The False Advertisement of a Fallen World | Theocast Clips

The False Promise of Prosperity and Success

And really quick, John, you mentioned the comment I made, which made you think a thing. So I said that the Lord delivers on every promise He's ever made, so He'll never disappoint us. But then you said, but people are being, effectively the way I'm gonna frame it is, people are being lied to about God, and are being lied to about what the Lord has in fact promised us.

Because God has not bound Himself, God has not said He's gonna deliver on promises that He's never made, right? And we're being told a lot of things in the church. And by that, of course, we mean the American-ish church, where we find ourselves, and many people find themselves in that context.

We're being told a lot of things about God, like He's promised us this, or He wants these things for us. And in fact, in His word, rightly understood, biblically and confessionally understood, He's not promised us that stuff.

And so it leads to a lot of confusion and a lot of disappointment. And yeah, so.

Well, I just, can I interject there to your point? As an illustration, I put this tweet out. You know, you have the prosperity gospel preacher who's falsely advertising success. God has designed success for your life.

And to prove that, you know, it's like, God told me to buy this plane as a prophet of God. And then I go read Ezekiel, and Ezekiel says, God told me to cook my food over poop and eat it.

True.

You know?

And I'm just like, we somehow want the promises of the new heavens and the new earth to be the reality that God says it can be yours now if you do enough of whatever. You can put the enough in there, pray enough, read your Bible enough, do this enough, work hard enough, enough, enough, enough.

Right.

And you can have heaven on earth now.

The False Advertisement of a Fallen World

Yeah, and this is what we want. And you know, I made this comment maybe in another podcast, but when I look at the metaverse and this new technology that's coming our way, this is what the promise is going to be.

It's a perfection. I mean, have you ever watched

It's utopia.

Yeah, have you ever watched a cartoon of like Disney characters? They're perfect. Like their skin tone and the design of them. And we imagine what this world could be. And that's what we want it to be.

And then we're disappointed when it's not that. And all of that is, and this is what we're getting into it. All of that is, is the messaging of a sinful fallen world. The advertisement is, in other words, you can have your cake and eat it too.

Yeah.

And the Christian life is saying, no, you are going to die. You're going to suffer and then die. But the difference is, you're not going to suffer without hope and you're not going to be suffering without dignity.

And you're going to die knowing that the promises that you hold onto will give you the hope of what's to come. So Justin, a little bit of a, if you're ready to transition here, I think we should talk about the false advertisement that many Christians are embracing.

And I think it's causing people to be robbed of rest. They are embracing agendas. They're putting energy into things that are of no value. It's almost like, you know, it's, we're all on the Titanic and we're trying to bail water so that we can preserve this beautiful ship.

And it's like, it's going down.

Or yeah, like we're on the Titanic and we're arguing about the furniture or the window treatments, or we're complaining about the service, you know, because yeah, or like, yeah, my champagne is not chilled enough or something.

It's insane.

Right.

That's basically what we're doing. I don't know if that analogy holds in every way. They all fall apart at some point, but let me start at this transition. Like we're making the transition. Let me start with this.

Over-Realized Eschatology and Heaven on Earth Now

Because I think this is a broad-ish one that we could riff on for a second and then maybe get more particular. I think that there is a misconception out there that if the church would just be the church, as God intended, that we could eradicate this world of evil.

And that if the church would just be the church, then our entire country would change. If the church would be the church, the world would be transformed. And literally we're going to usher in the new heavens and the new earth is how it comes across.

And I think this is a problem because we have been led to believe through bad theology and bad teaching that if we do what we are supposed to do, this evil that we're experiencing now will go away. This suffering that we're experiencing now will be mitigated, you know, and that these disappointments that we all have in this life will somehow just evaporate and all will be well.

And that is not true. It's an over-realized eschatology. I mean, that's a theological term to use where we do, as we've already alluded to at multiple points on the show already, we want to have heaven now and we want to build heaven on earth.

And that is not what the instructions of the scriptures are to the saints. That's not what the mission of the church is, biblically defined. We are actually meant to herald the work of Jesus Christ in the place of sinners and love each other and help one another die with dignity and hope, trusting the promises of God in Christ, knowing the hope to which we have been called and knowing that that hope is coming.

And instead of building heaven on earth the way that I might frame it is we are called actually to be waiting for and hoping in the new heavens and the new earth.