Sunday, December 23, 2018

Correcting a Common Platitude. . .

We are often told "we should live as if Jesus could return today."

“Perhaps today!” This is a slogan that is commonly heard in various Christian circles. A version of this is found in the popular hymn:

Jesus may come today
Glad day, glad day!
And I would see my friend;
Dangers and troubles would end
If Jesus should come today.

The problem is that it sounds nice and pious and preaches well, but the Bible never teaches that this should be our motivation.

Rather, the Bible teaches in a singular voice that we should live in light of the fact that Jesus is returning.

https://www.alankurschner.com/2018/12/23/correcting-a-common-platitude/

See my most recent podcast episode as I unpacked this.






3 comments:

  1. Hi Alan,

    Interesting. I don't share your eschatology in general (and haven't clicked through to the podcast for the details, sorry!), but I agree with you on this particular point.

    I remember once reading Wayne Grudem, I think, who, like many evangelicals both expounded that a) Jesus could return at any instant and b) The Bible teaches that a number of signs will precede his return. But, unlikely many evangelicals, Grudem then made an attempt to harmonise those two beliefs. He attempted this by explaining that perhaps they're already fulfilled.

    I didn't find what he wrote plausible; 1) surely a series of 'signs' that leaves even the most mature believers being committed to being agnostic between "maybe they're already fulfilled" and "but perhaps they're many years/decades/centuries off being fulfilled" are failing in their basic purpose of signifying anything, except as an intellectual "have they/haven't they" parlour game; i.e. there's no difference in the practical implications between one and the other; you can't re-order your life in the light of one rather in a way that makes any specific differences (that aren't already there with the belief that "Jesus is certainly returning one day"). 2) I don't remember the details, as it was many years ago, but his argument that all tribes and tongues of the world had had the gospel presented to them (I think he argued for a minimal standard of 'presented' rather than any sort of reception) struck me as still particularly implausible even with the minimal standard (I might be mixing it up with someone else, but I think he argued it just needed one person from each group to have heard a fragment of the gospel somehow; this struck me as Western-style loophole-in-the-small-print lawyering, far removed from the actual Scriptural vision of Jesus, through his sufferings, death, resurrection and through his people in the power of the Holy Spirit gloriously accomplishing that Adam and Israel failed to).

    David

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    1. Hi David,

      Thanks for your comments. In my forthcoming major book responding to imminence, I have an appendix responding to Wayne Grudem and other postribulationists who take a postrib imminence view, which I call "agnostic posttribulationism." Their reconciliation of imminence and prophesied events are incredibility strained. They badly want to affirm imminence. What they do then is claim that the prophesied events are "not discernible" so they may have been fulfilled, "we don't know," therefore Jesus can return at any moment. There are many problems with this as I outline in my appendix. The most problematic issue is they are making Paul and Jesus _disingenuous_ by minimizing the distinctiveness of their prophecies (e.g. the Antichrist's great tribulation).

      In short, the tradition of imminence of Jesus's return is so strong in evangelicalism, that they are willing to skew the prophecies of Jesus and Paul in order to maintain imminence.

      It's not just a pretrib tradition!



      Alan

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  2. P.S. This is a good point you made --> "you can't re-order your life in the light of one rather in a way that makes any specific differences (that aren't already there with the belief that "Jesus is certainly returning one day"

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