We had an interesting discussion in Revelation class yesterday. It had to do with the difference between Ezekiel eating a scroll in Ezek 2 and John eating a scroll in Revelation 10. While they were both sweet to taste, for John it turned bitter in his stomach. What's the difference?
I take the bitterness of John's scroll to mean that he will suffer on account of his mission, to be Christ's witness. But didn't the OT prophets suffer as well?
The class discussion veered into the idea that the OT prophets never really called the people of God to emulate them (as examples). Whereas in the NT, we are certainly called to emulate Christ (and the apostles/prophets as they follow Christ -- 1 Cor 11:1).
Perhaps this is what the "new command" is all about. While the idea of loving one another is an OT idea as much as a NT one, the idea of sacrifically giving of one's self, to the point of suffering, is "new" in a sense that humanity never really saw that before Jesus came.
A church with an eye toward eternity, then, must be a church that endures suffering well -- a church that doesn't give in to bitterness in the midst of difficulty. Love demands that we hold on to hope.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Important Questions
In this blog I (for now) want to discuss two of the wonderful gifts that have been bestowed on us by our Heavenly Father: our eternal hope of new creation, and the spiritual family of God that we enjoy now.
Both eschatology and ecclesiology are enormous fields, but in this exercise I really want to look at the intersection of these two areas of theology. Namely, two questions:
1. How does eternity influence the church (it's polity, programs, relationships, etc)?
2. How does the community of faith image eternity (how does it show us what new creation will be like)?
I think these are important questions. First, because so much of church "stuff" is just stuff -- meetings and budgets and newsletters and the like. How much of a church's board meetings is about mere stuff and not the stuff of eternity?
Second, we are such materialists. We need eternal values -- and where else are you going to see such things other than within the community of belivers?
I hope to add others to this journey along the way. After all, how can one have a blog about community without a community? We'll see if anyone else wants to come alongside.
Both eschatology and ecclesiology are enormous fields, but in this exercise I really want to look at the intersection of these two areas of theology. Namely, two questions:
1. How does eternity influence the church (it's polity, programs, relationships, etc)?
2. How does the community of faith image eternity (how does it show us what new creation will be like)?
I think these are important questions. First, because so much of church "stuff" is just stuff -- meetings and budgets and newsletters and the like. How much of a church's board meetings is about mere stuff and not the stuff of eternity?
Second, we are such materialists. We need eternal values -- and where else are you going to see such things other than within the community of belivers?
I hope to add others to this journey along the way. After all, how can one have a blog about community without a community? We'll see if anyone else wants to come alongside.
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