Is There Evidence For Long Life Spans in the Bible?

First, some Christian scholars will try to step around this problem by insisting that the long life-spans of the antediluvians (Pre-Flood greats like Seth, Enosh, Methuselah etc) is metaphorical.  Perhaps, it is suggested, these recorded ages were an indication of their importance culturally/ religiously, or analogous to something else, like the generations that revered them, or the amount of their learning, OR some numerological significance now lost to us.  For an interesting look at this view, see BioLogos give it a whirl: here.

But as you will see, they don’t offer sound reasons WHY the ancients would mark ages in this way (# of years = something other than years), or why they would then switch to marking age in a normal way (# of years = 365 day periods of life).  And the numerological math they do in this article is dizzying and frankly too convoluted to be convincing.  It feels too “ad hoc” – that is, contrived specifically to accommodate a uniformitarian view of the past.

Of course rejecting that hypothesis, we’re left with only two options:  One is ditching the bible as a truth source.  But if you, like I, are inclined to trust the Bible for other reasons, both historical and uncanny, then we have to take these ages seriously, as a statement of actual age, and then see if we can find some harmonization with science and observation which currently says, of course, that people simply cannot live that long.

The hope of finding archaeological evidence for really old humans is going to be difficult.  In any world where humans actually live to be 900 years old, the aging process must be entirely different.  

Modern CSInvestigators can determine the age of human remains by certain skeletal markers, and they might presume the exact same physical/chemical body processes would be at work to find the same markers in the remains of a 900 year old man.  But can we reasonably assume this?  The remains of a 900 year old man, if he aged under the same physical and chemical burdens we observe today carried out over 9 centuries, would look like a shriveled shell, a totally c-shaped, decrepit, living fossil, whose bones would be so brittle, so small, and so malformed, it would be practically unrecognizable as human remains.  If this is the evidence we’re looking for, it seems predestined to never be found. 

More reasonably, we have to assume that to live that long, something about the way we currently age (and therefore the way we assess age in human remains) would HAVE to be different than it is now.  So this would change our task in finding corroborating evidence for the bible’s claim that ancient people lived very long lives.  Instead of finding people who display the same aging processes/makers, only sustained artificially over centuries, we should look for some evidence that aging itself as we know it, is plausibly changeable, and could be different under different conditions.  This sort of evidence is more reasonable to come by.

So at Reasons To Believe, Hugh Ross and company go into the details of what we currently know causes aging.  In some ways, I was surprised to learn that the human can (and maybe was designed to) live much longer than the current outer limit of 120 years (which BTW, matches God’s judgment in the Bible in Genesis 6:3).  In other words, rather than early death being “natural” and 900 year life spans being “unnatural”, when you consider what look like governors on aging, the truth may be the reverse.

In studying fruit fly aging, it looks as though a genetic mutation in the current population ensures shorter life spans - and when that gene is altered, the flies can live literally 100% longer.  Other factors are considered, including large scale radiation from a specific supernova event which we now know coincided with early human development (and perhaps the time just before the flood, 40,000 years ago).  We know radiation plays a role in cellular breakdown and thus faster aging.  The increase in radiation from a celestial event like that also explains the gradual decrease in recorded ages in the Bible (from pre to post flood) rather than an immediate reduction right after God’s decree.  See all their lines of evidence in the article posted here: Reasons to Believe

Finally, there is a bit of circumstantial evidence that is corroborative while not convincing all on its own.  That is, the fact that the Bible is not alone in attributing long ages to people who lived in the ancient past.  The Egyptians and the Sumerians also have lists of ancient kings who lived very long indeed.  In fact, by comparison the ages of the Bible’s antediluvians is sober and positively conservative!  One Sumerian king was said to rule for 28,000 years!  What’s interesting is that these extra-biblical sources not only show long ages for those who lived before a great flood, but also that the ages quickly reduced directly after the flood.  To get a feel for what those Sumerian sources reveal, look here: Old Sumerian Kings 

In any event, the existence of long-lived predecessors presents us with an opposing view of humanity.  The current one is that people are continually upgrading through micro mutations into something better and better, but the antediluvians suggest that the human genome was in a purer (more fit) state in the past, and that people are continually degrading through mirco mutations – devolving rather than evolving.  John Sanford wrote a book called Genetic Entropy that makes the claim that devolution in terms of the human genome is a well-established fact.  Check out this video of him, beginning at 13:08: John Sanford - Human 

What Bible Passages Actually Describe Satan’s Origin and Fall?

You're right that the biblical material on Satan's origin and fall is fairly scant.  The only explicit reference to Satan's Fall is found in Jesus teaching and in Revelation. Here they are:

Luke 10:18 He replied, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." NIV

Rev 12:7-9  And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down — that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. NIV

Jesus obviously doesn't give us a whole lot of information, but the basic idea is still important: if Satan "fell" that means his origin was once "on high".  John agrees, the Dragon's starting place was heaven.  Some debate whether this war takes place before human history, or during the end times drama that John is describing, or around the time of Jesus birth.  It does follow a reference to Christ's birth (Rev 12:1-6), nevertheless, we know that Satan was ALREADY cast down to earth as the Creation Narrative (Gen 3) showed.  

The serpent figure was long associated with Satan therefore his fall must predate not only the arrival of Christ, but also the creation of man.  Thus we can infer a lot from just these two passages: that Satan must have been one of God's creations, one of his angels and his rebellion happened in prehistory and he was not alone in his rebellion, taking many angels with him.  This agrees with what's revealed in Jesus ministry who refers to "the Devil and his angels" (Matt 25:41) and with Job where the Accuser comes to the heavenly court with the "Sons of God" and thus must have also himself been an angel.

The Old Testament has other controversial passages that came to be associated with the origin and fall of Satan even though their overt reference was to specific human kings. For example, Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 which I'll comment on later.  They refer to the King of Babylon and Tyre respectively, but came to be seen as descriptors of Satan's origin and fall. 

Why did the Jewish mind make this inference?  The Jewish mind was trained on Scripture and the most fundamental idea about God in the Bible is that God is Good and God is Self Existent. God is not contingent on anyone or anything else for his being. This is summarized in His covenant name, "Yahweh" - literally "I AM". The Jews began to draw inferences from this one bit of revelation. For instance... If the self existent God is good, then goodness must be primary; badness must be secondary. 

They parted from Pantheistic thought that tended to see good and bad in balance. Jews said they were at war!  Pantheists said they were both eternal.  The Jews said one is eternal, the other doomed to fade away.  And they said that God is the hero in the war who we should be cheering for - "the LORD is a warrior!" and "the God of gods".  Badness they realized, has no intrinsic value. Everything a bad man does, he does for some good end, to increase his power or pleasure or wealth (which were inherently good things). Badness therefore was a parasite. Goodness was the real thing.

So the spiritual powers in the world that drove evil (and all Bible writers agreed that there were spiritual powers in the world) must have been, at one point, good since everything came from a good God. Badness was, therefore, only "corrupted goodness", there is nothing that is bad for it's own sake. In this way, without explicit revelation, the Jews (and the later Christians) accepted the idea that all evil powers started good and the greatest evil power started as the greatest thing God ever made.

This 'spiritual intuition' of the Jews agrees with and is built on what is explicitly known about Satan elsewhere, that he was a creation of God, that he was an angel originally good, that he rebelled against God in prehistory (as mentioned).  But it also explains perhaps why the Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 passages came to be associated with Satan even though they are not explicitly about him.  Here they are:

Isa 14:12-15
How you have fallen from heaven,
O morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth,
you who once laid low the nations!
13 You said in your heart,
"I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne
above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.  
14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High."
15 But you are brought down to the grave,
to the depths of the pit. NIV

Though this is about the King of Babylon, the reference to a "star" brings to mind Job 38:7 which calls angels "morning stars" celebrating God's work at creation.  The Hebrew word for morning star is a reference to Venus so early Christian translations of Isaiah substituted the Latin term for that star, Lucifer.  This is where Satan got that name.  But originally all Isaiah meant was "morning star" – he was not giving us Satan’s name.

A lot of criticism is cast on Christians who use this passage to flesh out our understanding of Satan's origin and fall.  It is not explicitly about that, they say.  True enough.  However, given what WAS explicitly known about Satan from Genesis, and Job, the Jews already in the inter-testamental period began to associate this passage with Satan.  Those early interpreters (and later the church fathers) had much less of a problem than post Reformation scholars in seeing "layers" to Scripture.

Without denying that this passage was first about Babylon's king, it's eternal scope and cosmic language ("fallen from heaven", "enthroned on the sacred mountain", "make myself like the Most high") brought to mind spiritual forces beyond an earthly king.  "Mountain", "Brightness", "Stars", "sons of God" are all standard O.T. language for the unseen realm, and spiritual forces, used ubiquitously (Job 38, Psalm 82, Gen 6).  And no doubt as God's people began to see more and more clearly the workings of spiritual forces of evil, the idea that a human king was merely a mimic or reflection of a true spiritual master, was entirely plausible.

The same inference was made by Jews and later by Christians for

Ezek 28:12-17
'You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone adorned you: ruby, topaz and emerald, chrysolite, onyx and jasper, sapphire, turquoise and beryl. Your settings and mountings were made of gold; on the day you were created they were prepared. 14 You were anointed as a guardian cherub, for so I ordained you. You were on the holy mount of God; you walked among the fiery stones. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. 16 Through your widespread trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned. So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God, and I expelled you, O guardian cherub, from among the fiery stones. 17 Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings. NIV

Again this is FIRST about a human king of Tyre, no question.  But after a long taunt against him, Ezekiel's language in verse 17 suddenly swings toward an eternal, cosmic scope and brings an observant reader to think about the heavenly realm.  

The language as it refers to the King of Tyre therefore must be clear hyperbole, yet could it be literal if referring to the a spiritual King of Darkness?  Note the terms used: "model of perfection", "you were in Eden", "you were... a guardian cherub (a name for an angel)", "you were blameless", "mount of God".  It's not impossible to see this as flowery descriptions of the King of Tyre's wealth and power and reputation... but the references strongly suggest another layer, as other prophetic literature has multiple layers of meaning.  Was this king really "perfect or blameless"?  No.  In what way was he a cherub?  It's a stretch.  But, as it reflects a spiritual puppet master BEHIND such a proud and shiny king, it's no stretch at all.

So I don't dismiss the Isaiah or Ezekiel passages as clues to Satan's origin and fall as easily as some scholars do.  Some, so fearful of reading into scripture something the author never intended, may diminish the richness of God's Word as a source of revelation with layers of meaning.  I grant that if we go outside the author's stated intent we are in speculative territory and we must be reserved. However, the application of these passage for clues to Satan's origin and fall have long precedent in Jewish thought before Christ and in the church, and they are perfectly consistent with what we ALREADY know from other explicit scriptural teaching. 

In fact, do we really rely on these passages as sources of Satan information that we can't get anywhere else in the Bible?  I think the answer is no.  So why use them as such?   Because their language is prophetic and profound, and because here more than anywhere else do we get the sense of what Satan as "angel" really means:  that he was PERFECT; that he was GOOD.  Even this creature could turn against God.  They also underline that he and God are not coequal combatants in a dualistic struggle.  No, Satan’s counterpart is Michael, not God – who has no counterpart.  And God will have the last say, good will eventually win.  

Finally, these passages prophetically and eloquently flesh out knowledge given to us in 1 Tim 3:6 - that whenever it happened, pride was Satan’s downfall and could be ours as well.

Is the God of the Old Testament different than the God of the New?

QUESTION: How do you reconcile the Old Testament to the New Testament picture of God? Specifically I'm reading Deuteronomy 28 and the God of this book just does not seem anything like Jesus. In verse 63 it even says he will get pleasure from it... It just seems so different than Jesus and everything he was about.

RESPONSE: This is a very common issue when reading the Bible.  There’s this seeming difference in God's character between the two covenantal periods.  Specifically, the Old Covenant God of Moses is full of wrath, the New Covenant God revealed in Jesus is full of grace.

There are two main things to say about this apparent discrepancy.

1. When we look more deeply, the differences are not as glaring as they first appear.  In other words, when we look inside, everything that is revealed about God's character in the Old Testament is still seen in the New, (and vice versa) even if there's a different emphasis.
2. The different emphasis in God's attributes fits with a well-established pattern of "progressive revelation".  Which is to say that God does not reveal all of himself or his plans at the earliest stages of his interactions with the chosen people.  God's revelations progress in content and depth over time, so we should never, from our position here in the "last days," consider the earliest revelations to be complete or interpret them in isolation from the later stuff.

In dealing with Deut. 28 specifically and this list of blessings and curses, we are getting insight into God that consistently runs across both Old and New testaments.  The holiness of God is revealed inside this moral order: obey and be blessed, disobey and be cursed.  As in physics, so in ethics:  for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  The message is simple:  attune your life to moral reality, just as you do to physical reality.

You might think that outlining (repeatedly) the specific consequences reveals a harshness in God, but would we think a parachuting instructor was harsh if he detailed the graphic results of failure to obey his instructions?  Would we think his lengthy, redundant, legal waiver meant that he was being mean?  No, once we understand the stakes involved, the graphic warnings are actually seen as a kind of mercy.

This teaches us that not only is God a merciful parent (laying out consequences up front), but also God is just, and holy for he follows through with discipline (every curse mentioned here ACTUALLY HAPPENED!).  Also, the stark warnings reveal that God is fair, because God is treating them the same as the nations they would be displacing in the Land.

The point is, what the Jews are learning about God here is not diminished by the arrival of Jesus Christ.  This is Jesus' Father:

• no respecter of persons or nations, impartial and fair (Deut. 10:17).  
• whose rules are not arbitrary but based in his good, fair, and loving character.  So his law is built on love, forbidding unfettered self-interest, protecting the weak, foreigners, children, orphans, widows (10:18-11:1).  
• who chooses his children not based on their pedigree but because of His love! (7:13).  
• How is this inconsistent with the God revealed in Jesus' gospel which teaches us that God adopted us out of no goodness in us, but purely by unmerited favor (Eph 1:3-6)?

Christians did not stop believing in this Lawfulness, and Holiness of God just because Jesus revealed God's grace in a supreme way.  Look at Galatians 6:9 - "do not be fooled, God is not mocked, a man reaps what he sows."  In fact, the Cross makes no sense apart from these characteristics of justice and holiness revealed in the Law.  As much as the Cross shows off God's grace, the pain of it also reflected the terrible, ultimate punishment for sin.   No, the cross is God's grace AND justice together (Rom 3:26).

So to my first point:  there is justifiable wrath in the New Testament (Romans 1:18, 2:5, 5:9) and in the teaching and actions of Jesus (Matt 3:7, Luke 21:23, John 2:15), which is consistent with the picture of God we get from Moses.  Also there is amazing tenderness and grace in the God of the Old Testament which is consistent with Jesus (Hosea 2:14).

The consistent picture of God is simply that God is completely "other" - holy and perfect and hating sin.  Also there is one consistent picture of sin separating people from people and people from God and ultimately diminishing human life and leading to terrible outcomes; in the Old and New Testament.

To underline this, remember that the picture Jesus paints of the sinner apart from his Grace, is probably worse than the picture Moses paints of his People who are disobedient!  The Old Testament warned of people being pillaged and suffering greatly for disobedience, and yes death for many... but for Jesus, the disobedient will suffer eternal death (Luke 12:5)!

And look at the curses of Deut. 28, and how it paints the disobedient as groping, blind, oppressed, robbed, hungry, and powerless.  This isn't a contradiction of the New Testament, rather, it sets it up beautifully!  For how can we see the sacrifice of Jesus as a Rescue unless we can see in our own disobedience, the same kinds of helplessness God predicts for disobedient Israel?  We too were disobedient and wrecked and helpless when Christ came into our lives.  This is painting one consistent picture of human nature, and God's nature.

But perhaps you still struggle with the language Moses uses - in the language of Deuteronomy, it looks like God is sort of deliberately inflicting suffering on them (and gleefully!).  Yet who is the one who ACTUALLY decides to invoke the consequences God warned about?  The people do!  See, Moses didn't care to separate the primary cause from the secondary cause in his language, which makes it seem to us like God is more callous than he actually is.

Imagine primary and secondary causes like this:  I set up a booby trap in my home for robbers.  I say to you, don't go in there, you'll get smashed by my trap, it's for robbers.  Then you go in anyhow.  And guess what?  You get smashed!  Who smashed you?  Well, in a sense, I did, I set up a trap to smash - it was MY trap after all, so clearly I caused it.  But truth is, YOU caused yourself to be smashed, because I warned you away, and you went in anyway!

It's just like that here in Deut. 28.  It feels really rough because God says, I'M doing curse X, Y, or Z.  But God's actually simply allowing natural consequences to flow, rather than deliberately inflicting arbitrary terror.  In fact, God is only a secondary cause of the curse, we ourselves are the primary cause of the cursing.  In the New Testament Paul will put it like this, "God hands the disobedient over..." (Romans 1:28) so He releases them to do what ought not to be done, and then they suffer according to their choices.

So God's holiness, and his judgment on sin is consistent throughout the Bible.

Ok, now my second point.  There is progressive revelation here.  Yes, we can see judgment and wrath in the New Testament and even at the heart of Jesus very mission to save because it borrows the same language of God cursing the disobedient sinner to separation... (See John 3:36).  HOWEVER, in Jesus we get no sense of God “delighting” in the judgment which you pointed out (Deut. 28:63).  So do we have reason to think this may be not the whole story on God's attitude?  Yes, because of what ELSE is said about God LATER in revelation history.

For example:

Ezek. 18:23-24: Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” This is the declaration of the Lord God. “Instead, don’t I take pleasure when he turns from his ways and lives?

Because of progressive revelations, we can see Deut 28:63 as hyperbole.  We can see this in the context of the sarcastic, dramatic way that the ancient Middle Eastern mind would think and talk, not as proof of God's callousness.

If we take all Scripture as one, we rest assured, God is not happily cursing his people.  We don't interpret one verse in isolation or in violation of another.  So we learn from LATER revelation that God must have been speaking in Deut. 28 like an exasperated parents speaks.

In fact, I have said something similar to my kids - "If you don't put your bike away, I am going to run over it someday and I won't even be sad, I will not shed a single tear, I will just happily take that thing down to the dump!!"  Saying such a thing, doesn't mean I wouldn’t have empathy for my kids or wouldn’t feel their pain at loss - even if it was all due to their choices.  I would have empathy still, and so does God.  We KNOW this, because Deut. 28 isn't the only thing God ever said to us.

Also, when it comes to progressive revelation, how did this all play out AFTER he laid down the law?  In fact subsequent history shows, God laid out these curses, but then rather than invoke them at the first sign of disobedience, tolerated the worse kind of violations of his law for centuries before they finally reaped the harvest they had sown.  And in this demonstration of God’s patience we see yet another consistent insight into God's character which spans from Old to New Testament.  For the God revealed in Jesus also said:

2 Peter 3:9:  The Lord does not delay His promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.

So if you look deeper you will see not only the consistency in the Bible’s picture of God’s character, but also how all Scripture must be interpreted as a whole.

Was Sodom Destroyed In a Natural Disaster Like Pompeii?

QUESTION:  I was watching a documentary the other night on Pompeii and it was interesting because I had just read about the destruction of Sodom and Lot... I was wondering if this was the same story... But then they mentioned that Pompeii happened in 79AD so that's obviously not it... but it seems like the way that Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed even.  Just curious if there was any history on this. Is there a good source to look up artifacts and things that have been found or proven?

RESPONSE:  So as you found out, Pompeii is in Italy and Sodom and Gomorrah in Israel, about 1400 miles apart, and about 2000 years apart in history.  They do sound similar in the apocalyptic destruction that rained down on both cities.  In the case of Pompeii, being much younger and in the shadow of a still active volcano, there hasn't been any debate about what happened or when. 

Sodom and Gomorrah on the other hand, have been debated as mythical cities for a long time.  In part because the modern scholars tended then (as now) to treat the Bible in the case of historical unreliability to be "guilty until proven innocent".  Also, there was no "smoking gun" in the area of Sodom, that is, no volcano present to explain the supernatural description of chaos and annihilation.  There was no obvious natural cause of "fire and brimstone" in the Dead Sea Valley.

But all that would change as the science of archeology progressed.  Digs in the Dead Sea revealed several candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah, called "cities of the Plain".  I've been here, it is one of the lowest places on earth - 1400 feet BELOW sea level, unbearably hot, and yet lush, because the Jordan river runs down a massive fault line in that deep valley watering the otherwise arid place.  So many cities cropped up here during Abraham's time.  Scientists finding all these remains have finally settled on a couple of very probable candidates for Sodom and Gomorrah.

Old cities usually are built on top of older versions of themselves in many strata, like a layered cake.  So when you find a mound and start digging, you are going on a trip through time the farther down you go.  In a strata that relates to about 3000 BC, in a city also named Numeira, they found a bunch of things that make them think this is Biblical Sodom.  Among other bits of evidence, the whole city shows signs of advanced, intense burning.  Skeletons are scattered everywhere, the gates are burned etc.

I'll let you read their case for yourself, it's VERY involved, but also very interesting:  Bible Archaeology Article on Sodom

Now, as to the HOW this happened, I assume as you do, that this judgment of God was likely some natural destruction, the timing of which was seen to be God's hand of judgment.  But what did God use, since there's no volcano?  Well, recall that this is a rift valley.  Earthquakes happen here all the time.  Also, recently (like in the 1970's) they discovered combustible petroleum materials under the valley floor, natural gas, sulfur, bitumen and oils.

So one theory is that a severe earthquake happened, and this unleashed combustibles into the air.  If they were lit by lightning or surface fires, you would have your hellish scene of fire from heaven, as gas was thrown into the air, lit, and burning material fell on the cities consuming them completely.

Now, one other detail you probably noticed.  Lot's wife turns back and is turned into a pillar of salt.  There's no need to insert a magical transformation at this point.  The Dead Sea where Sodom is located, is the SALT sea.  I swam in it, it's so full of salt that you CAN'T sink in it.  That means anything that gets put in it (including a person, if they didn’t decompose first) becomes "saltified".  Check this out:

It would have been a very Hebrew way of speaking metaphorically to say Lot’s wife became a pillar of salt.  But also highly accurate, because if you died in this Dead Sea disaster, your body would have been first covered in debris, and then permanently encased in Salt.  She likely didn’t believe the first tremors were going to ruin everything, didn’t just “look” back but actually turned back and re-entered the city, only to be consumed in the judgment God brought.

Are Children Who Die Without Christ, Damned?

Well, the short answer from Scripture is anyone who dies without Christ is damned.  But a more specific question is whether children, who can't profess Christ (because they aren't old enough), can nevertheless be saved BY him.  We believe this is possible for all Old Testament saints. for example.  And most Christians believe this can be true of young children and the mentally disabled as well.

Now, what’s important as we speculate on who may be saved apart from a personal confession of faith in Christ, is that we maintain the Bible’s GRACE alone, FAITH alone stance.  We can't go inventing new conditions of salvation.  If we entertain a new condition for salvation (like if we say, kids are saved because they’re just so innocent, or my Buddhist aunt must have been saved because she was so nice) then we’re diminishing our sin and Christ’s necessary role as Savior, and making Jesus out to be a liar (John 14:6).

AND this simply puts a burden on people most will never reach.  It's by grace so NO ONE can boast and so that as many as possible can be saved.  Who wants the condition of salvation to be by YOUTH alone?  That’s bad news for those of us who are not children!  Or by enough GOOD WORKS alone?  That’s bad news for people, like me, who are so broken and sinful.  So there are not many plans or conditions for salvation… there is only one:  by GRACE alone, through FAITH in Christ alone.  (Eph 2:8,9 & Acts 4:12).

Therefore, on what biblical basis (keeping the Bible's grace alone faith alone stance in mind) can we imagine that young children will be saved who cannot authentically name Christ for themselves?

The case begins with the fact our Lord himself used children as an example of those who through TRUSTING HUMBLE, FAITH, are models of what Kingdom people are.  He said, 

Matt 18:3 “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This suggests that all little children enter the Kingdom.  

What is it about children that becoming “like them” makes you eligible for salvation? We must conclude it’s based on their child-like faith (through the merits of Christ), not their own “youthful innocence” or their ignorance of the gospel. They are not innocent even if they were born without specific acts of sin – if we accept that “in sin my mother conceived me” (Ps 51). 

Anyone who has raised children knows how early a rebellious streak shows up. Even toddlers can be taught a line, know it clearly, and transgress it very intentionally. In fact, Saint Augustine once said: 

“If babies are innocent, it is not for lack of will to do harm, but for lack of strength!”(Confessions, Book I.7) 

So they aren't innocent, even if they are ignorant of the gospel. So we mustn't argue that children, (or the mentally ill or pagans in other nations without a Christian witness) aren’t subject to condemnation because they don’t have the Law or understand it or don’t clearly break it. The basis of our just condemnation is written on every human heart in our conscience regardless of whether we are too young and cannot read a bible, or born outside the reach of a bible.  

Therefore, we must maintain that all are justly condemned and in need of grace (and this makes the preaching of the gospel the highest priority, in other lands and in our own households.) But having agreed to the need of even children to be saved, we agree with Jesus that they do seem to exhibit faith. And so they are saved by the merits of Christ based on the intrinsic trusting dependency of their youth and God's prevenient grace. 

In fact, rather than consider them cherubs of angelic purity, by Jesus calling them prototypical citizens of the kingdom, he was saying they were more like the “sick” he came for rather than the “well” whom he did not come for (Matt 9:12-13). Not surprising then that most children seem much more like the penitent tax collector than the moralistic, self-assured Pharisee (Luke 18): they are needy, rebellious, at times lost little sheep who fling themselves on the care of their Parents and find their trust rewarded with mercy. 

Now,another biblical argument for why children are all automatically saved, is the “age of accountability”.  While acknowledging the fact of our sin nature, we can see that this sin nature, while acted OUT from birth on, is never ACTUALIZED until an age when the child’s conscience becomes self aware of his personal participation in Adam’s fall. While there is no explicit argument in Scripture about what that age of accountability is, some feel the idea at least, is referenced by Isaiah in 7:16 (“But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right…”). 

The age of 12 is most commonly associated with Jewish rites of passage into adulthood and “accountability”.  Before this time (whenever it is) of being ACTUALIZED in his sin, the child is not accountable and therefore covered under what Augustine called “prevenient grace” – the grace God gives to all humans prior to the engagement of their will or choice to commit specific sin.

The above reasons might be taken together as a sort of cumulative case rather than separate arguments for the salvation of children.  Regardless of how we approach this, knowing the heart of God is “not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9), we can more easily trust God with the unreached, or young children or anyone who cannot – through no fault of their own – make a personal confession of faith in Christ.

What are the biggest problems facing American Christians and the Church?

QUESTION: What would you consider to be the biggest issue facing the modern American Christian? And what problems are the biggest the Christian Church faces?

RESPONSE: This is a great set of questions.  I think that the two big issues I see relate to an area of orthopraxis (correct conduct) for believers in America, and an area of orthodoxy (correct belief) for the church overall.

AFFLUENCE

I think the biggest issue with America Christians is our conduct regarding our stuff.  In a word, Affluence.

My parents served for several years volunteering at a Christian training school for foreign nationals in Hawaii (I know, tough assignment!).  They developed many great friendships with people from Asia and Africa.  My parents related to me their surprising reaction to American prosperity and material comfort.  Almost to a person, their reactions were totally devoid of jealousy or cynicism or spiritual angst over God’s unfair distribution of goods.  Instead, to my parents’ shock, their response was almost universally one of pity!

You see, from outside American affluence these foreign Christians were “unplugged from the Matrix” and like those who took the red pill in the Matrix movie, they could see something clearly:  While those in the Matrix lived lives of relative comfort, they were also living a lie, numbed up, oblivious to the real world, and being used to advance a malevolent purpose about which they were clueless.  What a great metaphor for the siren call of stuff!

Jesus’ metaphor is even better.  He said, there would be those who would receive the gospel, like good seed, but that seeds’ productivity would be choked out by weeds. Jesus labeled them worry and “the deceit of riches” (Matt 13:22).  It’s hard to argue that wealth (and relative to the world almost ALL American Christians fit in this category) is seducing us.  The result is millions of Christians numb to what our gospel tells us is the real world:  Our next life which is our real life.  The result is millions oblivious to our mandate from Christ which is not to be rich, but to be “rich toward God”.  (Luke 12:21)

I don’t argue that a Christian can’t be rich AND rich toward God.  But my judgment is that American Christians currently pursue wealth as heartily as the world, without any reflection of how New Testament values ought to inform that pursuit.  If we do reflect at all, it often is to align with some version of the health and wealth Gospel, which turns Christianity into a God-powered program of pain reduction and pleasure expansion.  And you don’t need connection to a charismatic tradition to put a spiritual gloss on love of money either.  It’s just an inherent risk of living in the richest nation on earth.

But I’m afraid this is idolatry, plain and simple (Col 3:5).  And it doesn’t apply to the 1% (alone) but to the rank and file middle class people making up the majority of American Christendom.

How do we tear down this idol?   Well, prescriptions to impose universal vows of poverty aren’t helpful.  Neither is lifelong guilt about something we can’t control, being born in an affluent country.  Three key Christian truths have to be recovered:  

• One, God owns “my” stuff, so I need to manage it his way.  
• Two, the perspective of heaven says all wealth (and all suffering) is temporal and so a Christian doesn’t get obsessed with either.  
• Three, generosity mimics God and no one becomes like Christ without it.

When Christians get this, rather than monochromatic answers, I’ve observed diverse, and inspiring responses:

• In the case of some gifted entrepreneurs, unapologetically making as much as they can, after they set a standard of living, in order to give expanding excess income to the purposes of God in the world.
• Running businesses with Gospel principles which might lessen profits in order to create thriving work cultures that act as missions to employees.
• Willingness to downsize a standard of living, in order to leverage the extra time and money to church and family and the poor. 
• Openness to get out of the rat race partly or totally and be willing to accept callings to ministry where provision is much more a matter of faith.
• Leveraging affluence (money, cars and homes) for Kingdom stuff, such as fostering, adopting, housing unwed mothers, or welcoming immigrants and the homeless. 
• Declaring war on debt.  
• this one should be prescribed! No Christian, living by biblical principles would carry the kind of consumer debt average Americans do ($16,000/household).

Just imagine what the church could do if she repented fully of her enslavement to stuff and the debt that comes with it, and instead lived sacrificially, on purpose, for the Gospel?  That’s the sleeping giant no agent of hell wants disturbed, for, if roused, would surely shake the world.  But hell rests in peace, as long as individual Christians are content taking the blue pill.

PLURALISM

With the Church overall, I think the greatest challenge is from Pluralism and its assault on Christian orthodoxy – specifically the uniqueness of Jesus' message of Grace.

Social pluralism is, of course, a good thing. It says diverse religions should function tolerantly within the same society.  Ideological pluralism however, says that all religious claims are equally true.  Therefore, claims to unique knowledge are considered arrogant and inherently wrong.

This would simply be a problem for how to present an exclusive Christ in an inclusive age, IF the Church weren’t increasingly accepting ideological pluralism as its new creed.  That’s a much bigger problem.

The “Emergent/ Emerging” controversy in the Church today is very much like the "Modernist/Fundamentalist" controversy  of a hundred years ago.  Back then, Mainline denominations tried to accommodate the Faith to Materialism, and it lead to them giving up on core, historical, orthodox Christian assumptions – like creation ex nihilo, the authority of the Bible, the Deity of Jesus, the Atonement etc.  The Fundamentalists responded by delineating and holding fast to the unchanging core essentials of Christian belief.

Today, the Emergent movement, like the Mainliners before them, seeks to accommodate the Faith to postmodernism.  But this is leading it to adopt postmodern ideological pluralism.  Statements of faith in Emergent churches are considered passé, divisive and truth is never spelled with a capital “T”.  Like the Fundamentalists before them, the Emerging churches (totally confusing terms, I know) seek to win Postmoderns to Faith in Christ by rejecting the excesses of modernism, without abandoning, or diminishing the importance of objective Truth and Christian distinctives.

I sympathize with many of the impulses of the Emergent Movement.  They were alienated by the mega-church phenomenon where church relationships were superficial or legalistic.  They reacted against the emphasis on bigness, money, buildings, high-powered worship services and theological bickering.  So they came together around circles of authentic relationships, candles and sofas.  As postmoderns, they gladly reclaimed an emphasis on mystery in Christian thinking and de-emphasized harsh lines of who was “in” and who was “out” of the Christian faith.

And that, IMO, is where they started to go sideways and where the church is at risk.

If this was simply a move toward greater Christian unity, de-emphasizing the secondary doctrinal issues that often arrogantly keep Christians apart, recovering simplicity, I would be a fan.  The Christian faith has lots of room for humility regarding our doctrinal stances, and plenty of areas where we “see in a glass darkly”.  Christians can channel this postmodern urge to rally around what Lewis called “Mere Christianity”.  We can go that far – but only that far.  For Christianity contains, inescapable truth claims that define the Faith.  Without them Christianity is quite literally “worthless” to use Paul’s phrase.

In other words, a full accommodation to the postmodern mind which rejects objective truth, authority, “meta-narratives”, creeds and doctrine, is impossible – not without de-Christianizing Christianity.  And yet, that is exactly what is being tried.  Even in less hip, less trendy, more conservative evangelical traditions, I know of church leaders starting to accept the fundamental tenant of pluralism: that the Christian faith does not offer the world unique access to God through Jesus Christ.

The “only way” of Christ is, admittedly, a divisive idea.  

But can one reasonably believe that Christianity is Christianity without it?  What impelled the first apostles to move across the Mediterranean with the gospel?  Was it an Emergent “doctrine doesn’t really matter” impulse?  No, it was the belief that “there is no other name under heaven, given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  Consider the role doctrine played in early Christian controversies.  Clearly the apostles had no problem calling some ideas “in” and some “out”, and the assumption that other religions/gods/teachings are false is behind everything you read, from Genesis to Revelation.

Perhaps the Emergent movement will become like the Mainline Denominations which have largely made themselves irrelevant by removing the stakes of involvement.  If you tell people your message is not really needed for salvation and that truth is found everywhere, why go to your church?  Not surprisingly mainline churches have been declining for decades.  It remains to be seen if the Emergent churches will also flag due to their relativizing of truth.  Most still retain the outreach energy of the evangelical traditions from which they sprang.

Also what may energize this movement away from biblical orthodoxy is a growing Alliance between “old mainline” and “new emergent” under the LGBTQ banner.  Again there’s a parallel – when the old mainliners removed the historic gospel, what remained was a social gospel.  Today, Emergents have rallied to the LGBTQ cause of normalizing homosexuality, which is simply another social cause that replaces the primary, spiritual mission of New Testament Christianity.

But that is simply further evidence of the place doctrine, history, the creeds and Scripture holds in the life of these new Christian communities.  This concerns me.  Without a strong commitment to all those things, the Church exchanges its unique Gospel birthright of grace, for a mess of postmodern, moralistic, relativistic  pottage.

Has the Prophecy in Isaiah 19:25 Happened Yet?

QUESTION: 

Isaiah 19:25 The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Hi Rick, I'm reading the book of Isaiah...in chapter 19:24-25 it sounds like part of this prophecy already occurred but verse 25 in particular - that has never happened? Is what was called Assyria...isn't that now where Iran/Iraq are? 

RESPONSE: 

Great question.  Yes, Assyria then basically covered what is today eastern Syria and Northern Iraq.

Finding the historical location of fulfillment for these prophesies is more difficult than the geographical location, however.  There’s been some general consensus that the judgment part of the prophecy of chapter 19 has some historical fulfillment.  Looking into Isaiah’s context, Egypt at this point (750 BC) was a shell of its glorious former self under the Pharaohs.  It was mostly ruled by Ethiopians, which explains the connection to chapter 18’s prophesy. 

After Isaiah’s time we could say that his vision (19:4) to see them “delivered into the hands of harsh masters, and a strong king to rule” was fulfilled many times over:  in many kings in the succeeding centuries.  

• Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal (Assyrians), 
• Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonian), 
• Cambyses and Alexander the Great (Greek) 
• all these ruled Egypt as fierce tyrants. 

So Egypt’s judgment as described here has definitely been fulfilled.

More context:  the temptation in Isaiah’s day was to see Egypt as a potential ally against Assyria.  So God is saying here DO NOT TRUST Egypt – she will be unreliable, God is going to crush her.  And do not be worried about her either, she will fall and fail you – and eventually adopt OUR ways, not the other way around.  Unfortunately, Israel would struggle all the way through to king Josiah and his sons with trusting Egypt when they shouldn’t.

So the judgement piece really came true, but what about the salvation piece of this prophesy, from 19:16-25?  Were there ever five cities in Egypt that "swore allegiance to Israel’s God"?  Was there ever a "Jewish altar in Egypt" for worship, did God miraculously "send a Savior" to deliver the Egyptians, and was there ever a "highway connecting Jerusalem, Egypt, and Assyria"?

Some suggest that the prophecy was fulfilled after the exile when a group of Hebrews fled to Egypt, settled in four Egyptian cities (Jer 44:1) and later built a temple in Leontopolis around 170 BC.  The problem with locating the salvation parts in that part of history is that all the Jewish settlements in Egypt were mostly by Jewish apostates who rejected the Lord or worshiped Him along with pagan deities.  Also, there was no highway connecting Egypt with Assyria during this period, unless we mean a highway of destruction!  

The prophesy is clearly envisioning a future where Egypt not merely has some outposts of true religion, but rather pervasively KNOWS the Lord in a real way, speaks the same language as God’s people, are faithful to Him and a good ally and fellow worshipers of the One True God (vs 22). This is more than we could say ever happened before Christ.

So another approach sees these words fulfilled after the spread of Christianity to Egypt.  And that makes better sense that Isaiah sees a “savior to rescue them” (vs 20).  This sounds like Messiah, and in the late Roman period and into the Byzantine era, most of Egypt was heavily Christianized.  But honestly, I don't anything that has happened in Egypt in the Christian era comes close to matching the lofty and quite shocking beauty of this vision of the fertile crescent: all One, all adopted as God's people, totally at peace and unified under Israel’s God from the Nile to the Euphrates (Iraq)?  Hasn't happened yet.

So I would settle on a third view:  the salvation part of the prophecy awaits fulfillment during the future period of peace brought in by Christ in the 2nd coming.  Read Isaiah 2:1-4… this is the grand picture of the future peace which the prophet sees coming to ALL the earth.  And Isaiah begins that vision with same words as the prophecies in 19: "in that day".  I think then chp. 19 is supposed to fit into this grander vision as a specific sort of microcosm of the whole picture.  Inside the future where “ALL the nations will come to the mountain of the Lord” and “walk in the paths of the God of Jacob” (2:3), will be this specific peace between Egypt, Israel and Assyria (19:23.24).

To even imagine it in Isaiah’s day was scandalous.  It would be very similar if I said that one day, Jesus Christ will be acknowledged everywhere, but then went on to say, “even in the Levant and Syria Jesus will be claimed as Lord and worshiped as God in the heart of Mecca!”  Christians believe that will happen when Christ comes again - but to non-Christian ears it's shocking to even imagine it!  It feels weird to print it!  That’s how this prophesy likely hit Isaiah’s countrymen’s ears.  A highway of peace between our dreaded enemies to the north to our enemies/unreliable allies to the south?  Co-adoption as God's people with Assyrians and Egyptians?  Unthinkable!  But that’s what’s coming, says Isaiah.

Yet not through some great negotiator or leader - only through the “Lord Himself” making himself known to the Egyptians (21) so that again implies 2nd coming.

That's why I would say this is for the future, because of its size and scope.