TXAB: The Christ Almighty Blog

MATTHEW 6.9-10.The Lord’s Prayer in Matthew begins with πάτερἡμῶνὁἐντοῖςοὐρανοῖς/páter imón o en toís uranoís, “our Father who’s [located] in the heavens,” Mt 6.9 ’cause we’re addressing—duh—our heavenly Father.Matthew 6.9 KWL“So pray like this: Our Father who’s in the heavens! Sanctify your name.”Some Christians wanna make it particularly clear which god we’re praying to. Partly because some of ’em actually think they might accidentally invoke the wrong god (and y’know, if they’re Mammonists or some other type of idolater, they might). Sometimes because they’re showing off to pagans that they worship the Father of Jesus, or some other form of hypocrisy. But Jesus would have us keep it simple: Just address our heavenly Father. There’s no special formula for addressing him; no secret password we’ve gotta say; even “in Jesus’s name” isn’t a magic spell—and you notice “in Jesus’s name” isn’t in the Lord’s Prayer either. You know who he is; he knows who he is; he knows what our relationsh…

End Times prognosticator Hal Lindsey is fond of saying when we read the bible, particularly Revelation, we oughta do it with the scriptures in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Because the events of his End Times timeline are happening. Right this instant.Even though every five years or so, he has to write another End Times book to update all the predictions of his previous End Times book. For some reason they keep not turning into the harbingers of the End he insists they are.Y’see, what Lindsey does, and what many other End Times fixated Christians do, is what they call “discerning the news.” What they’re doing, they claim, is what Jesus tells us to: They’re looking at the signs of the day. Or as the KJV puts it, “the signs of the times.”Matthew 16.1-4 KWL1 Approaching Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus for a heavenly sign to show them.2 In reply Jesus told them, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It’s red; clear sky.’3And in the morning, ‘Storms today, for the sky is red and gloo…

Forty days after Easter, Jesus left. For now.On Thursday, 15 May 33 (if we take Luke’s count of 40 days Ac 1.3 literally, and not as an estimate) this happened.Acts 1.6-9 KWL6 So when they came together, the apostles questioned Jesus:“Master, is it at this time you’re restoring the Kingdom of Israel?”7Jesus told them, “It’s not for you to know times or timing.That, the Father sets by his own free will.8But you’ll all get power: The Holy Spirit is coming upon you.You’ll be my witnesses in Jerusalem, all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the world.”9 Saying this as they watched him, Jesus was raptured.A cloud concealed him from their eyes.Christians call this Jesus’s ascension, and celebrate it 40 days after Easter—and 10 days before Pentecost Sunday. ’Cause it’s when Jesus went up, or ascended, into heaven, to stand in service or sit in judgment, at the Father’s right. Ac 2.33, 7.55-56Various people who don’t believe Christians are getting raptured when Jesus returns love to point o…

And those who think it’s coming… and those who don’t. MILLENNIUMmə'lɛ.ni.əmnoun. Thousand years.2. One of the thousand-year periods after Christ’s birth: The first millennium, the third millennium, etc.3. Where one thousand-year period ends and another begins.4. [theology] Christ Jesus’s reign on earth, represented in an apocalypse as a thousand-year age.[Millennial mɪ'lɛ.ni.əladjective.]Whenever Christians talk about being “premillennial” or “amillenial,” no we’re not criticizing millennials, the kids born after the year 2000. We’re talking End Times theories. (We’ll use other terms to criticize millennials.)The idea comes from Revelation. In one of its visions of Jesus’s second coming (oh, you didn’t know there are multiple visions of the second coming in Revelation? Y’oughta read it sometime), Jesus returns, brings us Christians back from the dead, throws Satan into the abyss for 10 centuries, and rules the world. At the end of that time, Satan gets out, starts a fight, Jes…

Some Christians believe there’s no such thing. Here’s why the others believe it exists—in whatever form they imagine it. Many Christians figure they’re C.S. Lewis fans ’cause they read his Narnia books, as I did in fifth grade. In high school I read his Mere Christianity, and in college I took advantage of its much-larger Lewis collection to read everything I could find. Including, it turned out, his academic stuff… which leads to another story I’ll tell another time.One of his books was The Great Divorce, Lewis’s attempt to tell a Divine Comedy-style tour of purgatory, with George MacDonald as his guide instead of Virgil. It’s interesting because it gives examples of the sort of people who aren’t ready for heaven. But the book is a big hurdle for various Christians—in particular Fundamentalists—because they don’t believe in purgatory. Depending on how gracious they are (or aren’t), they’d assign Lewis’s case studies to either heaven or hell, and that’s that.I’ve since found a number …

We don’t know the details of God’s relationships with his other creatures. Probably shouldn’t speculate. Years ago, in my junior high school bible class, one of the students asked about doggy heaven. And just for evil fun, I horrified her by quoting Revelation 22.15, which describes New Jerusalem in the new heaven and earth:Revelation 22.15 NIVOutside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.So, I joked, all dogs apparently don’t go to heaven. Looks like they go to hell.No, that’s not the proper context of the verse. The text does literally have oikýnes/“the dogs.” But you have to remember what dogs were to ancient Judeans. Some of them did have pet dogs, a practice they picked up from the nations round them. But generally dogs in Israel were scavenger animals: They ate garbage, roadkill, and picked off rats and other vermin. They were ritually unclean, not to mention physically uncle…

Life is suffering. But sometimes there’s a little extra suffering going on.TRIBULATIONtri.bu.la.tionnoun. Great suffering.2. The cause of great suffering.3. An End Times period of suffering around the time of Jesus’s second coming.[Tribulational tri.bu.la.tion.aladjective.]Tribulation is an old-timey word which, to many people and Evangelicals in particular, has to do with the End Times. That’s why writers find it useful. You wanna talk about suffering, and wanna make it sound as bad as suffering can be? You call it tribulation.Thing is, when the word tribulation came up in the King James Version, it meant any and every kind of suffering. Not just the worst-case-ever kind of suffering. I mean, it was used to describe that, Mt 24.21 but it was used for all the other kinds. ’Cause suffering is part of the world we live in. Life is suffering.But Jesus has conquered the world.John 16.33 KJVThese things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have trib…

Funny how everybody sees the afterlife they expect. In yesterday’s article, “How long does hell last?” I brought up the subject of near-death experiences, those cases where people died and came back, and have a tale to tell about what they saw in the afterlife.And they have all sorts of tales. Like of an out-of-body experience, where their ghost watched the doctors or EMTs trying to bring ’em back to life. Like a spirit-realm experience, where they met angels, dead loved ones, Jesus, or the Father. Like an afterlife experience, where they travel through a tunnel of light and get to poke around heaven for a bit. In some cases it’s the bad afterlife, and they’re in hell.These stories are really popular, and people share them and cling to them for hope. Books about them sell. Movies too. Since we have big questions about the afterlife, we figure near-death experiences help answer these questions.This is also true for Christians. The scriptures don’t tell us a whole lot about the afterlif…

Some say forever, some say temporarily, and some say no time at all. As I explained in my article “The four hells,” there are four words translated hell in the scriptures, and the one I mean by “hell” is ge-Henna, the trash fire outside Jerusalem, reimagined in Revelation as a pool of fire and sulfur outside New Jerusalem. Rv 20.10-15 Into it go Satan and its angels, the Beast, the fake prophet who promotes the Beast, the personifications of Death and Hades (i.e. the afterlife), and everyone whose name isn’t listed in the life scroll—everyone who refused to turn to God for salvation, and therefore don’t get to enter his kingdom.The Beast and prophet are explicitly described as being “tortured there, day and night, age to ages.” Rv 20.10 Though this lake is known as the second death, Rv 20.14 it doesn’t have a sense of finality like death seems to. Death feels like an absolute stopping point—when you’re dead, you’re not alive, you’re not moving, you’re not breathing, you’re not thinkin…

Same as the rest of the world.The bible, in entirety, was written before the middle east, Europe, Asia, and Africa knew the western hemisphere existed.True, God knew it was there. But his apostles and prophets had no idea. And God didn’t see any point in informing them. It’s not like the Americas, nor any other yet-to-be-discovered islands in the world, were excluded from the scriptures’ blanket statements about humanity. The LORD is God, and Jesus is King, of the whole earth. Known and unknown lands alike.So North and South America—the Indian nations then, and the current nations now—aren’t in the bible. At all. Neither suggested nor alluded to in it.So even if you’re citizen of the United States, loyal and patriotic, or even just a big fan of all things American like so many of our resident aliens, I gotta break it to you: Other than the bits about “all the world,” we don’t figure into End Times predictions whatsoever.But you’d be surprised how many American prognosticators simply c…

When Jesus returns, everybody’s gonna see it. Which is kinda the point.“People are missing,” she managed in a whisper, burying her head in his chest.He took her shoulders and tried to push her back, but she fought to stay close. “What do you m—?”She was sobbing now, her body out of control. “A whole bunch of people, just gone!”“Hattie, this is a big plane. They’ve wandered to the lavs or—”She pulled his head down so she could speak directly into his ear. Despite her weeping, she was plainly fighting to make herself understood. “I’ve been everywhere. I’m telling you, dozens of people are missing.”“Hattie, it’s still dark. We’ll find—”“I’m not crazy! See for yourself! All over the plane, people have disappeared.”“It’s a joke. They’re hiding, trying to—”“Ray! Their shoes, their socks, their clothes, everything was left behind. These people are gone!”So goes the first chapter of Left Behind, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ 1995 End Times novel. In the middle of a cross-country flight, where…

Before Jesus returns, there’s a whole lot of lawbreaking.Different scholars have different ways they wanna interpret the Greek word parusía/“[second] coming.” Most of the time “appearance” or “coming” or “return.” When used to describe what Jesus is up to, it has more of a sense of “arrival,” or even “invasion.” Certain gutless commentators leave it untranslated, and just refer to Jesus’s parousia, as if it’s too difficult a concept to convert into English. Rubbish: The popular idea of “second coming” works just fine to describe it, 1Th 3.13 so that’s how I translate it.Today I wanna point to Jesus’s brother James, and how he referred to it:James 5.7-8 KWL7 So be patient, fellow Christians, till the Master’s second coming.Look, the farmer awaits the land’s precious fruit,patient about it till they can get early- and late-season rain.8 Be patient yourselves as well. Strengthen your minds:The Master’s second coming has come near.So. Ever since Jesus’s rapture, Christians have expected h…

Before Jesus returns, there’s a whole lot of lawbreaking.Before Jesus returns, bad stuff was predicted to happen. Both by Jesus, who described some of the events 40 years hence when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem; and here by Paul, Silas, and Timothy when they reminded the people of Thessaloniki that there’d first be a time of apostasy.2 Thessalonians 2.1-12 KWL1 We should ask you, fellow Christians, about the second coming of our Master, Christ Jesus,and how we’ll be gathered together with him.2It’s so your minds won’t be shaken up, nor go into a panic,whenever some spirit, message, or letter (like those from us) claims the Lord’s Day has come.3 Don’t let anyone trick you in any way: Nothing happens till the apostasy comes first,till the lawbreaking person, the child of destruction, is revealed—4 the antagonist, the one exalting himself over everything called “god” and “worshipful,”so much so he sits in God’s temple and claims he’s a god himself.5 Don’t you remember the things I told…

Because even in the first century, people grew tired of waiting.2 Peter 3.1-9I’ve been writing about the scriptures on Jesus’s second advent, or second coming. And of course I had to point out we don’t know when that’ll be. The events which were meant to come before his return, happened. There’s nothing left to hinder it—so it can happen at any time.This being the case, people want that day to be today. Right now. ’Cause they’re suffering, or ’cause current events are awful, or ’cause they’re in a hurry to live under Jesus’s direct rule. Either way, come Lord Jesus! But he hasn’t yet.And sometimes people give up hope of him ever returning. Which was the mindset Simon Peter had to deal with in his second letter.2 Peter 3.1-4 KWL1 Now this, beloved: I wrote you a second letter in which I awaken you to a purely-thought reminder—2 to remember the words the holy prophets and your apostles foretold,commands of our Master and Savior.3 Know this first: In the last days, mockers will come to m…

He doesn’t say. Not that this stops us from guessing.Jesus is returning. But when?That’s the question every Christian asks, whether it’s in the front of the back of our minds. When’s Jesus coming back? Sooner rather than later, we hope—though considering the past 20 centuries, he’s taking an awfully long time to get round to it.What did Jesus himself have to say about it? Well, this. You’re not gonna like it.Mark 13.32-37 KWL32Nobody’s known about that day or the hour.Neither the heavenly angels, nor the Son. Just the Father.33Look. Stay awake. You don’t know when it’s time.34It’s like a person abroad, who left his home.He empowered his employees to do their jobs—and he ordered the doorman so he’d stay awake.35So stay awake! You don’t know when the master of the house returns.Evening? Midnight? Sunrise? Morning? 36 When he suddenly arrives, don’t let him find you asleep.37What I tell you, I tell everyone: Stay awake!”In short: “I dunno. And even if I knew, I’m not telling. You just ne…

It’s gonna be really obvious he’s come back.When Jesus returns, it’s not gonna be a secret second coming. It’s not gonna be an event which only takes place metaphorically, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim; where they believe God’s kingdom began in 1914 but Jesus isn’t coming to earth till the final battle.It’s not gonna be a secret gnostic event, which only the chosen few know about. It’s not gonna be a secret rapture, where the Christians vanish and go to be with Jesus, and the rest of the planet has to wait seven years. It’s not secret. It’s nice and visible and obvious. As Jesus himself describes.Matthew 24.23-28 KWL23“Then when anyone might tell you, ‘Look! Here’s Messiah!’ or ‘He’s here!’ don’t believe it:24Fake messiahs and fake prophets will arise, and will give great signs and wonders to deceive you.If possible, to deceive God’s chosen people too.25Look, I’m forewarning you26so when people tell you, ‘Look, he’s in the wilderness!’ you don’t go out;‘Look, he’s in the inner ro…

The first hint we get that he’s bodily coming to earth more than once.The first hint we have that Jesus is arranging a second coming—that he’s not taking possession of his kingdom during his first coming—appears in the Olivet Discourse, the bit in Mark 13, Matthew 24-25, and Luke 21, where Jesus answered his students’ question about a future disaster he’d just casually referred to. Mk 13.1-2, Mt 24.1-2, Lk 21.5-6In each gospel’s version of the discourse, Jesus brought up the persecution of his followers, a particular time of great suffering which’d take place in Jerusalem, and fake Messiahs and prophets who’d try to lead them astray. But afterwards, this:Mark 13.24-27 KWL24“But in those days after that suffering:‘The sun will be darkened and the moon won’t give its light.’Ek 32.725The stars will be falling from the skies; the heavenly powers will be shaken.26Then people will see ‘the Son of Man coming in the clouds’ Da 7.13 with great power and glory.27Then he’ll send angels, and gath…

These are the folks who write all the End Times books.I’m Pentecostal. So whenever I see an notice or ad for an upcoming “prophecy conference,” they tend to refer to prophets. Actual prophets. Meaning people who’ve learned to listen to the Holy Spirit—and thereafter share with others what he’s told them. True, some of ’em practice some really iffy methods of identifying his voice. But when Penecostals, charismatics, and most continuationists refer to prophecy, we literally mean the same thing we see done in the bible by Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah, Simon Peter, and Paul of Tarsus. They heard God; they shared what they figured he told ’em; that’s prophecy.Outside Pentecostal circles—though not far outside Pentecostal circles, ’cause from time to time it gets in here—is a whole other type of “prophecy conference.” There, they aren’t at all talking about hearing God. They mean predictions about the End Times. They’re throwing a conference ’cause they wanna tell you what they think the…

Satan used to have access to heaven. Now it doesn’t.Revelation 12One of the popular myths about the devil is it used to an angel. Not just that it fakes being one. 2Co 11.14 Christians will teach it straight-up was one.Even more: It was Lucifer, the greatest angel ever. The best and brightest and mightiest angel in the heavens. Head of the heavenly choir. Ruled over earth as God’s number two. The Holy Spirit’s vice-president, more or less.Anybody else think someone’s been padding its résumé a little?Pause a moment, go some basic digging through the bible, and you’re gonna find out it says nowhere that Satan used to be an angel. It may have angels, working for it. At one time it came and went before God, just like God’s mightier angels. But Satan’s species is never once identified.Given Satan’s reputation as a liar, Jn 8.44 I’m mighty suspicious about any stories about its origin which attempt to make it look like it used to be kind of a big deal.Or still is. During Jesus’s temptations…

What kind of fish are you?Matthew 13.47-50But before the Fish-Sorting story, let’s have the Fish Slapping Dance.
You wanna watch the whole thing, do it here.Monty Python’Cause this parable’s about the End, and about judging the wicked, so it’s a bit of a downer. So I thought I’d first cheer you up with some grown men hitting each other with dead fish.Considering a few of Jesus’s students were fishermen, stands to reason he’d include a fishing parable. This one compares sorting fish to sorting the wicked. Bad fish get tossed; bad humans get burnt.Matthew 13.47-50 KWL47“Again: Heaven’s kingdom is like a net thrown into the sea, gathering every kind of fish.48Once filled it’s pulled up onto the beach and sorted.People gather good fish into a vat, and rotten fish are thrown out.49It’s the same at the end of the age:The angels will come out, and separate the evil from the middle of the righteous.50The angels will throw the evil into the fiery kiln.It’ll be weeping and teeth-grinding there.”…