The book of Revelation concerns not just the present and future of Christians, but of the entire human race. So, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near” (Rev. 1:3). If churches rise or fall according to their convictions about Scripture, so does the well-being of every Christian.

Survey history and you will soon see that the health of the church rises and falls with its convictions about the Bible. When the church knows and believes that the Bible is God’s Word, it grows as strong as Hercules. It becomes a light on the hill, a sheltering tree with wide-spreading branches.
When the church is confused about the Bible, its light grows dim, its branches wither. It becomes more of a danger than a help.
In Revelation 8-9 the first six trumpets sounded. The seventh trumpet will not sound until chapter 11. In Revelation 10 we stop and reflect on something vital: the character of God’s spoken and written revelation.
Revelation 10 reveals to us six facts about God’s word that when known and believed will strengthen and enliven the church:
1. Jesus Christ is the author of God’s Word.

Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded.Revelation 10:1-3

Basically, angelos means “messenger.” Many debate whether or not this particular messenger is Jesus. I argue that he is, but even if you don’t agree we must all see that he manifests undeniably Christ-like attributes.
First, he is wrapped and robed in a cloud, just like the LORD in the Old Testament. Jesus said that he would return like that for final judgment, in fulfillment of Daniel 7:13:

“But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”Matthew 26:64

Second, his head is crowned with a rainbow, the sign of the Noahic Covenant of mercy when the LORD pledged never again to destroy the world by flood (Gen. 9:14-16). Revelation has already shown us Jesus—the Lamb who was Slain—on the throne and encircled by the rainbow (4:3).
Third, his face shines like the sun. Revelation 1:16 showed Jesus like this, and on the Mount of Transfiguration Peter, James, and John saw the same: “And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light” (Matt. 17:2).
Fourth, his feet (podes can refer either to feet or legs) are like fire. Revelation 1:15 showed Jesus with feet “like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace.” His feet are the solid opposite of the feet of clay of Nebuchadnezzar’s statue, which represented ephemeral world empires (Dan. 2:33).
Fifth, he holds a biblaridion, a little scroll or book. (“Bible” comes from biblion, which was in turn derived from the Phoenician city Byblos, well known as the port through which Egyptian papyrus was imported into Palestine.) For now, we note that in Revelation a scroll usually represents God’s decree for history. We will return to this little scroll in a moment.
Sixth, he plants his right foot on the oceans, and his left foot on the land. This is the Creator of heaven and earth, who stands over and transcends his creation. It recalls Jesus striding over the raging waters of the Sea of Galilee like he owned it. Indeed, he created and owns and rules the universe.
Seventh, he gave “a loud voice, like a lion roaring.” This is the invincible voice of the Lion of Judah, Jesus Christ, who spoke creation into being (Rev. 5:5).
The author of the little scroll, and all of God’s revelation, whether spoken through his prophets of the Old Testament, or his apostles of the New, is Jesus Christ.
“All Scripture is theopneustos”, said Paul (2 Tim. 3:16); theopneustos means “breathed out by God.” Every word and syllable and letter of the Bible comes out of the mouth of Jesus Christ. 
2. God’s Word is Jesus’ powerful voice.

[He] called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write…Revelation 10:3-4

Here we expand on verses 3-4. Last year the mighty cruise ship MS Queen Elizabeth, 300 metres long and weighing 92,000 tons, docked in Hobart. I happened to be on the wharf at its departure, when it gave a triple blast on its horn. It was like the deep bass rumble of a very large cathedral pipe organ, but quantumly louder, easily the loudest man-made sound I’ve heard, and felt. The blast bounced off Mount Wellington and echoed and resounded around the city for a remarkably long time.
Jesus’ Word is echoed by “seven thunders.”
Again and again the Gospels let us hear the mighty power of Jesus’ voice:
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by Aaron M. Renn |
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Evangelicalism has successfully adapted to new media, with various groups creating huge online and social media followings. It has adapted to the rise and fall of evangelistic strategies such as revivals and street preaching. Christians may indeed be a declining and unpopular moral minority, but that is no reason to assume that evangelicalism’s day is done. 

American evangelicalism is deeply divided. Some evangelicals have embraced the secular turn toward social justice activism, particularly around race and immigration, accusing others of failing to reckon with the church’s racist past. Others charge evangelical elites with going “woke” and having failed their flocks. Some elites are denounced for abandoning historic Christian teachings on sexuality. Others face claims of hypocrisy for supporting the serial adulterer Donald Trump. Old alliances are dissolving. Former Southern Baptist agency head Russell Moore has left his denomination. Political pundit David French has become a fearsome critic of ­many religious conservatives who would once have been his allies. Baptist professor Owen Strachan left an establishment seminary to take a leadership position in a startup one. Some people are deconstructing their faith and leaving evangelicalism, or even Christianity, behind. Where once there was a culture war between Christianity and secular society, today there is a culture war within evangelicalism itself.
These divisions do not only represent theological differences. They also result from particular strategies of public engagement that developed over the last few decades, as the standing of Christianity has gradually eroded.
Within the story of American secularization, there have been three distinct stages:

Positive World (Pre-1994): Society at large retains a mostly positive view of Christianity. To be known as a good, churchgoing man remains part of being an upstanding citizen. Publicly being a Christian is a status-enhancer. Christian moral norms are the basic moral norms of society and violating them can bring negative consequences.
Neutral World (1994–2014): Society takes a neutral stance toward Christianity. Christianity no longer has privileged status but is not disfavored. Being publicly known as a Christian has neither a positive nor a negative impact on one’s social status. Christianity is a valid option within a pluralistic public square. Christian moral norms retain some residual effect.
Negative World (2014–Present): Society has come to have a negative view of Christianity. Being known as a Christian is a social negative, particularly in the elite domains of ­society. Christian morality is expressly repudiated and seen as a threat to the public good and the new public moral order. Subscribing to Christian moral views or violating the secular moral order brings negative consequences.

The dating of these transitions is, of necessity, impressionistic. The transition from neutral to negative is dated 2014 to place it just before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, which institutionalized Christianity’s new low status. The transition from positive to neutral is less precise, though the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War in 1989 was clearly a point of major change. I selected 1994 for two key reasons. It represents the high-water mark of early 1990s populism, with the Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives (and, arguably, the peak of evangelical influence within U.S. conservatism). And it was the year Rudolph Giuliani became mayor of New York City, signaling the urban resurgence that would have a significant impact on evangelicalism.
For the most part, evangelicals responded to the positive and neutral worlds with identifiable ministry strategies. In the positive world, these strategies were the culture war and seeker sensitivity. In the neutral world, the strategy was cultural engagement.
The culture war strategy, also known as the “­religious right,” is the best-known movement of the positive-world era. The very name of its leading organization, Moral Majority, speaks to a world in which it was at least plausible to claim that Christians still represented the majority of the country. The religious right arose during the so-called New Right movement in the 1970s, in part as a response to the sexual revolution and the moral deterioration of the country.
Up to and through the 1970s, evangelicals and fundamentalists had voted predominantly for the Democratic party. Jimmy Carter, a former Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, was the first evangelical president. He won the Southern Baptist vote, 56 to 43 percent. Newsweek magazine proclaimed 1976, the year of his election, the “Year of the Evangelical.” As late as 1983, sociologist James Davison ­Hunter found that a plurality of evangelicals continued to identify as Democrats. But under the leadership of people like Jerry Falwell, this group realigned as Republican during the 1980s and became the religious right. Evangelicals remain one of the Republican party’s most loyal voting blocs, with 80 percent supporting Donald Trump in 2016.
The religious right culture warriors took a highly combative stance toward the emerging secular culture. By and large, the people we associate with the religious right today were those far away from the citadels of culture. Many were in backwater locations. They tended to use their own platforms, such as direct mail and paid-for UHF television shows. They were initially funded mostly by donations from the flock, a fact that imparted an attention-grabbing, marketing-driven style. Later, groups such as the Christian Coalition began to raise money from bigger donors, having become more explicitly aligned with the GOP.
Major culture war figures include Jerry ­Falwell of Moral Majority (Lynchburg, Virginia), Pat ­Robertson of the Christian Broadcasting ­Network (Virginia Beach), James Dobson of Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs), Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition (Atlanta), and televangelists Jimmy Swaggart (Baton Rouge) and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (Portsmouth, Virginia).
A second strategy of the positive-world movement was seeker sensitivity, likewise pioneered in the 1970s at suburban ­megachurches such as Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek (Barrington, IL) and Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church (Orange County). This strategy was in a sense a prototype of the neutral-world movement to come. But the very term “seeker sensitive” shows that it was predicated on an underlying friendliness to Christianity; it’s a model that assumes that large numbers of people are actively seeking. Bill Hybels walked door to door in suburban Chicago, surveying the unchurched about why they didn’t attend. By designing a church that appealed to them stylistically, he was able to get large numbers to come through the doors.
Seeker-sensitive churches downplayed or eliminated denominational affiliations, distinctives, and traditions. They adopted informal liturgies and contemporary music. Seeker sensitivity operated in a therapeutic register, sometimes explicitly—the Christian psychologist Henry Cloud has become a familiar speaker at Willow Creek. They were approachable and non-threatening. Today, there are many large suburban megachurches of this general type in the United States, which to some extent represent the evangelical mainstream.
In the neutral world, by contrast, the characteristic evangelical strategy was cultural engagement. The neutral-world cultural engagers were in many ways the opposite of the culture warriors: Rather than fighting against the culture, they were explicitly positive toward it. They did not denounce secular culture, but confidently engaged that culture on its own terms in a pluralistic public square. They believed that Christianity could still be articulated in a compelling way and had something to offer in that environment. In this quest they wanted to be present in the secular elite media and forums, not just on Christian media or their own platforms.
The leading lights of the cultural engagement strategy were much more urban, frequently based in major global cities or college towns. The neutral world emerged concurrently with the resurgence of America’s urban centers under the leadership of people like Giuliani. The flow of college-­educated Christians into these urban centers created a different kind of evangelical social base, one shaped by urban cultural sensibilities rather than rural or suburban ones. These evangelicals tended to downplay flashpoint social issues such as abortion or ­homosexuality. Instead, they emphasized the gospel, often in a therapeutic register, and ­priorities like helping the poor and select forms of social activism. They were also much less political than the positive-world Christians—though this distinction broke down in 2016, when many in this group vociferously opposed Donald Tru­mp. In essence, the cultural-engagement strategy is an evangelicalism that takes its cues from the secular elite consensus. Sometimes they have attracted secular elites or celebrities to their churches.
The political manifestation of the cultural-­engagement approach is seen in politicians like George W. Bush, who touted “compassionate conservatism” and an evangelicalism less threatening to secular society. The vitriol directed at Bush by the left should not obscure the differences in Bush’s own approach. For example, less than a week after 9/11, he made the first-ever presidential visit to a mosque to reassure Muslims that he did not blame them or their religion for that attack. He opposed gay marriage but supported civil unions and pointedly said he would not engage in anti-­gay rhetoric. It is important to stress, however, that pastors and other cultural-engagement leaders within the evangelical religious world were typically studiously apolitical. They consciously did not want to be like the religious right.
Most of the urban church world and many parachurch organizations embraced the cultural engagement strategy, and some suburban megachurches have shifted in that direction. Major figures and groups include Tim Keller of Redeemer ­Presbyterian Church (New York City), Hillsong Church (New York City, Los Angeles, and other global cities), ­Christianity Today magazine (suburban Chicago), Veritas Forum (Boston), Sen. Ben Sasse (Washington, D.C.), contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura (New York City), and author Andy Crouch (Philadelphia).
These different movements represented different responses to the three worlds. But they also reflected other theological, sociological, and cultural differences among the various camps. The culture warriors had a fundamentalist sensibility, and often came from that tradition. Jerry Falwell and Francis Schaeffer both had fundamentalist backgrounds, for example. The seeker sensitives and cultural engagers had a more evangelical sensibility.
Fundamentalism prioritized doctrinal purity and was frequently separatist and hostile to outsiders or those who would compromise on biblical fidelity. Evangelicalism developed, beginning in the 1940s, as an attempt to create a kinder, gentler fundamentalism that could reach the mainstream. Its priorities have been more missional than doctrinal. If we view it in terms of sensibilities, we will find that this split—between doctrinal or confessional purity and missional focus or revivalism—has manifested itself persistently throughout American religious history.
Read More

Since the debut of Darwin’s work in America, views in the church have been diverse; there has never truly been one single perspective that could be described as “the American Christian position” on evolutionary theory and the proper interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative.

In the decades leading up to the 1859 publication of Darwin’s magnum opus The Origin of Species, much of the scientific community in the United States (which included numerous sincere Christians) had already embraced the idea that the earth’s history involved long geologic ages during which many biological species had appeared and later become extinct. Geologists cited the patterns in the fossil record as evidence for long epochs punctuated by sudden changes in the earth’s flora and fauna. Some Christian geologists interpreted these relatively abrupt transitions as markers of divine intervention by which God had specially created new species following population collapses caused by ice ages and cataclysmic floods. Leading academics, such as geologists James Dana at Yale and Edward Hitchcock at Amherst College, believed that Christian teachings on creation could be harmonized with the scientific data by interpreting the “days” of Genesis 1 as representing long ages (the so-called “day/age theory”) or by assuming that there was a long period of time between God’s initial creative act recorded in Genesis 1:1 and the divine activity described in Genesis 1:2 and beyond (the “gap theory”). These ideas contrasted sharply with Irish Bishop James Ussher’s seventeenth-century calculation of the earth’s age—roughly 6,000 years—which was based upon a literalistic understanding of the biblical genealogical records. Thus, prior to the rise of Darwinism in American scientific circles, a diversity of views already existed about how to best understand the early chapters of Genesis in light of scientific evidence.
When the British printing of Darwin’s Origin made its debut in America in late 1859, the majority of scientists had yet to embrace any theory of biological evolution, even though such ideas had been discussed in academic circles for quite some time. It should be noted that skepticism toward evolutionary thought was not always connected to religious convictions. In fact, some devout Christians in the scientific community readily embraced it. Darwin’s greatest American champion, Harvard botanist Asa Gray, was a deeply devoted Presbyterian who disagreed with the claim that the theory of evolution by natural selection was inherently atheistic. Gray, who had corresponded with Darwin on scientific matters since 1855 and went on to facilitate the American publication of the Origin in 1860, argued that natural biological mechanisms of evolutionary change exhibit God’s design just as much, if not more than, instantaneous acts of creation. He used the analogy of cloth woven by hand compared to cloth made by a power loom; both are obviously the product of mindful design, and the latter is even more impressive because of the level of intelligent contrivance involved. Creation is all the more impressive, Gray explained, if God engineered an evolutionary mechanism to accomplish it.
Read More
Related Posts: