Jojo Agot

Is Eschatology Just for Head Knowledge?

During our Eschatology Lecture last Saturday with Pastor Noel Landicho, a victory group leader approached me with an interesting question. He asked why we need to study the end times in the first place. To him, it sounded like all these things all boil down to having head knowledge.

I can understand where the question was coming from. If you’ve attended Victory for quite a while, you must have noticed that we always trumpet relevance and practical application in our preaching. Even our church events (like Marriage Boosters or Finance seminars) all point back to how we can apply the Word in our lives today. We are a church that doesn’t spend much time speculating the nuances of doctrines. Instead of debating the validity of, say, infant baptism, we’d rather go and preach the gospel to the nations.

So why preach on eschatology now? Where’s the practical application in that?

Continue reading Is Eschatology Just for Head Knowledge?

The Grace of God’s Silence

One of the questions that’s hard to address when talking to hurting people is the fact that God doesn’t exhaustively answer all our questions. The book of Job is a book containing 37 chapters worth of questions, speculations and deep pondering on the issue of suffering. The best philosophies that tackle the question of pain were explored in this lengthy book so much that one could almost expect that God was bound to explain Himself. He didn’t. Towards the end of the book, all Job got was an interesting enumeration of the wonders of creation.

The frustration of not getting exhaustive answers from God has haunted humanity for centuries on end. We want our lives to revolve around laws and principles and concepts we can wrap our heads around on. We want clear cut definitions. When we don’t get that kind of clarity, we either question God or become indifferent of Him. But is getting exhaustive answers really necessary? Does a good explanation guarantee that we will feel less pain, even if the explanation came from God? I think not. As Tullian Tchividjian wrote, information is seldom enough to heal a wounded heart.

Mark Galli, in his book God Wins, has an interesting insight about how Jesus identified with our suffering on the cross. It still doesn’t answer the question of pain but at least it’s comforting to know the grace that comes with God’s silence. Continue reading The Grace of God’s Silence

This Is Not to Scare You

Three major things I learned during our Eschatology Lecture last Saturday:

First, when you talk about the second coming of Christ, it is better to focus on positive application. Anything that produces fear and panic doesn’t come from Christ. And anything that comes from Christ builds up faith.

Many people have the tendency to make eschatology morbid and terrifying. This is not the way of our Lord and His apostles. When the Bible talks about the end of the world, it also talks about the bigger themes of hope and eternal life. In 2 Peter 3:11-13, Peter emphasized that our knowledge of end times should challenge us to live holy and godly lives.

Second, eschatology is a broad and, errr, difficult (read: confusing) topic for most people. The abundance of symbolism in Daniel, Joel, Ezekiel and Revelation doesn’t help much. I mean, seriously, does anyone know what the dragon, the seven vials and the seven hills mean? Continue reading This Is Not to Scare You

The First Freedom They Take Away

A quarter of a century ago, a twenty-six year old pastor-theologian gave a radio address at the Potsdamerstrasse radio station in Germany. His speech was innocently titled “The Younger Generation’s Altered Concept of Leadership.” The talk was about the fundamental problems of leadership as understood by the young Germans at that time. Before the talk was over, the speaker was cut off from the air waves.

The name of the speaker was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The speech was made in February 1, 1933, exactly two days after the national elections where Adolf Hitler was democratically elected as chancellor of Germany. We all know how the story turned out. Hitler became a ruthless dictator and Bonhoeffer was executed 23 days before Germany was liberated in 1945.

One thing I came to understand: in oppressive regimes, the first freedom they take away from the people is the freedom of speech. From there, everything could spiral downhill.

God in the Background

I was reading about Abraham’s lie about Sarah being his sister in Genesis 20. Three things seem to be happening here all at the same time.

First, God was building Abraham’s character through the trial God put him through.

Second, God was preserving Abraham’s marriage by not allowing Abimelech to touch Sarah.

Third, God was keeping Abimelech from sinning so He will not have to punish him.

But while God was doing all these in the background, all Abraham could see was his own fear and a cowardly sense of self preservation.

We Are Planktons

The fact that God sustains and maintains the universe and beyond without the slightest strain on His abilities should make us draw back, vulnerably in tune with our impossible smallness and fragility. How do you communicate with this God? If you don’t like how He’s wired things or you’re not amenable to what He commands, what could you possibly do about it? We are plankton shaking a microscopic fist at a killer whale.

Yet He hears us. He takes note. He is, the Bible says, mindful of us. And that should awe us (Psalm 8:4; Heb. 2:6).

Because as big and mighty as God is in light of the universe, the declaration of glory in the heavens is still not where He has most beautifully flexed His muscle. God reveals His power most fully not in the expanse of the universe but rather in His rescuing of those ants in that tiny mound in the middle of the Sahara, by being for them all they couldn’t be and taking from them what they could never be rid of. The depth, width, ferocity, and immensity of God is seen most spectacularly in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Matt Chandler, Introduction to Gospel Deeps