Special revelation in the present day.

Most Christians understand that God continues to reveal himself to humanity. I would say he constantly reveals himself; he’s constantly talking to people. Plenty of Christians have a conversational prayer life with God. As for those who don’t: He works around our hesitancy or ignorance. He’ll drop an idea in our heads, and we might think it’s one of ours, but it’ll be way better, way more fruitful, than any of ours. He’ll give you a dream you can’t forget, or one of his many prophets will tell us something that pokes us right in the conscience… along with the Holy Spirit, who pokes us there an awful lot too.

Every time God answers a prayer, every time he performs a miracle, every time he gives out a message for another person—whether it’s encouragement or divine knowledge—in every interaction, we see more examples of what God can do, and God’s good character. We learn more about God.

True, there are cessationists who insist God stopped doing all that stuff in bible times; who insist the only way we can learn about God is by reading and quoting and studying bible. And I’m not gonna discourage getting to know that bible; it’s how we confirm the God who’s actively doing stuff among us, is the very same Holy Spirit whom Jesus promised to send us. But what evidence do cessationists have that God doesn’t specially reveal himself anymore—that instead he’s forsaken us—other than out-of-context bible verses?

Well none. Just their own prejudices against people who claim they had God-experiences. Just their terror of the very idea that Christianity isn’t under their control at all; that in fact the Holy Spirit has his own agenda, and because they’ve been denying his activity they don’t actually know him as much as they’ve been claiming; and because some of ’em have been calling his activity devilish, turns out they’ve been blaspheming him.

Funny thing is, I grew up among cessationists. And even they will talk about God’s current activity. They’ll talk about looking at nature and deducing God from it. Awesome discoveries from the Hubble and Webb telescopes reveal what God made. Awesome scientific breakthroughs reveal God’s intelligent design. A newborn baby or a really cool sunset both reveal God’s current activity. So if God’s continually revealing himself through nature… then he is continually revealing himself, isn’t he? Gotcha.

Premillennialism: Jesus is gonna rule the world.

PREMILLENNIALISM 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl.ɪz.əm noun. Belief after Christ Jesus’s return, he and his saints will reign on earth a thousand years.

[Premillenarism 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.ər.ɪz.əm noun., premillennial 'pri.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl adjective.]

As I’ve written before, all my life I’ve been a part of Evangelical churches which taught premillennialism: They all believed when Jesus returns, it’s to literally set up God’s kingdom here on earth.

It’s a literal interpretation of Revelation 20:

Revelation 20.4-6 NRSVue

4Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5(The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. 6Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him a thousand years.

Since Revelation consists of apocalyptic visions which aren’t meant to be taken literally, most Christians don’t take this passage literally either, and are amillennial: They figure the millennium represents the Christian Era, i.e. right now, and Jesus and his saints kinda rule over it; then Jesus will end the world at his second coming, and off we go to New Heaven. Amillennialists say we premillennialists are claiming a metaphor is literally gonna happen. It’s like claiming when Jesus returns, a giant mustard tree has to grow in Jerusalem for the birds to nest under.

And I actually agree with them: We can’t interpret this passage as if this is how things are literally gonna happen. But we can interpret it—same as we interpret Revelation 21’s descriptions of the New Heaven and New Earth—as how things are sorta gonna be. Jesus conquers the world, Rv 19.11-16 takes out the Beast and his armies Rv 19.17-21 (whether you consider the Beast a specific political leader, or all the corrupt systems currently ruling the world), chains Satan and imprisons it in the Abyss, Rv 20.1-3 then resurrects his saints so they can serve Jesus, and Jesus rules the world. Rv 20.4-6 And since Jesus conquers the world before he personally takes over—and the world surely hasn’t been conquered by Christendom, much less Jesus—it stands to reason these are future events. Jesus’s millennial reign is not now. It’s later.

Oh, and it likely doesn’t last a literal millennium. The apostle John no doubt used that word to describe a significantly long time. But if it lasts 100 years, 1,000 years, 10,000 years, or Jesus is planning to rule this world till our sun finally goes nova, we Christians ought not be picky.

Get in the closet.

Matthew 6.6.

The reason Jesus addresses public prayer in his Sermon on the Mount is to discourage hypocrisy. That’s what you saw in public places in Israel: People conspicuously praying so that others would see them, and think them devout.

Whereas Jesus told his followers that if you legitimately want to pray, make it a private conversation.

Matthew 6.6 KWL

“You, whenever you pray,

go into your private room, closing your door;

and pray to your Father in private.

And your Father, who sees what’s done in private,

will pay you back {in the open}.”

Ἐν τῷ φανερῷ/en to faneró, “in the open,” was added to Matthew by the Textus Receptus, both here and in verse 4. It’s not in the oldest copies of Matthew; it was added in the fourth century. Again, since Jesus is bringing us our compensation at his return, Rv 22.12 this isn’t a problematic addition. Still, Jesus didn’t say it.

The KJV translates ταμεῖόν/tameión as “closet,” and the NET as “inner room.” Your average middle eastern house would have two rooms—the main room, which you could access through the front door, and the smaller back room, which you could only access from the inside. Guests could enter the main room, but only family went into the back room: It was private. That’s the tameión. Wealthier middle easterners would have a number of ’em in their homes, and use them for storage—hence the KJV’s translation “closet.” But it doesn’t have to be a closet. Just someplace private.

Now, why would you have to go someplace private to pray, when it’s much easier to speak with God in your mind, and not aloud? Simple: Ancient middle easterners didn’t pray like that. They prayed aloud.

You’re talking to God, right? Which means you’re talking to God. Not thinking at God. I know; a lot of Christians pray silently, and for many of us it’s the only way we pray. Most of the time it’s not appropriate to pray aloud. If you prayed aloud at work, people’d think you’re weird. If you prayed aloud in public school, some idiot would complain about it. If everybody in church simultaneously prayed aloud, it’d get loud (and in ancient times, when people prayed aloud, it absolutely did get loud).

In general, we’re encouraged to pray silently, and that’s understandable in a lot of places. But Christians get the wrong idea and think we’re always to pray silently. No we’re not.

Lookit how Jesus demonstrates prayer in the scriptures. When he went off to pray, even by himself, privately between him and the Father, other people could overhear him. Like in Gethsemane. Mt 26.39, Lk 22.41-42 The reason we even have records in the bible of people’s prayers, is ’cause these folks weren’t silent. They spoke.

I should add: Praying in your mind is much harder than praying aloud. Because the mind wanders. (By design! It’s how the creative process works.) In the middle of our mental conversations with God, stray thoughts pop into our heads. In a verbal conversation, we can choose whether we’ll say such things aloud, but in a mental conversation, we can’t do that: There they are. We just thought ’em. They interrupted our prayers, like a rude friend who thinks he’s being funny, but isn’t. Ordinarily we ignore those thoughts. In mental prayers, we find it really hard to. Even the best-trained minds struggle with that. And a lot of Christians get frustrated with it, so they give up and pray seldom, if at all. Don’t do that. If you lose your train of thought all the time during prayer, stop praying silently. Pray aloud. It helps a lot.

“But what,” Christians object, “about privacy?” Discussions between us and God are often sensitive. We don’t want people listening in on our conversations, like they do when we answer our mobile phones at the coffeehouse. We want privacy. That’s why prayed in our minds in the first place. And this is precisely why Jesus talks about praying in private.

Simon Peter and the kingdom we inherit.

1 Peter 1.1-9.

Simon Peter wrote a few letters before his death under Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in the 60s. We have two of ’em in the New Testament—one which he wrote to the Christians of what is now Türkiye, and another which he wrote to Christians in general.

Some commentators think he wrote his letters under persecution, and some think he wrote ’em before. And of course that’s seriously gonna influence the way we interpret the letter. When Peter writes about “the testing of your faith” in verse 7 of today’s passage, we’re gonna wonder whether he’s writing about the usual difficulties of daily life in a largely pagan culture… or whether he’s writing about full-on tribulation, as the Romans tried to round up people whom they thought were terrorists. Nero blamed the Great Fire of Rome in 64 on them, and hunted them down like ICE hunts immigrants; to put ’em in island concentration camps like he did John, or to execute them like he eventually did Peter.

I mean, 1 Peter can be applicable in both situations—under life’s usual trials, or under a fascist purge. Most scriptures are flexible like that. But we don’t know which of the two the west Asian Christians were going through, and I’m gonna presume Peter wrote it before the persecutions… otherwise there’d be way more about persecution in the letter.

Now, some Christians insist it had to have been written during persecution, ’cause Peter talks so much about the second coming of Jesus. But that’s because Peter expected the second coming to happen in his lifetime. He was off by a few millennia, but he didn’t know that. All he knew was he was right there when Jesus got raptured into heaven, and the two men told him and the Eleven he coming back in the same way. Ac 1.11 He saw Jesus get transfigured. He knew this future kingdom of Christ is coming. He was excited about it! We should be excited about it! So this comes out in his letter. Doesn’t take persecution to bring it out of you.

1 Peter 1.1-9 KWL

1Peter, apostle of Christ Jesus,

to the “foreign” elect of the Diaspora—

of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,

Asia Minor, and Bithynia.

2By God the Father’s foreknowledge,

in the Holy Spirit’s holiness,

into obedience—

and the sprinkling of Christ Jesus’s blood—

may grace to you, and peace, multiply!

3Blessed are you God,

father of our Master, Christ Jesus.

By his great mercy he makes us born again,

into a living hope

through Christ Jesus’s resurrection from the dead.

4Born again into an inheritance,

unspoiled, untainted, unfading,

under guard in the heavens for you all.

5And you are guarded

by God’s power, through your faith,

for the salvation he prepared,

to be revealed in the End Time.

6In that, you can jump for joy—

for now, briefly, it’s necessary to grieve

from our various temptations.

7Thus the testing of your faith,

which is more precious than gold,

which perishes through fire,

might be found proven,

to the praise, glory, and honor

at the revelation of Christ Jesus.

8You don’t see him;

you still love him.

You can’t look upon him just now,

and you believers still jump

for inexpressible and magnificent joy

9at receiving the outcome of your faith:

Salvation of your souls.

Unbelieving Christian leaders.

Years ago I listened to a Christian podcast in which the host interviewed an ex-pastor, whom I’ll call Trophimus. (Honestly, I didn’t change his name to protect the innocent; or in this case guilty. It’s because I just forgot his name.)

Trophimus had retired from ministry a few years before. Now he was writing books; this interview was to promote his book. Not as part of a publisher’s book tour; he was self-publishing, so he was self-promoting. The subject of his book? How he led his church for a full decade… despite the fact he no longer believed in God.

He wouldn’t call himself atheist. He’d say agnostic; he wasn’t sure God exists. Couldn’t feel or sense him. All the warm fuzzy feelings were gone. Bible and Christian literature were no help. And those Christian friends whom he shared his doubts with…

Ah, there’s the rub. Trophimus shared his doubts with no one. No counselors, no mentors, no close friends, not even his wife. I’m not sure he even talked with God about it—“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Mk 9.24 KJV I mean, it’s not like unbelievers never ever pray, when desperate. Maybe he didn’t feel desperate enough.

In any event Trophimus hid his doubts as best he could, went through the motions, and stuck out his job till he was ready to retire.

“So,” the podcast host bluntly said, “you were a hypocritical fraud for 10 years. Just doing it for the money.”

You could hear Trophimus bristle at that description. Absolutely not, he insisted. He wanted to believe again; really he did. He didn’t stay in his pastorate just for the money; he was hoping something might reactivate his faith. Maybe he’d see a miracle. Or hear God, or otherwise have a God-experience.

“You ever try the Pentecostals?” the host said; “plenty of God-stuff happens there.”

“No,” Trophimus chuckled. I’m guessing he never considered them. I’m Pentecostal, and to be blunt, some of us are mighty weird, so I get it. Still, if you claim you’re desperate for a God-experience, I’m gonna suspect your claims are entirely B.S. when you absolutely rule out continuationist churches where such experiences happen. But I digress.

Nonetheless, Trophimus figured being in ministry gave him a better-than-average chance of seeing God stuff. He’s not wrong, but in my experience it depends on what kind of ministry you’re doing. Are you working with seriously needy people, or are you only interacting with fairly comfortable rich people? If your people don’t have real needs, how’re you gonna witness God meeting needs? But that’s another digression.

“Okay,” said the host, “but you didn’t even tell your wife? You couldn’t trust her with your secret? For 10 whole years? She has to feel so betrayed.”

Yeah, this wasn’t a comfortable interview for Trophimus. He kept trying to justify himself, and the host was having none of it, and kept calling out his hypocrisy. I found it memorable because it was mighty cringey—and not very gracious, unfortunately. It was probably the very same judgmental response Trophimus feared the moment he outed himself.

But to be fair to the podcast host: For 10 whole years Trophimus committed spiritual fraud.

The bible as a source of revelation.

Many Christians firmly believe the only way God reveals himself to humanity, is through bible. Which contradicts what we find in the bible.

In the scriptures, God first reveals himself to humans with a God-appearance: He hangs out with Adam and Eve. Ge 3.8 It’s special revelation through regular personal appearances. Now yeah, the humans ruined those visitations… but no, their sin didn’t drive God away; sin doesn’t do that, because God is infinitely mightier than sin. The scriptures tell us God still appeared to people from time to time. And of course he became human, and interacted with people that way.

Likewise there were other forms of revelation—all of which we see in the book of Genesis:

• We got creation, for those folks who insist nature’s a type of revelation.
• We got miracles.
• We got God having conversational prayers with people. (Including, of all people, Cain, the first murderer.)
• We got prophetic dreams. (And the first guy to have one is neither Abraham nor one of his descendants; he’s a gentile.)
• We got prophets.

And the bible is a product of all these sources of revelation. People interacted with God, recorded these things, preserved them as best we can, and that’s our scriptures. That’s bible.

The difference between bible and other forms of revelation, is the bible’s been repeatedly confirmed as reliable. In its day, and many times since. Yes, even Revelation—even though its apocalyptic visions talk about the very end of history, plenty of it is about its then-present day, and that stuff came to pass. It’s why ancient Christians kept it. I can’t help that “prophecy scholars” make tons of wild claims about what they think it means, that people buy their books and believe ’em, and that their wild claims regularly don’t come true. They know not what they do, and their fans are wasting their time and money on ’em.

The fact the bible’s been confirmed is why we kept its books: Why keep supposed “revelations from God” which were unproven or disproven? Why seek similar God-experiences for ourselves? But since we’ve sought those experiences and found ’em valid, and since we’ve thus far confirmed many of the bible’s historical events in history, we Christians consider the scriptures faithful and reliable revelations of God. If you wanna fact-check it again, go right ahead; we’ve found it can stand up to scrutiny. Archaeologists still keep digging up stuff which confirms it—sometimes in ways they never expected, ’cause their discoveries put a whole new spin on the scriptures.

Now, with every other source of revelation, we still have to confirm them. We gotta watch miracles to see whether they produce the sort of good fruit we oughta see in God’s handiwork. We gotta confirm prophecy, prayer messages, and dreams, lest people were mistaken, or were tricked, or are lying. But with bible, not so much. From the time the very first books were written, all the way to today, God’s followers have confirmed and re-confirmed and re-re-confirmed the scriptures are solid. Trustworthy. Relevant. Consistent with who God is.

Postmillennialism: Conquering the world for Jesus.

POSTMILLENNIALISM 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl.ɪz.əm noun. Belief the second coming of Christ Jesus takes place after a thousand-year period of blessedness.

[Postmillenarism 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.ər.ɪz.əm noun, postmillennial 'poʊst.mɪ'lɛn.i.əl adjective.]

Most historical resources will tell you postmillennialism became the dominant way Protestants understood the End Times in the 1800s: We Christians were gonna evangelize the world! Roman Catholics would fire the pope, the Russians and Greeks would fire their patriarchs, the Turks would quit Islam, the Indians would quit Hinduism, the Jews would turn to Jesus. and everybody’d become Protestant. And once we’d done so, we’d enter the millennium.

Now, Christians of that era weren’t that naïve: All this stuff of course sounds extremely unlikely. It’d be a lot of work, and take years, to convince all these groups to become Christian. Centuries maybe; Congregationalist evangelist Jonathan Edwards, who promoted his belief in postmillennialism during the Great Awakening revival of the 1730s, figured it might not be achieved till the year 2000. It’d take an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit—but, Edwards firmly held, it’ll happen. It’s inevitable.

And when it arrives, it’ll begin a thousand years of grace, peace, and prosperity. No more war, no more inhumanity towards one another; Christians will follow Jesus wholeheartedly, and work together to solve all humanity’s problems. With the Spirit’s help and power, we’ll the earth into a utopian paradise.

And then Jesus returns—and it’s the end of the world, and off we go to New Heaven.

This postmillennial worldview is why you’ll see a bevy of reform movements in the 1800s. Christians, spurred by their postmillennialist preachers, realized it was time to get started! Gotta ask ourselves, “What would Jesus do?” and do that. Gotta seek and save the lost. Gotta lay the groundwork for the new Christian world we’d help bring about. Gotta encourage the culture to get more Christian, more humanitarian, more righteous. Onward and upward!

Three things wrong with this description.

First and most obvious, Christianity historically teaches us Jesus can return at any time. But postmillennialism holds off that return for a thousand years after the millennium starts. So, because we obviously haven’t been working on it, if we can’t get the millennium started till the year 2265, Jesus isn’t returning till 3265. He’s a thousand-plus years away; not near.

Second, this particular postmillennial trend was largely an American Evangelical thing. Yes, there were Evangelicals outside the United States who were postmillennial… but more often they were amillennial, same as the Orthodox and Catholics. They figured the millennium of Revelation 20 represents the Christian Era, i.e. right now. Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father, Ro 8.34 reigning right now. And when he returns, it’s to end history and the world, and take us to New Heaven. There’s no special utopian millennium coming; Jesus is coming. Again, he can return at any time, y’know.

Third, the people who not only held a postmillennial view, but promoted and pushed it really hard, weren’t only doing it to further the cause of Christ. Weren’t always primarily doing it for Christ Jesus either. A significant segment of their plans were—and still are—political.

’Cause if Jesus isn’t coming back to personally reign over the millennium… who’s gonna do that? Who’s gonna be in charge of the novus ordo seclorum? Well, Christians. Which Christians? Well… them; the postmillennial proclaimers. Or at least those fellow Christians who absolutely agree with them about how the new world order’s gonna be run.

What you’re regularly, invariably gonna find just beneath the surface of postmillennialism, is a political plan for a theocracy, a government by and for Christians. Not by and for every Christian; it’s gonna favor one particular branch, sect, or denomination of Christianity. If the leader of a particular postmillennial group is Baptist, it’s gonna look mighty Baptist. If he’s Catholic, very Catholic. If she’s Presbyterian, super Presbyterian. If he’s involved in the New Apostolic Reformation, it’s gonna be riddled with NAR teachings and terminology.

And if she’s a white nationalist, it’s gonna very much be that. Doesn’t matter that God’s kingdom is described in the scriptures as including “every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation;” Rv 5.9 they figure those other peoples are gonna be conquered subjects, second-class citizens who get grudgingly included in their millennial kingdom, but certainly can’t be granted any real power within it. Like blacks in the United States during the Jim Crow era, or Indians under the British Empire.

Yeah, the dirty little secret of postmillennialism is the more we look at the way these folks plan to run the millennium, the less Christian it gets.