Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

One Vast Boneyard

Life in the Regeneration
Written by Douglas Wilson
Sunday, October 23, 2011

The end of October approaches, and as we mark and celebrate the great Reformation, our heart’s desire and prayer should be for future historians to be able to describe it as the first reformation, as the small one. “Small” does not mean insignificant, but in this case it does mean early on. Eye has not seen and ear has not heard what God has prepared for those of us who love Him. As we emphasize the five solas (as we should), let us exult in the one which is the true intersection of all of them — solus Christus.

Christ died for the world, and if we are to follow the apostle Paul’s argument, this means that we have an obligation to see that world differently.
We are not to see the world as saved after it is saved in fact. We are called to see the world as saved in principle, beforehand, in the reality of Christ’s death and resurrection. We should not see the world as saved when our eyes tell us it is all right for us to believe. Who hopes for what he already has? The world will be saved because we see Christ crucified and risen, and so we declare to the world what that means. What is it that overcomes the world? Is it not our faith?

The apostle tells us that how we see non-Christians is directly related to how we see Jesus (2 Cor. 5:16). We like to think that a high Christology and a low cosmology go together, but they do not. We like to think that a high Christology and a low anthropology go together, but they do not. New Age mystics and distorters notwithstanding, we worship a cosmic Christ. Externalists notwithstanding, we worship a personal, heart-felt Jesus.

“For we commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf, that ye may have somewhat to answer them which glory in appearance, and not in heart” (2 Cor. 5:12).

We are constrained by the love of Christ, knowing that His was the kind of death that encompasses. If one died for all, then all for whom He died have also died. He died for them in their sins so that they might live for Him outside of their sins. He died and rose. How can anything be the same anymore?

Believing this to be the case, we are not permitted to understand any man “after the flesh.” There is a way of understanding humanity that does not take into account what Jesus did on the cross, and what He accomplished when He rose from the grave. That way of understanding humanity may call itself “realistic,” but how is it realistic to ignore the new creation? That way of understanding may point to the orthodox doctrine of total depravity (which is the orthodox and biblical doctrine), but how is it that we have come to believe that total depravity has more power to hold down Jesus than the stone tomb did? The fact that Jesus was buried in a stone tomb is a biblical doctrine also, but that was not the end of the story.

Yes, unregenerate mankind is totally depraved. Yes, it is true that we cannot autonomously contribute in any way to our own salvation. Yes, it is true that we were dead in our trespasses and sins. But let us never preach the doctrine of total depravity without also declaring there has been a great earthquake, and that an angel of the Lord has rolled away the stone in front of that imposing doctrine.

“Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more” (2 Cor. 5:16).

This is crazy talk, I know. But it is also biblical talk. This whole world, since the sin of Adam, has been nothing but one, vast, pole-to-pole boneyard. Whatever would Jesus do in a world like that? What could He possibly do that could transform a world like that? The gospel reply is that He could come back from the dead in it.

Billions of sinners, dead in their sins. Son of man, shall these bones live? Ah, sovereign Lord, you know. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, bones can’t hear. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, they are not paying any attention. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord, that’s not how I learned to do it in seminary. Son of man, prophesy to the bones. But Lord . . . but Lord . . .

To see men after the flesh is to see nothing but the bones.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).

The newness does not follow the gospel result, but precedes it. The newness calls new life into being. The gospel is not vindicated by conversions; conversions are vindicated and made possible their participation in the great cosmic conversion. We do not invite Jesus into our lives — down here in the boneyard. Jesus invites us into His life, and the whole world is invited.

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:18-20).

The ministry of reconciliation is based on the fact of the cosmic reconciliation. People reconciling with God does not create the ministry of reconciliation. The ministry of reconciliation brings the fact to those who have been reconciled and still need to be reconciled. What is so hard about building on the foundation that God has established? You have been reconciled; therefore, be reconciled.

Some may object that this dilutes the truth of definite atonement. Not in the slightest. All who were purchased for eternal salvation by Christ will in fact be eternally saved. Those who were not so purchased will not be. The point here is not that Christ died indiscriminately for every last man, whether elect or damned. The point is that Christ died for the world, and those who are excluded from Christ are excluded from that world — they are cast into the outer darkness. To be saved is to be saved into the new humanity. It is to be saved into the world.

But it further means that definite atonement is not synonymous with “tiny atonement.” The reality of definite atonement is seen in the specific numbers alloted to each tribe — 12,000 from each tribe, no more, no less. The majestic extent of definite atonement is seen when John turned and looked. What did he see? He saw a multitude that no man can number. How many will be saved? We can’t count that high. Look at the stars, Abraham. Use the Hubble telescope, Abraham. So shall your descendents be.

How will these things happen? What will bring it to pass? The glorious message of a glorious substitution will be declared and presented to every living creature. What shall we tell them? We should give them the message we we were told to give to them. We should prophesy to the bones.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. 5:21).

No Doubt About This

Kings Shall Come to Your Rising

When the (Chinese) Communists took power in 1949 there were perhaps 2 million Christians in China. At the time, not only Marxists but even American liberal church leaders dismissed these as mainly “rice” Christians–people who put up with missionary efforts only in exchange for handouts. Fifty years later we have discovered that these Chinese rice Christians were so “insincere” that they endured decades of draconian repression, during which their numbers doubled again and again–there might be as many as 100 million Christians in China today! Moreover, conversion to Christianity is concentrated not among the peasants and the poor but among the best-education, most modern Chinese.

There are many reasons people embrace Christianity, including its capacity to sustain a deeply emotional and existentially satisfying faith. http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0812972333&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrBut another significant factor is its appeal to reason and the fact that it is so inseparably linked to the rise of Western civilization. For many non-Europeans, becoming a Christian is intrinsic to becoming modern Thus it is quite plausible that Christianity remains an essential element in the globalization of modernity. Consider this recent statement by one of China’s leading scholars:

“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact, the pre-eminence of the West all over the world. We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this”

Neither do I.

Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason, p.234f.

>Public Declarations

>Christ Coming into His Kingdom

Biblical Theology, Prophecy

As regards the Second Coming of Christ, it will scarcely be questioned that it was somehow connected with statements, which we now see to have primarily referred to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple.  Equally there can be no doubt, that the men of Christ’s time expected His Advent, and also that every age since has done the same; and, indeed, was intended to do so. . . . 

And the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple was not only a symbol, but in an initial sense the very coming of Christ into His Kingdom.That coming of Christ into His Kingdom, which had been denied in explicit words, and negatived by public deed, when by wicked hands they slew Him, was vindicated, and, so to speak, publicly enacted when the Roman solider threw the torch into the Temple, and when afterwards Jerusalem was laid level with the dust.  As regards the men of that land and generation, it was the public proclamation, the evidence, that Christ Whom they had rejected had come into His Kingdom.  By the lurid light of those flames no other words could be read than those on the Cross: “This is the King of the Jews”.  I say, then, the burning of Jerusalem was to that generation–and whatever kindred events successively came within the focus of the telescopic vision of following generations, were to them, the fulfilment of that prophecy, of which the final completion will be the personal reappearance of Christ at the end of the Aeon.

Alfred Edersheim, Prophecy and History in Relation to the Messiah (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 132f.  http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1440090947&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Very Little Stones

Political Dualism – Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Tuesday, August 24, 2010

So I have said more than once that secularism is on its last legs. Where do I get off saying that? Why that pronouncement?

There are a number of ways this argument can be made, but allow me to point to just a couple. These indicators are not my own private claim to be able to see the future, as though I had a crystal ball, but rather indicate which way I see certain important currents running. The things I am pointing to do not seem to me to be disputable, and it also seems obvious to me that they are highly significant.

First, the anemic response of the secularists to the idea of sharia law has been quite striking. For example, consider the various accommodations to forms of sharia law that have been made around Europe. And through recent years, when that has been pointed out here, the laughter and the poopooing has been quite patronizing. “That couldn’t happen here, you boob.” And then this imam, at Ground Zero no less, pops up and wants to put a mosque there, and does so as an advocate of sharia law.

Now I know there is sharia law and there is sharia law. There is the chopping off of hands and death by stoning, on the one hand, and spiritiual jihad against eating too much cheesecake on the other. Given how human beings generally spread themselves out across a range of opinions, it is not surprising that some advocates of sharia law are not as whackadoodle as others. But this distinction is one that secularism, back in its robust and virulent phases, would have been incapable of making. This is the kind of distinction that secularism can make because it is in the process of unraveling.

Think back to the days of the Christian Reconstructionists. Think of Ezekiel One-Tooth, living on his theonomic compound somewhere in the Ozarks, unbending a little, in order to argue that the biblical requirement of death by stoning could actually be met by a firing squad, for what are bullets, he asks, but “very little stones?” Meets the requirement, he says. And then put alongside him a moderate theonomist, a scholar and careful thinker like Bahnsen, say. Do you think that as many secularists would be rushing to praise the “moderation” of Bahnsen the way they are defending this particular imam? To ask the question is to answer it. No, what is happening is that self-confidence is draining clear out of secularism, as can be seen in their inability to take a clear, public stand against the encroachments of militant Islam. The pathetic European attempts to dab around the edges of this problem, by trying to ban burkas, for example, are a day late and a Euro short.

The second reason I would like to offer for considering secularism a spent force is that the devil is moving from opposing Christendom across the board to a more nuanced stance of supporting and advancing some forms of it. This will require greater development, but here is the outline of it.

When the Church crosses the boarder between “outside and persecuted” to “inside and influential,” that border crossing does not mean that the devil has gone into retirement. He does whatever he can to prevent the formation of Christendom in the first place, but then, when it looks as though we are going to get ourselves a Christendom regardless, he is concerned to manage what kind of Christendom we get. It was altogether a good thing that Constantine converted, and there was nothing bad about how the persecutions of the Church ceased. Three cheers for all of it. But the spiritual war continued on, unabated.

Anybody who thinks that the apostle Paul would have had us put up a big “mission accomplished” sign at that point is seriously mistaken. Once we have Christendom, which the devil opposed, are there forms of it that provide him with a great deal of scope to continue his work? You bet.

And I have seen, in recent years, arguments from Christian scholars that, if adopted in the context of a renewed Christendom, would present a really big problem. In fact, they would be a problem in just the same area where people have accused Constantine. The idea is that Constantine wanted something to prop up the existing order, and not something that would transform the existing order. Leave aside for the moment whether the accusation against Constantine is true. It is a plausible accusation nonetheless. “Let’s get Jesus to help us to succeed in what we were already trying to do.” In a similar way, those Christian thinkers who want the lordship of Jesus Christ acknowledged in public affairs coupled with a continuation of soft socialism (e.g. Wright, Cavanaugh) are wanting something that cannot be. And when they get the former, what they want with regard to the latter will be completely undone. For someone like Eusebius, someone like James Madison turns out to be something of a let down. Oh, well, I would say.

Another area of danger is found in those who urge an accommodation between postmodernism and the Christian ideal of community (e.g. James K.A. Smith). Leave aside for the moment that no one is really postmodern if they are not postDarwinian . . . more like Henry Morris than Brian McLaren. What is passing for postmodern these days is simply a rearguard action, trying to preserve certain customs in “our faith community.” Which is not what Jesus told us to do. Jesus, if you recall, told us to go out into all the world in order to impose our metanarrative on all those other little, unbelieving narratives, and to do so in quite a triumphalistic fashion.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>No Peace Treaties with Amalekites

Political Dualism – Mere Christendom
Written by Douglas Wilson
Friday, July 09, 2010

The notion of Christendom is not just a personal pipe dream. It is not a collection of “wouldn’t it be nice” surmises. A Reformed understanding of the gospel, of worship, of education, of politics, and so on, is incoherent apart from a commitment to Christendom. Christendom is an essential part of a Reformed theology in its historical setting. This does not mean that said Christendom must be up and running — just that there needs to be a commitment to it by faith. When Abraham saw his descendants as heirs of the whole world, and not by law either, he did not have Christendom up and running at just that moment. But he still knew that the world was his, and that his heirs would walk around in it.

A faithful Reformed missionary in Egypt knows that Christendom is not right outside his window. But Jesus is right outside his window, and everywhere else too. We do not yet see everything subject to man — but we see Jesus. Christendom is easier to see when it can be photographed, but we are called to see it whether it can be photographed or not.

This whole issue is what systematic theologians might call a “big deal.” Underneath a lot of the current controversies that are roiling the Reformed world are the issues of paedocommunion and postmillennialism. The thing these two doctrines share in common is that they are both, in different ways, an optimistic testimony about the course of future generations. Paedocommunion nurtures the next generation in optimistic faith, and postmillennialism is the grounded hope that God will continue to nurture His Church across multiple generations. Generations do not occur in the resurrection — they are a phenomenon found in this world, and they are directly connected to the questions that swirl around the formation of a culture. No culture without cultus.

A culture is religion externalized, and thus it makes sense to ask of every culture what form of worship lies at the center of it. It is a stark fact that the center of secular culture is not the worship of God the Father through the name of Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit. That being the case, Christians ought to have no devotion whatever to secular culture. Devotion to their culture means devotion somehow to their gods, and we should always refuse to bow down to their gods.

If this historic Reformed faith is resurgent (and it is), and if people are starting to pay attention to it (and they are), and this poses a threat to those in the Reformed world who have signed a peace treaty with the Amalek (. . I meant to say the secular state), then it might seem like a good idea to distract everybody by getting people to be suspicious about our Reformed bona fides. This can easily be done by saying that we are wobbly at best on sola fide, or that we are sacramentalists of some sort, and that such things are clearly Not Good.

But if they were to raise the real objection, which is that we believe that Jesus is Lord of Heaven and earth, and that the earth ought to admit it sooner rather than later, a lot of people in their own churches would wonder (and perhaps say), “What’s wrong with that?” It is easier to say that we don’t really preach the gospel than to say something far closer to the truth, which is that we believe that the unchained gospel is in the process of conquering the whole world.

After all, how potent is a gospel that allows you the freedom to sign peace treaties with Amalekites?

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>The Future is the True East

Written by Douglas Wilson
Monday, January 11, 2010

We need to start thinking about church/state relations in eschatological categories. If we think of them in static categories, the Christian church will find it hard to avoid becoming reactionary. That kind of conservatism is the way of death.

The Marxists know what they are supposed to be doing right now because they have an eschatology of the state. They say that the dictatorship of the proletariat will eventually wither away, which is perfect nonsense, but they nevertheless do have an eschatology of the thing. But when believing Christians get involved in politics they are hampered by the fact that politics is inherently an eschatological discipline, and their eschatology is either lurid, confused, pessimistic, or non-existent. Why should we want to drive the car if we don’t believe the car is going anywhere? Why should anybody let us drive the car?

So I want to think of where church/state relations are headed teleologically — we need a political eschatology. This will orient us where we need to be oriented. Man was created to be informed by the past, but oriented by the future, not the past. The future is the true East.

We have been all sorts of places. History is messy and at certain times we should want to identify with the Methodists, or Moravians, or Baptists, or Reformed, because that is where the Spirit was moving at that time. There were times when some form of anabaptism was closer to center of faithfulness. We should always identify with faithfulness, whether that faithfulness was connected to “our faction” or not. But in doing this, we need to stand with those faithful saints while avoiding the false eschatologies that arose from those situations. I say this because someone can be where they ought to be, but not know where all of us ought to go. Those are two separate questions.

So the central question I am trying to ask and answer in this discussion is this: where is the Spirit taking us, considered in thousand year chunks? What is it supposed to look like 500 years before the end?

Now, that said, if the Church is everything that matters for the new humanity, then one option is that the state outside the Church goes to hell and we let it (anabaptism). Another is that the functions of the state are subsumed into the Church (which for various reasons I don’t want). Yet another logical option is that the functions of the state wither down to nothing or virtually nothing because of the prevailing Edenic conditions brought about by gospel preaching. We don’t have the problem of reconciliation between church and state anymore because one of the parties needing to be reconciled went poof.

The problem I have with this third option is not a logical one, but rather the fact of the prophecies of healing for the nations, and the honor and glory of kings receiving much higher and greater glory because of their submission to the Church. When kings come to Christ, their glory will grow. When kings die to their own glory, they will be raised in the glory of Another. And incidentally, though I am a minarchist (not an anarchist), and I believe that the kings of the latter glory will largely be ceremonial figureheads, I do not intend this as demeaning or as some kind of a nothing-honor.

Why would any of us think that ceremony is a trivial thing? I suspect it will be shown to be the chief thing, far better than the current techniques for lording it over people — to wit, kicking butt and taking names — peace through superior firepower. That is a model that has a certain rough justice about it, but we have to admit that improvements could be made. When the lion lies down with the lamb, it will not be because men with block letters on their jackets are standing over them with automatic weapons.

So my proposed solution to all this, my fourth option, is to divide a believing world into Church (believing administration of Word and sacrament) and Kingdom (believing administration of bread baking, lovemaking, candlestick making, warfare, sewage treatment, etc.) The Church is the central cathedral and the Kingdom is the parish. The Kingdom may certainly be called the Church by synecdoche, just as all ancient Israel could be called Zion, just so long as we maintain a category elsewhere that keeps them clearly distinct. I want to keep this distinction sharp because I don’t ever want to have ministers of the Word too closely involved in chopping off the heads of miscreants. Wanting to do better than the Inquisition is not setting the bar too high. Whaddaya say?

No one nation replaces Israel — there is one global Israel, an international kingdom, with the worship of Christ at the center. Let’s call it Christendom. We could also think of all the individual civil societies as so many little israels, but only to the extent that the national churches are “churches.” But if the universal Church is the Temple of the new order, then all the nations taken together are the outskirts of the new Israel.

The language I use for this distinction is Church and Kingdom. The Church is the heart of the Kingdom, but not everything in the Kingdom is Church proper, although it is “Church” in some sense. The Church is at the center, and Christendom surrounds her.

The early Church was not Israel complete “in itself,” but was rather an entity that took on certain civil functions in a jury-rigged fashion until a believing culture around the Church had been planted. In other words, Paul told the Corinthians to handle civil disputes in the Church, not because they belonged there ultimately, but rather because it would be worse to let unbelievers handle it. But Paul’s requirement of a jury-rigged small claims court in the Church disappears once the civil magistrates are all Christians, the laws are biblical, and the witnesses are sworn in on a Bible.

So America, Nigeria, Scotland, etc. never become the city of God. But they do all bring their honor and glory into the Church (Rev. 21:24, 26). They do become nursing fathers to the Church (Is. 49:23), submitting themselves to the Church, and being discipled by the Church. They all become parts of the Kingdom, they assume their station as one of the many nations of Christendom. I don’t see how the leaves on the tree of life can be for the healing of the nations without the nations actually getting better (Rev. 22:2).

So the Church is not gathered into the State, with ecclesiastical functions delegated to some part of the bureaucracy. Rather, I see the nations gathered to the Church, with the remaining civil functions distinct from the Church proper, but subordinate to it. The honor and glory of the kings really is honor and glory, and that honor and glory is really brought as tribute to be laid on the altar. In other words, I don’t see the nations gathering the Church, but rather the Church gathering the nations.

Remember, this is a purified Church, and not a grasping Church with a thin veneer of piety. Remember, this is eschatology, and depends upon the Spirit working through millennia. I am talking about 3500 A.D., and not proposing a sorry retread of the Sanhedrin or the Council of Constance to be implemented tomorrow.

Against this, it could be argued that in ancient Israel citizenship in the nation and membership in the congregation were identical, and so that creates problems for us in the era of an international Church, when they can’t be identical. But actually I deny the premise. I don’t agree that the two citizenships were identical in ancient Israel (Dt. 23:2-3). If Moabites and bastards could not come into the congregation of the Lord until after ten generations, that had to be ten generations of some sort of probationary catechumen status, presumably circumcised but maybe not. And then there were sons of Belial who were headed in the other direction. There were ways to be “cut off” from the congregation short of execution, which means that the two citizenships were logically distinct, but drastically intertwined — like being English and being Anglican at certain points in their history.

This is admittedly a rough, preliminary sketch. But Christopher Dawson once said that the Church lives in the light of eternity, and can afford to be patient. Recall that I am a postmillennialist. We have all the time in the world.

>Meditation on the Text of the Week

>Cleaning the Place Up

But his master answered and said to him, “You wicked, lazy slave, you knew that I reap where I did not sow,and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have put my money in the bank, and on my arrival I would have received the money back with interest.
Matthew 25: 26,27

Where is the Kingdom of God going in history? This question has three possible answers: all three have been propounded in the course of the history of the Kingdom. None has yet gained permanent hold in the collective heart and mind of God’s people. The three possible outcomes are:

1. That the Kingdom will progressively diminish in the world, until, like Frodo and Sam clinging to the last rock at the breaking of the world, the eagles will come and rescue the last few remaining Christians before all is swept away. In this view of the course of the Kingdom, the idea is to get as many life rafts and life-belts into the sea as possible so that the maximum number of drowning people can be saved as the ship goes down.

2. That things will stay pretty much as they are—with ebbs and flows. The Kingdom will neither increase nor decrease; from a Christian perspective things will neither get worse nor better. It will be “same old, same old” until the final advent of our Lord—which could occur at any time, since there are no developments in the Kingdom which must take place prior to His final return.

3. That the Kingdom will be so filled and empowered by God’s Spirit that the world will be progressively Christianised—genuinely so—to where the overwhelming majority of the world’s population will be truly converted and living holy and godly lives. In this possibility the world will be a grand and glorious place prior to the Final Advent. Since the Kingdom is way short of that glory at present, there remains much work to be done. Therefore, the coming of our Lord is a long way off.

As we mentioned above all three possibilities have been propounded at different times and locations in the history of the Church. Generally, in the West the first possibility has held dominance throughout most of the previous century. Two world wars, totalitarian communism, the Great Depression, the nuclear threat—all helped convince Christian folk that the future of the Kingdom was bleak indeed, and that glory and triumph would only be known and experienced after the end of redemptive history, when the stricken ship had gone down.

Our view is that the Scriptures teach the third outcome for the Kingdom—the world-wide Christianization of mankind through the preaching of the Gospel. One of the reasons is the sequence of parables our Lord delivered just prior to His death in answer to the disciples’ question upon hearing that the temple would be torn down, “When shall these things be?”

Of course, the destruction of the Temple was imminent, within a generation. For the disciples, steeped in the prevailing rabbinic eschatology, the coming of the Messiah meant the Final Advent. It took them several years to be weaned off this mono-dimensional view and grasp that the destruction and judgment of Jerusalem in AD 68—70 was not the end of redemptive history, but the beginning of a work of redemption greater than the human race had ever seen. The Gospel was going to the Gentiles, and all the world was to be made a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In answer to the question as to when the temple stones would be torn down, our Lord definitively stated that it would occur within that generation (Matthew 24: 34)—as indeed it came to pass. But redemptive history would go on. Jesus then told a series of parables, all of which imply a long passage of time. He uses the image of a landowner who goes away for a long time, leaving his servants in charge of His affairs. When He comes back, it is clear that He expects that things will have changed a lot since His departure. His servants will have been hard at work; His household will be greatly enlarged, running smoothly, well governed, and in much better shape than when He departed. He returns as one who is very demanding, a “hard man”, who expects to reap where He did not sow, and harvest where He had not scattered seed.

Our great hope is that we will be present at the Final Advent of our Lord when He comes to the earth. We long to be here when He comes. And we shall be. Paul insists upon it (I Thessalonians 4:16,17). Our hope does not focus and terminate upon death and our souls going to heaven. Our hope looks beyond that—it looks for our being able to participate in the greatest glorification of the Son of God ever seen in all creation—and that will be when He returns to the earth to make it His dwelling place forever. Our greatest hope is to be there bodily—whole and complete. And we shall be, for we will all form part of His glory train. The dancing, the feasting, the singing, and the celebration will be unlike anything ever seen since the beginning of time. “I’ll be back,” is the great, triumphant cry of the dying saint.

When our Lord comes, He expects to see everything in order, well managed, running smoothly. He expects to find the Gospel preached to every creature as He commanded, and all the nations discipled, being instructed daily in all His commandments. He expects to reap where He did not sow—and what the Lord expects, He will get. He is the Lord of the heavens and the earth, after all.

So, knowing that the Lord is returning, we work hard to clean the place up before He gets here. It is what faithful servants do. “Occupy until I come!”