Two Things Are Needful?
I've been doing a 6-month review over the past week or so - taking a brief time-out to take stock after my half-year across the pond in the East Coast of the U.S.. After reflecting on a few impromptu chats I've had with neighbours in New Jersey or bystanders in New York, in my mind, at least, two doctrinal deficits stand out.
The Doctrine of Deity
Many religions or sects (Judaism, Mormonism, Islam and JWs) claim to worship God but are largely ignorant of the most basic articles of our faith. They need to be taught the Name of the True God, His Triune Godhead and His revelation to Man in the Person, Work and Offices of His Divine-Human Son. Seaboards East and West need basic Creeds of Christ.
The Moorings of Moses
The hotbeds of secular thought on America's East and West Coast are ideologically indoctrinated and brainwashed against TFG (Theological Foundations in Genesis).
Sill, incredibly, evolution usurps the Throne of Yahweh the Creator of the Cosmos. Gender chaos replaces complimentary binary biology. Sabbath rest is dismissed as an unwelcome plague of a bygone puritanical age.
Deregulation of public worship less resembles humble Abel and looks more like the pride of rebel Cain. Marriage is in freefall. Abortion rules the roost. Fear of the Great Flood has long been submerged beneath surging waves of climate change.
Pursuit of sensual pleasure, miracle antidotes or suspended animation continues to drown out the universal spread of death. The new morality has turned darkness into light.
The great sins of the time, in bastions of pluralistic prejudice, are intolerance of evil, exclusive claims of Christ, "proselytizing" idolaters, calling non-binary forms of sexual expression perverse, dumping ocean plastic, calling veganism demonic doctrine or teaching that graceless human beings are naturally, terribly and hopelessly corrupt.
If lost metropolites are ever to see their guilt, accept they will give account, come to God for pardon, or call upon our Lord, they need spoon-fed with large doses of the "cod liver oil" of Genesis.
Integration of Moses into Jesus
Two things are needful - the doctrine of Moses and the teaching of Jesus. It was Christ, speaking to Cleopas, who alerted him to the fact and combined these needful points.
Our Saviour was astonished how little His loved ones knew of how the Old Testament testified to Him - he opened God's book and instructed them in truth.
How wonderful it is, too, how the curse of Moses and Cross of Jesus integrate so paradoxically and harmoniously at Calvary.
In Moses and Jesus, in His glorious substitutionary death, not only do we see bud in flower, promise in fulfilment, but also shadow become substance.
Golgotha is the crossroads for a meeting of law and grace: with guilt borne, wrath endured, debt cancelled and sin atoned, as Moses meets Christ mercy wins-out over death.
Shoring Up the Coasts
May God grant us grace to rebuild the house in a Mosaic of basic bricks which are all aligned to Chief Cornerstone Christ, the full, final, fleshed-out Word of God.
