What’s the catch?  Our mothers always warned us, “if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”  The cunning of the salesman is to promote the benefits and overcome the objections.   Unfortunately, ‘the catch’ often gets lost in a sea of euphemism.   And so, to bridge the gap between the sunshine of the salesman and the rainy day of reality, we have disclaimers. 

Everything comes with disclaimers. The fine print. The low-toned, rapid-fire voice at the end of the commercial offering a hurried, but dire warning. Asterisks and double-daggers qualify every statement, so as to evade charges of false advertising. The dictionary defines a disclaimer as, “a statement, document, or assertion that disclaims responsibility, affiliation, etc.; disavowal; denial.” To disclaim is the opposite of claiming. The salesman claims, the legal department disclaims. Offers are made, then qualified, modified, mortified. The sales pitch promotes benefit without borders, then the disclaimer draws a very small map of possibilities. 

Disclaimers makes us jaded to every remarkable promise, suspicious of every offer.  Yet, I suppose this is nothing new in the history of the world.   From the beginning, the Great Deceiver, deceived our forefather Adam to believe that it was God who was deceiving him.   Satan added disclaimers and man doubted.   Ever since, man has doubted.   God offers man more than he can imagine.  The offer requires only faith, yet man can only doubt.  Satan suggests disclaimers.  Surely God is up to no good.  Surely it is a trap to defraud and destroy.   And so, in our fallenness we trust the Deceiver, and view the Trustworthy One with suspicion.

But God gives something else.  He gives faith as a gift.   God in his mercy, gives us the faith to trust that his offer comes without disclaimers.   Nothing in our doing or undoing undoes God’s offer of eternal life.   And to remind us of this, He brings the great story of redemption to a close in Revelation 21 with a vision of all His promises kept.   Everything He offered is given.  Nothing is withheld.   There are no caveats, no conditions, no last-minute substitutions – no disclaimers.

What was true regarding the people of Israel entering the promised land, is also true all who will experience the new heavens and the new earth.

Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass.

Joshua 21:45

Have you trusted these promises? Have you accepted God’s offer? Have you believed that eternal life in Christ appears too good to be true, but really is? Or has the Deceiver kept you looking for a disclaimer, a loophole, a conviction that God’s promise comes with asterisks and double-daggers and will come to nothing? Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Revelation 21:1-8 and consider the offer that appears too good to be true, but really is.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Rock and roll ballads rarely offer helpful counsel for life’s existential angst.  But they do put their finger insightfully on the pulse of the angst itself.   The bards of rock know well their condition and articulate it with great intensity.   Examples are copious, but some lyrics are more poignant than others. 

Creed’s title track, My Own Prison, has always grieved me.   It’s clarity regarding the ultimate existential crisis, but unwillingness to accept its acknowledged solution underscores the inability of man, unaided by the effectual calling of the Spirit, to find peace. 

Court is in session, a verdict is in
No appeal on the docket today just my own sin
The walls cold and pale, the cage made of steel
Screams fill the room, alone I drop and kneel

Silence now the sound, my breath the only motion around
Demons cluttering around, my face showing no emotion
Shackled by my sentence, expecting no return
Here there is no penance, my skin begins to burn

I hear a thunder in the distance, see a vision of a cross
I feel the pain that was given on that sad day of loss
A lion roars in the darkness, only he holds the key
A light to free me from my burden and grant me life eternally

I cry out to God, seeking only His decision
Gabriel stand and confirms, I’ve created my own prison.

While its theology is askew, the songs’ message is clear.   Without God’s grace, men are self-condemned in a prison of their own sinful making.  The Bible is clear about our condition apart from God’s grace.  Men try to ignore it, deceive themselves about it, and rail against it, but the they cannot escape their own prison.    Though many mock Christianity and scoff at the Bible, all men sense the truth of what Paul wrote in Acts 17:31 and dread it.

[God] has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

Judgment is coming.   God has not hidden this truth.   Throughout the Scriptures the inevitability of God’s judgment is proclaimed with clarity and certainty.   The final judgement is never expressed in conditional language.   As the author of Hebrews wrote.

It is appointed for man to die once and then comes the judgement.

Hebrews 9:27

All men will face it.  Great and small, righteous and wicked, believers and unbelievers.  Yet not all men will be condemned.    In a moment of remarkable literal clarity, Revelation 20:11-15 speaks of the final judgment – of its certainty, scope, basis, and sentence.   But like every word of judgement in Scripture, this picture of the final judgement includes a word of grace.   

Among the books of men’s deeds is found another book, the Book of Life of the Lamb Who Was Slain.   This book does not contain men’s works, but their names – the names of those who have trusted Jesus’ works, not their own.   For these men and women, boys and girls, justice has been satisfied.    The one on the throne executing judgement has, himself, endured judgement in their place.  

What about you?  Which book determines your eternal destiny on the day of judgement?   Will you hear, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” or “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”  Join us this Lord’s Day as we examine Revelation 20:11-15, commonly called the Great White Throne Judgement, and consider what makes the difference between eternal life and death at the final judgement.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Long before the dawn of the computer age and concern over the alleged influence of Russian hacking, the fate of nations and the tides of war lay in the power of cryptography.   During World War II, the best and the brightest were pressed into service as cryptographers seeking to create and to break unbreakable codes.   The stories of these unsung men and women have been recounted in recent movies such as Windtalkers and The Imitation Game.

One of the most significant of these crypto-analysts was British mathematician, Alan Turing.  Turing led a team of researchers at Britain’s infamous Bletchley Park lab to build a machine capable of decoding messages encrypted by Hitler’s famed Enigma machines.  Turing’s machine, or Automated Computing Engine, was the earliest electro-mechanical computer, a machine which revolutionized the modern age.

Despite Turing’s brilliance and achievement in cracking the world’s foremost cryptographical enigma, however, he could not decode the ultimate enigma, the meaning of life.  His untimely death by cyanide poisoning in 1954 was ruled a suicide.  Turing was not the first notable man in history to grapple with the enigma of meaning and meaninglessness.   Solomon, in the Bible, had done it all.  He had unparalleled wisdom, wealth and experience, but he still wrestled with the same ultimate questions of meaning and meaningless that create existential angst for each of us today.

Cracking Hitler’s Enigma machine seems child’s play compared to deciphering the symbolism of Revelation 20.   The theologies growing out of the events described in Revelation 20 are the most divisive and enigmatic in Christian eschatology, or the study of ‘last things.’   And Christians often use another’s position on the Millennium as litmus tests for orthodoxy or heterodoxy.   Though fashionable to ask, “are you pre-mil, a-mil, or post-mil?”  Asking another Christian his position on the millennium is akin to asking how he voted in the last election.

But the enigmata of Revelation 20 is its ultimate irony.   The Revelation is not given to obscure, but reveal.  Not to distress, but comfort.  Not to divide, but to unify.   In An Eschatology of Victory, Marcellus Kik notes that accessing the comfort of Revelation 20 depends upon rightly understanding three simple, yet profound images: the binding of the devil, the reigning of the saints, and the two deaths and resurrections.  

Warfare between various theological camps erupts at just these salient points.   Yet, to miss the meaning of these powerful images is to miss some of the richest gospel comfort offered in Scripture.  Join us as we examine Revelation 20:1-10 and find simple, yet profound comfort from one of the Scripture’s most enigmatic passages.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

“Shock and Awe, simply Shock and Awe!”  For most, this phrase entered our vernacular from CNN Reporter, Peter Arnett, describing the stunning exhibition of US airpower from his hotel in Baghdad on March 21, 2003.   The second Gulf War had begun.   Operation Iraqi Freedom was underway.  We watched live as coalition airpower obliterated Saddam Hussein’s Presidential compound on the Tigris and other government and military sites in and around Baghdad.   ‘Shock and Awe’ was meant to make a statement, to break the will of Saddam’s army — to end a war before it began.

Military strategists as far back as Sun Tzu have understood the value of destroying the enemy’s will to fight.   But the concept of ‘Shock and Awe’ was meant to take it to the next level.  It is Sherman’s ‘total war’ on steroids.   The phrase ‘shock and awe’ was originally introduced by Harlan Ullman in a 1996 Pentagon study.  For Ullman, ‘shock and awe’ defined a concept of engagement so massive and sudden that the enemy would be stunned, confused, overwhelmed, and paralyzed.

But the coalition bombardment that began on March 21, 2003 was nothing compared to the ‘Shock and Awe’ described in Revelation 19 as the world’s final battle that pictures the return of Christ in judgement.   Kings and captains, mighty men, men both free and slave, small and great gather for battle.  Summoned by the King of Rebels, the ancient Dragon and his Beast and False Prophet, they have come to resist the will of their rightful King, the Lord Jesus Christ.  They trust in everything false and swear allegiance to the King of Lies and Murder.    They think this will be their moment – and indeed it is.  Just not the moment they expected.

As the Lord Jesus appears in power and glory, the armies of heaven following after Him, He brings ‘Shock and Awe’ His enemies never anticipated.    “Every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him…. Kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and rich and powerful and everyone slave and free, [will hide] themselves in caves and among the rocks of the mountains calling to the mountains, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb.’”

Their swagger and boasting, rebellion and hatred of the Lord will come to nothing in an instant.   The mighty power of the Beast and the pervasive influence of the False Prophet dissipate at the appearing of the one who is Faithful and True, who slays His enemies with the sword of the Word of God.    The return of Christ comes as ‘shock and awe’ to His enemies, and ours.   But to those who have loved not their lives unto death, who have held to the testimony of Jesus, who have been sealed with the seal of the Living God, the “shock and awe” of His coming causes them to cry ‘Glory!’

We are reminded in Philippians that

God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Some will confess Jesus’ Lordship out of love for their King.  Others will confess it under compulsion of judgment.   When Jesus comes, He comes with ‘shock and awe.’   For those who submit to Him in grace, there is joy.   But for those who refuse His light and easy yoke, submission comes only in judgement.   As one theologian noted regarding that moment.

“Either judgment is done on [Christ] at the cross [on our behalf], or else, failing that, judgement is done by him as people’s unforgiven sin sends them to hell.”

Have you submitted to his grace?  Or are you resisting your rightful King, gathering together with the King of Rebels and the enemies of the Living God?   ‘Shock and awe’ is coming.   Are you ready?   Join us this Sunday as we examine Revelation 19:11-21 and the great promise and the great warning of Christ’s return.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Are you tired yet?   Tired of ‘all things Covid?’  Tired of protocols?  Tired of rapid tests?  Tired of feeling like everything is inside a bubble?  Tired of not being able to understand the cashier because of two masks and a layer of plexiglass?  Tired of the calculus of doom?  Life these days is filled with all kinds of fatigue.  Fatigue was not something I heard much about as a boy, but now it is everywhere. 

Caregiver fatigue is creating burnout and impacting care for the sick and elderly.   And while media pins ICU bed shortages on the unwashed masses, a nursing shortage is more to blame.  Then there is compassion fatigue.  Compassion fatigue is a creeping callousness toward suffering due to an overload of caregiving.   Those suffering compassion fatigue struggle to care about those they care for.  Now I am hearing about Decision Fatigue.  

Every routine action now requires an elaborate decision matrix.  The complexity of quarantine calculus requires a Cray supercomputer.   The statistics used as decisioning criteria are a classic GIGO (garbage-in, garbage-out) paradigm.  Facebook friends are obliterating straw men left and right, decrying the uninformed by declaring their own unsubstantiated misinformation to be self-evident to all non-Cretans.  We are going to war over decisions we are ill-equipped to make.  Mask or not? Vax or not?  The emotional exhaustion wrapped up in these questions is creating decision fatigue.   Struggling to make a decision is not necessarily a lack of decisiveness but more a function of fatigue. 

But for the Christian there is a decision fatigue much more persistent than our covid mitigation strategy.   How are we to live in the world, but not be of the world?  What is our relationship to culture?    The question has challenged the church throughout its existence: “How are Christians to engage and relate to the surrounding culture? How should we then live? What does it look like to be in the world but not of it?”

H. Richard Niebuhr’s classic book, Christ and Culture, he wrestles with this question. Niebuhr proposed five models:  Christ against culture; Christ of culture; Christ above culture; Christ and culture in paradox; and Christ the transformer of culture.  While Niebuhr does not resolve the tension this question creates, he puts his finger on its nuances.  While at some level each category resonates with Scripture and our experience, what is the complete picture?

Another theologian has described the church as a community of resident aliens.  Resident aliens have great power to influence and effect society.   They bring their particular cultural strengths to the table, but also foster the distinctives of their homeland.  They are a part of society, without losing their identity. The Church is to be like this – resident aliens, “an island of one culture in the middle of another.” (Phil 3:20)   But it must never be merely an enclave.  For while the Church fosters the culture of its heavenly homeland, its calling is to transform its sphere of influence, not just “coexist.” 

Revelation speaks to this question pointedly.   Written to a church under pressure to conform or be cast out, Revelation graphically pictures what it means for the church to be in the world but not of the world.   In the history of interpretation, however, this message has often been obscured by its apocalyptic medium.  

Revelation is a book of unveilings.  Beginning in chapter 17, the Spirit unveils the hideous nature and doomed future of worldly culture united only by its rebellion against God.   Though alluring and seductive, its ways are the ways of death.   In the chapters that follow, the church is warned and encouraged.  Warned not to be seduced from the way of Christ to the way of the world.  And encouraged by holding fast to Christ the church will endure eternally in radiant beauty and peace.

In Revelation 18, the Lord unveils the destruction of Babylon, the Harlot, who pictures rebellious, worldly culture.   The people of God are commanded to come out of her.  And while her lovers mourn her downfall from a distance, those who belong to God give thanks for her destruction.   At first glance this seems an ungracious, or even vindictive, portrait of the church. But a deeper examination reveals important insights into the responsibility and the relationship of the church to the world.  Join us this week as we examine Revelation 18 and consider what this passage says about our calling to be ‘in the world,’ but not ‘of the world.’

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Chickens are not the smartest creatures on God’s green earth.   When they actually fly, they invariably land in danger.   Despite an acute ability to spot food on the ground in front of them, they prefer to chase each other to the point of exhaustion when one finds a grub.  Though provided with spacious, clean, inviting nest boxes, they pile up two or three deep in some cramped spot to lay eggs.  And they mindlessly pursue any spot of red anywhere and on anything.    Their tiny brains are remarkable only for the remarkably dumb things they do.

But for all the shortcomings, the chicken’s vision is truly amazing.   Having eyes on each side of their head gives the chicken a 300° field of vision.  The left eye is far-sighted to keep an eye to the sky, while the right is near-sighted to provide microscopic vision of the ground in front of them.   With more cones than humans, they see a larger spectrum of color and more subtle contrasts.   This makes them sensitive to the most minute movement in their environment.   And even if a chicken is blind, it has a special gland in the top of its head that distinguishes daytime from nighttime.   The chicken’s vision is truly remarkable.   While their brains are small, their perception is enormous.

Human perception, by contrast, is more limited.   Our field of vision is only 180°, assuming our peripheral vision is perfect.   But peripheral vision is easily reduced by injury or trauma.   Extreme stress can limit our sight to just what is in front of us; a condition we call ‘tunnel vision.’    Tunnel vision is dangerous because it removes visual context.  And visual context is critical in order to understand what we see.     High stress encounters by soldiers and law enforcement have documented the tragic consequences of tunnel vision.   Unintentional victims have been wounded or killed, because combatants simply did not see them in the field of vision.    Tunnel vision can be dangerous, and even deadly.

But tunnel vision is not only a danger for our physical eyesight.    We can develop tunnel vision in our spiritual perspective, assessing our circumstance without the context faith peripherally provides.   The enemy of our soul, the ancient Serpent, Satan, wants to blind us to the truths of God’s power and promises.   He creates drama and trauma in our lives, then voices a new possibility.  “Did God really say?”   Perhaps God did not mean it?  Perhaps God cannot be trusted?   Perhaps we must look elsewhere for truth?  Satan is forever working to foster suspicion of God.  And accusation against you.   To give us tunnel vision.  His relentless assaults on God’s promises wear us down, destroy hope, and fill us with despair.    Satan wants us to see only the insurmountable crisis and unsolvable brokenness right in front of us.  But not the promises of God which surround us.

We see this unfold in Revelation 13.   Satan’s rage against God is focused on God’s people, the church.   Two beasts arise, making war against the saints, conquering them through crushing power and relentless propaganda.   The picture seems hopeless.   But that is not the end of the story.   In this book of comfort, God restores peripheral vision, revealing the rest of the story.   Satan’s conquest is short lived.   The true Lamb appears with those where were sealed by the living God with the Holy Spirit.   Their number is not diminished.   Every one sealed is saved.  Not one is lost.   Despite the ravages of the enemy, the people of God stand victorious and sing victory songs before the throne.   The lies of the Dragon were just that.  His boasts, his threats, his accusations, his propaganda all come to nothing.   The Lamb is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  And the saints, who did not love their lives unto death have conquered the Dragon by the blood of the Lamb and the testimony of Jesus.

Have you developed tunnel vision in your spiritual life?   Has hopelessness gripped you, chipping away at your faith?   In Revelation 14, God corrects our vision.   He restores the periphery of faith and heals us of tunnel vision.   The attacks of the enemy are powerful, but they cannot snatch one single saint from the hand of their God, nor separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  Join us this Lord’s Day as we consider Revelation 14 and learn to avoid spiritual tunnel vision.

We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.