Return Of Christ Research Articles

Kristologi Eskatologis: Kerajaan Seribu Tahun Dalam Pemikiran Teologi Kristen

This article discusses the concept of Eschatological Christology, especially in the context of Christian theological thought, with a focus on the idea of the Millennial Kingdom. The author explores the theological interpretations of the future found in Christian scripture, particularly in relation to Christ's return and His thousand-year reign. The discussion includes various different theological perspectives, so this article summarizes views about the millennial kingdom (millennium kingdom) using qualitative methods, namely by using existing literature data.

Christ the Physician: A Theological Framework for Healing in Catholic Health Care.

The metaphor of Christ the physician features prominently in the gospels and the preaching of the Church Fathers, emphasizing that Jesus' work of healing extends beyond bodily ills to spiritual healing as well. Given that the end of medicine is "health," which involves wholeness of body and soul, Christ is uniquely able to accomplish this in us-beginning with grace in our souls in this life, and culminating in the resurrection of the body and restoration of body and soul in glory at the end of time. Drawing on the thought of the Church Fathers and Thomas Aquinas, this paper considers how Catholic health care is distinctly positioned to continue Christ's work of bodily and spiritual healing through medical and sacramental approaches-as we await our perfect and ultimate healing upon Christ's return in glory.

ПЕРШІ КРОКИ ПРОПОВІДНИЦЬКОЇ АКТИВНОСТІ ЧАРЛЬЗА ТЕЙЗА РАССЕЛА

This study is aimed at outlining the context of the first preaching company of Charles Taze Russell, the founder of the Watch Tower Society, and the religious movement International Bible Students, which today is called the religious organization of Jehovah's Witnesses. As a result of the study, it was found that in the first half of 1870, Charles Russell and a group of like-minded people, through Bible studies, came to certain conclusions that became the basis of their doctrinal system. During this same period, independent Adventist minister Nelson Barbour and his followers were identified as rethinking the idea of Christ's second coming after their disappointment in 1874. They found the theological basis for a new view that Christ's return had actually occurred, but in an invisible manner. It has been established that the common belief in the invisible manner of Christ's return became the reason for the acquaintance of Charles Russell and Nelson Barbour in 1876. This encounter made Charles Russell open to the importance of studying the prophetic periods of the book of Daniel. It was found that the basis of the interpretation of the prophetic scheme, which he got acquainted with and accepted, was the edited scheme, which was professed by the participants of the movement of William Miller in the 1830s–1844. It is revealed that the new convictions, the realization that the time for the fulfillment of events before the arrival of the Millennial Kingdom has come, prompted Charles Russell to take active action in preaching, for the accomplishment of which he spent his time and money. As a result of the religious activities of Charles Russell and his employees, a significant number of US states were covered by preaching. Because the religious leaders of the day did not agree with the idea of the invisible return of Christ in 1874, Charles Russell's preaching work faced great resistance. At the same time, some noted his positive personal qualities: confidence and courage in public sermons.

Cessationism and continuationism: Pentecostal trinitarianism balances the tension

There are three streams of theological thoughts on charismata. The first thought is the cessationists who believe that all sign gifts were designed for canonical conclusion, and therefore ceased when canon was completed. This theological stance was endorsed by Reformers such as Calvin and some Catholics. Later, around the 17th century to date, this stance had been challenged by evidence of these spiritual gifts in operation. There are four mainstream cessationists. Firstly, full cessationists are totally anti-miracles. Secondly, concentric cessationists believe in the total cessation of charismata and miracles in mainline Christianity and evangelised territories. However, miracles may manifest in unevangelised areas as an aid to the missional endeavors. Thirdly, classical cessationists of whom the charismatic manifestations served as the launching pads for evangelisation and the affirmation of God’s revelation. Finally, consistent cessationists go further to declare that although the miraculous gifts were for church establishment in the 1st century, the apostles and prophets also ceased. The second thought is continuationism, which stands in juxtaposition with the cessationists. They are convinced that charismata never ceased. If they cease, it will be at the return of Christ. Pentecostalism, through its trinitarianism, stands in the middle of the two thoughts and enhances the continuationist stance. It is a movement that accepts the holistic or trinitarian view of God. The God of the Old Testament continues to be the God of the New Testament up to current times. Its trinitarian emphasis puts it above the cessationist-continuationist tensions.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: The article’s intradisciplinary implication was realised through the appeal to numerous theological disciplines such as biblical studies, church history, ecclesiology and pneumatology. These various disciplines and doctrines argue that although cessationism and continuationism are common in theological thoughts today, Pentecostal trinitarianism is growing and gaining more ground at the grassroots levels.

Form versus Catastrophe in the Old English Christ III

Medieval authors of literature on Doomsday faced a structural challenge of their own making: their audiences knew too much about the coming end of days to be as terror-stricken as they should. This difficulty was compounded by the comic structure of the Christian salvation narrative, which looked forward to Christ's return as—technically speaking—its catastrophe, when all the confusion and unhappiness of the universal plot would be unravelled and total clarity would reign. The author of the Old English Doomsday poem called Christ III, however, devised an ingenious strategy to restore its audience to a state of wholesome uncertainty. By destabilizing the predictable flow of Old English meter with an unusually varied and challenging range of hypermetric verses, the poet of Christ III used metrical form to undermine the confidence of audiences in their powers of prediction—and in so doing, restored suspense to the experience of Doomsday.

A Posture of Protest? The Search for Christian Identity in A Post-Secular Society: Between Secularised Eschatology and A Sacralisation of History

This article theorises ideations of “the people” in a comparative reflection on Latin-Christian theologies and typologies of time and secularised appropriations thereof in right-wing as well as far-right movements in Europe and the United States of America. Understanding the world in grand narratives of “good” and “evil” emerges from Christian eschatological hope: the hope of the restoration and renewal of the cosmos and the final defeat of evil prophesised in association with the return of Christ. However, this language of good and evil becomes detached from the wider corpus of Christian belief and theology. In its secular expression, it may attach the good to an abstract and normative account of “the people”, who are defined in contrast to a range of others, both internal and external to the nation. Secular iterations might further echo the stratification of present, past and future through a sacralisation of the past and a dramatization of the future. The context of contemporary right-wing and far-right movements poses a series of questions about the relationship between belief and belonging, the acceptability of the secularization of Christian traditions and theologies, and the extent to which Christian communities can legitimately associate with right-wing movements.

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

The Emergence and the Rise of Covid-19 in Rivers State: A Christian Traditional Perspective

This paper focus on the Emergence and the Rise of Covid-19 in Rivers State: A Christian Traditional Perspective. The paper argues that Covid-19 according to Christian perspective is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy that was foretold by Christ 2000 years ago concerning the occurrences of pestilences in the history of mankind; one of the signs of the ‘last days' of human history and a practical reminder of Christ's return to judge and reign over the earth. The paper contends that Covid-19, in the context of African Traditional Religion is akin to ogbanje, sorcerers and witches in the sense that it is associated with death, suffering, panic, fear, psychological trauma. The paper adopted historical approach to trace the emergence of Covid-19 and its gradual increase in the State. The paper recommends that the Rivers State Government should intensify more effort to ensure compliance of its citizens to Covid-19 precautionary measures because the virus is real and still ravaging.

The Politics of Zealotry: Pier Paolo Pasolini's "St. Paul"

The Politics of Zealotry:Pier Paolo Pasolini's "St. Paul" Michael J. Shapiro (bio) Prelude A large room in Barcelona. Interior. (Night.) Isn't he a fascist? A collaborator with the SS? Isn't he and didn't he declare himself the most zealous of the most zealous promoters of traditions?… Paul looks around and begins to speak (he has a mysterious smile, unbelievable in that face distorted by fanaticism), and looking around humbly, he says in a deep voice in the way the first words of a hymn are uttered: 'Christ has liberated us for freedom.' —Pier Paolo Pasolini St. Paul: A Screenplay Zealotries on the Road In his crime novel Lucky You (1997), Carl Hiaasen invents an encounter that illuminates the way right wing zealotry can become a collective sensibility. Early in the story he describes, with cinematic detail, two men (who ultimately hatch a plan to rob a lottery winner) getting out of a Dodge Ram truck after coming off the road and entering a convenience store: "Bode Gazzer was five feet six and had never forgiven his parents for it. He wore three-inch snakeskin shitkickers and walked with a swagger that suggested not brawn so much as hemorrhoidal tribulation. Chub was a beer-gutted six two, moist-eyed, ponytailed and unshaven. He carried a loaded gun at all times and was Bode Gazzer's best and only friend. They had known each other two months." 1 What helps me initiate my analysis of the media through which zealotry spreads its world view is the ideational symbiosis that takes place once Hiaasen has Gazzer, a poacher, and Chub, a counterfeiter in conversation. "Chub never thought of himself as having a political agenda until he met Bode Gazzer, who helped organize Chub's multitude of hatreds into a single venomous philosophy…[e.g.] 'Oklahoma,' Bode Gazzer said sharply, 'and that was the government did it, to frame those two white boys. No, I'm talking 'bout a militia. Armed, disciplined and well-regulated, like it says in the Second Amendment'." 2 [End Page 535] The Gazzer-Chub shared sensibility that Hiaasen invents has counterparts in other historical periods in which zealous mentalities have been amplified in encounters. One is captured in Leonardo Padura's novelistic biography of Leon Trotsky's assassin, Ramón Mercader. Mercader is recruited and radicalized during a number of encounters in disparate national venues. 3 Among those that prepare him for his leap into history is one with Africa de las Heras: Her parents named her Africa, like the patron saint of Ceuta, where she had been born, and rarely had a name fit someone so well: because she was vigorous, unfathomable, and wild, like the continent to whom she owed her name. Ever since the day he met her, at a meeting of the Young Communists of Cataluña, Ramón felt absorbed by the young woman's beauty, but above all, it was her rock-solid ideas and her telluric drive that ensnared him: Africa de las Heras was like an erupting volcano who roared a permanent clamor for revolution. 4 Like the apostle Paul's addressees, whom he tells to wait expectantly for Christ's return, Ramón experiences a "tense environment, in which everyone was expecting something to happen very soon…it was as if his life and history had been lying in wait for each other." 5 Once he becomes known as a political zealot, he's selected by Stalin's agents to be Trotsky's assassin. During his training he takes "theoretical classes" in the Soviet Union and is turned into "soldier 13…a man of marble, convinced of the need to carry out whatever mission was asked of him," which turns out to be the mission that brought him to Mexico for the planned assassination (accomplished in August 1940). 6 The influence of Gazzer on Chub and de las Heras and others on Mercader is captured in Jean Paul Sartre's remark, "Words wreck havoc when they happen to name something that is experienced but is not yet named." 7 However Sartre's remark needs a supplement, a specification of the ideational susceptibilities, historical situations, and...

Paul’s biblical patterns of church planting: An effective method to achieve the Great Commission

The mandate to make disciples of all nations remains the churches’ task before the return of Christ. Church planting is the best way to achieve this mandate. Hence, the biblical patterns as exemplified by Paul the apostle and their relevance to achieving the Great Commission have been the focus of this work. Paul shows through his patterns of church planting the relevance and influence of the Holy Spirit in establishing new centres of worship. Thus, contemporary church planters must seek to emulate Paul in obedience to the Great Commission through church planting, which remains the most effective evangelistic methodology.

Pentecostals, Israel, and the Prophetic Politics of Dominion

ABSTRACTThis essay traces the evolution of a specific tradition of prophecy interpretation in U.S. pentecostal-charismatic circles, which I dub the “prophetic politics of dominion.” From the start, this strain of pentecostal-charismatic religiosity merged transnational sensibilities with dominion-style language but typically shied away from overt political organization. Building on Israel-themed symbols and ideas acquired from nineteenth-century evangelical prophecy interpretation, a small but influential group of white proto-pentecostals and early pentecostals embraced a distinctive set of eschatological teachings known as British Israelism and its attendant literal racial identification of Anglo-Saxons with Jews. Such emphases bolstered a conviction that spirit-empowered Christians would exert significant influence on global politics prior to the Second Coming of Jesus. In the ensuing decades, a vocal minority of notable pentecostals and their charismatic successors kept alive similar emphases even as they eschewed the highly racialized conceptions of pentecostal connections to the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” More comfortable employing Christian millennial tropes than engaging pragmatic politics, these figures, nevertheless, anticipated the rapid Christianization of society and their own ascendance to positions of spiritual and temporal power in preparation for Christ's return. All the while, Israel-centric symbols and identities remained central. The crystallization of this transnational, dominion-now tradition, with its unique Israel-centric emphases and millennial motifs, represented one of the most significant—and most misunderstood—contributions to evangelical politics by U.S. pentecostals and charismatics over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Paul and Death: A Question of Psychological Coping

Paul and Death: A Question of Psychological Coping

“Let no man deceive you by any means”

“‘Let no man deceive you by any means’: Billy Budd and interpretive tragedy” argues that although Vere's dreadful and necessarily tragic decision occupies the central position in the plot, the association of Claggart with the phrase mystery of iniquity – an allusion to 2 Thessalonians – is the culminating moment in the novel's obsession with the madness and tragedy of interpretation. More specifically, the idea of the mystery of iniquity is fundamental to Melville's tragic view of life. In Paul's letter, the mystery of iniquity refers to the radical deceit unleashed by God upon the world before the return of Christ, a force that makes humans particularly susceptible to delusion. Associating Claggart with the mystery of iniquity ironically seduces readers with its explanatory appeal, thereby diverting them from the phrase's implication that textuality, interpretation, and meaning necessarily participate in representational uncertainty.

Eschatology and the Western Missionary Movement

The article considers the influence of eschatological concepts, especially in Puritan and Evangelical circles, on the development of Protestant missions from the early mission efforts among Native Americans to the mid-nineteenth century and notes the major changes introduced by a move from the expectation of a period of notable response to the Gospel to the expectation of the return of Christ to a worsening world. It is argued that very divergent eschatological expectations at different times brought stimulus and direction and that eschatology in African and Asian Christianity needs fuller investigation.

Stalin and Proleptic Communism

ABSTRACTThis discussion article concerns the implicit idea of proleptic communism in the thought of Joseph Stalin. This idea refers to the sense that communism is creatively present as a type of reverse causality, determining the nature of the present even though it remains to be achieved. I situate this approach to communism in terms of the theological doctrine of proleptic eschatology. Functioning as a response to the delay of the Parousia (Christ's return), this form of eschatology may also be found in Eastern Orthodox theology. In order to render explicit the implicit idea of proleptic communism in Stalin's thought, the argument requires two steps: to track the way Stalin pushes the era of communism (in distinction from socialism) into a well-nigh mythical future; to espy the contours of proleptic communism. My specific aim is to understand an unacknowledged feature of Stalin's thought, without taking sides in the perpetual polarisation over his legacy.

Doubting John?

This essay focuses on the figure of John the Baptist in prison and the question he sent his disciples to ask Christ: was he ‘the one who is to come’ (Matthew 11: 2–3)? Having observed how the Fathers strove to distance John from the perils of doubt in their readings of this passage, it traces the way their arguments were picked up by twelfth- and thirteenth-century biblical exegetes and then by authors of anti-heretical dispute texts in urban Italy, where the Baptist was a popular patron saint. So as to give force to their own counter-arguments, learned polemicists, clerical and lay, made much of heretics’ hostility to John, powerfully ventriloquizing a doubting, sceptical standpoint. One counter-argument was to assign any doubts to John's disciples, for whose benefit he therefore sent to ask for confirmation of the means of Christ's return, neatly moving doubt from questions of faith to epistemology. Such ideas may have seeped beyond the bounds of a university-trained elite, as is perhaps visible in a fourteenth-century fresco representing John in prison engaging with anxious disciples. But place, audience and genre determined where doubt was energetically debated and where it was more usually avoided, as in sermons for the laity on the feast of a popular saint.

The Day of the Son of Man and its Anticipation (Luke 17:26-30)

The aim of this paper is to focus on the biblical images in the text Luke 17:26-30. The verses Luke 17:26-30 describe the coming of the day of the Lord and the manner of waiting such a day. The evangelist offers an example of lack of preparation for the return of Christ, the Son of Man. The members of the lukan communities have a lot of the activities without connection to the spiritual life. First, Luke intends to condemn an immanent vision on life. Secondly, comes the lack of concern for the kingdom of God. The comparison with the days of Noah and Lot has exhortative function, inviting the members of Luke’s community to focus their look and attention on the divine realities. In the conclusion, the delay of the Parousia should not lead to a life limited to the earthly activities, thus forgetting about God. The anticipation of Christ return must be alive, while being aware that the Lord may arrive at any moment, and His coming should find people prepared for it.

Eschatological Foundations of Christian Education: How our Beliefs about Christ's Return Impact our Educational Ministry Efforts

Recent theological work on foundations of Christian education has explored a wide range of important systematic theology topics (e.g., sanctification, ecclesiology, pneumatology, Trinity, the nature of Scripture). An area that has not received much attention is eschatology. How do understandings of Christ's promised return impact the focus of educational ministries in the church? What is important for us to learn in this time of waiting? This paper focuses on biblical images and themes associated with waiting for Christ's return and key issues that should have an impact on Christian educators' ministry efforts. It explores how eschatological views give direction and shape to the church's teaching ministries.

Intellect and Activism: The Secular Authority of Left Behind

Intellect and ActivismThe Secular Authority of Left Behind David Morris (bio) Offering a thrilling action story, accessible theology, and passionate characters fighting a just struggle against evil, the Left Behind series found readers beyond born-again Christian circles. The series sold more than sixty million copies between 1995 and 2005, and also built a multimedia franchise that included three films, many children’s books, a video game, and online fan forums.1 The series’ widespread popularity has invited scholarly examination of the books as biblical exegeses, science fiction, family therapy, and political propaganda. Particularly compelling readings have situated the series within the wider late twentieth-century engagement of born-again Christians with mass culture and politics.2 This “mainstreaming,” to use Melani McAlister’s term, included activism around social and political issues, entrance into discussions of economic theory, and the production of cultural products for consumption within and outside of born-again circles.3 Left Behind and like products performed crucial cultural work within the broader sociopolitical project of the New Christian Right (NCR): reversing the political and cultural advances made over the previous four decades by women and people of color.4 While the influence of the New Christian Right has been profound and lasting (born-again Christians still occupy positions of power in government and the military, for example), the popularity of Left Behind waned in the latter part of the last decade. Several years later, it has become reasonable to ask what, if any, lasting impact the series has had. Left Behind colonized the secular for the purpose of evangelizing mainstream culture. However, this evangelization went beyond the popularization of preexisting conservative theological and cultural ideals; it required a reconfiguration of U.S. secularism. In Formations of the Secular, Talal Asad argues that “secularism is not simply an intellectual answer to a question about enduring social peace and toleration. It is an enactment in which a [End Page 64] political medium (representation of citizenship) redefines and transcends particular and differentiating practices of the self that are articulated through class, gender, and religion” (5, emphasis in original). Secularism, in other words, is a discursive site of conflicts over political legitimacy. Part of a broader battle pitched at the site of secularism to pull mainstream political-economic discourse to the right, Left Behind links born-again Christianity and conservative cultural politics to a global capitalist political economy that exploits and contains cultural others. The NCR had already been active for decades when the first novel was published; however, Left Behind seizes the opportunity of a particular moment in the 1990s to imagine NCR goals as a global project. In Life between Two Deaths, 1989–2001, Phillip Wegner argues that, after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the absence of the global symbolic order of the Cold War opened the world to the imagination of radical new collectivities (9–10). The 9/11 attacks, however, helped to establish a dominant symbolic order characterized by the spread of ruthless global capitalism and the containment of cultural others in the global “war on terror” (24–25). Left Behind indulges a utopian hope that injustice might be opposed and finally ended with the return of Christ; however, through its struggling born-again characters, it idealizes a subject protected by global security apparatuses and benefited by a ruthless global economics that concentrates power and wealth in few hands. The series legitimizes this order by yoking a born-again-leaning secularism to an emergent American global order. The first three novels of the series, Left Behind (1995), Tribulation Force (1996), and Nicolae (1997), construct a born-again Christian male subject endowed with overlapping types of authority, which Stephen D. O’Leary identifies as one of the central topoi of apocalyptic rhetoric (19). In this essay, I examine Left Behind’s representation of an ideal modern Christian subject characterized by the selective embracing of secular standards for public action and private life. By basing the authority of the characters in secular intellectualism, fundamentalist theology, and proper domestic behavior, the protagonists of Left Behind represent ideal modern Christians because they are endowed with religious and secular authority. These ideal subjects move within a dystopia that constructs...

Peter Hocken: His Life and Work

This article discusses the life and work of the Roman Catholic Charismatic Peter Hocken. It shows how, over many publications and in a series of writings directed both to Catholics and to the wider Christian world, he has constructed a theological understanding of the outpouring of the Spirit in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The purpose of the Spirit in denominational and nondenominational streams turns on the key role of Messianic Jews and is essentially eschatological and ecumenical as it prepares for the return of Christ. The article also includes a list of Hocken’s publications on Pentecostalism, charismatic renewal, and Israel.