Considering 1 Corinthians 15

I wrapped up my personal reading of 1 Corinthians last week. While I was in chapter 15, a few things stood out to me. You might be interested. Or not.

²³ But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. ²⁴ Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷ For “Go has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. ²⁸ When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

Christ is the vice-regent. I mentioned this while preaching about Joseph as vice-regent to Pharaoh (for all intents and purposes). Jesus, on the throne of David, rules under the authority of the Father to accomplish the purposes of the Father. Someone, understandably, asked me about this. It is not common to speak this way.

Here we find that Jesus presently rules and is currently subduing His enemies. When He completes this work, the end comes and Jesus hands it all over to the Father. He is not independent of the Father, but subdues their injuries.

Death is the Final Enemy. Death is the last enemy that He will destroy. We are moving toward this. Keep this thought in mind!

⁵¹ Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
⁵⁵ “O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection is the End of Death. Paul ties the resurrection at the return of Jesus with the death of death. We who are in Christ will no longer sin, and therefore we will no longer die. Death is swallowed up at the resurrection. This, according to Paul, includes the transformation of those who are still alive.

This passage presents a huge problem for those who advocate a pre-tribulational or mid-tribulational rapture. We who are alive are not taken up and changed prior to the resurrection according to Paul. This is the death of death- the final enemy is destroy at the resurrection. Therefore, the resurrection cannot take place prior to the judgment when the enemies of God are thrown into the abyss.

We see here that Jesus, as the 2nd Adam, does what the first Adam failed to do. He subdued and ruled the world! We see this fulfilled most clearly in Revelation 21-22. Our future is an earthly future. Ponder that, an eternal earthly future in the world that Jesus subdued, ruled and renewed.

No, not the most earth shattering thoughts for most of us. But perhaps a few of you might consider, or reconsider, a few things.

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Considering Grant Jeffrey & Friends

I’ve got too much time on my hands.  That isn’t a very good thing sometimes.

Only $0.01 at Amazon!

I noticed a title on the bookshelf here at the in-laws (they sort of just collect interesting looking books, they probably haven’t read this).  It was The Millennium Meltdown: Year 2000 Computer Crisis by Grant Jeffrey.  Selling Y2K fear was big business in the late ’90’s.  I know I told my congregation to be prepared, just in case.  Just trying to be wise.  So no big deal that NOTHING happened.

But when you write a book about it, tying it into a secret agenda for world government (yes, that’s a chapter title) you are seriously committed to the idea.  And when it doesn’t happen, you lose some serious credibility- or at least you should.

  Grant Jeffrey is one of the many dispensational doom & gloom salesmen who see each world crisis as proof that the Great Tribulation is about to begin ( he has about 10 titles in this genre).  Despite the fact that he is batting .000 (and so are the rest of these guys) …

1. How do they have the chutzpah to continue to write books as if they have any intellectual, biblical legs to stand upon?
2. Why do people continue to buy those same books as if they had any intellectual, biblical legs to stand upon?

I have a number of conflicting emotions as I see both how self-deceived you must be to continue to write this books without ever asking, “Am I misunderstanding the Bible?” and questioning the system of thought that keeps bringing you to these conclusions that don’t match the facts of history.  I also have a number of conflicting emotions when I see how gullible and naive people can be to keep buying this stuff even though these men (and women) have been 100% consistently wrong (just for fun read the customer reviews on Amazon).

I fear for the American Church, it as if large chunks of the church want to be deceived.  Or perhaps I’m deceived and the Y2K mess really happened, there is a cashless society operated by the one world government and the war on terror, or oil, or sand, is triggering the advent of Antichrist and the rapture which they have predicted about 50 times by now.  Or that God actually does want me to be wealthier than I can imagine, perfectly healthy and trouncing the devil with every step and I’m not living my best life so far because I don’t have enough faith or think positively enough and I just really need to will my migraines and back pain away.

I need to head to the tiny beach nearby with my MP3 player of sermons so I’ll stop thinking of these things.

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A Self-Respecting Amil Calvinist

With no apologies to Rev. MacArthur by the way.  I promised myself I’d tackle this baby, but made sure I didn’t just jot something down while I was still annoyed.  One of those little things you learn as a pastor- don’t respond immediately because you tend to make things worse. 

Here is an excerpt from THE Live-Blogging Machine that is Tim Challies:

“MacArthur made the point that those who most celebrate the sovereign grace of election regarding the church and its place in God’s purpose and those who defend the truth of promise and fulfillment and believe in election being divine, unashamedly deny the same for elect Israel. This is a strange division. “It’s too late for Calvin,” he said,” but it’s not too late for the rest of you. If Calvin were here he would join our movement.”

“The thrust of the message was simple: Of all people to be pre-millennialist it should be the Calvinist–those who believe in sovereign election. A-millennialism is ideal for Arminians because according to their theology God elects nobody and preserves nobody. A-millennialism is consistent with Arminianism. Yet it is inconsistent with Reformed theology and its emphasis on God’s electing grace.

“For those who “get it” that God is sovereign and the only one who can determine who will be saved and when they will be saved and is the only one who can save them, A-millennialism makes no sense because it says that Israel, on their own, forfeited the promises. The central argument went like this: If you get Israel right, you will get eschatology right. If you don’t get Israel right, you will never get eschatology right and you’ll drift forever from view-to-view. You get Israel right when you get the Old Testament promises and covenants right and you get these when you get the interpretation right which you get right when you use a proper hermeneutic (Did you get all that?). Essentially, you move from a proper hermeneutic to a proper interpretation to a proper view of the covenant and Old Testament promises and then you get Israel right. And then, of course, your eschatology is right. If you go wrong at the base, and set aside proper methods of hermeneutics, you have no chance to get anything else right.”

Okay…. I will make some comments about the summary and then spend some time in Romans 9-11 to flesh some of this issue out.  I guess I’m stumbling over the question of “elect Israel”.  As a nation, they were chosen for some specific tasks.  As individuals, many were chosen for salvation.  But the nation as a whole was not chosen for salvation, for salvation has always been by grace thru faith.  As a Calvinist and biblicist, I recognize BOTH types of election in Scripture (unlike some Arminians who only recognize the former, and John who seems to have forgotten the former).  To say God has some as yet unfulfilled promises to the nation of Israel is a function of his dispensational hermeneutic- one which was initially devised in the 1800’s by John Nelson Darby which has some serious issues in dealing with biblical data (IMO).  So, John MacArthur is confusing/conflating the 2 types of election but says we are inconsistent regarding election unto salvation.  That is not a sound premise.

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