As we finish up our brief look at how our views of the End Times impact our journey into deep discipleship, we explore how the two primary groups (Splitters and Joiners) expect this current age to end. Is this "church age" winding up or down?
Does this "idea of expectation" impact our everyday life? If so, how?
Jump in as Brian invites us to participate in two "thought experiments" about church-age optimism and church-age pessimism. And join him in wrestling with how the two views influence one of our Core Ideas: what we're actually supposed to be doing on this third rock from the sun.
TRANSCRIPTION
How the Church Age Ends
We’re in the final stretch of our brief look at how our End Times views impact our understanding of the Forgotten Kingdom and our spiritual formation, our slow meandering saunter into deep discipleship.
We’re going to explore some questions about our End Times views that may not normally pop up on our radar, and it’s going to get pretty deep. So put on your waiters or grab your scuba gear, and let’s dive in.
The Millennium and the Forgotten Kingdom
Way back in Season 1, we introduced the concept of “ideas” that form our hearts: these hidden assumptions that sit in our soils that power who we are. We took a cue from theologian Dallas Willard, who suggested that discipleship is the lifelong journey to become more like Jesus, and that we do so through the slow transformation of the often-unconscious ideas that sit in our hearts. They govern us underneath our polished exteriors, our well-thought-out words, and sometimes even our belief systems.
Uncovering and identifying these ideas takes practice. In Episode 8, I suggested that mining for our ideas is similar to learning to see the visual images in a “stereogram.” Stereograms were popular back in the 90s – they’re certain types of pictures that look like gibberish until you train your eyes to see “into” them. If you relax your eyes a certain way, a clear 3D image suddenly becomes visible. There’s a sample stereogram in the blog entry for Episode 8 on the website if you want to practice.
Like the 3D image in the stereogram, ideas are often hidden until we learn how to uncover them in our hearts, the hearts of others, our churches, and our culture. And these ideas have an enormous influence on how we perceive the Kingdom of God.
Though it’s a major theme weaving through the Bible and should be Discipleship 101, we live in a time and place that’s largely forgotten the Kingdom. Though exploring the Kingdom is essential for our journey into deep discipleship.
And we’re doing this little mini-series on the various views of the End Times. It may seem out of place for a season focused on the Kingdom, but it’s actually intertwined with it. After all, three of the four names associated with these various End Times views are centered around the concept of a millennial kingdom found in Revelation 20.
How we view this concept of the Millennium affects how we view the Kingdom now and what we’re doing in it.
Splitters and Joiners
In Episode 68, we worked to simplify some things. Four major views of the End Times exist today, and although they share some similarities, they differ in important ways.
Instead of trying to parse through four perspectives, we’ve boiled them down to just two. We’re using Michael Heiser’s terms: Splitters and Joiners. We’re treating these as distinct categories, and usually they are, but not always.
Heiser himself took a somewhat middle position – he believed that Jesus and the church are the fulfillment of Old Testament Israel, though he maintained there is some purpose for the people of Israel in our future.[1] So, he was a hybrid between a Splitter and a Joiner, maybe we’ll call that a “Sploiner.”
A Splitter examines the meta-narrative of the Bible and believes the story splits into two groups in the New Testament: the people of Israel and the Church.
Splitters identify certain promises God made to the people of Israel in the Old Testament as being unconditional and unfulfilled. Because God is faithful, they must be fulfilled as they were presented in the Old Testament sometime in our future. This conclusion impacts how they interpret various prophecies in the Bible and leads to a future Rapture, Tribulation, and a literal 1,000-year millennial kingdom.
Splitters interpret the Bible differently from Joiners. Splitters see the Old and New Testaments on equal footing and reject the notion that the New Testament may redefine, reinterpret, transform, or “spiritualize” passages and ideas from the Old Testament. As one dispensational scholar (a Splitter) notes, “[This method] believes in great continuity between the testaments. Old Testament revelation is the foundation for the New Testament. The New Testament builds upon the Old. It does not replace the Old or transform it.”[2]
As you might expect, Joiners don’t agree with that conclusion. Another scholar (a Joiner) wrote, “[That method of interpreting the Bible] goes against the dominant method of interpreting Scripture in church history. More importantly, it goes against the way the apostles appealed to Old Testament passages as being fulfilled in the present era in Christ. In fact, Jesus taught his followers to read the Old Testament with himself at the center (Lk 24:25-27) …[3]
In other words, Joiners accept and embrace the idea that the New Testament does transform, amplify, and reinterpret Old Testament ideas in the person of Jesus, and believe it’s fairly self-evident when it does that.
This contributes to how Joiners read the meta-narrative of the Bible – the story merges the people of Israel and the church in the New Testament. It’s the story of one people and one plan.
Joiners find very little Scripture that has yet to be prophetically fulfilled. Most prophecies in the Bible ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Jewish Temple in AD 70. A Joiner doesn’t hold to a Rapture or a 1,000-year kingdom reign of Jesus here on the earth.
Is it really that simple? Is it just a matter of concluding whether the Bible is sharing the story of one people and one plan, or two peoples and two plans? Is it just a matter of determining whether the New Testament does transform, clarify, and amplify various ideas and passages in the Old?
Well, not exactly, but it’s probably 80% of the way there.
Two or Three Stages?
This becomes particularly important for our spiritual formation because of how Splitters and Joiners expect the future to unfold. We’re back in the realm of Ideas of Expectation, something we began to explore back in Season 1. Our unconscious ideas about what we expect in the future influence how we function and operate in the world today.
If we’re Splitters, we most likely adopt a three-staged approach to the Forgotten Kingdom.
1. Right now (what is normally called “the church age”)
2. A coming literal 1,000-year reign of Jesus on the earth (the millennium, after the Rapture and tribulation)
3. And then the new heaven and new earth
If we’re Joiners, we may adopt more of a two-stage approach.
1. Right now (the church age)
2. The new heaven and new earth.
Why does it matter? Because of how each perspective expects this current age – the church age – to play out. And because we tend to operate according to what we expect, we need to understand the impact of our expectations.
Church Age Pessimism and Optimism
We’re going to focus on this one key difference between Splitters and Joiners – the direction our current age is headed. Are things heading up, down, or sideways in this stage of the Kingdom?
And, by necessity, these assumptions also speak to the purpose of this age. What is the purpose of the Church Age? What is our purpose during this age? What are we doing here?
Every Christian is, in the final sense, Utopian. We all believe that the new heaven and new earth is going to be unbelievably amazing. So, I’m not talking about the final stage of the Kingdom – I’m talking about our assumptions about this stage of history.
Today, we’re just going to explore the two “bookend” positions: this age is winding up, or this age is winding down.
If we’re Spitters, we see the Bible’s meta-narrative as a story of two people and two plans, and that story results in this church age heading towards a time of terrible suffering and pain, generally called the Tribulation. We call this “Church Age Pessimism.” Society must devolve into great evil and judgment.
If we’re Joiners, we see the Bible’s meta-narrative as a story of one people and one plan, and that story sometimes leads the church age in an increasingly positive direction prior to the Second Coming. This is “Church Age Optimism.”
An Odd Request
Here’s where things get a little whack-a-doodle. For the rest of this episode, I’m going to invite us to participate in two thought experiments: one about Church-Age Optimism and one about Church-Age Pessimism. I’m not taking a side, nor am I endorsing the one perspective we’ve left out – those who think the world is moving in cycles or just don’t care.
I do have some fairly in-depth questions about these “bookend” views that I’ve wrestled with, and I’m going to share them with you. There are things about the optimist and pessimist views that raise my eyebrows and I think are worth exploring.
We’ve already established that both groups holding these opposite perspectives do so “because the Bible says so.” The pessimist and the optimist can’t both be right; this age can’t be winding up and down at the same time, though both sides are reading the same book with an earnest desire to interpret it accurately.
So, let’s wrestle with the underlying ideas and consequences of holding either perspective. How do these views fit into the overall story of the Bible? How do these opposing views influence how we operate in the world and how we perceive our purpose?
Church Age Optimism.
Let’s start with Church-Age Optimism – the idea that the world is winding up.
This perspective is held by some Joiners, primarily postmillennialists. One writer defines it this way:
Postmillennialism is an optimistic view of the future and how the world will end. Postmillennials believe that the great commission – make disciples of all nations – is actually going to be fulfilled; that the nations will overwhelmingly turn to Jesus before He returns.
When a postmillennial prays the Lord’s Prayer, there is the real expectation that the following line will come to pass before Christ returns: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Good will gradually triumph over evil. There won’t be a sudden 180, taking the world from overwhelmingly evil to overwhelmingly good, all in the moment of Christ’s return. Instead, throughout history, the kingdom of God has been growing, and it continues to grow even now, so that there will eventually be a glorious, extended period in which the rule of Christ will flourish on the earth. And after that, the Lord will return.[4]
Church-Age Optimism maintains that the Great Commission does and must have an impact on more than our destiny after we die – it impacts all of culture and society, all seven mountains, right now. It’s the steady process of heaven coming to earth throughout this age. It sees the cross and resurrection as the pinnacle of history, and that Christ is, at this moment, putting all His enemies under His feet.
Kenneth Gentry writes, “The more recent postmillennialism (arising in the early 1900s) understands the victory of the gospel as coming gradually throughout Christian history. It sees gospel success unfolding incrementally and sporadically through history while experiencing advances and setbacks. Nevertheless, this progress will eventually lead to the worldwide dominance of the gospel and the influence of the Christian worldview for a long period of time.”[5]
Most people I speak with about the Optimist view have, quite frankly, never heard of it. And they aren’t sure what to do with it when they do.
Alva McClain says of postmillennialism: “This optimistic theory of human progress had much of its own way for the half-century ending in World War I of 1914. After that, the foundations were badly shaken; prop after prop went down, until today the whole theory is under attack from every side. Devout Postmillennialism has virtually disappeared.”
Merrill Unger dismisses postmillennialism in short order, declaring: “This theory, largely disproved by the progress of history, is practically a dead issue.” [6]
Apparently, the Optimist is in short supply today because recent events have proven it obsolete.
Biblicism?
As you might imagine, Optimists are quick to point out that our views of the End Times should only be based on Scripture and not on reading the news.
As one Optimist writes, “The fact that an era of gospel prosperity and world peace has not yet arrived would no more disprove the Bible’s teaching…than the fact that Christ has not yet returned disproves the Bible’s teaching…! The only question is whether the Bible actually teaches these things.”[7]
In other words, attempting to validate our End Times views based on things that haven’t happened yet or by watching the news is risky business. It is risky business.
Though let’s be honest. As much as we would like to claim that our view of the world is entirely “biblical” and completely divorced from our stories and experiences, there is no such thing as a “biblical purist.”
We all come to the Bible with presuppositions, hidden ideas, assumptions, emotions, and experiences that influence how we read it and how it forms us. I’m pretty sure God knows that and has written both of His books accordingly.
Our view of the Bible and the world has certainly been shaped by our personal study, but also by sermons, teachers, courses, family, friends, videos, podcasts, other relationships, and an untold number of other influences. The Bible itself often appeals to things outside of itself to make its points – primarily creation and culture.
If we’re going to claim that our views are only shaped by the Bible and nothing else, we suddenly lose the need for apologetics, logic, archaeology, the study of ancient cultures and other religions, and a host of other disciplines that inform, support, and cause us to wrestle with things in the Bible. We’re integrated beings living in an integrated world.
A Hard Sell
The Optimist view is by far the minority in the West today, and the optimist can reasonably complain that recent events have caused it to become so unpopular.
The Pessimist view took off in America in the 1900s, a time which featured the Great Depression, two world wars, the birth of the nuclear age, the sexual revolution, and the explosion of instantly available negative news. Whether we agree with the pessimist or not, it’s fairly self-evident that its rise to prominence has been impacted by recent history and our interpretation of it.
So, while the Optimist may argue that its view is the only accurate biblical perspective and that we shouldn’t be influenced by non-biblical factors, that comes up a bit short for me.
If we want to defend the faith to, let’s say, atheists, do we not make appeals to logic, ethics, history, and literature? If someone doesn’t believe in the Bible, we make arguments for God in nature, in society, or in biology. If we want to take a stand for our particular view of creation, don’t we appeal to the sciences like geology, astronomy, and archaeology to make our points?
We routinely make arguments from other parts of creation to support our biblical views, and we should. God’s two books certainly agree with each other since He is the author of both.
So, of course, the Pessimist will point to modern history to support her assertions. Why can’t the Optimist do the same?
I mean, wouldn’t we all want to hold to the optimistic view? Wouldn’t we rather believe the world is inevitably winding up in this age, that the Gospel is and will be incredibly effective in all aspects of life, and that society will eventually get its act together through Jesus? Wouldn’t we rather assume that the Gospel is working its way through the world, transforming, renewing, recreating, and reforming everything right now, working to prepare to celebrate the return of its conquering King, rather than gasping for breath and writhing in violence, awaiting the return of the King who must first destroy much of it before turning it around?
Doesn’t the Optimistic view just feel a whole lot better?
So, what gives? Why is it that most people aren’t even aware of the Optimist view and, if they are, just can’t bring themselves to hope that it might be accurate?
Perhaps it’s because the Optimist view is difficult to argue from history. Though we might agree with our Optimist friend that our End Times views shouldn’t be formed by the news, I’m not sure we can just dismiss that out of hand.
Historical Pros and Cons
Let’s make a pros and cons list here. What Christian ideas have successfully become embedded in at least some parts of the world since Christ’s first coming?
A while back, I introduced you to a book called How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin Schmidt. It’s a long and exhaustive work, and here’s how it opens: “This book is a survey of the vast, pervasive influence that Christianity has had for two thousand years on much of the world, especially in the West.”[8]
Here is a list of some of the ways Jesus’ life has positively impacted parts of the world:
The sanctification of human life, elevating sexual morality, women receiving freedom and dignity, the rise of overall human compassion, the creation of hospitals and healthcare systems, the rise of education as a social good for all, labor and work becoming dignified, the birth of modern science by Christians, the rise of healthy justice systems, the abolition of slavery, the profound impact of Christianity on the arts, music, literature, and architecture, and even Christianity’s influence on language, holidays, words and symbols.
It’s hard to argue the list. If we just begin with the Middle Ages, we can trace how radically different our lives are now compared to our brothers and sisters in the 1500s, and most of the positive changes are because of ideas of Christianity.
Here’s the problem – it’s nearly impossible to read that list and not find profound regression in the very societies that originally benefited from the Christian ideas.
Sanctification of human life: worldwide abortions today total somewhere over 70 million per year.[9]
Elevating sexual morality: some modern cultures are more confused now about sexuality than they have been in generations.
Women’s freedoms: though there’s been some progress, the #MeToo movement and the preponderance of pornography suggest we have a long way to go.
Hospitals and healthcare systems: Though many, if not most, were founded by churches and Christian organizations, many no longer identify with the principles on which they were founded.
The rise of education: This remains a battlefield in parts of the West, with government-controlled schools abandoning the moral ideas on which they were built, forcing families to find various alternatives, such as homeschooling.
Science: though clearly birthed by committed Christians and theists, modern science is not the field we expect to find scholars looking to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” On the contrary, science is often a sledgehammer used to attempt to disprove God.
Abolition of slavery: While we celebrate the work of William Wilberforce and others in the past, there are almost 50 million people living in modern slavery today.[10] Human trafficking is a worldwide epidemic.
So, if the optimist is looking for strong evidence that Christian ideals are taking root in nations and cultures, we will find them, but we will also find those same ideals eroding over time. This is true in families, institutions, cultures, and nations. In other words, it seems difficult to make Christian ideas “stick” for more than a few hundred years at best. How, then, is the entire world supposed to become increasingly Christianized over time?
Author and scholar Glenn Sunshine acknowledges this trend in our corner of the world.
“Western Civilization was the product of the interaction of Roman civilization with Christianity. As Christianity’s influence on the Western worldview has declined, it is no accident that our thinking has become more like that of Rome. And since ideas have consequences, since worldviews inevitably shape culture…it is also no accident that people in our culture are acting more and more like Romans.”[11]
Meaning, Sunshine, who’s not a pessimist by the way, believes Western ideals are regressing backward about 2,000 years.
It seems like we find a somewhat predictable cycle: Christianity takes root in a group, flourishes by following biblical principles, becomes prosperous, forgets God, and ends up back where it started or worse. This cycle isn’t ironclad, but it does seem to describe at least the West at the moment.
If the entire world is to become increasingly Christianized, how does this “regression” cycle get broken? What’s the catalyst by which a society living by biblical principles is able to plant them so deeply into the family and cultural institutions that they last for longer than a few generations?
And how does this work when every beautiful newborn baby, a precious gift of life, is also a little sinner, especially when he gets to be around two years of age?
I suppose an initial answer might be “effective evangelism.” If enough people become converts, that should help overcome what appears to be a recurring regression cycle. Maybe. But as we talked about in Season 1, we need to take a serious look at why the divorce and abortion rates are so high in modern Christian communities.
There’s a profound difference between making converts and making disciples. It seems that the more prosperous we become, the more freedoms we enjoy, the less serious we are about becoming genuine disciples and making others.
Another appropriate answer to how this “regression cycle” is broken is the sovereignty of God and the Holy Spirit. After all, Jesus expands His Kingdom, not us. Though He seems to relish in inviting us to join Him in the expansion. Maybe we just aren’t paying much attention to His invitation.
Look, I get it. We do need to form our views of the End Times around biblical teaching and not by looking at history and the news. And there’s a biblical case to be made for Church-Age Optimism. Countless Christians over hundreds of years have held to it.
Perhaps the reason it’s such a minority view today is that we’re struggling to articulate good examples of how gradual improvement plays out over time, especially if we live in the West, and I’m not sure we should just ignore that reasonable request. Whether we’re talking about families, communities, or entire nations, it does seem that these things rise and fall, not rise and rise.
Church Age Pessimism
Let’s ask some deeper questions about Church-Age Pessimism. This is the view that the world is heading towards a time of tribulation prior to what Splitters view as the next stage of the Kingdom, the 1,000-year millennium in which Jesus will physically reign on the earth.
Before we start, let’s clarify what we mean by “tribulation.”
David Jeremiah is a popular teacher and minister; he’s a Splitter, and he’s taught on the End Times for many years.
“According to biblical prophecy, the Tribulation is a seven-year period that will begin immediately following the Rapture. Evil will spread without restraint. The diseases, natural disasters, wars, and devastation we see in our world today are but a taste of the atrocities to come…There is nothing we can do to prevent the Tribulation from occurring…”[12]
He predicts several natural disasters during this time period: great earthquakes and darkness, asteroids that will pummel the earth, mountains and islands will physically shift. “The sea will become blood, and one-third of all sea life will die. In addition, one-third of all ships will be destroyed…The pollution of the water and the death of so many sea creatures will vastly affect the balance of ocean life.” Freshwater will also be impacted. He predicts that a star or meteor “hurtling through space will sideswipe the earth, turning one-third of the earth’s water into a deadly poisonous liquid.”[13]
Another author predicts that 2.5 million people will die every day. He writes, “One out of every two people will die during the Tribulation…some through the ravages of war, others by starvation, and amazingly many others by the ‘beasts of the earth.’ He predicts about 3.2 billion people will die in the space of 3.5 years.
One-third of all vegetation will be burned up. Nature will go into revolt. Locusts the size of horses will come up from hell and sting people like scorpions. Though people may try to commit suicide, they somehow won’t be able to. Worldwide famine and war will abound.[14]
Greg Laurie and Harvest International predict, “Ecological disaster on a scale never known to man. Unprecedented famine, disease, and possibly nuclear war will sweep the planet, culminating in the war to end all wars—Armageddon. More than one billion people will lose their lives as Satan wreaks havoc on this planet.”[15]
John Piper notes that there will be great apostasy in the church leading up to this time – people falling away from the faith and church institutions becoming increasingly corrupt.[16]
Society must progressively fall into greater and greater evil prior to the Tribulation. Things are winding down.
Last Verse the Same as the First?
If we take a quick survey of biblical history, we find some examples of wrath and judgment. The most famous is the flood in Genesis. Mankind became so evil and wicked that God rescued eight people and performed a massive “do-over” on the rest of the earth. After that, we find various localized, violent judgments in the Old Testament: Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction of the Egyptian army in the Red Sea, and the city of Jericho.
But in terms of worldwide violence and death, the coming tribulation only compares to the great flood in its scope and suffering. It’s “Flood 2.0” as it were. Those who hold to a pessimistic perspective point to Matthew 24, where Jesus refers to a future time as “similar to Noah.” They believe Jesus is referring to our future.
And in terms of suffering, we might consider the coming tribulation to be worse in its impact on people and the planet than the Flood. Drowning is obviously terrible, but at least it’s relatively quick. At least three and half years of misery, starvation, war, potential nuclear fallout, disease, and supernatural attacks from both the heavens and hell is something entirely different.
In this narrative, the only time things get really fixed in our future is when Jesus comes back physically. Our age, the church age, ends in disaster. The future Millennial Kingdom is a time of recreation, renewal, and restoration. It’s considered by some to be the Golden Age of our history.[17]
Alright, so let’s ask some difficult questions about Church-Age Pessimism.
Did Anything Change?
So, what actually changed with Jesus’ first appearance?
If the only time things get truly fixed in our future is when Jesus comes back in bodily form…what did He “fix” the first time He came?
The pessimist view contends that the earth continues to turn as it did in the Old Testament. Mankind becomes so wicked that God will execute His wrath and judgment on the world again. There’s apparently been little progress or transformation between Flood 1.0 and “Flood 2.0.”
If the church age must end the way the pre-flood age ended, did anything change as a result of Jesus’ first coming?
Salvation of What?
The most obvious answer is that Jesus came to take away the sins of the world. He came so that we would have a way to “get to heaven.”
Okay, but there are lots of people in Heaven who aren’t Christian.
Do we think Moses is in heaven? How about Abraham and Sarah? Rahab, Deborah, Jeremiah, Joseph – don’t we assume they all died and somehow made it to a pleasant afterlife?
None of them is “Christian.” None of them “accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.” The term wasn’t invented until the middle of the Book of Acts. They couldn’t have accepted Jesus’ death and resurrection when He hadn’t done either of those things yet.
Most scholars assume our Old Testament heroes enjoy a pleasant afterlife today because of their faith in God and in what He would do. They looked forward to God’s promises and trusted Him, even people like Adam and Eve, who had virtually no insight into how our salvation would play out.
So, people in ages past got to heaven by trusting in God and believing that salvation would come, and we get to heaven by trusting God and believing that salvation did come.
Why Did He Come in the Middle?
Doesn’t this raise a question of timing? If this current church age serves to prove again how evil the world still is and that this age will end like the pre-flood age, why wouldn’t Jesus come just once at the very end of human history? Why would He not have consummated the Kingdom and wrapped things up at His ascension?
Why did He come in the middle somewhere? Why did He die for our sins and then leave the church to struggle for at least a few thousand years, only for the world to succumb to a similar fate as in Genesis 6?
If the primary purpose of Jesus coming to earth the first time was to “get us into heaven,” but people got to a pleasant afterlife both before and after He came, what really changed at His first coming?
Is there really no difference between the pre-flood era and our era?
Failure to Launch
What impact did Jesus’ first appearance have on the Kingdom of Darkness? If we believe society is becoming increasingly evil, and that evil includes a future apostate church, is the darkness just as powerful and dominating as it was prior to Jesus? Is it more powerful now? Did the cross, resurrection, and ascension have any impact on the Kingdom of Darkness?
What’s the role of the Holy Spirit? The very spirit who raised Jesus from the dead now lives in Christians across the globe.
There are a few billion living temples on the earth today, Christians who are “dwelling places of God.” A temple is a place where Heaven and Earth meet. So, Heaven is more present on Earth today than at any other time in human history. That reality didn’t exist before the flood.
For those of us who hold to the pessimistic narrative, the world only gets “fixed” when Jesus bodily returns in the Millennium. But isn’t He here right now? Isn’t He reigning right now, both over the cosmos and in our hearts? Does God’s presence on the earth in the hearts of a few billion Christians not have any meaningful impact on the world for good?
It seems as if the pessimist narrative assumes we live in a parenthetical expression between one physical rescue mission and the next, though Jesus’ first rescue apparently wasn’t designed to change all that much, since both the early Genesis age and our age end up in similar horrible circumstances.
So, what’s the purpose of this parenthesis in history?
Ideas of Expectation
Why does all of this thought experimentation matter? What’s the point of asking questions and wrestling with these underlying assumptions that most likely don’t come up in our churches?
Because of Ideas of Expectation and Ideas of Purpose.
If we expect to go to the grocery store tonight, that expectation impacts our thoughts and behaviors. We’ll make a grocery list. We’ll make sure we have enough money. We’ll put gas in our car. We’ll schedule our time to make room for our grocery run. We behave a certain way now based on our expectations of future events.
The optimist views the church age as a reversal of the curse and its cosmic effects. Jesus’ first appearance is the apex of our history. He ascended to His throne on the cross – He was given a robe, a crown, and a scepter. It wasn’t the coronation anyone expected, but welcome to His Kingdom. It’s rarely what we expect. He validated his coronation by rising from the dead and then took His rightful place as King of the Universe when He ascended.
This view sees Jesus and His Kingdom slowly overcoming the powers of darkness in all areas, with the reclaiming process begun in Acts 2 and continuing to this day. It expects the recreation, reformation, redemption, and renewal of all areas of life, including the arts, government, church, education, and so on. And it sees the church at this moment as Jesus’ primary means of accomplishing this worldwide return to Eden.
As Dallas Willard wrote, “[Jesus’] objective is eventually to bring all of human life on earth under the direction of his wisdom, goodness, and power, as part of God’s eternal plan for the universe…he set afoot a perpetual revolution: one that is still in process and will continue until God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven…He has chosen to accomplish this with and, in part, through His students.”[18]
The pessimist narrative is very different. The pessimist agrees with the optimist that there will be a complete and comprehensive renewal of all things, except that the church in the church age is not the primary means for a worldwide, comprehensive restoration. Ultimately, the church age will fail to bring Jesus’ kingdom to fruition on earth. The restoration process doesn’t really get started until a future literal millennium.
How do these very different ideas of expectations impact our day-to-day lives?
Ideas of Purpose
Way back in Season 1, we explored the Six Core Ideas, one of which is Ideas of Purpose.
Our Ideas of Purpose are central, foundational to who we are. Our assumptions about why we’re here have an enormous impact on how we think, what we do, where we go, what relationships we build, and how we spend our time and money.
These two very different expectations about this age bring with them two pretty different ideas of our purpose.
The Terra Firma
Let’s explore this from another angle.
Let’s say we all live together in a big 500-unit apartment complex. We’ll call it The Terra Firma. The Terra Firma is owned by a man named Joshua, and He commissions the residents of the complex to take care of one another and to take care of His building.
For a while, we do a terrible job at both, and so Joshua comes back and, at great expense to Himself, shows us a new way to live, a new way to love each other and his apartment complex.
Over time, we develop two distinct views of the future of Terra Firma.
One group of us believes that Joshua is coming back in a month or so, and that He’s going to destroy the building along with many of the residents. He’s going to start over and rebuild the Terra Firma from the ground up.
How might we expect this group to act if this is our expectation? Of course, we would want to rescue as many people from the complex as possible. We might go door to door, urging people to move out of the building before the owner comes back. And we’ll provide as many relief efforts as possible. Residents get sick, they lose their way, and they turn on each other, so let’s relieve their suffering.
So, we might expect this group to assume their purpose is largely rescue and relief, given their expectation that Terra Firma will be torn down.
Another group also believes Joshua will return in a month or so, but not to destroy Terra Firma. He’s coming back to make his final home with us. This group believes that when Joshua showed us a new way to be human and to care for each other and the building, He also empowered us to get the job done.
How might we expect this group to act if this is our expectation? We’re going to prepare the Terra Firma for Joshua’s return. We’re going to organize, beautify, and improve it. We’re going to fix broken sinks, handrails, and cabinets. We’re going to plant gardens, make tenant improvements, and attempt to upgrade the opportunities and quality of life for all of Terra Firma’s residents, whether they like Joshua or not.
This group will assume their purpose certainly involves some rescue and relief, but also the constant and comprehensive improvement of the entire complex, both for the welfare of its residents and to honor the owner.
So, back to the Church age: What is our primary purpose in the pessimistic story? Whether we hold to the Rapture or not, the church age is a time of urging people to be rescued from an increasingly evil world. Our purpose may naturally focus on defense – rescuing others and providing relief.
What is our purpose in the optimistic story? The story is about the salvation of the earth compared to the salvation from the earth in this current age. Our purpose may naturally focus on advancement – joining with Jesus to increase His comprehensive Kingdom in all areas of life.
We can’t overstate how powerful these two narratives are or how deeply they shape how we view the world and operate in it. Our expectations for this age and our purpose in it shape our spiritual formation and our entire journey into deep discipleship.
Kingdom Purpose/Individual Purpose
Our assumed church-age narrative often becomes a narrative for our individual lives. We unconsciously take the story of this age and make it our own.
We often view our salvation as the beginning of our spiritual story. We were rescued. If we hold to church-age pessimism, perhaps we view our death or the Rapture as our “second rescue” from the earth. Our lives are the time period between two rescues.
If we’re looking carefully for ideas, if we’re learning to see the hidden images in the “stereogram,” we may find this narrative in how we hear the Gospel presented.
Just last week in church, the pastor preached the “Gospel.” “Accept Jesus so that you can go to Heaven.” What’s the first part of the parenthesis? Accept Jesus. What’s the second? Go to heaven. Be rescued so you can eventually be rescued again.
What wasn’t covered? The stuff in between the parentheses, our lives. There was no explanation of how the Gospel of the Kingdom impacts the time between the two rescues.
A church-age optimist will assume a different story about their lives. Their kingdom journey often begins with their salvation, their rescue. Though their death is not a second rescue. It’s a graduation of sorts. They weren’t “rescued” from the earth; they graduated from their time of joining with Jesus to expand His kingdom on the earth.
Conclusion
Let’s wrap this up. What we’ve discovered is that our End Times views are central to our understanding of the Forgotten Kingdom and our exploration of deep discipleship. They influence and frame our conscious or unconscious narrative about what we’re doing here. Are we here with Jesus to rescue and relieve, or are we here to also reclaim, restore, redeem, reconcile, and recreate? Those are two profoundly different ideas of purpose.
If the Kingdom is Jesus’ primary message, if the Gospel of the Kingdom is what we’re to proclaim, if the Kingdom is what Jesus tells us to seek first, if the coming of the Kingdom is the first thing Jesus instructs us to pray for, we should really explore and determine what this Kingdom is, where it’s headed right now, and what our role is in it.
Whether we’re Splitters or Joiners, let’s just make sure we’re clear in our own hearts about our assumptions and conclusions about this Kingdom and our role in it.
Ultimately, if the purpose of deep discipleship is for our hearts to be formed more like the heart of Jesus and to do the things Jesus taught us to do, we need to align those things with our assumptions and expectations about His Kingdom in this age.
That is a fascinating and exciting leg of our journey into deep discipleship, and that’s where we’re headed next.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TJzZueabZ04
[2] Vlach, M., (2023) Dispensational Hermeneutics (pp. 98-99). Theological Studies Press.
[3] Parker B. & Lucas R., (2022) Covenant and Dispensational Theologies (p. 183). Intervarsity Press.
[4] https://www.ligonier.org/podcasts/simply-put/postmillennialism
[5] https://postmillennialworldview.com/welcome/
[6] https://postmillennialworldview.com/2023/10/17/misguided-rejections-of-postmillennialism-1/#more-18683
[7] https://postmillennialworldview.com/2023/10/17/misguided-rejections-of-postmillennialism-1/#more-18683
[8] Schmidt, A. (2004). How Christianity Changed the World, (p. 11). Zondervan.
[9] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country
[10] https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20latest%20Global,of%20modern%20slavery%20are%20children
[11] Sunshine, G. (2009). Why You Think The Way You Do, (p. 203). Zondervan.
[12]https://davidjeremiah.blog/what-is-the-tribulation/
[13] https://davidjeremiah.blog/what-is-the-tribulation/
[14] https://www.crosswalk.com/special-coverage/end-times/jesus-christ-explains-the-tribulation-and-end-times-11573798.html
[15] https://harvest.org/know-god-article/overview-of-the-tribulation/
[16] https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/what-must-happen-before-the-day-of-the-lord
[17] https://www.nateholdridge.com/blog/the-millennial-reign-of-christ-revelation-20
[18] Willard, D. (2012). Renovation of the Heart: Putting on the Character of Christ, (p. 14-15). NavPress.
