“It would never occur to people with academic degrees and professorships that they are both ignorant and incompetent in vast areas of human life, much less that they should keep that in mind before they vent their emotions and wax self-righteous.
“Degrees show that you have knowledge in some special area. Too often they embolden people to pontificate on a wide range of other subjects where they don’t know what they are talking about. The fact that academics are overwhelmingly of the political left is perfectly consistent with their assumption that third parties — especially third parties like themselves — should be controlling the decisions of other people who have first-hand knowledge and experience.”
I’m a big proponent of the Priest, King, Prophet cycle taught by James B. Jordan. To put it simply, the ‘Priest’ stage can be viewed as a childhood stage; the ‘King’ stage is the adult stage; and the ‘Prophet’ stage is the elder stage.
We can see these stages throughout Jewish history (before Jesus) and throughout Church history. The cycle repeats itself over and over and will again. This theory is nothing to burn at the stake over, but it is interesting to see and use to plan for the future of missions and the Great Commission.
In Jewish history we can see the priestly stage from Moses to David; the kingly stage from David to Elijah; the prophetic stage from Elijah to John the Baptist.
The Western Church has been in the prophetic stage since the Reformation. The Western priestly stage can be seen as the first few hundred years or so of the Church, when the Church was learning how to be the Church. The kingly stage can be seen as Western Christendom, when the Church actually ruled.
The Asian Church, today, is in the priestly stage. The elders of the Western Church need to come and teach the young Christians and churches in the eastern world.
In the future we can expect to see the Asian Church grow to its kingly stage, and then its prophetic stage. Perhaps in the future, the Asian elders will lead the Church to the completion of the Great Commission worldwide. Or perhaps, we’ll see the cycle repeat with a different group of people.
Christendom is not a bad thing if the kings rule righteously. If the kings become corrupt, God will send prophets to shut them down. If the kings rule well, the prophets will come and give more power to them. We have not seen that happen yet in our history, before Jesus or after.
I believe the Great Commission will be completed (the discipling of all nations) and it will happen through the Priest, King, Prophet cycle.
“[S]cience has replaced magic and superstition in our era only by inheriting from Christianity its faith in progress† and its power to fight against the vicious circle of mental habits for an open future, the power to change our minds through suffering…
“Scholars have been complacently sawing off the trunk of Revelation on which their science was but a branch. By refusing to acknowledge their indebtedness to the Christian era for one future, one time common to all men, they lose orientation. Sciences do not give orientation; they presuppose it. The pillars of time are erected by lived lives, not by theories.”
† “Outside of science, progress is simply a myth… Without [progress], will we not despair? Like trembling Victorians terrified of losing their faith … humanists cling to the moth-eaten brocade of progressive hope. Today religious believers are more free-thinking. Driven to the margins of a culture in which science claims authority over all of human knowledge, they have had to cultivate a capacity for doubt. In contrast, secular believers – held fast by the conventional wisdom of the time – are in the grip of unexamined dogmas.”
~John Gray, from Straw Dogs, Forward
“Without the scientist’s feeling that truth is of the utmost concern, truth ceases to be of concern, in the mores of the people…
“Progress is impossible in a society which has lost orientation.”
“When [the Jews] were scattered over the earth after the loss of Jerusalem in 70 A.D., they had no other function than to bear witness to the ‘economy of revelation,’ to the growing Kingdom of God. Without their existence, the gospel of Jesus might have come to the Gentiles like a myth or a legend. Christianity becomes an historical fact only through the existence of Jews. The natural inclination of men and nations to take flight into dreams of ancestral pride or the cobwebs of abstract philosophy always leads to excesses of agnosticism and mythology. The Jews, simply by their existence, bar the nations from a relapse into that comfortable self-adoration which makes Jesus himself into a blond Germanic hero instead of a despised Jew.”
Pursuit of Percipience 