Category: Theology

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Books Theology

90 Minutes in Heaven

Sometimes I wonder how many times this book sells because people assume it was written by JOHN Piper.  If you aren’t familiar with either Don or John, let me introduce them to you.  Don Piper is a pastor who has written a book chronicling his experiences surrounding a terrible automobile accident.  He believes that he died and spent 90 minutes in heaven before God miraculously brought him back to life.

John Piper, on the other hand, also a preacher, has written dozens of books in which he presents the glorious gospel of the Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on a cross and suffered the condemnation and wrath of God that sinful humanity deserves so that those who are united with him through faith can experience reconciliation with God and the full enjoyment of God’s glory for all eternity in heaven.

In this post, I want to take a brief look at DON Piper’s book in the light of Scripture…

My 14 year old son read D.P.’s book and liked it initially, but the more we talked about it together, the more we came to the conclusion that there was something wrong.  Any experience that a believer has needs to be held up to the Word of God and evaluated in its light.  When we did this to D.P.’s experience we found the following problems.

1.  D.P.’s “experience of heaven” didn’t include Jesus

Surely Jesus is the “principal attraction” of heaven and would be prominent in any genuine experience.  Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” and in Philippians 1:23, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” When we die, we will immediately be with Jesus. We will not be in a tunnel and we will not be in heaven “waiting” to see him. I think that based on these scriptures it is safe to assume that Jesus will be the very first person or thing that we see when we die. D.P.’s experience just doesn’t seem to fit with these verses. Does that mean that he is a bad person or intentionally trying to deceive people? Absolutely not, but he needs to look at his experience and seek to understand it in light of Scripture.

It also strikes me that a friend of mine who follows another major world religion has had four surgeries and describes very similar experiences to what many Christians claim to have experienced through near death experiences–being in a long mirrored tunnel with very bright light at the other end. In his case, it strikes me as a demonic deception that he is “OK with God” spiritually and ready to die, and not a genuine experience of whatever lies beyond the grave for him.

2.  Scripture is clear that man dies only once.

Nowhere in Scripture is there any account of someone going “halfway.” There are, however, plenty of examples of people who actually died physically and were raised back to life, both before and after Christ. God certainly raises the dead and he may very well have raised Don Piper from the dead! But I find it interesting that in every single one of these recorded biblical resurrections absolutely nothing is ever said about what these individuals experienced.

Scripture also says that it is “appointed for man to die once, and then comes the judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27). In my thinking, the only way to understand Heb. 9:27 in light of the many recorded resurrections is that when those individuals died, even though they died physically, their souls did not go to heaven. I certainly don’t believe in the erroneous doctrine of “soul sleep”, but I think that this is a reasonable understanding of Heb. 9:27. When God determines to raise someone from the dead, he knows that it is not their time to die, and so he doesn’t take their soul to heaven, but rather restores physical life to their body. I understand that this is just an inference on my part, but I think it is a reasonable one.

3.  Scripture is clear that “back from the dead” experiences will not bring people to faith.

Isn’t it interesting that none of the resurrected individuals recorded in Scripture shared their experience with others? Perhaps it is because there was nothing to share! And even if there was some sort of experience to share, Jesus made it clear in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 that such experiences are not what God has sovereignly determined to use in the conversion of sinners. Luke 16:31 “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” Rather, “It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:21)

What is lacking in D.P.’s book is the clear, straightforward presentation of the simple biblical gospel, (the one the other Piper preaches). Testimonies are great, but they should point to our wonderful Savior and what he did for us when he took our punishment upon himself so that we might be reconciled to the Father.

If you want to read my son’s review of the book, you can find it here.

Categories
Cross-Centered Life Theology

Importance of the Lord’s Supper

To identify the central event in all of human history is not difficult.  Indeed, the same event is not only at the center of human history, but is central in the universe and even in eternity.  this event is, of course, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of Jesus’ death on the cross.  It is impossible to do too much to keep Jesus’ death central in our thinking, in our daily living, in our conversation and relationship with others, in our service to and worship of God.  

And if it is impossible to make too much of Jesus’ death in our individual living, how much more so is it impossible to make too much of his death in our corporate life together as the people of God.  Without Jesus’ death, there would be no church.  There would be no worship.  There would be no sermons on family life, or money management, or dealing with conflicts, or any of the manifold things we talk about in church.  

I believe we have a sinful tendency to marginalize the death of Christ.  Because of the sin that still indwells us, we tend to drift away from the gospel.  When we first come to Christ, the gospel is right in the forefront of our minds.  We see Jesus crucified in our place, as our substitute, taking upon himself the punishment that we deserve.  We see him as our wonderful Savior and we overflow with love to him.

But as time goes on, our tendency is to treat Jesus and what he did for us at the cross like a movie ticket stub.  When you go to the movies, you pay to get in and they give you a paper ticket stub.  Without that stub, you can’t get past the usher into the theatre to see the movie you want to see.  That stub is your ticket in.  But once you show it to the usher and go into the movie theatre, what do you do with it?  You put it in your pocket and you forget about it.  

That can be a picture of how we think about the death of Christ.  It is our “ticket in”.  We understand that without what Jesus did for us on the cross, we will not be admitted into heaven.  We understand that without his death, we can not be adopted as God’s children and enjoy the privileges of belonging to his family, but the more distant we get from that date when we first entered the family of God, the easier it is to forget the centrality of Jesus’ death on the cross to everything that we do.

Our Lord, knowing our tendency to drift from what should be at the center, gave us, his people, two sacraments to help us keep Jesus’ death constantly before us.  The first sacrament, baptism, is meant to be performed only once.  It pictures for us our entry into the family of God.  Through our identification with Christ through faith, we are united with him in his death and resurrection.  But the second sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, Jesus told us to repeat.  He said, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor. 11:26).  

The reason for two sacraments is that the cross of Jesus is not just our “ticket in”.  It IS that, but it is so much more.  Jesus’ death on the cross that atoned for our sins and propitiated the wrath of God is the source of every single good thing that God has ever given us or the world.  It is the foundation upon which a sinful world and sinful people have any basis for relating to God at all.  As I said before, it is at the center of everything.

For this reason, we gather together often to remember Jesus’ death on the cross.  We come together to pause and think about what he did.  If we only think of Jesus’ death as our “ticket in” we will very soon drift back to a dependence on our own righteousness to earn us a right standing with God.  But when we look often to the cross and what Jesus did there, we will mature in our faith and grow in our relationship to God.  There is a powerful, sanctifying effect that comes from meditating on the cross of Jesus Christ.  That is what we come together at the Lord’s table for.  

I believe that every time we come to the Lord’s table, we should focus on some aspect of what Jesus did for us there.  We can never exhaust the tremendous store of meaning that there is in Jesus’ cross.  Every time we come together to eat the Lord’s Supper together, it should be looking at another facet of the beautiful diamond that is the work of Jesus on our behalf at the cross.  Here are just a few of those facets that come to mind.  

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the SERVANT-NATURE of our Savior.  Jesus himself said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28).  Isn’t it amazing that the God whom we had rebelled against and scorned would stoop to serve us, his enemies?  

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the OBEDIENCE of our Savior.  Jesus saved us by obeying in our place.  When we were disobedient to the Creator’s commands, Jesus came in our place and said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God…” and the author of Hebrews goes on to say that “…by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”   

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the FORGIVENESS that Jesus provides through his death.  We can put ourselves in the place of the repentant thief and know that we will be in Paradise because we have repented and looked to the Savior.  We can hear him say to US:  “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the REDEMPTION that Jesus purchased with his death.  We were enslaved to sin, but we were ransomed, not with perishable things like silver and gold, “…but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Pet. 2:19).

When we meditate on the cross, we can see the SERIOUSNESS OF OUR SIN.  Nowhere do we more fully grasp what we are guilty of than when we look at the cross of Jesus.  It is there that we see our sin, because “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21) We see our sin at the cross because as Isaiah 53:6 says, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” 

When we meditate on the cross, we can see the JUSTICE of God.  As God himself declared to Moses when he revealed to him his holy name:  “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”  

But God, who does not clear the guilty, is able to say in 1 John 1:9 that “he is faithful and JUST to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  He is JUST to forgive us our sins–because he has already judged our sins in Christ, and therefore it is right and just for him to forgive us.

And finally, when we meditate on the cross of Christ, we can see the LOVE OF GOD for us.  This facet is worth quoting several scriptures…

John 15:12-13  “…love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”

John 3:16  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

And 1 John 3:16, and 4:9-10 show us HOW God, in his love, gave his only Son… not just in the incarnation, but at the cross:  “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us…”  “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

For those of us who are married, our unions are meant to display the love that Jesus showed us when he died for us.  Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Unless we meditate on the cross and Jesus’ death there as our substitute, we will not be able to comprehend the depths of his love for us, his children.  We were, Ephesians 2 says, “dead in our transgressions and sins… following the course of this world…following the prince of the power of the air… we were by nature children of wrath….         BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the GREAT LOVE with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.   TOGETHER with Christ, he says, pointing to the fact that Jesus shared our death, so that we might together with him, be made alive.

And perhaps the most incredible passage displaying the love that Christ showed us at the cross is Romans 5: 6-8:  “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

These are just a few of the many facets of this beautiful diamond which is the death of Christ on our behalf.  So every time you eat the bread, which represents his body given for us, and every time you drink the cup, which represents his life-blood which flowed out of his body for us, remember that the cross of Jesus isn’t just your “ticket in” to the Family of God, to be shoved into your pocket and forgotten.  It is the spring from which flows your entire relationship with God.  Meditate on it often, and not just on Communion Sunday!

Categories
Bible Study Theology

Christ’s return will be sudden

Here’s another post in a short series I am doing on the return of Christ.  Read back over the last several posts to see my purpose in focusing on the this tremendous truth:  Jesus will return to earth.    Today I want to show how the Scriptures teach that his return will be sudden.

But before I go to some specific Scriptures, I feel the need to emphasize that what I am challenging us to do is NOT to focus on the COMING of Christ, but on the coming of CHRIST!  Do you understand what I mean by my use of capital letters there?  Very often, when we speak of Christ’s coming, the emphasis is on the event, and we forget the person of the event.  What makes the second coming so encouraging to us as believers is that it is JESUS who is coming.  If Jesus isn’t precious to us… if we fail to see his glory and the desirability of being in his bodily presence, then we will have missed the encouragement that we can receive by remembering that the glorious bridegroom of the church is coming back to earth.

So when we see in Scripture that Jesus’ return will be sudden, we understand that the suddenness of his coming is an encouragement to those who love him, while it will be dismaying to those who don’t.

Perhaps the passage that most clearly teaches this truth is Matthew 24:36-44.  

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.  37 As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man (see also 2 Pet. 3:5-6 for a comparison to Noah’s flood).  38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.  40 Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left.  41 Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left.  42 Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.  43 But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into.  44 Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

Consider the difference in the way the two individuals mentioned will perceive the suddenness of Christ’s return.  Of the two men in the field (v. 40), or of the two women at the mill (v. 41), one rejoices as he/she is immediately in the presence of the one he loves most, while the other is suddenly  aware that the flood of judgement that Jesus Christ promised has come upon the world, and he/she is outside the Ark of Grace.

I Thess. 5:2ff, another passage that underlines the suddenness of Jesus’ return, draws this same contrast:

2 For you yourselves are fully aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.  3 While people are saying, “There is peace and security”, then sudden destruction will come upon them as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.  4 But you are not in darkness, brothers, for that day to surprise you like a thief.  5 For you are all children of light, children of the day.  We are not of the night or of the darkness.  6 So then let us not sleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.  7 For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, are drunk at night.  8 But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, having put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation. 9 For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, 10 who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep we might live with him.  11 Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.

Here again, the return of Christ is spoken of as being very sudden:  To those who deny his coming and find their peace and security is something other than the salvation that Jesus provided at the Cross when he died as a substitute for sinners, Christ’s coming will result in “sudden destruction” (v. 3).  But for those who are united with Christ in his death and are looking to him alone for salvation from their sinfulness (vs. 8-10), his sudden return is the culmination of a hope that has been implanted in their hearts since the day they first came to Christ in repentance and faith–the hope that “we might live with him” (v. 10) for all eternity.

There is another passage that comes to mind as painting this picture of eager anticipation for Christ’s return–a passage not often associated with eschatology, but I think very appropriate.  It is in the Song of Solomon, chapter 3

1 On my bed by night I sought him whom my soul loves; I sought him, but found him not.  I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves.  I sought him, but found him not.  The watchmen found me as they went about the city.  “Have you seen him whom my soul loves?”  Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves.  I held him, and would not let him go until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her who conceived me

Our puritan forefathers rightly saw in Solomon’s love poem, the relationship of Christ with his Bride, the Church.  What a beautiful picture is painted in these verses of the Church eagerly anticipating the return of Christ.  It is in this context that the Scriptural doctrine of the sudden return of Christ is such an encouragement to us as believers.  Very soon now, our Lord will come for us.

Sorry these posts on Christ’s return have been so infrequent recently, but I’m trying to learn a fairly difficult language right now, and that has occupied a lot of my time!  How I desire for this unreached people among whom I am living to know this glorious truth that Jesus is coming back.  By God’s grace, may many of them receive life on that day and escape the wrath to come!