For my write-up today, I shall blog about my thoughts on
the sermon given by Rev Paul Woods for the Faculty Teaching. The message given by Rev Paul Woods served to
remind fellow VCFers on the vision of the VCF for the year – Becoming Kingdom
people. Rev Paul brought up a perennial debate which affects the theological
world regarding how the concept of God’s kingdom as described in numerous accounts in the bible should be interpreted.
One pervasive Christian doctrine on how this is interpreted is the
dispensationalist perspective. The dispensationalists interprets the Kingdom of God as yet to come. This Kingdom of God would only be established by the second coming of Jesus where Jesus would institute his millennial reign (which they infer from Revelation 20:1–6). Until then, the state of the world is one that is corrupt and evil, estranged from God. It is thus advocated that Christians should exclude themselves from worldly pursuits which belongs to the evil contemporary times. A terminology to describe this theological perspective is Premillennialism - the etymology of the word being that the millennial reign of Christ Second Coming is yet to be, and that we are now living in an age that is before this significant eschatological event according to the dispensationalist.
Rev Paul Woods critiques this Christian perspective as misguided, commenting that this is actually a Grecian influence on biblical doctrines. He blames this view for the reason why Christians have been losing grounds in the modern world for the past 400 years because the Christian community has excluded itself from taking part in the affairs of society when it views these things as antithetical to the faith. He gave the example on the irony in which Christians lament the degeneration of values in contemporary society, where Anti-Christian influences seems to be predominating in the sphere of the media. Rev Paul Woods points out that the irony is that Christian exclusion from participation has been partly the reason for the celerity in which these negative influences have been able to take hold of these machinery of society.
Rev Paul Woods says that the concept of the Kingdom of God is one that is prevailing in contemporary society and not simply one that has yet to take place. It is in a partially existent state which has yet to be completely fulfilled by the second coming of Jesus. An apt analogy which Rev Paul Woods used is how a Singaporean who goes to a foreign country still retains his Singapore habits and disposition. "You can take a Singaporean out of Singapore, but you can't take Singapore out of a Singaporean.". In the same way, the Kingdom of God manifest itself through the lives of the believers and establishes itself through the actions of the believers. I just did some quick research and found out that this school of theological thought is called "Amillennialism". It seems like the position adopted by most mainstream conservative Protestant denominations as well as the Roman Catholic Church, so I suppose the message given is not a radical one and would be one that would be accepted by most VCFers who have conservative denomination backgrounds. Biblical passages that are cited to support this doctrine includes Matthew 12:28, Luke 17:20-21 and Romans 14:17.
I would like to deliver this message to my cell group members in Jireh tomorrow during the moon cake festival celebration we are having. It is an important message of the vision of the Varsity Christian Fellowship which would help Christians to have a better perspective of their identity as Christians in their various walks of life in the world today. I liked how Rev Paul Woods brought perspective of how the various fields of contemporary society are all created by God, and there is no notion of a secular field. "Math is created by God, and before Einstein came up with his formula E=MC2, God already knew about the workings of the sciences". It pays to not see these technical discipline in the compartmentalized framework of being secular discourses.
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