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How Premillennialism Destroyed the Gospel

By Jeremy Myers
7 Comments

How Premillennialism Destroyed the Gospel

Despite what I say below, I am a premillennialist. I believe in a future, literal, 1000-year earthly reign of Jesus Christ from Jerusalem. I want to state that first and foremost.

But I also believe that Premillenialism destroyed the Gospel. Here’s how:

Premillennialism is the belief that at some future point in time, Jesus will return to earth, set all things straight, and rule over the entire earth with righteousness and justice from Jerusalem for 1000 years. Among those who hold this view, it is also a commonly held belief that things will get worse before they get better. There are biblical prophecies which seem to indicate as much.

So when people who hold these two ideas read the Gospels, and specifically theย announcments of Jesusย that theย Kingdom of God is at hand, that it is within us, among us, and breaking in on the world, they read such statements as prophecies about the future Millennium, and therefore, any instructions for how to live as Kingdom people or spread the Kingdom are pushed off into some future time.

In other words, it is argued that since the Kingdom did not fullyย “arrive” with Jesus,ย all the kingdom principles and values can be shoved onto aย  generation in the future by-and-by when Jesus return and sets all things right. Until then, the earth and most of the people in it can just go to hell.

That is strongly stated, but it’s how we live. We revel in wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, and diseases because we think such thingsย show that Jesus is about to return. And maybe it does, butย that doesn’t mean that we can sit back,ย twiddle our thumbs,ย and watch it all with glee on the evening news.

In fact, I k now some Christians who actually prayย for things to get worse, because the worse things get, the better off Christians are.ย After all, doesn’t Jesus say that He won’t return until the days become like Sodom and Gomorrah? These Christians want to read about rape, murder, and pillage, because these are signs of the end times.

And yet, all such things are completely and utterly contrary to the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is not just about getting people to believe in Jesus so they can get eternal life and go to heaven when they die. While that is part of the Gospel message, it is only about 1% of it.

The rest of the Gospel concerns how those who have believed in Jesus should work to make the world better.ย The purpose of the Gospel messageย isย to bless the people of the world, to stop injustice, to free the slaves, to rescue the captives, to break the chains of bondage, to bring peace to war-torn areas, to restore health to the sick, to take light into the darkness, and help to the hurting.

By putting off the Kingdom of God until “the future millennial reign of Christ” we have divorced most of the message of Jesus from the Gospel of Jesus. We have gutted the Gospel of it’s significance for our lives here and now, and made it entirely about the life ever after.

Premillennialism has done this.

I’m not saying we cannot be premillennialists. We can. I think the Bible teaches it. But we must avoid the pitfall of thinking that since Jesus will return at some point in the future to fix everything, we can just sit back and wait for it to happen. That is not the Gospel. That is not following the teachings or the example of Jesus.

So this year, what are you going to do to live the Gospel? How are you planning to restore kingdom principles into your life, your family, and your community?

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Discipleship

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Deuteroproto in Luke 6:1

By Jeremy Myers
5 Comments

Deuteroproto in Luke 6:1

Ever wondered what deuteroproto means in Luke 6:1? If you’re like me, probably not.

But about two months ago, as I was preparing commentary on Luke 6:1-5, I fell headlong into the debate swirling around this difficult word. It literally means “second-first” and while the majority of scholars today believe the word is not original and should be removed from the text, I was uncomfortable with such a conclusion. It seemed to me they had little textual basis for removing the word, and were doing so only because they didn’t know what it meant in context.

So I started studying the word, and I made a post about my progress on it a few weeks ago. I came up with a theory which seems to make good sense of the word, and which helps bring significance to the surrounding context. I was pretty excited about it, but the explanation of the word for the commentary required less than one paragraph to explain. I had read about 1000 pages on the word, and spent dozens of hours reading and researching it. It seemed a shame to summarize all that into one paragraph.

So, simply to dignify the hours I spent studying one word, and to put all my research in one place for future reference, I wrote an article about my findings. If you are curious about it at all, you can read the article by clicking the link below. Also, if you follow me on Scribd, you can get it from there.

What’s on Second Who’s on First Luke 6 1

Happy studying!

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Commentary on Luke, Bible Study

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Jewish Studies

By Jeremy Myers
14 Comments

Jewish Studies

Some of my research time over the past two years has increasingly included talking about Scripture with some Chassidic Jewish friends. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned.

For example, the answer to age-old Christian question about what our responsibility is to the Law of Moses is quite simple. We are not required to obey the Law of Moses. Why? Because we’re not Jewish. There’s a whole history behind this answer, but it’s that simple. Gentiles are to obey what is called the Seven Laws of Noah, and interestingly enough, a summarized version of these laws are provided to Christian Gentile converts in Acts 15:29.

And of course, just as with the Jewish laws, the Noahic laws are not to gain eternal life, but in order to live in right fellowship with God and with each other.

deuteroproto
Another area of Jewish background research has been my commmentary on the Gospel of Luke. I try to get as much Jewish background information in there asย I can. Jesus was Jewish, after all. And so were the apostles and Paul.

I have spent the last four weeks reseaching the potential Jewish background on a very difficult word in Luke 6:1: deuteroproto (lit. “second-first). No, research and writing is not my full-time job, but I figure I spend about 10 hours a week or so in study. So this one word has consumed about 40 hours. Yikes.

But last night, I had a major breakthrough on it. I am super excited about what I discovered. So far, only my wife knows about it. She’s my biggest cheerleader and my inspiration. Hopefully now that I’ve found a solution, I can get on with writing the next portion of the commentary, Luke 6:1-5. You will have to wait until that is finished to hear my discovery.

In researching this word, I had numerous discussions with my Jewish friends about my possible theories. They were extremely helpful.

Slippery Study
One thing I have found, however, is that discussing Jewish backgrounds with Chassidic Jews is a slippery endeavor. They only see things one way: their way (Just like all of us, I suppose.) They are the heirs of what we would call Pharisaical Judaism. Paul was a Pharisee, and Jesus probably was also. Or at least, in his thinking, theology, and practice, Jesus was closest to the Pharisees. He argues with them as one who is part of the group. He is not an outside critic.

But I have found that when I ask questions, I need to take what I hear with some discernment. For example, on one question I had about Passover (Jews call it Pesach),ย the Rabbi friend of mine answered the question and then said, “Every Jew everywhere throughout time has believed this way…”

I knew for a fact that the Sadducees and the Essenes did not, and that there were groups of Jews today who also have a different opinion. So I mentioned these groups and their views, and he said, “Oh, yes, well, they were not truly Jewish.”

I laughed to myself, but realized that we “Christians” are the same way. If a person believes and behaves differently than we do, it’s easier just toย claim that they are not Christians than to admit that there might be something legitimate about their point of view.

What’s the point of this post? I don’t know. Study Jewish backgrounds. I’m still writing commentary. Something like that.

I guess I should just stop here.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Commentary on Luke, Bible Study

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Christian Plagiarism

By Jeremy Myers
3 Comments

Christian Plagiarism

Just had to repost the following from one of the blogs I read.

“I work at an online company that generates tens of thousands of dollars a month by creating original s based on specific instructions provided by cheating students. I’ve worked there full time since 2004. On any day of the academic year, I am working on upward of 20 assignments.

…

“I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow. I have been commissioned to write many a passionate condemnation of America’s moral decay as exemplified by abortion, gay marriage, or the teaching of evolution. All in all, we may presume that clerical authorities see these as a greater threat than the plagiarism committed by the future frocked.” – “Ed Dante”, academic ghostwrier

Read the whole sad story here.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study

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Living in the Kingdom

By Jeremy Myers
1 Comment

Close Your Church for Good. Chap. 3, Part 4. We’re in a chapter called “The Church Must Die.” In it, I have written so far about how most churches tried to spread their message through Public Relations Campaigns which include flyers and advertising. Now we begin to look at a different way to spread the message of the Gospel.

* * * * *

The message of the Gospel must guide the methods that are used to spread the Gospel. If we havenโ€™t got our message clear, the methods we adopt will always lead us astray. And what is the message? Itโ€™s not about politics or power. Itโ€™s not about the economy or ecology. It is not about fame and glory. It is not even about how sinful the world is or how a person can get eternal life and go to heaven when they die.

The message of the church is the same as the message of Jesus: that God wants to be involved in their life. This is what Jesus was announcing when He talked so often about the Kingdom of God. He was telling the people that God wanted to set up His rule and reign right in their midst. That God wanted to dwell with them, and among them, to guide, provide, and protect them. This was the message of Jesus.

And the method of Jesus to spread this message is revealing. Though Jesus did teach about it, that method was at best, secondary to His primary method of actually showing through his actions what a life lived under the rule of God looks like. What was the message of Jesus? That the Kingdom of God has come. What was the method Jesus used to spread this message? He lived out the Kingdom of God in His own life.

All this may still be too academic. Letโ€™s bring it down to earth even further. If one wants to characterize God, they could do no better than the way God described Himself to Moses: โ€œThe Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truthโ€ (Exod 34:6). This is what God says about Himself and who He is. It would follow then, that if a person is under the reign of God, that is, a part of the Kingdom of God, then their life will resemble these very same characteristics of mercy, grace, patience, goodness, and truth.

And how else could we describe Jesus? He was the embodiment of such traits, which is not surprising, since He was, in fact, God in the flesh. Theologians, with their fascination for big words, call this the โ€œincarnation,โ€ meaning โ€œto be in the flesh.โ€ It may not be the best way of describing Jesus, since Scripturally, the โ€œfleshโ€ if often identified with the โ€œsinful sideโ€ of humanity, and Jesus had no sin. Nevertheless, the idea is sound, that God, who is rich in mercy and love, became human in Jesus Christ.

Why? Again, not just to preach or give us doctrine. He could have sent an angel to do that, or dropped a book out of heaven with the thunder booming in the clouds, โ€œRead this book!โ€ But He didnโ€™t. He wanted to tangibly reveal to us what He is like by living among us, touching our pain, healing our heartache, being present in our loneliness, and delivering us from our chains.

Ultimately, of course, He died. This too, was a central part of the Kingdom message. Yet even here, we misunderstand what God was doing in Jesus. We tend to think that His death was only to provide forgiveness as the once-for-all sacrifice for the sins of the world. That certainly is part of what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and cannot be undermined. But it is by no means all that Jesus accomplished. His death on the cross is once again, a way of revealing the message of the Kingdom. And what is the message of Jesus on the cross? That the Kingdom of God is not about power and prominence, greatness and glory. It is about humility, suffering, pain, rejection, and ultimately, death.

Jesus came to show mankind what it looks like to live life under the rule of God. And in so doing, as the pinnacle of this expression, Jesus died. The suffering and rejection of Jesus on the cross is not a catastrophe, but a gateway to the ultimate manifestation of the Kingdom of God on earth. One of the core features of the Kingdom of God is the concept of self-sacrifice in the service of others. This is what Jesus embodied in the Incarnation.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Close Your Church for Good, Discipleship, Theology of the Church

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