Sunday’s Notes
“Popular Protestant Preaching put into Proper Preterist Perspective”
A Critique of “War of the Worlds Views” By Gary West - 21 August 2005
The issue in this series of sermons is the Christian world view vs. the secular world view. Dealing with the new age humanist mindset vs. the mind of Christ. In his sermon, Pastor West uses the proper view of a “world view.”
- It is a set of suppositions that each person holds about how the world works and how we fit into it. It is what we believe to be true and untrue. It forms the basis of our values and determines how we behave.
My initial reaction to this is to want to hear how he describes the world view of a Christian and what texts he uses when discussing it. He begins by calling it a Judeo-Christian world view. He says that we both (Jews and Christians) believe in “the wisdom of God.” That Genesis 1:1 is literal and that God is responsible for this world and has created order and structure. “All meaning flows from Him.”
I agree with this definition. The proof text he uses from scripture is where I, as a preterist Christian, start to take issue with the sermon.
Initially the pastor called it a “Judeo-Christian” world view. I agree that though we both believe that all wisdom and meaning comes from God, I disagree that Jews and Christians can be on the same path of reasoning as to the outcome of Gods plan for this world. Jews believe in the success and domination of a race, they do not believe in Christ. Christians should believe in the domination of the reign of Christ through His people. Not that this is a governmental or military type reign, but that our influence is so far reaching, that the world, knowingly or ignorantly, is established in the #1 statue of Christ, to love one another.
The proof text he uses is as follows, and will go to show why a “Judeo-Christian world view” is the wrong title.
1 Cor 2:6 However, among the mature we do speak a wisdom, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 On the contrary, we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery, which God predestined before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age knew it, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written: What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, and what has never come into a man's heart, is what God has prepared for those who love Him. (Holman)
He asserts that the “rulers of this world” are the anti-Christian elements in today’s society. This is an uninformed assumption that is made by 99 percent of protestant preachers. However, this assumption cannot be correct. The historical context of this chapter is, like the entire New Testament, an encouragement for the Christian to stay on the path of Christ in spite of anti-Christian persecution from the Jews outside the church, and to refrain from the temptations of sin that are spreading in the Church.
Almost the entire New Testament was written to encourage them to not fall into the Judaism trap. This is why the text reads in (NLT) “But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would never have crucified our Lord.” This had to be speaking of the Jews, for it is they whom the Christians held solely responsible for the death of Christ. As Christ said it would be.
Matt 23:34 This is why I am sending you prophets, sages, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and hound from town to town. 35 So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
Christ was speaking of Himself as well as those He was sending. “All the righteous blood shed on the earth” is exactly that. The Jews even proclaimed His blood upon their own heads. This separates the idea that today’s view could be a “Judeo-Christian” one. It must be a Christian world view. It was the ideals of the law-zealous Jews that his own proof text speaks of that was in direct opposition of the ideals of Christians and the wisdom of the Spirit.
Christians must wake up to the fact that God does not have a Judeo mindset. It was this Judaist mindset that was the number one enemy of Christ in the first century. God the Father has only one covenant with man and it is the grace covenant bought by the blood of Christ.
TO BE CONTINUED…
“Popular Protestant Preaching put into Proper Preterist Perspective”
A Critique of “War of the Worlds Views” By Gary West - 21 August 2005
The issue in this series of sermons is the Christian world view vs. the secular world view. Dealing with the new age humanist mindset vs. the mind of Christ. In his sermon, Pastor West uses the proper view of a “world view.”
- It is a set of suppositions that each person holds about how the world works and how we fit into it. It is what we believe to be true and untrue. It forms the basis of our values and determines how we behave.
My initial reaction to this is to want to hear how he describes the world view of a Christian and what texts he uses when discussing it. He begins by calling it a Judeo-Christian world view. He says that we both (Jews and Christians) believe in “the wisdom of God.” That Genesis 1:1 is literal and that God is responsible for this world and has created order and structure. “All meaning flows from Him.”
I agree with this definition. The proof text he uses from scripture is where I, as a preterist Christian, start to take issue with the sermon.
Initially the pastor called it a “Judeo-Christian” world view. I agree that though we both believe that all wisdom and meaning comes from God, I disagree that Jews and Christians can be on the same path of reasoning as to the outcome of Gods plan for this world. Jews believe in the success and domination of a race, they do not believe in Christ. Christians should believe in the domination of the reign of Christ through His people. Not that this is a governmental or military type reign, but that our influence is so far reaching, that the world, knowingly or ignorantly, is established in the #1 statue of Christ, to love one another.
The proof text he uses is as follows, and will go to show why a “Judeo-Christian world view” is the wrong title.
1 Cor 2:6 However, among the mature we do speak a wisdom, but not a wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 On the contrary, we speak God's hidden wisdom in a mystery, which God predestined before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age knew it, for if they had known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But as it is written: What no eye has seen and no ear has heard, and what has never come into a man's heart, is what God has prepared for those who love Him. (Holman)
He asserts that the “rulers of this world” are the anti-Christian elements in today’s society. This is an uninformed assumption that is made by 99 percent of protestant preachers. However, this assumption cannot be correct. The historical context of this chapter is, like the entire New Testament, an encouragement for the Christian to stay on the path of Christ in spite of anti-Christian persecution from the Jews outside the church, and to refrain from the temptations of sin that are spreading in the Church.
Almost the entire New Testament was written to encourage them to not fall into the Judaism trap. This is why the text reads in (NLT) “But the rulers of this world have not understood it; if they had, they would never have crucified our Lord.” This had to be speaking of the Jews, for it is they whom the Christians held solely responsible for the death of Christ. As Christ said it would be.
Matt 23:34 This is why I am sending you prophets, sages, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and hound from town to town. 35 So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.
Christ was speaking of Himself as well as those He was sending. “All the righteous blood shed on the earth” is exactly that. The Jews even proclaimed His blood upon their own heads. This separates the idea that today’s view could be a “Judeo-Christian” one. It must be a Christian world view. It was the ideals of the law-zealous Jews that his own proof text speaks of that was in direct opposition of the ideals of Christians and the wisdom of the Spirit.
Christians must wake up to the fact that God does not have a Judeo mindset. It was this Judaist mindset that was the number one enemy of Christ in the first century. God the Father has only one covenant with man and it is the grace covenant bought by the blood of Christ.
TO BE CONTINUED…
posted by Nathan DuBois | 9:17 PM
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