Mine Eyes Will Have Seen The Glory
Mine Eyes Will Have Seen The Glory
I've only been asked this question once, but it came in a pointed way. I was a speaker at a conference committed to uniting church and home. I made many friends there, and was honored to be able to speak on the importance of being connected and accountable as a local church. I encouraged hundreds of homeschooling, breeding, patriarchal families to remember the scope of the grace of God and to try to get along with those other people that Jesus died for. I don't know exactly how it happened, but apparently some of my other convictions slipped out during my talk. While we all shared a commitment to living more covenantal lives, we were not all on the exact same page theologically. There we were, sitting down to eat a nice ballroom-at-the-hotel meal when the gentleman across from me asked, "How is it that you can maintain an optimistic eschatology in light of the world around us?" Not only was he direct, but he left room for only one answer. "Because I believe the Bible," I told the man.
One of the weaknesses that comes with a romantic view of the early church is that it drives you to eschatological pessimism. If the church reached its peak in AD 40, then everything has been downhill from there. One of the weaknesses of eschatological pessimism, of course, is that it requires a gloomy view of the present and the future. In short, dispensationalists think the world is getting worse, post-millenialists think the world is getting better, while a-millenialists wish the world would just go away. But we who are optimistic need to be careful not to fall off the other side of the fence. While we affirm joyfully that Christ will indeed establish a golden age on earth before His return, that golden age must not be confused with the consummation of the kingdom. When I was called to give an answer for the hope that is in me to my dispensational table-mate, I had to be careful to give the right answer. The world is indeed getting better all the time.
When that great and final day of the Lord comes, however, it won't be merely to fold up the tents of the millennial kingdom and to hoist the tents of the consummation. When the King returns, He will find unbelief. Such ought not cause us to despair, nor slide into that eschatological heat-death known as amillenialism. Rather we must look forward in hope to His return, when He will bear both a rod and a sword. Neither will be borne in vain. And among those enemies that will be wrestled into the pit will be Leviathan.
This, in fact, is that of which psalmist sang when he, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, penned the second Psalm. We're so busy reminding folks of the fundamentals—that He will come in judgment, that His judgment includes those in the political sphere, that His kingdom includes the nations as His heritage—that we fail to remind them that He will break them with a rod of iron, that those who deny His reign are not merely wrong but, as my Mom used to warn me, cruising for a bruising. Worse still, because we miss this promise altogether, we miss the glory of it. We do not delight in the things God delights in—which includes dashing rebellious nations into pieces like a potter's vessel. Won't it be a sight?
Of course imagining the outpouring of the wrath of God against any person or institution is a double-edged sword. We ought not, like prissy neo-evangelicals, to be embarrassed by it. But neither should we be an army of Jonahs. We ought to be driven to compassion. Biblical compassion, though, does not mean denying the coming judgment but warning of it. Those who gleefully wave the flag because a few of our fathers quietly kissed the Son are not doing those who stand under that flag any favors. We need to tell them to flee from the wrath to come. Like the blissfully ignorant Jews who prayed for the Day of the Lord, not knowing that for them it would be a day of darkness rather than light, we seem to think that Jesus will drop a nuke or two on everyone but the U.S. and Israel.
But neither nation serves the Lord with fear. Neither nation even pretends to kiss the Son. And without that, all that we can expect is judgment. He has, however, tarried in His wrath. He has, in His grace, been forbearing for a season. No, I don't mean He's given us a reprieve by giving us Republicans as far as the eye can see; rather I mean that the King has not yet returned fully and finally, and so we can still call and pray for repentance.
It is not enough to pray for the President, or the Congress, or the Supreme Court. The question is, what do you pray for them? Do you pray, "Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer; call his evil to account till you find none"? Jesus prayed thus, and so should we. Pray for their repentance, by all means. But pray that their wickedness would stop. And as you pray, remember where you have your citizenship. If your identity is in these United States, you will surely perish with them. If it is to this nation that you have pledged your allegiance, then you too will be broken with a rod of iron.
If, however, you are among the host over which our King is Captain, then you will not only escape the judgment, you will administer it, "And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following Him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty" (Revelation 19:14–15). You will see justice roll down like a river, and will rejoice.
He is coming, the Prince of Peace. And the government will be upon His shoulders. This time He will not be a baby in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes, but He will be the Great Warrior. And all who do not welcome Him will see that He is not only peace, but the white hot fury of the wrath of justice. Come, Lord Jesus.