The idea of past and future is more and more in my mind as I think about the church. The old song popped into my head…………..
Give me that old time religion
Tis the old time religion,
Tis the old time religion,
And it’s good enough for me.
It will take us all to heaven.
It will take us all to heaven.
It will take us all to heaven.
And it’s good enough for me.
I think we need to start developing a vision of the church as an end time reality. We need to develop an end time religion while avoiding the crazed placard carrying images so popular years ago. Christ is the end of the age and we live in the end of the age now. A faith that looks back, applies the truth of the Gospel to now with a forward end time view can be ready for anything. As Matthew Harrison has said that church has a future because Christ has a future.
Martin Franzmann made a wonderful observation. He says that the predictions in the parables of Jesus are dominated by the question “what sort of persons ought you to be?” He notes that in Matthew’s Gospel less than one third of Jesus words concerning the end of the age are predictive. He calls them monitory. That means they serve as a warning. He says when the disciples think about the coming end of the age they will be warned and understand that they need to be open- eyed, alert, ready, hopeful, faithful, and using the word of God to inform their life, and help them to give an account of the hope that they have. He also says that the disciples wait in hope as a member of a waiting and hoping church. The church cannot hope and be ready for the disciples anymore than the church can believe or love for the disciples. But the church gives them a fellowship that keeps them from wallowing in a “me and Jesus” mentality. Obviously then our preaching should be monitory as well. What kind of people ought you to be? needs to be a question we ask not only from the perspective of the law, but the perspective of the ultimate coming of the one who removed from us the curse of the law.
