Featured Cultural Interaction pt2

So in chapter 5 he points out that man's best effort Fallen man's best effort is to make some kind of utopian society and leave God out. But because man is so sinful and Fallen rather than restoring Earth to the Garden of Eden type condition it more or less is a return to the Tower of Babel.
Man having turned from God seeks to replace the omniscient God with man's Wisdom and try to control all elements of society and culture and as such on page 180
the utopian education is not preparation for life and freedom within the goal of enabling children to think critically, equipped with the tools necessary for life and learning an inquiry. Instead education is social activism the goal is homogeneous, predictable product ,less able, less critical less inquisitive,More pliable not nurtured in divisive Christian understanding of life but with feelings of equality ,fraternity ,and dependency.
Man is reduced to the level of an animal.

 

Charles Spurgeon was a reluctant historic premillennialist, who would comment on his view when pressed, but even he urged his hearers to a godly example among the unsaved world;


The grace of God has made us deny the prevailing philosophies, glories, maxims and fashions of this present world. But then, brethren, you. cannot be complete with a merely negative religion; you must have something positive; and so the next word is living--that “we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.” Observe, brethren, that the Holy Ghost expects us to live in this present world, and therefore we are not to exclude ourselves from it. This age is the battlefield in which the soldier of Christ is to fight. Society is the place in which Christianity is to exhibit the graces of Christ. It is of no use for you to scheme to escape from it. You are bound to breast this torrent, and buffet all its waves. If the grace of God is in you, that grace is meant to be displayed, not in a select and secluded retreat, but in this present world. This life is described in a threefold way. You are, first, to live “soberly”--that is, for yourself. “Soberly” in all your eating and your drinking, and in the indulgence of all bodily appetites-- that goes without saying. You are to live soberly in all your thinking, all your speaking, all your acting. There is to be sobriety in all your worldly pursuits. You are to have yourself well in hand; you are to be self-restrained. The man who is disciplined by the grace of God becomes thoughtful, considerate, self-contained; and he is no longer tossed about by passion, or swayed by prejudice. As to his fellowman the believer lives “righteously.” I cannot understand that Christian who can do a dirty thing in business. If you mean to go the way of the devil, say so, and take the consequences, but if you profess to be servants of God, deny all partnership with unrighteousness. Dishonesty and falsehood are the opposites of godliness. A Christian man may be poor, but he must live righteously; he may lack sharpness, but he must not lack integrity. A Christian profession without uprightness is a lie. Grace must discipline us to righteous living.
Toward God we are told that we are to be godly. Every man who has the grace of God in him indeed and of a truth, will think much of God, and will seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
-God will enter into all his calculations,
-God’s presence will be his joy,
-God’s strength will be his confidence,
-God’s providence will be his inheritance,
-God’s glory will be the chief end of his being,
-God’s law the guide of his conversation.

Serve the Lord in some way or other. Serve Him always. Serve Him intensely. Serve Him more and more.
- Go tomorrow and serve the Lord at the counter, or in the workshop, or in the field.
- Go and serve the Lord by helping the poor and the needy, the widow and the fatherless.
- Go and Serve Him by teaching the children, especially by endeavoring to train your own children.
- Go and show the drunkard that there is hope for him in Christ, or let the fallen woman know that Jesus can restore her. Do what Jesus has given you the power to do.

The Second Coming Of Christ, CHS

 

J.C.Ryle ,saw the verses but had a different view;
Coming Events and Present Duties

Our Lord's disciples seem to have thought that the Old Testament promises of Messiah's visible kingdom and glory, were about to be immediately fulfilled. They believed rightly that He was indeed the Messiah — the Christ of God. But they blindly supposed that He was going at once to take to Himself His great power, and reign gloriously over the earth.

This was the sum and substance of their error.

They appear to have concluded that now was the day and now the hour when the Redeemer would build up Zion, and appear in His glory (Psalm 102:16)
— when He would smite the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips slay the wicked
— when He would assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah (Isaiah 11:4, 12) — when He would take the heathen for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession — when He would break His enemies with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel (Psalm 2:8, 9)
— when He would reign in mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before His ancients gloriously (Isaiah 24:23)
— when the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole Heaven would be given to the saints of the Most High. (Daniel 7. 27.) Such appears to have been the mistake into which our Lord's disciples had fallen, at the time when He spoke the parable of the Pounds. It was a great mistake unquestionably. They did not realize that before all these prophecies could be fulfilled, "it behooved Christ to suffer." (Luke 24:46.) Their optimistic expectations overleaped the crucifixion and the long parenthesis of time to follow, and bounded onward to the final glory. They did not see that there was to be a first advent of Messiah "to be cut off," before the second advent of Messiah to reign.


I like JC Ryle, and yet he would speak against the mission of God point of view here;
Will you dare to tell him that Old Testament prophecies of this kind are not to be taken in their plain literal sense? Will you dare to tell him that the words Zion, Jerusalem, Jacob, Judah, Ephraim, Israel, do not mean what they seem to mean — but mean the Church of Christ? Will you dare to tell him that the glorious kingdom and future blessedness of Zion, so often dwelt upon in prophecy, mean nothing more than the gradual Christianizing of the world by missionaries and Gospel preaching? Will you dare to tell him that you think it "carnal" to take such Scriptures literally, "carnal" to expect a literal rebuilding of Jerusalem, "carnal" to expect a literal coming of Messiah to reign, "carnal" to look for a literal gathering and restoration of Israel? Oh, reader, if you are a man of this mind, take care what you are doing? I say again, take care.

 

pg.191- In reform thought, evangelists miss history - and world - firming semi: the gospel declares Christ universal providential government and cosmos renewing intentions. Thus, we must repudiate all notions of evangelism that are intent on purely inward, pietistic concerns, seeking to escape from the world into heaven rather than seeking his Kingdom coming on Earth as it is in heaven as Matthew 6 verse 10 says. Evangelism is not only about saving souls what about declaring christ's redemptive activity for the whole person - what he has done, is doing and will do.

 

I bought the hardback, but just saw a paperback copy available on Amazon for just over 20$
The Mission of God: A Manifesto of Hope for Society Paperback – April 22, 2016
by Joseph Boot (Author)
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As I read through I paused to backtrack and see if this description of a Christian is common in our churches;or is it something we cannot relate to?

2 Corinthians 4
King James Version

4 Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not;

2 But have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.

3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:

4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.

5 For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

6 For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

8 We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;

9 Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;

10 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.

11 For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

12 So then death worketh in us, but life in you.

13 We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak;

14 Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.

15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.

 

on pg192; As made clear by Paul and 2nd Corinthians 4 :16 to chapter 5 :4.
Eternity is not the fine by temporal concerns, but rather,it defines and establishes the significance of time. ,
There is it non-dualistic priority of the eschatological future of temporal concerns and a fallen world that is under the wrath of God. The world is destined for destruction as well as renewal.

So evangelism understood in light of the Kingdom, must hold a proclamation and demonstration of the good news and dynamic tension common with temporal priority given to the eternal dimension in the biblical paradigm.

Quoting from Bosch in Transforming Missions;
Evangelism, then, means enlisting people for the reign of God, liberating them from themselves, their sins, and their entanglements, so that they will be free for God and neighbor.
It calls individuals to a life of openness, vulnerability, wholeness, and love.To win people for Jesus is to win their allegiance to God's priorities.
Commenting on this Joe boot says basheer appears very biblical. However, the critical issues must be addressed. We cannot leave these things vague and undefined. If evangelism is a listing people for the reign of God, what does the reign of God look like? If we are to win people's allegiance to Jesus, what are god's priorities, how do we identify them and where do we find them? How do we go about winning people over to Christ reign? These are the questions to which we will now turn.

 

In chapter 6 he begins a discussion on how those who seek to do away with the law of God have no real answers that align with Biblical Justice. They pick and choose a couple of ideas and go with it using man-made ideas for support rather than scriptural support so he spends time looking at some current books and current theologians trying to explain away the role of the law God and he does so by looking through Proverbs and Psalms and a couple of the portions of scripture to demonstrate that some of these laws are true in all ages

 

In a related book called Gospel Culture Living in God's Kingdom on page 2 he speaks about the rejection of the vertical accountability for horizontal relativity, modern man is conferring on himself the contractual right to redefine gender irrespective of creational chromosomes; the right to murder that is abortion; the right to polygamy, sodomy, bestiality or any sexual predilection, the right to Suicide; the right to euthanize children and the elderly or sick; the right to homosexual "marriage ", the right to prostitution and pornography the right to suppress worship of the Living God and the free speech of Christians; the right to blasphemy and endless violations of the Sabbath all dressed in the Garb of freedom and human dignity, which amounts to nothing but radical autonomy.

 

pg6...Man was not made to live a fragmented and dissonant life but was made an integral being, to worship and glorify God. and have dominion,under God,in all things..
The gospel fully restores man to his calling to worship and serve, beginning with the regeneration of the heart of man and thereby effecting a radical change in the core of man's being.

Since the gospel effects such a great transformation, we must conclude that the dreary condition of our culture today is in large measure due to the apostasy of the church and Christian family from their respective callings.

Since the so-called Enlightenment, Christians have steadily surrendered the various organs of culture-education, medicine, government,-almost entirely the increasingly humanistic state.

We have progressively retreated into a pietistic bubble, concerned largely with eternal verities and keeping souls from hell, we have faithlessly limited Christ's jurisdiction to the institutional church. The result has been the marginalization of the Christian church and a change of religion in the public sphere.

 

Reflecting on what Joe Boot has offered so far it has me thinking this;

Local churches that are not doing well fail because instead of provoking one another to love and good works,they limp along many times just doing minimal external church things and calling it a day.
People are creatures of habit and if a pattern of sluggishness is acceptable enough, many will just repeat the bad patterns that have caused this poor worldview and defective service.
I have my own ideas on a remedy but he is doing a great job so I will see where he steers the ship and what remedy he suggests.

 

Gospel Witness pg 48,49;
The central problem facing an unbeliever, then, is him or herself.
not a lack of evidence or inadequacy of reason to believe.rom8:5-8

But in their sins, people tend to find only what they want to find and to see only what they want to see. As such we should not overestimate our ability to persuade, nor be discouraged when our best efforts are rejected or ignored.

Because without grace men suppress the truth about God and exchange it for a lie. Rom1:18,25.

 

At the end of chapter 6 He shows that lideral and social gospels mimic a Christian worldview, but attempt to leave out the scriptural directives.

In Ch.7 He starts with 2 quotes-pg239

Poverty also hath its temptations...For even the poor may be undone by the love of that wealth and plenty which they never get: and they may perish for over-loving the world, that they never prospered in the world.-Richard Baxter

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.-Winston Churchill

He laments the mistaken idea of redistribution of wealth. then comments;
Social justice is not a biblical concept but a humanistic doctrine that aims at replacing Christianity with secularism, and the church with the state.
As Marcello Pera points out, "The church doesn't seem to realize that much of this secularization is the result of the welfare state and of the concept of social justice, to which its own social doctrine also appeals...if the state gives you everything that your family, your parish, and your community once gave you, why do you even need a church?

 

On page 250 a lengthy discussion takes place concerning the people of the land defiling the land in Lev18:26. and being vomited out because of immorality so he goes on to say that is to say the physical condition of the environment the condition of our land and animal Kingdom are ecological cycles and weather patterns are inescapably related to the moral conduct of man when we disobey God's commands, the land is parched and not fruitful Deuteronomy 11 : 17.
In the fall the land was cursed because of the actions of man then you have the destruction of the ungodly and the flood of Noah's day that they were expelled from the land you have the canaanites expelled from the land for their abominations, and the Jews expelled from Jerusalem in Matthew 24.
He brings it up to our day, the Church expelled from northern Africa,the middle east, and western Europe.

 

Modern man for the most part think in naturalistic terms, but they do not think about man's sin in relationship to the fruitfulness of farming, husbandry, forest health, and animal populations. Nor do they take seriously the expulsion from Eden, the Flood, or the fall of Jerusalem, because they are evolutionary in their thinking and deny the historical Adam and Eve, thereby denying the creation ever fell-rather nature has always been red in the tooth and claw.

They reject the temporal judgment of the global flood as myth and deride the active providence of God in the rising and falling of nations.

 

A case is being made that the Puritans had a better grasp on the scriptures and viewed the world not only seeing the promises for believers.;
but also understanding the call from the prophets calling the people to obey Gods law as well
pg251;
They can only be understood in terms of the whole law of God in scripture and only then do we understand God's solution for these problems.
Puritan thought especially notes the intended outcome of obedience to God's laws for debt, charity, and Sabbath rest. not an equalitarian order but, a "debt-free" society that is also poverty-free, and this is only possible in terms of God's law. God's law of liberty[james1:25] is thus the heart of a truly reformed vision for God's reign.
This reign can only be realized through obedience to Gods word and not humanistic ideals which rest on envy and covetousness.

 

Geerhardus Vos offers some thoughts on the reality of the Kingdom when he wrote this;

The first thing to be noticed in the synoptical passages above quoted is the absence of every attempt at a definition of what the kingdom of God means. Jesus occupies historic ground from the outset. It is the kingdom, the well-known kingdom with which he presupposes familiarity, not merely on his own part but also on the part of his hearers. Our Lord did not come to found a new religion, but simply to usher in the fulfilment of something promised long beforehand. In the Old Testament God is frequently represented as the King of the Universe not only, but also as the King of Israel in a special, redemptive sense. He became so at the time of the deliverance from Egypt and the organization of Israel on the basis of the covenant, Ex. 19:4–6, cpr. Deut. 33:4, 5. In this sense God's kingdom first meant a present, real relation between Himself and his people, not something whose realization was expected from the future. Through the supernatural giving of the law and its administration and his direction of the course of history Jehovah exercises the functions of King in Israel. Later on, however, the conception of the kingdom, without losing its older meaning, obtains a distinctly eschatological sense. This development coincided with the development of Messianic prophecy, and both took place in dependence on the institution and further development of the human kingdom, especially that of the Davidic line.

The most important question connected with this central idea of our Lord's preaching concerns the exact nature of the order of affairs designated by it. Did He mean by the kingdom a new state of things suddenly to be realized in external forms, more or less in harmony with the current Jewish expectations, or did He mean by it, primarily at least, a spiritual creation gradually realizing itself in invisible ways?
For convenience sake these two conceptions may be distinguished as the eschatological and the spiritual-organic conception, provided it be kept in mind that these two are not logically nor historically exclusive. It is necessary, however, to make the distinction, because in modern writings both have in turn been pushed to an extreme in which they become exclusive each of the other.

The tendency at present among those who believe that Jesus was conditioned by his age and environment is to make his conception of the kingdom largely eschatological. On the other hand, where the originality and uniqueness of Jesus' teaching as over against the Old Testament and Judaism and Apostolic doctrine, are strongly emphasized, the opposite tendency appears, viz.: to eliminate as much as possible the eschatological elements and to ascribe to Him the idea of a kingdom entirely spiritual and internal.
A careful review of the evidence shows that the organic and eschatological conceptions are both present in our Lord's teaching. In reference to the eschatological side it is almost superfluous to establish this in detail. Our Lord repeatedly speaks of the kingdom as a state of things lying altogether above the sphere of earthly and natural life, being so different from the natural conditions that it could not be evolved from the latter by any gradual process; compare Matth. 8:11; 13:43; Mk. 14:25; Lk. 13:20, 29; 22:16, 29, 30.


It is of more importance to collect the references to the kingdom as a present, spiritual reality. In Matth. 12:20, Lk. 11:19, our Lord appeals to his casting out of demons by the Spirit of God as proof of the advent of the kingdom. According to Lk. 17:20, He declared that the kingdom does not come with observation, but is among or within men. And Lk. 16:16, makes the kingdom begin from the days of John the Baptist and immediately succeed the law and the prophets as the comprehensive name for the Old Testament dispensation. Both the present reality and the organic-spiritual character of the kingdom are most clearly taught in the great kingdom parables, Matth. 13, Mk. 4, Lk. 8. In several of these parables the point of comparison is taken from vegetable life, for the express purpose of illustrating the organic mode of its coming.


According to all three Evangelists Jesus was aware of having revealed in these parables a relatively new thought concerning the kingdom, which He designates "the mystery of the kingdom," Mk. 4:11. This mystery, this new truth, we may find in the revelation that the kingdom is realized gradually, imperceptibly, spiritually, for in comparison with the Jewish exclusively eschatological expectations this was so novel and startling a thought that it might be fitly called a mystery. Some modern advocates of the eschatological view have tried to escape from this conclusion by assuming, that in the original form of the parables, as they were delivered by Jesus, not the kingdom of God but the preaching of the word, as preparatory for the establishment of the kingdom, was referred to, and that the introductory formulas, as they now stand, were added by the evangelists, but there is no critical evidence to support this view. These formulas are not all alike and in part so idiomatic that one can hardly fail to detect in them Jesus' own manner of speech; compare Mk. 4:30.

Both these aspects of the kingdom, thus represented in our Lord's teaching must be carefully guarded from current misconceptions. The doctrine of an eschatological kingdom must not be confounded with the ordinary Jewish expectations of the coming age. The latter were national, political, sensual. It was inevitable that these expectations should more or less color the understanding of what Jesus taught concerning the kingdom not merely among the people but even among his disciples. But we have no right to identify our Lord's own ideas with such misunderstandings.

The Kingdom of God

BY GEERHARDUS VOS

 

ON PG 265;

Paul teaches that all human beings know the work of God's law even though they may not be consistently conscious of all its precepts-they recognize by created instinct the work of God's law on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to this reality.[rom2:14-15].
However, although they know the work of God's law, in rebellion they don't want to obey it.
Just as they see God's attributes and power in creation but refuse to honour God and worship the creation instead, so they know God's requirement and sanctions in their conscience but rebel against it.
As a consequence, God gives them over to a depraved mind.Rom1:24 and they live in terms of that.Rom.1:29-32.
Thus the work of Gods law is known by common grace[not by natural law] serves only to condemn people in their sin and rebellion and does not provide an alternate law structure to biblical law, since rightly understood[not perverted or suppressed] the law in man's being only confirms God's written law rom2.

 

On page 66 of the book gospel culture Joe boot says Jesus Christ the 2nd Adam and true image bearer, was mistaken for a gardener at the garden tomb because hes a true gardener, the true man of culture, who restores us to the original task of culture making as prophets, priests and kings. The Christian calling is clearly not to live as monks in a cloister and a dualistic, bifurcated universe, where true spirituality is equated with institutional piety . We are gods ambassadors, calling creation to be reconciled to the king.
We are not monastic pilgrims ,culture beggars wandering the Earth and pleading for a seat at the secular table. We are a Royal priesthood and Christ, turning all the Earth into God's sanctuary, for he owns the whole table in some, the noachic covenant is emphatically not a general, abstract covenant with the creation or man in general that produces, via theological Fiat, a common Kingdom - there is no such general man and there is no such common Kingdom.

 

pg266;
At present, civil government in the West wants liberty without the gospel, morality without Christ, affluence without Covenant.
It is willing to do anything, including forfeiture of its own lands to Mohammedans, except submit its nation to Christ.
Civil leadership is willing to subsidize polytheism.

pg269:

In Rushdoony's puritanism, man's social problems cannot be solved by humanistic concepts of political progress of the right or left but only theologically, by a return to Christ, biblical law, creedal affirmations that shaped the pre-modern period in the Christian West.

Puritan missiology insists that, as the Psalms make clear, God reigns over all the nations, and is alone both King and Saviour.