The Fullness of Time — Dennis Kinlaw

I had the privilege of having lunch today with one of the members of the group, and before we left each other, he turned to me and he said, Have you noticed the passage in John 13? And so we turned and looked at this passage.

Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet

I want to use it tonight before I begin speaking. Now, before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end, and supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside his garments, took a towel and girded himself.

After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. One of the things that marks the Christian religion and Christian faith is a profound interest in history.

Christianity and the Meaning of History

If you will look at the religions of the world, you will find that many of the religions of the world have very little interest in history. In fact, many of them find that what they want to do is escape it, if at all possible.

I ran across an article the other day by Herbert Butterfield, the great British historian, in which he was writing, he himself not an evangelical believer, about the fact that the first history that was written in the course of human events was written by Old Testament prophets.

But that should not be a surprise. You see, if you really believe that God created the world and he is sovereign Lord over it and it had a beginning and it is going to have an end in terms of his purposes, then what you have done has been to straighten it out so that it starts somewhere and it's going somewhere.

And these Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament, they believe that God had started human history time and space were a part of his purposes and that he was going to work out his objectives in space and time for us.

Now, that was strengthened by the coming of Christ. Because if the creation gives us a special view of the importance of time and of space, if you really believe that God himself stepped out of eternity to work out his redemptive purposes from within time and from within space, then there is a value in time and space from God's point of view that we should recognize and that we should honor.

So if you remember that God dwelt among us in our state, in this place and in these circumstances redemptively for thirty-three years, then it's fair for us to say that there is significance for God in the space and the time that he has given to us.

We know that time is a gift that comes from him. You and I can't produce it. There's no way you and I can stretch it. There's no way you and I, except by doing wrong, can shorten our time. Time comes as a gift from God and given for purposes.

But one of the interesting things about the biblical point of view and the Christian point of view is, it was reflected in what Larry was talking about, and he stole part of my message from me when he was witnessing earlier tonight.

Part of the biblical view is that all of time is not of the same value. That there are some moments that are more significant than others. There are some hours that are more significant than others. That there are moments in time when eternity touches time and time takes on a significance that is far more important than just in the regular run of events.

Joy Davidman’s Transforming Moment

I ran across an article in Time Magazine the other day about a play that started on Broadway a couple of weeks ago. I hope it's still running, I don't know. But it is a play on C .S. Lewis and his relationship to his wife, Joy Davidman.

And it caused me to go back and pull down Lyle Dorsett's volume, his biography of Joy Davidman. You see, Joy had a very interesting experience. She was a Jewess who grew up in a home in Brooklyn, one member of the family a little bit devout and the other one completely secular.

She went to Barnard College in the 30s, early 30s, and she herself became a Marxist and through that she became an atheist. And then she became a journalist with the New Masses, which was the communist publication in the United States in those days.

And so for several years she wrote as an atheistic Jewess for that communist publication. She married a man whom she met who was a novelist and they had two children and they moved out into the rural areas north of New York City near Austin and there she lived with her husband who developed an alcohol problem and then was unfaithful to her.

When he was unfaithful to her, this came as a very shattering experience because she said up to that point I had never had any question about my worth and now this had happened to me and I had always been in control of my life and now there was a factor in my life which I could not control.

Then one day she got a telephone call from her husband in downtown New York and he said, I am having a nervous breakdown, I don't know what's going to happen to me, I don't know where I'm going but I know that I can't come home and he hung up.

And so she spent the rest of the day trying to find somebody who could locate her husband but she couldn't find anybody who could tell her where he was. That evening she spent with her children not knowing where to go or what to do and finally she put her children to bed and she said I realized for the first time in my life a sense of helplessness and despair which I had never known before and a sense of profound loneliness which I had never known before.

She said all of my arrogance, all of my cock-sureness and all of my self-love was momentarily shattered. What does one do in a moment of desolation like that? When she said suddenly in my existential loneliness she said, I thought wait, there's somebody here and she said I knew that I was not alone.

She said, it's interesting, it didn't last very long. She said you know it's hard for you to remember those experiences but I doubt if it lasted more than 30 seconds. She said it's interesting it didn't take my panic away, it didn't take my fears away, it didn't take the shattering experience of concern from my husband away but she said I knew that I was not alone and my life was turned around now because the biggest question in my life was who was he?

So she said I began my search and she said a good Marxist I turned first to Lenin and I read everything of Lenin's that I could get and for the first time I saw the contradictions in Lenin. She said then I thought I'm a Jewish, maybe that's where it is and so she said I started reading the literature of Judaism.

She said that felt a little better but she said I still could not find out who he was and then she said somebody gave me a New Testament and I found that his name was Jesus and she said out of that came my Christian life and ultimately her marriage to C .S. Lewis who wrote, you will remember, a tribute to her in a book entitled A Grief Observed.

Remarkable tribute and all of that came out of 30 seconds. Isn't it interesting how when God decides to move he can make the ordinary extraordinarily significant? Now if that happens in individual lives and if you're a Christian I don't think you have any question about it.

Transformative Encounters with God

Look at the massive literature in the Christian church and in the Hebrew Christian tradition. We know something happened when Abraham was 75 years of age that had not happened before and the rest of his life was different because of what happened when he was 75.

There were those other moments later. You will remember that the same was true in Moses' life. The first 80 years were of one order and then something happened and we don't know how long it lasted but in an experience it could obviously be measured in less than days, certainly in hours and maybe in minutes.

Something happened that changed the course of human history because it transformed Moses. And then you get the experience of Isaiah in the temple. You get the experience of Paul on the Damascus Road. You get the experience of Augustine sitting in the garden.

You get the experience of Wesley when he said, and I've always loved it, when he said at about a quarter before nine. Isn't that an astounding thing? It was punctiliar enough that he could tell you about where the hands were on the face of the clock when time took on a different significance for him.

You may remember Pascal's memorial but Pascal began the testimony of what happened to him with these words in the year of grace, 1654, on Monday, the 23rd of November, the feast of St. Clement, the feast of the Pope and the martyrs, and of others in their martyrology, the vigil of St. Chrysogonus, martyr, and others, and from about half past ten in the evening until half past twelve, fire.

Not the God, the philosopher, but the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob and his life was transformed. But I've come to love that line, between about 10 .30 and 12 .30, two hours that made a difference.

Now it would be wonderful if God would make these hours that we have together significant in somebody's life, wouldn't it? You notice that's what Larry was talking about when there were those holy moments when God came and in the course of his whole life was redirected.

And the bishop, his testimony, too. That's true of, I suspect, the most, if not all of us here. But now tonight my question is not that. We believe that. What I want to ask is, if that's true of individuals, is it also true of human history?

Christ’s Incarnation and the Fullness of Time

Are there moments in human history that for the human race make a difference? Are there moments in human history that for the Church of Christ make a difference? And that are as significant for the Church of Christ or for the human race as those high moments are in individual lives that we talk about?

I think if you, you don't have to think long until you realize that the Scripture talks about in relation to Christ and when the fullness of time was come. That something happened in the birth of Christ and in the incarnation that makes it legitimate for us to say it was one order of time before and it is another order of time since.

And so we mark the division of time with the birth of our Savior. I suspect that we could build a biblical case for some other things like that. Certainly the day of Pentecost made a radical difference.

You will remember the prophecies in the Old Testament and the New Testament cite those prophecies in relation to Pentecost. That it was one relationship to God and to His Holy Spirit before and after Pentecost it was a different relationship so that a period of time had the touch of God on it and the world's opportunities, the Church's opportunities were different after that moment than they were before.

I suspect there may be something like that in that period of the collapse of the Roman Empire. You will remember when Augustine sat down and wrote the city of God which we would not have had if it had not been for that unusual experience.

And I suspect a case could be made that God at strategic points in history, though we can't see His hand, obviously had His hand in political, economic, sociological events. Early this morning I was reading an article that was sent to me recently on John Huss, you know, the patron saint of Czechoslovakia and one of the pre-Reformation reformers who in, what was it, 1415 was burned for his faith in Christ and for his commitment to the Scriptures.

You know, he died for his faith. It was a hundred years later that Martin Luther came along. Was it the fact that God did some things in that century in the breakup of the political empires of the world that gave Martin Luther a freedom so that he could survive so that you and I could be the beneficiaries of his witness and of his work?

I wonder if we could make a case, and I'm not the one to do it because I'm not a historian, I'm not the scholar to do that, but I have the feeling that a case can be made that there are times when God acts specifically, definitively, in terms of history.

God’s Sovereignty in Political Upheaval

Just recently I had the privilege of being with Sam Kamalesin in southern Russia for a pastor's conference. And it was interesting to be in a country where a few years ago, from my point of view, I hardly knew whether there were any churches at all in Soviet Russia.

And find myself worshiping with 175 pastors in one republic, from one religious Christian group in that republic, and in a church packed with people, 700 people in the seats and people standing in the aisles.

And when the invitation was given, this remarkable response in a country that has devoted itself to the extermination of not just Christianity, but of religion itself. And as I experienced that and watched what was taking place, I found myself saying, what has happened here?

The passage that came to me again and again was the passage that, in the book of Revelation, chapter 5, where you will remember John sees that the throne of God and in the hands of the one on the throne, the book sealed with seven seals, and he knows that his future is in that book and the future of all of us is in that book.

And he wonders who it is that's worthy to break the seals, open the book, and let history unroll. And as they look for someone worthy, they search out heaven, search out the earth, search out under the earth, and there's no one worthy to break the seal and to unroll history.

And as he weeps that there is no one worthy to break those seals, one of the elders comes and says, don't weep, there is one worthy. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and John turns and looks again at the throne, and standing in the midst of the throne is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

And the elder speaks and says, he is worthy, and the Lamb of God takes that seven-sealed book that nobody else can open, and he begins to break the seals, the trumpets begin to blow, and history is different because he's broken those seals.

Now, you know, there is something biblical in that concept that he is the King of kings and Lord of lords and that he is sovereign over it all. Well, I come to wonder if you and I have lived to a day when that kind of thing is true, and we have had the privilege of seeing it.

You see, what has happened in Eastern Europe, what has happened in Russia in the last 15 months is something that 16 months ago, I doubt if there is a person in this crowd who would have suggested the possibility of it.

I was talking with a person who had a close friend who is in the strategic planning for the Pentagon in Washington, and their business is to dream of every possible scenario. Part of their business is to dream of the wildest kinds of scenarios so that everything has been envisioned that could possibly happen, and then so that preparations could be made for it.

And so he said, I asked my friend who is in the middle of that kind of speculation, did anybody conceive a scenario like what we have seen in the last 15 months? The man whose business is to dream those scenarios said, nobody dreamed anything anywhere near like it.

I wonder if we have lived to see a period when God has shown his hand and we are in a different world from what we were 15 months ago, 16 months ago. There are things that seem to me to give evidence of that.

The Romanian Awakening and the Power of the Gospel

I had a delightful time with Sam Camalason. Many of you know Sam Camalason. Sam was it because he has an Indian passport, was able to get in behind the Iron Curtain with great freedom when we could not.

And so he found himself invited to do an evangelistic campaign in one of the cities in Romania, and a stadium was rented. And so Sam was to preach every night. And when he arrived, his first visitor was the head of the secret police for the whole country, a man who obviously was responsible for the execution of stacks of people.

And he was there to threaten Sam Camalason and to forbid him to preach. And he said, Sam told me he started down in his questionnaire, his interrogation to intimidate me. And he said, by the third question, I realized he was not paying any attention to my answer.

So after my third answer, when he didn't pay any attention and started on the fourth question, I looked over and said, Sir, if you're going to ask me questions, why don't you pay any attention to my answers?

If you're not going to pay any attention to my answers, why should I answer your question? I will simply refuse to answer your questions if you pay no attention to my answer. He said the head of the Romanian secret police apologized to him.

He said twice in the course of that conversation, he apologized to him. He said, you know, Ken Long, the guy I work for is bigger than the one he works for. Now, you know, I love that kind of confidence and that kind of faith.

It's interesting that the man forbade him to preach. And he said, oh, that's a decision I can't make. You see, I'm a guest in this country of many of your fellow citizens, and they have invited me to preach the gospel of Christ.

And he said, if I'm not to preach, they're the ones who will have to make that decision. You will have to deal with them. He said, I preached. And every night when I gave an invitation, hundreds responded.

He said one night I didn't give an invitation and hundreds responded anyway. He said it was interesting to watch priests from the Orthodox Church in their regalia come forward in an invitation to receive Christ.

He said God was present. But then he said something that I do not think I will ever get over. Some of you have heard me share this, and you'll be patient with me. But let me share it again for the sake of those who haven't.

I do not think I will ever think quite the same way again. He said to me, he said, you know, one night, Dennis, I was aware of sound in my audience that I could not explain. I didn't know what it was.

And so he said I tried to, while I was preaching away, sense what it was. Then I noticed the sound came in waves. And he said as it came in waves, then he said I noticed it came every time I used the name of Jesus.

And then he said it dawned on me it was the ladies in the crowd weeping. And then he said the noise got louder. And I realized all the men had joined the women as they wept every time the name of Jesus was mentioned.

Then he said at that point, I found Ken Law that I was weeping every time I mentioned the name of Jesus. Then he said this. This is what I will never forget. He said, Ken Law, when the last alternative option to Jesus has been exhausted, exhausted and exposed for its bankruptcy, the name of Jesus takes on remarkable power.

I wonder if I've ever heard an academic statement on philosophy of history comparable to that. I wonder if that's not the explanation of human history, that we choose our delusions and God lets us follow them until they collapse and until they're exposed for what they are and that there is something about life itself that will do them in.

You see, I've lived through at least three of those. Empires that were as formidable as anything in the ancient world, Darius or Nebuchadnezzar or Ramses or any of the rest. Because you see, you and I, some of us here can remember when Hitler came to his end in a bunker, taking his own life and the life of his lover.

I can remember when Hirohito became a human being and a day he lost his divinity overnight. And you and I have lived to see what may be one of the greatest political delusions and empires in human history come to almost a total collapse.

And you and I didn't lift a finger to accomplish it. And it wasn't done with political or military might. It was collapse from within. And I wonder if we have not lived to see a day when God has given the Church of Christ an opportunity that it has never had before.

A sixth of the earth's surface now open, apparently, to the gospel of Christ. You know, one of the things I love is that while he's working up here, he's also working in other places. Yesterday, the day before yesterday, I got a phone call from a couple, from a man here in Wilmore who has come here.

His daughter is in college. He spent several years in the Philippines as a missionary among Muslims. And he said, you've just come back from Europe. And I said, yes. So he said, will you tell me about it?

So I told him a little. And he said, I believe God's been speaking to me. And I said, oh, he said, yes. He said, I'd like to go to eastern Russia. He said, there are a lot of Muslim people there. I'd like to take the Jesus film and spend the rest of my life working among Muslims.

You see, he said, I lived among Muslims. I know what it is to live in a community that's hostile. I know what it means to live among people that may kill you. He said, you know, I've lost my fear of that.

It would be a great privilege. Do you suppose that kind of thing would be possible? Well, let me say, these days I'm not ready to say anything's impossible. And I don't believe that it's the economic forces of history that have brought it all about.

Open Doors for Global Mission

I still have that vision in my mind of the lamb sitting on the throne, breaking some seals, and new possibilities are opening up because of it. Now, just recently, I have had some conversations with Mary Fisher, whom some of you know.

And the other day, I read a report of the 92nd birthday of Walter Judd, who in 1940, I heard speak on China. One of the most dramatic missionary messages I ever heard in my life, one of the most powerful.

And if you know, if you've ever known Walter Judd, you know he was an incredible figure, powerful figure, and a great Christian. He gave much of his life to China, and then he gave much of his life to the United States and the United States Congress.

And it was interesting that he felt as much a missionary there as he did when he was in China. And as needed as a missionary there as he did when he was in China. But at his 92nd birthday, his comment on the Tiananmen Square was this.

He said, I'm so glad God has let me live to see the riots in Tiananmen Square. He said, they have justified my life. Now, he said, I know the Marxists are still in control, but you can't tell me it's for long.

Could it be that you and I are going to live to see the two largest chunks of human race outside of, say, India and the world, apart from India? The two largest chunks of one of human surface and the other of the human race open to the cause of Christ in a way that they've never been open in the last millennium?

Would that be fair? I don't know enough about church history to be absolutely accurate in my statements or dogmatic in them on those kinds of things, but certainly an opening. Now, is this something that we should be paying attention to and saying, God, does this bear upon me?

I want to raise the question with you about that. Is it presumption for you and me to believe that what has happened in human history bears on people sitting in Bernard Chapel in Asbury College in November of 1990 coming from the kind of places you and I come from?

I wonder if we do not need to realize that if there was a day when a person could be a Christian without being missionary-minded, that day's over and over forever. I've come to the feeling that God has done something that now puts us in the place where the responsibility is on us.

And he says, the door is open. I've moved. Now, you have an opportunity to move. Now, what are you going to do about it? You see, if God has moved like that, then every person who calls himself a follower of Christ ought to be concerned.

And that interpretation is compatible, I think, with what I find in Scripture. I notice that God has called us. You remember Jesus, when he spoke to his church the first time after the resurrection, said, as the Father has sent me.

He had a call and he was sent. And sent for what purpose? Recited for us a few moments ago, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

That when God sent Christ, he had the whole world in mind. And if you and I are followers of him, and if we have heard his voice to follow him, then we ought to have that kind of perspective too. Now, there was a day when there were a lot of doors that were closed to us.

Vocations as Participation in Christ’s Mission

But the question is, when they're closed, maybe we can say that's not our responsibility. But when those doors open, then that may put us in a radically different position. You know, I was with the family of George Luce, who was chairman of the board here until July.

Died in July. And at the funeral, I was talking with two of his brothers. And one of his brothers said to me, he said, you know, our father said some things to us that we could never get over. They were the largest, I think, single bus builder in the United States, maybe in the world, I don't know.

And you've seen their school buses all over the United States, as well as some of their recreational vehicles, sort of the Cadillac of that type of vehicle. But Joe said to me, you know, my father would say to us, boys, we're not in the business of building buses.

We have bigger business than that. Our business is to spread the gospel of Christ across the face of the earth. And building buses is the way we have an opportunity to do it. So our business is not building buses.

We build buses so we can do what God has called us as a family to do. Now, you know, that's a different mindset, isn't it? Wouldn't it be interesting if the professor, I notice Paul Deaton back there shaking his head, if the professor in Asbury College's faculty, whether it's mathematics or biology or Bible, would say, my business is not teaching mathematics or biology or Bible.

But my business is participating in what Christ went to the cross to do, and that's to redeem a world that's lost. My way of doing it, teaching mathematics or biology or Bible, I suspect the teacher would be a different kind of teacher.

I suspect the learning would be a different kind of learning. You know, I suspect the pastor would be a different kind of pastor if he felt my business is to be a part of Christ's redemptive work to reach a world with the gospel.

And my way of doing that is pastoring the local church in my community where I am. I suspect it would make a radical difference in the kind of pastoral leadership that that pastor gave. Now, let me burn that home a little closer.

What if a college president were to say, my business is not running a college. God's called me to something bigger than that. God has called me to be a party with him in the redemption of the human race.

And the way he wants me to do it is to be a college president. I suspect it would make a radical difference in the way an institution was run, don't you? So I wonder if we do not need to think through afresh what our relationship is to what God is at work doing in the world today and how we fit into that.

Israel’s Universal Mission

I'm convinced we need to think universally in a way that we've never thought before. And, you know, if you'll go through scripture, you'll find that that's what God had in mind all along. The Jews never understood.

The Jews said he did all this for us. Look what he did. He called Abraham out of her the Chaldees so we could have the land of Canaan. Then he appeared to Moses in the wilderness and he called him to lead us out of Egyptian bondage so we could have the land of Canaan.

But if you go back and read the call that God gave to Abraham, it wasn't so the Jews could have the land of Canaan. That was part of the package, but it was for a bigger purpose. That was so that redemption could come to the whole world.

If you read the passages relating to the call to Moses, you will find that Israel was to be a kingdom of priests and priests are not in the temple for themselves. Priests are there for the sake of other people.

And Israel's call was to be the kingdom of priests for the rest of the world. Yeah, I dare you to go through the Old Testament and notice the universalism that's there all the way through. You don't have to.

When I was a student at Ashbury, I was convinced if I wanted to speak on missions, I had to go to the end of the gospels to get a missionary text. Let me tell you, the great missionary texts of the scripture are loaded all through the Old Testament.

When God gave redemption, the possibility of redemption to man, he had everybody in the world in mind. Now, some of our forefathers understood this. When you look on the cornerstones of some of these buildings, you'll find free salvation for all men, full salvation from all sin.

And that's an interesting concept of what our business is. But it's salvation is to go to the ends of the earth and for all men. I think that the significance of the part is never seen correctly unless it's seen in terms of the whole.

And that wherever you are, your part in the work of God, you will never understand it and fulfill it adequately unless you see it as a part of the whole thing. You know, if we ever see that, then there is no place in the world that isn't significant.

If there is no place in the world and there is no job in the world, it is not important. It doesn't matter whether it's washing feet or what it is, if it's part of the whole plan. You take the guy on the football team whose business is to serve as a decoy and to get either the lineman or the back out of the way so a hole can be filled so the guy with the ball can get through.

If he's the decoy and pulls the other guy out of the way, and as he goes, people say, what's he up to? He's got his own game plan. He doesn't care whether he gets the credit or not as long as the touchdown takes place.

Now, if we could see all that we do in relation to what Christ died on the cross to accomplish, I think everything we did would take on a new sanctity and a new significance and a new excitement and there would be a new fresh thrill about it because God has called us to big business.

Thinking Eschatologically

I think we ought to think universally as believers. Now, the second thing is, I've decided we ought to think eschatologically. Now, don't push me too hard as to what I mean because there are a lot of questions I can't answer, but I do not think we ought to think without thinking about the end.

When I was growing up, we used to hear a lot about the second coming. We don't hear too much about that anymore. I guess we preached it in such a way that when you preach it long enough, people don't pay any attention to you.

I remember the guy who told me, he said, I set up a prophecy conference in my city and he said, I got a number of churches to cooperate and I got the best prophecy expert in the United States I could get to come and preach on the imminent return of Christ.

And he said he sent me a long bill of particulars about what he had to have in terms of space and accommodations and provisions while he was preaching to us on that Christ might come before that next service was over with.

You know, you go far enough in that and people don't pay any attention to you anymore. But the reality is it's a biblical thing, that there is going to be an end and that God is moving everything toward that.

And he is Lord and he began it and he's going to wind it up. I remember old Dr. Otto Pieper from Princeton who was invited to speak to a group of liberal Presbyterian preachers. And when he got through speaking, there was a question and answer period and one of them turned to him and said, Dr. Pieper, I picked up sort of an implication in what you were saying that you believe in the second coming of Christ.

And old Dr. Pieper, greatest scholar I think I ever sat under, he looked around at the preachers in particular to the guy who questioned him, said, well, he began it all. I assume he will wind it up. That's a vital part of my faith and it ought to be a vital part of yours.

Now, if God is in the business of exhausting the options, letting us exhaust the options, we have an opportunity now for God to do something that I think has not been true in my lifetime and yours. And we ought to face it with a certain amount of joyous anticipation and confidence.

Christ’s Servanthood and Certain Victory

The reason I use that passage in John 13 where he said he knew where he came from, that he came from God, and he knew where he was going, that he was going to God, he didn't have any problem washing people's feet because if washing their feet was going to get the end accomplished, that's what he was here for.

He wasn't here for position. He wasn't here for place. He wasn't here for privilege. He wasn't here for wisdom. He was here to fulfill and to accomplish the purposes of his Father and knowing that those purposes were going to be accomplished and that he couldn't lose.

He didn't care what the Father led him through to get there. And, you know, we need some of that sense within us. He's going to win. He's going to win. Christ is not going to lose. I think sometimes we've let the secular world around us put a despair within us and a doubt within us and an agnosticism in us.

We ought to come out of the present moment saying, if he can pull that kind of kingdom down, he can pull any of the other kinds of kingdoms down and he can establish his kingdom and we need to be believing and giving ourselves wholly to it.