God – John Markum

Sermon Recap: The Last Amen, week 3

Posted on December 16, 2024December 16, 2024 by johnmarkum

In the final week of our End Times series, The Last Amen, I led our church through graphs and timelines of what to expect with the approaching end of the age. In this message we sought to understand and answer three common questions:

How do all of the events of the End Times fit together?
When is Jesus coming back for His church?
What happens after the Tribulation?

We considered the timing of our rescue from the judgment to come, the general timeline of the Tribulation, the Millennial Kingdom, the final judgment of Satan and all those who have rejected the grace of God, and the New Heaven and New Earth that awaits. 1 Corinthians 2:9 reminds us, “Eye has not seen and ear has not heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him.”

As such, the BEST is yet to come! One day God will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and there will no longer be any pain, nor sickness, nor death (Revelation 21:4-5).

You can catch the entire service here, and this week’s 5-day Devotional based on the message. Below, are the two main graphs I made to summarize what the Bible teaches about the End Times. I also shared that I tend to believe in a Mid-Trib Rapture of the church, as this seems to make the most sense of Revelation 14:14-16, when contrasted to other teachings such as 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, and 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

Here is the graph I made, giving a broad overview of the 7-year Tribulation period, along with the key passages of Scripture that we can use to discern the layout of these events, and study each in more detail.

This is my graph showing a big picture of the events of the End Times, primarily focused on the culmination of Revelation.

Was Mary the “Mother of God”?

Posted on January 11, 2024January 10, 2025 by johnmarkum

This is the third of four articles I’m writing, addressing the doctrines of Catholicism that revolve around their belief that Mary was something more than Protestant Christians claim her to be. The four core dogmas of RCC Mariology include:

Perpetual Virginity. This is the notion that Mary remained a virgin after giving birth to Jesus, and was never sexually intimate with her husband Joseph, and gave him no children aside from Jesus (who was not biologically Joseph’s son).
Immaculate Conception. The idea behind this doctrine is that in order for Mary to have been the vessel for bringing God’s Son into the world, she too must have been sinless. Catholics will argue that Mary still needed Jesus as a Savior, but that she was saved from sinning, not saved from sin she committed like everyone else.
Mary as “The Mother of God”. This doctrine is based on the Greek title theotokos meaning “God Bearer” or “Mother of God”. Protestants generally reject this title, and I’ll discuss why in a later post.
The Assumption of Mary. This doctrine insists that Mary did not physically die like most people, but that she ascended into Heaven – or, God “assumed” her into Heaven – like Christ, Elijah, and Enoch are described as having experienced.

For today, let’s address Mary as the Theotokos…

This term originated back in the early church…, and has two commonly accepted meanings: God-bearer or Mother of God. Catholics and Orthodox alike enthusiastically embrace the moniker “Mother of God” as both have a much higher view of Mary than most Protestants. The logic seems pretty straightforward:

Is Jesus God? Yes.
Is Mary the mother of Jesus? Yes.
Therefore Mary is the “Mother of God”.

The term Theotokos, and its formal acceptance into Roman Catholic doctrine was affirmed at the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD, which met under the request of Nestorius. Nestorius upheld a different term for Mary – Christotokos, meaning “Mother of Christ” – a term which he felt honored Mary as the rightful mother of our Savior, without eluding to any greater significance. However, the council went against Nestorius, and even condemned his teaching as heresy, namely by Cyril with a series of “anathemas” or condemnations.

The primary basis of this condemnation is lost on us in the modern English, as the Greek term Theotokos more accurately stressed the divine nature of Christ, and the privilege of Mary to bring God into the world through the incarnation of Jesus. Yet in English – and modern Catholicism – the emphasis is placed much more so on Mary. Regardless, it was this emphasis on the divinity of Christ that made Nestorianism seem indefensible, though it never denied the deity of Jesus.

Ironically, it would come a mere 20 years later at the Council of Chalcedon where the two-fold nature of Jesus would be articulated and formalized in church doctrine, known as the “Chalcedon Definition”. This council in 451 AD would identify Jesus as having two natures (human and divine) and that Christ was fully both, and yet united in one person, Jesus Christ. Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians unanimously affirm this doctrine just as we do that of the Trinity. Just as there is a tangible and intangible nature to every human, there is/was with Christ.

So why do Protestants “protest” the “Mother of God” title for Mary? Because it specifically identifies her as being the progenitor of both the divine and human natures of Christ, making her not only divine, logically, but even more than divine, the creator of the divine. While Mary is the Mother of Christ, and Christ is God, the second member of the Trinity “was in the beginning” with God the Father, co-equal in Creation (John 1:1-4). As such, “Mother” of God is a gross overstatement. So what is the correct view?

Protestants believe that Mary is the mother of the human nature of Christ, and yet the “Word” of God – eternal, co-equal, and co-existent with the Father – is eternal and never “begotten” by Mary at all. His human nature, however, was the result of the virgin Mary giving birth to the human nature, united with the “Word” who was incarnated into one person we know of as Jesus Christ. In summary, she was the vessel through which Jesus Christ came into our world, not the means by which Jesus Christ was created.

Mary deserves all of the honor and favor rightly endowed to her as the mother of our Savior. And yet she was a finite human being through which God entered the human race. By contrast, God the Son existed in eternity past, and was also the Savior of woman He would call His emma on earth (Luke 1:47).

Good Theology isn’t Enough

Posted on February 20, 2023February 20, 2023 by johnmarkum

Hear me out… I’m not a heretic, I swear. Strong, Bible-based theology is a critical component to how we walk with Christ. I’d even argue that it’s the first and most important job of Pastors – to ensure the doctrinal integrity within the church. With that said, the problem with our systematic theology is that ultimately it’s a man-made categorization and classification of Biblical truth: We make absolute truth statements summarizing our understanding of Biblical teachings – but these are our statements, uninspired by God, and therefore possessing room for the possibility of misunderstanding, misinterpretation, or error. For example…

Consider the crowds and the Pharisees who dismissed Jesus as not being the Messiah because they read in Isaiah that we wouldn’t know the origins of the Messiah, only that He would come from Bethlehem. And in John 7, the crowds say in verse 27, “However, we know where this man is from; but when the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from.” and then later in the same scenario, “Others were saying, “This is the Christ.” But others were saying, “Surely the Christ is not coming from Galilee, is He? Has the Scripture not said that the Christ comes from the descendants of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So a dissension occurred in the crowd because of Him.” (v. 41-43).

To summarize… Some didn’t accept Jesus as the Christ, because they “knew” Jesus was from Nazareth not Bethlehem like the prophets had told them, and they had a somewhat obscure verse that convinced them they wouldn’t know where the Messiah had come from…

Except they didn’t know. Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem as the prophets foretold, and left for Nazareth, likely out of Egypt as a young boy until He began His public ministry. The irony, is that the crowd’s misinterpretation of the prophets resulted in them fulfilling the very prophecies they were quoting – they really didn’t know where He came from! They had excellent theology, poor execution. They needed solid orthodoxy (“pure doctrine”) and orthopraxy (“pure practices”).

Enter Asbury University of Wilmore, KY who has shared reports, videos, and now thousands of eye witnesses claiming a nearly two-week, 24-hour, nonstop revival has been building in momentum. The “Asbury Revival” in turn has inspired or influenced a series of other “revivals” around the nation including reports from Cedarville University and even more secular schools like Yale. With the arguably sensational reports of revival, repentance, salvations, and constant praise that almost seems akin to something you’d read out of Acts 2 with the Day of Pentecost, there’s been no shortage of internet preachers and Christians ready to accuse this revival of nothing but nonsense and attention seeking. Except the college has consistently been turning down several news stations offering to give their college and this revival national coverage.

I’m not writing today to call this (or other) revivals authentic, nor to label them as just emotional hype. But what I am writing to say, is that when God shows up, it defies our explanations. The best religious minds of Jesus’ day knew the Old Testament and the prophecies of the Messiah by heart, many of them memorizing the largest portions of the Torah and Isaiah. And yet they looked the incarnate God of the Universe straight in the eye – the very One they longed for and prayed for – and said, “Nah. Can’t be Him.”

It is inadequate to have strong doctrine, we must also have a strong relationship with the actual Living God of our theology. Here are a few thoughts I have for the Asbury Revival and the other similar occurrences we see around our nation right now:

I pray to God that it is real and sincere! I’ve been asking for revival among this generation before they even had labels like Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and so on. Our nation needs revival, and all of us who believe in Jesus know it.
God doesn’t operate on any of our agendas! What would real revival in our nation look like anyway? Do you really think Jesus wouldn’t shake the cart of our carefully formed religious systems like He did in the first century? Let’s hold our ideas of revival with very open hands…
Apply the Gamaliel Test. When the church was born in the book of Acts, the Sanhedrin turned to one of their oldest and wisest teachers, Gamaliel (who actually trained the Apostle Paul). Gamaliel’s advice was simple: Watch and see, Trust in God’s sovereignty, Stand on God’s side. He cautioned that if the early church was just a man-made effort it would come to nothing anyway, and they didn’t need to worry… but if it actually was from God, be careful that they didn’t end of fighting against God Himself. The Sanhedrin basically said, “Good idea!” and then immediately fought against the move of God anyway.
You can’t conjure a move of God. All we can do, is position ourselves to be receptive when God does show up. Authentic or not, there will likely be many who want to imitate what’s happening at Asbury, and for the most part, I want to say I hope it happens. But revival won’t happen because you planned it, but because you prayed for it.

Let’s not allow our pre-conceived ideas of how God “has to” bring revival get in the way of Him actually bringing revival on His terms. I believe we are the greatest threat to God not bringing revival in the first place. We have to come to God like Jesus in the garden and say, “Not my will, but Yours be done.” We must be sure that we leave plenty of room in our theology for God to still show up and destroy our expectations. Doctrine is important… but not more important than God Himself. Good theological statements are pinpoint specific where they should, and broad where they cannot be. But God Himself is infinite, so let’s be careful to not put Him in a box of our theological preferences. And let’s pray for the real God to bring real revival – even if it means we have to adjust our expectations.

Blessings,
Pastor John

PS…
Among the things that make me take notice, I also love that at the Asbury Revival there appears to be none of the following: