Category: Hear From the President

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

The Day of Pentecost celebrates the coming of the promised Spirit and the day the church began to preach the gospel to the world. As the disciples spoke, the large crowd from all over the region were astonished to hear the message of “God’s deeds of power” in their native languages.

This was a remarkable miracle—a reverse of the confusion of tongues that happened at the tower of Babel. However, it might not seem quite so miraculous today. The technology exists for simultaneous translation, even taking into account regional accents and dialects. This is just one of the remarkable advances in communications technology.

How should we use these advances to spread the gospel?

I’m certainly not opposed to the use of media. The development of the Internet and the rapid progress in all forms of communications technology makes it possible to reach out in ways that we could not have imagined even two decades ago. What once needed dozens of employees working in large departments now can be accomplished by a handful of people, working out of their own homes. I can have frequent and almost instant contact with the people who work with me producing the church’s media, even though we live thousands of miles apart.

This is the trend of the future and we can follow it intelligently.

There is nothing wrong with using mass media, providing we remain true to the gospel message. Sadly, in order to attract attention in the competitive world of advertising, it can be tempting to present the gospel as something it is not. In the past, when we had a very different focus, we spent millions of dollars every year on television and print media. But it became obvious that, as production became more sophisticated and expensive, and as cable and satellite expanded the choice of TV channels, this was a bottomless pit of expense. So we now distribute our video productions through the Internet, allowing us to produce quality programming at a much lower cost.

We must be careful not to become so bedazzled with the potential of new media that we overlook the fact that the most effective advertising method for preaching the gospel is one of the oldest. In the nineteenth century, if you wanted to make your product or business known, you would hire a “sandwich board man.” He would walk the streets, wearing boards that had your advertising information written on them. This is what my dad had in mind when he used to say we should be “walking, talking advertisements for the kingdom of God.”

My “business,” and yours, is representing the kingdom of God. Suppose God asked you to walk around for a few hours each week wearing a big sign saying something like “Be kind, be loving, be graceful, be forgiving, be generous, seek truth, be a Christian.” You’d be pretty careful how you behaved while doing that, wouldn’t you? Thankfully, God does not expect us to literally do this. However, he does expect us, through our behavior, to show there is an alternative to the vanity, selfishness, lust and greed that is the way of life in this world.

After the impressive “launch” of the church in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, it does not appear to have been God’s plan to spread the gospel through huge media campaigns. Research into early church history shows that the gospel spread through the example of the believers who were moved by the Holy Spirit. The gentle, unselfish way of life of the first Christians was a striking contrast to the harsh realities of Roman rule. And it is the same today. The same Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to send his disciples then, enables us now to proclaim with our lives the good news of the renewing power of God. That same Spirit also prepares and enables others to hear and receive the message of God’s grace at work within us.

The best advertisement we can be for God’s gospel of grace is to let the love of God flow through us and reach out to others in the power of the Spirit of Jesus. This is why I pray daily that my life’s advertisement be a positive message. I believe we all want to follow the apostle Paul’s words:

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:19-20).

On the Day of Pentecost this year , let’s count on the Holy Spirit to be at work among us and encourage those we serve to launch their own “media campaign,” showing by the way we live the hope that we have in Jesus (1 Peter 3:15).

Your brother in Christ,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Television scriptwriters know that if you want a successful family sitcom, Mom had better play a prominent role. Perhaps you remember June Cleaver, the all-together Mom in the TV show Leave it to Beaver. Then there was Claire Huxtable, the have-it-all Mom in the The Cosby Show. There was Ann Romano the divorced-ad-exec Mom with her hands full rearing two teenage daughters in One Day at a Time and Angela Bauer, the-wealthy-divorced-single-mom-trying-to-fill-the-Daddy-void-for-her-impressionable-young-son in Who’s The Boss. Livia was the unflappable Mafia-Mom in The Sopranos and Carol was the stay-at-home-trying-to-blend-children-from-two-families Mom in The Brady Bunch.

Mothers, real or imaginary, have a vital role in shaping the destiny of their family. Well has it been said that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” Though no human mother is perfect, most love their children in a profoundly deep and unconditional way. A mother’s love comes as close to unconditional love as we humans are able. It is therefore a beautiful reflection of God’s unconditional love for us.

The most prominent personal characteristic of God shown in the Bible is that of being fatherly, but God’s relationship with us is also described as being like a mother. In Isaiah 66:13, God says, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” In Luke 13:34 Jesus likened himself to a mother hen in lamenting Jerusalem’s rejection of him, “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

One of the last things Jesus did before he died on the cross was ask a friend to look after his mother. “When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (John 19:25-27 NIV 1984).

In spite of his own agony, Jesus was concerned for his mother. So as Mother’s Day draws near, let me encourage you to follow his example.

Mother’s Day, or something similar, is celebrated in many countries around the world. This year, in the US, it falls on Sunday, May 12. It isn’t an official Christian celebration, but you’d think it was. LifeWay Research conducted a survey of 1000 Protestant pastors and discovered from them that Mother’s Day was the third most attended church service in the year (after Easter and Christmas).

I’d like to share a good story that I recently heard about honoring our mothers. A woman had stopped to order flowers to be wired to her mother who lived 200 miles away. As she left her car to enter the shop, she noticed a young girl sitting on the curb sobbing. She asked what was wrong and the girl replied, “I wanted to buy a red rose for my mother. But I only have 75 cents and a rose costs $2.00.” The woman smiled and said, “Come on in with me. I’ll buy you a rose.” She bought the girl her rose and then ordered flowers for her own mother. As they were leaving, she offered to take the girl home. She said, “Yes, please! You can take me to my mother.” The girl directed the woman to a cemetery, where she placed the rose on a freshly dug grave. The woman returned to the flower shop, canceled the wire order, picked up a bouquet and drove 200 miles to her mother’s home.

The role of Mother is one of the greatest gifts that God has given to us. Let’s think about how we can show our appreciation—to God—and to our Moms—on Mother’s Day.

Your brother in Christ,

Joseph Tkach

PS: From time to time we hear of GCI elders/pastors who are celebrating milestone wedding anniversaries (20th, 25th, etc.). If you will email us the details and include a digital picture of the celebrating couple, we’ll be pleased to include an announcement here in GCI Weekly Update.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Next week, many Christians will celebrate the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some will celebrate exactly 40 days after Easter (May 9); others will celebrate the following Sunday (May 12).

The Ascension does not have quite the same prominence in the Christian calendar as the “big three”—Christmas, Good Friday and Easter. Perhaps this is because we underestimate the importance of this event. We may even think of it as rather anticlimactic, after the trauma of the Crucifixion and the triumph of the Resurrection.

This is a mistake. The resurrected Jesus did not just stick around for 40 days and then retreat to the safety of heaven, his work on earth now done. The ascended Jesus remains forever fully human, as well as fully divine and fully involved. This revelation helps us to understand the nature of his High Priesthood. Jesus is eternally our Intercessor. The nature of the atonement itself is not merely about what Jesus has done, but who he is and forever will be.

The Bible records the Ascension as the next step or event in Jesus’ work. In Acts 1:9-12, we are told:

After he [Jesus] said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Then they returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city.

These verses make two basic points: that Jesus ascended into heaven and that he will return.

But there is more to ponder. In Ephesians 2:6, which is one of my favorite verses, Paul adds a perspective not to be missed:

Because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.

Here Paul explains the implication of the new life we have in union with Jesus Christ. He often used the phrase “in Christ” in his letters to help us understand our new identity. To be “in Christ” is to share not only in Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, but also in his ascension by which we, in some sense, even now live with him in “the heavenly realms.” Being “in Christ” means that when God looks at us he does not see us alone in our sins. He sees us with and in Christ, for that is now who we are.

In the book The Message of Ephesians, the late John Stott comments on Ephesians 2:6:

What excites our amazement…is that now Paul is not writing about Christ but about us. He is affirming not that God quickened, raised and seated Christ, but that he quickened, raised and seated us with Christ…. Fundamental to New Testament Christianity is this concept of the union of God’s people with Christ (emphasis added).

Paul further emphasized this truth in Colossians 3:1-4:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

After Jesus was resurrected, he was recognizable by those who knew him, but he was not quite the same. He was able to move at will in and out of the dimensions that we experience as human beings.

Being “in Christ” means that as Christians we live in two realms—the physical world of everyday reality and the “unseen world” of spiritual reality. We do not yet experience the full glory of our resurrection and ascension with Christ, but Paul tells us that it is no less real. The day is coming, he says, when Christ will appear, and in that day we will experience fully the reality of who we have become.

God did not merely forgive our sins and then leave us on our own to try to be righteous. God made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. He then raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms. That is what being “in Christ” means. We are no longer who we are alone, but who we are in union with Christ, sharing in all he has accomplished for us, in our place and on our behalf. We belong to Jesus Christ!

This is the foundation of our faith and hope. God has made us one with Christ so that in him we can share in the relationship of love that he has with the Father and the Spirit. In Christ, the eternal Son of God, we are the Father’s beloved children in whom he is well pleased.

Ascension Sunday is a good time to remind ourselves of this life-changing good news.

Your brother in Christ,

Joseph Tkach

PS: Go to http://thesurprisinggodblog.gci.org/2013/04/jesus-ascension.html for a Surprising God post that highlights an article from Gerrit Scott Dawson on the meaning and importance of Jesus’ Ascension (and continuing Incarnation). Gerrit will be a featured speaker at our denominational conference in early August in Orlando, Florida. For conference information and registration go to http://2013.gci.org/.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Although I have written hundreds of articles, I have written only one book, Transformed by Truth. I wanted to chronicle, from our denominational perspective, the transformation God led us through.

Writing that book was hard work. I made an overall outline, and then dictated my thoughts and ideas. Using a transcription of my dictation, I then reorganized the material, eliminating repetition while maintaining the story flow. It took me months of hard work. Even so, I didn’t do a perfect job. I tried to be fair and accurate, explaining why and how our church went through what some have called an unprecedented change in doctrine. With the wisdom of hindsight, I look back over what I wrote and see places where I could have explained things more clearly.

That is the problem with the written word. It is a conversation where one party is absent. The writer and the reader are separated by distance, time, language or culture—sometimes all four. I wish I could sit with each person reading my book and explain what I was trying to communicate. I can’t do that, but the Bible’s ultimate author does, as I’ll explain.

The Bible has rightly been called the greatest story ever told. It is about the greatest person who ever lived, who had the greatest message possible and made the greatest offer ever made. As you know, the Bible was written over a 1,500 year span of time by over 40 authors from every walk of life, including kings, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, shepherds, soldiers, poets, statesmen, scholars and more. From beginning to end, these authors wrote on many topics, from many different perspectives. The challenge was to present these testimonies in a way that was coherent and consistent, building up a written record that conveyed the unfolding story of God’s love for all humanity in all times—not just those who lived in “Bible times.”

The Bible has been read by more people than any other book—it has out-sold every book that has ever been written and still sells more copies every year than any other book. The Bible has been translated and published in more languages than any other book in existence. The story had to be told in a way that would be accessible to all these people, whenever they lived and whatever their cultural background.

Some authors offer revised editions of their work, updating their writing as times change or more facts become available. Some have wanted to do that with the Bible, altering the text to make it more “relevant” to their particular culture. We can do that to some extent, but we had better be careful, for we have no authority to alter the meaning of the inspired words of God.

However, the Bible has a significant advantage that no other ancient book can claim: its ultimate author and editor is still alive! Not only that, but he promises to come and be with each reader, guiding his or her understanding. As Gary Deddo explained in the first of his articles on Interpreting the Scriptures, God stands behind his word, helping us, no matter who we are or where we are in time and space, to grasp more deeply what those uniquely inspired words hold for us.

While Jesus was with his disciples, he could teach them personally, at times giving one-on-one instruction. It was like having the Word of God living among them. Actually, it was not like that—it was that. However, at the Last Supper, Jesus told his disciples, who had relied so much on his presence:

“I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you” (John 16:12-15).

Today, we can trust that same Spirit to be at work among us, helping us hear just what he spoke to those authorized first apostles.

A recent survey from the Barna Group, commissioned by the American Bible Society, revealed that most Americans esteem the Bible and have access to it. There is a healthy cultural respect for and fascination with Scripture, which helps explain why millions tuned into the recently broadcast television series, The Bible. People seem to be open to experiencing ancient scriptures in new ways. However, many are not sure how to apply the lessons of the Bible to their own lives and to society at large. I believe that Gary’s ongoing series of articles will help us not only maintain a proper respect for the Holy Scriptures but also apply their timeless wisdom to our lives. The third installment in his series will be posted in the next issue of GCI Weekly Update; for the first installment, click here; for the second installment, click here.

With love, in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This Monday, three people died and nearly 200 were injured by bombs detonated near the finish line of the famed Boston Marathon. Dishon Mills, who is planting a GCI church in nearby Randolph, Massachusetts and works near the location of the bomb blasts, wrote this on his Facebook page:

It was a tragic day for our city. I work six doors from the site of the first explosion. My family and I were going to go down to my job to watch the race, but I was tired from traveling so we stayed home. Not only that, for the first time in at least five years, no one from my staff was in the building watching the Marathon. Otherwise, we would have been right in the center of the devastation. Some will ask, “Where was God when bombs ripped through the Boston Marathon?” My reply is that he was working through the first responders who worked to minimize the casualties. He was working through the police who found additional explosive devices before they detonated. He was working to keep me, my family and my colleagues safe on a terrible day. I am confident that this same God will comfort the families of the victims and help my city heal from this tragedy.

Dishon’s heartfelt words remind me that we are called to join with Jesus in his concern for suffering people near and far. I was also reminded of this when I visited our Stratford and Cromwell, Connecticut churches pastored by Larry Wooldridge. One of the opening prayers included intercession for the people of North Korea and the surrounding region, asking God that peace and cooler heads prevail. This prayer reflected the apostle Paul’s admonition to intercede for all people everywhere by praying for the leaders of their governments (1 Timothy 2:1-4). I hope we’ll all take this admonition to heart. Though we no longer examine current events searching for “where we are in prophecy” clues, world events should still be a concern of ours and a focus for our prayers.

When disasters, like the recent floods in Mozambique, directly affect our members, we naturally respond with prayer. But what about the people in the Korean peninsula? Though we don’t have many members there and though most commentators expect things to return to normal (if “normal” is a word that can be used to describe anything about North Korea!), I still feel that we should join in prayer for the people of both South and North Korea and for their leaders. The same can be said for people in many parts of our world, who suffer through troubles like those shown in the cartoon below.

North Korea has become one of the strangest countries on earth. If it was not for the fact that they are developing nuclear weapons, we could dismiss them as a comic sideshow on the world scene. They live in isolation, obsessed with an incredible personality cult around their leaders. Their first President, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, is still considered the Head of State. Nebuchadnezzar, who liked to be addressed as “O King, live forever,” could have learned from the North Korean propaganda machine. Kim Jong-il, his son, and now his grandson Kim Jong-un, are worshiped almost as gods in North Korea’s peculiar blend of communism and state idolatry.

One of the strategies of war is to dehumanize your enemy. My father, who fought in the Pacific during World War II, was told that there was no word for “love” in the Japanese language. That is nonsense, of course, but if you can demonize your enemies in this way, it makes it easier to destroy them. The seventeen million people of North Korea are fed a steady diet of hate propaganda, designed to prepare every man, woman and child to be ready to fight to the death to defend their homeland against “the American aggressors and their South Korean puppets.” We must not allow ourselves to return the hate. Let’s remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount:

You’re familiar with the old written law, “Love your friend,” and its unwritten companion, “Hate your enemy.” I’m challenging that. I’m telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best—the sun to warm and the rain to nourish—to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty (Matthew 5:43-45 The Message).

When I see the news reports of North Koreans rallying in massive displays of adoration for their leader, I identify with Paul’s feelings on his visit to Athens. “The longer Paul waited in Athens for Silas and Timothy, the angrier he got—all those idols! The city was a junkyard of idols” (Acts 17:16). As I see them marching in lockstep in endless military parades, I have to remind myself that each one of those sadly deluded people are nevertheless children of God. I try to see them as he sees them—not as depersonalized automatons, but as individuals whom he loves, sending his own eternal Son to save them from sin, death and the power of evil deceit.

Christianity is thriving in South Korea, but North Korea is officially atheist, and ruthlessly suppresses all religion except their state idolatry. A small and incredibly courageous underground church exists there, but it is safe to say that outside of that there is hardly any “knowledge of God.” It has not always been that way. Did you know that about a hundred years ago, North Korea was once one of the world’s most fruitful fields for Christian missions? There was a massive revival, and for a time, Pyongyang was known as “The Jerusalem of the East.”

God has not written off North Korea and neither should we. I was glad to hear our congregation’s prayer last weekend. Let’s not just pray about North Korea. Let’s remember to pray for them—a sadly confused and deceived people who nevertheless are included in God’s great purpose for humankind.

With love, in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

“If at first you don’t succeed; fail, fail and fail again” seems to be the mantra of those who make it their business to predict the end of the world. You’d think they would learn.

Sadly, they never do. They have convinced themselves and their followers that the Bible is a kind of crystal ball, through which they can predict the course of world events and the date of the Second Coming. Although they never get it right, they keep going. Incredibly, some people keep believing them.

Do you remember Harold Camping, the Christian radio broadcaster who predicted that Christ would return on May 21, 2011? His prophecy made national news. Many of his followers paid for billboards, took out full-page ads in newspapers. When May 21 came and went as normal, Harold Camping revised his prediction to October 21, 2011. Of course, that prediction failed too.

Another wannabe prophet, currently serving a jail term for tax fraud and hiding money in a Swiss bank account, is still predicting when Christ will return. His latest speculation is for Pentecost of this year. Don’t hold your breath.

How many times will these folks get it wrong before they realize there is something more than just faulty calculations that they are missing? As you know, our own founder also made the mistake of setting dates for the end. In 1939, in the August Plain Truth magazine, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “But this you MAY KNOW! This war will be ended by CHRIST’S RETURN! And MAY start within six weeks! We are just THAT NEAR Christ’s coming!”

Thankfully, GCI learned the lesson. We no longer indulge in speculative prophecy. Our focus is to preach the good news of the gospel. I wish I could say the same for our many splinters and off-shoot groups, but most of them still seem to think that predicting the end of the world is the gospel. One of our former pastors, who now leads his own group, said in a sermon eight years ago: “Take a good look—study it carefully—scrutinize all that is going on, because this Pope [Benedict XVI] is the last one you’ll ever see on this earth ever! You can go to the bank with that statement.” I hope no one did!

He also predicted that something of dramatic significance would happen on January 16, 2010, the day which, according to him, ended “one more 19-year time cycle in the Elijah work.” Out of interest, I checked the news archives. January 16, 2010 seems to have been a rather quiet day. Wrong again.

Predicting the end of the world is a sure way to get attention. If all it did was provide some religious comic relief, I suppose no harm would be done. Unfortunately, it does influence impressionable people and divert their attention away from the real message of hope that is in the scriptures. The Bible does not tell us the date of the end of the world, but it is clear about how we should regard those who think it does: ^“If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed” (Deuteronomy 18:22).

Our modern false prophets have not failed because they haven’t figured out how to break the code they think is hidden in the scriptures. They have failed because that information is just not there. It is not for me to judge the sincerity (or sanity) of these purveyors of gloom. After all, certain prophecies are a part of the Bible, and they must mean something. And of course, they do.

As Jesus told the Pharisees, another group who tried to use the scriptures to shore up a false premise, the prophecies pointed to him. Studying prophecy should lead to an understanding of who Jesus is and what God has done through him. Knowing Christ now is the focus of the Christian life, not knowing exactly when he is coming back.

“Eschatology” is a term that refers to the study of the teaching of Scripture concerning “last things” and the “age to come.” Though it is a legitimate area of study, we must scrupulously avoid using it for any purpose other than that intended by the biblical authors, which is hope, not prediction. In the Greek New Testament, Jesus is called the Eschatos (Revelation 1:17; 2:8; 22:13), meaning the “Last One.” It is from this title for Jesus that we get the term eschatology. Jesus himself is the fulfillment of all history—he is our ultimate hope. That is what we need to know; that is the focus of Bible prophecy. How sad that many of our former colleagues still are obsessed with predicting the end times: “Always learning but never able to come to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).

It’s vital that we orient our study around the Bible’s real message. I believe you will find Gary Deddo’s series on interpreting scripture to be of great help for this. The first installment is posted at https://update.gci.org/2013/04/scripture-gods-gift/. I hope you will read it and share it with others. The second installment will be posted next week.

With love in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach

PS: After seven years as editor of Christian Odyssey, John Halford has asked if he can step aside. John will continue to write and be involved with media projects, but he feels that since Christian Odyssey is now an online publication, it needs an editor who is more familiar with electronic publishing. I have appointed Rick Shallenberger to take his place. Rick worked in our editorial department and was editor of Youth magazine for several years before being hired into the field ministry. Rick will now join our media team on a part-time basis, while continuing to pastor one of our congregations in Cincinnati and serving as a district pastor.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

At this time of year, we celebrate the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ, by which our sins are forgiven and our eternal future is assured. It was the greatest act of love we can imagine—although we can’t fully grasp the depth of that love.

As Paul wrote to the Romans, “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8).

What the Lord God did in Jesus goes far beyond any human standards of love and sacrifice. That is why we find it so hard to accept, without any reservations, the richness of God’s grace. We read that our sins are forgiven, but we feel the need to add an “if.” We understand that God’s love for us is unconditional, and yet we still think there is a “but.” Unconditional love and forgiveness seem too good to be true.

People in Old Testament times didn’t have this problem. The Temple animal sacrifices left no doubt that the removal of sin was a bloody and messy business. But even then, some were able to glimpse that there was more to the forgiveness of sin than slaughtering an animal. David, when confronted with his multi-faceted sin with Bathsheba, pleaded,

Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
(Psalm 51:9-11)

David realized that his outrageous behavior had damaged his relationship with God. He wanted desperately to make it right. However, a visit to the Temple with a sin offering was not enough.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
(Psalm 51:16-17, NIV margin)

David was ahead of his time in glimpsing God’s grace, realizing there was nothing he could do except admit his guilt and ask for forgiveness. As we know, he was forgiven and later, in happier times, he could sing confidently:

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
(Psalm 103:11-12)

The world of David’s day was much less technologically advanced than ours. Most people thought of the heavens as a vast inverted bowl in which the sun, moon and stars moved. In Psalm 103, David used that view of the cosmos as an analogy for the vastness of God’s forgiveness and mercy, which separates our sins from us by an unimaginable distance. That sense of vastness is sometimes blunted in our modern age. I often fly long distances “through the heavens” from east to west and back again. Thus, David’s analogy might seem less impressive. But it shouldn’t. Just last week we were reminded of how vast the cosmos truly is. In 1977, an unmanned spacecraft named Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Kennedy. Its mission was to travel along a trajectory that would take it through our solar system, sending back photographs as it traveled.

Voyager 1 has fulfilled its mission brilliantly. After traveling for 18 months, it sent back stunning pictures of Jupiter. Three years into its mission it gave us the first close-up pictures of the ringed planet Saturn. Now, over 35 years later, Voyager 1 has traveled farther “from east to west” than any other man-made object. It is now over 11 billion miles from earth. Its signals, traveling at the speed of light, take about 18 hours to reach us. It is heading out of our solar system at about 38,000 miles an hour. Last week, scientists were speculating that either it has, or soon will, move beyond the influence of the sun. Its power plant may be able to send us signals for a few more years. But then Voyager will be on its own, hurtling through interstellar space until it comes under the influence of another star in about—wait for it—40,000 years!

The journey of Voyager 1 puts David’s analogy of “east from west’” and “above the heavens” into perspective, doesn’t it? Although the spacecraft has traveled through only a tiny fraction of our cosmos, the distance, even with our modern scientific understanding, is beyond our ability to grasp. Perhaps if David was writing Psalm 103 today, he might put it this way:

For as far as interstellar space reaches away from earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as Voyager has traveled from east to west,
so far has he removed from us our transgressions.

God’s commitment to remove from his memory the guilt and stain of our sins is still greater than anything we humans can imagine. That’s how great God’s love for us is. And always will be. Let’s be thankful for that.

Your brother in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach

PS: With this issue, we have posted Scripture, God’s Gift, the first article in a six-part series entitled Guidelines for Interpreting Scripture by Gary Deddo (the article also is linked under the Church Development heading at upper left). We will be publishing the other articles in the series, one every-other week, over the next three months. I think you will find these articles extremely helpful.

Embracing Incarnational Trinitarian Theology means reviewing and, if necessary, changing many of our ideas, including our approach to Holy Scripture. Gary has spent his career studying and teaching the Bible—bringing to the task a deep love and respect for Scripture as well as his world-class scholarship. As I read the articles, I found myself thinking, “In a few sentences Gary has said what it’s taken me years to learn.” Though we can’t all be professional theologians, this series will help us become “a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). I hope you enjoy the series. Please let me know what you think of it.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Over the next few days, we will be celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus. These are pivotal celebrations because all that we believe and hope for hinge on the events commemorated by Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Some sincere people put great emphasis on getting the details surrounding these events correct. Much has been written about the exact year, or precise date, or precise chronology of Jesus’ arrest, trial, death and resurrection. Though most accept that Jesus was crucified on a Friday, others insist that it was a Wednesday or a Thursday. Some argue over whether Jesus was in the tomb for three days and three nights or just parts of those days. Some believe we should not celebrate the orthodox Christian days at all, insisting that the Old Testament observances are the only correct way to remember Jesus’ sacrifice.

I once thought these details were important and spent far too much time trying to resolve them. I now see that it was time wasted. I don’t mean to suggest that the details are insignificant. The events of Jesus’ last week were carefully orchestrated by God so that prophecies of the Messiah could be fulfilled. However, if we try to establish an exact chronology, some of these questions cannot be resolved definitively, because there is some ambiguity in the scriptural record. However, even if the precise details had been recorded with the attention to chronological detail that we expect today, they really do not matter. What is important is what happened, not when.

If, about 2000 years ago, Jesus the Son of God incarnate, was executed and then later resurrected, the destiny of every human being has been changed forever. If he was not, then, as Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, “Our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14). In that letter, Paul reminded his readers that if indeed Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, “Then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (v. 54). Here Paul was quoting from Isaiah 25:8:

He will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.

That was probably a popular scripture. It is poetic and concise. Had Hallmark been in operation then, they probably would have put the saying on bereavement cards. Paul was showing the Corinthians that it was no mere pious platitude. Because of Jesus, what Isaiah prophesied became reality. Death had in fact been swallowed up in victory and thus Paul could write confidently: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

Death—any death—does have a sting. If a particular death does not affect us personally, it might only be a small sting and the pain doesn’t last long. Tragedies like the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut leave us all hurting for some time. The pain of the death of a loved one goes even deeper.

Our Christian worldview gives us comfort in knowing that there is more to life than what we experience in our mortal bodies. Jesus taught that there is an afterlife and promised that he would go and prepare a place for us. Knowing that death is not the end for our loved ones moderates the terrible pain of loss, so that we need not “sorrow as those who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13, NLV). However, it does not take away the entire ache. We still suffer the loss of not having their companionship and presence with us while we are still alive and they are dead.

This is why death is the enemy, and even though Jesus has conquered this enemy, we still feel some of its sting when a loved one dies or when we see innocent children murdered. Though we shed tears over death, we are reassured in Psalm 56:8 that God is aware of them all: “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle” (ESV); “…list my tears on your scroll—are they not in your record?” (NIV). Whatever the translation, the point is clear: God knows our pain and suffering down to the details and has promised to eventually remove them forever.

I have been pondering the phrase that John wrote in Revelation 21:4: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” Like Paul, John was reminding us of the reality of the promise in Isaiah 25:8. Consider how important that promise is. If God did not wipe away all tears from our eyes, there would be ongoing cause for weeping.

Most certainly, we’d weep over our past sins, the wasted opportunities while we were upon the earth, as well as our acts of unkindness toward others. We would weep much about the old order of things. But God says there will be no more death and the old order has passed away. In the fullness of God’s kingdom, every cause of grief will be removed. In our glorified life, there will be no more death to part loving hearts. There will be no more sorrow of any kind. There will be no more crying for any reason. There will be no more pain of any sort. Instead, there will be fullness of life—a sharing in God’s own kind of eternal light and love.

This is why Jesus allowed himself to be tortured and executed, only to be resurrected shortly thereafter. What he did for us he did freely and with confidence in his heavenly Father. And so we read of him: “Who for the joy set before him, endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2).

The precise chronology of Holy Week is not the important issue (were it important, surely God would have made it clearer). What is important is what Jesus did to fulfill the specific prophecies of the Messiah, like those given by Isaiah. Jesus changed the very nature of death and opened a pathway to our future hope when all things are made new (Revelation 21:5).

That is what Jesus did and that is what we should focus on. Let us remind our congregations of these things as we commemorate the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Your brother in Christ,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Thomas Edison once said, “There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.” My grandfather would have agreed.

Conversations with my grandfather were always entertaining. Although he did not go to college, he was quite smart—he could read and write in seven languages. As a journeyman tool and die maker he often worked with college graduates. Grandpa was astonished that though some of them were graduate engineers who studied calculus, they were unable to set up the tool and die machinery on which they worked. He would say that their years in college made them “educated idiots.”

Some of my relatives worried that Grandpa was dissuading me from going to college. They warned me that he was “old school.” Actually, he encouraged me to pursue higher education, but he did not want me to become an educated idiot.

I did go to college, eventually earning a doctorate. Rather than learning to use machine tools, I learned to use the most valuable tool of all—Holy Scripture. I’m not saying I have it all figured out, but I learned that there are right and wrong ways to read the Bible. Some of this I learned through academic training—so I am not denying the value of that. However, the most important lessons about reading the Bible have come through experience.

I learned that one of the wrong ways to read the Bible is what I call the Robert’s Rules approach. Robert’s Rules as you may know, is the recognized authority governing the conduct of meetings and assemblies according to parliamentary procedure. It covers just about every contingency, allowing a meeting to be conducted with order and fairness. Some people look at the Bible like that. They see it as God’s Rule Book, and believe all the problems of humanity stem from not following those rules.

Of course, the Bible does contain rules. There are commands to wash one another’s feet, to remain isolated for a month after childbirth, to not wear jewelry, to trim one’s beard in only a certain way, and many more. Of course, you can’t keep all these rules even if you can remember them. How many of us greet everyone with a “holy kiss”? How many of us build parapets on our roofs?

All of us are selective about which rules we obey and which we ignore. At some level, we realize that certain rules are more important and applicable across all time and for all people than others. But some who worry about this try to specify exactly what is required so as to avoid violating any of the rules. The problem with that approach is that it leads to losing touch with the heart and character of God, thus failing to see God’s overriding purpose to be in close, loving relationship with his people. That legalistic approach leads to think that a relationship with God can be reduced to a list of rules. Reading the Bible from that perspective is a sure-fire way to miss the point.

Another wrong way to read the Bible is what I call the Nostradamus approach. It presumes that the Bible’s purpose is to give us detailed prophecies of how world events will unfold in the next few years (it’s always “the next few years,” no matter when you live). You take the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, and try to interpret the “signs of the times” from the news of the day. This too leads to missing the point, which is that the purpose of prophecy is to point to Jesus Christ and his work of reconciling all humanity, in every age, to God. The point of prophecy is to help us hope and trust in God, knowing that all of history is in his hands.

Another wrong way to read the Bible is what I call the Rubik’s Cube approach. It sees the Bible as a giant puzzle to be decoded. Just as a Rubik’s Cube has several color cubes that must be twisted and turned until they go together properly, some mistakenly think the Bible should be contorted into systematic topics, such as a divinely approved diet, the only correct “sacred calendar,” or a universal dress code. Some actually take this to the extreme of looking for coded messages buried within the Bible’s text.

Of course, the worst way to read the Bible is to combine these wrong approaches. I need not elaborate—many reading this have personal experience with viewing Holy Scripture through this terribly distorted lens.

God’s story—our story

So how do we correctly read and use the Bible? The key, I believe, is viewing Scripture as an encounter with God in history. We have to understand that the Bible uses many literary devices and genres, with multiple layers and mini-stories that yield a single Grand Story telling us who God is and the relationship he desires with us.

Some of this can be learned academically, and we should value sound scholarship. However, it is not just a case of knowing ancient languages, or being able to ponder and argue profound philosophy. Do that and you run the risk of becoming one of my grandfather’s educated idiots.

What I have come to learn from experience is that to really understand the Bible, I must become a part of the story—seeing God’s story as my story and finding my place in it. The Bible is not just a collection of stories and prophecies from another age. It is about our relationship with God—here and now. It isn’t just a story to read, but a story that we live.

Gary Deddo is preparing a series of articles on how to study and read the Bible from this perspective. We will begin to publish the series here in GCI Weekly Update, beginning after Easter. I think you will find it eye-opening and inspiring.

With love in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

March 14 is Albert Einstein’s birthday. He was born 134 years ago. Einstein has always been a fascinating personality to me. More than a hundred years ago, he wrote a paper describing a radical insight into the nature of light, which turned the conventional physics of that day on its head and led to the development of Quantum Theory. What may be less recognized is the potential impact that Einstein’s ideas had on theology.

Disciplines like physics and chemistry are called “hard sciences.” Not because they are difficult, but because those physical phenomena respond to the scientific method, yielding testable predictions through controlled experiments that can produce accurate and quantifiable data. Disciplines like sociology, political science and theology are less exact, more difficult to quantify and don’t easily yield predictable results outside the experimental environment. So they are sometimes called “soft sciences.”

Einstein showed that hard sciences are not so hard after all. He realized that what were considered established ideas about the nature of matter were too simplistic. Light, for example, behaved in some unfathomable way, as both a wave and a particle. This apparent paradox defied a simple scientific explanation. Einstein said, “What I see in nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility.” The idea of light acting as both a wave and a particle is still a difficult concept to grasp. It is an idea that would seem to belong to a soft science, not physics.

As scientists probe ever further into the realms of the very large and the incomprehensibly small, they have found even more extraordinary paradoxes. Stephen Hawking, a brilliant contemporary theoretical physicist has written, “Quantum physics is a new model of reality that gives us a picture of the universe. It is a picture in which many concepts fundamental to our intuitive understanding of reality no longer have meaning” (The Grand Design). According to physicist Lisa Randall in Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World:

We are poised on the edge of discovery. The biggest and most exciting experiments in particle physics and cosmology are under way and many of the world’s most talented physicists and astronomers are focused on their implications. What scientists find within the next decade could provide clues that will ultimately change our view of the fundamental makeup of matter or even of space itself—and just might provide a more comprehensive picture of the nature of reality.

I find this a fascinating topic to explore. In some ways, it has helped me in my journey to appreciate the triune nature of God. When I see that paradoxes exist in nature, it is not so difficult for me to accept that the nature of the Creator of light would also seem, to my limited human understanding, also somewhat paradoxical.

Albert Einstein was not a “believer” in the traditional sense. Though he considered himself an agnostic, he was a firm critic of atheism. He would have deplored the strident voices of some scientists today who angrily insist that God does not exist. He wrote, “In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for the support of such views.”

Although Einstein did not believe in a personal God, he never missed chapel service at Princeton when prayers were being offered for Jews trapped in the concentration camps. He maintained, “even though the realms of religion and science in themselves are clearly marked off from each other,” there are “strong reciprocal relationships and dependencies as aspirations for truth derive from the religious sphere.” He once explained that “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

Einstein died in 1955. It is not only the hard sciences that owe him a debt of gratitude. When asked how he came to his great new discovery, he said: “I stood before the universe and listened.” He showed that being scientific does not mean making everything understandable with absolute certainty. He demonstrated that great new advances in knowledge come only when we let a reality, far greater than our previous understanding would allow, determine how we are to know it and in humility let it tell us its nature.

In this way, Einstein surely opened the door for some to recognize the legitimacy of the so-called “soft science” of theology; for in theology we stand before a Reality that far exceeds our understanding. But when we listen in humility at the place where God has personally made himself known, we can indeed have real, if not absolutely comprehensive, knowledge of God. And that place is a person, Jesus Christ.

Christian theology is not unscientific and science does not and cannot rule out a reality greater than ourselves—greater than our universe. Doing so would be, well, unscientific. As Einstein wrote:

Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe—a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble.

With love in Christ’s service,

Joseph Tkach