Kingdom of Israel / Kingdom of God - Part 2

As we can abundantly see from the tensions and possible military conflict building up between Ukraine and Russia at present, it is sometimes exceedingly difficult to draw a clear line between civil and religious authority, between the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God. One Easter season many years ago, I was eating my brown-bag lunch in the Wisconsin State capitol building located just across the street from where I worked as a budding new programmer: a choir was singing one of the last choruses from "The Messiah" by Georg Friedrich Haendel, and the words - "the kingdoms of this world are become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever. Amen!" - sent shivers of joy and anticipation up and down my spine.

But the intervening years have witnessed a secularizing, desacralizing of Western society. The United States is no longer a Christian country (if it ever truly was); it is definitely now post-Christian, and in many ways even anti-Christian. The Apostle John's and Haendel's vision of the Kingdom of God being present on earth here and now appears to be a very remote possibility. A church choir would not be allowed to sing such words today in a government building in the U.S.

And yet, that fuzzy, unclear line between the secular and and the spiritual has always existed. Any modern nation-state exists only because it has some sort of connection between the dominant religious or ideological worldview and that nation's government. So-called modern civil society supposedly has social institutions that are independent of government control, but in fact the two spheres interact considerably.

As witnessed by several recent court cases in the U.S. and elsewhere in the West, the desacralizing forces of secular humanism are forcing Christians to surrender their values in order to function in society. Christian organizations, sometimes even including churches, are no longer independent of government, they are threatened with fines or loss of tax-exempt status if they "meddle" in politics or do not conform to certain government-mandated hiring and insurance rules that contradict their faith. Christians are being forced to abandon practicing their faith if it conflicts with the "rights" of homosexuals and others to practice their un-faith.

This is the same sort of pressure that Orthodox Christians were subjected to under the Muslim Turkish Empire, in many Muslim countries even today, and under the Mongol yoke of Genghis Khan in ancient Russia. Then, after Ivan the Terrible threw off the Mongol yoke, he subjected the head of the Orthodox Church to himself. Under Emperor Peter the Great and later Empress Katherine the Great, the Church became a department of the Russian government, led by state appointees, not clergy.

Christians living under a Muslim government were and are considered "dhimmi" - second class citizens without the right to openly practice and propagate their faith, subject to special taxes, often persecuted and forced to convert to Islam. It is the same sort of pressure and persecution that Christians of various confessions were and are subjected to in the former Soviet Union, as well as in today's Communist China, Vietnam and North Korea. Christians are forbidden to perform any sort of social outreach or ministry to the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind. That has become the function of the state. Does this sound familiar?

What is it that the religion of Islam, communism and secular humanism all have in common? Why do all three attempt to subjugate Christians and suppress the open practice of their faith? It is this: all three deny Christ's full deity and the incarnation. And where does this originate from? In early Christian history there arose the Arian heresy: Arius was a wolf in sheep's clothing, a false believer who became a deacon and preached the notion that Jesus was not pre-eternal God come in the flesh. This false teaching spread over much of the Greco-Roman Empire, but Arius and his followers were finally condemned and driven out of the Empire into the deserts of Arabia.

A related heresy then sprang up, that of iconoclasm - the denial of the proper veneration of images in Christian worship. Icons can be venerated precisely because Christ became incarnate, Christ "is the radiance of his [God's] glory, the very image ["eikon" in the original Greek] of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself made purification for our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Hebrews 1:3). Man and woman are also created in the "image" (icon) of God. And God became visible and touchable: "That which was from the beginning, that which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we saw, and our hands touched, concerning the Word of life, and the life was revealed, and we have seen, and testify, and declare to you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was revealed to us" (1 John 1:1-2).

After a century-long struggle between iconoclasts and iconodules - those who venerate icons, the iconoclasts were also condemned and driven out of the Empire into the deserts of Arabia. Shortly after this, a certain charismatic Arab leader merged together the two pseudo-Christian heresies of Arianism and iconoclasm, forming a "new" religion. That Arab was named Mohammed, and his religion is called Islam, which means "subjection." It teaches that Jesus was a prophet, but denies that He is God incarnate. Their god Allah is distant, unseen and unknowable. They also deny the use of any images in their religious practices. This results in the denial of humanity being in the image (icon) of God, and leads to the subjection of others, especially of women, such as the practices of female genital mutilation, forced marriages of pre-teen girls including kidnapped Christian girls, and polygamy.

Both communism and secular humanism also deny the divinity and incarnation of Jesus Christ, if they even acknowledge that Jesus ever existed. They might concede that Jesus was a good man, great leader and/or moral teacher, even a prophet, but not the Christ, the Messiah and Son of God. Then they exalt humanism and human reasoning above the faith-knowledge of experiencing God. And what is the evil spirit behind all this? "Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son, the same doesn't have the Father. He who confesses the Son has the Father also" (1 John 2:22-23). And "For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist" (3 John 1:7).

But will the the kingdoms of this world ever become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ? "Let no one deceive you in any way. For it will not be, unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin [the Antichrist] is revealed, the son of destruction, he who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits as God in the temple of God, setting himself up as God. Don't you remember that, when I was still with you, I told you these things? Now you know what is restraining him, to the end that he [the Antichrist] may be revealed in his own season. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only there is one who restrains now, until he is taken out of the way. Then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will kill with the breath of his mouth, and bring to nothing by the brightness of his coming" (2 Thess. 2:3-8).

Yes! The Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ is coming! When the Antichrist fully reveals himself, then the Lord Jesus Christ will kill him with the breath of his mouth - the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. Meanwhile, however, now we wrestle and strive "against the world's rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12b). Keep up the fight, refuse to be subjugated to the state, reclaim our right and duty to minister to the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind. "Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, to stand" (v. 13)!

(Linked to www.Hosken-News.info of 02 Mar. 2014.)