What is the Biblical Hope for the Church?

Tom: Thanks, Gary. You're listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

In this segment of our program, we are concluding our discussions of the content of Dave Hunt’s out-of-print book Beyond Seduction. He wrote it 18 years ago as a sequel to our bestseller of 20 years ago The Seduction of Christianity, and both books address beliefs and practices finding favor in Christendom, yet were and are deviations from biblical doctrine.

Dave, last week we ended this part of our program by addressing attempts by Christians throughout church history to form Christian utopias, or model societies. We mentioned instances such as Calvin’s Geneva at the time of the Reformation, and Kingdom Dominion/Resconstructionist movements of the last century. Now, why are they wrong when most seem to have sincerely righteous motives?

Dave: Well, we're not going to establish God’s kingdom on this earth; that’s not our job.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: And the disciples asked a very perceptive question, Acts 1: “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom?” So any restoration of the kingdom is going to be by the Lord. Furthermore, what do you mean “restore” the kingdom? When was the kingdom of God on this earth? No, it’s Israel! “Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel…” And these people are incredibly - Kingdom Now/Dominionists, you know…

Tom: Well, going back to the Reformation even.

Dave: Yes, Reconstructionists, they don’t want to restore the kingdom to Israel; they think that the church has replaced Israel. Israel has nothing of any significance to do with the events on this earth now. The fact that there are some Jewish people over there in the land they call Palestine, they say that is meaningless. So they don't understand the kingdom, and Jesus, as we quoted last week, I think, said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” So His kingdom is not of this world. 

Now, that’s an interesting statement, because He will rule on the throne of His father David one day from Jerusalem over the entire world for 1,000 years. So that tells us that the Millennial kingdom is not the ultimate kingdom. Jesus had a number of things to say about the kingdom: “You must be born again, or you can’t even see, much less enter, the kingdom of God.” 

Paul said, “Behold, I show you a mystery.” 

1 Corinthians 15: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” The Millennial kingdom will have many flesh-and-blood people in it, so they couldn’t be in the kingdom. Even Nebuchadnezzar knew… You’ll find it in Psalm 145 and many other places: “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom.” 

And Isaiah:9:7Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
See All... says, “Of his kingdom and peace, there will be no end.” Well, the Millennium obviously ends, and it ends with a war as the people of this earth, deceived by Satan, come against Jerusalem to destroy Jesus Christ. That’s incredible that they would even attempt to do that. 

So the kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; it involves the new heavens and the new earth, but there will be an earthly part of that kingdom, and a heavenly part, heavenly people, and the church is the heavenly people. Israel and the nations that will survive on this earth, the nations of the redeemed, they will be the earthly people. The Bible says the earth abideth forever, but it will be a “new heaven and a new earth, where indwelleth righteousness.”

So these people have the wrong impression, and we mentioned last week it’s very dangerous to imagine that you are establishing the kingdom. The King’s in heaven, and He’s not ruling over the kingdom, not from the earth. They don’t even believe in that, although some of them do. Some of them would say, “Well, when we have established the kingdom, we’ve taken over the media and the government and the school boards and so forth, then Christ will return to reign over the kingdom that we have established.” 

But the Bible very clearly says, “The dead in Christ will rise first, then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” 

So there is an event called the Rapture, the catching away of the bride of Christ up to heaven for the marriage that takes place in Revelation 19. 

Jesus said in John 14, “I am going to go away.” He said, “In my Father’s house are many mansions. I’m going to go and prepare a place for you. And if I go away, I will come again and receive you unto myself.” So the church is the heavenly people, the heavenly bride, and we will be caught up, and there will be a wedding in heaven - Revelation 19. 

Tom: Dave, how important is that for a believer today? For example, as we avoid those kinds of teachings…

Now, I remember when I became a Christian, you know, the Rapture was on every Christian’s mind. This was 20-some years ago. And today it seems as though you don’t talk about it, you avoid it. So my question is, how important is that? And isn’t there a sense of biblical history or eschatology, the way things are going to turn out, that I need to know and understand that with regard to what I’m going to do, how I’m going to conduct my life, and how I’m going to be discerning about other things out there that may really get me working for an apostate church or for the Antichrist? 

Dave: Well, Tom, on the one hand, whether you believe in the Rapture or not, if you’re a true Christian, you’re going to leave in the Rapture, and we’ll explain it to you on the way up. But the idea that the Christian is to take over the world, that leads to all kinds of problems. A person can think they’re Christians because they’re working for a moral society, and they can confuse Americanism with Christianity, and that is a big problem today. “Never mind the gospel; that’s not so important for people to believe that Jesus actually died for their sins and so forth.” Or anybody who kind of believes in Jesus - “Jesus was a good man…” 

And as The Message (we’ve quoted it a number of times) says in John:3:17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
See All..., it says, “The Father sent not the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.” To be saved is to be delivered from this world and taken to heaven. But The Message says, “He came to help us put the world right.”

Well, if that’s all we’re engaged in, that’s sociopolitical action. You can imagine you’re a Christian; you have Christian values, you're against abortion, against homosexuality, and so forth, and so I think that it draws in a lot of people to a “good works” scheme. It sounds good - we’re going to turn America into a Christian country - but "Christian" isn’t really Christian in the sense that Jesus taught, because Jesus said, “You are not of this world. I have chosen you out of this world. Because you are not of this world, the world hates you. If they hated me, they’ll hate you.”

But now we’ve got a kind of Christianity that is going to make Jesus Christ popular. It’s going to take over the world, and we’ll have a Christian society. This is not the gospel, and there could be people who really believe the gospel who have been deceived to be involved in that sort of a program. 

On the other hand, I think there could be many, many people who are caught up in this program who think that thereby they are pleasing Christ, they’re establishing a kingdom for Christ, and somehow they haven’t understood that they’re sinners separated from God under His judgment, and unless they repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ as the one who paid the full penalty for their sins on the cross, they will be lost forever. So that true gospel becomes obscured, or swallowed up, in this other “good works” effort to change society.

Tom: And dangerously so, Dave, because if people don’t understand that on the one hand, morality is a good thing, yet morality doesn’t save anyone. 

Dave: Well, Jesus didn’t say, “I came to save moral people.” He didn’t say, “Clean up your morals, and then you’ll be one of My disciples.” He said, “I came to seek and to save the lost.”

"The Son of man didn’t come to call the righteous to follow him, he came to call sinners to repentance.” So you can get so righteous (and self-righteous) and so much involved in cleaning up the world and bringing about a moral reformation in society that you don’t need Jesus to be your Savior; you don’t understand that you need Him in that way.

Tom: And I think, Dave, as we look at what’s going on - we’ve been addressing over the last months false doctrines, false teachings in the church, false approaches to this, false peace, false prophets, false Christs...and with all of that, we’re trying to call people to the biblical truth, what God’s Word says - not what you say or what I say, but let’s check these things out to see if this is what God’s Word says, and that has as much to do with theology or doctrine as it does with how we live our lives and what we do. 

Dave, what’s the biblical hope for the church?

Dave: Well, the biblical hope for the church, of course, is to be taken out of this world to heaven: “Looking for that blessed hope, the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ,” Titus:2:13Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
See All.... 

Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “How you turned to God from idols to serve the living and the true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven.” 

And John in [1 John 3], he says, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” So we are - even in our less than perfect lives, we are the sons of God. 

“It doth not yet appear what we shall be [there’s a transformation coming], but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” And he says, “Everyone that has this hope in him purify themselves, even as he is pure.” 

And a few verses earlier than that in chapter 2, he said, “Beloved, we don’t want to be ashamed at his coming.” So the Christian is looking forward to the coming of Christ. We are calling people out of this world. We’re calling them to citizenship of heaven. We are not trying to make this world a better place for our grandchildren to live in. That is not what the Bible teaches, and that is not going to happen. The Scriptures says, “Evil men and seducers will wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” 

Now, that doesn’t mean that we are not in favor of morals. We certainly are, and we would like to see a better world in any way that we could help in that. We don’t want to destroy the environment; we don’t want to encourage sin and wickedness, and say, “Oh, well, praise God, because it’s got to be that way. It’s going to get worse and worse.” No, we will stand up against it. But the best way - and really the only way, ultimately - that we can oppose evil is through the gospel of Jesus Christ, because here's the remedy: the only remedy, and God’s judgment… And you mentioned prophecies; they’re very clear: God’s judgment is coming upon this world. The world is ripening for judgment, and the Bible says it.

Now, does that mean that God has predestined that, and now that’s got to happen, and therefore people are going to get worse and worse because God is going to cause them…no! But God knows what is going to happen. He knows the human heart. 

It’s rather instructive to read - go back and read Genesis 6. This can’t be too long after Adam and Eve have died, you know. They lived nearly a thousand years. There were others who knew Adam and Eve intimately who were part of that generation upon which the flood came, and yet it says that the wickedness of man was so great - the imagination of every thought was only evil continually - that God said, “I’m going to wipe them off the face of this earth.” Now, that wasn’t because God predestined it, or God caused them to become wicked. Jesus said, “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries,” and so forth. And so I believe that we are heading for that sort of a day. Jesus said, “As it was in the days of Noah….” 

Now, He focuses on something else, but nevertheless, we could include in that the wickedness of man is great, and God’s judgment is going to come. That’s what the Great Tribulation is all about. You are not going to prevent the Great Tribulation. The church will be raptured out of here, and the world is going to be left. And over and over, Tom (as you know very well), in the Book of Revelation, in spite of the judgment that comes from God upon this earth - the plagues, the horror of everything - as God pours out His judgment…why? Because they deserve it, number one. Number two, it is a means, possibly, of causing them to repent. And in spite of that, it says, “They repented not.”

Tom: Right. They cursed God.

Dave: They cursed God, yes. Incredible! So this is where we’re going, and it’s totally contrary to Scripture in many different ways to say, “Well, no…” They call us negative for believing that. “You guys are negative. You’re just looking for a ‘helicopter escape.’” That’s what Gary North used to say. “You just want to get out of here, but we are going to change this world. We’re going to take over this world.” One of my dearest friends for many years; that’s how he used to sign his letters: “Yours for changing the world,” or something to that effect. 

Tom: Now, Dave, along that line, if the world wanted to change, the Bible talks in Matthew 7 about a "narrow way." “Strait is the gate, narrow…few there are that find it.” Now, why is that? I mean, wouldn’t that be the solution to the problem if we did things God’s way? But it says, “Few there are that find it.” Does that make what we’ve been talking about here a club, a kind of closed society, or what?

Dave: Well, Tom, I have pondered that many times. And you know, for example, in the book What Love Is This? about Calvinism, I mention that people often ask, “Why does one person believe in Jesus and another one doesn’t?” 

You have two choices: either God caused one to believe and He caused the other not to believe, or as some Calvinists would say, “No, He simply left the other one in his unbelief; He caused one to believe, He regenerated one, and then He left the other one.” Well, it’s the same thing.

If I am going into a burning building and I could have rescued all 50 people who were in there and I only rescued 20 of them, or 49 - however many I leave in there, I left them in there. If I could have rescued them...and that’s the problem: if God could have saved everyone, but He didn’t, okay, according to the Calvinists, and that’s according to His will, the secret of His will, and we have no right to question Him, okay - then what love is this? How can that be? So we have one answer to the question: why do some believe and others don’t? 

Well, God predestined them not to believe; He predestined them to eternal hell - or it’s because some of them just don’t want to! And I often say, “Why doesn’t this person believe? Ask him! Or ask her!”

"The heart is stubborn, deceitful above all things, desperately wicked." Now, God pleads and He reasons. Isaiah:1:18Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
See All...: “Come now, let us reason together, sayeth the Lord.” 

So, Tom, we could ask why did Satan rebel against God? All he knew was the presence of God. I mean, he had everything you could possibly want, except being God Himself, and that is what man wants, apparently. We don’t want to have somebody tell us what to do; we’re going to conquer space, conquer the atom, reign supreme over this universe - that’s what it’s all about. We are rebels, and we proved that when Jesus Christ came and did nothing but good, and they took the Lord of glory, the Creator, when He came as a man to walk among them, and they rejected Him, despised Him…He said, “They hated me without a cause.” They nailed Him to a cross, and unfortunately, that’s the way it seems to be. 

Tom, some people would say, “Well, didn’t God do a very dangerous thing when He gave people the power of choice?” Because this is what it amounts to: the power of choice. 

Tom, why is it that so many people today stand in front of witnesses…young couple - they’re becoming husband and wife - swear their undying troth, “Till death do us part.” And not long after that, they can’t get along with one another. They break their word; they made a promise to each other. They made a promise to God, they made a promise before witnesses, and they have no compunction about just breaking that promise. They’ve lost their integrity, if they ever had any integrity, and that’s part of the problem. It's in the human heart. Tom, the only solution is we have to turn to Christ and accept the fact that He died for our sins. So that’s why it is a narrow way - strait gate and narrow way - because you don’t negotiate with God. You don’t say, “Well, God, come on now, don’t be so narrow-minded.” 

Why is 5 times 5 twenty-five always - never more nor less? Because that’s what it is! This way is the narrow way, because that’s what it is! God created this universe, He created us, He sets the rules. So it’s a narrow way, because you can’t bend it. You can’t change what God has said. He doesn’t go back on His word, He says what means, He means what He says, period. And a lot of parents out there need to learn that and instill it in their children.

Tom: Well, I think, Dave, as you know, I’m under as much conviction here as anybody listening to us. It seems we keep pushing the parameters of what God says, and what we think He says, in order to be more tolerant, to accommodate this, to accommodate that situation, and so on, to the point where we don’t have any discernment left. Or our heart to - you say "commitments," and living up to commitments. I don’t think we know what the commitments are anymore, even though God’s Word lays it out verse by verse by verse by verse - what He wants, what will bring Him pleasure, what will produce fruit in our lives, but I think that’s being blurred daily.

Dave: Tom, because we’ve got - we’ve talked about it a lot; I won’t go into it - we’ve got new translations, so-called. They change the Word of God. We have pastors who want to be popular; they want to have a large church, so they change the Word of God. They lower the standards. They compromise the gospel. They want to cater to people’s desires. The Bible says that the people in the church, so-called, “will heap to themselves teachers having itching ears.” They will turn away from the truth to fables. The pastor’s ears are itching; he wants to have the people say, “Oh, that was a great sermon, pastor.” And that’s about all the ambition that the pastor has. Rather than to please Christ, he wants to please the people. It’s a great tragedy, Tom, and it is rampant.

Tom: Dave, I think of parents with their children. Now, anyone - and just a conversation about these things, I’m sure we could get them to agree - that if parents indulge their children, at some point the children are going to turn on their parents. Now, put that in a pastoral setting: as the shepherd of the flock indulges the sheep, it’s going to create all kinds of problems. But nevertheless, it’s a tradeoff. 

Dave: See, parents are not being kind to their children; they’re not being loving when they indulge them. They're training them to have a bad life ahead, because they’re going to indulge themselves, they’re not going to be able to keep any standards, and it will lead to disaster.

Tom: And the same with pastors, and that’s the point I’m trying to make.

Dave: Right. Yeah. Well, that’s where we are today, Tom, unfortunately.

Tom: But we have God’s Word; we have His Holy Spirit. “Where evil abounds,” Scripture says, “grace is available.” It will abound more if we are willing, if we will turn to Him, if we will turn to His Word, if we will preach the Word, teach the Word.

Dave: Tom, a lot of it comes down to the influence of Christian psychology on the church: self-indulgence, self-acceptance, self-image, self-love, instead of self-control. We need to deny ourselves, take up the cross, follow Christ. It seems painful, but it is really best.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, one last point, all of this, all we’ve been talking about for these months, really comes down to people are being moved away, and moving themselves away, from the sufficiency of God’s Word.

Dave: Mm-hmm. Amen. It’s sad.