Morality Wars

Within Buddhism there is a thing called Karma. Karma is based on good or bad deeds which then translates to future happiness or future suffering. If you build up bad Karma in this life you will pay for it with suffering in the next life. If you build up good Karma you will be rewarded. This system is the framework for Buddhist morality.

Christian morality is based on the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because He first loved me, I must love others. Because He has forgiven me, I must forgive others. Because He stripped Himself of His power to come save poor humans, I must work to help the poor.

A Buddhist will be reluctant to help the poor. The poor person may be paying for something horrible he did in a past life, and if someone were to alleviate his suffering, that someone would be going against the Karma system and will put her own future happiness at risk. “Live and let live” is the Buddhist moral standard. This actually creates a kind of tolerance that many western Humanists would be envious of. But where the Buddhist would be tolerant of something like homosexual lifestyles, a tolerance which would be celebrated by the Humanist, the Buddhist would also be tolerant of allowing the poor to stay poor, a tolerance which the Humanist would rail against. This is because Humanist morality is a bastardized version of Christian and anti-Christian values.

I remember telling someone how I was helping poor children in Cambodia to get a proper education. She thought that was wonderful. But then her face dropped and she asked if I was also teaching the people about Christianity. “You’re not trying to convert them are you? Don’t they already have their own religion?”

Sigh. So your morality praises me for helping poor children, but then, that same morality scolds me for opposing a religion (Buddhism) which has a moral system that actually prevents Cambodians from helping their own poor children? But to her, her thinking was completely logical, and that is because she has no idea where her Humanist morality comes from.

Humanism is doomed. So what will be the next moral battle fought in the western world? Nihilism versus Humanism? Islam versus Humanism?

Will Christians wake up to the fact that Christendom fell a long time ago and join the fight?

Take Over the World for the Glory of God

Right at the beginning of creation, humanity received from God what could easily be called our first “Great Commission”.

God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
~Genesis 1:28 NASB

“Take over the world for the glory of God” is basically what we’re commanded to do.

Skip ahead to Babel and read what the people’s two reasons were for building the tower:

They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
~Genesis 11:4 NASB

They wanted to make for themselves a name (above God’s name and for their own glory), and they did not want to be scattered abroad; which is exactly what they were commanded to do: “…fill the earth, and subdue it”.

So, God scattered them. God scattered them by using different languages to cause division.

Right after the Babel story we are introduced to Abram, later to be named Abraham, the father of many. Starting with Abraham, God enters into a covenant with the Hebrew people, and for many hundreds of years, deals only with these people.

Did the Church exist in the Old Testament, or was that some different dispensation? Absolutely the Church existed in the Old Testament. Israel was the Old Testament Church; they were also of the same ethnicity. All those who were saved in the Old Testament were saved by the person and work of Jesus Christ. The animal sacrifices and the temple were types and shadows.

The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves. The sacrifices under that system were repeated again and again, year after year, but they were never able to provide perfect cleansing for those who came to worship.
~Hebrews 10:1 NLT

Now we can jump ahead to Pentecost.

At the beginning of the book of Acts, Jesus gives the Great Commission.

“…but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.”
~Acts 1:8 NASB

And this is what happened when they were filled with the Holy Spirit:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.

Now there were Jews living in Jerusalem, devout men from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language.
~Acts 2:1-6 NASB

The miracle of Pentecost was not that they spoke with other tongues. The miracle of Pentecost was that all the people present, from “every nation under heaven”, heard “the mighty deeds of God” (Acts 2:11) spoken to them in their own languages.

At Pentecost God used different languages to bring the people together.

At Pentecost God did the reverse of what He did at Babel.

Where as before God was only dealing with the Jewish people, now God was opening His arms to the gentiles as well.

The miracle of Pentecost was not that God was creating the Church in some new dispensation. The miracle of Pentecost was that God was taking the gentile nations and grafting them into the Church, which already existed as Israel, the true Israel.

Now reread the Great Commission as stated in Matthew:

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
~Matthew 28:18-20 NASB

“Take over the world for the glory of God.”

The Antichrist

The term “antichrist” is used four times in the bible; three times in 1 John, and once in 2 John.

“Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know it. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.”
~1 John 2:18-22 NASB

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus, is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
~1 John 4:2-6 NASB

“And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward. Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and teaches and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”
~2 John 1:6-11 NASB

John wrote these two letters nearly 2000 years ago. We can see from these verses that he was concerned that his readers were being deceived into believing a false teaching; a false teaching which said that Jesus did not come as a flesh and blood man from God. John speaks of people who were apparently members of the church, but began to teach falsely, and then they left the church.

John warns his readers to hold to his teaching and that if anyone came to teach anything different, they were to be ignored and not welcomed into the church. There were many false teachings going around at that time, and the apostles had to diligently fight against all these teachings. Some false teachers believed that Jesus could not be God, and a flesh and blood man at the same time, so they denied that Jesus was ever truly a man, but only had the appearance of a man. Christianity does not work if Jesus never came as a man (see Romans 5).

From these verses we can see that “antichrist” is called a spirit, which can be thought of as a system of thought influenced by demonic forces. Notice also from these verses that the term “antichrist” is not used to describe one particular individual, but rather, anyone “who denies that Jesus is the Christ”, “who denies the Father and the Son”, “who does not confess Jesus”, and “who does not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh”.

These days the antichrist has become a Frankenstein of biblical verses who resembles the emperor in Star Wars more than any character found in the bible.

How does the term “antichrist” apply to us today? The same way it applied to John’s readers 2000 years ago.