The world is chattering about the Trump assassination attempt. Some people are gnashing their teeth, and others are thumping their chests and pumping their fists. I don’t want to rush to conclusions about anything. There is far too much of rushing to conclusions in our world – or reflexively doubling down on the conclusions we reached long ago.
The assassination attempt, however warrants some kind of response. No one is without some thoughts on the matter. My goal, though, is to be circumspect and seek perspective
As I write this, I recognize that Trump may likely become the next President of the United States – an unlikely two-time President. I also recognize the prophecies about the first Trump presidency and the prophecies predicting a second Trump presidency that did not come to fruition four years ago. They appear (to me) about to be vindicated in 2024.
If Donald Trump is elected for a second time, we must admit that these prophecies came true. The test of a true prophet and of a prophecy from God is whether the events predicted happen.
That isn’t the end of the story, however. Paul exhorts us to test everything and hold onto only what is good. (1 Thess. 5:21) The context in which these words were spoke is prophecies, among other things:
Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophecies, but test everything; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil.
1 Thessalonians 5:19-22
What do we hold on to here? What is God saying, and what is God doing in these times
Does a second Trump presidency as prophesied mean that Trump is God’s anointed? Like David? Or Like Saul? Does it mean that the American church must put its uncritical allegiance behind Donald Trump, including all that he says, all that he does, every position he takes, and all that he stands for?
These questions are ways of asking, “What God is doing in our times?” And, maybe more importantly, “What should we be doing in these times?”
We need to be careful – to test everything. God has a way of doing things that we don’t expect and don’t understand. If we don’t believe that, we are not reading our Bible closely enough.
Go into all the world and tell the gospel to all creation
As I read through the New Testament this year as part of my daily reading plan, I have finished the Gospels, and I am well into the Book of Acts. As I read through the Gospels, I was mindful of the context in location, time period, and the history of the area and the people of Israel, surrounding nations, and the Greco-Roman world leading up to the time that Jesus walked the earth. I have also been mindful of the sweep of this history as it has played out since that time to the present day.
As a believer in the story of God revealing himself to human beings in this history that we continue to live into, I am also mindful that this time was pivotal. God becoming incarnate (taking on human form and fully living into His own creation), is the centerpiece of our story. It ties the story together from the beginning to the end that will play out into the future fulfillment of God’s ultimate plans.
Abraham and his descendants have been the focus of this story from the time that he heard God encouraging him to leave his family and homeland and strike out to a land God would show him, full of the promise descendants as numerous as the sands of the shores of the sea and the stars in the sky. But the story has taken an unexpected turn – unexpected, at least, for those descendants who have been living into this story for millennia by the time of Christ.
But it shouldn’t have been unexpected. That original promise to Abraham included blessing for all the nations of the earth. This was God’s plan from the beginning – from the creation of Adam and Eve and the command to “be fruitful and multiply.”
The covenant God made with Moses with those descendants of Abraham, however, took on a life of its own – at least as far as they perceived it. They were (more or less) faithful to that covenant. At least, they clung to that story despite their failings to be faithful and despite their myopic view of what God was doing.
It was myopic because they lost sight of God’s intention to bless the nations of the earth through them. This blessing was embedded into the original promise to Abraham, and it was always intended to be part of the story. Yet, they had lost that thread.
Thus, when God entered into the story to move it along and begin to work out the thread of His ultimate plan, they didn’t recognize Him. The people God chose through whom He would work out this plan unwittingly resisted it.
Yet, God in His sovereignty was not surprised by this. He used their resistance to move the story forward. Jesus knew this when he read from the Isaiah scroll in his hometown synagogue:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Luke 4:18-19
When Jesus told them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”, they were not ready to receive it, though the fulfillment of it was long-awaited by them. Jesus knew their rejection of him would be the catalyst God would use to unfold the rest of the story:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”
Luke 4:23
Jesus, the fullness of God in human form (Col. 2:9), knew he would die at the insistence of his own people, but this was meant to be.
“And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
Pjilippians 2:8
God worked through this people He chose to prepare for the time He would enter the story, and their rejection of Him would be the turning point.
Episode 124 – Statement of Triumph – from the BEMA Podcast, with Marty Solomon and Brent Billings, inspires my writing today. It was the subject of discussion for the Saturday morning Bible study I have attended off and on with an exceptional group of men for several years.
The subject was Matthew 21:1-11. The chapter heading in the NIV translation (which would not have appeared in the original text, because there were no chapter headings in the original text) is “Jesus Comes to Jerusalem as King”.
This is usually how we read it: a “triumphal entry”. We celebrate it as a triumph, and it was. But not perhaps in the way we tend to think about it. Certainly, not in the way the erstwhile followers of Jesus perceived it when it happened.
Marty Solomon sets the stage in the podcast, noting that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey during the week of Passover, an unusually tense time in this region of the Roman world. The uneasy tension arose in that time in that region because it was home to the only group of people in the Roman Empire who refused to worship the Emperor.
The Jewish people were stubbornly true to their God. Even so, Rome allowed the Jews to have their own ruler, Herod the Great. Herod was Jewish and powerful in his own right, but he was happy to be propped up by the Romans, and the Romans accommodated him to maintain stability in the region.
Even so, this small piece of real estate was problematic for Rome. It sat at the crossroads of the earth. The Hebrew people long inhabited it, but they were a headache for the Romans because of their entrenched religious traditions and unabated worship of their God.
When Herod the Great died, three of sons took over different areas of this land that Herod ruled as a vassal of the Romans. Herod Phillip ruled the north (Caesaria Phillippi). Herod Antipas ruled the middle region, and Herod Archelaus ruled in the south (Judea).
Archelaus only lasted two years, so Rome brought in its own ruler, Pontius Pilate (the Roman Bulldog), to maintain Rome’s control over the region. Pilate didn’t live in Jerusalem. Pilate lived in Caesarea Maritime (Caesarea, By the Sea), a city built by Herod to honor Caesar.
The week of Passover would have been a particularly tense time in Jerusalem, the Jewish holy city. Jews from all over were in town to celebrate the feast that remembered their great deliverance and triumph over the superpower of an earlier time, Egypt. The last thing that Rome wanted was for this celebration to get out of hand after rebel Jews got all fueled up with wine and remembrance of their former deliverance.
If there was any holiday that might make the Romans nervous in Judea, it was Passover. Zealots were always stirring up trouble, and Passover would be the most opportune time for a Jewish revolt against the Roman rule of this territory that the Jews long held out as their own. After all, the Jews still believed this land was to be theirs again through based on their understanding of prophecies about a military coup to be led by a messiah (savior) in the line of their once great King, David.
Every year at this time Pontius Pilate would head south from Caesarea down the coastal road to Joppa. He would head east from Joppa to make his way into Jerusalem. Pilate would enter Jerusalem from the west. He traveled with great pomp and a show of force, with an army of soldiers, trumpeters, heralds, banners, and pronouncements. Pilate would lead the way on a white stallion symbolizing Roman conquest and rule.
This show of power, of course, was intentional. I found the article, In Through the Back Door, September 24, 2022, by Terry Gau that describes these yearly processions made by Pilate into Jerusalem at the beginning of Passover week. He cites historians, John Dominic Crossen and Marcus Borg, in their book, Last Week, memorializing the historical and political context for the final chapter of Jesus’ ministry on earth. the procession is described this way:
“Traditionally, Pilate paraded into Jerusalem on the first day of Passover Week, entering the west gate – the front gate – with legions of chariots, horses, and foot soldiers, dressed for battle and armed with swords and spears. Rome’s authority would not be questioned. The majesty with which Pilate enters the front door of the city was meant to inspire awe and fear, respect and obedience.”
Marty Solomon says,
“You could have heard him coming from miles away. The message he wanted to send to the Jews was clear. ‘Don’t even think about it! Keep everything under control, or Rome will crush you!’”
BEMA Podcast, Episode 124
Pilate would stay in Herod’s palace in Jerusalem for the week until the festivities ended. Then he would go back to Caesarea. He wasn’t there to celebrate, though. He was there to ensure things didn’t get out of hand and to keep the peace.
During one Passover week under the rule of Pontius Pilate in Judea another procession took place. It may have even happened on the same day at the same time that Pilate was entering the City from the west. This procession took place on the east side of Jerusalem where Jesus, riding on a lowly young donkey with a small, rag tag bunch of unarmed disciples entered through the east gate – the back door to Jerusalem.
“This parade was just as carefully staged as Pilate’s entry into Jerusalem. It was a counter-procession, a different vision of what a Kingdom should be, a subversive action against the powers that ruled Jerusalem. Jesus’ humble, yet triumphal, entry into Jerusalem stood in contrast to the magnificence and brutality on display at the opposite end of the city. Jesus brings peace, while Pilate brings a sword.”
In Through the Back Door
This was the backdrop for episode 124 of the BEMA Podcast and of our discussion. I sit writing at a temporary table with one chair left in my house that is all but cleaned out and being readied for sale. My future is uncertain as I recount one of the most pivotal times in human history and the dealings of God with man and what it means for us, today.
People cite the great church father, Augustine, in defense of the view that the earth is only thousands (rather than billions) of years old. Indeed, I believe this was (more or less) Augustine’s view, based on the science and knowledge that was available to him in the 5th Century when he lived. Augustine believed the earth was young.
That isn’t the end of our understanding of Augustine, though. To understand Augustine, we might be aided by a basic review of the mythological, philosophical and scientific views that were prevalent in his world at the time.
According to my inquiry on Bing Co-Pilot, the mythology of the time didn’t attempt to date the age of the earth. Science (such as it was) also had not established a position. Philosophy, however, provided two opposing views.
The philosophical camps were led by Aristotle and Lucretius. Aristotle argued that the earth was eternal, and Lucretius argued that the earth formed relatively recently (based on a lack of records prior to the Trojan War). (The Trojan War dates to the 11th or 12th Century BCE.) Thus, the two competing views in Augustine’s day were 1) eternal earth or 2) young earth. There was no inkling in Augustine’s time that the earth might be very old, but not eternal.
Interestingly, Aristotle’s view of an eternal earth shifted to an eternal universe, and that view became the accepted scientific view that lasted well into the 20th Century. This was Einstein’s view when he developed the Theory of Relativity.
The past eternal view of the universe was only debunked and rejected by the scientific consensus in the second half of the 20th Century, and then only very reluctantly. (Even now, some scientists demonstrate a desire to find support for a past eternal universe, but support for that view seems to get thinner and thinner as time goes on.)
In the uncertain stew of mythology, philosophy, and science in the 5th Century, Augustine acknowledged that a literal, 6-day reading of the creation story in Genesis is not an irrational interpretation. That is basically how he put it.
He didn’t endorse that view, however. He thought the better view was that the “days” in Genesis 1 do not correspond to earthly (24 hour) days. Even in his exploration of a “literal” reading of Genesis, Augustine incorporated allegorical nuance.
Augustine did not believe that “literal” and “allegorical” meanings were mutually exclusive, and neither did most of the early church fathers. What Augustine and the early church fathers meant by the “literal” meaning of Scripture was what the people who wrote the original words literally meant and how the audience to whom they communicated understood them.
In this effort to understand what the writers meant, the early church fathers assumed that the original meanings included metaphor, symbolism, and literary devices. None of the early church fathers (that I am aware of) argued for the modern sense of strict literalism in the interpretation of Scripture.
Though most early Christians believed literally in the historicity of the biblical accounts (to use a modern term), they also accepted the richness of allegorical meaning in Scripture at the same time. In fact, the metaphorical meaning of Scripture was assumed to be the deeper, more significant meaning of Scripture.
Augustine (along with Clement of Alexandria and Origen) ultimately rejected the calendar-day view of the Genesis creation story in favor of instantaneous creation with a kind of day/age view of the creation passage in Genesis. The great Jewish theologians, Philo and Hilary of Poitiers also took this view that God created the earth instantaneously.
We should recognize that the day-age view that Augustine and others preferred was probably not the consensus, but it also wasn’t considered heresy. The theology and the philosophy were unsettled, and science had not yet developed as we know it. The Church allowed for robust disagreement on age of the earth, because it was not considered essential doctrine.
I should stop here, at the risk of pointing out something you already know, and look at the meaning of the Hebrew word, יוֹם (yom). This word is translated into the English word, day, in Genesis 1. As with most Hebrew words, yom has many nuanced meanings and applications, both literal and figurative. The various meanings include:
Day, as opposed to night
Day as a division of time
Day as defined by evening and morning
Day as in a time (like harvest)
Day as in an age or epoch of time
In addition to the definitions, most Hebrew words have both literal and figurative meanings and applications. Thus, Augustine’s position that the days in Genesis can be read to mean an “earthly” or “ordinary” day did not exclude the idea of applying them more figuratively. That duality is consistent with the way Hebrew words and Hebrew language works. This built-in literal/figurative duality of Hebrew words informed the thinking of the early church fathers.
Augustine is famous for preferring allegorical readings and applications of Scripture. In his early two-volume work on Genesis in which he took issue with the Manicheans, Augustine explored the position that the days in Genesis are seven epochs of redemptive history corresponding with seven stages of the Christian life. (See Did Augustine Read Genesis 1 Literally? by Gavin Ortlund citing De Genesis contra Manichaeos 1.23.35-1.25.43, in Augustine, On Genesis, 62-68.)
When Augustine set out to write a “literal” interpretation of Genesis, he didn’t mean what people today might think he meant. Even his “literal” reading of Scripture was not strictly literalist. It was an attempt to understand what the original writers and audiences (literally) meant and what they understood it to mean.
Science in St. Augustine’s day was not advanced enough to weigh in on the age of the earth, but Augustine was a strong proponent of understanding science. The science of his day, for instance, had settled the spherical shape and circumference of the earth. That the earth was round and even the size of the perimeter of the earth was well established and understood among academics since before the time of Christ. (It is purely a myth, for instance, that Columbus had to convince people the earth was not flat.) Augustine’s view of scientific knowledge and its relationship to Scripture is what I want to highlight here.
I am reminded again in my daily reading of Scripture of the prominence of women in the life and ministry of Jesus. Every time I read through the Gospels, I see it. As I read through the Old Testament with eyes sensitized by the Gospels, I see the theme there also. This theme is somewhat, hidden, however.
We have only committed to the idea that women should be equals of men in very modern times, and that idea is still not universal around the world. A cultural revolution was required in the western world to change ancient paradigms. The change has been slow, difficult, and filled with tension.
Christianity was influential in bringing about that change, but many Christians have also resisted it. This is true even while the roots of that cultural revolution are embedded in Judeo-Christian Scripture.
Tom Holland, in his epic book, Dominion, traced modern, secular humanist values back to a surprising root. He had no idea where the values he took for granted came from: gender equality, racial equality, individual freedoms, civil rights, etc. When he searched for them, he for found them in Genesis, in the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and in the letters of Paul, the apostle.
Rebecca McLaughlin writes about the prominence of women in the Gospel accounts of Jesus in her 2021 article, Jesus Changed Everything for Women. She quotes Holland to remind us of the cultural context in which those accounts were written:
In Greco–Roman thinking, men were superior to women and sex was a way to prove it. “As captured cities were to the swords of the legions, so the bodies of those used sexually were to the Roman man,” Holland wrote. “To be penetrated, male or female, was to be branded as inferior.”
In Rome, “men no more hesitated to use slaves and prostitutes to relieve themselves of their sexual needs than they did to use the side of a road as a toilet.” The idea that every woman had the right to choose what happened to her body was laughable.
Jesus chantged Everything
Jesus didn’t introduce the these radical notions, however. They go all the way back to Genesis, where we read that God made men and women, together, in His image. (More on that below)
Modern westerners have learned to reject and even to despise the paternalism of most of the history of mankind (pun intended), so it’s easy to miss the way the Bible elevates women. After all, the Bible was written by many men many centuries ago, before anyone in the west (or anywhere else) got the notion that women should be treated as equals.
Let that sink in a moment: the Bible was written by men.
As much as modern westerners like to recoil from the idea of men treating women as second class citizens, the 1st Century Roman world thought nothing of it. Aristotle taught that women are “defective men”. He believed that “women were fit only to be the subjects of male rule“, and “they are born to be ruled by men”. Aristotle and most men for millennia thought that the inferiority of women was obvious, stemming from their nature as the “weaker gender”.
Given that context, the “clues” we find “hidden” in the Bible of a different narrative about women is remarkable. Though the Bible was written, literally, by men, Christians like myself maintain that it was inspired by God, and a divinely inspired narrative shines through it. This is true despite the obvious cultural influences we see on the face of it.
The Bible was written by men during times in which men dominated thought and culture. it is no wonder that the Bible is often criticized for being backward and paternalistic, but that view can only be sustained on a cursory, shallow reading of the Bible. A closer reading belies a very different narrative!
Navigating by Faith 