On Mistaken Belief          The last book in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia  called, The Last Battle , portrays different responses when a person believes something is true that later is learned to be false.       Now hard times had come on Narnia, and many Narnians were enslaved to the Calormen – although the Ape (a stooge for Tash, the Satan character) wants to convince them they are not enslaved. Ape mocks the Narnians as being naive for thinking they are enslaved and says, “Tash is only another name for Aslan [the Christ character]. All that old idea of us [Narnians] being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who.... Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan; Aslan is Tash.” Lewis is describing a situation where good and evil are so mixed as to be allegedly the sa...

The Gospel of the Forty Days:  The Church as the Restored Kingdom       Last week we developed the theme of the Messianic expectation of the restoration of the Kingdom of David, and asserted that in Jesus’s teaching about the “kingdom of God” during the forty days between His resurrection and ascension (Ac 1:3), He would have taught that this kingdom is now the Church. Let’s explore that a bit more.       David’s kingdom was based on covenant with God (2 Sam 7:1-29), which included God’s promise to establish an eternal kingdom with a descendant of David, and “I will be His Father, and He shall be My Son.” Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that Jesus, in the flesh, is a descendant of David (Lk 2:4-7, 3:31); and in previous articles we have discussed some of the Bible’s evidence that Jesus is, at the same time, in His Divinity, the Son of God.       Now at the Last Supper, Jesus says to the Twelve, “As My Father appoin...

The Gospel of the Forty Days: Messianic Expectations       “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Or as a significant textual source has it: “Is it at this time that You will bring about the restoration, and when will the kingdom of Israel be?” (Ac 1:6.) The Apostles asked this of Jesus at the end of the forty days following His resurrection and just before He ascended into Heaven.       Many misinterpret the question as an expression of the expectation of a political Messiah. It is true that some First Century Jews, notably the Zealots (the Apostle Simeon had been one), were waiting for a political Messiah. But Biblical and extra-biblical Jewish sources indicate this was not at all the general Messianic expectation.       Brant Pitre, PhD, a scholar of the Jewish background to Christianity, reminds us that to understand the humanity of Jesus, His words and actions in historical context, we ne...