Revelation – Questions and Answers

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson answers questions from Revelation in his series called Missions as the Triumph of the Lamb.

Question: Heaven is perfect with no sin. How did sin begin in this setting within Lucifer?

Answer: I don’t know. Next question. Now I’m going to disappoint you. There are lots of different ways of saying that. I can say, “I don’t know” in very sophisticated ways. It seems to me that it is important to affirm three or four things about the fall of Lucifer or the entry of sin into the human race or into the created order.

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The first thing to affirm is that in the new heaven and the new earth, the Scriptures insist again and again and again that no further fall will be possible. In other words, there is no suggestion, not a hint that there could be another cycle. So we get to heaven and it’s all perfect, but they were perfect once before and they can fall again.

You have another fall and go another round and maybe God creates something all over again. There’s not a hint of that. In other words, heaven will be perfectly secure. Which means that you must see that there is some distinction between the new heaven and the new earth as it will be and the original creation before the fall.

There still was no sin, but clearly there was the possibility of rebellion within the sweeping purposes of God or else there would not have been any rebellion. You have to make that distinction, it seems to me. Thus one can have moral perfection without having perfection secured, which is what there will be in the new heaven and the new earth.

Beyond that, I could introduce discussion about the nature of double causality. You have to say on the one hand that it still falls within the sweep of God’s sovereignty, but God stands behind good and evil asymmetrically, in a different way. He stands behind good so that all good is ultimately creditable to God, but he stands behind evil in such a way that although it doesn’t fall outside of his sovereign sway, it is credible only to the secondary causes.

In other words, Satan gets blamed for it or I get blamed for it, but not God. Otherwise, you make God immoral. He stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. There’s no way that that makes sense of the Bible, either. There are certain posts that you can put down all around this question and the answer you give before you say, “I don’t know.”

In other words, your “I don’t know” can be sufficiently sophisticated so you don’t suddenly walk into a trap in which you say something really stupid or really against the Bible in some way. That doesn’t mean that I have a complete explanation of it.

Question: Did God create sin? How could a perfect God create sin?

Answer: Well that assumes that the answer to the first part is “yes,” but my answer to the first part, “Did God create sin?” is “No,” so I don’t have to answer the second part. That presupposes that sin is a created thing. It’s a hunk of something. That’s not the way sin is presented in Scripture. Sin is not a hunk of something that has been made. It is rebellion by moral beings.

The question is not whether or not God created sin. I would say in the strongest terms, he did not. On the other hand, he created moral beings who, transparently, had the capacity to rebel. That’s not to say he made them rebellious. He made them good, but nevertheless they did rebel. Then you’re back in the same range of questions that I briefly introduced the first time around, although again there’s not a lot more that could be said.

Question: When did the Devil fall from heaven? Did it have to be before Genesis 3 when sin enters the world as the Devil is present here doing his evil scheming?

Answer: Yes.

Question: What is the best piece of advice you have ever been given or would give?

Answer: I don’t know. I have an aversion to questions of the sort, “What’s the best book you ever read? What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? What’s the best sermon you ever heard?” partly because best to those sorts of questions is such a subjective category and depends a bit on where you are at the time.

So that a book that might’ve been very influential on me at one particular point, for which I thank God, might not be the best one to give you. Where you are in your pilgrimage, where you are in your experience and growth in grace may not be anywhere near where I was when I thought that book was pretty hot. It might not even be considered by me to be very hot now.

When I was about 14, I read my first more or less serious theological book. It was Watchman Nee’s The Normal Christian Life. It was a tremendous incentive to holiness, but I have to tell you that I think exegetically, it’s a load of rubbish. That’s what I think today. It’s not what I thought then.

I’m still grateful I read it because it was an encouragement to holiness at the time, but I’m not going to recommend it to you because I think there are a lot better books on holiness. In terms of its understanding of Romans, I think it’s right up the creek without a paddle. On the other hand, was it important in my own life?

Yes, and I thank God in his providence that I read it at the time and all that. That doesn’t mean that I want you to read it particularly unless you want to read it with a decent grasp of Romans nearby. So I really don’t know what to tell you. Make sure you get enough sleep. If you’re going to get married, marry well. What can I say? I really don’t know how to answer that question at all. Sorry. This could be quite a disappointing afternoon.

Question: Will the mark of the Beast be a physical mark, or is this apocalyptic writing?

Answer: It’s clearly apocalyptic writing, but then the question becomes, “Granted that it’s apocalyptic writing, is the mark of the Beast a physical mark?” I doubt it. I just doubt it very much. People have tried to make it out to do all kinds of things. It might be a barcode imprinted on your forehead or something. Give me a break.

That’s not what John had in mind when he wrote. In any case, it’s built, after all, on the allusion to the Old Testament vision of Ezekiel 9 where, again in an apocalyptic vision, God tells the angel who is carrying this script-writing material to go and put on the foreheads of the people of Jerusalem a mark.

Well, clearly it wasn’t a literal mark on the people of Jerusalem who were then spared in some sense from the destruction. It’s an apocalyptic way of saying, “The Lord knows those who are his and the Devil knows those who are his.” It’s a powerful way of saying that you belong to one or the other, with the corresponding fears and hopes. They’re bound up with the two positions. To argue that it is a literal mark, I think it’s pushing the apocalyptic language too far.

Question: Are the Antichrist and false prophets actual people? If so, do you think they are on the earth today?

Answer: Yes, they are being treated as real people. Certainly the antichrist that John talks about, for example in 1 John 2. He says, “As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so also already there are many antichrists.” Clearly he’s referring to people, not ideas. They are people who embody certain destructive, oppressive, attacking ideas and often the power to go along with them.

If you’re saying, “Do I think that antichrists are abroad today?” of course there are antichrists abroad today. Whether in the supreme sense of one who has all the power of a Hitler or a Stalin or whatever, a Pope Innocent III or a Nero.… Well, if you ask some people living in certain parts of the world, they would say so.

Ask Christians amongst the Karel people. Ask the Christians in southern Sudan whether antichrist has any play today. I think they would understand yes. That doesn’t mean that we know that the ultimate Antichrist is here. There I would say, “I don’t know.” I just don’t know. I would say then something similar with respect to the second beast, the false prophet who is parasitic on the first beast. So if what I’ve said about the first beast is correct, then it’s equally true for the second beast.

Question: Do you think that there is a final, ultimate Beast and False Prophet?

Answer: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Because ultimately it’s very difficult to make sense not only of the recurring theme, but.… With a recurring theme like, “The beast is slain and then comes back again; he’s slain and comes back again,” Hitler dies, but then there’s some other authoritarian regime that is anti-Christian. Eventually, that comes to an end. In that sense, there’s ultimately an ultimate one. Even besides that, a passage like 1 John 2 is so very clear.

“As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so also there are many antichrists already.” It does not say, “Now you’ve heard that there is an antichrist coming, but I say to you, there are antichrists all over the place. Don’t worry about a final one.” It’s not cast like that. It’s not that John takes away from the ultimate one. It’s rather that, granted, there is an ultimate one; there are lots of other ones on the way there. It seems to me that that’s the way the argument runs.

Question: You have recently been through personal suffering as well as your wife. You wrote a book on suffering prior to this. Is there anything you would change now?

Answer: No. The whole of point of the book How Long, O Lord: Reflections on Suffering and Evil was that it be a prophylactic, that it be a bit of anticipatory medicine to prepare you before the evil day comes. In other words, the whole point of the exercise was to get certain biblical truths, certain walk with God, certain experiences, certain perspectives thoroughly in place before you get kicked in the teeth.

Because if you live long enough, you will get kicked in the teeth. That’s just inevitable. Sooner or later, unless you die very young, which is another form of getting kicked in the teeth I suppose, then you will be bereaved. The only alternative to being bereaved is bereaving somebody else first. Sooner or later, you will get serious illness. You might be an astonishingly healthy beast all the way to the age of 80. Fair enough, but most of us will have serious illness somewhere along the line.

I tried to write that book as preventative medicine. Because what happens is if you don’t have enough of your biblical theology in place so that you’ve got a kind of theology of suffering, you’ve thought about these things in God’s world, you’ve thought about them before they happen, then when they do happen, not only do you suffer from whatever you’re suffering from, you’re also suffering from all the spiritual anxiety and doubt and wondering what God is doing, which makes the suffering far worse.

If you have a theology in place before the evil day comes, then you have far more resources … spiritual, theological, biblical … to get you through those days. When I wrote that book, I started writing it and in the midst of it I got a rare disease called sarcoidosis, which could’ve killed me. It didn’t. It took me four years to get over it.

Toward the end of it, then I went to Africa for something or other and managed to get typhoid, which was almost an instant killer a century earlier. Nowadays you get some medical help and you’re usually all right. I was one sick puppy for a while. When this was all over, my wife informed me in no uncertain terms that the Lord was trying to teach me the subject of my own book and please the next time could I choose a subject like joy?

Since then, my wife has had cancer that’s almost killed her. We almost lost her four years ago. She is still a high-risk patient. It could easily come back. What can I say? There’s nothing in that book that I would change, nor am I surprised by it when it does happen. We’re all going to get kicked in the teeth. None of us are exempt. We’re all going to be disappointed somewhere.

The important thing is to have certain planks of the Bible and theology well and truly in your mind and heart to see the connection between suffering and sin and the place of Job and things and the sovereignty of God and things and what does Romans 8:28 say. You need to get these kinds of things down. What kinds of things they can teach you?

So when something like this happens, you’re no longer in the place where you’re going to say, “Why me? This isn’t fair!” However unpleasant it is to go through these kinds of things, if those things are really part of your whole worldview and belief structure, then you’re far more stable when they do happen. You can call upon the Lord with a certain kind of confidence.

I’m not saying that watching your.… My wife was so ill she couldn’t shower. I half-carried her into the shower and sat her down in a plastic chair. She couldn’t do anything. She was violently ill. Back and forth to the emergency room again and again. We almost lost her twice. On the other hand, I wasn’t simultaneously saying, “This isn’t fair! I’ve been such a nice man and I’m trying to preach the gospel. Why doesn’t God pick on somebody his own size?” and whatever else you say during that.

It didn’t even cross my mind to think this. I was aware of the Lord’s presence. Either Romans 8:28 is true or it’s not. I cancelled all my trips and looked after my wife. You get on with it. What can I say? You either live faithfully through that or you don’t. It seems to me that it’s just very important to get those kinds of biblical theological perspectives truly nailed down in your life before those days come. Because come they will. That’s my cheerful thought for the day.

Question: What would the phrase the Son of Man have meant to the hearers in the time of Jesus? For example, Jesus spoke it, and it’s found also in John’s gospel and Revelation.

Answer: That’s actually a very tricky question. The question is straightforward, but the answer is tricky. Because the expression meant different things. Even in the Old Testament it means different things. When God addresses Ezekiel, he addresses him again and again as “son of man,” about 80 times.

What it is doing there, it’s functioning as a way of saying “human being” or “mortal being” or something like that. It distinguishes Ezekiel from God. Sometimes it is merely a Semitic way of saying “a human being.” Thus you get this sort of reflection in a psalm like Psalm 8: “What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you consider him?”

The parallelism shows that it’s the same expression. It just means a human being. Over against God. On the other hand, in a passage like Daniel 7:13–14, clearly the figure there is more than an ordinary human being. He’s one like a son of man, but on the other hand he receives a kingdom from the Ancient of Days.

It clearly has some kind of messianic overtone, whether it’s first of all through a corporate sense of Israel or there’s some sort of messianic overtone to it. When Jesus starts using the term Son of Man to refer to himself, I am persuaded that one of the reasons why he does so is precisely because it is safely ambiguous.

If he went around immediately calling himself, “Son of David, David’s rightful heir. Basically I’m King David. I’m the Messiah,” because the expectations of the time were so political it would’ve been instantly a threat to Rome, instantly politicized amongst the Jews for and against, but if he could talk about himself as the Son of Man then it could generate questions about himself.

Is he thinking of himself as a messianic son of man of Daniel 7 or is it just a self-reference to himself as a human being? It’s obscure. It’s evocative. It makes you ask questions. Sometimes you do get precisely this kind of question asked in the gospel. “Who is this Son of Man?” They’re having trouble with the category.

I’m sure that one of the reasons why he used the category is to depoliticize the messianic categories generally. With time, you discover that some of Christ’s messianic “Son of Man” references are clearly alluding to Daniel 7. Some of them are bound up with the fact that he’s a human being. Some of them are bound up with the fact that he suffers.

Though he claims all the prerogatives of God, like a human being, he does suffer. In one passage, it’s bound up with the fact that he identifies with us and therefore is qualified by personal experience to be our judge, as in John 5. It’s an evocative term that can mean different things in different context.

Because of the frequency with which Revelation appeals allusively to Daniel 7, I suspect that’s the dominant one that’s coming through in that particular book. I think it’s a wonderfully clever title, precisely because it means slightly different things in different contexts. It gave him time in the course of his ministry to unpack who he was and explain who he was without immediately being embroiled in so much politics that he couldn’t move freely.

Question: Is our view of hell as conscious eternal punishment wrong? Reasons:

1. The immortality of the soul is a Greek concept, not Hebrew.
2. In Genesis, man was prevented from taking of Tree of Life and living forever.
3. Is God going to sustain the existence of damned souls?

Answer: First, it’s probably correct to say that the immortality of the soul is a Greek concept, if by that you mean with independent quality of life. That has never been the orthodox view. That is to say that people continue eternally because God so decrees it. It seems to me that is taught in Scripture pretty clearly, not least in the passages that we considered this morning.

Once you see that that’s the case, then it seems to me that the other two questions answer themselves too. For example, “Is God going to sustain the existence of damned souls?” If you want to say no, explain the exegesis of chapter 14 and chapter 20. I don’t think you can do it. Not believably.

Question: Is the lake of sulfur rhombic sulfur?

Answer: It’s in the Greek.

Question: You mentioned that in hell people continue to sin. Where is this found scripturally?

Answer: It’s a fair question. There is no passage that comes right out and says, “And they continue to sin” as unambiguously as that. On the other hand, there are several passages it seems to me that hint at it. First, the last chapter of the Bible, which then pictures what is happening. “Let him who is just be just still. Let him who is unjust be unjust still.”

I know that’s looking then to the final decision. It’s got to a place now where the paths are set, but I suspect in the context it’s going right through the decision to what follows out beyond. In other words, it seems to me that the injustice then continues the other side into eternity as righteousness continues the other side into eternity. It’s not quite a knockdown-dragout passage, but I think that’s what it means.

Moreover, in such passages as give us any glimpse at all for hell, for example the rich man and Lazarus, “The rich man lifted up his eyes being in torment …” although he is concerned that his brothers don’t join him, there is no hint anywhere in any such pictures of people actually repenting and crying to God for mercy. They want relief.

I don’t see any passage anywhere in the Bible where a person in that situation then says, “I am so sorry for the things that I did. Please …” As long as there’s no repentance, then there’s ongoing sin, it seems to me. I don’t see how else to understand things. I could tell you of some very important and godly exegetes who take a different view, so I won’t insist on it as part of a creedal point, but I think that it’s the most likely conclusion from the texts as we have them.

Question: What is your advice regarding how to apply the message of Revelation on a daily basis in the face of our busy lives, frequent failings, and discouragements?

Answer: That’s a fair question. There’s a nexus of applications, and I’ve tried to give some of them as we’ve gone along. Let me summarize a few of them. In some ways they’ll be some of the most important ones tonight.

In chapter 4 and 5 what we are to learn of things is the sheer greatness of God, which should compel us toward worship and adoration and recognition that at the end of the day, all of God’s purposes are brought to pass by the Lamb so that our worship, our adoration, our thinking of history and where we are in it and how we live is bound up with Christ, who he is, coming from the throne, his cross, his resurrection, which purchased men and women for God from every tongue and language and people and nation.

It’s bound up in the first place with a worldview and how we think about God and worship and what’s central and most important. In a chapter like 12 we’re told how to overcome Satan in that passage. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by bearing witness, by not loving their lives even to death.” Just work on those three things for the rest of your life, and you’ve got your work cut out for you.

I’ve sometimes given this illustration. Supposing at the time of the first Passover, on Passover night, you have two Jews with the remarkable names Smith and Brown. Smith says to Brown, “Have you killed a Passover lamb yet and daubed your two doorposts and lintel with the blood of the Passover lamb?”

“Of course,” Brown says. “Moses has declared that the angel of death is going through the land tonight and anybody who doesn’t have the blood from the Passover lamb daubed on the doorposts and the lintel is going to lose their firstborn.” Smith says, “I know what Moses has said. I’ve daubed the blood as well, but you got to admit, there have been a lot of strange things that have gone on here the last little while.

Flies, frogs, water to blood, and all of that. I’ve only got one son. This is pretty shocking stuff. How is the angel going to tell that he shouldn’t take out my son?” Brown says, “Well, you have to trust what God has said through Moses. What God has said through Moses is if you kill a Passover lamb and put the blood on the doorposts and on the lintel then the angel will pass over. That’s why we call it a Passover lamb, for goodness’ sake. So don’t worry! If you’ve done what Moses said, don’t worry.”

Smith says, “That’s all right for you to say. You’ve got six kids already. You can afford to lose one. But in my case, it’s the only one. I’m really worried.” That night, the angel of the Lord passes through the land. Which one loses his son? The answer, of course, is neither. Because the condition is not made on the tenacity of the faith or the intensity of the faith or the sincerity of the faith or the maturity of the faith but on the object of the faith.

So now you get up and it’s one of those miserable days: Cold, wet, the beginning of February. The sun isn’t up yet. You’ve got to be up three hours before it is. You reach for some socks and you discover you don’t have a clean pair. The heating system isn’t working in your flat. You go out to start the car on your way to work, put in the key, and the battery dies. You knew you should’ve changed it and you didn’t. You arrive late.

Your boss chews you out. You’re grumpy. You skipped breakfast because of it. Some workmate asks you some religious question, “You sort of go to church, don’t you?” You snap his head off. The whole day goes like that. Then you get back to your flat late at night. There’s scarcely anything in the larder. Before you go to bed, you pray, “Dear God, this has basically been one rotten day. Your will be done. Amen.” You ever have a day like that?

Then another day you wake up and the sun is shining and the birds are tweeting outside your window and you get up and you stretch. Your flatmates got up ahead of you, and you smell bacon. You pull on that nice, fresh, clean pair of socks. You go down and you have a nice quiet time before you get out the door because you got up early. You feel ever so pious.

You get out there, you put your key in the ignition, and it goes off. You discover that you have a promotion at work waiting for you. The same coworker comes to you and asks some question, a little more timidly than the previous time, and the Lord just gives you words from the heart to speak.

You testify brilliantly to the grace of God, and he promises to come to church with you next Sunday. You get home eventually that night, you have a lovely meal, and you watch a program. Then you go to prayer meeting. You come home and you get down on your knees and you pray, “Sovereign and merciful God, in your infinite mercies I bow before you and give you thanks for all the blessings that have come to me in the person of your Son, my Savior, Christ Jesus.”

Now you start praying on for the missionaries and for everybody. It goes on and on. You get into bed feeling pretty good. You ever have a day like that? The truth of the matter, of course, is that both times you’ve been remarkable pagan. Because you think you can approach almighty God on the basis of what kind of day you’ve had.

Revelation 12 won’t allow that. You overcome Satan on the basis of the blood of the Lamb. Good day or bad day, your confidence is in Christ. It changes everything. It induces fidelity on bad days. It induces humility on good days. You begin to see that witness is part of the normal activity of Christian existence, part of overcoming the Devil. So is self-denial … daily. “Unless you take up your cross daily, you cannot be my disciple.”

They’re elementary gospel things. The book of Revelation is an immensely gospel-type book. Not genre of gospel as in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but gospel-focused book. Then there’s a lot of emphasis on enduring to the end in chapter 13. Chapter 14, living with eternity’s values in view. Anticipating heaven in 21 and 22. There are a lot of practical things that can be worked out from the book of Revelation in terms of teaching you how to live and what your priorities are and so forth.

Question: Could you make comment on Revelation, chapter 20? The millennium, the binding of Satan.

Answer: The subject is huge, of course, because historically Christians have disagreed on exactly what the millennium is referring to. Some think that the millennium is the period of Christ’s current reign … he’s reigning now … before the end. So in some ways, Satan is bound now. Before the end, there’s a final outbreak of evil. That view is normally called amillennialism.

Premillennialism thinks that there is a thousand-year period, but that varies amongst stricter types of premillennialists and amongst dispensationalists. It really is a thousand years. But amongst older premillennialists, ones who go back to the early church … sometimes this is called historic premillennialism … they think that, typical of all of the numbers in the book of Revelation, the thousand years simply represents a long period of time. How long it is, nobody knows. Just a long period of time.

They do see then that there is a period of Christ’s reigning on the earth short of the final new heaven and the new earth. Then there’s a final outbreak again and then the new heaven and the new earth. So all it does, in terms of the best historic premillennialism, the best of amillennialism, the two views are remarkably similar except that there is this hiatus or this interregnum when Christ is reigning in a more immediate and direct sense on the earth before final bust up.

It effects very little in terms of your overall interpretation of the whole Bible. Whereas when you come to dispensational premillennialism, if effects quite a lot. Then there is historic postmillennialism. The Puritans were mostly postmillennialists with a few premillennialists. There just were no amillennialists amongst them as far as I know.

They hold that the millennium is a sustained period of time in which the advance of the gospel eventually brings so many benefits and bonuses and peace on the earth that ultimately we live in conditions of millennial splendor by the sheer preaching of the gospel. That’s not to be confused with liberalism. The world is getting better and better and nicer and nicer.

Whatever the Puritans were, they weren’t liberals. At different periods in the history of the church, one or the other of these groups has dominated. If I had more time, I would be more than happy to take you through the text and tell you which one I think is most likely correct, but that’s the sort of thing I don’t want to do unless I have time to take you through the text, because I don’t want you to be convinced by what Don Carson thinks, I want you to be convinced by the text.

It’s one of those subjects where, apart from time with the text, I don’t touch it with a barge pole except to lay out the options, which I have now done.

Question: What does keeping the Sabbath day holy actually mean and not mean?

Answer: That is a very, very big question. It’s easier to say what it meant when it was first given. What it really meant was the cessation of normal work for the purpose of honoring God by the setting aside of a particular day for corporate worship and other God-designated activities and also for the social well-being of family and home and hearth. I think all sides would agree with that.

When you read through more and more of the Old Testament, as the Sabbath laws were first given, they were given in a largely agrarian society. As Israel becomes more urban, then there are extra workings out of these things in a more urban society in some of the prophetic writing as you have more and more cities that are capturing attention.

The debate comes with how this is fulfilled in the New Testament, because the passage in the New Testament that deals with the fulfillment of Sabbath at greatest length, namely Hebrews 3:7–4:13, insists that the ultimate antitype of Sabbath is, in fact, the Sabbath rest of God. That is to say, salvation that we have in Christ Jesus.

I think most people would agree with that, too. That is what the passage is arguing, so that there is a sense in which entering into God’s rest in Eden, enjoying the Sabbath rest, the rest of entering into the Promised Land, the rest of returning to the Promised Land after the exile, these are all markers along the way of the rest theme, which then comes to climax when Jesus says, “Come to me and I will give you rest.”

Hebrews works it all out as the ultimate fulfillment of this rest. We have rest before God. We enter into his rest when we cease from our labors and trust Christ, who bore our sins on our behalf. It’s worked theologically in that way. Then the question becomes, “Does that mean we still have to observe Sabbath today?” That question has long been disputed in the history of the church, exactly how it works out.

Some have argued that the Sabbath law is for the seventh day, and they have become Seventhday Adventists or Seventh-day Baptists or Seventh-day Paedo-baptists. Yes, there were Seventh-day Baptists amongst the Puritans. There are still some in the US and elsewhere. Others say that it’s surely a principle of one day in seven, and now for us the Sabbath is Sunday. So they look for verses in the New Testament that justify a transfer theology.

Whereas others say the fulfillment really is in the gospel and although there are important principles of rest to observe, nevertheless Paul can say, “One person regards one day above another. Another man regards all days the same. Each will be fully persuaded in his own mind.” It’s a remarkable thing to say, you have to admit.

He does not say anywhere, “One person regards adultery as an abomination. Another person regards adultery as a great thing. Let each be fully persuaded in his own mind.” He doesn’t. There are some limitations on where he makes points of continuity and points of discontinuity. Others will argue that, “Yes, although the ultimate Sabbath rest is the new heaven and the new earth, because we’re still in the old creation order, one day in seven still applies.”

In my view, the Sabbath issue is such a hot one in some circles, not because of its own intrinsic importance but because it is an astonishingly powerful test case of systems, because it crops up in creation, it crops up in the Ten Commandments, it crops up in the Prophets, it crops up in the teaching of Jesus, it crops up in the writings of Paul, and it crops up in the Apocalypse. Thus, it becomes a way of how you’re putting your whole Bible together. That’s why the Sabbath issue has become such a hot one over time.

I edited a long, technical, and boring book on this subject, From Sabbath to Lord’s Day, 20-odd years ago. It’s still in print. It’s a long subject. No matter what I say, I will step on somebody’s toes on this one, which doesn’t bother me by itself, except I don’t like to be unnecessarily divisive unless I have a lot of time to spend on explaining the rationale for the particular stance that I take.

What I would say is if you belong to the camp that does not think that the Sabbath is an ongoing mandate for Christians today, most people who take that view do preserve Sunday as a mandated day for worship, even though they don’t think of it as the Christian Sabbath. If you do take that view, then you are also saying something about whether or not you view the Decalogue as a moral summary, because if the Decalogue is a moral summary and now you take one of them out of it, as Sinclair Ferguson likes to say, “That makes it a monologue instead of a Decalogue.”

Well, that raises fundamental questions about whether God makes a distinction between moral law and other kinds of law. What is central in the law of God? So I leave you with a text to mediate on that is very interesting. Go and meditate on Hebrews 7:11 and 12. Stick that in your theological pipe and see what it does to your whole understanding of how the law hangs together. Okay? So now you’ve got some homework, too. This next one is not a question; this one’s an epistle.

Question: The postmodern society we live in finds it hard to view the Bible as the absolute truth from God. Vast leaps in science in areas such as cosmology and astrophysics seem to suggest the universe is billions of years old. This seems to run contrary to the Bible and hence brings dismissal in a postmodern mind. What do you think of organizations such as Reasons to Believe who try to bridge God’s general and specific revelation by reevaluating the Bible in view of science in order to satisfy the postmodern mind?

Answer: At the risk of being obnoxious, I think that the question is actually two questions. That is to say, the question of bridging between science and astrophysics on the one hand in the Bible is in fact much more a product of the modern world than of the postmodern world. The postmodern world has less problems with that sort of thing in my experience than the modern world does.

The postmodern world finds this one far less difficult. Today when I do university missions, I have far fewer difficulties introducing scientists to the faith than I do arts people. Because at least scientists still have a category for truth, at least in their discipline. Whereas many of the arts people, they don’t really have a category for objective truth. I’ve done some informal checking of major churches near major universities. I check who its students are, its Christian students or its Christian faculty. From what faculties do they spring?

If you line up physics, mathematics, computer science, business, all those hard sciences over against the soft sciences or the arts (the social sciences, cultural anthropology, English literature, psychology), in my experience the ratio is something between six to one in favor of the first group to eighteen to one in favor of the first group. The hardest people to evangelize today by far are not the scientists. They’re the arts people. That’s the postmodern influence.

In other words, the Reasons to Believe-type organizations are not really addressing the postmodernists at all. They’re addressing the scientists. There are a lot of organizations that try to understand these things aright and teach a certain kind of hermeneutical sophistication and respect so that neither we, in our attempts to interpret Scripture, nor scientists in their attempts to interpret reality are allowed to get away with too much arrogance and to bring to bear how to think about the non-negotiables of Scripture in a way that is genuinely believable.

I’m all for that kind of activity. Some of it’s done well and some of it’s not, but surely that does need to be done. It needs to be done again and again and again. The postmodern side is a bit different. It seems to me that, there, they’re having a much harder problem not reconciling the claims of science to the Bible; they’re having a much harder problem thinking of absolute truth anywhere.

A rigorous postmodern will say that scientific theories are themselves merely theories. They’re merely structures of thought that have a social base. It’s a social construct. You can imagine another scientific theory that could produce the same sort of empirical results in the lab but explain things somewhat differently.

The standard example is Newtonian physics and Einsteinian physics. The new physics, relativity and so on, can’t possibly be the final word because it hasn’t been reconciled at all with quantum mechanics. There’s got to be something bigger out there or different out there that puts those two together that we’ll get someday. So it’s all in flux. It’s all in advance. So science itself is merely a social construct. I think there are real problems with that; nevertheless, that’s the way postmodernism looks at things.

Thus, the approach to handling postmodern questions in evangelism tends to be a wee bit different. To answer this question at length about how to tackle that second group would take me pretty far astray. Let me suggest two or three books that might be useful if you’re interested in this sort of thing. We had a conference at Trinity a few years ago that produced some papers that came out in a book called Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns that may give you a fair bit of help.

Postmoderns also are very suspicious of dogmatic answers so, practically, it’s very useful to learn how to answer questions with questions and keep the discussion going in a humble sort of way. One of the best books I’ve seen on this in a long time is by Randy Newman, called Questioning Evangelism. Randy is a Jew who was converted and came to Trinity.

He did a degree 20 years ago and for the last 20 years has been involved in East Coast universities, some of the toughest in the nation. He now works with faculty members and Washington pentagon types. He’s been a very fruitful personal evangelist over the last two decades. His little book Questioning Evangelism begins by looking at how often Jesus answers a question with a question.

Then he does the same thing. He gives question after question after question that contemporary postmoderns ask, and then he says, “How do you answer back with that?” He gives a question back and he gets things going. “You don’t really think that God’s going to send everybody to hell, do you?”

“That’s a very good question. Do you think God should send anybody to hell? How about a Hitler or an Adolf Eichmann or a Pol Pot? Should he send anybody to hell or should people get away scot-free?”

“Oh I suppose that some people should go, but you wouldn’t want to say that everybody should go.”

“What do you think the criteria should be for who goes?”

He keeps on asking questions and questions and questions and keeps things going until it’s heading into a frame of reference in which you’re able to present a Christian perspective on some of these things. Whereas if you simply answer that first question with “Yes” well, that’s it. You’ve borne witness, I guess. So partly it’s a question of how to apply gracious wisdom in this sort of context. I strongly recommend that book. Sell your shirt and buy Questioning Evangelism by Randy Newman, published by Kregel.

Question: How can we pray in a way that is acceptable to God and how can we know that God hears our prayers?

Answer: Prayer that is acceptable to God in Christian terms is first and foremost prayer that is offered in Jesus’ name. It’s offered because we have access to God since God forgives us in Christ Jesus. If we think that we have access to God in our prayers because we try harder or because we’re basically decent people or because we come from Northern Ireland, or whatever, it’s just frivolous. It’s just frivolous.

At the end of the day, our knowledge that God hears our prayers is bound up in part with the promises of God. That’s the basis of our confidence. But on the long haul, also with our experience. For those who learn to pray in a Christian way, they start discovering that God answers prayer. He really does in all kinds of wonderful ways.

There is both the certainty that comes from the promises of God and the certainty that comes from the finality of Christ’s cross work and the experiential evidence of a prayer-hearing, prayer-answering God. One of the most useful things you can do, however, as you start developing your own prayer life is by working through, writing out on a piece of paper or on your computer all the prayers of Paul, for example, or all the prayers of Daniel or all the prayers of Moses.

Start writing them out and then learn to incorporate them into your life. There is a sense in which praying for everything is legitimate. That’s what Peter says. Casting all your cares on him because he cares for us. There’s nothing you can’t pray about. Nevertheless, there are clearly some things that are more important than others judging by the examples of the biblical people themselves.

Thus to learn how to pray from the Bible is to reform your prayer life by the Word of God, which can only be a good thing. With time, therefore, you learn not only what to pray for but in what terms. Making appeal to what promises of God, what degrees of confidence? Things that God has promised to give you versus things that you may ask for but you have no promise that he’s going to give them.

If you ask that God will genuinely keep his own people, you’ve got all the promises in the world on that one. If on the other hand you ask that God will heal you from a certain disease. Well, sometimes God does and sometimes God doesn’t. That’s the truth of the matter, even in Scripture. He will ultimately heal all of his people in resurrection bodies in the new heaven and the new earth, but we all die sometime.

He may answer that one positively and he may answer it negatively. What can I say? That’s just the way it is. There are some things that you learn to pray for with confidence because there are promises to back them up. There are other things you pray for where you are not sure what’s going to happen. Should that be so difficult to understand?

A kid comes to Mummy and Daddy and is hungry and wants a drink and knows perfectly well that Mummy and Daddy aren’t going to leave the poor kid to starve or to dehydrate so approaches with a certain kind of confidence. “I’ve asked before. She’s always given it to me,” or whenever.

On the other hand, he might ask for a new tricycle or a new bike or a new stereo or a new computer. Then, there are more options. The kid learns that, too. Eventually you find out the kinds of things. I mean, if the kid is decently trained and sitting at the table, “Please pass the ketchup,” he knows the father is not going to say, “Let me think about that now. Shall I pass you the ketchup or not?”

It’s not going to happen, but it’s still part of the courtesy. You ask for the ketchup and you get it. Fine. But that doesn’t mean that just because you ask for a new flute you’re automatically going to get it. That might be something else. You learn those sorts of distinctions by observing the prayers of Scripture and by personal experience. That’s all part of maturation in prayer life, it seems to me.

Question: Are there degrees of reward in heaven?

Answer: I would argue that there are both degrees of reward in heaven and degrees of punishment. There are lots of biblical texts. I know there are a few people who disagree with that, but it seems to me there are so many biblical texts that warrant that that the answers are overwhelming. Then one needs to think about what it means, too. For example, in 1 Corinthians 3, someone builds in his ministry with wood, hay, and stubble versus with precious stones.

Then it says, “He will be saved, but so as by fire.” Saved by the skin of his teeth, nothing to show for it. It presupposes that he gets into heaven himself, but there’s nothing to show for all this work, this ministry. Even in the parables Jesus tells, clearly some become ruler over one city or two cities or whatever, there are more talents, and so on. That, too, is part of the parabolic structure.

Even though it’s only a parabolic structure, when you start linking those sorts of things with promises about rewards, “For great will be your reward in heaven,” then it presupposes there are distinctions to be made. Likewise, in hell, when Jesus can say in Matthew 11:20–24 regarding Korazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum that it will be worse for them on the day of judgment than for Tyre and Sidon, pagan cities up the coast, or even for Sodom and Gomorrah, because they have had more revelation given to them.

It presupposes that there are degrees of punishment to be feared. It’s going to be worse for them. Then Luke actually speaks explicitly in chapter 12 that some will be beaten with more stripes and some with fewer stripes. At the end, not only will justice be done, but it will be seen to be done. This raises then some fundamental questions about the nature of rewards, doesn’t it?

Is it a work thing after all, or do you get saved by grace and then where you’re ranked depends on works after that? Is that what I’m saying? No, no, no. A very helpful illustration on this rewards business, I picked up from C.S. Lewis. He describes two men. One man goes down to the red light district of town, goes into a whorehouse, pays his money, and has his woman. He’s got his reward.

Another falls in love with a young woman; woos her carefully, honorably, and with dignity; gets to be known by the family, gets to know the family, and eventually proposes. The whole thing is carried out with tenderness, gentleness, respect, and dignity. Eventually they get married. He has his reward. What’s the difference?

The difference, he says, is that in the first case the reward is so incommensurate with the payment that the whole transaction is obscene. In the second case, the reward is nothing other than the fulfillment of the relationship. Isn’t that nice? The point is, in the Christian way, that relationship is itself the fruit of grace.

So even when Paul says that he worked harder than all the rest, he did. He says, “By the grace of God that was given to me I worked harder than all the rest,” so that even the hard work which leads to rewards is ultimately credible to the grace of God. What can you say? So yes, I do think that there are degrees of punishment and degrees of blessing, and at no point do they take away from the exclusive control of grace in all of these matters.

Nobody’s going to be able to say to somebody else in heaven, “I’m mayor of a bigger city than you are! I have more rewards than you!” It’s just not going to happen, because whatever we have, in the first place, we won’t be playing one-upmanship games and we won’t be jealous of others who do have more. We will be perfect. We will respect the distinctions that God has made. There may even be possibilities for changes of these things in the new heaven and the new earth. Who knows? In every case, we will be profoundly grateful for the grace that has brought us thus far.