The Problem with Sin

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The Problem with Sin

February 27, 2007 • Ronald L. Dart

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I used to be a teenager and, although it was a long time ago, I still remember some of the questions about the Bible that troubled me back then. Young people ask a lot of questions that their elders are embarrassed to ask and that somehow never get answered. Faith survives, sometimes, but it often gets badly bruised along the way. I remember as a teenager wondering about some of the stuff I heard from the pulpit and in Sunday school.

For example: Why would God give Man a set of laws he cannot possibly observe, and then punish him for not observing them. Yes, I know, “by grace are you saved”, but if you think about it long enough you will realize that doesn't answer the question. Even my parents didn't punish me for not doing something I *couldn't* do. If they gave me a rule and I broke it, at least it was a rule I could have kept if I tried. And the punishment fit the crime. They weren't cruel to me. The worst I ever got was a few swats on the behind. I survived.

But my question about God remained: Why would God give Man a set of laws he cannot possibly observe, and then punish him for not observing them? I don't remember when the answer occurred to me, but I came to realize that my question made an assumption. The assumption was that the law was arbitrary. That is to say that the law depended on the individual discretion of the judge; in this case, God.

There were, in fact, two assumptions. One, that the law was arbitrary and could have been otherwise. (That follows naturally from the assumption that the law could have been set aside.) Two, that the enforcement of the law depends on a sovereign act of God. In other words, God can let me off or punish me. If he doesn't, then I got away with it. But what if my assumptions were wrong? If they are, then there are two conclusions that might follow...

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About the Last Days #2

June 23, 2009 • Ronald L. Dart

What did the First Christians believe about the last days? Forget about the expression “the End of the World”—the end of the *planet* is a long way off. It is plain, though, that the First Christians believed there was to be an *end of the age* (however one might take that) because that is what they asked Jesus about one day on the Mount of Olives. They were familiar with the Old Testament prophets and their view of the last days and end of this system. Peter cited Joel with clarity on the day of Pentecost. He would be less than human if he had not seen what looked like the initial phases of the end times. And yet, Christ would not come in his lifetime, for some 2,000 years to come, or (for all we know) many more years yet. The prophets told of a “day of the Lord”, a day of God’s wrath. And while they also saw it as a near-term thing, there is good reason to think that they also saw it as a distant event. It would be so cataclysmic that the destruction would boggle the mind. And they also saw it ushering in a new age. And not only did the First Christians have the prophets, they had Jesus’ Olivet Message to make them a little hypersensitive to prophetic events. Peter and the others thought they saw it coming, but they were also quite careful to avoid crying wolf. And they had good reason for that as well. [Image credits, if any, may be found by visiting the "View Online" link on this page.]

About the Last Days #1

June 16, 2009 • Ronald L. Dart

What did the First Christians believe about the last days—the end time of man on the earth? It may not have been a lot different from what some of us believe today, as I suspect more than a few of us have been disquieted by events in the Middle East. Even if we don’t fully understand all the implications of biblical prophecy, we know that the Middle East looms large at the end time, along with *serious* loss of life. With the Iranian regime *certain* to develop nuclear weapons, and with the stated intent to destroy Israel, you have to take this seriously and wonder how much longer are we going to be able to go on this way. But we aren’t seeing a lot more than the First Christians did, and they can be excused for thinking the return of Christ would be in their lifetime. There were prophets among those First Christians but strangely, as far as the record is concerned, they express little interest in the far horizon. Perhaps, because they thought it wasn’t all that far away. The activities of the prophets in the church seem to be very timely—that is, concerned with the events of the immediate future. But that doesn’t mean at all that there was not a broader view of prophecy in general and of the last days in particular. In fact, you are probably already thinking about the Book of Revelation. But it is plain that they had a belief system about the last days which was, at first, somewhat off-base. To some extent, this is accounted for by something Jesus said. We’ll find it in Matthew, chapter 24. [Image credits, if any, may be found by visiting the "View Online" link on this page.]

Surviving the Last Days #2

June 26, 2007 • Ronald L. Dart

If you want to know about “the last days” one of the places you’ll naturally go looking is the Bible, and if you grab a concordance and do a search for the expression “in the last days” you will find exactly six occasions where the term is found, Old Testament and New. However, if you search the Hebrew phrase, you will find the expression some 13 times in the Old Testament alone. The reason is that in over half of the occasions where it is used, it is rendered “in the *latter* days”. I presume there are contextual reasons for choosing one expression or the other. We would like to insist that the expression always means exactly the same thing, but English doesn’t work that way and we shouldn’t expect Hebrew to be any more precise. We run afoul of some very bad interpretations because amateurs find a meaning of the Hebrew that fits their assumptions and then they impose that rendering everywhere it is found because it supports their particular bias. I have the impression that God wants us to be less dogmatic and more enquiring, but that’s a hard adjustment for some people to make. The last time I spoke here, I introduced the topic of the last days with Paul’s warning of debilitating, weakening times in 2 Timothy. Then came Peter’s powerful admonition in 2 Peter 3. I’ll begin here with another occasion when Peter addressed the question of “the Last Days”, the “Day of the Lord“, and the prophet Joel. We’ll find it in Acts, chapter 2, occurring on the Day of Pentecost. [Image credits, if any, may be found by visiting the "View Online" link below.]