Here we have an inkling of the great obstacle facing western Christianity. How clever the evil one is; he penetrates the political, sexual morality, and scientific realms in order to blind and enslave mankind. Sadly, the Church itself does not stand unscathed in this attack. Fortunately, there is power to the truth, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” (I John 4: 4)

To any with the slightest interest in history, we have just passed through perhaps one of the most tumultuous history-making days of this century. To observe the dismantling of Communism (Marxist-Leninist style) around the world, almost without a shot being fired, is both awesome and baffling at the same time. To the amateur historian, it is either the most remarkable and miraculous event to take place or it is the greatest deception ever yet to be played out on the human race. Only time will reveal what is the truth behind this seemingly crumbling empire. What a comfort to know that God knows.
As our attention shifts from Eastern Europe to Communist China, Cuba, and Korea, we can only wonder what the future holds for these nations. More importantly, we should be certain as Christians to turn our eyes upon Jesus, trusting Him to forge ahead with His wonderful and merciful plan of redemption for all peoples in such days as these. If Communism is truly passing, the vacuum must be filled with something. Western civilization, with its permissive, pornographic, violent, drug-hallucinating societies, can only shudder at the possibilities.
True students of the Word of God and of prophecy know that the only light flashed on the future indicates ominous, evil days before the end comes and our Savior returns in glory. In all our wonder and elation, it behooves us to be wary, perhaps even trembling, as to what great evil crouches at the threshold of the future to rise next. If ever there were days when Christians should pray without ceasing, those days are now! Next to being a student of Scripture, being a student of history provides insights which both infidel and ignorant lack. The one reveals the will of God, and the other the will to power of various evil men.
Paul Johnson, an insightful and investigative British historian, offers perceptive clues as to from where modern history is coming to where it is advancing. He notes that “The nineteenth century saw the climax of the philosophy of personal responsibility—the notion that each of us is individually accountable for our actions—which was the joint heritage of Judeo-Christianity and the classical world.” According to him, “the impact of relativity was powerful because it coincided with the public reception of Freudianism. “Marx, Freud, Einstein – all conveyed the same message in the 1920s: the world was not what it seemed. . . Moreover, Marxist and Freudian analysis combined to under-mine, in their different ways, the highly developed sense of personal responsibility and of the duty towards a settled objectively true moral code, which was at the centre of nineteenth century European civilization.”
Here we have an inkling of the great obstacle facing western Christianity. How clever the evil one is; he penetrates the political, sexual morality, and scientific realms in order to blind and enslave mankind. Sadly, the Church itself does not stand unscathed in this attack. Fortunately, there is power to the truth, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.” (I John 4: 4)
Even as we gapingly watch the dismantling of Communism, we reside in the midst of the dismantling of the moral moorings of our own society and of the impact of Christianity on society. It has proceeded so cautiously that some of us are just now waking up to the fact that we are in hot water (boiling water at that)! Do any of us recoil with pain at the anti-Christian, anti-God environment in which we live? The only way the Church of Jesus Christ can advance in the hellish nightmare into which we have slipped in this century is to stand firm in our trust in God, to press on to holiness of life, and to proclaim release to those still in chains of bondage. Let us give heed to the words of Peter: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of sufferings.” (I Peter 5: 8,9)
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa; this article originally appeared in October 1991 in her church newsletter.

Our God speaks, and he speaks not simply to be heard and not merely to pass along information. He speaks so that we can begin to know the unknowable and fathom the unfathomable (1 Cor. 2:9; cf. Isa. 48:8). You may think you’ve seen it all, and you’ve heard it all, and you’ve experienced everything there is to experience. But you haven’t seen or heard or imagined what the God of love has prepared for those who love him (1 Cor. 2:9). 

What We Want Most

Most of us, deep down, want the same things out of life. Of course, I’m talking about ultimate things, not immediate things. On the immediate level, people have a wide variety of desires. Some people like to travel. Some people like fine dining. Some people prefer indoor plumbing and a comfortable bed. And other people like camping. There are a million different tastes, interests, and hobbies. But if we get to the level of the heart, I think people all around the world generally want the same things: We want purpose. We want to be happy. We want to know we are okay. We want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to be known by someone bigger than ourselves. We want to live forever.

And if you dig around in those desires, you’ll find that most people are waiting for some word from somewhere so that they can finally know this good life. They want a law or a list that will tell them steps to take to get there. They want their teacher to say, “You’ve passed,” or their parents to say, “I love you.” They want to get a call from their dream job or their dream date. They want to hear good news about their retirement fund or their health or their kids. Many of them are listening intently to hear from the most sacred voice they know: their own. And some are desperate to hear from God.

The doctrine of the necessity of Scripture reminds us of our predicament: the One we need to know most cannot be discovered on our own. And it assures us of a solution: this same ineffable One has made himself known through his word. As the Westminster Confession of Faith explains, “Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation.” Holy Scripture, the Confession goes on to say, is therefore “most necessary” (WCF 1.1). The Scriptures are our spectacles (to use Calvin’s phrase), the lenses through which we see God, the world, and ourselves rightly. We cannot truly know God, his will, or the way of salvation apart from the Bible. We need Scripture to live the truly good life.

We need Scripture to live forever. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). There is no other book like the Bible. It reveals a different kind of wisdom, comes from a different source, and tells of a different love.

A Different Source

So where do we go to learn the things God has revealed? Do we look to the trees? What about the inner light? How about community standards? Maybe human reason and experience? The clear testimony of 1 Corinthians is that only God can tell us about God. Just as the spirit of a person discloses the thoughts and feelings and intentions of that person, so also no one can make known the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God (1 Cor. 2:11). The only Being knowledgeable enough, wise enough, and skillful enough to reveal God to you is God himself.

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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Thursday, August 26, 2021
We must always know that the kingdom cannot be fully inaugurated without Christ’s return, and even our very best attempts will be flawed before then. We must always stress the need to respond to Christ’s kingship to further bring the kingdom into the world.

We live in modernity, the source of all evil, according to some. I’m the sort of grumpy curmudgeon who thinks everything was better before the modern era, by which I mean the last 500 years.
This clearly isn’t true. Antibiotics, for one, are a gift we would not want to give up! What is true is that the current age had a particular set of challenges that are different to those of ages before ours; that the digital revolution in 2007 has changed the world in innumerable ways we have not even counted, let alone fathomed; and that there is something hostile to Christianity in our specific cultural moment.
Yet, if we look around at people’s desires and attempts to change the world we see that much of what people desire looks something like the kingdom of God.
Let me give you some examples:
After reading my post on acedia several friends sent me this New York Times piece on ‘languishing,’ which seems to be talking about essentially the same phenomenon. I rolled my eyes at the need to define a new term for something when there are rich resources in the great tradition for us to draw on, but what else did I expect? The nature of liberalism, and for now at least the NYT remains staunchly liberal, is to with dewy eyes reinvent the wheel. I get that there’s no gain when writing to a largely progressive audience to appeal to the great tradition, but it irks me.
(For the sake of clarity, I am using the term liberalism to mean liberalism, rather than to mean ‘left-wing’ as is probably more common in discourse).
It’s exactly the same approach that made everyone declare the Covid-19 pandemic ‘unprecedented’ until it became true by its repetition. Unprecedented in your lifetime, maybe.
The follow-up to that piece outlined ways to ‘flourish’ instead of ‘languish’. Broadly speaking they outlined the Sermon on the Mount.
At the same time the Guardian had this wonderful post-pandemic idea of inventing ‘lockdown days’. As numerous respondents on Twitter pointed out, they’d ‘invented’ humanity’s oldest law, the Sabbath.
A Kingdom
There’s a reason we keep seeing things that look a little bit like the kingdom, and there’s a reason they don’t look as good.
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