This is not the end of the world – just the end of this way of BEING the world.
Buckle up for a wild ride.
Here is the audio for Sunday School podcast http://vermonthillsumc.org/podcast/y-is-for-y2k-2/
You can also listen on Itunes and Stitcher. Read the preview here (link) or the PDF (Y is for Y2K (preview))
Just remember: prophets don’t tell the future so much as they tell the truth in interesting ways.
If same-sex marriage, evolution, end-times, and biblical inerrancy were settled issue – where would your energy go?
I have been thinking about this question for the past year as I returned to an evangelical context from 7 years away. For 7 years I attended a mainline (inter-religious) school and worked at a mainline (liberal) church.
I was struck upon my return to evangelicalism at the amount of energy that goes to LGBTQ discussions, defending creation and biblical authority, and end-times prophecy.
I kept thinking:
“imagine all the good that could be done if our energy didn’t go to this”.
So it has been eye-opening to be appointed to a church this summer where our energy doesn’t go to those issues – it turns out that my suspicion was right! An amazing amount of good does get done when your energy is not being sapped by those controversies.
Those controversies are exhausting and they occupy a disproportionate amount of mental and relational energy for evangelicals.
I sort of get why so many evangelical, charismatic, fundamentalist, and pentecostal young people walk away from the church in their late teens and early 20’s. I get why so many people are now claiming to be ‘nones’ and ‘dones’. If you were raised conservative and then you settled those issues, your faith might seem spent.
I am in the midst of developing a thing for folks who are thinking about faith again as an adult but who want to begin again with those issues off the table. What would faith look like if those 4 variables were changed to givens? Where would your energy go?
I would love to hear from you:
Where would your energy go?
or if you have settled those issue, what has your energy gone to instead?
This video is an experiment to tailor eschatology for an evangelical audience. A pastor requested that I customize my previous EndTimes theory to a specific crowd.
Let me know what you think! I’m afraid that it comes off like a 3 hour class crammed into 12 minutes … because that is exactly the case … 
Intro
Three things up front:
That last point is going to be held loosely. I am totally open to the idea of a Symbolic reading (from the last post) that sees the book of Revelation about all oppression and injustice – in every place in every time. I get the appeal of that and have listened to my friends who hold that position and why they think that it is so important. I get it and I am open to it.
The danger with the Preterist reading (all in the past) is that people immediately jump to “then it has no relevance to the modern reader” argument. I do not see that one directly leads to the other – but I will cover that in part 4.
Having said that I am not sympathetic toward the Futurist or Historicist views, I hope to clarify why in this next post and the next.
Numbers
A couple of things that pre-modern hearers (readers) would have been familiar with that late-modern (enlightenment) folks may not is the imagery embedded in numbers and symbols. While these show up in other places in the Bible (40 days of rain for Noah, the spies spent 40 scouting the promised land, 40 years in the wilderness for Israel, Jonah warned Ninevah of impending doom in 40 days, Jesus being tempted for 40 days, Jesus was seen on earth for 40 days after the resurrection, etc.) they are really evident in apocalyptic.
Simply stated
one = unity
two = witness
three = completeness (heaven)
four = earth
five = intensity
six = man
seven = heaven (3) and earth (4) in unity
eight = newness
ten = intensity (double)
If we don’t understand the way numbers were embedded with meaning, then we are going to be confused, lost, or just wrong about what a passage means or has come to mean.
Numbers like 666 Continue reading “Reading Revelation Better (part 2)”
Bo Sanders: Public Theology 