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The Kingdom of God Anthology

The Beginnings of the Kingdom of God

The "Essential Gospel" as I learned it in my classical evangelical upbringing is a theology of what one author calls a theology of “sin management”. For a succinct expression of this kind of theology one only needs peruse the quintessential statement of modern evangelical orthodoxy, the Four Spiritual Laws. Your problem is sin, and insofar as the blood of Jesus atones for sin, the problem is considered solved and it only remains for man to accept it. 

It has become my belief over the few years of my personal spiritual sojourn that such a gospel sells short both the Scriptures and the Glory of God. I prefer, as I believe the Scriptures prefer, to formulate the Gospel not in terms of sin management but in terms of the Kingdom of God. The fact that I am perhaps not all that wide of the mark on this contention is suggested in Scripture by 

• the development of the whole of OT history with a “kingdom” as its central and controlling motif; 

I prefer, as I believe the Scriptures prefer, to formulate the Gospel not in terms of sin management but in terms of the Kingdom of God. 

• the persistent use by Jesus of the Kingdom of God as the anchor of virtually all his teaching; 
• the repeated characterization of the apostles’ teaching in the book of Acts as the “preaching of the Kingdom of God”; 
• the portrayal by Daniel and John of the consummation of the ages as nothing less than the establishment of a “kingdom which shall never end.”

What I mean (or rather, what I take Scripture to mean) by the Kingdom of God in it's grandest manifestation is essentially this: God created the universe, men, and angels as the stage and actors for the display of his glory. Together they comprised his Kingdom in its primeval perfection. The essential feature of this perfection was the uncontested dominion of God over his creatures and the untainted harmony of God with them. This perfection was corrupted by the rebellion of both men and angels. Henceforth God’s dominion would be contested and the harmony between Him and his creatures poisoned. From the Kingdom point of view, all of ensuing history is nothing more nor less than the chronicle of God reclaiming his rightful dominion over creation and restoring harmony with men, with the intention of finally restoring his kingdom so that it displays His glory in more brilliant hues than the original created order ever could have. The Gospel in its most elementary form is thus an appeal to men and women to acquiesce to this intention and act in a manner consistent with its realization.

What this means in practice is that the proclamation of the Gospel begins not with a discussion of sin, but with a vigorous contention for God’s rightful dominion over creation in general and over the hearts of men and women in particular. This contention is rooted in creation, and in the common admission that a craftsman is rightfully master over the work of his hands. The immediate corollary of such an admission of dominion is, of course, a call for the display of attitudes consistent with it - i.e. humility, fear, honor, and esteem. It is worth noting that while the OT insists on this and it is inherent in the very definition of God, such a call is notably lacking in standard Evangelical orthodoxy which has joined to its sin-centricity an inordinate haste to preach faith without preaching the honor that faith presupposes. So it is that this volume of the Anthology begins with the story of creation and a call for men and women to take the sensible step of prostrating themselves before the Creator.

10 - God created the WORLD AND ORDERED IT

In the beginning there was nothing

In the beginning (literally in Kwong, "in the roots of establishing"), we explain that there was nothing - no spirits, no people, no earth, fire or water, no green things, no stars, no sun, and no moon. There was nothing - only the Father, Son, and Spirit existing in the eternal ballet of love which we call the Trinity (which we explained in Book 1, though we don't have a term as such for the trinity in Kwong). 

God created the world

Literally, he created "place" (in the singular) which from a philosophical perspective is an amazing insight for a primitive language like Kwong. We quote Genesis 1:1 (naturally). What is interesting in Genesis 1:1 is that it does not teach creation ex-nihlo. It says nothing about things coming from nothing, and a "simpleminded" (but none too stupid) Kwong person could legitimately conclude from the Genesis 1:1 that God made the heavens and earth out of some junk he found behind the garage. We are obliged to go to Hebrews 11:3 (which we duly translate) to show that in fact creation was ex-nihlo. A man, we explain, will take mud or hay, or wood, work them with steel implements, and with his hands create a mud hut or whatever. God, on the other hand, speaks, and from nothing comes something. 

In the beginning, things were a mess

This point does not figure prominently in standard evangelical orthodoxy (except as part of a theology of the rebellion of Satan and the subsequent devastation of the earth - see Rev 12:7-9) But the writer of Genesis seems very intent on making the point that in the beginning, things were a mess - formless and void and covered with water (verse 2). By doing this he the writer sets the stage for the  "God of Order" and the "God of filling" in the subsequent 6-day account of creation (which seems to assume, incidentally, that the stuff of the universe is already in place.)  In explaining this to the Kwong we say that "the water, dirt, wind, sun, moon, and fire were all mixed up in a terrible mess just like the casserole soups that the Kwong eat with their millet every day." Over and against the chaos below, the picture is completed by the Spirit - with whom the Kwong are already familiar in the first book of the Anthology - hovering over the waters, pondering the disorder, and contemplating by what means the Godhead might make order of chaos. We compare this to a Kwong man pondering a pile of mud he has mixed up and thinking what kind of mud brinks he shall make with it, and what kind of house he will make with those bricks.   

God puts everything in order

The first three days of creation (Genesis 1:3-13) are, as we teach the Kwong, nothing more nor less than God saying "enough!" to the disorder before him. It is a testimony to his power and wisdom that he separates the light from the darkness on the first day, the atmospheric water from the terrestrial water of the sea and rivers in the sea on the second day, the terrestrial water from the soil and rocks on the third day, and then, so lest the land be naked, he covers it with grass and trees, also on the third day. Indeed, the whole notion of God subduing the waters becomes an icon in the Scriptures for God's power to subdue every disorder of the universe (e.g. Psalm 33, 93, and esp. 104) - a theme which culminates in the observation John makes (Rev 21:1) of the new heaven and a new earth where "there was no longer any sea" - and God's victory over every disorder is complete. 

We want the Kwong not just to "know" that God did such and such during these three days (we don't see any use in confusing them with the possibility that a "day" in Hebrew can mean more than 24 hours) but to see something of his attitude in his work, and no more beautiful expression of that is to be found than in Proverbs 8:22-31 (... I was the craftsman at his side filled with delight...) - a passage which we have translated and made considerable use of in the Anthology. 

What shall we say then?  

First, it is fitting and natural that we should worship God for his power. When we as humans undertake a project, we tire of our labors and frequently have to start over from scratch when we "flub up". God never tires in his creative work, and never "flubs up". The implications for having such a tireless, wise God as our God are clear: trust him. We translate Isaiah 40:27-31 (... why do you complain? ... the Lord is the creator... he will not grow tired or weary...) as one of the most beautiful expressions of this truth. 

Second, God is a God of order. He was offended by the disorder of the primeval world and literally "moved heaven and earth" to put it right. If we are to in any measure likewise reflect the character of God it behooves us to maintain order in our homes, in our villages, and in our churches. We conclude with I Cor 14:33 - God is not a God of disorder but of peace.

11 God filled the earth with Good things

Virtually all the commentaries on Genesis observe that the 6 days of creation divide neatly in half, with the first three days describing the ordering of the material of creation and the second three days (days 4,5,6) describing the filling of creation with living things. They also observe that each of the first three days of creation has it's twin in the second three days, so the first day (separation of light and dark) corresponds in some sense to the fourth day (creation of the heavenly lights); the second day (separation of water and air) corresponds to the filling of the water and air with fish and birds on the fifth day; and the separation  of the dry land from the water on the third day corresponds to the filling of the dry land with animals and people on the sixth day. These observations may seem esoteric, but they are so fundamental to the text and so enhance its coherence and beauty that we feel we can no nothing less than convey the events of creation in exactly these terms. So it is, that in this chapter, we come to the second three days of creation. (It is worth noting moreover that these observations suggest that the text of Genesis is essentially a literary text with a theological purpose. The beauty of what God did, and the glory of what kind of God he is - when the creation account is read in this way - far outweighs whatever faint (and from a spiritual standpoint, mostly useless) clues are to be gained about the age of the earth by people who read it  principally or only as a scientific text.) 

Maximum people and minimum people

We begin our study on the "God who fills" with the observation that among Kwong people (and indeed people everywhere) there are two extremes of people (with a lot of average folk in between). You have "maximum" people who go the extra mile in everything - "obsessive compulsive" we call them (no translation for that in Kwong). In Kwongland, as we describe it, they would be the people who, with ten thousand rough, sun dried, mud bricks to shave smooth with a machete (a job that normally takes about 30 seconds for a brick), take instead an Xacto knife and  meticulously shave each one. The suburban equivalent would be mowing your lawn with an Xacto knife and micrometer. That's a maximum person. That, as we shall see, is God.

We all know the minimum person, too. In Kwongland he's the guy who calculates (actually guesses wildly) at the absolute smallest field that will get him by foodwise for the coming year - assuming of course the most wildly optimistic set of circumstances of rainfall etc. In the USA they are the folks who buy lottery tickets with their welfare checks. They are "minimum" people. 

God is a Maximum God 

By the third day, God could have rested on his laurels. He had subdued the disorder, the mess of Gen 1:2 was cleaned up. Strictly speaking, he didn't even have to bother with planting grass and trees on the dry land, but that's not his way. In Genesis 1:14-31 (which we translated naturally enough) God goes way beyond just subduing and ordering. He fills, and he fills, and he fills again to overflowing. He could have made one or two species of animals or fish or birds - and they would have been marvels of the universe, and we likely would have worshiped them, so miraculous they would have seemed to us. But he was not satisfied with only one or two. He made 20,000 species of fish, 9,000 species of birds, 4,000 species of animals, and a million species of insects. He could have given them all the same voice, or the same skin or the same color. But no, each one has his own voice, own color, distinct habits and habitat and so forth. God, we conclude for the Kwong, is a craftsman beyond parallel, who creates beyond reason. He is a Maximum God. 

He is a Maximum God, and he loves life. "Be fruitful and multiply" he commanded each of these creatures. It would have been a marvel if there were only two rhinoceroses in all the world (which, incidentally, there soon will be if poaching keeps going the way it's going) but he wanted lots of rhinoceroses - he loves rhinoceroses, he loves, as Psalm 104 so picturesquely puts it, a sea "teeming with creatures beyond number - living things both large and small."  He loves to create things for absolutely no useful purpose - and then make them beautiful for no reason other than his own pleasure at creating cool things. We point out to the Kwong a silly red bug which comes out after the first rains every year. It's useless - you can't eat it. You can't plow your field with it or feed it to your ox. It doesn't bother anybody. All it does is crawl around - a look really red. Being red doesn't, so far as we can tell, serve any useful purpose. It just makes him pretty. All we can say is that God loves to make cool red bugs. 

If, we conclude, God so loves a world filled with living things of such variety, that says something about how we should treat the world around us. For the Kwong, this has implications (which we do not hesitate to point out) for their habit of shooting anything that moves - even the smallest, meatless bird - and chopping down anything that grows (and then bemoaning the heat of the sun when there's no shade left). For Americans, need we mention the dwindling old growth forests of the Pacific northwest? 

12 Creation ANNOUNCES THE GLORY OF GOD

Creation tells us that God is Good, Wise and Powerful

A craftsman, we remind the Kwong, gains his reputation for quality (or poor) work from the things he has made. And so the reputation of God derives first of all from the things he has made and the way he has made them. In this chapter we bring to the Kwong's attention the power, wisdom and goodness of God as displayed in creation.

Creation displays the power of God

What is beautiful, and uniquely "godish"  about the creation account is that the power of God is localized in his voice. He speaks and things happen. In order to breath life and feeling into the notion of God's powerful word, we translated Psalm 29 (The voice of the Lord is over the waters. The God of glory thunders...), which compares the power of voice of God to the power of a thunderstorm coming off the Mediterranean and crossing the hills of Palestine.  As Kwongland is lashed by exceptionally violent thunderstorms each July and August, the imagery is appreciated by the Kwong. 

Creation displays the wisdom of God

Six times during the creation account God says that his labors are "good" and the seventh time he exclaims that his work is "very good". Only an exceedingly  wise God could create fish which swim in water without drowning and birds which fly without falling. We conclude this section with the exclamation of the Psalmist (104:24) "How many are your works oh Lord! In wisdom you made them all...

Our daily bread shows us the goodness of God

Day after day, year after year the rain falls and the crops grow and we are fed and nourished, and we know thus that God is good to us. We conclude this section with Acts 14:17 where Paul tells the men of Lystra "He has shown you kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons, etc."

Everything bears witness of the glory of God to men and women 

We summarize this chapter with the conclusion that everything God has made shows forth his glory to all the peoples of the earth. The classic passage in this regard is, of course, Psalm 19 which we translated in part: "The heavens declare the glory of God..." Every person of every tribe hears and understands the language of the heavens, and we conclude therefore that men of every generation and every place are without excuse in their obligation to honor the God of heaven. We quote Romans 1:20 (Gods eternal power and divine nature have been understood ... so that men are without excuse), but point out as the ensuing verses of Romans 1 do, that "though they knew God they failed to glorify him as God" and ended up in the absurd position of worshiping created things instead of the creator. And so the appeal of God to the Kwong, which we take from Revelation 14:7 is simply to turn from "worthless things", and "worship Him who made the heavens, the earth and the springs of water." Indeed these verses and this appeal form the core of almost every evangelistic sermon we preach in Kwongland. 

What Psalm 19 and Romans 1 seem to suggest is that the created order is the only universal, concrete "witness" or "proof" offered by God to man. Man, it seems, is called to respond to this proof, however inconclusive or incomplete it may seem to be, and insofar as he does or does not do so, is rewarded by a heart disposed to listen to the revelation of Scripture or a hardening against it. It seems impossible on the face of these Scriptures for a person to go anywhere at all spiritually without first passing through the gates of recognition of the the divine origins of created order. It is the practical application of Jesus'  assertion that only those who have will be given more, and those who do not have will lose what little they do have - spoken, as it was, in the context of people who "people whose hearts had become calloused." 

13 God rejoiced over his creation and so should we 

God rejoices over his creation

This chapter is essentially a takeoff on the seventh day. The commentaries tell us that the verb in Genesis 2:1-2 which is normally translated "rest" actually is simply "to cease". The spin we take on this ceasing - influenced by the fact that God blessed and sanctified the day of his ceasing - is that God sat back, contemplated his work, and rejoiced in it. By way of illustration, we point out to the Kwong that when an artisan sits back and contemplates his own work, what he is really doing is rejoicing in the worker - himself in this case. And so for God. If, as we propose in these lessons, God was rejoicing over the work of his hands on the seventh day, then he was in effect rejoicing over himself - an activity entirely consistent with what we saw of his attitude towards his own glory back in Book 1. Such an understanding of the seventh day sets the precedent for us to rejoice in God and the work of his hands on the seventh day (as opposed to just "resting" on the seventh day). 

God had, we point out to the Kwong,  good reason to rejoice over his creation. It was "good" and even "very good." It was not just that people didn't sin and that there were no devils. It was that there was a cosmic goodness in the whole of creation. There were none of the other evils in the world – no sickness, no death, no famines, no thorns, no scorpions or mosquitoes (or at least scorpions and mosquitoes that didn't or wouldn't sting). The Kwong really like this part, because almost everything that grows or moves in Kwongland does inflict injury. The final element of this goodness was the essential harmony that existed between the Creator and the created.

We should rejoice over creation as well

The inevitable conclusion we must draw with respect to creation is to rejoice in it - a conclusion which for the centuries following the reformation (but alas, no longer) rightly provided a powerful and God glorifying impetus behind scientific inquiry. We need to study it, ponder it, cherish it, and rejoice in the wisdom, power, and goodness of the God who made it. The Kwong should (as we suggest) marvel that the birds fly and that the fish don't drown. They should enjoy the beauty of the birds and wonder how the gazelle runs and how the wild cat gives birth. (Someday we will expand on this by translating Job 38 and 39). Americans should marvel at the beauty of DNA, ponder the mysteries of the sub-atomic world and peer into the depths of space - and worship, for this is what God did. We conclude this chapter with an annotated translation of the most beautiful expression in Scripture of this truth - Psalm 104. 

14 Because he made the earth, God is King of it

He who makes a thing is it's master

It is a basic to the fabric of the universe - there is a prerogative unique to the maker of a thing. The maker of a clay jar is the jar's master unless and until he cedes it to another person by sale or as a gift. Lordship is inherent in creation. 

God made the world and is it's Lord in consequence

God makes - and this is utterly crucial to a theology of the Kingdom such as we are proposing - just such a claim of Lordship over the universe and everything in it. He is lord over every every tree, every gazelle, every man, every woman, and every star because he made them. There is nothing which is that he did not make, and hence nothing over which he does not say "mine". We translate one of many great expressions in Scripture of this truth, Psalm 24:1-2 (The earth is the Lords, and everything in it... for he founded it..) The conclusion for humans is obvious - acknowledge the rightful dominion of God over the them. Psalm 95 draws just such a conclusion (vs 6 - Come let us bow down in worship...) after describing in expansive terms the extent of Gods dominion (vs 3-4 - the mountain peaks, the depths of the earth, the sea, the dry land ... for he made them). 

God does what he please because he is Lord

One of the beauties of taking the kind of approach to theology that we have taken in the Anthology is that doctrines which tend otherwise to be disconnected from the rest of theology - not to speak of life - arise organically and unexpectedly from the thread of Kingdom history. The doctrine of the sovereignty of God is just such a doctrine. Once launched on the notion of a Creator-Master, it is scarcely possible to steer clear of truth that the maker of a thing can, quite literally, do anything he pleases with his creation, He can make it the way he wants, change it at will, or destroy it - no matter how beautiful or precious it might seem to someone else. No one can ask the maker of a thing "why are you doing that?" And so the Scriptures contend for God. We translated Psalm 135:5-6 (the Lord does whatever he pleases...) and the confession of Nebuchanezzar in Daniel 4:31-32 (... all the peoples are regarded as nothing... he does as he pleases... no one can say to him "what have you done?"). We also translated Psalm 33:10-11 (he foils the plans of the nations... but he plans of the Lord stand firm forever.).

What shall we say to all this? Worship God!

It has snuck up on us and here it is before us - the first great ground of God's claim on our allegiance and the first great motive of humans to worship. (The second and final one is awaits the cross.) It is a claim and a motive which arise not from some concocted religious orthodoxy, but from the very fabric of the universe. It arises from the basic distinction between creator and created - a distinction that even the simplest Kwong farmer understands.  Revelation 4:11 is the most concise expression of this distinction and its implications. Our translation of it into Kwong reads something like this: "Yes, Lord God, you, are worthy of people's worship;  you are worthy of people's honor, and power to rule over the earth should be in your hands because you made everything. It was by your will that they were made, and it is by your will that they live today."

Unfortunately, even though that simple Kwong farmer understands this, he still struggles with it. He was brought up to believe that all the little gods of the Kwong also have a claim on his allegiance and worship. Why is their claim on his attention in any way inferior to God's? Israel struggled with the same question and Jeremiah answered it (10:11-13) both for Israel and for the Kwong. "The Lord is the true God,"  he said, "but these gods did not make the heavens and the earth and will perish." Creation and lordship are inextricably entwined, and where there is no claim to creation, there is no just claim on allegiance.

What shall we say then? Honor God!

The fitting response to Lordship is "honor" and "allegiance." It remains then to define what we mean by such notions - a crucial task since the theology of the Kingdom presupposes such attitudes at every turn, and contends that such a response precedes even faith itself. Breathing life in these words in Kwongland is not difficult. We need only evoke the relationship between a young person and a village elder and the term "honor" becomes pregnant with meaning. If you are a young person, "honoring" your father or a village elder means 

• That you confess openly that he is "big" and you are "small"
• That you say "yes" to his will at the expense, if need be, to your own.
• That you seek his esteem in the eyes of others, and defend it when necessary
• That you think highly of him
• That you think affectionately of him

The parallels with our relationship to God are obvious, and it is for this reason that Scripture exhorts us:

• Bow down before him - for you bowing you confess that he is great and you are small. It is the acknowledgement that he is king. 
• Keep his law and his precepts - for they are the expression of his will and in doing so you confess that his will is preeminent over your will. 
• Declare his glory and say among the nations "the Lord reigns", for in doing so you are zealous for his esteem and honor in the eyes of others.
• Trust in him, for in trusting you say implicitly "yes he is good to me" and moreover, "yes, his power and wisdom are sufficient to bring about that goodness for me." There is no higher esteem one can have for another.
• Love him, for there is no greater affection for another.

These attitudes are what honor is about. Scriptures are full of them, because they are the first and most basic attitude of creatures towards their creator. It is with this theme of honor, we tell the Kwong, that we must begin our appeal to unbelievers, and not with Christ and faith (which must come, but later). A person who either doesn't understand, or is unwilling to accept the proper relationship between creature and creator is in no wise ready to either understand or accept the notion of faith in in Christ for the forgiveness of sins. We conclude this section with a verse from Malachai (1:6) which says "A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If I am a father (as you all say) where is the honor due me? If I am a master (which creation demands) then where is the respect due me? 

15 All things come from his hands are are his

This chapter, which has to do with tithing and thanksgiving, among other things,  is seemingly completely out of place in the development of the Anthology. In fact, we never intended to include such a lesson at this point, but the natural evolution of the lessons seemed to demand it. It is another example of seemingly disconnected themes of Scripture finding of their own accord a natural unity in the matrix of the Kingdom - if we let them. And for the Kwong, this issue of material possessions in general, and tithing in particular is crucial. They are poor, and unfortunately, can't get over dwelling on their poorness and so excuse themselves from being generous towards their churches or pastors - an attitude which is crippling the development of the Kwong church. 

If all that we have is Gods, then it is fitting to thank him for it.

We begin this section by pointing out the obvious - that if everything is made by God, and he is master of everything thereby, then he is also creator and master of everything we call our own. All that we have is his, and only "ours" insofar as God entrusts it to us. 

This being the case, it is fitting that we should give daily thanksgiving to God. In fact, failure to do so is the first step in the slide into paganism and darkness, as Romans 1:21 suggests (...they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks... and their hearts were darkened.). We offer the Kwong Psalm 118:28-29 as the positive alternative of joyful, heartfelt gratitude to God for his goodness to us. (You are my God and I will give you thanks...)

All things are Gods, but he has no need of any of it. 

The little Gods of the Kwong are perennially in need of chickens, goats, money, etc. Actually the men who style themselves as priests of these little gods seem to make most use of the goods, but all in the name of the little gods. They are, after all, hungry gods. But God is not like the little gods. He has no need of our gifts and we would do well not to pat ourselves on the back when we do return to him a token of what he has given us. Psalm 50:7-13 expresses this beautifully: "I have no need of a bull... every animal of the forest is mine...do I eat the flesh of bulls?"  A more fitting attitude towards God with respect to the things he has bestowed upon us is expressed in the following verses (14-15) "... sacrifice thank offerings... call upon me in the day of trouble." 

When we give to God, we say "thanks" and acknowledge it's giver.

We encourage, therefore, the Kwong to give of their belongings, to give generously, and to give cheerfully. We point out that when we fail to give to God, or when we are stingy, it is tantamount to saying:

• What you have given me, oh God, is measly, and I am not satisfied. 
• What I have given you is actually mine and you, oh God should be suitably grateful to me for it.

On the other hand, when we give of our belongings to God with a glad heart, we say, in effect:

• Thankyou for what you have given me
• All that I have is from your hands, and belongs to you. I will not consider them inherently mine.

When King David and his men contributed generously to the future construction of the temple, they exemplified the kind of God-glorifying, humble, unselfish attitudes towards possessions we wish the Kwong would develop - attitudes rooted in a clear understanding of creation and lordship. These attitudes are recorded for us in the prayer David prayed in 1 Chronicles 29:11-14 - a prayer which which we have translated for the Kwong in hopes that as the Spirit works in them, they too will exhibit such attitudes towards their possessions. The prayer reads in part: "wealth and honor come from you, you are the ruler of all things...but who are we that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you and we have given only what comes from your hand."

16. We can trust the God who made all things 

God knows us intimately, and he knows our future.

The internal combustion engines which drive the old Mercedes market trucks which come through Kwongland during certain times of year are a complete mystery to the Kwong (and to me too, as far as that goes). But the men who designed and built those engines in Germany know precisely how they work. And so it is with the God who made us. By virtue of having made us, he knows everything there is to know about us - which is, of course, the whole point of Psalm 139, which we translate for the Kwong "...you created my inmost being... " And because he made us knows what will befall us, be it sickness, death, or hunger. Nothing takes him by surprise, which is what verse 16 of Ps 139 tells us: "all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."  

If God knows us thus, let us trust him.

We may trust God because he does know us and our future so intimately. This, taken together with the essential goodness of his disposition towards us and his wisdom to weave the fabric of our lives so as to bring good out of pain means we are in very good hands. This is what Jeremiah intended us to understand in 29:11: "I know the plans I have for you, plans for good, and not for evil..." And his power is more than adequate to bring about his good plan. He will not be confounded by circumstances - something that Israel, the Kwong, and most of us wonder about when things aren't going the way we expected. Such doubts on Israel's part called forth a gentle rebuke from God, recorded in Isaiah 40:27-31: "Why do you complain saying 'our way is hidden from the Lord...Have you not heard that he is the creator of the ends of the earth? ... those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar on wings like eagles, etc..." 

If God knows us thus, do not argue with him

Sometimes, we remind the Kwong, God's plan for us doesn't please us. We will go hungry (something that happens almost every year for the Kwong), our children will die (there is virtually no Kwong family which has not buried at least one child), and the natural tendency is to accuse God of incompetence or or outright maliciousness. At such a time - and we have all been there - we need to remember that God is creator, and as creator he is also master. Even as the the craftsman can do as he pleases with his handiwork, so God can do as he pleases with us. This is the substance of God's curse pronounced on such people in Isaiah 45:9-12 "Who to him who quarrels with his Maker... does the clay say to the potter 'what are you making' or ' you klutz'? Do you question me? ... It is I who made the earth...." 

Let us rather remind ourselves that the suffering and hardship which God sovereignly brings our way are part of his perfect plan for us. Let us find encouragement in the essential goodness of God for us. This is the message of Lamentations 3:31-33, 38: "...Though he brings grief, he will show compassion... is it not from from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?" 

17. God Created Man and Woman in his image

At this point in the lessons we have more or less exhausted the implications inherent in the whole notion of creation. As I hope has been clear, these implications are considerable and they have knock-on effects even in such areas as evangelism and the way we convert people. We turn thus to the origins of man, which we introduce to the Kwong, appropriately enough with the translation of Genesis 1:26-28. Translating the ideas of "image" and "likeness" in this passage presented some interesting challenges. After several false starts that implied, among other things, deity for man, we settled on we word which is used variously for the shadow of a person and for the image of a person in a photograph. Unfortunately, while this word seemed ideal for translating the idea of "image", it is also the word used to refer to a ghost or phantom. In fact, this was the term they used for the Holy Spirit until we obliged them to change it to something more suitable (the Kwong term for breath or life). The upshot is that in this part of the Anthology we must explicitly disassociate our use of the Kwong term for "image" from the old word for Holy Spirit. 

Terminology aside, the notion of "image" or "likeness" needs explanation. This we attempt for the Kwong along the following line. Insofar as wisdom, power, and goodness goes, man is quite literally but a shadow of God. But insofar as man is "soulish", he very much resembles God, which is what one might well expect since it was into man that God breathed his own breath. He did this, we explain, so man would be, as it were, of the same "species" as God, which is to say, able to communicate on the same level, perceive glory in the same way, emote in the same terms, and finally (and tragically, to an extent) know good and evil in the same way. (At this point I was sorely tempted to identify the breath of God with the Holy Spirit. There is some real theological elegance in the idea, but it would seem to be going further than the text warrants.)

We expand on this idea of man being of the same species as God with a parable for the Kwong: “A kitten knows another cat’s voice but not that of a cow and a dog knows another dog’s voice, but not that of a donkey, because each kind of creature has it’s own kind of “breath”, so that it only communicates with another creature of the same kind of breath (that is, spirit). And so God, to make a creature who hears his voice breathes his own breath into it.”  We add at this point the observation (which will be essential in later lessons) that man was in perfect communion with God. We know at the very least that man heard God with his ears, which is more than we can say for us now. Whether he actually saw something with his eyes is difficult to say.

It is impossible to speak or write of these things without being filled with a profound sense of wonder. The Biblical vision of man is truly an exalted one - and a humbling one. That God should share his divine breath with mere mortals is a blessing for which no superlative is adequate. David the psalmist was filled with just such a sense of wonder when he penned Psalm 8, part of which we translate for the Kwong at this point as a proper expression of our attitude regarding these things: "When I consider the stars, etc, what is man that you are mindful of him? (yet) you made him a little lower than the angels and you crowned him with glory and honor."

What shall we say to these things?

We were astonished when we began to consider the far-reaching social implications of this doctrine. It is yet another case of seemingly discontinuous facets of Christian doctrine and practice emerging organically in the most unexpected places when given the chance by a Biblical (as opposed to systematic) theology such as our Kingdom of God anthology. We identified eight such implications which we teach the Kwong, and which we summarize as "eight ways in which the the "tradition" of Scripture is diametrically opposed to the "tradition" of the Kwong." (We put it in terms of tradition because they are prone to appeal to tradition, and any appeal to tradition is ipso-facto unassailable by any argument to the contrary. Tradition just "is", and that is that. We want Scripture to take on the status of "unassailable tradition" within the Kwong church. Interestingly enough, the term for "tradition" is also the term for "law" - which is how Israel referred to their unassailable tradition.) These eight implications derived from the teaching that man bears the image of God are then:

• The people of Christ reject the tradition of the world which despises people who are from a different tribe, or handicapped, or poor, or worthless, or your enemy.  The tradition of God says that when you scorn another person, you scorn God, because that person was made in the image of God. It is thus that the people of Christ reject the habit in Africa whereby you always favor those of your own tribe and suppress those of other tribes. 
• The people of Christ do not show favoritism. Whether it is a rich person, or a powerful person, or a pastor (they have a real hard time with that one - a pastor is a king),  the people of Christ do not honor them  more than they honor the poor person, or the widow. In the eyes of the people of Christ, the esteem and honor of all is precisely equal because all are equally made in the image of God. James 2:1-13 (Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring...)
• The people of Christ reject the tradition of the world which despises women (and despise is not too strong of a word for what we see even among the Christians in Kwongland). We declare that every woman is every bit made in the image of God as any man, and in that respect is in no wise inferior to man. As being made in the image of God, they are a thing of glory, and it behooves men to honor them. The men of Christ reject the tradition of the world (read: Kwong) which says that women are shameful, and condones beating them (which they do a lot), and considers them stupid. For such behavior is nothing less than the scorning and beating of one who bears the image of the living God. When your wife is sick and you have money, but instead of taking her to the clinic, you go to the market and buy new parts for your bicycle (the equivalent of going to Best Buy and coming home with a big screen TV), you declare, in effect, that your bicycle is a thing of greater worth and greater beauty than the image of God.
• The people of Christ reject slavery - whether that of the white people who in centuries past bought and sold men like animals, or the Arabs who do so even today (in Sudan - and there are old men in Kwongland whose fathers lived under the threat of Arab slavery until the French suppressed it in the early 1900's).  To make merchandise of men and women thus (in Kwongland the men were castrated, and many died in the process, and the women were made concubines) is to make merchandise of the image of God himself. But the value of the image of God exceeds any price. To buy and sell people is to blaspheme God. 
• The people of Christ declare that to kill another person or to kill yourself is to despise a thing that God has made. It is as if to say that God is an inept craftsman, and that his image breathed into that person is of no value.
• The people of Christ help the poor, the powerless, the lame, the blind, the sick, and the foreigner. Why do they help them? Because each of them is made in the image of God. It is for this reason that Jesus said in Matthew 10:42 "If you give a cup of cold water to one of the least of these in my name..." and the wise man wrote in Proverbs 14:31 "He who oppresses the poor despises He who made them, but he who has mercy on them honors God."
• The people of Christ spare no effort that the people of the world be saved by the blood of Jesus, for to save one of these people is to save, as it were, the image of God - a thing of inestimable value. 
• And finally, we can hope in God and believe that he will do us good when we call upon him in our distress with a pure heart. We may believe that he will hear and will answer because he will not despise a creature which he has made, and on which he has stamped his image. We translate here an extraordinary verse, Isaiah 57:16, which reads in Kwong something like this: I can not accuse these people forever, nor can I always be angry with them. Otherwise, they will get discouraged - but they are my creation".  

18. God blessed the Man and the Woman 

The overwhelming sense one gets in the account of God’s creation of man is one of lavish grace and kindness. God just piles one blessing after another on the peculiar new creature he has made. In this lesson we try to convey something of this graciousness and generosity to the Kwong. We have already considered the first grace, which exceeds them all, which was the bestowing on man of the image of God. In this chapter we consider four other blessings God bestowed on the first man and woman, and in a more limited sense, on us to this day. We introduce these blessings to the Kwong by setting them against backdrop of God's goodness, and God's intention that he should, right from the start be known as a good and generous God - facets, as we have seen, of his glory. The four blessings we consider are 1) the blessing of a good home; 2) the blessing of being man and wife; 3) the blessing of being made rulers of all creation; and 4) the (mixed) blessing of a law. 

The first blessing was as fine a dwelling place as anyone could imagine - four rivers, and abundant trees in a lovely garden. (Unfortunately, the word for “garden” carried over years ago into Kwong from another language carries with it the unpleasant idea of a farmers’ field - and a flooded, mucky one at that - which would not exactly be a suitable place to live. This was the word the guys initially chose for the Garden of Eden! Another word referring to a certain kind of relatively lush palm-covered geological feature that rises above the flooded “gardens” of Kwongland was chosen as a more appropriate term.) 

We make much of the oft-neglected tree of life so that it’s significance in Revelation some 60 lessons later will be the more poignant. The point of the tree seems to be that even in Eden, Adam and Eve were not “alive” in some autonomous sense - they depended on God to give them their daily “life” ration. Oh how we need to remember that!

God gave man a law to keep

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is presented in this lesson as a simple test of honor and worship. If there were no law, however trivial, “honor” would be a meaningless category in the relationship between God and man. The law of the tree established a vertical order in the relationship, and the keeping of the law was a nod of assent by the man to that order. That nod of assent is what we call “honor” and ought still to be the basis of our relationship to God. (I would suggest that faith, the other candidate for the distinction, is really a kind of honor - indeed the ultimate honor, or as I have put it here, the ultimate nod of assent.)

God entrusted man with his kingdom

The final grace piled on all the others was “to rule over the birds of the air, etc...” To bring the enormity of this home to the Kwong, we cite the example of a little village bloke being entrusted with some grave responsibility by the governor of our region. Such a confidence would engender a tremendous sense of honor and allegiance on the part of the poor country boy so honored. And so it ought for us who have been entrusted with the whole world. (When I preach on this passage, I hasten to point out its implications vis-a-vis what we would call in the West “a keen sense of environmental consciousness” - something otherwise entirely lacking in Africa where the modus operandi is “If it grows, chop it down; if it moves, shoot it.”)

What shall we say to these things?

The first point we make is that the world we read about in Genesis 1 and 2, and not the world we experience in 2002, is normative for human existence. We need to remember that the world of today is abnormal. God did not make a screwed up universe. We draw attention to the repeated assertion that the world God made “was good” and this is a reflection on the God who made it.

The second point is that God’s intention is that we live in communion with him. It was not his design that we should live with a “sky of brass” separating him from us.

The consequence of both these points is that praise and worship should well up inside us - because he has shared with us his own “breath” (and now the Holy Spirit as well); because he has deigned to confer on us the governance of his world; and finally, because it is abundantly clear in all of this that God intends good for the men and women he has made, however mucked-up the state of affairs we find ourselves in now.

To conclude this section we translate Nehemiah 9:6 (You alone are the Lord, you made the heavens... you give life to everything... the multitudes worship you) and Psalm 95:3-7 (the Lord is the great king above all gods...come let us kneel down before our Maker...) as testimony to the unassailable sovereignty of God over creation, including the devils and angels.

11 The angels

God is part of Kwong traditional religion. In an amazing feat of sovereign grace God has preserved the knowledge of himself among the Kwong, even though the prominence of the little gods of this tree or that pond far outstrip that of God in their daily lives. This being the case, we are obliged as missionaries to tackle the problem of these little gods head-on. In fact, these little gods should properly be called demons. This chapter lays the groundwork for a proper Biblical understanding of demons with an explanation of their origins – as good angels, made by God.

God made the angels

Psalm 148:2-5 sort of obliquely (by way of Hebrew parallelism) makes the point that angels are creatures, and not self-existent beings.

What are angels like?

There are lots of them (Rev 5:11); they are powerful (2 Peter 2:11); they are not flesh and blood (Luke 24:39); they are divided into ranks (Jude 9, Daniel 10:13, Eph 1:21). I personally think that the recent preoccupation with territorial spirits is quite unnecessary and a distraction and so I teach none of that. We do however tell the stories of Balaam and his donkey and of Elisha and his servant to underline the reality of good angels. These two stories are invariably the high point of the lesson. This lesson also describes their “jobs” - i.e. to convey messages, to protect etc.

What shall we say to all this?

Insofar as traditional Kwong beliefs were left to run their course, they would probably worship or at least pray to angels. So, we conclude with Revelation 19:10 where the angel rebukes John for bowing before him and then solemnly reminds him to “worship God.”

13 The rebellion of Satan

At the beginning of this lesson, we recapitulate the absolute purity of God’s newly created kingdom, and of the harmony between all that he made and himself, including the angels and man.

In the beginning, Satan was pure but then rebelled

Here we translate and cite Ezekiel 28:12-15 (you were a model of perfection...you were blameless until wickedness was found in you). To be honest, I had my grave doubts as to the exegetical legitimacy of using this passage and the one from Isaiah 14:12-14 (How you have fallen from heaven, oh morning star...) as a description of the rebellion of Satan. However, after several months back in 1998 of flip-flopping on the issue, and some encouragement from otherwise circumspect commentators, I decided to treat these passages as referring to Satan, even though on the surface they refer to the cities of Tyre and Babylon.  Names mean a lot in Kwongland, so we make use of the (admittedly dubious) name from the Vulgate of “Lucifer” or “Morning Star” from Isaiah 14 for the pre-rebellion version of Satan.  Taking a few liberties like this makes the telling of the story go a lot smoother. We conclude this section with the changing of his name from Lucifer to the list of names cited in Revelation 12:9 - dragon, the serpent, devil, and Satan.

Satan usurped the loyalties of one third of the angels

We get the one-third from Revelation 12:4 (his tail swept a third of the stars...), and we translated Jude 6 to show that they “left their assigned places”.

These angels are the demons among us now.

Here at last is the real motive behind the earlier chapter on angels and this chapter on the rebellion of Satan - to explain the origins of the evil spirits which play such an ubiquitous role in the lives of the Kwong. The point is simple: these demons were made by God - they are in no wise equal to him. They were made good and then revolted (we do not use the much weaker word “fall” or “fallen” , as such a term suggests in Kwong a kind of inevitability to the wrongdoing that in some sense absolves one of culpability) and became God’s enemies. If you honor them with your chickens, you honor God’s enemy thereby, and provoke his wrath.

14 The rebellion of man

The first section of this chapter is simply the text, in Kwong, from Genesis 3.

Satan persuaded Adam and Eve

We lay out a four-step process that Satan used in usurping the loyalty of Adam and Eve for God, and hope by doing so, to show that it is the same four-step process Satan still employs today.

• 1. Satan presents himself as wise. He chose to “incarnate” himself as the wisest of the animals. (Of course it wouldn’t do to look stupid, so that kind of ruled out, for instance, the cow.) Satan’s ideas always seem wise on first glance.

• 2. Satan begins to lay out his case by suggesting doubt in what God says “Did God really say ....”

• 3. Then, following a just retort from Eve, Satan ups the ante with a bald-faced lie. “You will not surely die...”

• 4. And finally, in the supreme blasphemy, Satan openly calls into question the integrity and good faith of God “God knows that when you eat...” or   “He's just a selfish old ogre who doesn’t want you to enjoy....”

The second and fourth steps are crucial, because they epitomize the essence of sin - calling into question God’s very character - doubting his wisdom, calling into question his goodness, and denigrating his power. I regard it as essential that the Kwong understand that this is the essence of our offence against God, and not just the transgression of some arbitrary rules. When they understand this, I hope that the necessity of honoring God by the exact contrary of such doubt - that is by faith, trust, and confidence - should be apparent. Unfortunately, I fear that for the Kwong, as for the evangelical circles in which I grew up, “faith” is at best an arbitrary hoop we jump through that bears no intrinsic relationship to the nature of our offence. Nothing could be further from the truth.

We are guilty too.

In a primitive society like the Kwong, they automatically relegate this story to ancient history, unless we make the point explicit that it’s not just ancient history - each of us bears the same guilt and shame before God today. I don’t go into the imputation of Adam’s sin as such (it’s pretty heavy stuff even for seminary students) but that’s what’s behind this section.

What shall we say then?

Sin is not just the transgression of rules - it is a personal offence against a would-be friend characterized by calling his character into question. Reversal of this attitude (that is, faith, trust, confidence) is the only means of restoring the relationship (and shedding a lot of blood to atone for the damage done in the mean-time.)

In order to bring the question of doubt home to the Kwong, we explain it thus: We think that we should be able to have such and such, but God has not given us the wherewithal obtain it - be it goods, or a woman, or the praise of men - to take the three biggies. We doubt God’s wisdom in refusing us, or maybe we question his goodness in withholding it, or his power to provide it, so we steal or, if it is a woman, rape her, or in the case of praise, provide it ourselves. We conclude this section by pointing out that when we try to provide these things for ourselves in spite of God, we are declaring ourselves to be wiser than God, which is to say we make ourselves out to be like God, which was Lucifer’s idea. 

15 Death is the consequence of rebellion

The anger of God over man

The principle verses we employ here are Ephesians 5:6 (because of such things God’s wrath comes on those who are disobedient) and Romans 1:18 (the wrath of God is being revealed....). We make the connection between rebellion and death using that old standby Romans 6:23a (the wages of sin...), and Genesis 3:19 (from dust you came, to dust you return).

However, that’s not the end of the story. Kwong people ask an obvious question that more people should ask: why didn’t Adam and Eve die? The New Tribes material has an interesting illustration which we employ - when a tree is cut down, the leaves don’t wilt for the first day or two. They keep on with the appearance of living before finally withering and dying. Adam and Eve were like the leaves of such a tree - the root of life was cut, and it was only a matter of time before they withered.

God forbids to them the tree of life.

In this section we draw the Kwong’s attention to the The Tree of Life - the “other” tree that we typically gloss over in our Bible lessons. It seems a good inference that Adam and Eve ate of this tree regularly, as there were no stipulations recorded to the contrary. We once again adopt the New Tribes spin on it - that the eating of this fruit was a sign to Adam and Eve that their life even in the garden came from God. It was, as it were, their daily ration of Life from the hand of God. They were, of course, forbidden after the rebellion to eat from this tree (Genesis 3:22-4, which we quote here). This is not merely prosaic to the history of the fall as it is a motif, which will make reappearance in paradise in association with the water of life in Rev 22. We try as much as possible to exploit such overarching motifs wherever possible in the interests of giving maximal coherence to the Kingdom story.

Incidentally, I would point out that there is a very intriguing association in Scripture between the Holy Spirit and the “water of life” (see especially Jn 7:38,39 - ... streams living water will flow from within him. By this he meant the HS...), and indeed with “life” in general. In the final chapters of Revelation, the Holy Spirit drops from the stage, but you have the “tree of life” and the “water of life” making an appearance. Granted that the tree (both in Genesis and Revelation) is probably figurative for something, I can’t help but wonder whether that “something” might be the Holy Spirit.

What shall we say to this?

We make the point that God showed Adam and Eve much mercy in not wiping them out immediately. We ask the question “If God wiped them out, who would be left to turn to him and submit to him?” (which is the point the psalmist made.)

16 What happened after the rebellion

It must be said that in our traditional evangelical theologies, we dwell heavily on the forensic consequence of the rebellion - i.e. guilt, wrath, and death. In a way this is appropriate since it represents the most intractable of all the consequences of the fall - which is why the entire previous chapter was devoted to it. However, to stop with the forensic consequences, which is what a theology of sin management tends to do, is to underestimate the breadth and seriousness of the curse that fell on man and the universe after the fall - not to speak of overlooking the one very good explanation man has for all the pain and suffering in the world. A theology of the Kingdom accommodates such a comprehensive catalog of consequences very neatly, and indeed, demands it. In the present chapter we try to enumerate some of them.

People’s minds are all messed up (“depraved” as they say)

We include the text of Ephesians 4:17b -18 (... futility of thinking... darkened in understanding... ignorance... hardened hearts...) as a pretty vivid statement of what “messed up” really means. As a classic example of how a messed up mind works, we quote Paul’s “do what I don’t want to do” passage (Romans 7:15). We point out that if there is any doubt as to this observation, one only needs to consider people’s behavior to settle the case.

Life became difficult

We take the unembellished text from Genesis 3:16-19 just the way it is. The women here give birth on average 8 to 10 times in their lives, and the pain is a constant reminder of the fall. Likewise, the task of wrestling food from the ground on the edges of the Sahara desert make verses 17-19 only too poignant to the men. “Average” agriculture here is simply murderous - every square inch is tilled with a hand-held hoe. “Advanced” agriculture here is simply the addition of draft animals (usually oxen) to the equation. “By the sweat of your brow” speaks volumes.

The animals and plants became bad

We infer that before the fall, scorpions (plentiful here) did not sting, and mosquitoes did not carry malaria, and maybe didn’t poke at all. It is clear from the text that carnivores ate grass.  It is likewise clear from Genesis 3:18 (which we quote) that after the rebellion noxious weeds became a problem. Taken all together, we have a good summary of the ecological mess the world is in even without our aiding and abetting it. We quote Romans 8:20-21 (creation was subjected to frustration...) as a summary of the mess (and a very difficult passage to translate as it turns out.)

The world became the kingdom of Satan

In a “Kingdom of God” anthology, it is a bit ironic to talk of the world becoming the kingdom of Satan. We point out that indeed, so long as people honor Satan by doing his will (i.e. evil) they have effectively made him “king”. We quote 1 John 3:8, 10 (he who does evil is of the devil... anyone who does not do right is not a child of God...) to show how this works. We then allude to Colossians 1:13 (he has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness...) and point out that three times Jesus refers to Satan as the “Prince of this world” (Jn 12:31, 14:30, 16:11). For good measure we quote also Satan’s words to Jesus at His temptation “all this has been given me” - probably not entirely true, but a good indication of the enemy’s modus operandi, and not something to discount or take lightly.

What shall we say to these things?

It’s a fitting thing that we should have suffering in this world. After all, we brought it into the world by our own choice in our rebellion. Now if this is the case, how is it that we dare complain that God is making us suffer? If you put your hand in the fire, doesn’t it get burned?