One of the foundational principles of this church comes from a quote that I still cannot discover the precise source of.  Some attribute it to compatriot of Martin Luther’s by the name of Philip Melanchthon, and some take it all the way back to Augustine.  Whatever the case, it is something that should characterize every body of believers (but unfortunately, often-times does not):  Unity in the essentials, diversity in the non-essentials, and love in all things.  It seems to me that if a church is going to avoid dis-unity, something that has compromised the mission of the church over and over again, then this is a good place to start.  Agreeing at least on the essential areas of basic Christian Doctrine, and allowing for a lot of grace and room for discussion in some of those “gray areas” that seem to somehow lead to so much controversy in the church.  This seminar is about affirming and underscoring those essentials.  The things that we all need to agree on.  One of the things about this seminar is that for something as important as this, it might seem a bit brief.  There’s a reason for that.  Because I hope you’ll learn something important about what isn’t this seminar. It seems to me that  many churches take a doctrine that is what I call a theological “gray area”, and they define their church by how they think about that issue.  They major on the minors.    This seminar isn't about that--in part, what you will learn will come from what is not in it-- and that is hopefully something you’ll take away from this seminar.

God

Any study of basic Christian Doctrine must rightly begin with a study of how we understand God.  This is foundational to orthodox thinking in all areas of Christianity, and the root cause of wrong thinking in most areas of heresy.

The first and most important thing to understand about God is that there he is one.  Perhaps the most important verse in the Old Testament to a good Jew is Deuteronomy 6:4:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.  (Deut. 6:4)                   

This is what is know as the Shema, and is a confession recited daily by orthodox Jews. This is the defining characteristic that set the people of God apart right from the beginning.  Every other ancient religion that existed when the people of God first began to form were what we call polytheistic—they had many gods.  Basic Christian Doctrine is founded on the notion that there is only one God. 

Where it can get confusing is in the fact that God is manifested as a trinity.  That is to say, God has revealed himself through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  A Muslim would say that makes us polytheistic- that we worship three gods.  But that isn’t what we mean by a trinity at all.  This can be a tricky concept, and it doesn’t help that the word trinity itself does not appear in the Bible.  However, there are some concepts from Scripture that are become very clear from reading it, and the trinity is simply a convenient term we use to describe what in some ways is indescribable, even incomprehensible.  Basically, what we need to affirm about God and the trinity are these two things:  1. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each God, and 2. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are each distinct persons.  When I say persons, of course, I’m using a human term to describe deity, but that’s the best we’ve got for now.  A number of ways have been tried to attempt to describe this concept, none of which are really adequate.  I’ve had it explained to me that the trinity is like an egg: it has a shell, a white, and a yolk but they’re all one unit.  That helps, but implies that God is somehow split up into three distinct parts, which isn’t what we’re talking about.  I’ve also heard it explained to be like water:  sometimes it exists as liquid, sometimes solid (when it’s frozen), and sometimes gaseous (as vapor).  That doesn’t really help a lot either, since when Jesus walked the earth, that didn’t mean that the Father and the Holy Spirit weren’t also being manifested.  In other words, when God is manifested as all three persons concurrently.  You see the difficulty in really grasping this, but why should we in our human-ness be able to fully comprehend the god-head?  What we know for sure is what has been revealed to us:  that the operations of God are worked through these different persons of the trinity.  In the beginning, for instance, God created the heavens and the earth.  But the New Testament in regards to Jesus Christ, “For by him all things were created” (Col. 1:16), but it was the Spirit of God hovering over the waters that gave it form and substance.  So God the Father created the heavens and the earth through Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. 

Some of the attributes that Christian thinking ascribe to God are these:

He is non-dependent.  In other words, he is the only thing in existence that does not depend on anything else.  These days who God is and what he is like literally depends on what people would prefer him to be, or to be like.  And we affirm that as perfectly rational.  Christianity rejects that notion completely.  Who God is, is who God is.  That is reality.  We don’t have a say in it, we only get to decide how to respond to him.

He is transcendent.  He is above his creation, not subject to the laws that he created.  He is completely sovereign over the universe as its maker and creator.

But in addition to being transcendent, he is imminent.  In other words, he is also close to us and present with his creation.  He is not so high and exalted and lofty that we cannot touch him and know him and walk with him.  That is Allah, the god of the Muslim faith, who is so exalted above lowly mankind that no mere human could ever get close to him, spiritually or otherwise.  That is a god who is transcendent, but not imminent.  On the other hand, we need to avoid the opposite extreme as well.  People who would see god everywhere—in the trees and the wind, etc., but not acknowledge him as the non-dependent, transcendent creator of those things are making just as critical an error. 

He is omnipotent.  He is all-powerful and nothing is impossible for him.  However, the thing we need to bear in mind in this regard is that him omnipotence is limited by his moral character.  His omnipotence applies to inherent possibilities, not impossibilities.  He cannot be untrue to himself.  Hebrews 6:18 says, “It is impossible for God to lie”.  As C.S. Lewis says, “nonsense is still nonsense, whether we are talking about God or about something else.” 

He is omniscient.  That means that he knows everything.  The Bible never speaks about him learning anything, or figuring anything out because he’s so smart and he reasons so well.  He simply knows.  That includes, of course, what has happened, is happening, and will happen.  Perhaps this could be thought of as relating to the fact that in creating the universe, God created time itself, so he stands outside of time.  In a sense, he sees everything that has ever happened or ever will happen all at once.  It is also related to the fact that..

He is omnipresent.  He is spoken of in the Bible as being present everywhere at once.  Speaking of both his omniscience as well as his omnipresence, Jeremiah says,

Jeremiah 23
²³ "Am I only a God nearby,"
declares the LORD ,
"and not a God far away?
²⁴ Can anyone hide in secret places
so that I cannot see him?"
declares the LORD .
"Do not I fill heaven and earth?"
declares the LORD

Finally, perhaps the most important attribute of God:

He is holy.  There are two senses in which the Bible uses that term.  One is to be set aside for God’s purposes and the other is to be morally pure.  Obviously, God does not set himself aside for his own purposes.  That is how we are to be holy.  But God is the only being ever anywhere that can be said to be completely morally pure.  In God only is there absolutely no limit to moral perfection. 

Jesus Christ

In a way, when we speak of the basic doctrines that we need to adhere to regarding Jesus Christ, we are continuing on in our discussion of the attributes of God. But there are some specific things in regards to Jesus that must be understood and agreed to in discussing the essentials of the Christian Faith. Chief among them is in regards to the fact that in regards to his human form,

He was both human and divine.  Basic Christian doctrine affirms that both of these were fully true in Jesus Christ.  It’s not a whole lot easier to grasp than the trinity, to be honest, but it is vitally important that we affirm each one to be true, because of the nature of the work he did on our behalf.  Hebrews 2 says,

¹⁴Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil—(v. 14)

If Christ was not divine, he would not have been the perfect sacrifice.   If he wasn’t human, he would not have been our representation on the cross, being the bearer of our sins.  In other words, if he was not God, he could not be our savior, if he was not man, he would not be our savior.  We need to underscore this point, because here again some of the basic heresies that have plagued the church over the centuries center around this point.  Partly at issue is the fact that Jesus Christ himself claimed to be divine, so if that isn’t true than all of Christianity falls apart since he is shown to be a false teacher.  But the importance of his humanity is underscored in a continuation of the passage from Hebrews that we looked at previously:

¹⁷For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for^[6] the sins of the people. ¹⁸Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted  (2:17,18).

The role of Jesus Christ was more than to just be a perfect sacrifice.  It is to be an ongoing high priest—someone to be a help to us, because he became like us and went through the things we are going through. 

Another important point in Christian doctrine regarding Jesus Christ is that he is eternal.  In other words, he is not a created being, as some such as the Jehovah’s witnesses would suggest.  This is not a new idea—it stretches all the way back to the 4^th century and a guy named Arius, but the church rejected that notion then and it does so now.  In John 8 we read,

 "You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, "and you have seen Abraham!"
"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, "before Abraham was born, I am!"  (v. 57,58)

He was admitting to be one with the eternally pre-existent father, and the Jews at that point attempted to stone him for blasphemy.  Colossians is another great book to read in regards to how we think about Christ.  Chapter 1, v 16,17 says,

For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 

Just as in John, when this says he was before all things it is referring to time.  So he existed with God before all things, and was not a created being as most of the cults today would suggest.  We can also use this passage to affirm that he is the agent and sustainer of creation itself, as we discussed in the section on the trinity. 

These are some of the basics in regards to Jesus Christ that basic Christian doctrine affirms.  The other important aspect of him, of course, is the work that he accomplished on our behalf, something we’ll look at in the section on sin and salvation.  For now, let’s complete our look at the trinity with a brief overview of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit

As we mentioned previously, the Holy Spirit is God’s primary means by which God does his work.  We saw that in regards to the original creation, but it is also true in regards to his work in our lives. 

For instance, the Holy Spirit is also the means of our salvation.  The gospel of John reminds us,
Jesus answered, "I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  (3:5,6)

Another way this is talked about is that the Spirit is the means to our regeneration.  We are born “un-regenerate”, or with a sinful nature, and we must be born again spiritually.  The Holy Spirit is the means by which God accomplishes this.  In doing so, one of the things that basic Christian doctrine asserts is that the Holy Spirit indwells every believer.  I underline every, because there are some strands of thought that would have us believe that you can be a believer in Jesus Christ at one point, but then have to wait until some point at a later date to be indwelt by the Spirit.  Orthodox doctrine would reject that notion.  Paul makes this clear in Romans 8:9:

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. 

 
Obviously, you cannot be a believer without having the Spirit.  Part of the reason why is based on the work that the Spirit does when he regenerates us.  The Bible speaks of us being “sealed” by the Spirit, as in Ephesians 1:13:

And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit

Everyone, at the point of their conversion, is “put away” for God, or sealed for the day of redemption.  That is part of the work that the Spirit does, so it follows that no Christian could be without the Spirit, because they would not therefore be “on the shelf”, for God.

Perhaps one of the reasons this has created some confusion for people in the church is because of the fact that being filled by the Spirit is also an ongoing experience.  Again, from Ephesians, we read in chapter 5,

Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.  (v.18) 

Here he is talking to born again believers and telling them to be filled by the Spirit.  The grammar itself, although it isn’t clear in English, confirms the same thing.  The tense that the word filled is in speaks of an ongoing experience in the believer’s life.  And in fact, there are many times in the New Testament that this concept is both taught and illustrated.  One of the things to keep in mind when we read these texts, though, is just what that means.  The command to be filled does not imply that some people have more and some less, or that we have more of the Spirit at one time than we do at another.  To be filled with the Spirit in Scripture simply means to allow and experience more of the Spirit’s work in our lives.  One way of saying that is that the Holy Spirit is the means to our sanctification.  In other words, the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives is to help us grow up in our faith.  Some of the things that he helps us with in that regards is that the Holy Spirit helps us pray.  Paul says,

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. (Rom. 8:26)

Without the work of the Spirit in our lives, we could never be assured that our prayers conformed to the will of God in our lives.  If this is the only work he did in our lives, it would be worth everything to gain it.  But, of course that isn’t all. 

The Holy Spirit bears fruit in our lives.  The classic passage of the work of the Spirit in our lives is from Galatians 5:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law  (v22,23)

Notice that this is a list of character traits, not a list of do’s and don’ts.  The New Testament is consistent in its insistence that good works will come naturally from becoming the right kind of people, a work that the Holy Spirit helps accomplish in our lives. 

The Holy Spirit bestows gifts on the church. 

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.  (1 Cor. 12:7)

Note who gets these gifts and why.  We all are given gifts by the Spirit, but they are not given to us.  They are given through us, to the church.  Which brings me to another point I’d like to make regarding the Spirit’s work.  I don’t know if this really qualifies as basic Christian doctrine, since you really don’t come across it a lot in reading the basic resource material, but I think that it’s important to note that..

The Holy Spirit fills individuals and the church.

The former is clear from this passage in 1 Cor.:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own  (v. 19)

However, also note what Paul says in the same book, chapter 3:

Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?

(v.16)

Here he is clearly speaking to the gathered body of believers at Corinth.  So to fully experience the work of the Spirit in your life requires not just an individual commitment, but a commitment to the church as well.  One other thing to note is that The Holy Spirit’s work in our lives requires our cooperation.  Throughout the New Testament it is evident that God expects our own personal responsibility and effort to be cooperating with the power that the Spirit offers us to accomplish the works of the Spirit.  Paul says, “Do not get drunk with wine, which leads to debauchery, but instead be filled with the Spirit.”  (Eph 5: 18)  That is an imperative statement, a command that assumes some effort on our part.  And it’s an effort that stands opposed to those things we don’t do.  Doing the things that lead to debauchery are mutually exclusive with what leads to being filled with the Spirit.  There are things we do not do, and things we do.  We set aside sin in our lives, and replace it with worship, prayer, the Word, being witnesses, etc. 

Finally, there’s one thing the Spirit does that we probably will not be able to cooperate with very well.  The Holy Spirit will resurrect us.  Paul says in Romans 8,

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.  (v.11)

Praise God for all the Spirit’s works in our lives. 

Sin and Salvation

The next major topic is this whole issue of the dilemma we find ourselves in an how the triune God set about to repair it.  In other words, the issues of sin and salvation.  There are various terms used in Scripture for sin, meaning variously to miss the mark, (harmartia), or to trespass   (paraptoma), or to disobey the law (anomia).  Let’s just say for our purposes that sin is falling short of God’s standard.  He is a holy God, and his standard is nothing less than sinlessness, or absolute holy perfection, and we blew it.  That’s what sin is.  What sin does is sin separates us from God.  And if something wasn’t done about it, that separation would continue for eternity. 

The problem for us is what Adam committed: original sin.  Paul says in Romans,

For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (5:19)

The thing that happened is that once Adam sinned, mankind gained a sinful nature.  Before the fall, it is said of mankind that we had the ability not to sin.  But we lost that.  So, now we suffer from the inability not to sin.   Since Adam lost his original, perfected nature, and gained a sinful nature, and since like gives birth to like, we all suffer from that malady.  The famous passage in Romans 3:23 regarding our common status before God because of our sin is,

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God

 So its true that everyone has sinned, so we are in need of forgiveness, but something to keep in mind is that we aren’t sinners because we have sinned, we sin because we are sinners. Since Adam, it is in our nature to do so.  The reason that is important to understand is because of the nature of the fix that God created for the problem.  The work that Jesus Christ came to do was much more than simple forgiveness of things we have done wrong.  In fact, that never would have been enough, because it wasn’t just about what we did wrong, it was about why we do those things.  Because of who we are in our sinful nature.  So the nature of salvation is an exchange of natures.  The classic passage come from 2 Cor. 5:

if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (v.17)

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (v. 21)

So the popular notion of accepting the forgiveness of our sins through choosing to trust Jesus Christ for our salvation is not wrong, but it is not complete either.  The important thing to understand is now we have a new nature, the righteousness of Christ, and that is what really makes us acceptable to be in a restored relationship to God. The other important thing to note regarding salvation and basic Christian doctrine is that We are saved by grace through faith.   You will no doubt recognize the most famous passage in regards to this:

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast.  (Eph 2:8,9)

I think the important thing to note is that it is grace that saves us, not our faith.  Certainly our faith, or our decision to trust Christ, is what appropriates that for us, but saving power is always resident in the object of our faith, not in the faith itself.  There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. You can have all the faith in the world that worshipping Buddha will save you, but that won’t change anything. 

It is also important to remember that faith displays itself in works.  Even though there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, the Bible is clear that real faith can always be seen in people’s lives.  Don’t ever forget the last part of the passage from Ephesians:

For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.  (2:10)

As  Martin Luther said,  “we are saved by faith alone, but not a faith that is alone.” 

One of the primary pre-requisites for salvation is our repentance.  Repentance means simply to make a turn, or to change our minds.  When the crowd asked Peter at Pentecost what they must do to be saved,

Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  (Acts 2:38)

The important thing to note about this is that salvation is a centered set, rather than a bounded set.  In other words, we tend to think of salvation as the point at which we cross over a line, but then we could still be pointed away from Jesus.  The Bible speaks of it more as a turn toward Christ, a direction that you maintain as you continue to grow closer to him. 

This way of thinking helps us understand the important point fact that the way Scripture speaks of salvation is salvation is both an event and a process.  The event is our justification, the process is our sanctification, and the end result is our glorification. 

Just a couple words about why we call it salvation in the first place.  We are human beings with souls, after all, which will exist for eternity.  And our eternal destiny is really what this discussion is all about. 

In regards to heaven, then, we need to realize that to die is to be present with God.  The Bible does not support any thought of an intermediate state of some kind between here and God.  Paul says in Philippians 1:22,

I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far. 

So clearly believers at death go to be with the Lord, something that was confirmed by Christ on the cross when he guaranteed the thief hanging next to him that he would see him that day in Paradise.  However, it’s also important to note that the ultimate paradise will be a new heaven and a new earth.  Heaven is not just a spiritual place “up there” somewhere, but will be an actual, physical cosmos re-made by God.  So we will be resurrected.    That was part of what the resurrection of Jesus Christ was: the “first-fruits”, or what initiated our own resurrection.  1 Corinthians 15 is the key passage of Scripture to study about what that will be like.  But the key is that we will exist not just as spiritual beings, but be resurrected as physical beings, albeit with a new kind of body like Christ had after his own resurrection.  And that new resurrection life will be one of activity and responsibility.  The Bible says we will reign with him.  It would be speculation to say what the new heavens and the new earth will be like precisely, but whatever it is, it is going to be a place that requires leadership and creative activity on our part.  I’m looking forward to finding out.  One thing we also have to understand is that there are degrees of reward in heaven. (2 Cor. 5:10, Matthew 6:19-21, etc.).  This is something we have really missed in the church, but shows up all over the place in Scripture.  The notion that heaven is a place where everyone is equal and the only important thing about it is that you got in is foreign to the Scripture.  What we do here effects our eternity.  What that means precisely is never defined with precision, and I’m sure we couldn’t possibly comprehend it.  Mansions, treasures, rewards, greatest and least are all word pictures that are used.  We all need to understand that this life is designed to prepare us for heaven and what we accomplish here for the kingdom as well as who we become in our spiritual walk are all things that go with us into eternity.

The other option, of course is hell.  The bottom line for those who die without Christ is that hell is eternal separation from God.  That’s the inevitable result, since our sinful natures separated us from a holy God and they were not replaced by a new nature through the work of Christ.  What exactly hell will be like, I couldn’t tell you.  The Bible speaks of it as fire, but also as darkness.  Clearly we are in the realm of metaphor here, since those two things are mutually exclusive.  It is also weeping and gnashing of teeth, another metaphor since those who are not resurrected will not have bodies.  So the sense of eternal physical pain like I grew up thinking doesn’t seem to fit in my opinion.  I tend to think of it as regrets.  People will have come face to face with God on judgment day and spend the rest of eternity knowing what they missed.  To me, that would certainly create whatever the spiritual equivalent is to weeping and gnashing of teeth. 

The Bible

What needs to be said about the Bible is included in detail in the Introduction to the Bible seminar.  For our purposes, let me just remind you that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  That means that by whatever means you choose to believe, and people differ on these things, basic Christian doctrine underscores that God was ultimately the guiding force behind its creation, as well as its preservation.  That means that we believe it is a reliable guide for faith and life.  In other words, it gives us the straight scoop on the story of redemption and also useful information on how to live.  Your key passage is 2 Timothy 3:16:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness

The Church

A few words are also in order in regards to the nature of the church.  First of all, the church is a local gathering.  The word church comes from the Greek ekklesia, which was simply a gathering of people in a given community, usually for purposes of conducting some sort of community business.  Jesus applied that term to the new people of God that would be gathering under his lordship after his ascension.  One of the metaphors that the Bible uses for the church is the body of Christ.  In doing so, the apostle Paul writes,

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.  (1 Cor. 12:27)

Here he is referring to a specific, local body of believers gathered for worship as the larger context of this passage makes clear. 

However, it is also true that the church is universal.   In Ephesians 1, the Bible says,

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. (v. 22,23)

In this passage the church is seen in it’s universal sense.  The important issue is that for some people, membership in the church universal is seen as enough.  But the Bible knows nothing about that.  There is never any example nor any instruction that being a part of the church means anything other than participation in a local congregation. 

An aspect of the church that is important to mention is that all members are ministers.  You will recall that we mentioned one of the roles of the Spirit was to gift each member in order to contribute to the ministry of the church.  I Ephesians 4, Paul says,

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. (v 16)

Something else that underscores this point from this same passage comes from verses 11 and 12:

It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Here we see what the real function of pastors and teachers are in the church.  In some ways we have fallen into the trap in the church of believing ministry to be a professional function, for paid clergy.  In fact the distinctions between clergy and laity, the way we think about them, don’t exist in Scripture.  A pastor’s job is essentially an equipping function.  There is leadership, spoken of interchangeably as elders, or presbyters, or deacons.  But the ministry is to be done by the whole congregation as each one uses their gifts.  This is sometimes referred to as the “priesthood of believers.” 

The two ordinances that evangelical churches agree on were established for the church are baptism and communion. Others exist, but these two are considered basic to the Christian faith. 

There’s so much more that can be said about the church, but quite honestly most people try to say too much.  Many try to read from the Scripture, or more appropriately put, read into the Scripture, some kind of “model” for how to organize the church.  But no such thing exists.  There are all kinds of ways that happens, and none have been baptized by the Word. 

End Times

Last but not least, just a couple points about last things. 

The last days began with Jesus’ first coming.  (Luke 4:21, Acts 2:17, etc.) When Jesus came to Nazareth to announce the beginning of his ministry, he opened up the scroll of Isaiah to chapter 61 about the last days and proclaimed that it was now fulfilled because he had arrived.  At Pentecost, Peter quoted a passage from the  prophet Joel which begins with, “In the last days” and announced that it, too, was being fulfilled before their eyes.  The New Testament is full of places that assume that we are in the last season for humanity.  In 2 Timothy 3, for instance, Paul says that “in the last days men will be…” and he goes on to describe them, but then tells Timothy to avoid them.  That is just one of many examples.  Just keep in mind that when people ask whether we are in the last days, what they are asking is whether we are in the last of the last days.  Certainly we will come to those, but we have no idea when.

Jesus is coming back.  That actually kind of sums it up.  That may sound trite, but there are actually some strands of thought that would say his first coming was the only one and from here on out it’s up to us to completely Christianize the world until evil is destroyed forever.  I think you’ll understand from our previous conversations as well as your own experience, that sort of thinking doesn’t really fit into the mainstream of basic Christian doctrine or even common sense.  Remember what we said about our sinful natures.  It just cannot happen on this earth. 

We can’t know when.  Matthew 24:36 tells us “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  In verse 42  he simply tells us to “keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come.”  At a time when so many people are desperately trying to read the signs of the times to determine when Jesus is coming, I wish that some of us would pay more attention to this.

We are called to be ready and to help others become so.  In the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 25 and 26 Jesus explains well through the parables of the ten virgins, the talents, and the sheep and the goats that the most important thing for us in regards to the end is simply to be ready for it.  When Jesus comes he expects to find us with our lamps lit—filled with the Holy Spirit, using our talents for his kingdom purposes, and caring for each other.  Also, of course, throughout Scripture we are enjoined to be a part of helping others get to the same place where they are prepared for that glorious day. 

That’s it.  That’s all I have to say about the end times.  All the rest of it—whether or not there’s a rapture, whether there’s a literal 1000 year millennial reign or if we’re already in it, whether there is a tribulation still coming or if we’re currently experiencing it, etc. etc. is all a part of what I consider non-essential doctrine. People who believe any of the above are considered doctrinally sound in my book, as long as they believe Jesus is coming again and are actively seeking to prepare for that in their own lives as well as joining in the work of the church to help others do the same. 

 By way of synopsis, here is a one sentence way in which I would characterize basic Christian doctrine:

The Christian Life:

To worship God, trust Jesus, walk in the Spirit, know the Word, belong to the Church, and be ready for his coming.