The Global Tsunami Against 'Good': Antinomianism and Hope (Part 3)
Not even a superpower like the United States can solve the world's problems anymore, according to a quote attributed to German Chancellor Angela Merkel widely circulated over recent weeks.
Foreign policy expert Henry Kissinger, in the Wall Street Journal (August 29, 2014), describes just a few of the contemporary threats, and concludes: "The concept of order that has underpinned the modern era is in crisis."
"In just the last five or six years the world has been fundamentally transformed," writes Victor David Hanson, in National Review (September 2, 2014). Rather than the old "Western-inspired postwar global order," he says, "there is now mostly chaos." It is a "Wild West moment, when everyone in the saloon has drawn his six-shooter, paused, and is wondering what happened to the sheriff – and wondering, too, who will shoot first."
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That old order knew where to go for hope: to the superpowers. The United States and Soviet Union could be counted on to restrain global disorder as they perceived their own interests imperiled. That world of the past was sorted into neat, clearly bordered regions where the respective superpowers were either hegemons (nations that dominate others) or had sway with potential enemies who could be reasoned with. Nations could nestle themselves under the spheres of influence extended by the respective hegemons, and count on the "sheriffs" for protection.
The antinomian lawlessness of our day is without order or logic. One cannot reason with it. It surges over the borders that once defined spheres of influence for the respective superpowers.
Antinomianism, as we have noted in the previous installments in this series, is not your everyday run-of-the-mill lawlessness. It is the defiance of the fundamental principles of universal value. For those of us with a biblical worldview, antinomianism is the revolt against the holy character of God Himself, which is the bedrock of global stability. Antinomianism is the earthquake that assaults that great seabed, triggering the tsunami of lawlessness that rips apart everything in its path.
Antinomian lawlessness is what creates all tribulation, whether it is the "many tribulations" Jesus speaks of in Matthew 24, or the accumulation of the massive rogue waves in a civilization-destroying tsunami, called in the Bible, mega tribulation.
Such a world seems beyond hope.
However, those who soar high enough above the global landscape through biblical illumination can see the dim outlines of hope. They have a responsibility to point it out to others. There is the "burden of the valley of vision" (Isaiah 22:1) sometimes so oppressive that seers faint – as Daniel did – under the weight of the visions. But always there is hope nestled in the crisis, and those who peer through the eyes of scriptural revelation can see it. Such hope is on two levels – the temporal and the eternal, the existential and the transcendent.
Temporal hope runs throughout Jesus' Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24. Yes, "you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another. Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:6-14 NKJV. Emphasis added).
"End" is the Greek, telos, meaning purpose, or goal. Jesus says the whole point of history is the advance throughout the world of His Kingdom that the Apostle Paul characterizes as "righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." (Romans 14:17) The carnage of antinomian lawlessness visible worldwide through today's media shows the stark contrast between Christ's Kingdom and its would-be rivals in the world.
Another reason for temporal hope is that God always preserves His remnant through every tribulational cycle, whether it is the small clusters of believing Jews during the Exiles, the New Testament faithful huddled in Rome's catacombs, the underground church in totalitarian societies, or the contemporary church still alive in the lands suffering most in our time. This is the "surviving remnant" in every age, including that of the greatest tribulation, as symbolized in Revelation's 144,000. The remnant is preserved as the "witnesses" within both peaceful and highly conflicted times and cultures. They "put the root downward and bear the fruit upward" so that all who are left can be nourished (2 Kings 19:30; Isaiah 37:31).
"Don't be troubled," says Jesus. Why? Because history is on God's great Kingdom-focused schedule.
That leads to the eternal, transcendent "blessed hope" (Titus 2:13) that will ultimately embrace the whole world. We are, Saint Paul says, to be constantly looking for it. Our focus for hope is to be on Christ's Kingdom, not the superpowers or the evil empires (and sometimes the two have been synonymous).
Long ago George MacDonald, whose writings influenced C.S. Lewis, said: "But thou knowest it is difficult things pressing on every sense, to believe that the informing power of them is the unseen; that out of it they come; that where we can descry no hand directly, a will, nearer than any hand, is moving them to fulfill His Word."
The promise to those placing faith in God, and seeing themselves as "ambassadors" of Christ's Kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:20) in this world of antinomian lawlessness is given eloquently through Isaiah the Prophet. There are no better words to close this series than those in Isaiah 26:3:
You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.
