They gathered at Armaggedon.

The book of Revelation is an "apocalypse." An apocalypse is not really a genre we have today. Nevertheless, several different Jewish apocalypses have survived from around the time of Christ. A typical Jewish apocalypse is a little like a historical novel. The author pretends to be a famous person from the past prophesying about the present. 

For example, let's say I wrote a short story where John Wesley from the 1700s had a vision about the Methodist church of today. It would really be me writing about the present day. But in my apocalypse, Wesley would be telling about a vision he had. (I might also not get in trouble for what I am saying because, after all, John Wesley is saying it.)

Now, the book of Revelation doesn't have that element of a Jewish apocalypse. Most think that it really was John of Patmos behind the book. It is also possible that John was relating some part of an actual vision he had. But, given the genre, it would not be lying if he did not see all of the book of Revelation in a vision. He could simply have been inspired to follow the normal template for an apocalypse.

In a Jewish apocalypse, an otherworldly figure comes to visit the prophet in question. In the case of Revelation, it is Jesus himself who comes to John. The heavenly visitor then gives a "revelation" to the prophet. It is a revelation both about what is going on in heaven that the audience can't see yet and also about what is soon going to take place on earth. Often, an apocalypse was written during a time of crisis. The revelation brings a word of assurance that God is going to prevail in the end, even if things don't look so good at the moment.

By its very nature, an apocalypse is full of symbolism and figurative language. That is one of the challenges of interpreting a book like Revelation. Amid all of its symbolism, what are we meant to take as straightforward, and what is more like a kaleidoscope -- possibly the same event seen from different perspectives. For example, we probably should not take Revelation as a straightforward linear progression over time, with chapter 11 happening right after chapter 10. 

To get a handle on the book, it might be helpful to take a look at how its imagery progresses. What is the outline of Revelation, and how do its parts fit together?

2. Revelation begins with John on the island of Patmos, and he receives a visit from Jesus on the Lord's Day. Revelation 1 sets us up for the rest of the book. Jesus is coming back soon (1:7), and he is going to tell John "what is about to happen after these things" (1:19).

The next two chapters (Rev. 2-3) are then letters to seven real churches with real situations in Asia Minor. He goes clockwise: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. More than any audience today or at any other time in history, this revelation is for them. 

Chapters 4-5 are then in the throne room of heaven. Revelation 4 gives proper worship to God the Father in the throne room. Revelation 5 then turns to the Lamb, Jesus, who is the only one worthy to open the scroll that will unfold the final judgment.

The Lamb now breaks the seven seals of the scroll. And after he opens the seventh seal, we get seven trumpets (Rev. 6-11). This probably is not a linear sequence but an apocalyptic picture. The point is that God's judgment is going to be bad, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of it. 

During both the sixth seal and the sixth trumpet, there is an intermission to the sequence. In Revelation 7 we get a picture of the martyred in heaven -- 144,000 from Israel along with a group from every nation, tribe, people, and language (7:14). Revelation 11 gives a second intermission where two witnesses are mentioned. The temple seems to be still standing, and we have already suggested that imagery of the Jewish War may stand somewhat in the background of this chapter.

3. A second vision begins at 11:19. This is not a continuation of a storyline but another version of the same one. This vision chiefly covers Revelation 12-19. In it, we get a clearer picture of the historical context of Revelation. Revelation 17 in particular gives us a key to the identity of the beast and who the enemy is. As we saw in chapter 6, the beast is modeled on Nero, the number of whose name is 666 (Rev. 13:18).

The kingdom that is the enemy of God's people is Babylon, which is a cipher for Rome. Rome is Babylon because, just as Babylon destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, so Rome would destroy Jerusalem and its temple. Revelation 18 looks to the judgment and fall of Rome. Although this did not happen in the first century, Rome becomes symbolic of the defeat of God's enemies that will take place once and for all in the judgment.

We get more clearly who John has in mind as the oppressor of God's people. It is Rome -- or Babylon -- that is "drunk on the blood of God's holy people" (17:6). The prostitute in Revelation 17 is Rome, "the great city that rules over the kings of the earth" (17:18). While John pictures the judgment of Rome, we should expand the image to the final judgment of all who have opposed God throughout history.

Revelation 14 gives us a picture of the 144,000 again. This is not a different 144,000 but another picture of the same group who did not give in under Roman persecution. This time around, they do not seem to be restricted to those saved from Israel. They represent all the saved, a symbolic number.   

To finish the outline of Revelation, there is a third vision from 19:11 to 22:5. This vision reiterates the defeat of the beast again (19:20). However, this final vision pushes to the final judgment and the reign of Christ on earth. Revelation ends with both the conclusion of the vision in the new Jerusalem (22:6-17) and the conclusion of the letters to the churches (22:18-21).

4. Again, we probably should not take the book of Revelation as a sequence of events. Its symbols repeat the same basic elements over and over again. In John's day, the point was that Rome had become the archenemy of the church, and the emperors of Rome had become antichrists, although Revelation never uses that term. The church was experiencing intense persecution and martyrdom by Rome, which was drunk on the blood of the saints. 

The empire had come to expect emperor worship. The very coinage of Rome implied the worship of the emperor, making it difficult for Christians even to participate in the normal economy without feeling like idolators, like they had taken the mark of the beast. These images may very well have parallels in the end times, but it seems impossible for us to know how they will play out. All we know is that the imagery is built extensively from John's own world and the great tribulation the church was experiencing in his time.

The other recurring image is that of judgment. There would be a resurrection of all the dead. Those who had persecuted God's people would be judged. Christ would reign on earth eventually. There eventually would be the new Jerusalem and an eternal Millennium. More on the Millennium in the next chapter.

5. What then is Armaggedon? ...

Antichrist is coming.

For some reason, probably because of the freedom God has built into the creation, good almost always has its opponents. Whether it be Pharaoh at the time of the exodus or the high priest when Jesus was on earth, there is almost always a bad guy in the story. The Bible is full of them.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the archetypal bad guy in the key passages in Daniel turns out to be a Syrian king named Antiochus Epiphanes. He is the one who, in 175 BC, deposes the anointed high priest and puts his own favorite in charge of Israel (Dan. 9:26). It is he who in 167 BC puts an end to the sacrifice and offering (Dan. 9:37). He defiles the temple with a "desolating abomination" (Dan. 11:31). He offers a pig on the altar and constructs an altar to Zeus in the temple. Some three years later, the temple was purified and restored (164 BC). 

In other words, the prophecies of Daniel were initially fulfilled even before the time of Christ, including its prophecies about a "desolater." There was already a secondary fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem (Mark 13:14). Who knows, perhaps there will be a third fulfillment in the end times. There wouldn't need to be. We'll find out.

Antichrists

2. There's a good chance that you have heard of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is the archetypal opponent of Christ and Christianity. The term itself comes from 1 John 2.
_________________________________

"Little children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now, many antichrists have arisen. Thus we know it is the last hour." (1 John 2:18)

"Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son." (2:22)

"Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard that it was coming and is already in the world"  (4:3)

"Many deceivers have gone out into the world that are not confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist" (2 John 1:7)
_________________________________

Because of the noise in our heads from other passages and contemporary debates, we can easily overread these passages. If we can bracket those other voices out and listen to these passages in context, none of them are necessarily referring to an individual person. In fact, the lead-off verse in 1 John 2:18 says that many antichrists are here, not a single figure. 

There is also no "the" on the word antichrist in 2:18. In Greek, that doesn't mean that we should put the word "an" in front -- "an antichrist is coming." It may simply say that opposition to Christ is a predictable element in the equation.  

The very next verse hints at who John the elder actually had in mind. It is a group that had split off from John's church (2:19). 2 John 1:7 suggests that they were early Gnostics who denied that Jesus had come to earth in the flesh (cf. 1 John 4:2). We call this group "Docetists" because they thought Jesus only seemed to be human. [1] They may have been Jewish since they seem to have acknowledged God the Father but denied Jesus the Son (1 John 2:22).

The bottom line is that the antichrists of 1 and 2 John are not primarily an end times figure like the Antichrist we have heard of. There will always be antichrists in the world. Opposition to Christ is always coming. Ironically, the passages from which we get the name "Antichrist" are not primarily about the Antichrist.

Now, John may allude to teaching about an Antichrist. When he says, "You have heard antichrist is coming," he may be alluding to teaching in the church about an archetypal opponent to Christ. It is possible. He may allude to some of the other teachings we will examine in this chapter. But in general, he was referring to some of the Gnostic resistance to a proper understanding of Jesus that existed in the late first century in certain church circles.

Bottom line: 1 John does not clearly refer to an end-times figure known as the Antichrist. It could allude to such teaching, but its primary concern was a group in the late first-century church who opposed a proper understanding of Jesus.

The Man of Lawlessness

3. One of the most enigmatic passages in the Bible is 2 Thessalonians 2. It mentions a "man of lawlessness" who opposes God. He would certainly qualify as an antichrist, although the word is not used of him here.
________________________________

[The Day of the Lord will not come] unless the apostasy should come first, and the man of lawlessness should be revealed, the son of destruction. [He is] the one who opposes and exalts himself against everything called "God" or any object of worship. Accordingly, he seats himself in the temple of God trying to demonstrate that he is God. Don't you remember that I was telling you about these things while I was still around?

And you know what is restraining him now so that he might be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already working -- [there is] only the one restraining until he should be out of the midst. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the Spirit of his mouth, and he will destroy with the appearance of his arrival.

The arrival of [the lawless one] is accompanied by the working of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders and with all the deceit of unrighteousness to those who are perishing because they did not receive the love of the truth so that they might be saved. So God sends on them the working of delusion that they might believe in the lie.

2 Thess. 2:3-11
_______________________________

This is a difficult passage because nothing is said of the temple being destroyed (still less of it being reconstructed). The most natural way to think of this prediction is thus that it relates to Paul's own day and to the time before the temple was destroyed.

It is also very cryptic like there is code language here in case someone would read the letter. "You know," but the letter doesn't say. "Didn't I already talk about this when I was with you?" Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. This secret quality of the letter again reinforces a sense that it is about events that were unfolding at the time of writing.

As we have said repeatedly, that does not mean that it cannot be about the end times as well. Paul can be inspired to say more than he knows he is saying. But in his mind, something in his own time was likely going on.

What or who was keeping the man of lawlessness from fully emerging? Again, the language is very cryptic. No answer seems completely satisfying. The Holy Spirit is both a "what" (the Greek word for spirit is neuter) and a "who" (the Holy Spirit is a person), but it is not clear how the Spirit would ever be taken out of the way.

One theory is that the reference is to Paul himself. A self-reference might explain the cryptic nature of those comments. "You know what is keeping him from unleashing" (that is, me). "But when he is taken out of the way" (that is, me), he will come full on. 

4. The dating of 2 Thessalonians is often considered straightforward. The standard answer is that 2 Thessalonians was written at about the same time as 1 Thessalonians, around AD 50-52. Perhaps Paul writes 1 Thessalonians to explain the resurrection. Then some overreact and think the Day of the Lord has already happened.

However, there is nothing we know about at the time that fits the secretive nature of 2 Thessalonians. For example, there seems to be concern that its message be authenticated. Paul's signature is emphasized at the end (2 Thess. 3:17). There is also a strong parallel between the beginning of the letter and the beginning of 1 Thessalonians. Some have even suggested it has been copied.

For these reasons, I have hypothesized that the real context of 2 Thessalonians is in the last days of Paul before he was put to death by Nero. [2] This would put it in the range of AD 62 to 68. Some have suggested that 2 Thessalonians was "pseudonymous," written under Paul's name. If that were the case, we would still imagine it written soon after his death, when he would have been taken "out of the way."

As we will see in the rest of this chapter, the image of Nero as an antichrist figure, even if the word antichrist is not used, seems to be a major part of the imagery of Revelation as well. So it would be in keeping with this strand of New Testament thinking if 2 Thessalonians also had Nero in mind.

The imagery of 2 Thessalonians 2 also fits the tone and flavor of Mark 13. For example, both talk about signs and wonders accompanying false messiahs. They both suggest that there will be those who are deceived among the people of God. A context of the Jewish War -- which overlapped with Nero's rule -- would make some sense of these comments. 2 Thessalonians then, like Mark 13, would pertain to the lead-up to the temple's destruction ("sets up in the temple as God").

The bottom line is that Paul had some figure in his own day in mind and that the temple to which he refers was the temple that was standing at that time. More on the temple in the next chapter. Is it possible that there will be another man of lawlessness in the end times, even another temple? Far be it from me to say that there will not be. 

My point in this book is more to indicate that most of the prophecies that are part of the dispensationalist approach already had fulfillments in biblical times. God can do whatever he wants in the future. We'll know that when it comes. But these prophecies had a great deal to do with their own times. 

The Beasts of Revelation

5. [The chapter continues...]

[1] The Greek word dokeo means to "seem."

[2] See my Explanatory Notes on 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Marion: Independently Published, 2020).

From the Great Tribulation

We now come to the distinctive feature of John Darby's dispensationalism: the Great Tribulation. The idea of meeting in the air was not new. The idea of antichrist was not new. But no one before around 1830 had ever suggested that there would be a seven-year period of tribulation after a rapture of the righteous to heaven. This was the distinctive invention of John Nelson Darby.

And it is an ingenious invention! The starting point is Revelation 7:14, the key text for this chapter.
____________________________

These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
____________________________

We saw in chapter 3 that these individuals were not likely individuals raptured from the earth while alive. Rather, these are likely those who have been martyred for their faith. In chapter 3, we also argued that John probably was especially thinking about those who were martyred under the Roman Empire. 

In this chapter, however, we want to explore where the idea of a seven-year Tribulation came from. There are two places in particular. The one is Daniel 9, and the second is Revelation 12-13.

Daniel 9

2. Just as Ezekiel 38-39 is a passage that doesn't get a lot of attention, John Nelson Darby also noticed another little read passage in Daniel 9:24-27: 
____________________________

Seventy weeks are decreed upon your people and your holy city for the fullness of the transgression... from the going out of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the anointed one, the prince, [will be] seven weeks. And for sixty-two weeks it will return... And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one will be cut off and lose everything. And the people of the coming prince will destroy the city and the sanctuary... And he will make a covenant firm with many for one week. And in the middle of the week, he will stop the sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations, the desolator [will come] until complete and what is decreed is poured out upon the desolator.  
____________________________

It is commonly assumed that a "week" here stands for a seven year period. It is hard to make sense of the prophecy historically if it were referring to seven day periods. Given that figurative assumption, Darby then interpreted the years from that point on literally. Since 70 times 7 is 490, he assumed that Daniel was referring to a literal span of 490 years. 

He then took the one who "will be cut off and lose everything" as a reference to Christ. Since that point was 69 weeks into the prophecy, that would put AD 33 or thereabouts 483 years into the prophecy. Counting backwards, that would put the time of the word going out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem at about 450 BC. While not exact, this is about the time that Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (ca. 444 BC). 

But the most distinctive point of Darby's interpretation is his sense that the counting of weeks went on pause at the point of Jesus' death. At that point God switched "dispensations." God had been working with Israel. Now God switches to the church for a new period of history -- the "Church Age." We are still in this age today. [1]

However, Darby believed that God was still planning to make his math work. At the end of time, after the church was raptured to heaven, God would switch dispensations again. In The Great Tribulation, God would get that last seven-year week. He would finish up his dealings with Israel. In the end, Israel would turn to Christ, as we talked about in chapter 2. 

During that final seven-year period of history, a "desolator" would arise. He will stop the sacrifice and offering of the temple. (By the way, that implies that the Jerusalem temple will need to be rebuilt.) Darby correlated this prophecy with what 2 Thessalonians 2:4 has to say about a man of lawlessness setting himself up in the temple as God. He correlated it with the abomination that causes desolation in Daniel 11:31 and Mark 13:14. He correlated this figure with the Beast from the Sea in Revelation 13:1. He called this figure, "The Antichrist," following 1 John 2:18.

This is all ingenious, the sign of a beautiful mind. Perhaps he was inspired by the Holy Spirit! Nevertheless, we will take the next few chapters to unpack each of these texts to see what each seems to refer to in its own context. Far be it from me to say that God cannot stitch these passages together and fulfill them however he wishes. At the same time, in context, it is not at all clear that these passages naturally go together in this way. 

In this chapter, we especially want to examine his interpretation of the weeks in Daniel.

3. You'll notice that there is a mixture of literal and figurative here, and the weeks don't exactly line up. For example, there is nothing in the text to suggest that we would skip 2000 years between the 69th and 70th week. Darby just made that up with no basis whatsoever in the text of Daniel.

Most Christian interpreters throughout the centuries had taken the prophecy to refer to Jesus' death and perhaps the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This includes not only early church figures like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian but Protestant Reformers like John Calvin. That is to say, they believed the prophecy was already fulfilled.

Even then, there are questions about how literally we should take the numbers. The whole prophecy is very symbolic. For example, weeks are taken as years. We are on figurative ground from the very beginning. But then we become very literal and precise with how the years are played out. It's like we are mixing genres -- extremely figurative meets extremely literal.

By most reckonings, for example, the span of time from Nehemiah to Christ is remarkably close but a few years off. From 444 BC to 33 AD is 477 years. So it would seem that, by any reckoning, the weeks of seven years are approximate. This is no problem at all given the genre. The symbolism of the sevens was more important than the precision of the years.

But there are other questions too. For example, why start with Nehemiah? I would have thought the more natural referent is 538 BC when Cyrus gave the word to the Jews to "restore and rebuild Jerusalem." Daniel is set in the 500s, not the 400s. Daniel is set during the Babylonian captivity. The most natural way to take the "word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" is thus in terms of the return of the Jews from captivity, which took place in 538 BC.

But then 490 years puts us in the year 48 BC, a year of no particular note. Are there any other clues in Daniel that might suggest the prophecy is referring to some other event? 

Yes, why yes there are. Daniel 11 reads as a virtual blow-by-blow of the events leading up to the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Syria, in 167 BC. We have already mentioned that this event was the first fulfillment of Daniel 11:31 and the "abomination that causes desolation." We will return to this passage in chapter 7.

In other words, we know that the book of Daniel has material that is focused on the events surrounding the Maccabean crisis from 167-164 BC. In that material, a desolator puts a halt to the sacrifice and offering of the temple. And he does this approximately halfway through the crisis.

Who then would be the two anointed ones in the passage? The first anointed one is difficult in any rendering. Following Darby's approach, this person would need to live in the early 300s BC, and we know of no such figure.

Starting from the call to return to Jerusalem -- and taking the numbers to be approximate -- there are candidates for the interpretation that starts with 538 BC. For example, Joshua the anointed high priest of Zechariah 3:8 was high priest in the late 500s. Again, taking the numbers to be approximate, one might point to Nehemiah as the anointed one in the mid-400s BC. There are at least options, where there are none for Darby.

The Maccabean crisis is earlier than we might expect if the numbers are taken exactly, but the genre itself suggests that the numbers should not be taken exactly. What then is the final week? The final week would refer to the Maccabean crisis itself, which only came to a head with the desecration of Jerusalem in 167 BC. Antiochus had already been implementing actions to Hellenize Israel since about 175 BC, including a prohibition on circumcision, on the observance of Sabbath, and on keeping food laws. He ordered the construction of Greek institutions like a gymnasium.

The last three years of the crisis were the most intense. You might argue that they came "in the middle of the week."

Who then would be the second anointed one who was "cut off" and lost everything. This is often related to the high priest Onias III, who was deposed and replaced by Antiochus, the Syrian king. This deposing took place at the beginning of the troubles Antiochus brought on Jerusalem in 175 BC, arguably the beginning of the "week" to which Daniel refers.

Is it possible that God planted a double meaning here, one in relation to Jesus as well? Certainly. We find the phenomenon of double interpretation often in the New Testament. However, from a contextual standpoint, the book of Daniel itself more likely points to the Maccabean crisis in Daniel 9.

In either of these cases, there is no week left over for the end times. In this interpretation, Darby went completely beyond anything the text indicates. And indeed, he saw an interpretation that apparently no Christian (or Jew) had ever seen in the passage before him for some 1800 years.

4. What about Revelation then? Does it not mention several 3.5-year periods too? ...

[1] This switching to the church is in part why Darby did not anticipate that Israel would be gathered and be reconstituted as a nation before the Tribulation. The re-establishment of Israel in 1948 thus caused some adjustment to what was by then the standard dispensational understanding.

Magog will attack Israel.

Because I want to get my current writing project done before the eclipse, I'm substituting this post for my weekly review.

_________________________

If we did a "heatmap" for the parts of the Bible that people read and talk about a lot in contrast to those that get very little attention, the book of Ezekiel would probably turn out to be one of those books that is read less often. At this point, some would begin to chastise us. It is all the word of God, and preachers should preach the whole council of God! This dynamic is why preachers are told in seminary to use the lectionary, which is a tool to make sure you cover all of Scripture in the course of three years.

However, before we get too hard on ourselves, there is a good reason why some parts of Scripture are read more often than others. The books of the Bible tell us they were written to people who have been dead for thousands of years. When you write something to an ancient audience, even though it is inspired, it is bound to have some parts that apply more directly and others that apply more indirectly. In other words, some parts will inevitably have more to do with "that time" than "all time." We can learn from all of it, but some of it is bound to be more directly relevant to them than to us.

Take the middle chapters of Isaiah, chapters 13-39. There is some very rich material in these chapters! At the same time, most of these chapters involves the condemnation of nations that no longer exist. For example, Isaiah 16 is a prophecy against Moab. Where is Moab again? It no longer exists. So it is no surprise that you don't hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah 16.

A good deal of Ezekiel feels that way too. There is some incredibly rich prophecy in there. Yet it also relates to a situation in the mid-500s BC. And there is some strange material in there too -- wheels within wheels, eating scrolls, laying on your side for months on end! The Holy Spirit makes certain parts of Scripture jump out at different people in different times, places, and situations. At other times, these passages may stand ready more in the background.

2. Ezekiel 38-39 is a passage somewhat like Isaiah 16. It talks about places like Magog and has puzzling names like Gog, Meshech, and Tubal. It is very difficult to align these names with any known historical figures or places. The battle that is pictured in these chapters similarly does not align with any known battles.

So it is no surprise that dispensationalists typically align these chapters with an end-times battle that has not yet happened. The Scofield Reference Bible in 1917 had this to say about Ezekiel 38:

____________________

That the primary reference is to the northern (European) powers, headed up by Russia, all agree... The reference to Meshech and Tubal (Moscow and Tobolsk) is a clear mark of identification. Russia and the northern powers have been the latest persecutors of dispersed Israel, and it is congruous... that destruction should fall at the climax of the last mad attempt to exterminate the remnant of Israel in Jerusalem. The whole prophecy belongs to the yet future "day of Jehovah"... and to the battle of Armageddon... but includes also the final revolt of the nations at the close of the kingdom-age.

____________________

During the days of the Soviet Union, it was easy to think that it would spearhead an attack of this sort, although many other enemies are mentioned: Persia, Cush, Put, Gomer, Beth-Togarmah. These names represent areas like Egypt and Europe. One could easily think that the picture is that of the whole world against Israel, much like Armageddon in Revelation 16 when the "kings of the whole world" come to battle against God's people. 

3. How do prophecy teachers integrate the attack of Magog into their understanding of the Tribulation and the end times? The answer is that there is no one agreed application. Some have seen this event as taking place before the rapture and the Great Tribulation. Others think it will happen soon after the rapture.

How might these scenarios go? 

The one I remember from Hal Lindsey years ago is that, because Ezekiel 39:9 says it will take seven years for them to use the (obviously wooden) weapons for firewood, it would have to take place before the Tribulation began. In fact, since Lindsey didn't think there would be much time for such things in the last 3.5 years of the Tribulation, he suggested that perhaps Magog would come up against Israel three and a half years before the Tribulation.

Perhaps for similar reasons, others suggest that this event will take place soon after the rapture but before the Tribulation begins. Then there are seven years to burn the weapons. This event might also then provide a mechanism for the Antichrist to arise.

Both of these scenarios have in common a military event where large portions of the world rise up against Israel. They throw everything they have at Israel but are defeated.

4. I often have told my Bible students over the years that we will know what the fulfillment of such things looks like after it happens. Frankly, I haven't found a "one-to-one" pattern of fulfillment between the Old and New Testaments. Often, it seems like the fulfillments are somewhat unexpected. In hindsight, we look back at a passage like Isaiah 53 and say, "Of course, the Messiah is going to suffer for the world." But as far as I can tell, not a single Jew had that thought prior to the death of Christ, including the disciples themselves.

The imagery of Ezekiel came to mind in 1948 when so many Arab countries rose up against Israel after it declared its independence in 1948 -- the "Arab-Israeli" war. But that was not the end of the world, no matter how clear it seemed at the time! That moment was not the specific fulfillment of Ezekiel 38-39. But this passage always comes to mind in prophecy circles whenever some force is in tension with Israel. And thus far, they have always been wrong. 100% failure rate.

In fact, a number of Arab nations have recognized Israel as a nation since then. Dispensationalists resisted Jimmy Carter for trying to bring peace between countries like Egypt and Israel. "You're wasting your time," they said (lifeboat). "You're coddling the enemy!" But there have now been over 50 years of peace between Egypt and Israel. Imagine if their "clarity" on prophecy had prevailed. They were just wrong. 100% failure rate.

Bottom line? 

It is alarming when the interpretations of passages like these run the risk of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies in modern politics. In a 1971 speech, Ronald Reagan as governor of California expressed the belief that the Soviet Union was Magog. When he then gave his "evil empire" speech as president in 1983, it is only natural to assume he had this imagery from Ezekiel 38-39 in the back of his mind. 

Thankfully, Reagan later collaborated when Gorbachev indicated he wanted to restructure the Soviet Union and move toward peace between the two countries. As it turned out, the Soviet Union of the twentieth century did not turn out to be Magog. But you can see how potentially dangerous it was for Reagan to have this equation in his head. By the grace of God, the notion did not lead him to assume that Russia could only be the enemy, because he was wrong. 100% failure rate on equations like these.

Today, we face similar danger when politicians with immense power assume that, say, Iran must always be the enemy or, for that matter, that the nation of Israel can never do anything wrong. The world is at great risk if our leaders do not make decisions based on the evidence and holding all nations to the standards of international law. Otherwise, we run the risk of losing opportunities for peace or looking the other way at injustice.

As mentioned in chapter 1, there have been many moments of good and bad times over the last 2000 years. We run the serious risk of unnecessarily making the times bad if we assume they must always be bad. We should work for the good of the world at all times and, when the bad presents itself, deal with it with wisdom and sound moral values. When we assume, it makes a mess out of you and me (or something like that).

5. So what is the right interpretation of Ezekiel...

We will be caught up in the air.

As I mentioned in the Preface, the 1972 movie, A Thief in the Night, begins with a husband being snatched out of his bathroom while he is shaving. His wife is left behind. This is the rapture, probably the most discussed event of the end times. Suddenly, all the Christians on earth are taken to be with Jesus, and the Great Tribulation begins.

When I was a boy in the 70s, the big debate in my circles was whether the rapture would happen before the seven-year Tribulation (pre-trib rapture), in the middle of it (mid-trib rapture), or at the end of it (post-trib rapture). But there was no question about whether there would be a rapture or a Tribulation. These were assumptions.

A quick look on YouTube and elsewhere will quickly reveal that there is a lot of debate today about whether the idea of a rapture is even biblical in the first place. The same goes for a seven-year Tribulation. What is all the debate about, you ask?

2. The core text is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17:

"We who are living, who are remaining until the arrival of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep because the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are living, the ones remaining, together with them will be snatched in the clouds for the meeting of the Lord in the air. And thus always we will be with the Lord."

The key word in Greek is "will be snatched," "will be caught up," "will be taken." The word was translated into Latin as rapiemur. The Latin word is where the idea of a "raptor" dinosaur comes from, a dinosaur that Jurassic Park vividly pictured as "snatching" people to eat them. It has a sense of seizing or grabbing. 

So what's all the fuss about? Isn't it clear?

The questions are two fold. First, how literal is this picture. Isn't the air all around us? I reject this sort of "demythologizing" of the text -- attempts to make the text fit with our current conceptions of the world. They thought heaven was straight up. In Acts 1:9, Jesus ascends straight up into a cloud. Don't try to make the biblical text conform to our picture of the world. It wasn't written to us originally. It was written to them, and they pictured heaven as straight up. Get over it.

The more serious question is what happens after we are snatched up to meet Jesus in the air. A very good argument can be made that we meet Jesus in the air in order to come back down for the judgment of the world. Arguments have been made that his language of meeting Jesus is reminiscent of what happens when a dignitary comes to town. You go to the edge of town to escort him into the city.

Paul had a sense that both Christians would participate in the judgment of the world, including the judgment of angels. He tells the Corinthians that they would judge angels and the world (1 Cor. 6:2-3). Jesus tells the disciples that they will sit on twelve thrones judging the children of Israel (Matt. 19:28). The New Testament generally sees the kingdom of God as something that happens on a "new" earth (e.g., Rev. 21:1-2; Luke 13:29), but it is on earth.

1 Thessalonians 4 does not say where we will be forever with the Lord, but the most likely answer given the rest of the New Testament is that it will be on a renewed earth. Jesus will descend. The dead will rise re-embodied from the ground to meet Jesus. Then we will be "snatched up" as well.

The battle lines will be drawn. Those on Jesus' side will be on the right side of the battle lines. The judgment of the world will commence. Here it probably is significant that the word air refers to the sky just above the earth, not to heaven. That is to say, we are meeting Jesus right above the earth, not in heaven.

Paul's writings know nothing of a seven-year period between Jesus' arrival and the judgment. Nor do they know anything of a thousand year Millennium. It is an argument from silence, but it puts pressure on us to make sure we are interpreting the passages in Revelation correctly.  

3. Another set of passages that are often taken to be about the rapture are Matthew 24:36-41 and Luke 17:34-36. Here is what Matthew 24 says: 

"As they were in those days before the Flood -- eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage -- right up until the day Noah entered the ark, and they did not know until the Flood came and took them all, so also will be the arrival of the Son of Humanity. Then two will be in the field. One is taken, and one is left. As two women are grinding in the mill, one is taken and one is left." 

As Craig Keener and others have shown, this passage is actually saying something dramatically different than what we think of as the rapture. [1] If we follow the train of thought, those that the Flood takes away are not the saved, but the damned! The passage is not talking about the taking away of the righteous, but the sweeping away of those who are wicked.

It is the same in Luke's version. Luke 17:34-35 talk similarly about one being taken and one left. Then the disciples ask where they are taken. Jesus' response is that they are taken to where the vultures gather around dead bodies (17:37). So, far from supporting the dispensational understanding of the rapture, these verses picture the righteous remaining on earth in the coming kingdom.

4. What about Revelation 7:14? Does not Revelation picture the righteous in heaven, those who have been snatched up from the earth from the Great Tribulation? We will explore the idea of the Tribulation in chapter 5. For now, here is how Revelation 7 reads:

"After these things I looked and, behold, a great crowd whom no one was able to number from every nation and tribes and peoples and tongues standing before the throne and before the Lamb... And one of the elders answered, saying to me, 'Who are these who have put on white robes, and from where have they come?'

"And I said to him, 'Sir, you know.' And he said to me, 'These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes and they made them white by the blood of the Lamb'" (Rev. 7:9, 13-14).

It has been all too easy to see this group as the group of those who have been raptured from the earth. However, the picture is much more grim. How is it that they have come to the throne room of God? 

We find the most likely answer in the previous chapter -- the context...

[1] Michael Brown and Craig Keener, Not Afraid of the Antichrist: Why We Don't Believe in a Pre-Tribulation Rapture (Bloomington, MN: Chosen, 2019), 146. 

Things will get worse and worse.

I continue my current book project, trying to finish in time for the eclipse on April 8. Last night I finished the chapter on Israel becoming a nation, going on to explore the imagery of the fig tree in Mark 13 as well as the meaning of Romans 11 and "all Israel being saved."

On to the next chapter this morning.
_______________________________

Growing up, we never stopped to think about our “philosophy of history.” Everyone just knew that things were going to get worse and worse until Jesus returned. 

Of course, if you look back at the last 2000 years, there have been good and bad times. Things haven't irrevocably been getting worse for 2000 years. But this is the "premillennial" mindset and the assumption of my childhood. In the days right before Jesus' return, things will get worse and worse and worse.

2. Let me pause to explain this millennial language. Revelation talks about a Millennium in chapter 20, a thousand year period with Christ reigning on earth. We will explore it further in chapter 9. 

There are three basic views of what this Millennium signifies. First, there are those who take it literally and believe it will happen after Jesus comes to judge the earth. These are premillennialists who believe that a literal Millennium is still to come. This is the order in which events happen in Revelation. There is a battle called Armageddon in which the forces of darkness are defeated (Rev. 16). Satan is bound for a thousand years, and Jesus reigns over the earth.

Throughout most of church history, amillennialism has been the dominant view. This view does not take the Millennium literally but sees it as the spiritual reign of Christ now no matter what might be going on politically with Christianity in the world. This was the dominant view throughout the Middle Ages and even by the Protestant reformers.

Postmillennialism is a view that largely coincided with the optimism of the 1700s and 1800s. In this view, the world was getting better and better in preparation for Christ's return. As it were, the church would prepare the way for the return of Christ. This optimism was more or less dashed by the wake up call of two world wars and a reminder that humanity still reminds capable of the worst atrocities of the past.

3. Most of us didn't have a name for it, but I grew up a "premillennial." Even today, most of the American church is premillennial. We believe that, right before Jesus returns, things will get worse and worse and worse. Then when it looks like there is absolutely no hope at all, Jesus will come back.

In the late 1800s, the preacher D. L. Moody used the image of a lifeboat to capture this perspective on the world. The world was like a ship that was sinking. We needed to get into the lifeboat of salvation. Clearly, he had drunk from the waters of dispensationalism and John Darby that we mentioned in chapter 1. 

From this perspective, there is no point in trying to save the world. It's going down like the Titanic. It has no hope. This view of the world thus has little time for trying to improve society. It downplays concepts like trying to help the poor or address social ills. There's no point in trying to address climate change. The world is burning, and there's nothing we can do about it. Just get in the boat and try to get as many other people as you can in the boat with you.

These are all largely the unarticulated assumptions of a worldview. The bridge is out. We need to warn people. This is no time to work on their car engines. Jesus is coming back any day!

4. Where does it come from in the Bible? Two places, chiefly. First, there are the passages in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 where Jesus talks about the lead up to the temple's destruction. Then there is of course the book of Revelation itself.

Note that this tone is not equally sustained everywhere in the New Testament. For example, the Gospel of John does not have this same urgency. The Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus) do not have this urgency. Paul's early writings, which seem to expect Jesus to return within his lifetime, do not have the same feel as Mark 13. Even Luke's version of Mark 13 feels less urgent.

What makes the difference? The difference is when Mark is being written. Mark was arguably written around the time when the Romans surrounded and then destroyed Jerusalem. Nowhere is this clearer than when he inserts the words "let the reader understand" into Mark 13:14. This was arguably a note to the person reading Mark to a congregation to emphasize the point about the temple's desecration. Why? Quite possibly because it was in process or had recently happened at the time of writing.

We will return to the question of the temple in chapter 7. For the moment, we want to show that the "worse and worse" dynamic of Mark 13 especially applied to the time leading up to Jerusalem's destruction by the Romans in AD 70. It may apply to the end times as well, but let's hear those verses first for their original meaning...

Israel becomes a nation.

A decade or two ago, I wrote books by blogging through them. I'm not sure that this was a good practice, but it helped me picture an audience, which is a good thing when writing.

Several times over the last decades, I've also started a book on the end times. I've never finished it, of course. I have in mind a popular audience, particularly a Left Behind audience. I think I may have come to write a little too advanced for this audience. At the same time, my circles have become so populist that I wonder if my style has drifted from the more academic realm. 

In any case, I'm trying to shake myself loose on this project, so I thought I'd blog a little on one of the chapters.

____________

1. After nearly 2000 years in exile, Israel became a nation again in 1948. It sent shock waves through the prophecy world. Many believed that it signaled the beginning of the final generation of people on earth before Jesus would return and the end times would begin. Several passages in the Old Testament talk about the gathering of Israel back to its land. Here are a few:

Jeremiah 31:10: “Hear the word of Yahweh, O nations, and declare it among the coastlands from afar. And say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him like a shepherd his flock.’”

Ezekiel 36:24: “I will take you from the nations, and I will gather you from all the lands, and I will cause you to come to your land.”

Ezekiel 37:21-22: “I am taking the children of Israel from the midst of the nations to which they have gone, and I will gather them from around and I will cause them to come to their land. I will make them one people on the hills of Israel. And one king will be king over them all. they shall no longer be two peoples, nor will they ever be divided into two kingdoms again.”

2. The problem with these three passages is that none of them were actually about today. They were all fulfilled already in 538 BC. In that year, the Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and reestablish Israel as a political entity. Many of them did. In 516 the temple was rebuilt, and in the late 400s BC, the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt. 

Jeremiah and Ezekiel both wrote during a time when Israel was in exile (more specifically, the southern kingdom of Judah). The Babylonians had come and pounded them. They had destroyed Jerusalem. They had destroyed the temple. They had taken the elite away to a far-off country. Some had gone down to Egypt to escape. Some even built a temple there for Yahweh. When Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote, Israel was scattered.

Meanwhile, the Assyrians had scattered the northern kingdom of Israel a century and a half earlier. Israel had been divided into two kingdoms, a northern one called Israel and a southern one named Judah. In 722 BC, the Assyrians came in and wiped out the kingdom to the north.

So, Israel was scattered in the early 500s BC when Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied. They both predicted rightly that God would bring Israel back from the nations. And he did. In 539 BC Cyrus, king of Persia, pounded the Babylonians (see Isa. 45:1). The Jews returned.

3. So these passages were not, in the first place, about modern times originally. However, could they also be about modern times? In other words, a double meaning? 

We see the phenomenon of double meanings throughout the New Testament. Some have called this phenomenon a "sensus plenior" or taking the words of the Old Testament in a "fuller sense" than they were originally intended. A good example of this dynamic is when Jesus warns of the "abomination that causes desolation" in Mark 13:14. We'll return to this verse in chapter 7 for a fuller exploration.

This verse also was not originally about modern times. In fact, the verse has already had two fulfillments. The first was in 167 BC when the Syrians defiled the Jerusalem temple by offering a pig sacrifice on its altar and erecting an altar to Zeus within it. This was the original referent of Daniel 11:31.  

However, as we will see, the context of Mark 13:14 points instead to the defilement and destruction of the temple in AD 70. The beginning of Mark 13 makes it clear that the topic under discussion is when that temple will be destroyed. This event happened in AD 70.

Accordingly, this verse in Daniel has already had two fulfillments. Will it have a third? Time will tell. But before we go too far along that road, we should know that there is nothing that would lead us to expect another fulfillment. We will talk more about that question in chapter 7.

4. So, Old Testament passages apparently can have more than one fulfillment. Is Israel becoming a nation in 1948 another fulfillment of these verses? Far be it from me to say that it is not. God can fulfill Scripture however he wants to.

However, I am not sure that everyone who thinks so has actually reckoned with the fact that it has already been fulfilled. The first and primary fulfillment took place 2500 years ago. There is no need biblically for another fulfillment.

Someone might argue that some aspects of these passages remain unfulfilled. For example, not every Jew returned to Israel. On the other hand, it doesn't really say that every Jew would return. And, of course, far from every Jew has returned even today.

Israel did not generally have a king after the return either, and there was never a clear return of the northern kingdom to the land. We will think more about the fulfillment of Ezekiel in later chapters. Israel did briefly have a couple kings. In the early first century BC there were some kings of Israel, and Herod the Great was a king. Under Herod's rule, both north and south were united.

In later chapters, I will argue that Ezekiel cannot be precisely fulfilled because Hebrews and Revelation indicate God's glory will never fill an earthly temple again. This is not a problem because prophecy is often fulfilled in ways that were blurry to the prophet but that become clear in hindsight. Since we have the New Testament (and history), we know the precise fulfillments.
____________________________

Thanks. That helped get my juices flowing. Any suggestions about style or tenor are welcome!

Week in Review (March 23, 2024)

1. A lot of course writing this week again. Worked on a couple Kingswood microcourses. Here's one on Leading a Bible Study that I did the write-up on. Continued to work on a second-semester composition course, a Lifespan Development course, a Biology course, and more.

2. I largely paused my ads this week. My sense is that most sales occur from Thursday to Sunday, so I edited and turned a version of my ads back on yesterday. The ads do well. They get people to my landing page. People move from my landing page to a sales page. Good conversions there. A number of people even go into my Shopify check-out. It's only $9.99 for five e-books. I sent a couple follow-up emails to those who have already signed up too. 

No sales... well, except for some family members.

3. I pushed into the paperback versions this week. Most people still prefer paperbacks to ebooks. That may be part of my problem. You can ship paperbacks directly to people through Amazon at author cost. The problem is that it can take up to 10 days. 

I've rediscovered Lulu Press. They were the first press I self-published with. I thought Amazon would have put them out of business, but they have an impressive worldwide printing network. I had high hopes they would be the ticket. The quality of book product they facilitate is better than KDP on Amazon, IMO.

BUT their shipping price is outrageous, IMO. AND they take as long or longer than Amazon to ship. My sense is that most people in my shoes keep a stock of their paperbacks and ship them themselves. This of course would require me to buy lots of copies of my books well in advance of selling them without any guarantee they would actually sell. I could do this and may slowly stock up over time. By the way, I could do this with books I have written with conventional publishers as well, selling them through Shopify.

3. One of the more interesting things to happen this week was an inquiry about translating my systematic theology into French. The question was whether I would be interested in giving a certain mission group in Africa permission to work on a translation. Of course, I am. But I also indicated that I could have it in French by Monday, given the wonders of AI translation. I may go ahead and do that even if they do their own.

I continue to be very proud of this book. I feel like it is more accessible than most theologies. I think it is more practical. I think it is more real. And there just aren't many Wesleyan options out there.

4. I have about 100 people in my Schenck Book Club. They signed up, so I send them a couple emails a week so far. The course I took suggested that three emails a week is not onerous because people only read them if they hit them at a good moment. I promised them a couple more books by Pentecost. These are 1) novella #4 in the Gabriel sequence: Gabriel's Diaries: The Earliest Church and 2) Explanatory Notes on Acts 1-12. So I have about 7 weeks to get those finished. But will anyone read them???

5. I don't know if I ever shared my four-prong marketing strategy for this year. 

• Self-publishing -- this is the core business, selling on Amazon and now Shopify
• YouTube videos -- video atoms live here
• Udemy courses -- the videos assemble into courses here; books support the courses
• Patreon -- videos also make their way here for followers

It's still a trickle, but I probably bring in $250 a month from these venues. Obviously, I'd like to see that number in the thousands but oh well.

I hope you find this mildly amusing. Have a great week!

Week in Review (March 16, 2024)

I have always hoped that the reason why my books haven't sold as well as some others was marketing. I'm sure this is not entirely the case. :-)

After over $100 in marketing (really hardly anything), I had only two sales through Facebook last weekend. That's an $80 loss on the ad itself. I was hoping it was because it wasn't a payday, but thus far this weekend, the ad hasn't garnered any more sales even among the 50 or so people who signed up for my email list.

Yesterday I started running another ad with another bundle. This is 5 e-books for $9.99. The books are:

• Gabriel's Diary: The Enthronement
• Gabriel's Diary: The Incarnation
• Gabriel's Diary: The Creation
• Explanatory Notes on Mark's Passion Week
• Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Resurrection

Same setup as the other. Free ebook to introduce you to the series which then leads you to the offer of four more ebooks for only $9.99. Five books in all for only $10. Pretty good deal! 

I didn't have the time to work too extensively on this ad sequence. The ad gets a good reaction (although at way too high a cost per click), and the conversion rate for getting people on my email list is very good. But once on the list, they don't seem to download the free ebook or purchase the bundle. I don't know if a larger ad spend would make any difference.

I'll confess that I find it very discouraging. I know people who've written pretty trivial stuff who are selling 1000s on their personality. I mean books that have almost nothing in them. They sell because people like the author as far as I can tell. It's their magnetism. I mean, I have some charisma, but I don't have THAT x factor.

2. A good work week. I did have an encounter that had me chuckling a little. Someone seemed to take umbrage at our sales pitch. They let us know in no uncertain terms that their online courses were excellent, their faculty excellent, and that we could learn some things from the way they did online. Maybe so. I don't know. It felt a little out of nowhere to me.

Academics are funny people. Sometimes you have to be able to laugh at yourself.

Weeks in Review (March 9, 2024)

1. Time for my weekly check-in and journal of sorts. Work continues to boom. Working with more and more high schools and more and more colleges. Of the Wesleyan colleges, only Kinsgwood is working with us currently, I've expressed earlier my sadness that so much good is being done around rather than with our Wesleyan schools. I anticipate a day when we will contribute to the success of schools in direct competition with our Wesleyan schools even though we tried and tried.

Kingswood is the big exception. These last two weeks, microcourses on Urban Church Planting with Troy Evans and Apologetics with Adam Blehm dropped. I did the write-up for the Apologetics microcourse. So many good things are underway with Kingswood in partnership with Campus. It could have been that way for all the Wesleyan schools.

2. A week ago I launched Ken Schenck Books. Eventually, I hope it will be a one-stop shop for all my books, both that I have published officially with publishers and all the books I have self-published. This may require me to stock up and ship my own books, although I can ship through Amazon. The problem is how long Amazon takes to deliver author copies. It's like 10 days.

About 6 months ago, I started a course on self-marketing your own self-published books. Unless you're a well-promoted author (which is a select few), there's no money to be made with the normal system of publishing. And there's no money to be made with simple self-publishing through Amazon. Similarly, simple advertising on Facebook is pointless. Unsurprisingly, the system is rigged for Amazon and Facebook to make money off your futile dreams.

It remains to be seen whether my new venture will go anywhere. One week in, it is not encouraging. I write on too deep and detailed a level for the average audience, which of course is where the sales primarily are. Here is a brief tour of my venture.

3. The venture starts with Facebook ads. Above is one that has received 154 likes and 26 shares. It has been seen by about 4000 people on an ad spend of less than $20 a day. That ad spend is probably too low -- it takes money to make money, after all.

As you can see, I then send them to a landing page where I try to get them to sign up for a free ebook and join the Ken Schenck Club, cleverly named. Over the last couple months, I wrote a book for just that purpose, The Spiritual War for the World. You can get the ebook version for free if you put your email in the box.

About 150 people have clicked on the ad link on Facebook. Facebook keeps begging me to let it set the parameters of the ad, but I tried to target people who like theology and philosophy. Also, I tried to limit it to Facebook and Instagram feeds rather than watering it down everywhere in Meta's universe. Then about 50 people have given me their emails. A 33% conversion rate isn't bad for that part.

4. Once you give me your email, of course, I try to sell you on getting three additional ebooks for $9.99. These are previous (e)books I've written in upgraded form: Chats about God, The Problem of Evil and Suffering, and Who Decides What the Bible Means? 

Out of the 4000, only 2 have made it that far. Quite discouraging. Hours and hours of effort. Probably $1500 in set-up. I haven't given up. In many ways, this is expected. But I can't exactly say I'm in Joyland.

For those who signed up but haven't gone for the ebook versions, I've created a paperback offer where I will send them some $44 dollars worth of Amazon books for $19. Since at this point it will take over a week for the paperbacks to arrive, I'm throwing in the ebooks to read while they're waiting. On paper, it's an $80 deal for less than $20. Less than 24 hours in, no takers yet.

The books are of course on heavy topics. Stay tuned. On Friday (d.v.) I plan to unveil another book combo with another FB ad. Maybe novellas will do better than the ontological argument and the problem of evil.

Weeks in Review (February 24, 2024)

I haven't posted for a month. Campus Edu is really heating up. Over 25 Christian high schools connected. Many colleges interested in using our gen eds. Biology course well underway in design. Working on more micro-courses with Kingswood every couple weeks. Busy, busy.

The week before the one that just ended was spent at the ABHE annual conference in Orlando. Many good connections made. Even though I have spent most of my career in the CCCU, the ABHE crowd has more of the feel of home to me, given where I was born and raised. There really is a grass-roots, down-to-earth feel of the group. The CCCU doesn't realize that it comes across as elite and foreign to most churches. It smells "liberal" because it is culturally different. A lot of schools with declining residential enrollment don't get this.

My attempt to advertise on Facebook came to a screeching halt a week ago yesterday. Facebook flagged my business accounts as suspicious, and I haven't managed to get them to reverse the decision to shut them down yet. In the meantime, this Shopify offer gives you a glimpse of what I was working toward. I fear I will have to incorporate as an LLC to get back in FB's good graces.

In the meantime, Amazon is offering to create audiobooks out of many of my self-published books. So I did. I'm particularly excited about the audiobook of my AI Living Paraphrase of the Gospel of John. I already liked the paraphrase I did, and I think a lot of people would like it too if they gave it a listen. Now the audiobook is a nice possibility.

I'm trying not to give up on my advertising venture. I've put an awful lot of work into it.

E-book sale on Shopify

 I am currently running a 4 e-book sale for $9.99 on Shopify. Here are the books:

If you are interested, here is the link with the discount.

Ken

The Week in Review (January 22, 2024)

1. I missed Saturday's post, mostly because I was rushing to finish a draft of a psychology course for my work. One of the fun aspects of my job is helping various subject matter experts create courses on various subjects. I think I am uniquely suited for this role because I have such eclectic interests. Currently, I'm facilitating the creation of a psychology, advanced writing, and biology course. 

I finished the draft this morning. Now of course the subject expert will make it into his own likeness. Whenever I finish a course like this one, I think, "I should create a pastor's guide to psychology," just like I created a Pastor's Brief Guide to Business last year. Maybe someday.

2. I am scrambling to write two books because of the initiative I started in the fall. One is Ten Secrets about Jesus. I ran some marketing headlines by Twitter and Facebook. "Which headline would make you want to click?" The responses were all over the place but it seems like "What they don't want you to know about Jesus" got the most with "Was Jesus a troublemaker?" probably second. Other candidates were "Jesus was a conservative... and a liberal." Do any of those pique your curiosity? 

Technically, I'm supposed to run a market test on Facebook but I'm bogged down with getting my Facebook "pixel" to work for good tracking.

The other book is Hanging on to Faith by a Thread. It is an old idea but with new impetus because of a phone conversation I had last week with someone struggling with faith. I did a poll on Facebook for what chapter items should be included in this one as well.

3. The past week was not without its unique challenges because of the weather. Sub-zero weather had us strategizing keeping the chickens alive. Then we are down to one car for various reasons, and its battery died because of the cold. Today it looks like we will be back up to two working cars by the end of the week. So far all the chickens have survived, but now it's supposed to rain all week. Sucks for them!

Sometimes life just sucks almost everything out of you. But somehow we make it, thank the Lord!

Two Weeks in Review (January 13, 2023)

1. As I write, strong gusts of wind blow across the vacant corn fields around me as the temperature plunges. We're expecting temperatures in the single digits positive and perhaps negative this week. We've brought a number of the chickens into the garage in preparation, although the big coop has a heater in it. Quite the party.

Somehow I missed last week's week in review. I think I was scrambling to finish Steve Deneff's micro-course on holiness. This weekend a misunderstanding has me giving a fair amount of time to a course called Writing to Convince. I do enjoy being part of these course creations. Once psychology and biology are finished, we will have the full panoply of gen ed courses on offer.

The way it works is that a college adopts our courses and takes on our faculty as adjuncts. We administer the dual-enrollment program for them with their complete involvement. They give us names and connect us to (potentially) feeder high schools. There are other streams of students, including college students, that feed into the same classes. Because we administer it, a good deal of the friction of the traditional academy is bypassed. 

So there is a growing army of associated high schools (currently around 25) and a growing number of colleges from which the student can opt to receive the credit. 

It is so hard to get anything done in the traditional academy system. It's no wonder so many colleges and universities are struggling. Friction. Friction. Friction. If someone has a great idea on a high level, sometimes they are ground to a halt in the hands of infrastructure people who have lost the plot or never knew it. Or maybe a middle-level director has the vision but can't get buy-in from someone on a higher level. Courses are created that are never used because of politics or systems that they don't fit neatly into. Lots of places in the traditional system for good ideas to fail or be ground to a pulp.

It's frankly maddening. We used to wonder if we should just buy a failing college ourselves. But the goal was always to create an Amazon of college courses, a network of the best of the best of the best. We are in a really good place.

2. On New Year's Eve, I decided to go ahead and self-publish a Spanish version of my ethics. No one buys my books anyway. The reason it is iffy is that I used AI to translate it and didn't pay someone to proofread it. But that's hardly worth it. It would cost well over $1000 to have it proofed and I wouldn't see that much money from it for the rest of my life. Something is better than nothing. If no one uses it, so be it. AI translations are getting better and better. They will prevail soon.

Over the last couple months, I've been generating an AI paraphrase of John. I wasn't satisfied with what AI initially came up with, so I did a lot of paraphrasing myself beyond its raw output. You can tell me if you like the result.

Other projects in the works, as always.

Wishing you all electricity and heat this next week.

New Years Resolutions (2024)

It's time again to write a bunch of stuff about this coming year. Since I typically write a bunch of stuff that I hardly finish, I'll try to stay reasonable here.

Personal

• Run five times a week
• Read a chapter of the Bible a day
• Read 20 pages of something each week

Udemy

• Put a New Testament Greek course up

YouTube

• Hebrew of the Week on Wednesdays
• Through the Bible on Sundays

Self-Publishing

• The Antichrist
• Explanatory Notes on Passion Week
• Twenty-Five Years Teaching Philosophy

Real Publishing

• Science and Scripture

Probably the biggest goal I have is to set up my self-published books on Shopify and to market them to an interested list. We'll see.

Happy New Year!

The Year in Review (2023)

1. Another year has passed. I continue to be grateful to work for Campus Edu. We have done some tremendous things this year. We found a couple partners who believed in the vision and committed wholeheartedly to it. Oklahoma Baptist University partnered with us to connect high schools to them through our core general education courses (20 courses we built). This was huge. We really only needed one dedicated partner, and they caught the vision. Southwest Baptist and Kingswood University have since joined as well. 

Oklahoma Baptist is also launching Raley Collge with us, an idea about which we have been in conversation with other schools as well. In this approach, students live in the dorms with the other students but take almost all of their general education courses with us at a lower tuition rate. They get an AA degree at the end of two years.

The other key partner was Kingswood University. Together, we have launched Kingswood Learn, a gift of free micro-courses to the Wesleyan Church. These courses are great by well-known Wesleyans across the church, and churches/individuals can upload courses to the platform as well. I believe that this will quickly become a repository of the best of the Wesleyan Church and a go-to place for resources.

2. I did manage to publish some things this year. I had a three-pronged strategy: 1) self-publishing, 2) Udemy, and 3) YouTube. 

Udemy
I put a Hebrew course on Udemy which, all in all, has done pretty well (over 100 students). The Romans course I put up has not done as well.

YouTube
I added over 1000 subscribers on YouTube. My best post was Merry Christmas Algebra, which has almost had 1000 viewers this month. My work has been quite absorbing in the final part of the year and sapped nearly every last bit of my time. As a result, my posting fell off pretty dramatically these last couple months.

Publishing
I did manage to have one book published in the official way: Explanatory Notes on Hebrews. I don't have analytics to know how it is doing.

I am most happy with some of my self-publishing ventures this year. 

Wesleyan Theology
After several years of waiting, I finally edited my notes on Wesleyan theology and published them. I am very proud of these. I also used tools to translate them into Spanish, actually submitting the ethics book in Spanish today, just under the wire.

• Christian Ethics: Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections (January 30)
• Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Christian Theology and Ethics (February 4)
• A Wesleyan-Arminian Systematic Theology (February 27)
• Teología Sistemática: Reflexiones Arminiano-Wesleyanas (September 4)
• Ética Cristiana: Reflexiones Wesleyano-Arminianas (December 31)

Explanatory Notes

In addition to the Hebrews volume above, I also published some Explanatory Notes on the Resurrection Narratives of the Gospels:

• Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Resurrection (April 8)

Chat GPT

I experimented a little with AI this year. I was disappointed that my explorations did not get more interest than they did. I haven't given up.

• Chats About God: A Novel Seeking Faith (May 12)
• Plato's Republic (with condescending remarks) (May 27)
• A Pastor's Brief Guide to Business (June 18)

Prophecy

Finally, my mother was quite keen for me to publish a book her father had written in 1960:

• Foundational and Fundamental Truth Concerning the Coming of the Lord (May 2)

3. I remain grateful for the Lord's graciousness to me. God has been faithful. Angie has mostly recovered from her accident in 2022. These have been humbling days for me, but I hope they have brought clarity to who I am and what is important.

The Week in Review (December 30, 2023)

1. This week of course has included Christmas. I apologize for being one of those sad souls who dread Christmas. The expense has often been overwhelming. I am not good at finding pleasing presents. There are sometimes tensions with broader family. The whole event is the most stressful part of the year for me. I always breathe a breath of relief on Christmas evening. I realize the true meaning of Christmas is lost in all that, but I'm being honest. I have to think I am not alone.

I'd almost like to have a separate day set aside mid-year to celebrate Jesus' birth.

2. On Thursday, I traveled to Cincinnati for FOLLOW, the youth convention my denomination has every four years. I'm still there as I type. This has been really fun. It comes home to me how many youth pastors and pastors I've taught over the years. These are my friends, and it's good to see them.

I'm here with the launch of Kingswood Learn, a free resource for the Wesleyan Church that Kingswood and Campus Edu have partnered to provide. Feel free to sign up and enroll in some micro-courses (5-10 hours each). I'm one of the instructional designers behind the lessons in many of these courses. Let me just point out a few:

• There is a condensed version of Bud Bence's church history course.
• There is a condensed version of Dave Smith's inductive Bible study course
• There is a semi-autobiographical micro-course featuring JoAnne Lyon called, "Saying 'Yes' to the Holy Spirit."

3. I am pondering an increasing sense that the Wesleyan Church as a denomination is devolving toward a connection. I would say this trend is largely fueled by Boomer leaders associated with large churches. Many of them are afraid of what has happened in the UMC. They don't like the Trust Clause that says church property belongs to the denomination. They don't like paying the denominational "tithe" that funds schools and central administration. They also have a more Baptistic ecclesiology.

I'm trying to be objective. I think the idea that a connection of churches would retain a coherent Wesleyan identity, that we would still have Follow and The Gathering and common ordination standards and Global Partners and organized church planting and schools that retained a Wesleyan identity seems unlikely to me over the long term. Our schools would go their own way, whatever that is. Small churches would fizzle away without support. Large churches would do their own thing as they pretty much are now, largely Baptist by another name. There would be little funding for current denominational events or initiatives.

We'll see what happens. I think it might take a very intentional effort to reverse the current trajectory. It may already be too late. The Trust Clause would have to stay. The "tithe" would need to stay. District leadership would probably have to be balanced back away from large churches. There would need to be more submission to the denomination's general leadership, whose power is weaker than it has ever been since the denomination was founded in 1968.

What do you think?

Merry Christmas (December 25, 2023)

Merry Christmas all!

I woke up with the words from Longfellow's 1863 poem on my mind. I posted three stanzas on Facebook:

I heard the bells on Christmas day,
Their old familiar carols play
And mild and sweet their songs repeat
Of peace on Earth, good will to men

And in despair I bowed my head
"There is no peace on Earth, " I said
For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on Earth, good will to men

Then rang the bells more loud and deep
God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail
With peace on Earth, good will to men

This is my wish for the new year. The world is crazy right now, but it could get crazier. Praying that cooler heads prevail in this new year. I keep asking myself what I could do in my world to build peace.

2. I missed my Saturday review. I feel like I've been busier these last couple weeks than at any time in my life. We are rollling out Kingswood Learn. Check it out!

I built the "innards" for several of these: church history with Bud Bence, the brief guides to the Old and New Testaments, theology of the body, JoAnne Lyon's "Saying 'Yes' to the Holy Spirit, Dave Smith's How to Study the Bible, and more. I may have put too much work into them, but I saw it as a service to the church. To me it was important.

3. Nice to have all my children home for Christmas. Angie did have a wee bout of COVID but is coming out of it in time for Christmas day. I have tested negative so far and feel fine. Praying the same for the rest of the family.

4. I'm off to FOLLOW the rest of the week, the every-other-year youth convention of the Wesleyan Church. Hope to see many former students.

Merry Christmas all!

The Week in Review (December 15, 2023)

1. The first semester of Campus' dual enrollment program ended today. It all clicked rather quickly in late summer and we ended with over fifty high school students in it. That's pretty amazing for such short notice. We're now gearing up for a spring semester.

Here are some of the key points:

• We had 10 options for fall. Now there will be close to twenty for spring.
• You can now choose between three colleges to transcribe the credit: Oklahoma Baptist, Southwest Baptist, and Kingswood University.
• OBU is launching Raley College in the spring where you live in the dorm but take online classes through Campus.

In short, things are really ramping up.

2. I spent the bulk of the week on a "concept" micro-course to show how some resources the CCCU has on "sexual and gender minorities" might be put together for professional development. This was quite a task because it required processing a constellation of materials they have and trying to simplify them. I'll be interested to know what they think.

3. I've been burning the candle at both ends for work with little time for my own project. Let me just mention that I have two Christmas books you might consider.

First, there was Gabriel's Diary: The Incarnation. This was the first novel I ever actually finished, back in 2017. It tells the story of the incarnation from Gabriel's perspective.

Then the second I did last year: Explanatory Notes on Jesus' Birth. This is my old style verse-by-verse commentary, covering the birth stories in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2, with the first part of John 1 thrown in.

4. Sophie's home. She finished up her quick trip around Europe with Copenhagen. Then she returned to Edinburgh to pack up her stuff. Now she's back in the states again. Now she is conspiring to figure out how to get back to Europe. 

The Week in Review (December 9, 2023)

Oh, how the weeks fly.

1. My daughter Sophie has had a very enjoyable week traveling Europe before her soon return to America. From Amsterdam, she meant to go by train to Strasbourg and then to Munich. God or chaos theory intervened. A railway strike kept her from France, leaving her to look around the scintillating Karlsruhe (sarcasm). Then unexpected snow and frigid temperatures stopped her train journey at Ulm (it has a spectacular minster which I don't believe she was able to see in the end). Finally, after a night staying warm on a parked train with free coffee, she actually had to take a taxi from Ulm to Munich, thankfully at Deutschebahn's expense.

I have a strangely clear memory of most of these locations from my European days first in the 90s and then on my two sabbaticals in Germany in 2004 and 2011. The privileges of another life when I was a scholar. We spent late 2011/early 2012 in Munich, so Sophie revisited some of the old haunts from our time there, including the Gisele Gymnasium where Tom and she went to school.

Last Friday, Ken Blake in Munich unexpectedly found out he was in danger of a heart attack. God graciously drew attention to the situation before it became really serious. The long and the short of it is that Sophie was able to visit with the Blakes for several hours the afternoon he came home from the hospital. We attended their Wesleyan church when we were there on sabbatical.

She then spent a couple days in Vienna, another place we had visited in 2011. Then on to Copenhagen, a place still on my bucket list. I provided her with a few tales of Soren Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr. I'm so thankful she has been able to do this and that God has kept her safe.

2. I had the idea to make a video of a fun algebra ditty a former Greek student once showed me. It takes an equation and reworks it into the form of "merry x-mas." I put it online Wednesday and it already has over 600 hits. It will probably turn out to be the most successful YouTube video I've made.

I haven't had much time for my science and math goals, unfortunately. Just too busy.

3. The Kingswood Learn platform with free micro-courses for the church has been shared with a beta group but will launch officially at the end of the year. I will make sure that you know how to sign up when the time comes. I've finished my part of Bud Bence's "Brief Guide to Church History" and David Smith's "How to Read the Bible." This week I've slipped in Eric Hallett's "Missional Ministry Development." This resource is going to be huge. And your church can upload things too!

4. I am so very grateful to be doing what I'm doing. The young people I work with are so smart, so sharp, so talented. They dance circles around me in so many things. I am grateful to be part of what we're doing and, hopefully, I'm doing my part too. 

The Week in Review (December 2, 2023)

So we enter the final month of 2023. This week blew by. I find myself looking back and wondering where it went. Such it would seem is most of life for many of us. We wake up one morning and we are old, and we can't quite figure out where our lives went. I am not 60, but I do find myself feeling old on several counts.

The main event of my week was a quick trip to Dallas to ACSI headquarters. My organization and ACSI have been working together for a couple years now. We are doing a lot of work currently with Christian high schools, so an ongoing relationship seems appropriate. 

I'm effectively the chief academic officer for Campus Edu, so there was a lot of "make sure everyone and every course gets across the finish line" work this week. Checking in on students, checking in on professors. A little teaching here and there. Not a lot of time for my own projects. We are on a deadline to get dozens of micro-courses launched for Kingswood University by the first of the year, so that is consuming a lot of time. I'm working on several higher ed courses for spring too. A lot to do.

My daughter Sophie is doing a quick once around Europe this week. She's been through Amsterdam and is now in Germany. Strikes and snow are messing with her nicely laid-out plan a bit. She's bringing back memories. On this score, she's reliving some of my life.

AI is coming. It's only here in a taste. I know new millionaires are in the making. I won't be one of them. I suppose AGI might make that money meaningless anyway. We'll see. I wouldn't mind AI taking over the world. Just as long as I could convince it of the right values. :-)

That's it for this week in review. This weekend? Hopefully a couple more chapters of AI translation. A bit of work on a biology course and a missional ministry microcourse. Probably should slip a run in there. Grading would be responsible. Blessings to you all.