Okay, here we go, I’m going to attempt to summarize the four Christian views of end times. “What”, you say, “I thought there was only one version of end times—Tim LaHaye’s ‘Left Behind’ view?” You know what I mean, Dr. LaHaye says Christians will be driving down the street and they will suddenly disappear and their cars will crash into stuff and those “left behind” are in for really tough times. In other words, Christians are “raptured” out of the world just before a period of incredible worldwide turmoil called the “Tribulation.” Well, I have a friend who says the true definition of “rapture” is the look on Tim LaHaye’s face when he opens his latest book-royalty check. I’m not denigrating Dr. LaHaye; however, from the impression one gets from him and the mass media, you’d think his was the only Christian view of end times. It is not.

Let’s begin by starting with the oldest and moving to the most recent view of end times.

HISTORICAL (or CLASSIC) PREMILLENNIALISM

The Classic Premillennial view holds that the Bible teaches a time of great apostasy and suffering at the end the church age. This time of tribulation will be ended by the battle of Armageddon where the Antichrist will be destroyed. At the end of this tribulation Christians will be “caught up” to meet the Lord in the clouds (called the Rapture). At this point Christ will institute a thousand-year reign on the earth (the Millennium) in which the temple worship is re-established and sacrifices are done in remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. At the end of the Millennium Satan will be loosed and defeated. The unrighteous will be resurrected and judged after which God will reign with His people forever.

While this is probably the oldest view of end times, many of its ancient adherents got carried away with their thinking about what would happen during the Millennium and so it was discouraged or banned in the early church.

AMILLENNIALISM

The Amillennial view holds that the Millennium is not a literal 1000 year period, but a very long period of time between Christ’s first and second comings. We might call this the period of the church age in which Christ’s kingdom spreads throughout the world. At the end of this church age, Satan is allowed to trouble mankind but he is defeated at Christ’s return when the righteous and unrighteous are raised to be judged. This is followed by God’s eternal reign.

This view was fully developed by St. Augustine and is the primary view of Catholics and many Protestant Reformation denominations.

POSTMILLENNIALISM

The Postmillennial view is very similar to the Amillennial position. There is, however, a stronger sense in Postmillennialism that the church’s mission activity can hasten the return of Christ. Again, the Millennium is not seen as a literal 1000 year period of time, but a time of gradual Christianization of the world. In this view, however, when the Christianization has reached its culmination, Christ will return and immediately usher the church into its eternal state and the unrighteous will be judged.

Many of those who were part of the great revival and missionary movements of the 17-19th centuries believed in Postmillennialism. It fell into disfavor because of World War I and the disillusionment that followed that tragic event.

DISPENSATIONAL PREMILLENNIALISM

The unique feature of Dispensationalism is that it holds that the church (living and dead) is raptured out of all or part of the Tribulation. The other three views hold that Christians are “caught up” to meet the Lord when He returns, but Dispensationalism propagates the idea of a “secret rapture” before Christ’s Second Coming. Also, Dispensationalism holds that those who convert but die during the Tribulation will be raised at its end. At the end of the Tribulation Christ will return again (the Second Coming) to institute a 1000 year rule from Jerusalem where temple sacrifices will be offered in remembrance of His sacrifice. Those who convert during the Tribulation and survive will go on to populate the earth during the Millennium. Those who were raptured or raised previous to the Tribulation will reign with Christ during the millennium. At the end of the millennium, Satan will be loosed one more time to gather an army to battle against the Lord but he will be defeated. At the end of the Millennium there will be a "white throne" judgment (by which Satan and all unbelievers will be thrown into the lake of fire) Christ and all the righteous will institute God’s eternal reign.

Despite its current popularity, the Dispensational view is the most modern view. It was developed in 1830 by John Nelson Darby. It was first popularized in the United States through the C.I. Scofield Bible. It is the most complex of all the views.

MY VIEW

My personal opinion is that everything any believer NEEDS to know about end times is found in 1Thessalonians 4 and 2Thessalonians 2. One can spend countless hours trying to figure out what will happen by reading an endless number of books. Or one can read two chapters in the Bible. Paul keeps it pretty simple in these chapters. I recommend them.

In order to understand what is meant by the natural law we need to take a step back and put it in the broadest context possible. Okay, so here we go.

The Eternal Law of God

Imagine how an architect has in his/her mind the plans for a building. This is a way of understanding God’s eternal law. The eternal law is the wisdom of God as He plans, creates and maintains the universe. Consequently, God’s imprint is everywhere in nature. This means that there are two aspects to God’s eternal law. First, there is the totally inaccessible mystery of God’s divine mind and will. As Paul said, “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:34) However, there is the eternal law of God that is imprinted into nature which is accessible.

The Divine Law

The divine law is basically the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The divine law is necessary because the human mind is weakened from the fall and needs explicit divine guidance. The divine law also clearly describes man’s accountability to God and man’s eternal destiny. Without the divine law man could easily be mistaken about God and His just requirements.

The Natural Law

The natural law (as described by Thomas Aquinas) is accessible to man. Because God’s plan and purpose for all things are imprinted into nature and because man is a rational being; the natural law is “nothing else than the rational creature's participation in the eternal law" (ST I-II, Q. 94). Despite man’s fall from grace, God can still hold man accountable because His law is discernable from what is “made” (creation) and from man’s own nature (Romans 1-2).

The Biblical Basis for Natural Law

1. Romans 2:14-15: Paul tells us that the Gentiles didn’t have the Law (of Moses) but did by “nature” what the law required because that law was written on their “hearts.”

2. OT prophetic oracles to the nations: (Is. 13-27; Jer. 46-51; Ezk 25-32; Amos 1-2) -- All of these prophetic oracles to the nations clearly indicate that God holds humans, who do not have the divine law, responsible for their actions.

3. The Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, etc.): it is implied from the Wisdom Literature that man can gain wisdom from observing how nature operates (i.e. Proverbs 6 “consider the ant”); therefore, he must act according to God’s wisdom implanted in nature. Living in harmony with natural wisdom brings prudence for living and avoids foolishness.

4. There is a fixed order that governs the natural world: (Jer 31:35f; 33:20f, 25f) -- Living in harmony with this fixed order brings “peace” and well-being.

Importance of the Natural Law

The Acton Institute has a series of articles, from a Protestant perspective, describing why the study of natural law is valuable for modern Christians. Their basic thesis is that natural law provides a way for Christians to engage in fruitful dialogue with a post-Christian world thus, for Evangelicals, making it possible for them to escape cultural irrelevance. The Acton Institute articles can be found here: http://www.acton.org/blog/index.html?/plugin/tag/natural+law

Pleasure is a very fascinating topic that is far too complex and detailed for just a simple post. However, I am going to attempt to say a few things about pleasure here that, hopefully, will be helpful.

First, I want to say “three cheers for pleasure.” It obviously is a good thing because pleasure was created by God. But, let’s get a definition going here as to what pleasure is. How about this for a working definition; pleasure is “the repose of the will in some appropriate good, as desire is the inclination of the will toward the attainment of some good” (Aquinas, SCG, III, Pt. 1, Ch. 26, 15). Here Aquinas separates the desire for a “good” from the enjoyment of a good. Specifically, when we have attained an appropriate good and are enjoying it, we have pleasure.

The question arises, if pleasure is a good and it is enjoyable, then shouldn’t we see it as an appropriate “end” or purpose for life? This is a fair question. For instance, there are a number of contemporary philosophers who see pleasure as the unifying principle for human ethics. This does make sense if you—as do they--do not necessarily see human life as anything other than a biological or materialistic reality. However, even at this level, Aquinas would argue that pleasure is “ordered” to something beyond itself; therefore, it cannot be an end in itself. He has a simple statement to explain this which I will have to further explain. He says that, “In the order of natural things, delight is for the sake of operation, and not conversely.” What he means is that pleasure is associated with other things that are “necessary ends” for animal life. For instance, there is a lot of pleasure associated with food and sex for both animals and humans because these activities are necessary for animal and human survival. He notes that, particularly with animals, eating and having sex would rarely be done if there was not a lot of pleasure attached to them. Imagine what it would be like if either of these was a daunting or disagreeable activity.

The point here is that the enjoyment we get in pleasure is not an end in itself but is concomitant with another end. This can be fairly easily seen with the great pleasures in life such as food, drink, sex and family. It is a little harder to see with pleasures such as a hobby or sports. However, normally speaking (with the exclusion of professional athletes) we participate in sports as a way of refreshing ourselves, reducing stress and improving bodily performance so that we can better attend to the rigors of daily survival. The idea is that pleasure accompanies those things that enhance human life and, therefore, pleasure is not an end in itself.

The problem with pleasure is that it is a very powerful elixir. We can easily be deceived into thinking that life is all about finding more and better pleasures. To think this way is to think in an animalistic fashion. Unfortunately, whereas animals generally have an instinctual mechanism that limits their pleasure-seeking; humans can choose to go far beyond what any animal would ever normally do and pleasure ourselves to death (i.e. through a drug overdose). We can also choose to use pleasures in a way that God never intended them to be used. Gluttony and sexual promiscuity are two fine examples of the disordered use of pleasure. The higher purpose of the pleasures of food and sex is the continuation of the human race. When out of order, seeking the pleasure of food can destroy human health. Likewise, disordered sexual pleasure can destroy the human family and cause life-threatening disease which can decimate a society.

Bottom line, pleasure must be ordered to something greater than itself which is God’s purpose for human life.

I have a friend who is a noted retreat speaker and is currently writing a book on Christian maturity. He emails me theological questions, probably because he knows that I will give him answers that take into account Christian thinking that precedes the 1600’s. Recently, he emailed me an interesting question that arose out of his background reading for his book. Another well-known Christian author had expressed the idea in one of his books that the incarnate Christ did not operate on earth out of His divine nature but only acted through His human nature. The author went on to say that Jesus relied upon the power and divinity of the Father through the Holy Spirit. This way of understanding Christ’s incarnation, the author indicated, helps us better identify with the Lord. While I can certainly understand the author’s desire to relate with Christ’s humanity; there is a serious problem with the view that the Lord’s divine nature was functionally inoperative during His incarnation.

The bulwark creedal statement on the Incarnation is, of course, the mighty Chalcedonian Creed (451 AD). It states in part in regard to Christ’s two natures:

“…one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ;”

Please note a couple things from the Chalcedon statement. It says that Christ had two natures “without change.” This means that the Incarnation did not make any change in Christ’s divine nature. It then explicitly states that neither of Christ’s natures were “annulled” in any way by the union of the two natures. The reason that the creed states this so clearly is that there are serious implications arising from the possibility of a change of either of His natures.

Allow me to consider just one serious implication arising from the possibility of Christ’s divine nature being inoperative during His incarnation.

If it can be asserted that at any point Christ’s divine nature was not operative during His earthly life, then a question arises about the efficacious value of the cross. Was Christ’s divine nature inoperative during the crucifixion? If so, then how can His atoning sacrifice have infinite value and provide forgiveness for all mankind. Certainly, if it can be allowed that Christ’s divine nature was inoperative during His incarnation—at any point in time—it would, most assuredly, be asserted by someone that it was not operative on the cross. It is far better to stay with the faith of our fathers and affirm the Chalcedonian Creed.

I suggested to my friend that the best way to understand Christ’s earthly submission to the Father is to see it in the light of the eternal relationship between the members of the Trinity. All things flow from the Father unto the Son and from the Father and Son unto the Spirit. This is called the Double Procession. This ordering of all things within the Trinity is a model for Christian submission. It also avoids the dangerous error of asserting that Christ’s divine nature was somehow inoperative on earth.

As we get on toward Easter it is good to think about all that Christ has done for us.

According to Philippians 2, our Lord took on for himself a two-fold humiliation. First, he descended from the heights of his divine majesty to enter human history and human likeness (Phil. 2:8). Secondly, “He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (V. 8). However, Paul goes on to say in Philippians 2 that Christ was exalted in two ways that correspond to this two-fold humiliation.

The fact that the Lord was raised from the dead corresponds to the second humiliation in that it was the resurrection of his body. On the other hand, the Ascension corresponds to his first humiliation. The first humiliation was one of majesty and place. Paul states this in Ephesians 4:10 as, “He that descended is the same that ascended above all the heavens.”

It is important to remember, though, when we consider Christ’s Ascension, that this took place in his human nature. In his divine nature he never left heaven since he is always present everywhere. Jesus recognized this truth when he said in John 3:13: “No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.” By this we understand that Christ came down from heaven by assuming an earthly nature, yet in such a way that he continued to remain part of the Godhead. Also, by this we can see that Christ alone has gone up to heaven by his own power. Other men cannot ascend to heaven of themselves, but are taken up by the power of Christ as members of his Body.