Understanding God through anthropomorphic language isn’t just a theological exercise; it’s a transformative experience that profoundly impacts our faith and worship. When Scripture describes God in human terms, it does something remarkable—it brings the infinite within reach of our finite minds. For many Christians, God can seem distant and abstract, a vast entity far removed from the intricacies of our daily lives. However, when we read about God’s “hand” guiding, His “ear” listening, or His “eyes” watching over us, the Divine suddenly becomes more relatable, more intimate. This intimacy is crucial, especially in our prayer and worship, which are inherently relational.

Introduction
Have you ever pondered the majestic imagery in the Psalms, where God is depicted with “wings” sheltering His people, or the powerful depiction in Exodus of God’s “mighty hand” delivering the Israelites from Egypt? These vivid descriptions captivate our imagination, drawing us into a deeper understanding of the Almighty. Yet, this kind of language also raises an intriguing question: How can the infinite God, who transcends physical form, be portrayed with human-like or bird-like features? This enigma brings us to the doorstep of a profound theological concept in Scripture called anthropomorphisms. These literary devices are more than mere poetic expressions; they are bridges connecting the human tactile and material experience with the vastness of the metaphysical and transcendent God. 
Defining Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism, in its essence, is the Biblical attribution of human traits, emotions, or physical characteristics to the description of the infinite God as a way for finite creatures to understand Him. While indeed paradoxical, this concept does not conflict with a proper understanding of Yahweh, as described in John 4:24, which teaches us that He lacks a physical body and transcends human comprehension. Instead, it is a literary tool that God employs to convey His actions and attributes to fallible man in a relatable and understandable manner to His creation. It’s a theological bridge, helping us cross the chasm between our limited perception and the boundless reality of God.
Scriptural Examples
In its rich and varied narrative, the Bible frequently employs anthropomorphic language to describe God, allowing believers to relate to the divine in more familiar terms. This use of human-like imagery is not an attempt to define God in human terms but rather a way to make the nature and actions of the infinite God comprehensible to our finite minds.
Imagine standing at the edge of the Red Sea, feeling the formidable power of God as described in Exodus 15:8, where His might is likened to the “blast of His nostrils” parting the waters. It’s a vivid and awe-inspiring metaphor that paints a picture of divine intervention in a way that speaks to our senses. Then, consider how Isaiah 59:1 brings us closer to God’s nature, not by depicting Him with physical attributes but through the metaphor of a “hand” and an “ear” — symbols of His ability to act and His readiness to listen. This imagery stirs the soul, bridging the human and the divine gap.
Envision further: the “eyes of the Lord” roving across the earth in 2 Chronicles 16:9, a poignant reminder of His all-encompassing watchfulness, or the “arm of the Lord” in Isaiah 53:1, symbolizing a strength that reaches out to save. In Exodus 31:18, the “finger of God” is not a literal digit but a powerful metaphor for divine authorship, as God inscribes the Ten Commandments. Then, there’s the “face of God” mentioned in Genesis 32:30 — not a physical face but an expression of God’s manifest presence. The “voice of the Lord” echoes through Psalm 29:3, not as a sound we hear with our ears but as a declaration of His sovereign will that resonates in the heart.
These are not just poetic words; they are a language that speaks of the divine in terms we can grasp. They remind us that the limitations of human form or senses do not constrain God. His “ear” hears more than we can imagine, His “hand” works beyond the bounds of human capability, and His “breath,” as mentioned in Job 33:4, is the very essence of life itself. In Psalm 17:8, being hidden in “the shadow of Your wings” evokes a sense of divine protection and comfort, drawing us into the assurance of God’s encompassing care.
However, it’s vital to recognize that these anthropomorphic descriptions are not literal. For instance, attributing a physical hand or ear to God would paradoxically limit His omnipresence and omnipotence, confining the infinite to finite dimensions. Instead, these images are intended as metaphors, communicating real truth about God’s attributes and actions in a manner relatable to human beings. They reveal aspects of God’s nature—His power, care, protection, and attention—in ways that resonate with human experience and understanding.
The Bible’s symbolic use of anthropomorphic language bridges the gap between the divine and the human mind. It allows believers to develop a more personal and intimate understanding of God. When Scripture describes God with human characteristics, it invites us into a deeper relationship with Him, one where we can connect to His divine nature through our human experience. Therefore, these descriptions are not just poetic flourishes but are essential tools in helping us grasp the incomprehensible aspects of God’s nature, reminding us of His transcendence and immanence.
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My aim in this series is for the Church to abandon the defeatism we have been force-fed by Hal Lindsey, Left Behind, David Jeremiah, and even many of our Amillennial brothers and to embrace the Biblical case for the ongoing total victory of Jesus Christ.

Announcing a Brand New Series
In the same way you cannot play hopscotch in San Francisco without stepping on a heroin needle, you also cannot play in the halls of modern Christianity without very quickly bumping into one of her many idols. Evangelicalism, instead of being known for a bold addiction to Jesus, a committed love for the church and saints, or a lionhearted courage to see the world transformed by His Gospel, the church has unfortunately been fixated on “Moscow Moods,” big entertainment driven churches, shallow carnal worship styles, influence peddling among pagans, appearing winsome to God-haters, and an ethic that transforms absolutely nothing. If anything, it is evangelicalism who is slowly being conformed to the culture instead of the other, more Biblical, way around.
Somewhere along the way, it seems clear to me we have lost our zeal, lost our salt, and lost our stones. There are, of course, many reasons for this that should and very well could be explored. Yet, while the lethargy and impotence of the Western Church in the modern world could be laid at the feet of a thousand idols, I believe the eschatological sewage known as dispensationalism is an excellent place to begin applying the Postmillennial wet wipes. In the same way a parent cleans the soiled diaper out of love and care for the child, we who love Christ’s Church must discard the soggy polluted garments that dispensationalism have filled with odious piles of theological skoobala.
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This apocalyptic Christmas narrative reorients our understanding of the season. It’s a reminder that the peace, joy, and goodwill come through death, war, and dominion. Theses are not just sentimental ideals but realities grounded in the triumph of Christ over the powers of darkness.

Introduction
When we think about Christmas, our minds often conjure images of serene tranquility: a sleeping babe swaddled in linen, nestled in a manger under a starlit sky, surrounded by gentle animals lowing. We envision angels strumming golden harps, their melodies echoing sweetly with promises of peace on earth and goodwill toward men, heralding the birth of heaven’s all-gracious King. However, a starkly different, yet equally significant, portrayal of the Christmas narrative unfolds in the book of Revelation. Here, instead of peaceful stillness, we encounter a dramatic scene with dragons, falling stars, and a celestial war centered around a particular child. This apocalyptic vision of Christmas, far from the traditional manger scene, challenges us to expand our understanding of what Christmas means and how to apply its incredible and profound implications.
With that, let us explore the apocalyptic Christmas from Revelation 12 and discover what it teaches us.
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child, crying out in labor and pain to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems. His tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. And she gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron; her child was caught up to God and to His throne.Revelation 12:1-5
Examining the Characters
Now…For a moment I want to examine the characters in this scene, look at who they are, what they represent, so that we can understand what is going on. On the surface, the meaning if obvious…This passage is clearly talking about Jesus. He is the male child born to the woman and delivered to us on Christmas Day. He is the King who ascended into heaven after His resurrection as Revelation 12 alludes. But…This passage also presents the familiar scene to us in a very different sort of way…The book of Revelation does not present these events in the material realm like all of the other Christmas passages, which are set in our world, where men and women observed events in space and time…with stables, innkeepers, cities, stars, and wise men. With gifts like gold, frankincense, and myrrh that could be held in the hands. And where the holy family needed to flee from the threats of the maniac Idumean named Herod to a material country and place called Egypt.
Yet, Revelation tells the Christmas story, it seems, in an entirely different dimension. Instead of communicating events in the physical world, it portrays them in the spiritual, cosmic, and apocalyptic realm, which means that is we are going to understand them, we must careful to examine them in their proper setting, identifying what each of the characters in the dram represent and mean.
The Woman: Israel and the Church in Transition
The passage from Revelation 12 introduces us first to a woman “clothed with the sun,” which is a beautiful portrayal of a holy female, set apart by God and enveloped with God’s dazzling creative light. Now…This is not just any female…Many might want to attribute the woman from Revelation 12 to Mary, the physical mother of Christ, but this is not her. The imagery in our passage allows for only one interpretation of this woman’s identity: it is not Mary, but is instead faithful Israel.
Remember, faithful Israel was God’s Old Testament bride (Isaiah 54:5-6) as she is cast in feminine terms. But, since the church is the Israel of God, God’s bride is also the New Testament Church (Ephesians 5:25-27), who was grafted into Israel by the working of Christ (Romans 11:17-24). She, the faithful people of God, is the one whose maker is her husband (Isaiah 54:5) and who in the Old Testament was promised to be restored from her covenant unfaithfulness in the new covenant coming in Christ (Hosea 2:19-20; Jeremiah 31:31-34). At every turn, Israel, the people of God (Past, Present, and Future) are compared to a woman, which is why Revelation describes her this way. She, and by that, I mean the people of God, is the one covered in light through her relationship with Yahweh (Numbers 6:24-26) where He says that He will shine on her and make her shine like a radiant light to all the nations (Isaiah 49:6).
Thus, when we see in Revelation, a shining woman clothed with the sun, we should immediately recognize her as symbolic of God’s bride, the people of God in both Testaments.
Our suspicions are further confirmed when we see that the moon is under her feet and that she is crowned with 12 stars, which is directly alluding to Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:9. As you will remember, Joseph dreamed that the sun (representing his father, Jacob), the moon (his father’s wives), and the 11 stars ( all of his brothers) would all bow down to him and serve him in the future. And because of this dream, Joseph’s brothers become furious at him, selling him into slavery to a midianite caravan, which left him in Egypt, falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife, seeking out a living in prison, all before God elevated him to the position of second in command in Pharaoh’s empire. In this way, he was positioned at just the right place, to deliver his family from a massive famine in Egypt, making the dream true. His father and wives, along with his brothers (all of the people of Israel) bowed down and served Him.
Now, what is pertinent in Joseph’s dream to the description of the woman in Revelation, is that she is depicted with the sun, moon, and stars, which in Joseph’s dream applied to the entire people of Israel. Knowing this, it is especially clear that she is the embodiment of the true covenant Israel that Joseph dreamed about all those years ago. She represents the people of God, who are called the bride in the Old Covenant, but also in the New Covenant. We know this because this passage is not just a reference to a bygone Israelite era but a vibrant, living link that connects the ancient people of God, represented by the twelve tribes, to the unfolding narrative of salvation history in the New Testament. This woman is God’s bride who brought forth the man child messiah, but she is also the bride of Christ, who while persecuted will follow her Lord to victory. We see that as the passage develops (Revelation 12:13-17; 19:7).
We see this unfolding by the woman’s condition, as she is besieged by labor pains, which is more than a mere depiction of her physical anguish. This pain encapsulates, not only the long travail of Israel until the messiah was born, but also the tumultuous journey of the early Church, marred by struggles and persecution, especially under the harsh rule of the Roman Empire. These pains are not just symbolic of her suffering; they are indicative of birth, of new birth, of something new and transformative emerging from the throes of the old. Which is why this woman is the perfect picture. She is the Israel by which the Messiah was born…From her very womb. And she is also the bride of Christ who was birthed by His ascension into heaven. That event, began the shift from the Old to the New Covenant, a pivotal moment in the redemption where the Law and Prophets find fulfillment in Christ and where all the types and shadows of the Old Covenant fade away to make room for what they pointed to all along…Him.
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Our King is the one who put the world on notice. That babe in swaddling clothes announced to the nations you will either bow down and worship Him or be trampled underneath His glorious feet. The Son of Man, the Prince of Peace, entered brokenness and brought His Shalom. He went raiding behind enemy lines, rescuing His elect and delivering them safely back to God.

One of the most significant accomplishments in antiquity, in a history littered with wars and violence, was a hundred years of peace known as the Pax Romana, which in English means the peace of Rome. This unique and peculiar era of warless tranquility, which is unmatched in any other period known to man, saw no more nation rising up against nation, rumors of wars no longer on the lips of women in the market, and the myriad of complex personalities, usually unrestrained, now contained within a burgeoning peace, which lasted from 27BC, under the reign of Augustus, to the death of Nero Caesar in 68 AD. This is the world and setting that the Savior of the world was born.
On that first Christmas morning in Judea, God did not show up for a press conference at a palace or a “Precious Moments” commercial in the big city. Instead, in a surprise attack, He stormed the beaches of Bethlehem. He blitzkrieg’d the stables of that old country barn and assembled all the legions of heaven to herald Christ is Lord to shepherds in their fields. He held His fiery star in the sky to announce kings and kingdoms would either worship Him or be put down. While under the peace of Rome, God was bringing war.
And He was bringing war because this old world had fallen into bitter, soul-crushing slavery to an evil dragon. A serpent of great beguiling who tricked our only king into trading in his scepter for over-tight handcuffs… His crown for rusty chains. On that first Christmas morning, after legions of failed men who came before Him, the heaven-sent God-Man was born the royal Man-King. Delivered as a helpless babe to deliver and set the helpless free.
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When I say that the second coming occurred during the same time described in the book of Acts, I am sure to provoke a few knee-jerk reactions. Today, we have been conditioned to believe the second coming happens in the future when Jesus raptures away the Church from the world. This event, as the left behind novels describe it, will leave the pagan world to sort through millions of piles of clothing, surgical implants, and dentures from the vaporized saints Jesus took away to heaven in their birthday suits. This is not what the Bible teaches and can only be described as an insane and laughable reading of the text.

A Metaphor for NT Eschatology
When constructing an eschatology of the New Testament, you will need to do so in layers, kind of like a house begins with a proper foundation, then successive levels get added, one on top of the next, until finally you can put the chimney and shingles on and live in it. 
The Foundation: Old Testament Eschatology
In that sense, the foundation of New Testament eschatology, the critical understanding that lies under the surface of the New Testament text, is the manifold witness of the Old Testament. If we do not get our eschatological underpinnings from the men of old, or if we do not understand what they were saying rightly, we could waste a lot of energy and effort constructing an eschatological edifice that will not stand. And while many Old Testament passages have been appealed to in our study so far, a fuller Old Testament eschatology is still forthcoming. 
As a reminder, however, of what we have covered so far, the eschaton (the final age of man) was already defined by God in the first age of man. God defined man’s purpose in creation as filling the world with joyful working worshippers (Genesis 1:28). While the first man fell in that task, the rest of the Old Testament is about how a coming man will succeed and have that global Kingdom. While more could be said, that is the point of eschatology in the Old Testament. 
The First Floor: The Eschatology of Jesus
On top of that foundation, however, is the next level of New Testament eschatology developed by Jesus within the Gospels. There, you may have been surprised to learn that Jesus’ teaching on the topic did not concern events long into the future but events that would take place soon after His ascension. This is demonstrated most perfectly in Christ’s Olivet discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and the chapters leading up to it (Matthew 21-23), where Jesus predicts 2 significant events will happen. The first will be that great woes will fall upon the Jewish people for not correctly stewarding the Old Covenant’s mysteries. The apostate Jews will be removed from their station to make way for Jesus’ new bride, the Church, which is made up of Jews and Gentiles who follow Christ. 
The second cataclysmic event Jesus prophesied was the end of the Old Covenant order. This means with His coming, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed, the Levitical priesthood would be severed, the sacrificial system ended, the festivals repealed, and everything existing within the Old Covenant that served as a type and shadow for the coming of Jesus would be moved from the mantle to the museum. All of this would be done to make way for Jesus’ end-time Kingdom, manifesting on earth through the Church as He reigns over it at the right hand of God in heaven. This Kingdom, unlike the one of old, would conquer the world that Adam lost and, through the true and better Adam, deliver back to God a world that is finally and fully filled with worshippers. Jesus predicted this Kingdom would be taken away from the apostate Jews and given to the bride of Christ (Matthew 21:43). He indicated that these earth-shattering events would happen within a single generation (Matthew 24:34). And all throughout that forty-year window of time, as the downfall of the Old Kingdom and the rise of the New is happening, Jesus would provide incredible evidentiary signs and wonders to showcase the truthfulness of His claims.
In previous episodes and blogs, we outlined those Olivet signs and wonders and demonstrated how they do not prove a future eschaton but confirm to His disciples what He said. Again, these were near-term events that actually happened in the disciple’s lifetime and would have been a source of incredible comfort and assurance to them as they walked through these events. The signs Jesus gave them to be on the lookout for were the rise of false messiahs in Judah, the uptick in wars and rumors of wars in the ordinarily peaceful Roman Empire (Pax Romana), a marked increase in large earthquakes and famines, a blistering period of persecutions that Jesus called “tribulations,” “signs of the times” (which included a moral collapse of the Judean people, a period of great evangelism throughout the Roman world, and a great apostasy from increased tortures and persecution), an abomination of desolation in the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed, a period of great tribulations for the Christians just before Jerusalem was destroyed, a judgment coming of Christ to bring God’s wrath upon the apostate city and temple through the Roman armies (Part 1 and Part 2), and apocalyptic signs and wonders in the heavens to confirm what Jesus was saying. These teachings from Christ in the Gospels encapsulate the first level of New Testament Eschatology that is built upon the witness of Moses and the Prophets. 
The Second Floor: The Eschatology of Acts
After constructing a foundation for eschatology from the Old Testament and the first story that was given to us by Christ in the Gospels, we have now made our way up the staircase to the second story of our end-times building, which is provided by Luke in the book of Acts. While many do not think of Acts as an eschatological book, it is the only book in the New Testament that details the earliest days of the Christian Church. And in that sense, it is critical to confirm whether we have understood the Old Testament passages and Jesus rightly. 
Think about it like this, a derelict builder may construct a shoddy foundation, with a piss-poor, jerry-rigged first floor, without too many people noticing. The building stands, its flaws can be covered up a bit, and many uninformed consumers will jump on the discounted price, being none-the-wiser. But, the higher a building goes, the more exacerbated foundation-level issues will become. An inconspicuous error on the ground floor of a building, every cockeyed brick or wonky beam, will become a catastrophe on a higher level (as anyone who has ever played Jinga can attest). In this way, the higher floors confirm a foundation’s trustworthiness and faithfulness. This is precisely what the book of Acts does for the eschatology we have been teaching. It proves that we have understood the Old Testament correctly and that Jesus’ prophecies were coming true in the time frame that He has given. 
For instance, when it comes to Acts confirming the eschatology of the Old Testament, the book gives several fascinating details. It begins with Jesus going up to heaven with the clouds, fulfilling Daniel 7. Jesus also tells His disciples that He has all authority in fulfillment of Psalm 2 and that His disciples are to take His Kingdom to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Daniel 2, Isaiah 9, and Zechariah 7. We also saw how the coming of the Holy Spirit mirrored God’s coming on Sinai, how speaking in tongues reverses the curse of Babel, and how prophecies like Joel 2 were fulfilled before the onlooking Jerusalem crowd’s eyes at Pentecost. This is a brief sketch, but it does demonstrate how the book confirms a near-term first-century inauguration of the final eschaton. 
In the same way, the book of Acts confirms many of the details that Jesus prophesied in the Olivet Discourse and the Gospels.
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Love always seeks the best for a person. And what is best for a person is what God says in His Word. We must love men and women who are being led to the slaughter enough to point them away from these diabolical fantasies, the damned identity politics dreamt up by demons and instead bid them to turn to the truth of the Holy Scriptures. We must love them enough to call them out of their sins and perversions, leading them toward the belly of the fiery abyss. We must love them enough to call them to repent and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ before it is too late. Placating them is not loving them!

A MATTER OF LOVE
Generally speaking, every Christian has some level of understanding that God has called us to love. It is kind of the point of being a Christian, right? Paul says if we do not have love, we are nothing. Jesus said that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And He did not provide such a glorious and precious Son to reproduce more Grinches on Mt. Crumpit or more Ebenezer Scrooges on Business Street in London.
God saved us and did it through the greatest act of love ever recorded to make us loving people. Jesus even said that they (the world) will know that we are true disciples of Jesus by the way that we love one another, which means how we love other Christians (John 13:35). But, Jesus also taught us that we are to love our enemies and to pray for the ones who persecute us, which means our love must extend beyond the people who attend Church with us. We must be willing and ready to love anyone, even those who hate us most ferociously.
And this is where the confusion occurs. Just because we are to love people does not mean we are to love what they do or the sinful movements that they have ensnared them. It is my contention, and what I will be arguing here, that standing against a MOVEMENT is wholly necessary, and it is one of the chief ways that we genuinely love the PERSON.
For a moment, pardon me for my pungency. I will grab the flame thrower to light a couple of candles, and I will do this on purpose. Sometimes, we need a mother’s soothing lullaby to help us fall gently to sleep. Yet there are other times when we need to be shaken from our slumber by the father because the house is on fire. Today will be more like the shaking.
THE ABORTION MOVEMENT
I said above that we must love the sinners caught in sinful movements while hating the movements that trapped them. This is true. Which means we must not hate women who have had abortions. We must love them (profoundly so). This means we must love them enough to hear their stories of pain, to empathize with their struggle, but also to refuse to sugarcoat what they have done and to bid them to repent for murdering one of their children. If that language seems overly harsh, perhaps you are part of the problem.
Think about it, how many children in this country, and around the world, have to brutally die before we start taking this issue seriously? How many heartbeats need to stop for us to go beyond conservative incrementalism and heartbeat bills to flat-out abolish this disgusting, immoral practice? And let me just ask the obvious question: can our actions really be called loving if we allow this culture of death to continue? Are we really being kind to all the innocent babies who were chopped up into bloody pieces inside their mommy’s womb or chemically roasted by toxic abortifacients when we say things to the mother like: “It wasn’t your fault” or “You had no other options.” How sick and demented do we need to be to believe this garbage? Biblically speaking, abortion is the wanton sacrilege of human life, plain and simple, and total abolition of it is the only just outcome. To tell a woman anything else is to lie to her, make excuses for her sin, and allow her to believe the lie that God is not enraged over the shedding of innocent blood. He is the one who heard Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, and He is the one who hears every tortured fetus screaming from the cold metallic pan. And He will avenge them.
From a Biblical and ethical standpoint, there is nothing morally different between a woman getting an abortion and hiring a hitman to kill her toddler. In both instances, she bought and paid for a professional to kill someone she was supposed to love, care, and protect. We must stop euphemizing our language and call this precisely what it is. Abortion is not healthcare. Abortion is the intentional, inexcusable, and unauthorized decision to terminate a precious life that belongs to God alone, who endowed it with significance, dignity, and personhood.
And, while you may still be reeling from my descriptions, this is precisely how we love people. We love them by telling it to them straight and by pointing them to the risen Christ as their only hope. We love man and woman by exposing the lethality of sin, which is awful news, and then by providing them with the remedy, which is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can heal the wounds of a mother who killed her child. He is the only one who can forgive a man for pressuring his wife to let medical serial killers in planned parenthood dismember his legacy. He is the only one who can forgive the murderous doctors who have gallons of blood dripping from their hands. And the only way to truly be loving is to point everyone to Him.
And, what I find most astonishing is how the amazing grace and tender mercy of our perfect spotless savior totally and completely buries all of our sins! As reprehensible as abortion is, and as much shame as that should induce if left to our own devices, a woman who turns to the Lord Jesus Christ is not only forgiven but her shame is also eliminated! Her sins have been washed white as snow, and He restores her to royalty in His Kingdom. She has been given a new and glorious nature that cannot be taken away from her. She is healed! She is loved! She is restored! She is no longer known by a scarlet letter. And she may well worship in eternity alongside her aborted child. How? Because He took the curse that she deserved and gave unto her the honor she could never earn! Jesus Christ, her Lord and Savior, overpowered the putrescence of our iniquities and rescued us for His glory and our great good. This is true for all sinners! Why do we hold back from declaring this message? Why do we think this is unloving? And because of that, why do we entirely pervert this glorious Gospel by avoiding nearly half of it, skipping past the bad news of sin and death, to accommodate a sinner’s fragility? If you throw out the bad news, the good news makes no sense! If you throw out the need for a savior, you no longer have the Gospel! That is not the path of love or how we ought to love anyone.
At the same time, while I love the woman who has had an abortion, I must hate the abortion movement with every bone in my body. I will ever be at war against this modern day temple to Moloch! Why? Because it is the movement that is promoting, cheering on, and subsiding the murder of nearly a million image-bearing humans every year! This movement was dreamt up in the recesses of hell, fueled by the power of demons, and has captivated a swampy and pathetic government of fiends who would rather kill its citizens than lose political power or funding. I will love the person enough to hate such a despicable movement. And I will hate the movement enough to make war with it all my days.
THE LMNOP MOVEMENT
We must not hate the sodomites or lesbians who are caught in nature-denying, God-hating behavior. We also must not hate transgender people who have denied one of the most basic tenets of reality: their own biological gender. And, furthermore, we must not hate human beings who are mired in such delusional confusion, that single persons now want to identify as plural pronouns, or the genetic human who now want to use a litter box instead of a toilet. This is not to mention the kind of mental disorder that would cause a homosapien to identify as a two-spirit penguin. This would be hilarious if it were not true. Being true, I am heartbroken for them. I am shocked and grieved that such an apparent mental health crisis, of this magnitude has broken out in the Western world, and the “adults in the room” are trying to cure it with identity politics and clever deceptions. This is like trying to put a fire out with gasoline or trying to plug that hole in the Titanic with bubble gum. Instead of receiving the help they need to confront such vivid and wretched delusions, people today are force-fed horse manure from a society that absolutely hates them and a medical establishment that is profiting from lopping off their genitals.
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When adopting a hermeneutical framework for reading the Bible, the standard evangelical method is to try and understand what the original author was attempting to communicate to the original audience. When you do that, the only viable method of interpreting eschatological passages is the method known as partial preterism. Partial because we do not believe everything in the Bible has already been fulfilled, but when looking at the subject objectively, it is clear that the majority of its future-oriented texts have already been fulfilled. 

If you have been following along with our more recent episodes, you will know that we have been in a mini-series in the book of Acts, looking at all the eschatological passages within. This is also part of a larger macro-series on the end-times that began in the book of Malachi, crossed the intertestamental gap and looked at the eschatology of John the Baptist, then plunged into the eschatology of Jesus, traversing critical texts in Matthew, as well as the tremendous eschatological prophecy found in the Olivet discourse. Today is our thirty-fourth episode dealing with eschatology.
With that, you may be wondering, out of 84 total episodes of the PRODCAST, why would we devote 34 episodes to eschatology? That question is easily answered. Because your eschatology will dictate the way you engage with culture. To say that differently, what you believe about the destination of human history will shape your thoughts about its direction. If you believe the world is basically barreling over a cliff’s edge, going from bad to worse, ready to implode at a moment’s notice, then you will either try and save as many people as you can before the collapse or you will huddle away in your bunker until the commander returns to rescue you. You will not be interested in fighting any losing battles. You will not put energy and effort into preserving anything or building anything because what moron would waste their time arranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship? 
No, if that is the destination we are all heading in the eschaton, then you will aim all of your efforts toward making as many converts as you can before the imminent rapture, and you will leave the time-consuming things like making disciples and building the next Christendom to fall by the wayside. And that would be the right approach if the world were moments away from catastrophe. 
But, what if, on the other hand, you believe that history is His story of great victory and that over the last two thousand years, He has been building His Church, His Kingdom has been growing, and it will continue to grow until His reign of peace covers the earth with His glory and covenant blessings? If you believe that, and there are good reasons for doing so, then you would not bury your head in the proverbial sand. You would not frantically seek to make a litany of shallow converts. Instead, you would build churches that preach the Gospel and plant new churches that make disciples. You would run like you are running the Iron Man instead of the 60-meter sprint. You, my friend, will get up and build! 
This is especially important to me and central to the mission of this show because I began this as a way of invigorating Christians. The tagline that I say before every episode, “to prod the sheep and beat the wolf,” is my admission that the Church in America has been in a state of gross lethargy, and we need to wake up, shake things up, and get on with building the Kingdom we have been commanded to build wherever God has called us to live. Yet, because many Churches and many within the Church have been in full-scale retreat mode, hiding from this culture for the last several generations instead of engaging it, three things have inevitably occurred:

A legion of savage wolves have multiplied like rabbits without fear of reprisal. This is because weak-kneed pastors, shallow churches, and uninvolved Christians have allowed the hounds of hell to proliferate unchecked in both the Church and throughout this world.
Because the Church has overwhelmingly abandoned culture, society around us has decayed like a year-old Ribeye, left out on the counter, and now stinks to high heaven.
Because the Church has focused so much of its energy on making converts instead of disciples, the vast majority of Christians today are spiritually immature and incapable of even lifting the sword of truth, much less wielding it in battle. 

This is why a salty little show like this exists, and this is why we focus on a topic like eschatology: because we want to see the Church get prodded into faithful activity and to see the wolves and the enemies of God beaten into submission. But to do that, we need to be focused on the right kind of eschatology. 
The Kind of Eschatology Matters
There is no debate on whether Jesus wants us to be engaged with culture. When He told us to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19), He told us to be about transforming them. That work will continue until all the nations bow their knee to King Jesus and joyfully obey Him. Further, by calling us salt (Matthew 5:13-16), Jesus intends on His Church to be the agent of preservation in a culture that would decay and rot without us. In the same way that meat would be packed with salt before the dawn of refrigeration, the nations of this earth must be packed full of Christians who will act for the preservation and renewal of the world instead of hiding from it. “This is why Jesus called us to be lights that shine in crooked generations (Philippians 2:14-16), like a lampstand (Revelation 2:5), set upon a hilltop for all the world to see (Matthew 5:14).
Yet, as we have said before, certain eschatological schools of thought invigorate our cultural engagement and others (the wrong ones), which stifle it. While a full-scale treatment of this is impossible here, I want to break down the primary schools of eschatological thinking into two camps so that you will know where this show comes from and why we are so jolly. We need to talk about eschatology in two particular ways to do this. First, when does the millennium happen? And when will Jesus’ return occur in relation to that millennium? And second, what hermeneutical framework should we use to interpret all of the eschatological passages in the Bible? Let us begin with the millennium. 
The Millennial Challenge
If you are still getting familiar with these categories, the millennial Kingdom is the one-thousand-year reign that John speaks of in Revelation 20. It is Jesus’ reign over the whole earth, where the entire planet comes under the banner of His Lordship when Satan is bound for a thousand years, and Jesus’ Kingdom of peace reigns among the nations without opposition. Concerning this passage, there are 3 primary schools of thought.  
Premillennialism
The first is called premillennialism, which holds that Jesus will return in the future to this earth (rapturing His Church out of it and crushing Antichrist’s 7-year reign of terror) before He sets up His literal and physical one thousand-year millennial Kingdom. According to the premillennialists, Jesus is not reigning at the right hand of God as Earth’s current King but is instead sitting at the right hand of God, awaiting the time when He can return and set up His millennial Kingdom. This punts the reign of Christ into the uncertain future and allows premillennials to view the world pessimistically since they believe it is still under the authority and control of the devil. While it is essential to recognize that various streams and differences exist within the premillennial camp (i.e., dispensationalism, historical premillennialism, etc.), this represents a basic schema. 
Amillennialism
The second primary millennial position is called amillennialism, which holds that Jesus is in His reign right now. Unlike premillennialism, He is not waiting for it to occur in the future; he is ruling currently in heaven. And, just as the prefix “pre” tells us something about what premillenials believe, the “a” prefix says something about what amillennialists think as well. Generally speaking, when “a” is applied to the front of a word, it is done so as negation. For instance, a theist believes in the possibility of a god, whereas an Atheist does not. The “a” in atheist negates the term theist.
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In that moment, He saw a demonstration that the Lord reigns. And that gave our brother courage to take every strike all the way to the bitter end. We know from Acts that He has come into His Kingdom. He has all authority in heaven and on earth. And while this martyrdom of Stephen in Jerusalem kickstarted one of the worst periods of persecution and martyrdom the church has ever seen, the standing Christ reminds us that evil did not win, Christ’s Church was not be defeated, and that we must march on in our battles today, knowing that we are gaining ground.

The Beginning of Martyrdom
When you examine the history of the Christian church, there are many reasons why believers have been persecuted and even martyred for their faith. For instance, during periods of Roman persecution, it was commonplace for believers to be murdered for refusing to acknowledge Caesar as Lord. The Romans did not care in the slightest if people wanted to worship a messianic upstart that they, in turn, crucified. They only took issue when Caesar was not a part of your pantheon. You could worship any number of ridiculous gods so long as you acknowledged the lordship of Caesar. And since Christians only have one Lord, they were killed in droves and significantly persecuted.
Now, as we have noted in previous articles, the most violent period of Christian persecution, when you look at it by the percentage of Christians murdered for their faith, overwhelmingly occurred in the first century at the hands of the bloodthirsty Jews. Long before Christianity reached a million people, or 2.4 billion for that matter, and long before it had spread throughout the Roman world, which occurred around the 3rd century AD, this messianic offshoot of Biblical, Old Covenant, Judaism called “the way” (Acts 9:2) began in Judea, and was heavily persecuted in Jerusalem, which is precisely what Jesus promised would happen (Matthew 24:9). That persecution began almost immediately and increased in intensity quite rapidly.
For instance, in Acts 2, the crowds mocked the disciples for speaking in various tongues at Pentecost. In Acts 4, the persecutions intensified, leading to their arrest and warning to never teach in the name of Jesus again. When they failed to heed the warning, they were arrested a second time in Acts 5, this time without warning or offer of release. It was at this point that an angel broke them out of prison, and they went back to the Temple Mount teaching, which led to a third arrest and their first series of violent beatings. By the time you get to Acts 6, one of the early deacons, a man named Stephen, is not only arrested for his faith in Jesus and not only beaten, but he becomes the first Christian to undergo the brutality of martyrdom. After Stephen was stoned, thousands upon thousands of Christians would be butchered in the first century by the Jews in various and sundry ways.
Everybody Needs a Recap
Now, if you have been tracking along with this series on the eschatology of Acts, you will remember where we have been. In week 1, I identified the need for an eschatological series in the Book of Acts. In week 2, we saw how Jesus’ end-time Kingdom was inaugurated in heaven at His ascension. In week 3, we watched as significant eschatological passages from the Old Testament were fulfilled at Pentecost, bringing that heavenly Kingdom down to earth so that it exists in both places. Then, in weeks 4, 5, 6, and  7, we examined Peter’s first eschatological sermon given in Jerusalem, which not only foreshadowed the awful doom of all those who reject Christ but also set forth the glorious Kingdom that would be inherited by all who love Christ. In week 8, we examined Peter’s second eschatological sermon, which teaches how expansive Jesus’ eschatological Kingdom will be on earth for the elect of God. And then last week, we witnessed how the Jews, unwittingly following the prophecy of Gamaliel, were found to be fighting against God and rejecting His Kingdom by rejecting and persecuting His Church. And, just like the messianic upstarts mentioned in Acts 5 (Theudas and Judas), the Jews would soon likewise perish at the hands of invading armies.
Acts and the New Exodus
In a sense, our time in the Book of Acts has been telling us the story of a brand new Exodus. A true and better deliverer than Moses has risen up in Christ, calling all of His people to leave their slavery to sin, be removed from the tyranny of the serpent king, and follow Him to a paradise land where they will be under the canopy of His covenant blessings forever. Like Israel, the early church was experiencing great fruitfulness and multiplication (Exodus 1:7; Acts 6:7). Like Israel, the people of the land were becoming jealous of them and were attempting to stomp them out (Deuteronomy 32:21; Acts 5:17). Like Israel, the early church was being led by the hovering fire and wind cloud of God’s presence. And, in the same way, this growing expansive wandering people became too much for one man, Moses, to administrate faithfully (Exodus 18:17-21), so too, the early church took the advice of Jethro and divvied out the responsibilities to faithful men in the community so that the apostles could focus on the intercessory ministry of the Word and prayer (Acts 6:1-3). Some of these men were set apart as elders in the community (see Numbers 11:16 and Acts 14:23), while others were set apart, like the Levites, as deacons (Acts 6:5-6). Regardless of their position, everyone would come together to joyfully serve the living Christ (the cornerstone of the church) in seeing the Kingdom built up as the true end-time temple (1 Corinthians 3:16), built with living stones (1 Peter 2:5) that would fill the whole earth with God’s glory.
These events are clear allusions to the original Exodus and help us understand why God is going to destroy the first-century Jews. Instead of being the chosen people of God, who with tender hearts followed His chosen deliverer, they grumbled like their ancestors before; they turned on God’s deliverer and not only threatened to kill Him like Moses but shamefully succeeded. For their covenant crimes, killing God’s one and only Son (Acts 2:36), God would do to them what He did to the original wilderness generation, allowing their dead bodies to litter the wilderness ground after a period of forty years (Numbers 14:33; Matthew 24:28, 34).
Amid that Exodus context, God began to raise up faithful men out of that crooked and perverse generation (Deuteronomy 32:5; Acts 2:40). As in the original Exodus, where Caleb and Joshua were set apart for their faithfulness and were allowed to enter the Lord’s good land (Numbers 32:12), seven men were appointed to the office of deacon because of their faithfulness to God. And like Caleb and Joshua, they would not die in the Old Covenant sands with the rest of the rebels; they would lead God’s people like Joshua into the New Covenant paradise that we call the Kingdom of God (or the age of the church).
One of them named Stephen, after they laid hands on him and installed him to the office of deacon, was said to be like Joshua, full of faith and serving God in the power of the Holy Spirit (Deuteronomy 34:9). According to the text, he was doing signs, wonders, and miracles just as Moses did of old (Deuteronomy 34:10; Acts 6:8). When the people of Judah turned on him and threatened to kill him, he broke out in one of the great sermons of the New Testament, mirroring the words of Moses in Deuteronomy 32. In that sermon, he walked the crowds through the noteworthy events of the Exodus and showcased how they had the same heart as the stiff-necked people of old (Acts 7). Just before his Spirit-wrought message, the people noted that his face was shining like the face of an angel, which is the same phenomenon that happened to Moses (Exodus 34:29-35; Acts 6:15).
In almost every paragraph of the book of Acts, Exodus themes are present. And this, of course, is not by accident. God is alerting us that the same kind of people who rejected Him before will reject Him again. They will be given a window of forty years to repent. And because of their unfaithfulness, they will likewise perish.
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Acts 5 reminds us that our actions matter. Moreover, we have a choice. We can fight against God and His purposes in the world, which will bring us to ruin. Or we can fight with Him, join Him in His battle, and see the world come actively under His Lordship.

Introduction
In our quest to uncover the end-times themes buried within the Book of Acts, we have begun to unveil the hidden depths and subtle intricacies of the early church’s well-developed eschatology. We learned that eschatology is not for cloud gazers, numerologists, or makers of jumbled charts but for those who are willing to put in the work to see the Kingdom built. It is not filled with a mass of spiritually overweight spectators who are just as much a consumer of church as the Nutty Professor is a consumer of fried chicken. But unlike the Klumps, this one is not a joke.
Instead, the eschatology Luke records is for the one who will put his hand to the proverbial plow and break a symbolic sweat. It is for the here and now not to decode the uncertain events concerning an even less certain future. Acts tells us when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and other believers, and when they began doing miracles in Jerusalem and Samaria, that the end was upon them; the end of the ages had come.
For some, that end would climax in smoke and flames, devastation and destruction, as seen temporally in the events of AD 70, which stands as a type of eternal hell. For others, the end of the Old Covenant era of temples, a priesthood, and feasts would be joyfully replaced by the reign of God’s one and only Son, who sat at His right hand until all of His enemies would be made a footstool for His feet. Moreover, as we learned last week, His reign would not cease, be paused, or could ever be overcome until the whole world, every family on earth, is under the blessing of God! What a glorious message our friend and brother Luke has been telling us!
Now, as we stand upon the plank of our ninth blog in Acts, my aim is for us to be recast into its bristling blue waters, a new tank of oxygen in tow, as we plunge into its fifth chapter. However, before we put on our snorkel, we need to remember the flow of the book. In Acts 1, Jesus prepares His disciples for what life and the Kingdom will look like in His absence as they wait for the promised Spirit to come and empower them. In Acts 2, Jesus sends the third member of the trinity upon them in dramatic fashion, causing a crowd to swell, Peter to preach, and about three thousand souls to be added to the believing ranks. After his first powerful sermon, in Acts 3, the apostles began performing miracles in the city, drawing another large crowd, and Peter preaching another powerful sermon. Out of fear that these events would spark an uncontrollable revival, the Jewish leaders began persecuting and arresting believers in Acts chapter 4, especially those who served God publicly.
As the narrative unfolds into Acts 5, we find the apostles released, only to be swiftly summoned before the Sanhedrin – the paramount Jewish council of the era. Their alleged transgression centers on their steadfast and unyielding proclamation of the name of Jesus despite explicit directives to desist from their missionary activities. This resolute commitment to their faith prompts vehement opposition from the religious authorities, who seek to quell the burgeoning Christian movement once and for all.
Acts 5:33-39, therefore, emerges as a pivotal juncture within this narrative. It is a moment when the Sanhedrin, incensed by the apostles’ unwavering conviction to continue unabated, prepares themselves to take severe and even bloody action against the apostles as they had against their Lord. However, amidst this maelstrom of tumult and theological fervor, an unlikely voice of moderation rose in the form of Gamaliel – a respected Pharisee and a learned doctor of Jewish Law, who plays prominently in today’s passage, along with the two false messianic figures we will hear about in a moment. He, Gamaliel, ardently advocates for the council to proceed with extreme caution lest they be found laboring against God.
The events chronicled in Acts 4 through Acts 5 encapsulate a volatile chapter in the annals of the early Christian church and will teach us much about eschatology. Let us read verses 33-39.
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Christ put His Church here so that through His Spirit we can bring about the restoration promised in the Holy Prophets. This means we must preach the Gospel so that more men will be saved, but it also means we must teach those men how to live like Christians and obey everything Jesus says (Matthew 28:18-20). And when we do that and begin discipling the peoples and nations, His restoration program will noticeably come.

How Big Will It Be?
When we contemplate the size of Jesus’ Kingdom, and by that, I mean His Kingdom here on earth, the Church, what are the expectations that come to mind? Will that Kingdom remain in the minority, ever and always in remnant status, never able to gain ascendancy among the competing worldviews and world religions that continually jockey for power in a fallen cosmos?
Or will His Kingdom grow? And by growth, to what degree are we speaking? Will the visible Church on earth grow to become ten percent of the world’s population? Will it grow to over twenty? How about fifty? Or if you are very optimistic, will it become the majority in some way or fashion? And if it is the majority, does that mean fifty-one percent? Or are we talking about something much grander?
These are the questions I would like us to consider today as we re-enter the book of Acts and examine the eschatological underpinnings of the early Church. But, to do that, we have to understand some essential concepts that Luke springles along the way.
The Briefest of Backgrounds
Series Background
If you have not been with us over the last eight weeks, in week 1, I sketched out the need for an eschatological series in the book of Acts. In week 2, we saw how Jesus’ end-time Kingdom was inaugurated in heaven at His ascension. In week 3, we watched as significant eschatological passages from the Old Testament were fulfilled at Pentecost, bringing that heavenly Kingdom down to earth. Then, in weeks 4, 5, 6, and  7, we examined Peter’s deeply eschatological sermon in Jerusalem, which explained the glorious Kingdom that believers were entering and foreshadowed the awful doom all those who reject Christ in Judah would soon endure.
Textual Background
After Peter’s sermon, about 3000 souls were added to Jesus’ Kingdom at Pentecost with each receiving the covenant sign of membership in Jesus’ Church (Acts 2:41). Early on, Christ began weaving His people together around apostolic teaching of the Word, fellowship and communion, and also prayer (Acts 2:42). The community was also overwhelmed by the miraculous outpouring of the Spirit, which was being manifest through the working of miracles (Acts 2:43). Just as Elisha was given a double miraculous portion from Elijah and did exactly twice the miracles as the former, so the Apostles were given a double portion by Christ, who empowered them to do more miracles in the first century that He did, as a part of their ministry to harken all Judah to repentance (John 14:12-14). And many did repent. But many others didn’t.
Along with the preaching of the Word, prayer, miracles, fellowship, and the administration of sacraments, many of the earliest Christians were selling their property and pooling their resources together to address the needs of the Church. This is not, as some foolish moderns would ascribe, an appeal to Christian socialism. This, instead, is the most unmistakable evidence that the early Church understood the warnings of Jesus and the sermon of Peter. Think about it: Jesus warned Peter and the Apostles that Jerusalem was going to be surrounded by armies (Luke 21:20), set on fire (Matthew 22:7), and the stench of their carcasses placed in heaping piles would attract the ravenous swarms of hungry vultures (Matthew 24:28). If you owned property in Jerusalem and this is what your resurrected Lord predicted was going to happen in that city, wouldn’t you sell too? And, if you loved your countrymen as the first-century Jewish Christians did, wouldn’t you want to pool your resources within the Church and use that money as a missions fund to reach them? By selling your home, you could live within the city with enough resources to be on mission for many years, and when all of the worst aspects of Jesus’ prophecy began happening, you could flee the city and escape its awful downfall without fear of losing your home. In fact, this is precisely what the first-century Christians did (Eusebius, “Ecclesiastical History” (Book III, Chapter 5).
For a time, the apostles were still going to the temple complex, preaching the Gospel there, teaching, and performing various miracles as a sign of Jesus’ Kingdom and Lordship. On one such occasion, Peter and John healed a man born lame just outside the temple at its gate (Acts 3:2-8). As Luke records it, the man began leaping and skipping for joy, entering the temple for the first time in His life Because the Son of righteousness had just healed Him through His anointed apostles (Acts 3:8). This is a clear fulfillment of both Isaiah and Malachi’s great prophecy, which says:
“But for you who fear My name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings, and you will go forth and skip about like calves from the stall.”—Malachi 4:2
Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will shout for joy. For waters will break forth in the wilderness and streams in the Arabah.—Isaiah 35:6
Our Text Today
This brings us to our passage for today, where Peter begins his second eschatological sermon. Luke records:
“Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk? 13 The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him.14 But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15 but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses. 16 And on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; and the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all. 18 But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.—Acts 3:12-18
Eschatological Tidbits
Much could be discussed in the first part of this sermon. For instance, Peter does not attribute the power to heal this man to his personal piety or power but to the power and authority of the ascended and glorified Lord. He specifically points out His ascension unto glory because it was from that heavenly enthronement ceremony, that Christ sat down to rule, with His first act as King being to send His Spirit at Pentecost. By doing this, Christ made His power and His Kingdom available and accessible to the people of God on earth, which Peter is alluding to. This was an eschatological event.
Peter also refers to Jesus as the “Prince,” which is an apparent reference to the anointed Messiah of Daniel 9:25. In one of Daniel’s most Christocentric prophecies, Messiah (The Prince) would come and finish the transgressions of Jerusalem by destroying it, He would make an end to His people’s sin by atoning for their iniquity, and He would usher in His earthly Kingdom of everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24). By Peter calling Jesus the “Prince,” he is reminding us that Daniel 9 was being fulfilled in his day and hour.
In addition to the specific reference to Daniel 9 (especially of the Messiah being cut off in verse 26), Peter tells us that numerous other eschatological passages in the Old Testament were fulfilled in the suffering of Jesus. You may think of passages like Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, and Zechariah 12 as clear examples.
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