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Moving Beyond Our Politics
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Moving Beyond Our Politics
Copyright © April 21, 2013 Douglas W. Jerving.
All Rights Reserved.
"And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our
blood on them that dwell on the earth?"
-- Revelation 6:10.
This is not a prayer against mankind in general, so much as against those who are the oppressors and overlords
of God's people. Yes! Even in the New Testament we find prayers directed AGAINST those who hate and destroy the
truth. But God is still merciful, albeit for a season, so that they might repent (turn and obey Him).
The book of Revelation was written by John around the time of the Neronian persecutions just a few years prior
to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Many recent scholars have finally been forced by the evidence to agree with
this early date because it makes more sense than our last century's attribution of the date to the Diocletian
persecution at the end of the first century (or as some hyper-critical theologians, as late as the second
century). There is nearly overwhelming evidence that the anti-Christ was Nero and not some future despot still
to be revealed.
Why is that important? Because most 21st century Christians are still looking and secretly hoping for a modern
day anti-Christ, which is a figment of the premillenialist and fundamentalist imagination not at all founded on
the Bible. We (by which I mean "they") are expecting and praying for an end of the world that the New Testament
does not support theologically.
The results of such thinking is that we expect the worst, look forward to it, base our lives on it, and pray for
it. We expect the demise of Christian thought, of morality, of good government, and of the power of the truth. We
anticipate the destruction of society, the rise of anarchy, and an apocalyptic societal disintegration. We
anticipate these failures because we believe they will crack the social egg, fry it in the pan of adversity and
usher in the Kingdom of God. And to the extent we believe these things we are no less utopian and anti-Christ
than Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin. Our view of history is no less impossible and ridiculous than the materialist
philosophies of all statists from Plato to Stalin.
It is no wonder why unbelievers reject modern Christianity. We look forward with earnest, longing and zeal to the
total disruption of society even while we cry against it. We are Bolsheviks, not Christians, at heart, praying for
disruption so as to institute our particular view of Statism, hopefully this time using Jesus rather than Marx and
Engels. We join hands with Israel not because we love them as God's first fruits of salvation, but because we think
their future annihilation will somehow be for their own good, and we want to be sure they make haste. We declare
freedom of speech and thought so long as we can regulate it online and prevent it if it is out of line with our ideas.
The early church was far more cosmopolitan than we are today. They never feared challenging the philosophies of
their time. They went full force into the ideological battle without assuming that everyone would agree with them
and also without agonizing that most would disagree with them. They did not seek political correctness, but on the
other hand they did not go out of their way to become political public service announcements. When the truth you
have is the life you live you already prove that the life you have is the truth.
I am not waiting for the anti-Christ. I am waiting and looking forward to the return of Jesus. The Jews will be saved,
and so will we, wild branches grafted in to the tree of God through Jesus Christ, their Messiah and ours. (Romans 11).
Until that time we all pray fervently still! "Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done on this earth as it is in heaven".
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Doug Jerving is the publisher of the NewEdisonGazette.com. You may contact him at
dje@newedisongazette.com.
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