That is, things pertaining to the end, not the last things that will be addressed in this series. Today I'll be discussing the end of the world.

There are a few core things that we must establish right from the start when discussing the end of the world, that are universal to Christians. First, that the world will end. This earth is a temporary home, a place that will be destroyed and replaced in God's perfect timing. It is our responsibility (mankind has been placed in stewardship over it) but it is not our ultimate, perfect home. Second, that the end will include, at some point in the proceedings, the literal, physical return of Jesus Christ to consummate His direct and overt rule over creation, overthrow evil, judge the living and the dead, and initiate the perfected state of creation where He will live with His people for all eternity. Some views hold that He will do all of these things at once, others space them out, but the exact temporal relationship of these events is a secondary issue. The point is that His return will be real, physical, and undeniable. Views which hold to a purely spiritual or hidden return of Christ are, by definition, outside the bounds of historical orthodox Christian teaching. Third, that we will not know the time of the end of the world until it is happening. God has not given us information that can be used to accurately date the return of Christ or the events immediately surrounding His return, and we have assurances that He will not provide that information at a later date. Anyone who claims to have divine revelation indicating an accurate date when we can expect the return of Christ is a false teacher, even if by some statistical oddity they happen to pick the correct date.

The bulk of the dispute among Christians concerning the end of the world is about sequence, almost always centered on two events: The Millennium, and The Great Tribulation. Adherents to every view here draw sources from various places throughout the Bible, but both concepts are really given their identity in the Revelation or Apocalypse of John, the last book in the Bible. This is, ultimately, the reason these concepts are so hotly debated; Revelation is, itself, a book that faces a great deal of dispute over how to rightly interpret it. Without agreement on how to even read the book, we will not come to a consensus on how to understand it. Why this book in particular occupies such a contested place in Christian thought is that it is a different genre than the entire rest of scripture; it has parallels to prophetic books in the Old Testament, but unlike them it offers little, if any, context for most of its visions and no clear interpretations. This lack is shared with wisdom literature, like Proverbs or Job, but these tend to lack sweeping prophetic visions and are more concerned with a life spent well in God's world, which is very hard (if not impossible) to impose on the narrative of Revelation. The beginning is very much suited to study as part of the general epistles, but the exact relationship between the opening letters to the seven churches and the following prophetic visions isn't overtly given within the text; except that it suited the purposes of Christ, for whatever reason, to bundle them together into one delivery. It clearly isn't history or biography or law. It isn't alone in Greek or even Christian-adjacent writing, as there are other apocalyptic works from the first few centuries of Christianity and beyond, but the fact that Revelation is scripture and these others are not demands that it be held to a higher standard than they, but this is little help. Presumably it's doing what they are trying to do, in that it is an accurate and trustworthy form of the claims they are making, but the apocalyptic genre itself is fairly nebulous about whether it's even talking about the future or characterizing the present. What we are left with, then, is a book that cannot be easily placed in our standard boxes, and must be analyzed on its own terms; assuming we know what those terms are.

For the purposes of my theology and this article, we will be operating from the assumption that Revelation was written to inform people in the present how to trust, follow, and love God rightly in light of the future. As such, the prophetic elements are taken as things which are yet to come, that highlight the need for the warnings and affirmations found in the seven letters that preface those visions. The book of Revelation, then, is all of one piece; just like the other epistles, Revelation gives truth and application, and unlike most of the other epistles, this truth is new information about future events delivered in prophetic visions. So what are these two events that find their definition in Revelation?

When I was a kid, I often heard this time period called the Millennial Reign or the Millennial Kingdom, but I don't hear those names for it so much anymore; and now that I type it out, I find myself wondering if this change in language is related to the negative connotations so many older people have for the word 'millennial' due to their notions about my generation. But anyway, it's the least clumsy language I know here, so I'm going to use it.

The Millennial Reign is a period of one thousand years described in Revelation as that where evil is restrained on the Earth but the New Heavens and New Earth have not yet arrived. During this period, Christ assumes direct rule over the Earth, administered by Christians (or at least, those among the saints who have endured very specific and difficult times). The question is whether this is a literal event, and if so, when it happens in relation to other literal events. These questions result in three main views:

1. Amillennialism is the view that the Millennial Reign is not a literal event. That isn't to say nothing it describes happens, but that it doesn't happen the way other views describe it. Essentially, this view holds that the Millennial Reign is an allegorical description of the period of time in which the church is on the earth, administering the rule of Christ within its local contexts. The idea is that evil is currently restrained, that the church has already been given authority to judge and practice administrative duties on the earth, and the Millennial Reign is therefore describing nothing more or less than the full duration (which clearly is not exactly one thousand years) of the time between Pentecost and the return of Christ.
2. Post-Millenialism is the view that the Millennial Reign is a literal period that must come to pass before Christ physically returns. The idea is that the church has been tasked with the responsibility of restraining evil and establishing the rule of Christ in a material way in the world today and, once the world is brought fully under the authority of Christ, He will return to claim the Kingdom that has been prepared for Him. This view includes a specific definition of the church itself, as the agency by which God has chosen to bring creation into final submission to Christ.
3. Pre-Millennialism is the view that Christ will physically return and, as part of His return, restrain evil and establish the Millennial Reign. The idea is that it is the work of Christ that establishes the Kingdom on the earth, and that none of this can happen until He has returned. As such, it happens after the other end times events, followed only by the establishment of the New Heaven and New Earth.

Views 1 & 2 lend themselves well to administrative views of the church, and are therefore common in traditions that view the church as having direct legal authority in the world. In these views, the church either can or must practice judicial authority in the world as above the authority of human governments, which can be seen in the way much of Europe still has religious structure embedded into its secular governments, whether through submission to the Vatican, clerical legal authority, or the direct merging of church and state. View 3 can be held by people with such a view of the church, but it doesn't lend itself naturally to that approach. The essential problem here is that, in a Pre-Mill view, the church is equipped to make disciples, but is not equipped to ultimately change the hearts or minds of anyone who does not become a disciple. That is, secular people can and should be expected to continue acting out of a secular mindset for as long as they remain separated from Christ, and therefore, the church does not have the position of authority over them necessary to establish the material rule of Christ in the current age beyond our own spheres of influence. This view tends to consider the responsibility of the Christian as one where we lend our influence where we can (and in countries where the population votes, that includes voting along Christian moral lines), but recognizes limits inherent to that, which is fine as it counters attempts at creating a hollow theocracy. This view also lends itself to the "hopes and prayers" approach to worldly problems, wherein Christians are encouraged to wash their hands of certain problems on the understanding that nothing will really change until Christ abolishes evil in the world; this result is, obviously, much less fruitful in its engagement with the world. Amillennialism can coexist with this worldview, as well, but it's a less natural fit.

As it stands now, this blog overall is written from a Pre-Millennial position. I believe that Christ will return and, only upon His return, establish direct and overt rule over the world. There are two basic types of Pre-Millennialism, though; those that teach that the Kingdom is not yet a reality at all (and therefore not a direct factor in our current decisions and views about the church) and those that teach that the Kingdom is already a reality waiting to be fully revealed (and therefore informative of our decisions and views about the church). The former tends to coincide with a Dispensational view of redemptive history, while the latter tends to coincide with a Covenant view of redemptive history. For reasons I will explain in the post about Dispensational and Covenant theologies, I'll explain my stance in more detail there; for now, it is enough to note that I hold the Kingdom as a present reality that informs our view of the church.

The Great Tribulation is a period of time in which, essentially, everything sucks and then people die. I would love to be more detailed than that, but scripture itself kind of isn't; while there are a lot of details people have claimed for this period, the Bible itself mostly just says what's cited above. The passage in Matthew is preceded by a description of a day when people will need to flee, and followed by talk of a time when people will falsely proclaim Christ's return, but the text makes clear that these are events that happen before and after the Tribulation (respectively). The passage in Revelation comes after the opening of six of the seven seals, but before the events generally associated with the Great Tribulation.

The sequence of events in Matthew, where the "Abomination of Desolation" is discussed and then people flee before the Great Tribulation, is sometimes associated with the idea of the Antichrist as a distinct character. This view was already established within Dispensational theology, but really hit the mainstream with the Left Behind books and movies. The basic idea is that there is a distinct person who will stand as a primary Antichrist world leader that will fulfill the evil desires of the world in rebellion against God and initiate a period of suffering by setting himself up as a divine, probably in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. This, of course, relies on a few things falling into place (like the re-establishment of Jewish temple worship in Jerusalem), and assumes much. For instance, the term 'antichrist' is used primarily as a class of spirit or false teacher in scripture, rather than a descriptor for a specific individual, and some of the things attributed to this Antichrist are more clearly described in Revelation as being the actions of someone bearing a different title (generally the Beast or the false prophet of the Beast).

But discussion about the Great Tribulation is incomplete without discussion of the rapture, since the two events are often tied together. The rapture is the belief that Christians, alive and dead, will be removed from the world and taken up to meet Christ in the sky, to return with Him when He arrives to establish His direct and absolute rule over the Earth. Their relationship is so bound together in modern theology, in fact, that the primary views of the rapture are named for their relationship to the Great Tribulation. They are:

1. Pre-Tribulation: This view holds that the rapture will occur before the Great Tribulation and is almost universally tied to the belief that the Great Tribulation will be a seven-year period initiated by the political rise of the Antichrist, in which the world enjoys roughly 3.5 years of peace and prosperity under his influence, at which point the Antichrist desecrates the Jewish temple in Jerusalem by declaring himself God there; this launches the remaining 3.5 years of global suffering under the tyrannical rule of the Antichrist. It is most commonly held as part of Dispensationalism, because it assumes that the Great Tribulation is a period of judgment which doesn't apply to Christians (some views hold, in fact, that it is specifically a time of judgment against the Jewish people for rejecting Christ; this view is not universal, but is fairly innate to Dispensational thought itself). Whatever the nature of the Great Tribulation, a pre-trib view holds that Christians will not be present for it aside from those who come to faith during it.
2. Mid-Tribulation: This is the least common of the three views, and while it largely agrees with the timeline and purposes as stated by the pre-trib view, it holds that God will wait to withdraw His people until just before the worst bits happen; generally this means the rapture happens as part of the sequence of events in which the Antichrist declares himself to be God.
3. Post-Tribulation: This view holds that the rapture will happen only after the Great Tribulation has passed, and does not require that the Great Tribulation even be a specific period of time. It is the belief that Christians meeting Christ in the air are not escaping anything, but rather welcoming Christ during His triumphal return. This view holds that the return of Christ and the rapture occur together, which means that Christians would rise up to meet Christ and then immediately accompany Him as He continues His descent to Earth. It allows for almost any view of the Great Tribulation itself, from the seven-year timeline held by the other two views to a belief that the Great Tribulation is just a way to describe the fact that Christians can become martyrs during this time, and any view in between. It is frequently paired with amillenialism, but that connection is more important to the amill view than to the post-trib view (that is, almost every amill is post-trib; a great many post-trib adherents are not amill).

I hold to a post-tribulation view and a belief that the Great Tribulation is more of a general descriptor of bad times than a specific time period. I believe that the Abomination of Desolation and the following need to flee as described in Matthew 24:15-20 is the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 ad, and the period Christ describes partly as the Great Tribulation and the age of false Christs is more or less just the current period of time beginning with the fall of Jerusalem and continuing until Christ returns. I am, admittedly, less certain on that idea at this time than I am of the claim that the rapture is post-trib. I am absolutely convinced the rapture is post-trib, for a few reasons. One is simply the nature of God toward His people; throughout scripture, God leaves His people to deal with trying times, offering them His presence through those times but not removing them from them. I do not see in the God of the Bible a tendency that would point to Him pulling His people out of the Great Tribulation. But, more importantly, the Bible tends to describe the rapture as happening after the Great Tribulation or in conjunction with Christ's return. Consider these two passages where we get a lot of our idea about the rapture:

The passage in 1 Thessalonians states clearly that the promise of meeting Christ in the air is part of Christ's return, and not a preceding event. The passage in Matthew begins by stating that He is describing a period after the Great Tribulation, and during that period the people of Christ are gathered together. Note also that Jesus said in verse 22 that the Great Tribulation was cut short for the sake of the elect, which somewhat demands that the elect are present and threatened by the Great Tribulation itself. The arguments for an earlier rapture tend to come partly from later in Matthew 24:

Because pre- and mid-trib views tend to hold that the Great Tribulation is a defined seven-year period which can be recognized during its run, at least during its latter half, then the event described in the last two verses above can't happen after the Great Tribulation, otherwise we would know the day and the hour by simple math. That is, if the two men/two women descriptors are talking about the rapture, and the rapture is the same time as the return of Christ, and we can know that they will happen 3.5 years after the Antichrist declares himself God, then we can know when Christ will return by tracking 3.5 years after the Antichrist declares himself God. I find this argument unconvincing, for a number of reasons. First, I don't agree that the Great Tribulation is a trackable seven-year period, and I'm not even convinced the Antichrist is a singular being that will ever arise and do much of anything. But also, we have no indication that the two men/two women statements are describing the rapture. The assumption is that the one who vanishes was taken up to Heaven, but Christ is talking about a period of judgment, and I believe the much more natural reading of this passage is that the one who is taken is dead. All told, this reading does not seem justified to me, and certainly not justified enough to overpower the direct statement of Christ a few verses earlier that the angels will be sent to gather the faithful during, and not before, the return of Christ after the Great Tribulation has ended.

All told, then, I believe that the Great Tribulation is already underway, and that the judgment of God is already being poured out on the world in some measure. This present age will end with the triumphant return of Christ, with His people (alive and dead) rising to meet Him and join His procession to Earth, at which point He will initiate the Millennium of direct, overt reign in an undeniable and unmistakable coronation. After the Millennium is over, the final judgment will come, followed by the institution of the New Heaven and New Earth, where we will live with Christ for eternity.

As such, there is quite a lot about the Christian life that does not need to be repeated here but can be reasonably inferred from the series so far. Now, if this were a standalone post about the Christian life in the general epistles, it would likely be mostly a summary of James. The entire book of James addresses this issue, even the portions that also address another matter, and is therefore very useful for such a study. Handling that fairly likely deserves a sermon series rather than a single blog post, but this is where we are.

In the interest of limiting our focus to avoid repetition, the outline for this post will actually be drawn from Jude.

Jude has just spent his entire letter condemning false teachers and making comparisons to help his readers identify those false teachers. He closes his short letter with a contrast: the false teachers are as I've already described, but as for you, this needs to be who you are. And what we find in that ending is a very concise treatment of the Christian life. It contains the major classes of activities that make up the Christian life, as well as the goal and purpose of living in that way. Let's identify these and see what other authors of the general epistles have said about each.

But what is it we are to be building toward? It is hard to know if the act of growth is moving in the right direction if we do not know what the end result is supposed to look like. Here, Peter gives us aid:

We are being built up for a purpose, and that purpose is the function of a holy priesthood. Remember that a priest is one who represents God to the people and represents the people to God. We are under the chief priest, Christ, as Hebrews explains at length, and so we are not under the obligations of high priesthood that He covers; however, the general function of a priest is on our shoulders, and our growth will be building toward fulfilling that role. This includes spiritual sacrifices that are pleasing to God--but what are those? One of them is prayer.

This prayer must actually be honoring to God if it is to fuel a truly Christian life. Peter tells us that prayer comes from sound judgement and a sober spirit, that is, we must be honest and accurate in our treatment of reality, and we must be clear and focused. A review of the prayers contained in scripture show some of what this looks like.

For a brief description at what living in the love of God looks like, consider this word from Hebrews:

"All the more as you see the day drawing near" implies that we must be looking toward that day. We simply will not see it drawing near if we aren't looking to it. Jude includes this as a fundamental part of the Christian life, as well.

This includes both an understanding of the coming judgement and the hope of the promises being fulfilled on the other side of it. As I've said elsewhere, I am not inclined to believe we will get to miss the judgement that comes upon the world; but even if we are, we face trials now, and can see in Christ the patience we must exhibit as the world around us continues to oppose us. But we can do so joyfully, knowing that the Day of the Lord brings with it the promise of a new heavens and new earth. We can trust that, in Christ, we will not suffer the wrath of God, but will instead enjoy His presence forever. Our life now, then, must reflect both the adherence to God and the hope and joy in His salvation.

This is a major part of what is happening in 3 John. Gaius is being commended for walking in truth and treating well those who come in the name of Christ with the true gospel. On the contrary, John expresses displeasure for Diotrephes, who is no discerning the gospel well enough to welcome those who speak truth. Into this context he reminds Gaius, "Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God" (3 John 1:11, NASB). John gives more insight into this discernment when he says of the church in Ephesus,

Here the church is commended for testing those who come claiming to be in Christ, and including their commendation in verse 6, they are opposing those found to be false. But how do they test these false teachers?

We are to live in discernment, and we must practice this discernment by testing things to see if they line up with Christ, and we have as our standard the word of God. Combined with a life of prayer powered by the Holy Spirit, who has far greater discernment than we can ever have, the choices we make will form a lifestyle that reflects the gospel to the world around us.

The benediction of Jude, much like that of Hebrews, turns our focus to God. In the wake of everything Jude has said about the Christian life, he reminds us that this is all for God's glory, through the power of Christ, and under His authority. It is fitting that this is the final thought in this series, because holding to it will make all the rest of it clear. We can recognize false teachers by seeing how they do not seek God's glory, diminish the power of Christ, or downplay the authority of the Lord. We can recognize the true gospel by seeing God's glory, power, and authority played out through it. Our lives align with our message if we live it for God's glory, relying on His power, and honoring His authority.

The church of Ephesus comes first, and the promise they receive goes all the way to the beginning of scripture. Mankind is created and placed in the Garden of Eden, this paradise where they can live in community with God Himself, but they allow sin to enter into their lives and the world and have to be removed. Now, we tend to talk about how they had to be removed because they couldn't remain in God's presence, and there's truth to that, but the passage actually describes a more specific motive: Adam and Eve needed to lose access to the Tree of Life.

Now, we see later in Revelation that this is not a return to the literal Garden of Eden. The New Jerusalem is a city, not a garden. But it does have the streams of flowing water, it does have the Tree of Life, and most importantly, it has the people of God living in the presence of God without sin. It is in this context that Hebrews, which concerns itself with a significant section on the day of rest coming for the people of God through Christ, presents the fullness of that rest being realized.

This rest, according to Hebrews, is found in Christ for those who will believe on Him. This is placed in contrast to the generation that wandered in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt, who contended with God and failed to trust in His promises and provision. But it is in the presence of God, in true community with Him like there was in the Garden and will be again in the New Jerusalem, that the rest God promises will be fully realized. This is our first point about salvation: it is a restoration, a return to the perfect design of God and community with Him.

Revelation paints a very vivid picture of those who remain enemies of God being cast into the lake of fire, called the second death, followed immediately by the redeemed going to dwell with God forever. The fundamental promise being made to the church of Smyrna, then, is that the saved have no fear of final separation from God and can trust in the eternal life He offers. The contrast is set forth in the narrative of Revelation, and promised here in chapter 2, but is given in a very clear and concise way by Peter. In his second letter, Peter talks about how unrighteous people and the corrupted natural order will be destroyed by fire, and then promises that those who are in Christ need not fear that because they can look beyond to the new life that awaits them.

At a quick stroke, the promise to the church of Pergamum seems a bit odd. What is this hidden manna, and why a stone with some name on it?

The manna is a theme that gets some development earlier in scripture, though it isn't as strongly recurring topic. In fact, there are really only two places we need to go to get the general thrust of the story so far. The first is during the wandering in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt, when the people of Israel were in a barren place and hungry. God sustained them with provision in the form of a miraculous bread that appeared with the morning dew that they simply gathered. While there is very little discussion of the manna after that point in scripture, it certainly left a mark on the culture, because it gets cited after Jesus feeds the 5,000. He performs the miracle, He and His disciples ship out at night, and the people find them the next day and ask for more bread as a sign. A relevant part of that conversation includes:

Later, they grumbled among themselves about Jesus proclaiming that He was the bread that came down from Heaven. They got Jesus' point, even if they didn't like it: while the manna was a very real and effective sustenance for the people of God, there is a better sustenance delivered by God in the person of Jesus Christ. The promise of hidden manna, then, is a promise that ties back to the earlier promises of eternal life, with a focus on Christ as the giver and sustainer of that life. In 1 John, the author of both the epistle and the gospel revisits this topic when he tells us, "And the testimony is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life" (1 John 5:11-12, NASB).

Thus, the promise delivered through the church is Pergamum is not simply some bread and a stone, but an imperishable life founded on Christ and a new identity found in Him. The redeemed can trust that our lives are grounded on the solid rock of Christ, because He is both the giver and sustainer of life as well as the author of the promises that life contains.

The message to Thyatira is a bit more straight forward. Jesus promises authority over the nations and, as the morning star frequently represents, a position of some glory. 1 Peter 1:12 notes a similar theme, in recognizing that the saints of old looked forward to the fullness of salvation and that the nature of what we receive is so great that even angels long to see it. But while the idea of us receiving authority and glory will be revisited here, they are not widely common themes in the general epistles. When they arise, in fact, they are generally pointing beyond us. Consider, for instance, John's words just one chapter earlier, during his greeting.

Any glory or authority we may receive is second in importance to that which Christ receives. We can trust that this promise is true, that God will grant us to rule with Him and that He will glorify us in the end, but there seems to be an almost subconscious hesitance by the authors of the general epistles to let us ever think about that without immediately turning our eyes to the One who deserves all authority and all glory. This is a stark reminder that not only is Christ the means by which our salvation comes, but that salvation is ultimately for His glory and not our own. I would do us no favors in presenting it any other way.

The book of life, again, points to eternal life; confession of the name includes both glory and endorsement, and we can ask for no greater endorsement than that of God the Son. Instead of revisiting these concepts, though, look at the first clause in that sentence, that we will be clothed in white garments. This is a promise of purity, that we will be washed clean, that the one who overcomes (that is, the one who believes on Jesus as per our opening verse) will be sanctified and made whole. Hebrews, a book largely about salvation and redemptive history, touches on this a number of times but few as concisely as "by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10 NASB). The blood of Christ washes us clean, this is the means by which we are sanctified, and we have assurance given to the church of Sardis that this will be perfectly completed.

We have here new information on the new identity we have in Christ, that it involves being marked as one of God's, but this talk about being a pillar in the temple ties back to the promise in the message to Ephesus. Philadelphia's portion includes residing in the presence of God, but the temple language ties back to the apparently false form of Judaism they were dealing with. These people lived in the midst of what appears to be a false temple or synagogue, and are promised a place in the true temple of God.

This, the eternal temple where Christ stands forever, always in the presence of the Father and without need for further sacrifice or washing, is the temple that the redeemed can look forward to calling home. Where Ephesus was given an emphasis on the perfection and the closeness of God to His people, Philadelphia is given a picture of life in perfect and continual communion with God.

The church of Laodicea is a rich body. In the message to them, they have to be reminded that the wealth they have on Earth makes no dent on the poverty they have in spiritual matters, and that they are 'lukewarm' in their devotion to God. There is much that can be said about what it means to be lukewarm, but turning to verse 21 we see that the church is given a vision of something far greater than the riches they are relying on. After all, the throne of Christ is no small seat of power, but as Peter describes it:

Angels, authorities, and powers are subject to the throne of Christ. The things of this world that we seek are too small, they are as nothing compared to the vast riches we have in Christ. To the church of Laodicea, and any of a similar mindset, the desire for earthly wealth is a distraction from the fullness of what awaits those who put their hope in Christ.

The overarching thread of salvation woven throughout the general epistles, though, is that this is all through and for Christ, and as He is better than anything we have on this world, so His salvation is greater than anything we can have through other means, and the weight of our treatment of salvation is greater than how we handle any other subject. This is why false teachers are viewed in such a harsh light: what they do with the gospel is objectively far more important than what they do with anything else. We cannot honor God or do any ultimate good if we will not handle this matter well, and we cannot handle it well if Christ is not the focus of all of it.

In Christ, through the salvation He offers, we have a new and better identity, one that is pure and washed free of all sin and corruption, that includes authority and coming glory, that allows us to reside joyfully in the presence of God forever, without fear of further pain or death. This is founded on the work of Christ and grounds everything we are and everything we do. Let us look forward with joy and expectation, patiently awaiting the fullness of this great salvation, as James reminds us:

If we are truly grounding ourselves on this promise and on patiently waiting for it, our lives will be impacted. This will be the focus of the final post in this series.

One common theme raised throughout the general epistles is that of false teachers. This seems to have been a fairly constant issue in the early church, as it is referenced by every single author of a general epistle, discussed by Paul, and even briefly described in Acts. Jude, who sought to write a letter about salvation, instead found the need to address false teachers too pressing to delay. Peter, who spent his first letter largely concerned with salvation and Christian living, had to write (or at least dictate) a second that dealt heavily with false teachers. James, in a letter that is almost entirely about living out the gospel, found need to make a point about false teachers his audience needed to avoid. This was a rampant problem, and not one that has ever really gone away.

The authors of the general epistles, when confronted with the notion of false teachers, thought back to the period after their ancestors left Egypt and before that congregation entered the promised land. There is much to be said about the apparent cultural importance of these events, that details of individuals such as Korah and Balaam found their way into the immediate thought processes of so varied a group of individuals. For now, however, we will focus on what these citations say about the false teachers of the day.

Balaam
2 Peter mentions Balaam as an archetype of the teachings he was condemning in 2 Peter 2:13-16. Here, Balaam is described as loving "the wages of unrighteousness," and those who are seen to be following after his character are described as "...stains and blemishes, reveling in their deceptions, as they carouse with you, having eyes full of adultery that never cease from sin, enticing unstable souls, having a heart trained in greed, accursed children" (2 Peter 2:13b-14 NASB). In Jude 11, readers are warned that "for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam." John condemns the church in Smyrna, "'But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit [acts of] immorality" (Revelation 2:14 NASB).

​We know little about Balaam son of Beor, but the bulk of what we know is in Numbers 22-24, and we find in two different Biblical sources that he was later killed by the people of Israel while his town was being destroyed. The cultural understanding of what Balaam actually did must have drawn from other sources, however, because the actual narrative does not contain everything said of him here. Either way, the image being given of the false teachers of the day seem to include significant immoral behavior and an open enjoyment of their unrighteousness, as well as a certain amount of greed that drove Balaam to answer Balak's call after being told by God not to. This last point also indicates a disregard for God's command.

In Revelation, Balaam is associated with the Nicolaitans, a heretical sect which held that spiritual freedom was a license to live immoral lives and seems to have been present in Thyatira and Pergamum as well. Given the emphasis on good works in James, it is distinctly possible that the groups he was addressing were, if not Nicolaitans, at least similar to them in doctrine. If Peter and Jude have the same understanding of Balaam as John does, which seems likely from their descriptions, then they might also have been addressing the rise of the Nicolaitan sect. Given the context of the phrase in which Jude's use of Balaam appears, he may have also been citing Balaam's involvement in Balak's jealous attempts to usurp the will of God through sacrifices and condemn God's people.

The stories detailed above both take place during the Exodus, which is also referenced at length in Hebrews, notable here because it was a formative period in the development of Judaism. There is a certain degree to which the Jewish authors of the general epistles can look back to the wandering in the wilderness as a definitive period in establishing their identity, religious expression, and the promises God had made to their people. While they appear to have generally understood the rise of the church as the fulfillment of many such promises, there seems to have been an acute understanding that there was something new at play in the world that was unlike anything that had come before. In such a formative period, that would define much of Christian identity, religious expression, and the nature of God's promises and fulfillment, it should not be a surprise that the minds of the generation that saw God descend in human form went to the generation that saw God descend on Sinai. But not every general epistle goes to that history, or even to that level of specificity.

The epistle of James is, primarily, a study of the Christian life, and some parts are debated as to their influence on the doctrine of salvation. But in chapter 3, James (while still discussing the general expectations of Christians) focuses in on teachers. The first verse sets the tone, that teaching is a risky venture, and the rest of the chapter expands on the idea that our speech cannot be trusted unless our tongue is tamed, and even this is beyond our ability to do alone. We tend to read this passage as a command to all Christians to watch our tongues, and it is certainly useful in this way, and not contradictory to the broader context in which it appears. The fact that it appears as a clarification of a warning to teachers means that we can also look at it as a solid text to examine the nature of false teachers.

​The warning is simple: teachers are held to a high standards of accountability for what they teach, and the means through which they teach is corrupt and in need of purification. Our tongues can guide our entire lives, especially if we make our living through speech, and if we do not have this under control everything else will suffer. In this way he is, somewhat indirectly, warning that the false teachers, those who do not have bridled tongues, who allow blessing and curses to come from the same source, will lead themselves and their hearers astray. Everything described in the rest of that chapter, when applied to the body at large, is a matter of significant concern. When applied to teachers, it is harrowing.

Jude, in one sentence, describes the false teachers of the day in a very concise way: "For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah" (Jude 1:11 NASB). Balaam and Korah have been addressed already, and Cain is known for being jealous of his brother, offering improper sacrifice, and causing destruction and division. This all brings us to the big picture.

The general epistles, while addressing different audiences at somewhat different times, have a certain unity of description when addressing false teachers. They are described across the board as jealous, greedy, destructive and divisive, and dismissive of God's commands. This is all fine, and fairly easy to understand, and we can certainly apply the set to false teachers today; but probably the least clear common description best sums up the lot of them: these are people who would offer an improper sacrifice to God. But what does that even mean in a context where the sacrificial system is seen as superseded by a once-for-all sacrifice by Christ? Let's close this post by looking at that issue.