![]() ![]() According to Mark’s account of the trial of Jesus, the latter promised those in attendance that they would see him coming on the clouds. ![]() He fully expected himself to join with people rising from their graves to meet Jesus in the air (I Thessalonians 4) married people should stop having sex to remain pure for Jesus’ arrival Christians shouldn’t take each other to court because they themselves will be judging angels in the new kingdom. There is such urgency in the letters of Paul the arrival of Christ was imminent. New Testament authors would have been utterly baffled if they knew that Christians 2,000 years in the future would still be waiting for it to happen. The arrival of Jesus on the clouds to bring his kingdom was expected soon. So epistemology be damned, because so few of his followers will probe to find out how he knows the “clear direction of the Lord.” Cult followers usually trust that their revered leaders have a direct line to God.īut they don’t appear to have a direct line to the New Testament concept of “the Lord’s coming.” In the ancient documents this was a prophecy with an expiration date. This is a shrewd move if Johnson is trying to win back some of his evangelical base how can you go wrong when these folks so eagerly await the return of Jesus-in fact would do anything to help make it happen? Johnson seeks to ground the new focus with his assured connection to God, i.e., “after much prayer and the clear direction of the Lord.” In response to God’s gracious correction, refinement, and empowerment, I am choosing to refocus my gaze upon Jesus and the eternal realities of His Kingdom like never before.” I feel God is launching me, my family, and our ministry team further into His purpose for us. “I am not discouraged nor am I drawing back from my calling. His new focus will be Altar Global, whose purpose is to get ready for the coming of Christ, i.e., “help prepare the Bride of Christ for the return of our glorious Bridegroom King Jesus.” Miller points out that this “…includes a one-year intensive program called the Altar School of Ministry, based in Concord, N.C., where Johnson and others will train students ‘on the lifestyle of an end-time messenger and the return of the Lord.’” He abandoned Jeremiah Johnson Ministries, which entailed “tremendous financial loss.” This apparently means a withdrawal from political commentary-probably a good thing-but Johnson has decided to go deeper into the realm of Christian crazy. He adopted a major course correction as described in an article by Emily McFarlan Miller. When you have to admit that you got the word of the Lord wrong, isn’t it time to review your epistemology? How can you be sure that your channels to God are reliable? But that thought doesn’t seem to have occurred to Prophet Johnson. He was stunned by the backlash, as I discussed in my article here 18 January 2021, A Tsunami of Christian Hate. One good example is Prophet Jeremiah Johnson, who got into big trouble with his followers when he confessed, out loud, that he got it wrong when he predicted that Donald Trump would be re-elected he had misheard the word of the Lord. Those in attendance that day are successful citizens of the modern world who would reject any notion that their cell phones, cars, and refrigerators work by magic yet when they walk into the church, they step into the world of superstition and don’t notice the high quotient of Christian crazy.īut these days Evangelicals seem to have taken the lead in Christian crazy. The Ancient Jesus Mystery Cult is alive and well in suburban America. At the end, the faithful went to the altar to eat a piece of the flesh of the human sacrifice. The human sacrifice-a grotesque monumental crucifix-dominated the décor, and the congregation was assured by the priest that eternal life was the reward for belief in the Lamb there was no doubt whatever that the soul of the deceased had ascended to heaven, as symbolized by the smoke floating upward from the incense burner. This is ancient superstition, a dramatic example of magical thinking, promoted even today by a vast church bureaucracy.Ī few months before life was changed by the pandemic, I attended a funeral at a Catholic Church I had walked into a Lamb-of-God shrine. John’s theology represents an adjustment, an upgrade from animal to human sacrifice: Jesus is the one and only Lamb whose death is needed to cancel sin. The Temple had been a great slaughterhouse, doing big business in the ritual killing of animals to atone for sins. This gospel was written well after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 C.E. “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” So said John the Baptist when he spotted Jesus heading toward him, according to the opening chapter of John’s gospel (v. ![]()
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