Imperishable Inheritance

A lot has been hap­pen­ing. I’ve been try­ing for two days to find a place to edit images online, because the com­put­ers here have noth­ing; and they block admin access (prob­a­bly smart). Any­way, we’ll just have to do with­out the pic­tures for now.

Evan­ge­lism

I went with my new friend Aaron and evan­ge­lized on the cam­pus of Uni­ver­sity of South­ern Cal­i­for­nia. We got the oppor­tu­nity to talk to a Tibetan Bud­dhist, a Malaysian Mus­lim, and a Greek Ortho­dox Chris­t­ian (well, he said he was, rather pas­sive). The Bud­dhist eyes light­ened up when we talked about assur­ance of sal­va­tion in
Chris­tian­ity, because he had no such doc­trine in Bud­dhism. It was an enrich­ing expe­ri­ence. I love Mus­lims, but I just froze when I was talk­ing to him. It’s amaz­ing how all the head knowl­edge still has to be worked out in prac­ti­cal, evan­ge­lis­tic set­tings. I found my evan­ge­lis­tic half in Aaron. We com­ple­mented each other well, and it was a very edi­fy­ing time.

The King­dom

Per­spec­tives talked yes­ter­day about what “The King­dom of God” is and what will bring it back. I’ve been read­ing writ­ings by Gor­don Ladd who is well known for his writ­ings on The King­dom. The thought that the sec­ond com­ing will occur only by the gospel reach­ing the ends of the earth is a thought eas­ily passed over—but very impor­tant. It really makes you ques­tion how much you really want Christ to come back.

It was inter­est­ing to hear a scholar in Jew­ish stud­ies clearly illus­trate the dif­fer­ences between the Jew­ish con­cep­tion of the Mes­siah and the resul­tant “mys­tery of the king­dom” (that being two com­ings instead of one). He was the first to defend a the­o­log­i­cal stance, and that being pre­mil­len­ni­al­ism. He made good argu­ments through his­tory about the for­mu­la­tion of the Amil and Post­mil views (that notably being, espe­cially in Amil that the Roman Church was the king­dom and Jonathan Edwards and oth­ers view­ing Post­mil as the build­ing on the king­dom in a lit­eral mil­lenia). Reflect­ing on those thoughts makes Pre­mil just that much more appeal­ing. He was, although, pro­gres­sive dis­pen­sa­tional so that does for­mu­late in his view of a lit­eral king­dom to which the promises will be ful­filled to the Jews.

The­o­log­i­cal Controversy

We had some con­tro­versy (well, I caused con­tro­versy) with the inclu­sion of a Gre­gory Boyd arti­cle. I saw “God at War” the day before in the U.S. Cen­ter for World Mis­sions book­store, and I warned the man­agers about his the­ol­ogy; but they didn’t really seem to phased. Well, when that book was brought up and an arti­cle uti­lized from it was in our man­ual his the­ol­ogy was put on dis­play. It was good to warn oth­ers about what he believes and how destruc­tive it is in the mis­sions move­ment and our wor­ship of God.

Calvin­ism is still an issue. My dis­ci­pler told me to try and “think of some­thing dif­fer­ent.” Ha, I guess he’s right, but a part of my love for mis­sions mobi­liza­tion is deeply entrenched around that the­o­log­i­cal truth. I was so encour­aged to meet Hein Pre­to­rius (a mis­sion­ary to Namibia) and see how Reformed The­ol­ogy has impacted him and his ministry.

End Notes

I’m in a much bet­ter mood and learn­ing a lot. I’m finally open­ing up to the other peo­ple on the project and things are going bet­ter. Tonight, we’re going to a Mor­mon tem­ple after receiv­ing a les­son on their doc­trine (I know Aaron would get pumped up).