Sunday, February 10, 2008

Babylon By Mirror

I remember listening a sermon by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in which he referred to the hymn "The Kingdom Come, O God" which contained this line:
O’er heathen lands afar
Thick darkness broodeth yet:
Arise, O Morning Star,
Arise, and never set!
He basically laughed, and lamented, at the idea that Great Britain was still thought of in his day as a place that needed to look "afar" to find "heathen lands." Look no farther than in the collective mirror, the Doctor argued, for there you'll find all the heathensim you'll ever want to see.

I wonder if transformationism in the spiritual kingdom is the mirror-image of its counterpart in the civil one?

Just as postmillennial transformationists feel compelled to "redeem the city," so many Americans (believing or not) feel the responsibility to "make the world safe for democracy." The latter has been called "the white man's burden," and perhaps the former should be considered the Christian version of Manifest Destiny.

If what is good for the pious goose is good for the pagan gander, then the secular version of judgment begining at the house of God may be the willingness to admit that we Americans don't need to get to "Babylon By Bus," we can just walk out our front door.

Who, us Babylon? I dunno, but Revelation 18 hits eerily close to home.