantly, in the heart of every hearer of the Word of God there abides a conscience that reminds him of his accountability to his Creator. No matter how hard he suppresses his God-consciousness, no matter how clever his self-deception, we know that he knows the righteous judgments of God (Rom. 1:32). And if the hearer is regenerate, he has the indwelling Spirit that adds His testimony to that of his conscience. So, in those times of discouragement, when it seems like the Word of God rolls off the hearers like water off a duck’s back, we can take heart that it shall never return void! We always have this God-designed point of contact.
We know these things, not because of some profound philosophical or sociological analysis, but because we’ve sought God’s light through which we see light (Ps. 36:9). We’ve begun here to turn the tables on unbelief. Now we’re beginning to strategically envelop it instead of letting it envelop us first. In this second talk I survey the light that God has given us, not just in what He has revealed but in how He has revealed Himself. If the Bible tells us one thing about how God spoke His Word into history, it tells us that He spoke it sequentially a little bit at a time over many centuries. It tells us that He providentially prepared mankind for each such bit by setting up situations chronologically in the general revelation of history. It tells us that at the precisely correct moment He injected additional special revelation into providentially-prepared situations. Special and general revelation go together, and we leave them separated to our detriment.1 Let’s look at three such providential situations into which God spoke special revelation in mighty ways. Out of these three situations I will sketch the outlines of a biblical framework.
We all know about the Exodus from the Pentateuchal narratives. Sadly, thanks to the separation of special and general revelation throughout academia, we lack a good synchronization of Egyptian and biblical chronology at the time of this important event. The conventional chronology of the ancient near east prior to the first half of the first millennium, B.C., has been largely shaped by the post-Enlightenment’s “universal history project” mentioned earlier.2 For anyone who takes the Bible seriously, therefore, details of contemporary Egyptian history is an unsolved problem.
We can piece together from the available Egyptian materials and the biblical narratives, however, enough to recognize the broad outlines of the Egypt of Moses’ day. God chose Egypt as the womb of His son—both His national “son” and the Messianic Son (Hos. 11:1; cf Matt. 2:15). Why? From its founding by Ham’s son Mizraim until the Exodus over a thousand years later, Egypt functioned like a Gentile “Millennium” featuring one of the most artistic expressions of paganism in all of history. In it we observe the good and the bad produced by fallen man’s cultural dominion. We see advanced technology architecturally, medically, and literarily on one hand, yet on the other we are confronted with paganism’s worst features.
Egyptian culture placed great stress on the changeless and static elements of life in contrast to Mesopotamian culture. The see-saw of unbelief that we spoke of in Part I clearly tipped to the side of rationality and totalitarianism. The University of Chicago Egyptologist, Dr. Henri Frankfort wrote:
“The Egyptian belief [was] that the universe is changeless and that all apparent opposites must, therefore, hold each other in equilibrium. Such a belief has definite consequences in the field of moral philosophy. It puts a premium on whatever exists with a semblance of permanence. It excludes ideals of progress, utopias of any kind, revolutions, and any other radical changes in existing conditions. . . . In this way the belief in a static universe enhances. . .the significance of established authority.” 3
The individual was so submerged in the state and the state in nature that apart from the Exodus event there was a total absence of popular uprisings and revolutionary movements in Egyptian history. Here is self-sufficient man who denies the Creator-creature distinction realizing his need for stability, trying to exercise dominion in a corrupted manner, and winding up with the now familiar doctrine of the continuity of being spread throughout his culture from top to bottom. We’re going to observe how Egyptian paganism featured an entire network of ideas or framework affecting every area of life.
Let’s see how things worked out with ancient Egyptian artifacts. This first slide shows a design found on an ivory comb of the first dynasty.4 Note how early Mizraim’s society replaced the “Noahic Bible” with their brand of paganism. The god Horus, whose symbol was the falcon, is represented on this comb in three ways. At the top he is the sun in the boat sailing across the sky. In the middle he is the outstretched wings that depict the sky. At the bottom he is represented by Pharaoh as he stands on a box containing a serpent and the name of King Djet. The two vertical symbols are scepters denoting “welfare.” The sign to the right of the box refers to life. The interpretation of the art on this comb, is that the nature of the god Horus, manifested in the sun and in the sky, is also manifested in the person of Pharaoh. Because Horus is in Pharoah, life and welfare come from Pharoah.
The second artifact shows a temple column also from early Egypt. Again there are two vertical welfare scepters, but in this example they are capped above by the sky symbol and below by the earth symbol. Between them is written the name of King Sahure. The implication is that Pharaoh acts within the harmony of nature and was himself a vital part of it, a sort of mediator between heaven and earth.
The third artifact shows how closely the sun and the serpent appear in Egyptian art.5 Apparently to the Egyptian mind the sun and snake shared certain characteristics: both moved without normal means of propulsion. The sun illuminated the physical world; and if pieces of the Noahic Bible were remembered (cf. Gen. 3:1ff), the snake “illuminated” the spiritual world, giving “knowledge of good and evil.”
The fourth artifact clearly proclaimed the deity of Pharaoh. The Egyptian artist here draws Ramses II the same size as the gods Horus (left) and Khum (right) with whom he keeps company rather than with mortal men. This type of picture prompted Frankfort to write:
“[Pharaoh] was the fountainhead of all authority, all power, and all wealth. The famous saying of Louis XIV, l’etat c’est moi (I am the state), was levity and presumption when it was uttered, but could have been offered by Pharaoh as a statement of fact in which his subjects concurred. It would have summed up adequately [Egyptian] political philosophy.”6
The structure of Egyptian society, therefore, was idolatrous from top to bottom. Because “the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1)“although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful. . . .They changed the glory of the uncorruptible God in an image make like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things”(Rom. 1:21,23). Their artistic dominion power had re-engineered the heavens and the earth into a new cosmos with its gods and goddesses, man, and government united in One Being. Ancient Egypt was as advanced as paganism could get after the Babel judgment on its Nimrod prototype.
This pagan framework had deeply entrenched itself in the hearts of Moses’ fellow Hebrews. By adopting their Gentile overlords’ culture, they, too, had become spiritual rebels against their Creator (Josh. 24:14; Ezk. 20:6-10). Ancient Egypt offered man a “home” in which fallen man could forget his sinful alienation from God. Even though it was not perfect, it appeared to offer security from divine judgment. Had not the centralized power of Pharaoh been established through Joseph years before provided food relief against nature’s worst famine (Gen. 41)? So although the Hebrews cried out to the Lord for relief from their taskmasters (Ex. 3:7), they had a strange sense of security in Egypt that was threatened by the Exodus disruption (Num. 11:5: 14:22; 20:3-5). In effect they wanted improved living conditions while still dwelling inside the Egyptian social structure with its network of beliefs. The Word of God, they thought, could be added onto their pagan belief system.
From start to finish the Exodus crisis teaches us vital truth about how important frameworks of belief are. They can’t be mixed; they come as package deals. God began the crisis by appearing to Moses in the burning bush and announcing His name “Yahweh” or “I AM.” (Ex. 3:14). Immediately, Moses was confronted with God’s holiness in a way, perhaps, that had not happened in history since Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden in Eden. Again at Sinai Moses, together with the entire nation, came into physical contact with God in all his holiness. The peoples’ conscience was laid bare of all self-deception. They experienced, perhaps for the first time in their lives, unsuppressed fear of divine judgment upon their personal guilt (Ex. 20:19). From Exodus chapter 3 through the end of the Pentateuch the biblical text focuses on the issue of God’s righteousness, man’s sinfulness, and how substitutionary blood atonement is the only means of their reconciliation. Here is a grand illustration of the proper location of the point-of-contact for the Word of God. It strikes at the pivot point of unbelief.
How did God vindicate His Word through Moses? By vindicate I mean two things: how did He precipitate the admission of guilt, and how did He convince Israel to trust Him for every area of life—for safety from tyranny, for food and the necessities of life, for wisdom in whatever opportunities there were for dominion, for a soul-mate in marriage, for raising a family, for managing assets? The Hebrews faced a choice between two completely different networks of beliefs. The pagan framework was a façade to distract themselves from their guilt before God, and deep down they all knew it. It never really worked in daily life as its totalitarian implications worked themselves out (Ex. 1:8-11). Nevertheless, it was deeply ingrained in their hearts and souls. It took a series of miraculous challenges to every key area of the pagan lifestyle to dislodge it from Israel. Even then, the nation experienced only partial success as the Old Testament text reports.
We know the stories of the Exodus cycle. Moses wasn’t commissioned to lead a low-profile surreptitious rescue mission. That would not have confronted the Egyptian web-work of religious deceptions. Since that pagan framework centered in Pharaoh, the Exodus event focuses on him. God made Moses “as a God” to him (Ex. 7:1)—divine leader against divine leader. At first, Pharaoh’s magicians could counterfeit the miracles with their demonic powers. They vainly hoped that the Word of God through Moses could be enveloped and neutralized. Eventually, they admitted it for what it was—the “finger of God” (Ex. 8:18). Not only did Moses’ God triumph over divine Pharaoh’s domain, but He eventually killed Pharaoh’s own son! No family’s firstborn son survived without the blood of Passover showing the complete impartiality of God’s justice and the only way of salvation. The root guilt and need of atonement was objectively demonstrated. The vaunted stability and orderliness of Egypt step by step faltered and fell apart before the Creator of all things. God was not any less stern in dealing with the Jews in the wilderness wanderings. The rest of the Pentateuch records a litany of judgments against Israel’s residual pagan beliefs.
To provide the counterpoint to these beliefs Israel is left by the time of Moses’ death with the first five books of the Bible. These five books are sometimes aptly referred to as the Torah or “instruction.” Instruction in what? Instruction in the basic network of special revelation that challenges every part of the pagan system. We sometimes forget how we got the Torah. We got it because in the providentially-prepared moment of the Exodus required a total answer to Egypt’s total paganism. Through Moses God revealed a comprehensive correction to human culture with the truths of creation, the fall, the worldwide flood, the Noahic covenant, and the genesis of the Israelite counter-culture.7 8 These events and the doctrinal truths they reveal form a counter framework linking history, theology, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and daily life that, if used properly as an integrated whole, cannot be casually absorbed by unbelief. This biblical framework taken as a unit, the Holy Spirit provided as a necessary antidote to the high pagan culture of Egypt. By implication it show the antidote to the darkness of our own culture.
THE
EXILE CONFRONTATION WITH GENTILE DOMINION
The next event demonstrating the framework is the fall of Israel and the exile. From the Exodus in the second millennium, B.C., to the fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century, B.C., history contained an extended socio-political manifestation of the Kingdom of God in the nation Israel. For eight centuries the human race could observe clearly the cause-effect between man’s relationship to God and man’s welfare. Alva McClain put the matter in these words:
“The well-being of men, not only physically but every other way, is morally and spiritually conditioned by a principle confirmed by divinely imposed sanctions. Now this principle holds good generally in all nations in every age. But its operation has often been obscured to human eyes by the time ‘lag’ between moral breach and the infliction of the sanction. . . .Furthermore, in the general history of nations, the divine penalties are inflicted through secondary causes behind the veil of providential control (Jer. 51:28-30). For these reasons the skeptical have been able to question the existence of any divinely ordained moral government in human history. . . .But in the case of the nation of Israel in her Mediatorial Kingdom of history, the moral government of Jehovah was not only declared at Sinai but also was confirmed spectacularly in the recorded history of that kingdom by means of divine sanctions immediately imposed. And these sanctions were generally supernatural. . . .”9
Global
Implications of the Exile
The fall of ancient Israel and its exile caused a significant change in human history. It wasn’t the minor footnote that historians generally treat it. The Shekinah glory that had first appeared at the burning bush, that had made Israel the priestly nation of the world and had indwelt Tabernacle and Temple departed from the nation (Ezk. 8:5-18; 9:3; 10:4;11:23). No longer was the human race “visited” like it had been for the previous eight centuries. A major change in God’s providential working was taking place.
During the years of Israel’s declining strength two Gentile superpowers, Egypt and Babylon, competed for hegemony over the ancient near east. A few years prior to the departure of the Shekinah Glory, Nebuchadnezzar had ascended to the Babylonian throne after his victory over the Egyptians at Carchemish. For the next two years he purged pockets of resistance in western Asia (II Kings 24:1-7). By 603 B.C. he had become the undisputed lord and master of the ancient world. At that historical moment King Nebuchnezzar had his famous dream. Through his Jewish official, Daniel, God revealed the panorama of history from that day until the final re-establishment of the Kingdom of God in all its global completeness. The dream’s central theme was the transfer of political supremacy from Israel to four successive Gentile kingdoms:
“You, O king, are a king of kings. For the God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all.” (Dan. 2:37-38, emphasis supplied)
Centuries earlier such power could never have been given to a Gentile nation because of God’s promises to Israel: “If you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God. . . .[He] will set you high above all nations of the earth. . . .you shall be above only, and not be beneath.” (Deut. 28:1.13) McClain comments: “No nation, regardless of its size or strength, could stand successfully against Israel as long as that people followed the will of its divine King. . . .Israel went down in defeat only when she turned aside from the divinely written charter of her kingdom.”10 As if to confirm this transfer of power to the Gentiles, the Bible records the foolish attempts by the last few kings of Judah to rebel against Nebuchnezzar (II Kings 24-25). They suffered defeat and captivity as Jeremiah the prophet had forewarned (Jer. 27). These events spelled the end of the Solomonic Dynasty.
God transferred unrestrained supremacy to four successive Gentile kingdoms, each building upon the one before.11 Not since the birth of Israel restrained Egypt’s dominance had paganism such global freedom to revive. The four kingdoms are described in terms of metals of successively declining value but increasing strength suggesting perhaps a trend in economic currency and military power. They are also described in terms of animal-like nature suggesting—in contrast to the final coming of the Son of Man—cultural levels less than appropriate for proper human civilization (Dan. 7:2-8). All four consisted of comprehensive pagan social orders involving deification of the state. Nebuchnezzar immediately deified himself by perverting Daniel’s interpretation of his dream (Dan. 3-4). The Medio-Persians elevated human legislation to the status of divine, immutable decrees (Esther 3-8; Dan. 6). The Greeks, in spite of their so-called democratic innovations, set up a situation that led to the reign of the most Satanic-like leader of the ancient world, the prototype of the coming Antichrist, Antiochus Epiphanes (Dan. 8). And the Romans rapidly abandoned their early ideas of a Republic and adopted varying levels of emperor-worship. Note that in all four cases you can observe the political manifestation of unbelief: the see-saw of totalitarianism vs. anarchy.
One result of the exile was that a wave of Jews spread throughout the nations taking the Scripture with it. The Church fathers recognized the hand of God behind this Diaspora. Augustine (A.D. 354-430) wrote: “[Israel] was afterwards dispersed through the nations in order to testify to the scriptures in which eternal salvation in Christ had been declared.”12 If the Word of God hadn’t penetrated the nations during Israel’s kingdom period, it certainly did from the exile onward.
A strange phenomenon arose throughout the world just at the time when this wave of Jews was dispersing throughout the nations. As D. Winton Thomas has observed, “This century was more than a creative epoch in Israel’s history. It was a creative epoch in the history of the world.”11 One student of world religion noted:
“In the sixth century, B.C., there was a tidal wave of revolt against the priestcraft of the ancient world. This wave shattered the power of the old religions, though their cults continued to exist as backwaters for centuries. Seven world religions appeared within fifty years of each other and all continue to this day.”12 (Emphasis supplied)
Sevcn world religions? What was going on? One clue is that these religious changes paralleled developments among the Jews. The loss of the Shekinah Glory and Temple plus life in exile changed the Jewish religious emphasis from priesthood to teaching in the synagogue. The previous eight centuries of a supernaturally-managed nation had come to an end. The six other Gentile religions agreed that God, if He existed at all, was a non-interfering, non-transcendent, disinterested Being.
The slide also mentions the Greek astronomer Thales who made the first prediction of an astronomical event by predicting the solar eclipse that we now know occurred at 6:13 PM, May 28, 585 B.C. “Records of celestial phenomena had been kept for centuries by the Eastern sages, but now for the first time Thales had discerned a regularity in these occurrences, has formulated a law, and had tested his formulation by a successful prediction.”13 Eventually these developments in Greece mushroomed into the rise of philosophy culminating in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is almost as if the sense of regularity and law spread throughout civilization. One cannot help but wonder if it was a consequence of the diaspora Jews bringing the Scriptural concept of a covenant-keeping Creator over all of nature. If so, then the “mystery” of why philosophy suddenly arose in Greece during the sixth century, B.C., is solved. Japheth truly must dwell in the tents of Shem (Gen. 9:27).
Living by
the Word of God in Gentile Culture
The diaspora Jews would have to be prepared to survive outside of the land of Israel. To that preparation we now turn. Looking forward to the coming collapse of the nation, the pre-exilic prophets gave additional special revelation. From prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel we discover an expansion of the biblical framework into more detailed eschatology. To keep from being swallowed up and “assimilated” by paganism, Jews needed to have a framework of truth broad enough to encompass the new global dominion of the Gentiles. (You can almost hear their Gentile overlords saying, “Yahweh is nice for you Jews, but we Babylonians and Persians have our own gods, and while you live with us, you’ll darn well honor them. After all they enabled us to defeat you. It seems your god is a local deity and not a potent one at that.”14) God, therefore, enlarged the corpus of previous prophecy which had primarily centered on Israel by revealing prophecies concerning all the other nations and the grand culmination of world history. He had to be clearly revealed as the Lord of the land, the sea, and nations everywhere. This new special revelation about global history combined with “lessons learned” special revelation of Judges, Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles provides us with a vastly enlarged framework for our situation today.15
The entire second half of the book of Isaiah addresses the Diaspora situation, including those Jews who would return to the land after the exile but continue to live under the Daniel 2 Gentile hegemony. The text cuts to the core of pagan culture. In Part I I said that the root of our surrounding darkness today is sin. It hasn’t changed since Eden. It always leads guilty man to re-vamp his theology to relieve the pressure of guilt. And this revamping process always begins with idolatry. So, as we would anticipate, this section of Isaiah beginning with chapter 40 is loaded with interrogations of idol makers, often with sarcastic commentary. It’s the pivot point again in the pagan see-saw. The point of contact for the Word of God is the inner “fifth column” of the soul, where the conscience strives against perverted dominion.
Against pagan insistence upon the continuity of being with god(s) being only one component of this greater reality of Being, Isaiah insists that God Himself is ultimate Being with all else merely His creation (Isa. 40:12-26; 42:5; 43:10-13; 44:6-8). In opposition to the familiar pagan concepts of Chance and Fate, Isaiah mocks all those who take them seriously (Isa. 65:11). Contrary to the cyclic notion of history that goes nowhere, Isaiah speaks of history progressing toward a time of final judgment (Isa. 40:10; 41:8-20; 43:5-21; 44:3-5; 45:22-25; etc). Other passages include God’s critiques of empiricism and rationalism cited previously. Included in many of the passages are those key events of biblical history that have to do with all nations—creation, the flood of Noah, the Abrahamic covenant, the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the wilderness wanderings, and the Gentile discipline and defeat of Israel. By surrounding the life-among-Gentiles-scenario with these key events and their associated doctrinal truths, God provides a framework of interlocking truth powerful enough to handle any situation that the Jews would experience.16
The third and last example of God injecting special revelation into a providentially prepared situation comes from the times when the Church first ventured outside of Israel to evangelize Gentile cultures. One event that stands out among the others is Paul’s address at Mars Hill in Athens recorded in Acts, chapter 17.
Athens easily ranked as one of the chief intellectual centers of the ancient world. It was where Socrates gave his famous apology before being condemned to death four centuries before Paul. Athens was filled with pagan attempts to construct total world views or idolatries (17:16,22). However, like pagan intellectuals throughout history, Athenians could not suppress the upwelling of God-consciousness in their literature, art, and science. Paul knew their artistic and literary works and was ready to give an answer when called to a public hearing (17:16-21,23,28).
The presentation question centered upon the resurrection (17:18-19). Paul knew that their pagan viewpoint made the resurrection unintelligible so his apologetic began, not with a direct answer to their question, but with a critique of their entire viewpoint. Contrary to what some commentators have understood from this text, Paul made no attempt to argue on the basis of some fundamental notion shared between the biblical and pagan viewpoints. There could be no such notion common to both the Socratic maxim that knowledge begins with “know thyself” and the biblical maxim that knowledge starts with the fear of the Lord (Prov 1:7). What Paul did use was the true point of contact with his unbelieving audience: their irrepressible God-consciousness and sense of guilt.
Utilizing Old Testament revelation extensively, he contrasted the biblical worldview with their pagan worldview point by point. He challenged their belief in the continuity of being with Isaiah’s and the Psalmist’s Creator-creature distinction (17:24-25 cf. Isa. 42:5; Pss. 42:5; 50:9-12). He denied paganism’s deification of man’s intellect with Solomon’s confession of the incomprehensibility of God (17:24; cf. I Kings 8:27). Against Athenian racism Paul presented Moses’ accounts of the unity of the human race (17:26; cf. Gen. 1,9; Deut. 32:8), of the paganization of civilization (17:30; cf. Deut. 4:19), and the Psalmists’ subordination of national existence to God’s decreed doxological purpose in human history (17:27; cf. Ps. 74:7). Paul then used Greek literature to show that underneath, and in spite of, their paganism they really do know of God and their responsibility to think according to His standards (17:28-29). Not only does the gospel belong to a totally different worldview, Paul demonstrated, but paganism is beset with internal contradiction between what it says and what it at bottom knows is true.
Preaching the Resurrection Embedded in an Old Testament
Framework.
After this thorough analysis of Athenian culture, Paul could answ