A Return to Biblical Christianity—Part Two

January 1, 2025

Dave Hunt

Excerpted from Beyond Seduction* by Dave Hunt

How could the church be expected to establish the kingdom by taking over the world when even God cannot accomplish that without violating man’s freedom of choice? During His thousand-year reign, Christ will visibly rule the world in perfect righteousness from Jerusalem and will impose peace upon all nations. Satan will be locked up, robbed of the power to tempt. Justice will be meted out swiftly. The lion will lie down with the lamb and the desert will blossom like a rose. The whole earth will almost resemble the Garden of Eden before the fall. Yet at the end of the thousand years, when Satan is released, millions of those who have experienced the Edenic state and Christ’s perfect reign all their lives will be deceived, just as Eve was. Converging from all over the world to war against Christ and the saints at Jerusalem, these rebels will finally have to be banished from God’s presence forever (Revelation:20:7-10).

The millennial reign of Christ upon earth, rather than being the kingdom of God, will in fact be the final proof of the incorrigible nature of the human heart. The true kingdom which “flesh and blood cannot inherit” (1 Corinthians:15:50) pertains to the heart into which Christ has been received as Lord and Savior, and will be fully realized only in the “new heaven and new earth” (Revelation:21:1). Of this “everlasting kingdom” (Psalm:145:13) and the peace it establishes “there shall be no end” (Isaiah:9:6-7); yet the millennium ends, and in a war. A perfect Edenic environment where all ecological, economic, sociological, and political problems are solved fails to perfect mankind. So much for the theories of psychology and sociology and utopian dreams.

Christ declared that it was not the things on the outside but what man is within his heart that causes him to do evil (Matthew:15:16-20). Only those who admit this fact and in humility confess their guilt, cry out to God for mercy, and accept His remedy in Christ are cleansed of sin and made into new creations. They alone can dwell in God’s new universe. The victorious Christian has enthroned Christ in the place of self, having received Him to dwell in his heart by faith (Ephesians:3:17). Indeed, Christ has become his very life (Colossians:3:3-4). The practical evidence for that fact, so often lacking among those who call themselves Christians, is the power to live for others instead of for self:

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? (Isaiah:58:6-7).

Far from being restored to Adam’s state, by God’s grace what we have received in Christ as the last Adam is infinitely better than anything known to the first Adam. Those who are in Christ are part of a new creation for whom “old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians:5:17). Our primary goal is not to “restore earth” but to call mankind to citizenship in a “new heavens and a new earth” (2 Peter:3:13). We know, in fact, that “the heavens and the earth which are now” are doomed, “reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peter:3:7,10). This destruction of the present universe must not be dismissed as “negative” or “gloom and doom.” On the contrary, it ought to motivate the Christian, as it did Peter, to holy living:

Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with the fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness (2 Peter:3:11-12).

The Narrow Gate to Heaven

The fact that the Christian no longer belongs to this earth but to heaven is a major teaching of the New Testament. Paul wrote that God has “blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ” (Ephesians:1:3). As our forerunner and representative, Christ has entered into heaven for us (Hebrews:6:19-20). Indeed, Paul declared that we are already seated “in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians:2:6), having become by His grace “fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God” (Ephesians:2:19), and are now “heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans:8:17). Our citizenship “is in heaven” (Philippians:3:20). Peter assures us that we have an “inheritance incorruptible and undefiled” that is “reserved in heaven” for us (1 Peter:1:4). It is to heaven where Christ has gone to His Father’s right hand, and it is to heaven that we expect at any moment to be taken in an ecstatic catching-away (rapture):

In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also (John:14:2-3).

The Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout...and the dead in Christ shall rise first; then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thessalonians:4:16-18).

Far from indicating that the world will be converted, the Bible makes it clear that the overwhelming majority of people will reject Christ. We will be able to persuade only a few (John:15:16-19) to enter through the “strait gate” onto the “narrow way” to heaven (Matthew:7:13-14) that Christ Himself claims to be and of which He said, “Few there be that find it.” And we are to assure these “few that be saved” (Luke:13:23) that Christ is returning to rapture them out of this world before God’s judgment falls upon it. Far from expecting Christianity to become the prevailing belief system in this world, we know that “the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (1 Corinthians:1:18) and that those who perish, sadly enough, represent the overwhelming majority:

Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat; because strait is the gate and narrow the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it (Matthew:7:13-14).

Knowing that most of those he encountered would reject the gospel of Christ did not discourage Paul from preaching this gospel; rather it increased his determination to win as many as he could. The love that caused Christ to die for those who hated and rejected Him (and even for those who crucified Him) “constrained” Paul to carry the message of that love to the world of his day (2 Corinthians:5:14)—and to warn them of the eternal consequences of rejecting Christ. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord [in judgment],” Paul wrote, “we persuade men” (2 Corinthians:5:11). Driven by Christ’s love and his own passion for the lost, Paul declared:

I am made all things to all men that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake (1 Corinthians:9:22-23).

We ought to do the same. Although apostasy must come before Christ’s return, and deception and seduction will grow worse and false prophets increase in number and influence, that is not an excuse for any true Christian to become discouraged or to lessen his efforts to win the lost. Christ’s parable of the ten virgins (“At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him”—Matthew:25:1-13) indicates an awakening even among those who have “slumbered and slept” while “the bridegroom tarried.” And his parable of the “man [who] made a great supper, and bade many” (Luke:14:16-24) indicates that alongside the last-days apostasy there will also be perhaps the most fruitful time of evangelism in history:

Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the Lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled (Luke:14:21-23).

Making an Essential Choice

Heaven was both the great hope that Christ left with His disciples and an integral part of the gospel preached by the early church. Christ told His disciples, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven…for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew:6:19-21). While we ought to demonstrate genuine concern and to work to restore ecological wholeness, we must also remember that every solution to earth’s problems which is not founded upon the lordship of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins we have in Him is temporary at best and ultimately doomed to fail. Paul cites as evidence of the Thessalonians’ newfound faith not only their “work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope” and the fact that they had “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God,” but also that they were “wait[ing] for his Son from heaven” (1 Thessalonians:1:3-10). John reminds us of the importance of expecting Christ’s imminent return: “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John:3:3).

The very heart of the gospel calls people to make a choice between earth and heaven. Christ made this clear. He told the Jews, “Ye are from beneath, I am from above; ye are of this world, I am not of this world.” He warned them, “Except ye believe that I am, ye shall die in your sins, and where I go ye cannot come.” Where was He going? To heaven, a place which He referred to as “my Father’s house.” A well-known Puritan author said, “The most dangerous mistake of our souls is to take the creature for God and earth for heaven.”21 Schlossberg adds this wise comment: “Ironically, those who seek their ultimate value in the next world are the only ones able to do much good in this one.”22

Making temporary solutions to social problems the overriding concern of Christians blunts the gospel and obscures God’s eternal solution. The focus is turned from heaven to this earth, from a new universe that only God can create to a new world that we hope to fashion by our own efforts. It is just one more form of the selfism that plagues society and the church, another way of becoming little gods, of turning from Him to ourselves by assuming a responsibility to do what only He can do. It is easy to be caught up in a “good” cause that isn’t biblical. We cannot be reminded too often that we must check against the Word of God what even the most popular and seemingly fruitful Christian leaders teach. It is the responsibility of each Christian to stand firmly for the truth without compromise, heeding the words of Paul:

Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine...and they shall turn away their ears from the truth (2 Timothy:4:2-4).

Sound Doctrine and Understanding

There are many who call themselves Christians and attend Christian churches but deny Christ with their lives. Of course they need to recognize their self-centeredness and lack of concern and compassion for others. The solution, however, is not for such persons to reform their lives. Such an attempt represents a Christianized form of humanism and can only produce either guilt, frustration, or self-righteousness. Those who practice self-sacrifice and self-abnegation in order to help the poor and oppressed can become Pharisees also, looking down upon others who don’t live that way and taking pride in their own seeming humility. As we have already noted, Christ did not teach self-denial (self still on the throne but giving up much of what it might enjoy), but denial of self (the death of self) through His cross. He didn’t say, “Except you deny yourself you cannot be my disciple,” but “Except you deny yourself and take up the cross and follow me you cannot be my disciple.” Without the cross self can never be denied.

No less important than the way we live is what we believe. As Schlossberg rightly says: “Action cannot be separated from the belief that gives rise to it.”23 There is no value to the way we live, no matter how exemplary it may seem, unless our lives are founded not upon pragmatism but upon God’s truth. When Paul reminded Timothy of the example of Christian living he had set for the church, he mentioned first of all the doctrine that determined his life: “Thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, persecutions, afflictions...” (2 Timothy:3:10-11). We live what we believe, not what we profess to believe. Our manner of life betrays our true faith, and faith depends upon our understanding of the One whose promises we believe.

This is why the Bible places much emphasis upon understanding. Speaking through Jeremiah, God said, “Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the LORD” (Jeremiah:9:24). God wants us to understand who He is: infinite in love, yet no less just and righteous. He wants us to know Him intimately. And we can know and love God only for who He is, not for what we imagine Him to be. Moreover, we must come to Him on His terms and obey His truth. Explaining the parable of the seed that was carried away by the birds before it could take root, Jesus said:

Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart (Matthew:13:18-19).

One of the greatest problems within the church today is superficiality. We too often fail to make certain that those who are called upon “to decide for Christ” fully understand the decision they are being asked to make. We often build to an emotional climax as a means of persuading people to make a “decision.” There is nothing wrong with emotion that accompanies reality, but we must be careful not to encourage a commitment to Christ that is founded upon emotion and not upon an understanding of and commitment to the truth of who He really is, why He came, and what He demands of us.

When our Lord called Saul of Tarsus to preach the gospel, He sent him forth to do three things that we must also do if those to whom we witness for Christ are truly to be saved: “To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God...” (Acts:26:18). Only then, Christ clearly told Paul, could those who hear the message “receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” The emphasis throughout Scripture, and to which the church must return today, is clearly placed upon truth and understanding. So John writes:

We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true; and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols (1 John:5:20-21).

Faith and Understanding

A lack of this necessary understanding was apparently the problem with those of whom we read, “As he spoke these words, many believed on him” (John:8:30). Although they “believed,” their “faith” in Christ was not based upon a clear understanding of who He was and what He came to do. In fact, they were resistant to the truth when He tried to present it to them. Christ had to say to “those Jews which believed on him”:

Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not (John:8:43-45).

On another occasion “many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did” (John:2:23). On the surface that sounds so good, yet “Jesus did not commit himself unto them because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man” (John:2:23-25). He knew that although the miracles had convinced them that He was the Messiah, yet they did not understand the real reason for the Messiah’s coming. They may have been like those in John 6 who wanted to make Christ their king by force so that He would heal and feed them, but who were not willing to let Him reign as Lord of their lives.

In contrast to these men to whom Christ would not commit Himself, the next verse begins with these words: “There was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus...” (John:3:1). Here we are given an insight into where the others erred. Like those who “believed on him,” Nicodemus was convinced that Jesus was “a teacher come from God” who did miracles not “by Beelzebub the prince of the devils,” as the other Pharisees claimed (Matthew:12:24), but through the power of God (John:3:2). However, that was not enough, and we have the famous passage concerning being “born again” as Christ helps Nicodemus understand the truth he must know in order to be saved from eternal judgment:

Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. For God so loved the world that he gave his only be gotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him (John:3:3,6,16,17,36).

Being a Christian does not come about through superficial belief in the existence of a historical Person named Jesus of Nazareth who did miracles and taught sublime truths. It involves personally receiving Him into one’s heart and life as Savior and Lord and believing that He died for one’s sins and rose from the dead. This is the gospel (good news) which, if truly believed, will transform one’s life. Genuine faith is based upon understanding and results in obedience. Acts:6:7 tells us that “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” Paul preached “obedience to the faith among all nations” (Romans:1:5; 16:26) and warned of the judgment that would one day come upon all who “know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thessalonians:1:8). This is why Jesus said:

If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John:8:31-32).

This freedom is not produced by semantics. The attempt to bring peace to all men by promoting the myth of “universal brotherhood” is doomed by the fact that we are not all brothers therefore serious differences exist. It is axiomatic that there is no real brotherhood of man without the Fatherhood of God. And Jesus made it clear that no man is a child of God unless he has been “born again” by the Spirit of God into the family of God. Until then, Jesus said, we are the children of our “father the devil” and reflect his evil character in our attitude and actions toward God and one another.

Footnotes

21.Cho, Fourth, p. 23.

22.Ibid., p. 59.

23.Ibid., p. 12.

*NOTE: Beyond Seduction by Dave Hunt is currently out of print with extremely limited copies available through used book sellers. TBC covets your prayers as we consider reprinting this classic book.

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