The Lie of Two Worlds, pt. 2

Earlier today, I linked to a sermon I had preached on coming to positions.  Still go there and listen to that.

Some of you might recognize this "two worlds" language as Christian worldview talk, and you would be right on that.  Only one thing ever happens, not two.  I don't both do what I did and what I want people to think that I did.  If you come along writing in the sand, it wasn't caused by waves.  Someone wrote it, and the person who wrote it is the one who wrote it.  There are not two options there, depending on what you feel it to be or want it to be.

We live in an age in which your position is more authentic, because its yours, even if it didn't happen. Things that didn't happen can't be authentic.  Only real things can be authentic.  Only one real thing happens.  I understand that there are different interpretations of what happened, but still only one thing happened.

We can speculate on the motives of someone in the present and in history, but a person's motive is his motive.  God knows what that is.  There isn't more than what his motive was.  Only one thing happened too regarding motivation.  Someone could have a certain motivation and later say that it was a different, better sounding one.  God knows.  The only authentic motivation was the one the person actually had.

Things also work only the way God has designed, upheld, and allowed them to work.  Whether they really work is also determined by God.  Someone may say they work, but God is the final judge on whether that's true.  For years, many people could say that something was great and really worked, and wasn't that tremendous, when actually it was very bad and didn't really work, except toward the bad.  God knows.  For instance, someone could have been very successful previous to the flood and then didn't get on the ark.  The fact that he wasn't on Noah's ark meant that he wasn't successful.  His life was a failure, even if the story was that he was successful.  He failed.

I can have a James White say that I'm the biggest dufus, the biggest moron, the all time dud of all history, and actually not be that person.  He could also be right, but it can't be two ways.  There isn't a world where I'm very fine and a world where I'm horrible on what James White is speaking.  Phil Johnson can say that the experience of White with me is purgatory, when it could be that James White is really purgatory and I'm just pointing out that he is wrong.

James White and I, for instance, take different positions.  I say that, based upon the Bible, we know what the words of scripture are.  We've had them in every generation available and they are settled. James White comes along and says that's not true and gives his reasons.  Our two positions could be both right in our two worlds, except that there is only one world.  There aren't two worlds.  Neither is there a position that is the best of both worlds.  There is only one world.  When there is a contradiction, the positions both can't be right.  They could both be wrong, but there is a position that is right that God knows is right.  It's a lie to say there are two worlds on this.

It is true that people can live in their own world that doesn't exist.  They live it in their imagination, and like Paul says, that needs to be pulled down with a spiritual weapon, namely scripture.  Scripture can eliminate the fantasy world and it should.  The only world left is the real one, which is the one that lines up with the Bible.

Evangelicals and most fundamentalists today give credit to a fantasy world.  Amillennialism represents a fantasy world.  It's sheer fiction.  We don't do better to justify it by ignoring it and having communion anyway.  This makes room for a world that doesn't exist.

Conservative evangelicals act like there is one truth.  They trumpet that.  They tell you that they think that.  And yet, they behave as though there is more than one.  They act like there are several worlds that exist in which you can live.  They say, well, those things will just be sorted out in heaven, and we're going to ignore them now in the only real world in which we live.  They should repudiate the false and separate from it, rather than giving people the impression that there are gradations of reality.

There might be more to come.