John H Armstrong

A Prayer for Maundy Thursday

Several years ago I met Pastor Mark Moore at a conference in Colorado. Recently we have become real friends. I began reading his blogs in the past few days and have found them quite helpful. Mark describes himself, on his blog site, with this personal information: "I have the honor of being married to the most wonderful woman in the world and have been blessed with three amazing kids.  Several years ago, as a young and inexperienced pastor, I started Providence Community Church and since that time I have had the unbelievable privilege of serving this great community."

Yesterday, Maundy Thursday, Mark posted a fine blog that reflects upon the mystery of Christ's passion. I encourage you to read this over Easter weekend. You can read this particular blog at: http://markmooreblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/a-maundy-thursday-prayer/

 

I will be in Dallas in late May to build an ACT 3 Cohort Group for the fall of this year. If you would like to meet with me, and talk about this group, you can contact me directly or contact Pastor Mark Moore if you would like. Mark, and some of his friends, are likely to share in this group though no one has formally committed to it yet. My trip will be an exploratory one open to serious inquirers. You can learn more about the Cohort Groups at ACT 3. Click on the icon that has the picture of The Unity Factor on it. 

How Christology Helps Us Find Unity in Christ's Mission

One of the chapters in my book, Your Church Is Too Small, is taken from the title of a book by the German theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Christ the Center. Here I argue that the Christian faith is first about Christ? "Who do you say that I am?" asked Jesus. Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Before we argue about the doctrine of the church, the nature and seat of authority or even about the nature of faith and grace in our salvation why not begin with this question. It is clearly the most basic and core question of them all. If a person says (with the faith that only God knows and really sees) "Jesus is Lord" and confesses openly that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, then Scripture is very plain about this matter. Such a person is to be numbered among his followers and should be received by his followers as a brother or sister in Christ.

I am frankly amazed at how quickly we move away from this simple core conviction. Theology matters! In fact it matters profoundly because we are always in danger of losing our way in regard to rightly confessing the core mystery/truth that Jesus is Lord. Other lords seek our allegiance and bad theology can mislead us, even causing us to leave the Lord who redeemed us. But all of this does not negate the simple fact that we are saved by confessing Jesus, not by knowing which church is right, or which creed we accept or what doctrines we agree/disagree about.  

I am well aware that some extremely progressive Christians deny the most basic truths that support a credible confession of Christ when they deny his death, burial and resurrection. I am aware that some progressive Christians deny the essential truth of Jesus's two natures (divine and human) in his one person. In other words there are some professing Christians who deny what is stated in the creed as essential to the faith of the earliest followers of Jesus. I am also aware that the majority of liberal and progressive Christians do not deny these core truths at all. They "see" a Jesus who looks and sounds more like a progressive (modern) liberal and this prompts them to adopt views of the faith that I find, at some points, unacceptable. Yet I also believe that far too many conservatives "see" a Jesus who looks much like a modern conservative rather than the Jesus that we actually encounter in reading the four Gospels of the New Testament. If for no other reason this makes me cautious about these labels. For some time I have accepted people on the basis of what they confess and not "read" my views into them in terms of my relationship with them as brothers and sisters. This has not been an easy road to follow. Honestly, it is extremely challenging. The further I go down this road the more I have learned to accept and love people who confess Jesus as Lord but this has not always been without significant challenges to my mind and spirit. 

What I said in my chapter "Christ the Center" is rather simple. It is, in the best sense, basic. But it is not easy or simplistic. We too easily think that what is simple is simplistic. Not so.

This was one reason, among several, that I was drawn to the book, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: A Catholic and Evangelical Christologyy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), by my friend Fr. Edward T. Oakes. Oakes is the associate professor of systematic theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois. I have visited this seminary campus a number of times and have many friends on the faculty, including the extremely popular teacher and preacher Fr. Robert Barron, whose Catholicism video series I have warmly recommended. 

Oakes maintains that at the heart of all ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Evangelicals is their fundamental agreement on Christology. (Oakes was an original writer and member of the Evangelicals and Catholics Together Committee, an esteemed group which includes J. I. Packer, Timothy George, John Woodbridge, and other good friends, who are all respected evangelical academic leaders.)

Oakes has written a 459-page book to show how this common confession of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and unique Savior of the human race is the core of our common "evangelical" faith. In this magnum opus he surveys the Christian teaching on the person and nature of Christ and looks at the many doctrinal and historical issues essential to the study of Christology.  

Oakes draws on recent scholarship in New Testament studies and patristic Christology as well as key medieval and major Protestant voices. He also includes major contemporary Catholic theologians and magisterial statements from Vatican II. By presenting two millenia of thinking about the Christian paradox of an infinite God who is a finite human person he concludes that poet Gerard Manley Hopkins was right to speak of "Infinity dwindled to infancy." 

Timothy George, in his endorsement on the back cover of this important book, writes: "Oakes, one of best and most literate theologians, has given us in this volume a masterpiece of Christological reflection. Evangelicals and Catholics share together a common faith in Jesus Christ the Lord, the one and only Savior of the world."

But here is the is point of it all. George adds, "The closer we are drawn to Jesus Christ, the closer we come to one another." (He says this book will help us do both!) 

I believe that statement. The closer we are drawn into Christ, the more we exalt him and worship him and write about him the closer we are drawn toward one another. This is the key to understanding my journey in missional-ecumenism. Seek Jesus Christ first and draw near to him. He is "the way, the truth and the life." We have significant differences about authority, the nature of the church and our understanding of how grace works sacramentally, to name only a few, but we share this: a common love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Before we discuss anything else I suggest we go back here and begin anew. 

The One Who Takes the Son Gets Everything: A Parable

 

Ever so often I am forwarded an anonymous story or parable that is worth keeping and sharing. Most are too romantic for my tastes. Some are just not very good stories. One never knows who found or wrote these stories because they just get passed along from person to person with no attribution. I got one such story last week from a good friend. Instead of simply passing it along I share it today as a blog post.

I have to say that this parable (or story) speaks to the very heart and soul of faith and the work of Christ on our behalf. I loved it and thus I now share it. The punctuation is not mine but in the original copy I received. If anyone can tell me the source I will be happy to acknowledge it. For now just enjoy this powerful story . . . . 

A wealthy man and his son loved to collect rare works of art. They had everything in their collection, from Picasso to Raphael. They would often sit together and admire the great works of art..

When the Vietnam conflict broke out, the son went to war. He was very courageous and died in battle while rescuing another soldier. The father was notified and grieved deeply for his only son.
  

About a month later, just before Christmas,
 

There was a knock at the door. A young man stood at the door with a large package in his hands..
  

He said, 'Sir, you don't know me, but I am the soldier for whom your son gave his life. He saved many lives that day, and he was carrying me to safety when a bullet struck him in the heart and he died instantly... He often talked about you, and your love for art.' The young man held out this package. 'I know this isn't much. I'm not really a great artist, but I think your son would have wanted you to have this.'

The father opened the package. It was a portrait of his son, painted by the young man. He stared in awe at the way the soldier had captured the personality of his son in the painting. The father was so drawn to the eyes that his own eyes welled up with tears. He thanked the young man and offered to pay him for the picture.. 'Oh, no sir, I could never repay what your son did for me. It's a gift.'

The father hung the portrait over his mantle. Every time visitors came to his home he took them to see the portrait of his son before he showed them any of the other great works he had collected.

The man died a few months later. There was to be a great auction of his paintings. Many influential people gathered, excited over seeing the great paintings and having an opportunity to purchase one for their collection.

On the platform sat the painting of the son. The auctioneer pounded his gavel. 'We will start the bidding with this picture of the son. Who will bid for this picture?'

There was silence...
 

Then a voice in the back of the room shouted, 'We want to see the famous paintings. Skip this one.'
  

But the auctioneer persisted. 'Will somebody bid for this painting? Who will start the bidding? $100, $200?'
  

Another voice angrily. 'We didn't come to see this painting. We came to see the Van Gogh's, the Rembrandts. Get on with the Real bids!'
 

But still the auctioneer continued. 'The son! The son! Who'll take the son?'

Finally, a voice came from the very back of the room. It was the longtime gardener of the man and his son. 'I'll give $10 for the painting...' Being a poor man, it was all he could afford.
 

'We have $10, who will bid $20?'
 

'Give it to him for $10. Let's see the masters.'
 

The crowd was becoming angry. They didn't want the picture of the son.
  

They wanted the more worthy investments for their collections.

The auctioneer pounded the gavel.. 'Going once, twice, SOLD for $10!'

A man sitting on the second row shouted, 'Now let's get on with the collection!'

The auctioneer laid down his gavel. 'I'm sorry, the auction is over.'
 

'What about the paintings?'

 

'I am sorry. When I was called to conduct this auction, I was told of a secret stipulation in the will... I was not allowed to reveal that stipulation until this time. Only the painting of the son would be auctioned. Whoever bought that painting would inherit the entire estate, including the paintings.

 

The man who took the son gets everything!'

God gave His son over 2,000 years ago to die on the Cross. Much like the auctioneer, His message today is: 'The Son, the Son, who'll take the Son?'

Because, you see, whoever takes the Son gets everything!

FOR GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD HE GAVE HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON, WHO SO EVER BELIEVETH, SHALL HAVE ETERNAL LIFE...THAT'S LOVE

 

Bishop Kallistos Ware: “The Center of the Christian Message”

A few months ago Christianity Today editor David Neff did an interview with Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware. This interview is now available online. Bishop Ware, who is from Great Britain, was an Anglican before he entered the Orthodox Church as a young adult. His story is widely known and can be accessed online as well. He is probably best known for his written work, much of it explaining Orthodoxy to the non-Orthodox. Unlike so many leaders in the Orthodox Church Bishop Ware understands and loves evangelical Protestant Christianity.

The Christianity Today interview was actually conducted while Bishop Ware was in the Chicago area speaking at North Park University and Wheaton College. I heard the Wheaton address at the Billy Graham Center. His lecture at Wheaton was titled: “What Have We to Learn from One Another?” He answered, at the outset, “We need one another to be truly human!” I shall never forget this answer so long as I live. This is at the core of what I’ve discovered through missional-ecumenism. Knowing my brothers and sisters from the whole church has, I sincerely believe, made me more “truly human.”

Bishop Ware also said that there were only two kinds of Christians in the end: (1) Those who make it up as they go, and; (2) Those who live on the basis of a revealed religion. Priceless. He then explored three areas: (1) Church and Eucharist, (2) Scripture and Tradition, and: (3) The work of Christ. Quoting J. I. Packer he agreed that “We should do everything we can together that we are not obligated to do separately.”

In the final point he stressed that the Orthodox and the evangelicals focus on the cross is different. The Orthodox make no clear distinction between justification, sanctification and glorification. They stress salvation as union with Christ and include all three but without the sharp distinctions we’ve made. Quoting Antony, “Conversion begins but never ends.” This is a “Yes/But” approach, or better yet, a “Both/And.” Example: Christ died, yes he died for me.

Bishop Ware told a story about an evangelical asking him if he was saved? He said he did not answer “No.” But he did not say “Yes.” Nor did he say, “I don’t know!” He answered, “I trust by God’s grace I’m being saved. Life is a journey home to Christ.”

This type of thinking is captured in the interview David Neff did with Bishop Ware. Here is a small part of the interview that touches on the points I just made:

David Neff:

If I were to meet you on a train and ask you, "What is the center of the Christian message?," how would you succinctly put that?

Bishop Ware:

I would answer, "I believe in a God who loves humankind so intensely, so totally, that he chose himself to become human. Therefore, I believe in Jesus Christ as fully and truly God, but also totally and unreservedly one of us, fully human." And I would say to you, "The love of God is so great that Christ died for us on the cross. But love is stronger than death, and so the death of Jesus was followed by his resurrection. I am a Christian because I believe in the great love of God that led him to become incarnate, to die, and to rise again." That's my faith. All of this is made immediate to us through the continuing action of the Holy Spirit.

David Neff:

Evangelicals agree with everything you have just said. But we tend to focus on a transaction that happened at the Cross and a transaction that happens when the believer puts faith in what happened at the Cross. We take up Paul's courtroom metaphors. How would you describe the East's way of looking at it?

Bishop Ware:

It's true, we Orthodox would, on the whole, not use the word transaction. It's also certainly true that we do not emphasize legal language.

We prefer the image of Christ as victor over death, love stronger than death, the kind of victory that we sense at the Paschal service Easter midnight in the Orthodox Church, when there is a constant refrain, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs he has given life." That is the image of Christ's work that we chiefly stress.

But certainly within the New Testament there is a whole series of images. There is no single systematic theory of the Atonement, and we should make use of all these images. So, yes, we should find a place for the idea of substitution, which the Orthodox don't stress so much. It is there in the New Testament, in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "He who was without sin was made by God to be sin for us, that we in him might become righteousness." The idea of the sacrificial Lamb is also a profound scriptural image. We should make use of those images as well as Christ the Victor.

I don't care so much for the idea of satisfaction. Satisfaction is not a scriptural word. The legal imagery, I think, should always be combined with an emphasis upon the transfiguring power of love. The motive for the Incarnation was not God's justice or his glory, but his love. That was the supreme motive. "God so loved the world." That is what we should start from.

Thus ends only a small part of an interesting interview. You can read it all online. You can also see a video clip of parts that were not printed.

The final paragraph above is a pretty good summary of what I have come to believe over these many years. The idea of satisfaction is rooted more in culture of the West than in a central theme in the Bible, at least in my view. I believe in substitution and I believe in the legal category we see in Pauline language. But I also believe evangelicals have gone much too far with both of these in how they have reduced the cross to them almost exclusively. What I do not see is the over developed dogma of satisfaction, which makes God into someone other than the God of love who redeems the world because of his love. What convinced me of this was preaching six sermons on John 3:16 way back in 1991.

The Hope of Future Life

I am amazed at how easily people speak of life after death with no real basis for what they think or say. It is apparent that Christian thought has so permeated our culture that even when Christian thought no longer holds prominence in morals, or in day-to-day decision making and living, people still cling to the Christian idea of life after death. Simply put, they believe they will go to heaven, whatever and wherever it is in the universe. Their views of heaven are undefined, or ill-defined, but they speak of it all the time at funerals and when they think of a deceased relative or friend. In fact, the requirement for going to heaven now seems to be simple: you die!

An extremely important part of Christian faith is the hope of triumph over death. It is common to most people, even in other religions and systems, to believe that they will live again after this life is over. There is no evidence that any other creature has such a belief or practice as humans. But what must be continually kept in mind is that there is all the difference in the world between a hope that has reasonable grounds and a hope that is a simply wishful thought. J. B. Phillips said, “In plain sober fact, our hope of passing through death to share in God’s eternal life rests upon Christ’s own demonstration with the enemy, his rising from the dead. It is the crux of the Christian faith.” If Christ was not raised then all his claims are false or irrelevant.

Sooner or later you have to make up your mind. Do you accept as sober historical fact the resurrection of Jesus from the dead? If you think at all you will soon realize there is little basis for your own life after death, and certainly for your own resurrection and the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 21 – 22:4), unless Jesus was truly raised as claimed by the early disciples.

What launched the Christian Church into the ancient world? When I stood in an ancient second century church meeting place in Rome, back in March, I realized in a wholly different and powerful way that these believers gathered in this spot, over the remains of the cult of Mithraism, precisely because they believed Jesus was alive and still with them by the Spirit as he had promised.

The Gospel Is Completely Antithetical to Our Way of Thinking

For some years I have believed the gospel is good news about Jesus and his reign in this world and in the world to come. Thus we pray as our Lord taught us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The gospel of the kingdom is not about grasping facts, repeating words or saying some version of the “Roman Road” with proof texts that invite a closing prayer. Do not misunderstand me -- the death, burial and resurrection of the man Jesus are historical realities, not pious myths. This man from Nazareth was more than a mortal man, which we forget he really was in some churches. He was, and is, divine. I hold to an orthodox Christology. But the gospel is much more than Christology, especially when Christology is understood simply as “right beliefs” about the person of Jesus Christ.

The living truth of the gospel is something that we access through a faith journey, a journey that is antithetical to human certainty. This journey may/will bring us to make clear doctrinal statements but these statements are not the gospel. Remember, you can believe all the right things and not know Jesus. It is only as we step out in faith into the things to which God calls us that we experience God’s faithfulness, but this step is always taken in uncertainty and with a lack of full understanding. Faith is not an irrational leap in the dark but it is not a rational grasp of beliefs either. Faith is not anti-rational but it does transcend reason. The ancient mystics always understood this point. So did the Reformed thinker Jonathan Edwards. But few modern Christians understand it at all.

Most modern religion supplanted this type of spiritual journey and claimed that faith was believing in the truth of certain sacred doctrines. Or faith was hearing these truths and accepting them by the will. But all of this is very different from the kind of faith the gospel calls us to in Jesus. Jesus never associates faith with a belief in sacred doctrines. Instead of doctrinal beliefs that offer certainty, Jesus simply says, “Follow me.” That’s it.

When we follow Jesus we discover a God that is very different from what we had anticipated based upon religion or human/biblical forms of faith. The Jesus that religion and theology present to us is often very different from the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This religious Jesus that we follow is very often a tribal Jesus who shares our values and conforms to our notions of right and wrong. He punishes evildoers and rewards good people who believe the right things and practice the right kind of behavior. (Quite often such good people are those who are most like us since we believe that we have the truth and understand the mystery of true faith! This is why we keep creating new denominations and movements.)

The problem with this is clear. We make Jesus into our likeness and ignore all the things that he says that seem strange and mysterious to our way of religion. We convince ourselves that he did not really mean it when he said we are to turn the other cheek and love our enemies. And we cannot comprehend how the last are really not first and the first are actually last so we spiritualize this saying to make it fit our religion. We especially have a hard time believing that God is “kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.” And we fiercely debate how Jesus could speak as true God and pray for his torturers to be forgiven while he was on the cross. This is just too foreign to our human understanding. Consequently, we go on imagining a Jesus who will fit nicely into our fearful and limited understanding. This is so much easier than believing in a Jesus who changes our understanding in order that we might come to know the mystery of God’s mercy.

No Greater Love

Jesus says, in the Upper Room Discourse, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13). When the deadly tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, a few weeks ago Dean Wells proved what Christian friendship looks like by laying down his life. As 200 mph winds bore down on the Home Deport store people fled to the back of the store to be safe. Others in the parking lot were trying to find a way into the store. About a dozen people were tapping on the door at which point Dean Wells let them into the store. Wells was near the front door, having just let in a father and two young children, when the storm hit. Those who made it to the rear of the store survived but six did not. Among them was Christian saint Dean Wells.

When the funeral for Wells took place some days later his daughter said, “Today, we gather for the absolute No. 1 quality my father had. He served others before he served himself. The store manager said, “Wells put himself in a very dangerous place to allow other people to survive the storm.”

At Wells’ funeral service friends and co-workers said he was an optimistic, overwhelmingly friendly man who loved fly fishing and took pride in his grandchildren.”

When Wells’ two daughters went back to his home, after the authorities had released his personal effects, they searched through their dad’s desk for a CD of him whistling “Amazing Grace.” Finding it they played it as his service. Its sound filled the church at his funeral. They also found a note from a sermon. Wells wrote: “No greater sacrifice can be given to them than to give one’s life for another.” Amen. RIP, M. Dean Wells. You are a real hero and you demonstrate what a Christian saint is really all about.

A Christological Theology

I believe the greatest theological need in our time, along side the theological idea of what I’ve called missional-ecuemnism, is the recovery of a Christ-centered theological perspective. We desperately need a Christological theology!

Our theology is often centered on perspectives that are rooted in a number of good biblical themes but lack Christ. There is nothing more central to the biblical story of redemption than Christ. He is all. Paul, in perhaps the greatest hymn in all the Bible says:

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross. Therefore, God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:6-11).

A Christological theology embraces the commands to love God and our neighbor. Behind these commandments are not rules (law) but divine self-sacrifice, a sacrifice that binds together the entire enterprise we call theology. And the self-sacrificial character of Jesus means the trinitarian nature of God does not leave us at the whim of an arbitrary God. He rescues, will rescue and must rescue all who cannot rescue themselves and call upon him. Understanding God as self-giving in Christ is not an abstract theology of the attributes but rather an accessible theology of the cross and the resurrection. The cross reflects, contains and embodies the trinitarian mystery of the eternal self-giving Father who begets the Son and gives procession to the Spirit. In the words of one theologian: “Christology shares in the reality of who God is (theology) and reveals it” (cf. Matthew 11:25-30).

Further, a Christological theology does not detract from our doctrine of God but rather opens it up to the fuller reality that God’s intentions are inherent in his divine essence. Simply put, this means that God does what he does because of who He (God) is.

Much of Westminster-type Calvinism, especially of the sort that majors on the divine decrees as central to theology, fails at this precise point. It gives the Christian a view of God that is detached from God’s self-sacrificing nature and thus the center of his revelation, Jesus Christ. When I grasped this focus my life and my preaching were profoundly altered. I believe many neo-conservative Reformed Christians desperately need this richer, deeper and more Christ-centered perspective.

N. T. Wright captured this so well in his book, The Climax of the Covenant (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1991, 83-84). He wrote:

The real humiliation of the incarnation and the cross is that one who was himself God, and who never during the whole process stopped being God, could embrace such a vocation. The real theological emphasis of the hymn [Philippians 2], therefore, is not simply a new view of Jesus. It is a new understanding of God. Against age-old attempts of human beings to make God  in their own (arrogant, self-glorifying image) image, God reveals the truth about what it meant to be God. Underneath this is the conclusion, all-important in present Christological debate: incarnation and even crucifixion are to be seen as appropriate vehicles for the dynamic self-revelation of God (italics are Wright’s).

I believe Wright’s short sentence that this is a “new understanding of God” is at the heart of the Christian revelation. Jesus revealed the Father as he had never been revealed and now in the full light of his glory we see the heart and mind of God as never before. Let us lay hold of this truth and go forward into deeper and better theology in our personal thinking and in the community life of the whole church.

Harold Camping and the Rapture

Harold E. Camping, an 89-year old Christian radio broadcaster and the president of Family Radio, a religious broadcasting network based in Oakland, California, is one of the more arrogant and misled teachers on radio. His network now spans more than 150 outlets in the United States. On his network and website Camping says Christ is coming back this Saturday, May 21^st. Here is how USA Today reported the Camping prediction in a recent edition. Watch this video. It might move you to tears if you see how much damage this man has actually done to earnest people who follow him.

If you are not in an area of the country where you’ve heard Camping speak you haven’t missed a great deal. Wikipedia notes that his “trademarks include a deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow cadence. He has also used mathematical predictions applied to the Bible to predict dates for the end of the world.^” Camping is a very extreme Calvinist who at one time was actually a member of the Christian Reformed Church. (He long ago left his local church and pronounced judgment on this church and ever other church in existence! For some years his message has been centered on telling people to leave their church and support his radio broadcasts since he alone knows the truth.) His current end times prediction is that Christ will come for true believers, of which there are very, very few left it must be noted, this Saturday, May 21, 2011.

I heard Camping recently, for five minutes or so, on my car radio. He was going on and on about the fact that all of the remaining churches are apostate and all those who remain in them will be damned! Camping believes that we are already in the Great Tribulation and that when the few believers that remain are taken away this week then God will begin to completely destroy the Earth and the universe ending five months later on October 21. Nearly seven billion people will be destroyed in a series of “natural” disasters. He bases all of this upon calculations he has made with numbers and dates, ostensibly from the Bible. (It must be remembered that countless teachers have done the same for centuries, opposing the very teaching of Jesus about the end of this age not being known to anyone but the Father alone!) You would think Harold Camping would have learned something from his past mistakes about Christ’s return but such is not the case. He previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994 but now says he miscalculated the numbers. This time he will be right.

Several questions occur to me?

1. What will happen to Family Radio after May 21? (I hope it shuts down!)

2. What will these people who follow Camping so devotedly do after this Saturday? (I hope they wake up and confess their sinful foolishness, which is morally dangerous, disown the man as a false teacher and get involved in a confessional church.)

3. When will people stop this craziness? (You know the answer to this one already.)

4. How much damage will this teaching do to the missional witness of Christ? (Probably, very little.)

5. Who will be the next Harold Camping? (I have no idea but there will be others.)

6. What should true believers do this week? (Live for the glory of God and be faithful to Christ. Forget this unless you know someone caught in this deception to whom you can show mercy and grace after this Saturday.)

I plan to be doing my work all week. I doubt that I will think twice about Camping come Saturday, May 21^st. I hope, honestly, that once and for all he goes away and is totally discredited once and for all.

A dear friend has said to me, “John, the only problem with all these foolish predictions is that someone might accidentally get it right sometime!” That is actually unlikely since “no one knows the day or the hour.” It would take more fools than we actually have in the global church to accidentally hit the right day somehow, someway. “At such a time as you think not” comes to mind.

Death on a Friday Afternoon

Today, the world over, Christians remember the death of their Savior, Jesus Christ. We take part in various remembrances, some elaborate and some simple, even Puritan. Regardless, many of us will participate in some service of remembrance and express our thanks to God for the gift of his Son.

I have participated in many different death rituals in various countries and cultures. The most unusual was in India. I will never get over what transpired on my second extended trip there in the 1980s. One of the leaders of the mission we worked with had come to meet us at the airport, a drive of about four hours or more. His van had run into the back of a large truck, stopped in the middle of the road in typical Indian fashion. He had been thrown forward off the back seat (where he was sleeping) and was internally injured and died after some hours of suffering by the side of the highway with no medical help. Our team picked up his body late in the evening, drove for hours to the town where we were to lodge and the next day, a Sunday, I did a funeral. We marched through town with the body and sang songs of Christian faith while the people watched us in some degree of astonishment, or so it seemed to me. The whole experience is rather surreal to me and yet I remember it as if it was just yesterday. Mourners were connected to their grief in open and tangible ways that shocked my Western understanding.

Our culture places little or no importance on funeral rituals and their importance. We want to get it over and done with so we can act as if death is not really the end. It is like a big denial of the awful reality of the grim reaper. We isolate the dying and rush through arrangements once the finality of it all sets in on us.

In our cultural context we have little real understanding and appreciation for the rich and amazing biblical texts that explain Christ’s death. We do not know how to grieve the death of the person we profess to love more than all other people. One has noted that because of this we consequently find ourselves too apathetic to the resurrection. But death should neither be ignored nor celebrated. I know that will not go down quite right with some Christians, especially since many of us were taught from childhood that the day Jesus died was a great day!

I remind you death is an enemy. It was such for Jesus on this day. His death, even more than yours and mine, was because of sin, not his but the sins of the world. The awful foe got his grips on him that day and broke him. The only problem was that by his death he broke the power of the foe. This we can celebrate but this is the result of the resurrection more than the death.

Alexander McLaren said, “The grave is in the garden because all our joys and works have sooner or later death associated with them. Every relationship. Every occupation. Every joy. The grave in the garden bids us bring the wholesome contemplation of death into all life. It may be a harm, a weakening to think of it; but it should be a strength.”

My dear friend Jim Packer puts it well: “We can face death knowing that when it comes we shall not find ourselves alone. He has been there before us, and he will see us through.” Amen.

May Good Friday be good for you because you come to his death in faith and hope knowing that by his stripes you are healed for here your sins are covered once and for all.