Now the book is a challenge to read. It is hard going. Until you get to page 94:

“In this kind of study it must be admitted that certainty is difficult, if not impossible, to obtain. But if probability be the guide to life, I am of the opinion that the way forward is tolerably clear here.” G.R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism, Macmillan, 1973, p. 94.

The author recognizes the difficulty he is having in establishing his view from historical data. Certainty, he says, is difficult, if not impossible.

What’s the solution?

Probability.

That is the method of solving the problem. Probability.

Well, the author may probably be right, or he may be probably wrong. His probability hardly constitutes a solution to the discussion over baptism.

Probability theory, in its scientific and mathematical sense discusses random phenomena. Is that what is being offered here in place of sound biblical interpretation?

His understanding of the rise of infant baptism so early in church history is explained by an early lapse in the early church’s understanding of the New Testament documents.

There are a couple of significant problems here. First, Beasley-Murray is trying to establish a “New Testament only” hermeneutic. Secondly, he is trying to do it from documents which had no established canonic authority at the time of the early church he is speaking about. So the idea of lapsing into wrong teaching is a little more challenging to prove.

Rather, the issue is this one: what were the governing Scriptures in the early church? If they were the same documents the Messiah used in his teaching, the Law (Torah) and Prophets, then we know that covenant ideas governing faith and family were predominant. Eight-day old male children were given the covenant sign of circumcision. Did God really change the age restriction on this sign? In fact, did the sign really change? If so, on what authority, and how will that new authority be determined to have more authority than God speaking in the Old Testament?

Beasley-Murray is not the only writer who builds a case on probability. Probability, however, is all that is left once you untie yourself from the Old Testament, or even untie yourself from systematic theology then try to build a case. It just cannot work. For example, some views of the uncreated and created order accept the idea of an unending chain of being with man trying to divinize himself in order to achieve “salvation.” Similarly, when there is a denial of the Attributes of God: if He is not omnipotent, then He is weak, struggling, and can be overcome by man, the new omnipotent being. If God is not omniscient then it is not possible for him to communicate what Francis Schaeffer called “true truth”, and truth will be determined instead by finite man who now implies omnisicience for himself.

The concepts are inescapable, and will be attributed to God or to man. That’s why the location of our basic ideas is critical.

Almost everyone knows the story of Daniel and the lion’s den. What is not so well understood is the specific reason why Daniel came into conflict with king Darius.

Darius had appointed a number of officials to assist in ruling his kingdom. These officials became jealous of Daniel, who had distinguished himself in the service of the monarch. They sought his downfall, but could find nothing in his work habits that would give them cause to complain to the king.

These officials, however, knew that Daniel was a religious man. And they knew enough about his religion to be able to devise a trap that would ensnare Daniel and bring about his political downfall. They were certain that they could only destroy him if they brought some issue to the fore concerning the law of God, forcing Daniel to choose between the law of his God and the law of the king.

Appealing to the political philosophy of the time which put the king’s law above everything else, they suggested that he should pass a law forbidding any person in the realm from making a petition to any other god or man for thirty days. On the surface this did not seem such a harsh law. Only thirty days. These advisers were not greedy men. All they wanted was enough rope for Daniel to hang himself. And it would be a good test of the king’s ultimate authority. So this suggestion had some ego appeal for the king.

It is important to grasp the nature of this edict. It legislated a prohibition against all prayer or petitions to any person or god for a limited period. What was the meaning of this decree that Darius signed into law?

In essence, this law was designed to confirm the total jurisdiction of king Darius over all areas of life and thought. So powerful and mighty was Darius supposed to be that he could forbid people from petitioning even a god. Putting this another way, by prohibiting people from praying to any other god, Darius was establishing his own divinity. He was confirming himself the supreme authority in the whole universe.

This brought Darius into conflict with the first commandment. “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me,” declared the Lord God from Mt Sinai (Exodus 20:3). Had Daniel granted Darius the legitimacy to legislate when men could talk to the one true God, Daniel would have broken the commandment. Breaking the commandments, as the Bible tells us, is the essence of sin (I John 3:4).

The biblical account goes on to tell us how Daniel, upon hearing that Darius had signed the decree, entered his house and knelt in prayer on three occasions daily. He did this in view of all, praying in front of an open window. But you can imagine the comments of his friends and neighbors when he violated the decree:

“Daniel! Why don’t you close your windows and pray unseen?”

“Hey, Daniel! You’ll give God’s people a bad reputation. Don’t you know we’re supposed to obey earthly rulers at all times?”

“Now look, Daniel. It’s only for thirty days. After that you can pray as many times as you like to whomever you like. Just don’t rock the boat on this. It’s not as if it’s forever!”

“Daniel, you’ll give YHWH’s followers a bad name. Just sit it out. Everything will be fine.”

Yet Daniel did not flinch from his duty. And though he was convicted in the courts of man for breaking the law of the land, he was vindicated in the court of God and given Divine protection at a most difficult time. He was not one to obey the law of Darius on this point, for Daniel knew that to do so would be to break the commandment of his God, thereby giving evidence that he was not a true disciple of the Living God.

Over two thousand years later, Christians everywhere find themselves in a situation not unlike that of Daniel. For the highest authority in the land has made decrees that force every Christian to make choices. Whom shall they obey when the government passes a law that gives it total jurisdiction — even over the religious practices of Christians?

The issue today, however, is far worse than that faced by Daniel in some respects. Darius only required a 30-day moratorium on praying to anyone but himself. Governments today demand life-time eminent domain.

While Christians are not asked to face the lion’s den for violation of the law, they could be restricted from the free exercise of their religion for far more than the thirty days that limited Daniel.

Something to think about. God bless you.

There is a tendency by many to think of Christian culture in terms of things: movies, art, music, business, money, economy, property rights, and so forth.

In the past, however, when Christianity did influence the culture, it had an advantage. The key elements of Christianity were constantly a reminder to the people, not just through the implementation of music, art, literature, and law, but through a series of events that spread throughout the calendar year.

I’m referring to the Christian calendar. This created what Robert Webber calls “Christian-year spirituality”. According to Webber,

Through Christian-year spirituality we are enabled to experience the biblical mandate of conforming to Christ. The Christian year orders our formation with Christ incarnate in his ministry, death, burial, resurrection, and coming again through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. In Christian-year spirituality we are spiritually formed by recalling and entering into his great saving events (Ancient-Future Time, p. 22).

I know many of you personally on this e-zine list. I know your religious background, and the journey we share to understand our faith.

So when was the last time you had a Christian-year calendar that recalled the major events of God’s saving work through Christ, and participation in that and his future as King of kings, and Lord of lords?

Many of you were raised, like me, in traditions that had long forgotten the practices of the early and ancient church. As a consequence, we struggle to understand culture in general, and how the early church formed Christendom. They certainly didn’t do it with books like The Purpose-Driven Life. But they did do it with a liturgy, among other things, that we need to comprehend and practice.

Webber asks this question:

“How can the Christian year order our entire lives–our values, worldview, and personal relationships; our struggles with lying, cheating, lust, jealousy, anger, and such; our ambitions and drive for success, material wealth, power, and recognition; our complicity with the hunger, injustice, and pain of the world? (pp. 23-24).

Then provides the answer to his own question.

The Christian year represents the historical unfolding of the life of Christ and his sure return. One may observe that Advent deals with the coming of Christ; Christmas, his birth; Epiphany, his manifestation to the Gentiles; Lent, his journey toward death; the Great Triduum, the last days of Jesus’ earthly life; Easter, the time to celebrate his resurrection; and Pentecost, the time to experience life in the power of the Holy Spirit” (p. 31).

The Christianity community that gave us our Christian culture was one that was disciplined by the Christian year. For many people today, such a liturgy seems too stilted and informal; insufficiently spontaneous to provide evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit.

And therein lies our problem. We cannot fathom our past, and so we fail to influence the present and the future.

Our forefathers did not have this problem, which is why they succeeded where later generations have failed. Their liturgy brought past, present and future to the one place: in front of the heavenly throne, the seat of all power and authority, where all people bow to the King of king, King Jesus.

It appears that if we are really serious about establishing Christian culture we don’t need to wait for the conversion of the heathen. We simply need to to conform our lives to Christ and remind ourselves of him through the symbolic rituals that have allowed the historic church to influence the world in a way that we just dream about.

Meanwhile, we fail to see our neighbor converted, let alone the town or city, county, state and nation. What we are doing is failing to obtain the results we desire and think are possible. Now this is our weakness, unless we dare to blame God for our failure.

Maybe its time we changed some things. The Christian-year spirituality and worship of God in Christ seems like a good start.

God bless you.

Later in his Institutes, Calvin made these comments about the Old Testament law and its place in the life of any nation in the New Testament period. “For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate that they are stupid and false”(John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, 20:14).

Calvin wrote at a time when it was common to speak clearly, unlike today where misleading and obfuscation are the order of the day. The idea that any commonwealth is to be ruled by the law of Moses is a “stupid and false” idea. Now Calvin is not completely denying the law of Moses, or is he?

“But if it is true that each nation has been left at liberty to enact the laws which it judges to be beneficial, still these are always to be tested by the rule of charity, so that while they vary in form, they must proceed on the same principle. Those barbarous and savage laws, for instance, which conferred honor on thieves, allowed the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and other things even fouler and more absurd, I do not think entitled to be considered as laws, since they are not only altogether abhorrent to justice, but to humanity and civilized life” (Ibid., IV;20:15).

In the very next section Calvin attempts to get morality back into the laws of nations. He does this with these words: “I do not think [they are] entitled to be considered as laws” because they are “abhorrent to justice” and “humanity and civilized life.” Having turned his back on the law of Moses, the Torah, Calvin offers in its place the standards of justice, humanity and civilized life.

But this only begs the question: How are we to know what the standards of justice, humanity and civilized life are unless they are defined by the law of God as given to Moses?

The answer to this question contains the myth of Calvinism. Now a myth is “a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp. one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature.”

Here’s the myth: the “well-known division which distributes the whole law of God, as promulgated by Moses, into the moral, the ceremonial, and the judicial law”.

Now Calvin provides no arguments as to how this division is arrived at, other than this one. “the ancients who adopted this division”.

In other words, somewhere in the past, presumably one or more of the church fathers, the tri-fold division of the law was created. Who precisely created this idea we are not told. Nor are we told why they created the division.

And there has yet to be a biblical argument which clearly indicates how the laws are to be divided. The Ten Commandments are the moral laws, applicable to all, while all the other laws, civil and ceremonial are no longer to be applied, other than some kind of “general equity.”

But that argument — a myth — handed down through Calvin and then the Westminster Confession of Faith, has done nothing more than effectively undercut the possibility of Christian culture. There is no determinable basis or fact to support the division of the law, then the putting aside of most of it. It is a myth. Christian culture, which imperfectly based itself on the Torah, came into existence, because some people did not believe the myth. Alfred the Great, for example.

There is no Christian or biblical culture without the Torah. And those who perpetuate the tri-fold division perpetuate a myth and undercut the possibility of restoring Christian — or if you prefer, Biblical — culture.

If you’re not convinced, start reading the Psalms and the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:17ff. If those words in Scripture don’t convince you, nothing will.

Have a blessed week, serving God in your calling.

The Romantic movement, following on the heels of the Enlightenment, brought a revitalized message about love. There’s not enough of it.

And Romantic art of all kinds – poetry, music, painting, etc. – indicates that the lack of love is the significant problem in the world. If only this girl or that man would love me, all my problems would go away. Romanticism in this vein, however, is even more likely to have the three-way love affair, with adultery mixed in the midst of it. There was a reason composer Richard Wagner used Tristan and Isolde as a key part of his operatic works with music designed to undermine Christian culture, for the story is a key representative of Romanticism. Hollywood, in our generation, perpetuates this belief about love.

Enter our churches and you hear the gospel of love. “Honk if you love Jesus” was an old bumper sticker. Music, now the controlling influence in the contemporary church, is the music of the Romantic era. The use of melody and harmony are governed by the rules of the post-Baroque period, and when played on guitar and drums, the rhythm is highlighted and it becomes the dominant aspect of the contemporary worship service.

Now listen to the sermon that follows this kind of music.

Its slick presentation will be filled with words such as “love”, “justification”, “Jesus”, “The Bible”, and much more. Children are taught to sing “Jesus loves Me” and they are instructed to love Jesus. Have an emotional affair with Him, and as adults they sing, “I stand in the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses. . . And He walks with me, and He talks with me.” And so the hymn goes on.

But they are not told what the Biblical definition of love really is. And then you wonder why divorce rates in the church are just as high as outside of it. It’s to be expected, given the same ideas are taught inside and outside the church.

Something is missing, or at the very least given a misplaced emphasis. And that’s the word “sin.” And even when it is used, it is unlikely to be given its Biblical definition: Sin is anomia – lawlessness. In fact, it’s anti-law. Anti- God’s law, that is. (I John 3:4)

Against the modern notion of love and the lack of love, the Word of God on the other hand, emphasizes love as the keeping of the law of God. “For this is the love of God that we keep His Commandments” (1 John 5:3).

This is not the idea of love of the modern world, including the contemporary church. If it were, it would get rid of the humanistic romanticism contained in the music of hymns, past and present, and get back to God’s song book, the Psalms.

The psychology of relationships has replaced the theology of sin, guilt, the need for atonement, the history of creation and redemption, emphasizing God’s Incarnation as the ultimate solution. Man does not need love; he needs forgiveness.

In a sermon recently, it was said that the opposite to love is not hatred, but apathy. There is in this statement, like all heresies, a partial truth.

But the Biblical opposite to love is neither hatred nor apathy. It is sin. Sin is not apathy. It’s outright disobedience to the law of God.

Only when you and I get that message implanted in our heart by God Himself is there likely to be a reversal of the decaying culture in which we find ourselves. Because when this happens, we will begin to deal with the sin in our own lives. And maybe as a result of that, we might be capable of loving God and our neighbor, the necessary condition to changing the culture. But not before.

May God richly bless you as you serve Him in your calling.

In 1980 a book appeared that addressed a problem of mathematics: the quest for certainty. The author, Morris Kline, entitled his book, Mathematics: the Loss of Certainty.

In it he outlines how the philosophy and use of mathematics went beyond its capabilities. Newton, for example, in his science abandoned physical explanation of phenomena, and instead employed mathematical concepts. “Newton’s crowning work presented mankind with a set of only mathematically expressible physical principles. . . . The Newtonian scheme was decisive in convincing the world that nature is mathematically designed and that the true laws of nature are mathematical” (p. 57).

Anyone who thinks that nature can only be explained mathematically soon finds themselves with some unanswered questions. And it is easy to see how this kind of rationalism has contributed to a lack of faith in the world in which we live.

But the problem does not end there. Mathematics is not a unified field of study or knowledge. According to Kline, for example, “creations of the early 19th century, strange geometries and strange algebras, forced mathematicians, reluctantly and grudgingly, to realize that mathematics proper and mathematical laws were not truths. They found, for example, that several differing geometries fit spatial experience equally and well. All could not be truths. Apparently mathematical design was not inherent in nature, or if it was, man’s mathematics was not necessarily the account of that design.” (p. 4).

The Age of Reason and the search for a naturalistic explanation of the world was at a dead end.

This search for certainty is opposed to the biblical notion of faith, and there is no wonder that faith has declined as “natural” mathematical explanations have become the standard. Yet these contemporary explanations are a last-ditch effort by humanists to explain the world in naturalistic terms. This last-ditch effort has been going on for two centuries.

This same quest for certainty, however, is endemic in the Christian community in another context: the search for a certain and fixed Word from God.

This has led, in one area, to the idea that unless there is Divine Preservation of every letter and word in the original manuscripts, then it is not possible for us to have an accurate Word from God in written form, the Bible. This is one of the key arguments of those who propose that the Majority Text (or the related Textus Receptus) is the “right” one for us today, and that it alone carries God’s preservation through the ages.

The arguments they propose for this are curious, since the MT itself is a later compilation of early manuscripts, and does nothing to solve perplexing issues. For example, biblical scholar Kurt Aland has suggested there are fifty-two variants in the Majority Text sources in just two verses: (2 Cor. 1:6-7).

Now how on earth do we determine which one of these variants is correct? It would be reasonable to conclude that some of the variants are spelling related, or perhaps word order, neither of which changes the meaning of the text. But the existence of these variations seriously calls into question the idea that God has providentially preserved the copies in the same way He created the originals.

As for the TR, it was unknown before 1516, and was a result of the work of Erasmus. What happened to God’s preservation for 1515 years?

Such uncertainty in the biblical manuscripts is the reason for textual scholarship, and it is true that this, in turn, rests upon a systematic theology that governs our response to the issues. We are caught in an interesting “circular reasoning” conundrum.

Given this uncertainty in the manuscripts, how strong is your faith? And what is the basis of your faith?

Something to think about.

Click here for Part 2

The first part of commentary raised questions about the biblical manuscripts and the way we view them. We must have, it seems, a “scientific” approach to textual purity in order to be secure that we actually have the Word of God. Yet the more we search for certainty, the more elusive it seems.

Dr. Marvin R. Wilson makes this interesting contrast between Hebrew and our modern thought patterns.

The biblical authors never argue the existence of God; they only assume it. God is not understood philosophically, but functionally. He acts. The Hebrews primarily thought of him pictorially, in terms of personality and activity, not in terms of pure being or in any static sense. That is, to express the divine attribute of love, the Hebrews would normally think in terms of a “loving God” (i.e., a God who loves), rather than “God is love.” Certainly, therefore, the Hebrew mind-set of Bible times would find little or no interest in many of the issues the Church has debated over the centuries. These issues include theoretical arguments for the existence of God, the nature of the Godhead, free will and predestination, the specifics of the life to come, and the precise way in which the divine and human mesh in the inspiration of Scripture.

The Hebrew knew he did not know all the answers. His position was “under the sun” (Eccl. 8:17), so his words were few (5:2). He refused to oversystematize or force harmonization on the enigmas of God’s truth or puzzles of the universe. He realized that no one could straighten what God has made crooked (7:13). All things, therefore, did not need to be fully rational. The Hebrew mind was willing to accept the truths taught on both sizes of the paradox; it recognized that mystery and apparent contradictions are often signs of the divine. Stated succinctly, the Hebrews knew the wisdom of learning to trust in matters that they could not fully understand.

In an attempt to formulate the idea of inspiration to preserve an infallible Bible, Christians may have gone just a little overboard by operating on non-Hebraic assumptions. The influence of Greek thought in our culture is pervasive, and helps explain many of the issues that have driven Christendom underground and almost caused its complete demise.

If you’re really interested in finding out more, read Wilson’s essay, “The Contour of Hebrew Thought.” It should be compulsory reading for all seminary students and serious Christians. You will find it here: The Contour of Hebrew Thought

The Search For Certainty – 3.

In the quest for certainty, some biblical scholars are willing to give up all logic to prove a point.

At the heart of the certainty debate is this issue. It’s syllogistic in form, two premises followed by a conclusion.

Premise 1: God gave his Word through inspired writers who wrote down what God intended for them to write down. These are the original manuscripts of the Bible, of which we have none.

Premise 2: In order for us to have God’s word today, the words in the original manuscripts must be preserved by God so that they still exist.

Conclusion: ?

Do you see the problem? No conclusion is possible for this reason: at least one of the premises is not necessarily true.

Today we have a multitude of manuscripts and fortunately or unfortunately, God appears to have left it to the textual scholars to figure out which ones contains the “original” text.

Or, just possibly, God has preserved His Word on not one single manuscript but all of them combined, and taken together they give us the certain word of God.

There are some people willing to give up logic in order to argue that the majority text and its derivative, the Textus Receptus, used as the basis for the KJV translation, is the “right” one, and this is God’s preserved Word.

But this is logic run amok, for it is not based on logical necessity but just assumed to be the preserved text. Forget that the TR did not exist for 1515 years. Forget that while it may have been based on the Byzantine Text tradition (also known as the Majority Text tradition) it has nearly 2,000 variations with the Byzantine texts.

Then there’s the Magdalen papyrus, which some people claim is the majority text from the first century. Forget that the Magdalen papyrus has only one scholar suggesting its origin in the first century, while all the others give it a much later date. And then there is not clear evidence from the scholars that this papyrus is the wording of the later TR.

There is, unfortunately, absolutely no way you can arrive at the textual answer using the Bible itself. It simply does not tell us which manuscripts we ought to be using, just as it does not tell us which “books” belong in the New Testament.

Herein lies the weakness of our presuppositional apologetic, for this is one area we cannot go to the Bible to find the answer. The best we can do is assume that God has in fact not left us in the dark and that the Bible we have today is the Bible God wants us to have.

The real issue is this one. It is not a question of whether God has preserved His word. It is a question of how has God preserved His word through the ages. The Scriptures themselves do not tell us. So whether we like it or not, we are at the mercy of the textual scholars to provide an answer. And we might need to choose carefully so we do not get led up the many rabbit trails that lead to false conclusions about the KJV, the Majority Text tradition and the Textus Receptus.

Throughout the ages, the Christian church has not been able to determine which are the writings that finally belong in the list of the canon. It took an arbitrary decision of the framers of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Belgic Confession before them, to make a decision that had evaded the total Christian church to that point. Different groups have different ideas, which can only serve to confuse.

It is apparent you are left with no alternative but to live by faith, remembering there are limits to your ability to answer some of the questions that lie at the back of life. But you do need to live by faith, trusting that the Bible you are reading today, no matter which version it is, is God’s Word for you today. And that’s about as good as it’s going to get.

But there is a scene at the end of the movie that is provocative. King John declares he is appointed by Divine Right, and he’s not about to let a bunch of barons tell him what to do.

Historically, the Divine Right argument was fought out between monarch and papacy, until the Reformation came along and attempted to restore things to an earlier period. That period is the one that followed the collapse of Rome, and it turned the Roman Empire, with its divinization of the Caesar, on its head. Divine right was held to be a prerogative of God alone, and He did not need any representative on earth.

The rise of humanism, the return to the Greek philosophers as a synthesis with biblical teaching, soon brought Divine Right down to earth again, and the monarchs and papacy became embroiled in the debate. Both claimed to be God’s appointed representative in the earthly realm.

The Reformation was an attempt to turn back the clock on this issue, and John Calvin probably best articulated the absolute sovereignty of God, although Luther’s Bondage of the Will is a great denial that mankind is capable of free will in the same sense God has free will. Time and circumstance are not ruled from below; they are ruled from above.

Bringing this issue up to date, you see in the world the re-divinization of the political order, and in the United States at the moment, this is highlighted in the immigration debate. The State of Arizona is leading the call to stop “illegal” immigration.

This word “illegal” should be like a red flag to Christians. When you hear that word, your mind should wander through the Scriptures and ask this: where and when did God make it illegal to cross borders unless the political authorities said you may?

The existence of patrolled borders, now with gates between Canada and the USA to stop “illegal” flow of people and goods, is a non-biblical attempt by nation-states who see themselves as the ones to control the world and bring about heaven on earth. Of course, their version of heaven on earth is a political one, not a moral one, and therein lies the problem.

Modern man is attempting to solve human problems by political action rather than see them as moral problems. Sin, is the word used in the Bible.

Thus, immigration is a sign of the times: it continues to highlight man’s attempt at divinity which ultimately means absolute and total control, and attribute of God.

For this reason, the Christian should oppose the new attempts to control immigration. Rather, they should argue for the freedom and liberty of men and women to live where they please, with the freedom to move whenever they choose.

Anything less reinforces the idea that power and control are from below, not from above.

When I think of these issues of power and control — and they are a problem in business just as much as in politics — I am reminded of a comment made to me about power by Otto Scott: “If you think you have power and control, try ordering someone else’s dog around.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

God bless you this week.

Charles Hodge, in his history of the Presbyterian Church in the USA, written in the 19th century, was critical of the revival period known as the Great Awakening. Why? His opinion seems to cut against common acceptance that this was a mighty work of revival, and that the Holy Spirit manifested Himself in a particular way during this period.

Charles Hodge (no known relation to this writer) would not accept this view so readily. In his opinion, the church was in a worse state two years after the Awakening than it was two years earlier. Thus, he was not so ready to accept the Awakening was the work of the Holy Spirit.

His criticism, therefore, begs the question. And if you allowed yourself to dream for a few minutes, what would a spiritual revival look like to you?

I dreamed a dream. There was a spiritual revival under way.

First, the politicians determined that they would only live on whatever tax God said was payable to the political order. It was not very much. In fact, most of them lost their job.

Second, the principle of restitution would be applied for the past 7 years, and all the tax money stolen from the people would be returned. Stolen money is simple to figure out: it’s whatever God says you’re not entitled to.

Third, our political leaders would lead the way on this and start with their own income from the stolen money and repay it to the people.

Fourth, the religious leaders, agreeing that this is the right thing to do, might urge their parishioners to copy the politicians, and make restitution of all stolen money, even if they didn’t steal it directly, but were the recipient of it through a government program of taking form some and giving to others.

Fifth, that everyone demanded the religious leaders read and re-read the law of God day and night until everyone understood what was right and wrong.

Sixth, the biblical prohibition against usury was reinstated; money was no longer devalued through credit expansion and the printing presses because gold and silver became legal tender again; the sabbatical become the practice outside the university; and the year of Jubilee was taken seriously in an attempt to preserve the property-based family.

Seventh, then I saw the mess I was in and figured while I can’t change anyone else, I can make some changes in my own life. And this is where the revival needed to get its start, not with other people, but with myself.

Eighth, then I understood that revival is not something you ask for, it is something you do. And if I could identify real changes in my own life, then I knew that revival was already under way. I didn’t need to ask for its appearance: I just needed to recognize that revival is how God works ordinarily.

It’s not the politicians who need to practice restitution: I do.
It’s not the politicians who need to conform themselves to their God-ordained duties: I do.

To ask for anything seemed rather pointless, almost an admission that God needed to change everyone else except me.

Thus, to pray for spiritual revival as a future event denies the revival already under way in the lives of God’s people everywhere.

Then I woke up.

But for a while, I thought I was in the midst of a truly spiritual “revival,” the likes of which are never talked about.

Martin Luther King is not the only dreamer. What are your dreams for a spiritual revival? And is it already under way in your own life?

And when you pray for revival, thank God for that revival already in progress instead of asking it to be a future event.

God bless you this week as you seek to serve Him who alone demands and deserves our full allegiance.