Audio Transcript

New week, new day, new mercies. Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. We are going to start the week talking about nicotine — pipe smoking, specifically. But I think this topic, and this question, is likely to open up a much broader conversation about other stimulants — caffeine, sugar, amphetamines, cannabis, and THC for some — substances that provoke the central nervous system.

The question is from a listener named Robert in Goldwater, Mississippi. “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast! Eighteen months ago, in APJ 1702, you published an episode titled ‘On Cigarettes, Vaping, and Nicotine.’ It proved helpful to me. But I have a follow-up question for you. Many years ago, when I chewed smokeless tobacco, I discovered that my concentration for reading was improved. Apparently, the nicotine did something to my mind and body to increase my focus. Today I am considering taking up pipe smoking, something like C.S. Lewis did. I would continue this only if it improved my concentration. Pastor John, would you address the use of nicotine for the purpose of improved concentration?”

Well, I come into a question like this basically in the same category as everybody else. I am simply not an expert in all the possible effects — medically, socially, psychologically — that nicotine or other drugs might have on the human person. I have to do my simple research online just like everybody else does. That’s how I get ready for this podcast. I do what everybody else can do. I look for definitions and I go to Wikipedia. I go to medical websites and I try to get up to speed. So don’t put me on any kind of pedestal here like I’ve got some authority on how to answer a question like this. I’ve got my Bible; you’ve got your Bible. I’ve got Wikipedia; you’ve got Wikipedia. Here we go.

But here’s what I can do. What I can do is highlight some possible outcomes — just like anybody else can — of the use of various drugs, and I can point to some biblical guidelines and then pray that God’s people, myself included, would have great wisdom, and great self-control, and great passion for holiness and purity, and great love for others as we make our way through these days when more and more natural and artificial stimulants are available.

Beyond Nicotine

As I think about this question that he’s asking — about nicotine in particular — I’m going to broaden it out, because here in Minnesota a far more urgent question concerns cannabis (the constituent of marijuana) and the relatively recent upsurge of cannabis-infused drinks on sale for anybody wherever they have them. And they’re increasingly available, with all different percentages of cannabis.

The marijuana-like substance that goes into these drinks is called THC, which is short for an unpronounceable, long scientific word, which you can see in Wikipedia. That’s the psychoactive constituent of cannabis, and that’s what’s getting infused into all kinds of drinks and foods. If you read about the effects of THC, what you read is that there is a wide range of possible effects, from heightened sensory perception — I think that’s what Robert’s talking about — to relaxation, sleepiness, dizziness, dry mouth, euphoria, depersonalization, derealization, hallucination, paranoia, decreased or increased anxiety.

Now, the difference between smoking marijuana and drinking THC-infused drinks is that, when the drug is inhaled into the lungs, it passes quickly into the bloodstream, peaking in about ten minutes and wearing off in a couple of hours, while cannabis-infused foods and drinks may take hours to digest, and their effects may peak after two or three hours and persist for up to six hours. So says Wikipedia. You think I know things — I don’t know anything. This is just all learned for this podcast.

Tobacco’s Downsides

Of course, cannabis and nicotine are just two of many psychoactive stimulants, including sugar, caffeine, alcohol, opioids, betel nut, and not to mention the hard drugs that are illegal. Now, Robert says he used to use chewing tobacco as a way of getting better concentration, and he’s thinking about taking up pipe smoking if it works for the same reason. And what’s surprising in his question to me is that he didn’t raise any of the downsides of tobacco.

I mean, if you go to the Health and Social Services website online and just ask about that, here’s what you read:

Chewing tobacco can cause many types of cancer, including cancer of the mouth, tongue, gums, stomach, esophagus, and bladder. Heavy users might also notice that their teeth can start to get worn down and stained by the chewing tobacco, which can also cause the gums to recede. Regular chewing-tobacco use is linked to higher heart attack risks too, since it is known to raise blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

And there are similar warnings for pipe smoking. So, for example, “Cigar and pipe smokers are more likely to develop heart disease, stroke, and lung diseases than those who do not smoke.” So you can do your own simple research, just like I do on sugar (I mean, how serious is that?) or caffeine or alcohol or various preservatives in drugs and foods — all kinds of things that worry people these days.

Eight New Testament Guidelines

The New Testament does not solve these ethical problems of what we should eat, what we should drink — how much or not at all — by giving us a list of foods and drinks that are lawful. It couldn’t. It didn’t even foresee what was coming down the pike. The New Testament writers weren’t given that kind of prescience.

It addresses these things much more profoundly than by giving us a list of foods that we should avoid or drinks that we should avoid. It deals with the nature of what goes into the body or comes out of the body, the nature of who we are as Christians, the nature of our body and our soul, the nature of our calling as Christians and what life in the body is for, and how we personally relate to other people in regard to what we eat or drink.

“It isn’t foods that defile. It’s the motives and aims that come out of the heart.”

So here’s my summary of biblical realities in the form of eight guidelines. Now, I’ve never listed them like this before; this was all fresh for me as I thought about getting ready for this particular question, and I found breaking them out like this was helpful for me. I hope it will be for others. I’ll state it simply and give you the place that I get it from the Bible.

Guideline 1

Foods or drink, material things that go into the body, are not in themselves spiritually contaminating. It is the motives and the aims and the effects that make food and drink become morally significant.

Jesus said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him.” (Mark 7:18–20)

That’s principle number 1. It isn’t foods that defile. It’s the motives and aims that come out of the heart.

Guideline 2

Therefore, food and drink are God’s good creation and are meant to be enjoyed as an occasion of thanksgiving to God.

[False teachers] require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer. (1 Timothy 4:3–5)

Guideline 3

The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. We should let that have a very profound effect on us. Keep the temple holy because it’s inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Keep the body properly set apart for God’s habitation. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Guideline 4

Your body is a member of Christ. Our bodies are part of Christ’s body. So we not only are inhabited by the Holy Spirit; we’re part of Christ. We bring him into every habit we form with our bodies. “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 6:15).

Guideline 5

Christians don’t use their freedom just because they have it; they ask about what is helpful for their faith and the faith of others. “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Guideline 6

Christians don’t just use their freedom because they have it; they seek to avoid freely walking into a habit that enslaves. That happens. People really do use their freedom to get enslaved. Don’t do that. “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be [enslaved] by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12).

Guideline 7

Your body does not belong to you. God bought it with the blood of Christ. God owns your body — it’s his. His purpose is that you make your choices about your body in order to make God look valuable, beautiful, satisfying. “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Guideline 8

Christians don’t make food and drink and stimulant decisions in isolation. They walk in love and take into account how their habits will help or hurt others. “Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble” (1 Corinthians 8:13).

By the Spirit, Not Lists

So this is the way God wants us to live: not by lists, but by the Spirit. Paul put it like this in Romans 7:6: “Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” And the new way of the Spirit is to let these passages inspired by the Spirit shape the way we see God, the way we see Christ, the way we see the Holy Spirit, the way we see our bodies, the way we see food and drugs, the way we see freedom, and the way we see love and the good of other people. The new way of the Spirit is a whole new conception of God and Christ and Spirit and life and body and love, and that’s how Christians live.

So may the Lord take Robert and me and all of us deep into his word and Spirit, and may he be your teacher so that you and I and we would all walk in freedom, in joy, in holiness, for the glory of God.

Audio Transcript

We live in an age of hate. One political party hates the other. One nation hates another. But the polarity of our national and international struggles of 2022 is nothing new, as you can imagine. They’re as old as sin. Forty years ago, Pastor John said in a sermon, “The 1980s are becoming the decade of hate, and oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group and start hating the other group.” Same today. We’re tempted to fall in line with the world and hate our human opponents. But what a very different calling God gives to his church.

To understand God’s countercultural calling for us today in 2022, we rewind 41 years to hear a clip from a John Piper sermon. He was preaching on 1 Timothy 2:1–4. It’s one of my favorite sermons, especially when we face geopolitical chaos in the world. It’s an early sermon, preached on January 20, 1981. We heard another clip from this same sermon last Wednesday. There I mentioned that this sermon was preached two days before the Iran hostage crisis came to an end, and the same day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the new president of the United States. There was a lot of national and international news in the air when Piper preached on 1 Timothy 2:1–4.

The apostle Paul’s words were very relevant. Paul was eager for Christians to hold to the faith with “a good conscience,” according to 1 Timothy 1:19. That includes, as Paul explains, that Christians take a global worldview to offer

supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings . . . for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1–4)

Piper took up this plea from Paul and preached on what it meant to pray for others in the age of global hate. Here’s Pastor John.

It’s a great blessing to have our daily bread. It’s a great blessing to have our trespasses forgiven. It’s a great blessing not to be led into temptation, but to be delivered from evil. But we don’t pray — Jesus didn’t teach us to pray — “Lord, bless us. Amen.” He taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:11–13).

We have not been taught to pray in broad, sweeping generalities. We have been taught to pray for particular kinds of problems. When Paul wanted help for himself, he asked the churches, “Pray for me in particular — don’t just pray for the missionary cause,” for example. Therefore, I do not think that we will satisfy the demand of 1 Timothy 2:1 if we say something like, “God, bless all men everywhere. Amen.” What does it mean? How can we satisfy it?

Prayer for All People

If we give Paul a sympathetic reading here — that’s what you always should try to give anything you read: give it a sympathetic reading; try to put yourself in the shoes of the writer — I think what he’s going to say is something like this: “Timothy, push out the boundaries of your concern. Don’t let your prayers be limited to any group, or any kind of people. Enlarge the circumference of your love, Timothy. Don’t be provincial or sectarian or elitist or nationalistic or racist in your prayers, Timothy. Let your prayers embrace all kinds of people — high and low, white and black, Democrats and Republicans, Soviet premiers and Iranian ayatollahs. Enlarge the heart of your prayers, Timothy. Go to school at Calvary, and learn to hate the bigotry and the racism of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis, but to pray with earnest yearning for those men and women.”

“Don’t let your prayers be limited to any group, or any kind of people. Enlarge the circumference of your love.”

Isn’t Paul’s point the same as Jesus’s? “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies” — and do what? — “pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:43–45). Or to put it another way, “Timothy, there is no category of people of whom it can be said, ‘You ought not to pray for those.’” There is none. Here’s a message for our day, isn’t it? The 1980s are becoming the decade of hate, and oh, how easy it is for Christians to be sucked into one group and start hating the other group.

Jesus warned us in Matthew 24:11–12, “Many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” May it not be said of Bethlehem Baptist Church that we’ve made any contribution to the destruction of the world through icy hate, but let it be said of the Christians at Bethlehem — and oh, of all Christians — “Behold how they love one another. Look how they do good to those who hate them. Look how they bless those who curse them. Look how they pray for those who abuse them. Look at the parameters of their prayer. Why, there’s no boundary.”

Isn’t that the point of 1 Timothy 2:1? And if we pray like that and act like that, won’t people begin to say, “There must be a God of grace in the heavens, and he’s got a peculiar people on earth and in Minneapolis at this corner, people who are not conformed to this age or to this decade”?

Prayer for Kings

Now, after he stressed the wideness of the circumference, for some reason, Paul focuses in on kings and all in high positions. Pray for kings and all in high positions. Why? Why did he narrow in here? It’s clear from 1 Timothy 2:4–7 that Paul wants to emphasize that nobody be excluded from our goodwill, for nobody is beyond the grace of God. Why, then, do kings and people in high positions come in for special mention? I think there are at least two reasons — perhaps more, but I’ll just mention two.

The first is this: there are characteristics, aren’t there, about leaders that make it hard to pray for them — at least hard for those early Christians to pray for them, and I think still for us in many ways. One, for example, of those characteristics is that they are so distant and so remote — if not visually, or in miles, then in accessibility, anyway. They’re so remote.

It’s hard to pray for somebody earnestly, with heart yearning, that you don’t even know or don’t ever see. and yet Paul says, “That difficulty must be overcome. We must pray for the emperor, Nero. We must pray for the governor, Gallio. We must pray for proconsuls, and we must pray for Pilate and Herod and the like.” Those people must be prayed for, if you don’t ever see them. They may seem remote to you. They are not remote to God, and you can get as close to them through prayer as any of their closest advisors.

Here’s another example of a characteristic that makes them hard to pray for. They are often godless people, insensitive to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. That was almost universally true in Paul’s day. I think in our day, if you take all the countries of the world — and let’s not just limit this command to America — it’s probably still true today. It doesn’t matter where or when we have lived. If we are going to pray for those who are kings and all in high positions, we are going to wind up praying mostly for people who are hostile to or indifferent to our faith. That seems to be a stumbling block for many people.

Stream of Water in God’s Hand

What do I pray for them? Well, Paul says, “Don’t hesitate to pray.” First of all, God can save. God can change kings and those in high positions. And second, he uses unbelievers in high positions to accomplish his purposes anyway, whether they believe or not. A couple of examples. In Isaiah 10 in the Old Testament, God takes the wicked king of Assyria and turns him into a rod of his wrath when he wants to punish his people, Israel, and then he casts him aside because of his arrogance when he’s through with him.

Once Nebuchadnezzar, the great, proud king of Babylon said this: “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). You know what God did? He took away his reason and made him eat grass like an ox until he learned this lesson. In Daniel 4:34, Nebuchadnezzar says,

[The dominion of the Most High] is an everlasting dominion,     and his kingdom endures from generation to generation;all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,     and he does according to his will among the host of heaven     and among the inhabitants of the earth;and none can stay his hand     or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 4:34–35)

No king, no president, no Soviet premier or Iranian ayatollah can stay his hand when he has purposed to do a thing. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will” (Proverbs 21:1). The wise man said, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man [and a king], but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21). Therefore, we have strong encouragement to pray because God rules over men, whether they believe him or not. God reigns, and none can stay his hand.

Working Through Wicked Kings

Now, one implication of that is that our prayers for these kings and these people in high positions will not only be for their conversion, or even their sanctification — that we must pray for, or we disobey our Lord Jesus. But we will go beyond that, and we will pray that God’s good saving purposes would be accomplished through them anyway, even if they are impenitent. That’s the second reason why I think Paul mentions the need to pray for kings and those in high positions — namely, because God is able to do so much good in the world through people in high positions.

Even a bad king, Paul thinks, is better than anarchy. Paul is in a Roman prison or is under house arrest in Rome when he writes 1 Timothy. The emperor is Nero. In a couple of years, he’s going to put Paul to death. Probably, he died in the lions’ arena. Now, Paul is saying what he says under those conditions. Therefore, he is not naive when he says, “Make thanksgivings for all men, for kings and all in high positions.” Thank God for Nero? Why? How can he say that?

At least for this reason: Paul’s perspective on the world is so good. It’s so big. It goes above and beyond his own little life, or even his own little (great) ministry. The emperor who puts Paul to death in Rome keeps peace in the provinces where the gospel is spreading like wildfire, and for that, Paul is very thankful. So, our prayers for kings and for leaders and for all men should be seasoned with thanksgiving.

Peace for the Gospel’s Sake

But the main thing Paul says to pray for is this: “that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Timothy 2:2). Now, taken by itself, that might seem to fly right in the face of everything I’ve said. Is it really the case that in the last analysis, the only reason we pray for leaders is so that we might have the good life, so that we might have peace and tranquility and build our estates?

“May we never forget it, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we are exiles here in America.”

Many professing Christians seem to think so. But that would be a terrible misunderstanding of this text, wouldn’t it, because 1 Timothy 2:3–4 sharpens the focus of what Paul is really after. Why pray that we have peace and tranquility? Answer: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” God approves of peace and tranquility because he approves of the advance of the gospel. Peace is not the main thing; salvation is the main thing. Tranquility is not the main goal; the knowledge of the gospel of truth is the main goal.

May we never forget it, brothers and sisters in Christ, that we are exiles here in America. And I would say the same thing if I were talking to the Russians, the Iranians, the Mexicans, the Brazilians. We are exiles here in this land. We are not at home in America, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Israel, or anywhere on this earth. Our commonwealth is in heaven. We do not pray, I do not pray, simply for the prosperity of any land. I pray for the magnificent spread of the saving purposes of God in every land and for whatever conditions it takes to achieve that.

Audio Transcript

Happy Fourth of July to those of you in the United States. This holiday is a big one here, of course, and one that reminds me of many episodes on this podcast, Pastor John, where you have delved into the church-state separation controversy, political activism, Christian patriotism, US flags in the sanctuary, things like that — all sorts of topics we’ve covered in this realm. I attempted to digest all those episodes into one summary you can find (hopefully it’s handy for you) in the APJ book on pages 47–56.

Citizenship in a country like America is a wonderful grace, a common grace. On a day like this one, I am reminded of the apostle Paul and his Roman citizenship, which afforded him certain privileges and protections, and we see those come up all over Acts (Acts 16:35–40; 22:22–29; 23:26–27; 25:13–27; etc.). Paul’s passport is always showing up in Acts because his nationhood was useful. It was a common grace he returned to and claimed. We too have a ton of privileges, Pastor John, and protections in being American citizens. We cannot take them for granted. And so, on a day like today, it is good to celebrate them. So, Pastor John, what are your thoughts today as you ponder this common grace of citizenship, and how we got it?

I have little doubt that the lavish blessings of common grace that we enjoy in America are rooted in the pervasive cultural transformation that came from centuries of Christian influences in Europe and America. I don’t doubt that. And just by way of thanksgiving on this special day (and we should be thankful), the kind of common grace I have in mind are things like this — and the list is short and could be many times longer.

America’s Uncommon Gifts

I have in mind a stable government, whose processes so far have freed us from anarchy and mob rule, which are so destructive. You can just look at certain countries in the world today and imagine how horrible it could be.

I have in mind the freedoms we still enjoy to gather for worship and for all kinds of discussions that may or may not support the present persons and policies in power, without fear of the gestapo breaking in.

I have in mind the moral and legal forces that still hold sway that make people trust contracts when they sign them (and banking and currency) without fear of pervasive bribery or graft undermining the entire working of business and industry and personal finance — as is the case in so many countries that can’t do anything because everything breaks; it doesn’t work because of graft and corruption.

I have in mind reliable infrastructures that we simply take for granted. Electricity for virtually every home and apartment, with heat and air conditioning and refrigeration, and countless appliances that work at the flip of a switch. Indoor plumbing — imagine! Indoor plumbing! (And in Minnesota, that’s really good.) And invisible sewers that keep our streets from stench. (They were working outside my house some time ago, and they did this amazing relining of the sewer pipes without even digging them up — just incredible technology.) Hot and cold running water at the twist of a handle, and you can even drink it. You can drink it. Food supplies that almost magically show up every day on the shelves of thousands of stores because of countless processes of production and delivery. Roads and highways and trains and trams and buses and cars and air travel that, by the way, is astonishingly safe and reliable. An Internet that puts the world of information and commerce at our fingertips for almost everyone.

And Tony, I deleted a whole bunch, just to make this shorter. On and on we could go, and all this is true. Yes, though there are criminals at every level of society, from street drug dealers to white-collar fraud, the fact remains, for now, owing to the common grace of God in this land, in America, for the most part, things work amazingly.

I have an immigrant friend that I meet with almost every week to practice his English and to study Scripture, and we talk about his country of origin, where virtually nothing works. There’s no reliable infrastructure or economic system. The poor are kept poor because there’s no stable way for them to work themselves out of poverty in a system that is shot through with bribery and corruption and instability. A tiny layer of people at the top are rich enough to have multiple mansions all over the world, and they simply steal the country’s resources, with no effort to provide structures that enable people to make a living. And we both know, he and I, we know that will never change as long as the human heart of selfishness and greed dominates the culture.

Maintaining Perspective and Priority

So, what do I conclude from lavish blessings in America, rooted in a history of morality-shaping Christianity, and from hopeless brokenness in societies rooted in selfishness and greed and corruption? And lest anybody think I’m naive, of course I’m aware that there is ample selfishness and greed at every level of American society. But that’s not why America works. To the degree that those forces gain ground, to that degree will things simply break down, collapse, stop working. That may be where we’re going. I don’t know. So, what do I conclude from all this?

Not a Tool for Nation Building

Let me say again what I don’t conclude. I don’t conclude that we should think of the Christian gospel as the pathway to nation building or nation preservation. I don’t conclude that the church should define its priorities of ministry as nation building or culture transformation. Why not, since that is often the effect that they have? Two reasons.

“We’re not promised, in this age, the survival of any nation or culture.”

First, in the New Testament, the gospel was given to save sinners from the wrath of God, not from the collapse of the Jewish state or the Roman Empire. Jesus Christ came into the world to solve the biggest problem that exists in the world for everybody on the planet — namely, we will all perish eternally under the wrath of God if we are not saved by Jesus Christ, who reconciled us to God by his death in our place.

This is the most important news we have. No other religion has it. Jesus Christ — crucified, risen, and trusted — is the only hope for every person on the planet to be saved from eternal suffering. That’s the primary reason Jesus came into the world, and the message of the New Testament focuses on it. That’s the great problem of humanity. That’s the great glory of Jesus Christ. If we think of the Christian gospel in another way, and we promote the Christian gospel as a political tool for preserving a nation or transforming a culture, we will move away from the heart of the best news in the world, and the power of the cross will be lost.

The second reason that we don’t prioritize the gospel as nation building and culture transformation is that in that very process of prioritization of the wrong thing, we would undermine the very force of the gospel to transform cultures and build nations.

In the New Testament, the process of becoming godly, righteous, humble, courageous, loving people who are radically different from fallen human nature and from corrupt cultures — that process is profoundly personal and is a deeply spiritual warfare against Satan and against indwelling sin. Where the gospel takes a detour away from the prioritization of justification by faith and sanctification by the deeply personal process of spiritual warfare, the Christian church will reflect culture, not change it.

Faithful and Forward-Looking

So, what do I conclude? What can I say positively? With all our might, let us take the Christian gospel to all the unreached peoples of the world, and let us present the gospel in the most compelling way we can to the people around us, and let us seek to be so radically changed by the gospel that our lives are full of good deeds, which bring glory to our Father in heaven by showing that our treasure is not on this earth. These good deeds may or may not preserve a nation and build a culture.

We’re not promised, in this age, the survival of any nation or culture. C.S. Lewis said, “Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat” (The Weight of Glory, 46). What we are promised is meaningful lives of love in this world and eternal joy in the next — and that Jesus Christ, when he comes (and he is coming, personally, on the clouds), will create a new nation, a new culture, a new world that lasts forever. And so we pray, “Keep us faithful, and come, Lord Jesus.”