Pulpit Notes –Luke 3:7-18

7 John said to the crowds coming out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’
9 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

10 “What should we do then?” the crowd asked.

11 John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

12 Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?”

13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them.

14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?”

He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.”

15 The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. 16 John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” 18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

Point 1: Eschatological warning (verses 7-9).

What John the Baptist is proclaiming here is pretty obvious, “Judgment is near, and that judgment will not be determined on the basis of religious, cultural, or ethnic identity but rather on the what people have done with the coming Messiah that John is Heralding and then if their lives produce fruit in keeping with repentance.”

We might no understand how significant this would have been to these 1st centuries listeners. In the OT it was clear that covenant was made to Abraham and his offspring. However the Jews had forgotten the part where the OT also communicated the need to have circumcised hearts in order to be a true Jew. They liked to remember Dt. 10:15.

Dt. 10: 15 … the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today.

But they had forgotten 10:16,

16 Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.

John the Baptist is reminding them of 10:16

When John the Baptist speaks,

“For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. ”

We can see how his knowledge of the OT is influencing him,

In Isa. 51, Abraham is compared to the rock from which God’s people are hewn. (Is. 51:1b-2).

Look at the rock from which you were chiseled,
at the quarry from which you were dug!
2 Look at Abraham, your father,
and Sarah, who gave you birth.

So, John the Baptist comes pronouncing prophetic warning and woe, and as we’ve seen one matter he attacks is the Jewish mindset that believes it is special unto God just because it is Jewish. John ends all that nonsense by pulling the props from just that mindset. The Father does not love people solely upon the basis of their ethnicity or race. When the Father loves someone He loves them upon the basis of their identity in Christ.
 
Now, none of this is to say that having Abraham as their Father was unimportant or insignificant completely. St. Paul himself can later say in speaking of the descendants of Abraham, “Theirs is the adoption to sonship; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises.” Paul speaks  of the great advantage of being Jewish in Romans 3. But what Israel had done is they had absolutized their biological ethnicity marker and said that nothing else mattered. John the Baptist informs this that such thinking is the thinking of a fool. It matters not what your lineage is if you do not look to the greater one that John is Heralding and if you do not bring forth fruit in keeping with repentance.
 
Being part of the covenant community is a great privilege but if you absolutize that membership in such a way that all one is resting in is biological connectedness you are lost. Indeed, I would say this is one of the dangers of Reformed Theology when misunderstood. We, like the Jews of old, can place such an emphasis on being baptized, belonging to the visible Church, being a member of the covenant community, and having a godly heritage that we begin to forget the centrality of Christ and that Christianity demands a lifestyle of fruit consistent with repentance.
 
This tendency to absolutize ethnicity as a marker of God’s automatic favor is not unique to Jews. People groups have done it repeatedly. As just one example in recent history is the Black Liberation Theologian James Cone who has written,
 
“Therefore, God’s Word of recon­ciliation means that we can only be justified by becoming black. Reconciliation makes us all black. Through this radical change, we become identified totally with the suffering of the black masses. It is this fact that makes all white churches anti-Christian in their essence. To be Christian is to be one of those whom God has chosen. God has chosen black people!”
 
“Black Theology and Black Power” by James H. Cone (1969) — pg. 151
 
This kind of specious thinking goes on among White people as well,
 
Bertrand Comparet, writing in the American Institute of Theology’s “Bible Correspondence Course,” observes:
 
“Of course, one of the purposes [in Christ’s coming] was to pay the penalty of the sins of every person who believes and accepts Him as his personal Savior. But this is not all: another purpose of His first coming was to redeem His people ISRAEL which we know are not and never were composed of Jews; but today they are known as the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, and Germanic nations.”
 
This is a strange quote because it seems to draw a distinction between Christ coming to offer salvation to all while only redeeming white people. Regardless, of its strangeness it is suggesting that ethnic markers limit who can be redeemed.
 
We see in both these quotes is the same thing here that John the Baptist was warning against in his preaching to the Jews in Luke 3. We see here an absolutizing of an ethnic markers so that nothing else matters besides ethnicity.
 
That is something we must warn against and be on guard against. Our hope, in terms of our salvation, must not rest in ethnic markers, though we can and should thank God for those markers and understand what a great blessing they are. Our hope is anchored in being properly related to the Lord Christ who saves men from every tribe, tongue, and nation, in their tribes, tongues, and nations.

Well, what else might we note about vs. 7-9?

Brood of Vipers

1.) We should find it interesting that those who John the Baptist points at as opposing the work required to prepare the way of the Lord and to make straight paths for him are those styled as serpents. Right from the beginning of the ministry of the Lord Christ the seed of the Serpent is put in opposition to the seed of the woman. We see from this that the Spiritual warfare long spoken of in the OT between the serpent and his people and God’s people remains the center of conflict.

2.) Strong language

Brood of vipers
Ax laid to the root
Fire

Now remember this language was being used with those attached to the covenant community. It is not language pointed at those outside the covenant community.

Luke 3:9 —  In the OT Israel is frequently compared to a fruitless vine (Ps. 80:8, Isa. 5:2, Jer. 2:21, Ez. 15:6, 17:6, 19:10 Hos. 10:1) Images of fire and judgment may again evoke Mal. 3-4, but the use of the ax in the act of destruction point specifically to Isa. 10:33-34, where the judgment of the Assyrians is announced. The judgment of Israel’s enemies will fall upon those within God’s people who refuse to repent.

The ax imagery prefigures Jesus’ parable in Luke 13:6–9 about the unproductive fig tree that is given a good dose of fertilizer and another year to live. But if it doesn’t bear fruit after one more year, then what? The ax. 

Point 2: Ethical exhortation (verses 10-14).

Now those hearing understand the warning and so ask, “What then shall we do?”

It is the same question the crowds listening to Peter on Pentecost ask (Acts 2:37) and, as in Acts, Luke uses it to provide the preacher an opportunity to get to the heart of his sermon.  In Acts, Peter invites the crowd to repent, be baptized in the name of Jesus, and receive the Holy Spirit.

In these verses, John gives concrete ethical instruction to those gathered, but keep in mind that John is one who is pointing to the necessity of the Lord Christ, just as Peter pointed to the necessity of the Lord Christ.

John responds to each reiteration of this question by offering specific action that equates to “fruits worthy of repentance.”  To the crowds as a whole, John says: If you have more than you need, whether in terms of food or clothing, you must share.  To the tax collectors, who were  guilty of charging more for taxation on the top of regional and Roman taxes in order to line their pockets, John says: Stop stealing from your neighbors.  And to the soldiers John says:  No more using your power to take advantage of simple citizens.

No hoarding, no stealing, no extortion.

John’s counsel then seems fairly ordinary, even mundane.

It is interesting here that in each response John the Baptist gives is related to material wealth.

In  the first case the words came to those who had much to remember those who were in need. In the second two cases the words came to those who took advantage of people by stealing or extorting from them. John’s counsel was to do justice.

When he advises to remember the poor we hear the OT law that provided for the poor in the gleaning laws. When John advises to not steal or extort we hear God’s 8th command. What John tells them was in keeping with God’s law.

Point 3: Messianic expectation (verse 15-17).


Regarding messianic expectation: one who is greater and who baptizes not with water but with the Holy Spirit and fire is coming, and his coming will initiate the eschatological judgment.  In both of these regards, John stands as the latest — and, according to the New Testament authors, last — in a long line of Israel’s prophets.

This last Old Testament Prophet speaks of the coming Messiah and His role, and in doing so John turns to winnowing.

Winnowing was a necessary part of the grain harvesting process in the ancient world.  It was done to thoroughly separate the wheat (seed) from the chaff (the stalk, husk, any part of the plant that is not seed). Winnowing is a process that takes place after all the wheat has been scattered out over the threshing floor and beaten to make the seed break loose from the stalk. After the beating or ‘threshing’ has taken place, then the workmen take large forks (similar to pitchforks), they scoop up piles of threshed wheat and toss them into the air (like tossing or flipping pancakes), they do this repetitively until they have winnowed the entire threshing floor.

What was the purpose of all their hard work? After the wheat has been threshed much of the seed still clings to the stalk. The winnowing process is the final stage of separating the wheat from the stalk. After the winnowing, the seed will be laying directly on top of the threshing floor, but the chaff, …its all ‘UP’ on top of the seed, until either the wind blows it away or the workmen carry it away to be burned.

Now there is something we should not miss here. Both the chaff and the grain are in the same threshing community 0ne could say. But they have need to be separated. All of this is metaphor for the Church which has in it both tares and wheat. There is only one community but in that community there are those who have only an outward attachment while others have both a outward and inward attachment. The winnowing process that John the Baptist says that Christ is going to do will separate the wheat from the chaff.

John’s announcement then reminds us that God’s salvation is often through Judgment. The winnowing process is salvation to the wheat while at the same time being judgment to the chaff.

Conclusion,

As in the first Advent which brought this eschatological judgment into time so with the final advent will this eschatological judgment be completed. Christ will come with a winnowing fork and will separate forever the wheat from the chaff. This will be a time of great rejoicing as God’s people are relieved from those who oppress them.

Addendum

Luke 3:16 — The Baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit and fire’ should be regarded as one baptism, as both terms are governed by one preposition and the address is directed to one group. In the OT the Spirit is associated with judgment (Is. 4:4, 40:24, 41:16, Jer. 4:11-16, 23:19, 30:23, Ezek. 13:11-3).

Luke 3:16 continued — The combination of the symbols of spirit and fire with the imagery of water is found in Is. 30:27-28, where one also finds the expectation of the discriminating judgment of God.  (Luke 3:17) The presence of eschatological fire that will burn up the chaff in the context of the judgment of Israel bring to mind Mal. 4:1a: “See, the day is coming burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and evil doers will be stubble.”

3:17 — The presence of this echo behind 3:17 is plausible in light of the portrayal of John the Baptist which is couched in the language reminiscent of the Elijah figure of Mal.3-4 in Luke. 3:7-17 and elsewhere in Luke. Nevertheless, the comparison of the judgment of the wicked to chaff burning in fire is not unique to Malachi. (cf. Ps. 83:13-14; Is. 29:5-6, Obad. 18). The reference to unquenchable fire finds its parallels in other passages where the punishment of the wicked is describe: ‘for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Isa. 66:24b, cf.34:8-10, Jer. 17:27).

Notre Dame Philosophy Professor Reflects the Zeitgeist

The love of a mother is no more or less important than the love of a father. We all know this. But then, in general, mothers should be under no greater burden than fathers to abandon their callings for the sake of their children. The asymmetry in our responses to working mothers and fathers, then, suggests that other factors are in play. In an evangelical protestant context, the context I have in view here, there is good reason to suspect that these other factors include a tendency to devalue the gifts and contributions of women particularly in positions of teaching and leadership

Michael Rea
Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame

The above is culled from here,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-rea/mothers-in-ministry_b_8760590.html

Why, instead of the conclusion that Dr. Rea draws in his last sentence above, don’t we conclude that the reason Evangelical Protestants don’t want women in social order leadership is,

1.) The Scriptures forbid it.

2.) We so value women and their role in hearth and home that we don’t want to treat them like roses used as kindling to start a fire by turning them into ecclesiastical versions of “Rosie the Riverter?”

It is a fallacy to think that all because women are not treated like men therefore women are devalued in their gifts and contributions.

3.) We understand and affirm that men and women were not created to be interchangeable cogs as if both sexes were created to do the same thing.

Overall I would say it is Dr. Rea, and people like him, who are devaluing the gifts and contributions of women. It is people like Dr. Rea who are taking from children their Mothers who are to be the leaders and teachers of the most impressionable in our social order.

As a young lady, stay at home Mom, friend of mind said, in discussion about this article,

“With ‘men’ like Dr. Rea, who needs women to run for church office? We already have them!”

(And believe me when I tell you that this young lady, I’m quoting above, could run circles around any three Woman Pastors combined, you might want to name, in terms of giftedness in leadership and teaching.)

Finally, note the methodological way that the Left works here. Suggesting that men and women are interchangeable is put into such noble and glowing words and sentiments, while at the same time, the idea that women are distinct from men is made to look cruel and mean. The appeal to emotion is made with the consequence that the rational is bypassed. This is a common methodological tool of the unholy Left.

We Must Fight the Cultural Marxists

The loss of cultural confidence was precisely what the Frankfurt School and its descendants sought and still seek to engender. It is their only path to victory, which is why — even as they have seized the high ground of the academy and the media — they continue to roll over and expose their bellies like whipped curs whenever they are directly confronted, as Donald Trump is demonstrating. Pleas for “tolerance,” a weakness masquerading as a virtue, still serve the Amen corner of Academia, Corporate America, and Hollywood and their Washington Establishment well. It is long past time to give them a taste of their own “repressive tolerance,” a’la Marcuse, to mark the boundary clearly between dissent and sedition, between advocacy and treason. By consistently claiming that some solutions are “off limits” to “civilized people” the “inside the DC Beltway” undermine the very principles of civilization they pretend to advocate — the first of which is the right to civilizational defense and personal self defense. Those who are howling about Trump’s statements regarding Muslims are a suicide cult enticing the rest of us to join them.
 
But the moral high ground is not yet theirs, as much as they would wish it so. Constantly forced into a strategy of subterfuge, dissimulation, misdirection, and open deception — I have dubbed it “American taqiyya,” a counterpart to the Muslim concept of religiously acceptable dissimulation — there is no lie the Left will not tell in the furtherance of its sociopolitical goals. To maintain the martial metaphor, they are essentially double agents, operating behind the lines of Western Civilization. That they are not called out and dealt with aggressively in the court of public opinion and, when necessary, in courts of law, is one of the shames of our age. The only weapon they have is words — but we can hear the music behind them.
 
Inspired by Michael Walsh
The Devil’s Pleasure Palace — pg. 111-112

Luke 3:1-6 — John the Baptist Quotes Isaiah

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— 2 during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 4 As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet:

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,
‘Prepare the way for the Lord,
    make straight paths for him.
5 Every valley shall be filled in,
    every mountain and hill made low.
The crooked roads shall become straight,
    the rough ways smooth.
6 And all people will see God’s salvation.’”

As we come to this account in Luke’s Gospel we note that Dr. Luke is framing for us John the Baptist’s ministry by the usage of the historical political context (Luke 3:1-2a) along with the context of fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy (Luke 3:4-5). Of the Gospel writers only the historian Luke gives to us the leaders in power at the time. This allows us to have a pretty good idea of the dating of Christ’s birth.

Luke giving us the political leadership landscape is not his only unique mark as a chronicler of the account of Christ.  Luke also, alone, uniquely emphasizes the the impact which John’s arrival on the scene has upon a renewed realization of the promise found in Isaiah 40:3-5.
In Isaiah, which is the beginning fulfillment of seeing Israel’s promised deliverance by God was seen in their deliverance from their exile under Cyrus the great. That former deliverance is now being hearkened back to as a shadow deliverance type of a greater deliverance anti-type that is being announced to them now.  As Isaiah was then a “a voice calling in the desert,” so the anti-type deliverance has another prophetic voice calling out in the desert.

Luke, through John the Baptist, informs us that God comes near, and as such all creation is to prepare for His arrival. It is as if creation is being told to turn itself into a red carpet for the arrival of God.

And it not just the creation that must ready itself for the coming of God. John the Baptist also demands a readying on the part of his audience that includes repentance (Luke 3:7f) This cry for a contrite heart also has echoes in Isaiah … this time from chapter 57

For this is what the high and exalted One says—
    he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place,
    but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly
    and to revive the heart of the contrite.

So Luke has John on the scene as the great herald of God’s coming near. This coming requires creation to be turned into a royal road for His arrival, as well as demanding that men are humbled in the presence of God, turning again to the doing of justice towards one another. God comes and all creation must be readied.

Of course this reminds us again that the New Testament grows out of the soil of the Old Testament. What is happening here in Luke 3 is conditioned and informed by what happened centuries earlier with a shadow and lesser deliverance. We need to keep this relationship between Old Testament and New Testament in mind when we read prophetic Scripture.

I.) The Importance of the Wilderness Motif in Christianity

This great and coming arrival of God is announced, in all places, a desert.

Now, a desert is hardly the place to make this kind of announcement. This kind of announcement belongs in the context of these high and mighty political personages that are mentioned here by John. Instead what we get is a desert God making the announcement of His arrival out of the mouth of His desert prophet.

Don’t miss the intended stark contrast here. Luke is contrasting here the Potentates of this world with the desert God and His spokesman. The coming of God is announced in a wilderness setting as set against all the splendor of worldly pomp and power represented by the emperor Tiberius, the governor Pilate, and the “ruler” Herod. Luke likewise gives us the names of the ruling religious establishment, (Annas and Caiphas).  What Luke has done here is to situate the announcement of the coming of God in the context of the rule of man.

Great are the houses of Tiberius, Pilate, and Herod. Great is the pomp of Annas and Caiphas. The aspirations of each of these men are well known. Luke situates the coming of God’s Messiah in such a way that what is communicated to the alert reader is that God once again intends to use the seemingly trivial, obscure, and unanticipated to answer the problems of a world that the regal political and religious establishment structures of the day can not answer.

God comes near but when He comes near He announces it in and through a lonely desert prophet.
God comes near but when He comes near He does so through a unknown and virgin maiden descendant of David
God comes near but when He comes near He does so through a people who were considered “the least of all peoples.”
God comes near but when He comes near He makes lowly Shepherds His announces
God comes near but when He comes near He is ignored by those who should know better
God comes near but when He comes near He comes near pinned to a Cross

In History God often worked His redemptive plan in the places we might consider the most unlikely of places among the most unlikely of men and women. Scripture seems to indicate that this is done so, so that God might not be shorted on the Glory that is His to be had. Any deliverance that is to be had, any salvation that is to be known, any Exodus that is to be granted are to be clearly seen as being done by the finger of God quite distinct from any human agency. God does all the delivering. God does all the saving. God gets all the glory.

We would do well to remember this on this Advent Sunday. Men still believe that all the action is where all the pomp and splendor is but God still speaks … God still comes to us … in and by the comparatively simple proclamation of the Word and dispensing of the Sacrament.

Continuing with this idea of the Desert Motif in Scripture let us consider the Redemptive-Historical way in which the Scripture develops and unwinds Wilderness – Desert symbolism.

In Genesis Adam is cast out of the Garden Temple Sanctuary and in being driven east of Eden Adam is driven into the wilderness of this fallen world. Adam has to contend with a ground that produces “thorns and thistles,” the very vegetation of the Desert that Adam would now occupy. As you move from Genesis to Revelation one way of reading the Scripture as a whole is seeing that God’s intent was, through the redeeming work of the Lord Christ, to recreate the fallen world again into a Garden Temple sanctuary.

Man lost Eden … Man is cast into the Desert … Man will reoccupy Eden by the coming of He who is God’s Recreation.

Moses as God’s man is planted in the Wilderness of Midian for 40 years before he is raised up to confront Pharaoh. Joseph spend time in the wilderness rot of a prison before God lifts him up. Elijah spends time in Desert conditions before he confronts Ahab. Paul spends time in the Arabia before the flowering of his ministry.

We again see the Desert –  Wilderness motif in the Hebrew’s wanderings in Exodus. Here we have a literal desert complete with lack of water, poisonous serpents, and short food supply. God brings His people through the desert preparing them for the land flowing with milk and honey that He will lead them into.

Now remember we are looking at this because John the Baptist is a “voice crying in the Wilderness.” We are looking at how the Wilderness motif is used in Scripture. God raises up His people and trains them in the Wilderness before they are led into the promised land.

The idea of Wilderness – Desert is often employed in the OT books of the prophets. What we see there is that God intends to make the Desert bloom with the coming of the Messiah

[When] the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, And the fruitful field is counted as a forest (Isaiah 32:15).

For waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, And streams in the desert (Isaiah 35:6).

I will open rivers in desolate heights, And fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, And the dry land springs of water (Isaiah 41:18).

The Lord will comfort Zion, He will comfort all her waste places; He will make her wilderness like Eden, And her desert like the garden of the Lord; Joy and gladness will be found in it, Thanksgiving and the voice of melody (Isaiah 51:3).

All of this in Isaiah is connected to the passage from Isaiah quoted by Dr. Luke. John the Baptist is the voice crying in the Wilderness and in demanding that the wilderness of creation be made readied for God coming near we find the intent of God to make the desert flower.

It makes sense that John the Baptist would be the voice crying in the wilderness presaging the Lord Christ who would make all things new. The movement is from desert to garden. John the Baptist played the dirge, the Son of man came eating and drinking. John the Baptist pointed out the Barrenness of God’s people. The Lord Christ came to give life and life abundantly.

Our Lord Christ is driven into the Wilderness just prior to the official beginning of His ministry … one day for every year Israel spent in the Wilderness. There is a kind of recapitulation going on here. The Lord Christ is the faithful Son who triumphs in the Wilderness by the Word of God succeeding where Israel, as God’s son failed in the Wilderness by giving into sin. The Lord Christ succeeds and overcomes in the Wilderness and begins a ministry that casts out barrenness and brings the life of the garden to all He heals and delivers.

This relationship between desert and garden is punctuated on the Cross where Christ suffers in the most extremes of deserts. As the writer of Hebrews puts it “Christ suffers outside the camp,” providing for us an allusion to the sin bearing scapegoat who was taken into the desert and released.

During His wilderness on the Cross, Christ has upon Him a crown of thorns … those very same thorns that Adam was cursed with, in being cast out of Eden. It is as if, with the crowing of Christ with a crown of thorns, He is crowned with Adam’s sin.

So, when you combine the wilderness of the Temptation where Christ was obedient through the Word of God (where God’s people had previously failed) with the Wilderness of the Cross where Christ is crowned with man’s sin, you have a picture of Christ’s obedience in our place and for us along with a picture of Christ’s suffering the penalty for our disobedience. Christ has done for us in the Wilderness what we could never do. By His wilderness obedience and penalty we are healed.

But … the wilderness of the Cross is relieved by the resurrection that happens in … you guessed it,  a Garden.

In the text this morning Luke shows how the desert pattern begins yet again with John the Baptist in the wilderness. John is like Elijah, as Mark 1:2-3 and Luke 1:16-17 note (Mal 3:1). When God comes near this time God makes salvation manifest for all to see. There is nowhere else to look for God’s saving work except to the Lord Christ for it is in the Lord Christ that God is coming near.

Here, in Luke’s Gospel, John the Baptist is announcing, as the voice of the Desert Prophet that God is coming. In the other Gospel’s we get this more explicitly as they have John announcing that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This idea of God coming indicates that God is coming in a unique way in which He has not come before.

For the promised kingdom to be “at hand” means that it was not yet present when John speaks. So John is not speaking of the kingdom of God in its broadest sense of God’s rule from the beginning of the creation. Rather, he is discussing the promised, long-awaited rule of God in which the promised Messiah and God’s Spirit become evident in a fresh and startling way. John is saying that finally God is fulfilling the long-awaited hope of Old Testament promise wherein all the barren places are turned into a garden.

This is what happened with Christ’s first advent. Christ, who was and is, God’s recreation has come and should one desire to have abundant life one must flee to He who is God’s recreation.

It is true, as we have mentioned often, there is a “not yetness,” to the nowness of the life which Christ brings. The fullness of the fullness that is yet to come is not yet here. But if men are to find any joy in a world made sad by their attempt to de-god God … any relief from the weight of sin and guilt … any hope of the end of alienation from God, others, and self, then man must find that joy, relief, hope and life by looking to and trusting in the Lord Christ who is to fallen man his pardon from God’s wrath.

II.) The Importance of Historicity to Christianity

We have been over this ground before so we won’t spend a great deal of time here.

The point is, is that Christianity is a faith that can not be true unless the historicity of it is true. It is a faith that depends upon the validity of space and time History. Here we see just such an example. Luke the Historian, places John the Baptist in a very concrete historical context. There you have have the pronouncement of God coming near in the time of Tiberius, Pilate, Herod, Caiphas, and Annas. The legitimacy of this proclamation of John the Baptist is dependent upon the Historicity of all that is swirling around it. God came near at this time and point in History.

The Scripture repeatedly turns us to the Historical for verification.  The Creeds follow that lead when we recite that Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate. There it is … real life history.

We can not affirm Christianity if we discount its record of the Historical. Luke was a careful Historian. If you read his Luke-Acts book you see that he carefully examined all that he wrote. He was writing a history and he wanted it to be taken as History. Paul likewise speaks of Historical evidence when he mentions in I Cor. 15 that there were over 500 witnesses to the historical event we call the resurrection.

Now I mention all this because if this space in time Historical narrative did not really happen. If God did not really come near during the reigns of Tiberius, Pilate, and Herod, then how can I trust anything the rest of Scripture tells me? If God was not really born of a virgin, if the Lord Christ did not cast out Demons, raise the dead, heal the palsied and lame, if He Himself was not raised and ascended  … and all this as real life historical events then Christianity collapses completely.  Christianity requires the Historical and reciprocally History is defined by Christianity.

If you deny the historical of Christianity and replace it with the “spiritual meaning of the historical event” then you have nothing but your own imagination and no matter how much it might be denied such a person has themselves for their God. If the historicity of Christianity wherein the supernatural happens in space and time history is not real history then it is the cruelest of all hoaxes.

Walsh on the Deconstruction of the Family

The attack on normative heterosexuality — led by male homosexuals and lesbians, and invariably disguised as a movement for ‘rights,’ piggybacking on the civil rights movement of the 1960’s — is fundamental to the success of Critical Theory, which went straight at the hardest target (and yet, in  many ways, the softest) first. The reason was simple: If a wedge could be a driven between men and women, if the nuclear family could be cracked, if women could be convinced to fear and hate men, to see them as unnecessary for their happiness or survival — if men could be made biologically redundant — then that political party that had adopted  Critical Theory could make single women one of their strongest voting blocs.

And so Eve was offered the apple: In exchange for rejecting a ‘traditional’ sex role of supposed subservience and dependency (slavery, really), she would become more like a man in her sexual appetites and practices (this was so called ‘freedom’), and she would be liberated from the burdens of motherhood via widespread contraception, abortion on demand, and the erasure of the ‘stigma’ of single motherhood (should it come to that) or spinsterhood. Backed by the force of government’s fist, she would compete with men for jobs, high salaries, and social status, all the while retaining all her rights of womanhood. the only thing she had to do was help destroy the social order.

The results has been entirely predictable: masculinized women, feminized men, falling rates of childbirth in the Western world, and the creation of a technocratic political class that can type but do little real work in the traditional sense. Co-educational college campuses have quickly mutated from sexually segregated living quarters to co-ed dorms to the ‘hook up culture’ depicted by novelist Tom Wolfe in I am Charlotte Simmons to a newly puritanical and explicitly anti-male ‘rape culture’ hysteria, in which sexual commissars promulgate step-by-step rules for sexual encounters and often dispense completely with due process when adjudicating complaints from female students.

Crucially, at every step of the way, ‘change,’ from the old norms was being offered as ‘improvement’ or ‘liberation’ — more fulfillment, more pleasure, more experience. And yet, with each step, things got worse — for women. Eve’s bite of the apple sent humanity forth from the Garden, sadder but wiser. Today’s transgressive Western woman is merely sadder and often ends her life completely alone, a truly satanic outcome. G. K. Chesterton’s parable of the fence comes to mind, in the ‘The Drift from Domesticity,’ in The Thing (1929):

In the manner of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which probably will be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law, let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this, let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer, “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”

A splendid example of Chesterton’s Fence was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, championed by Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. “Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will non inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area,” said the Massachusetts Senator. “In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply as the critics seem to think … The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.” Half a century on, those predictions have proved dramatically wrong: the question is whether Kennedy and his fellow leftists knew quite well at the time that there forecasts were bogus — although (as someone or other famously said) what difference, at this point, does it make?

In the same way, much of contemporary, ‘reform’ is marked by impatience, ridicule, and haste, cloaked in ‘compassion,’ or bureaucratic ‘comprehensivity,’ disguised as ‘rights’ prised out of the Constitution with a crowbar and an ice pick, and delivered with a cocksure snort of derision against any who would demur.

Michael Walsh
The Devil’s Pleasure Palace; The Cult of Critical Theory and the Subversion of the West — pg. 88 – 89