From Chaos to Order some
thoughts on the pervasive theme of cosmology in Scripture
By Jay Wegter
Pagan cosmology has given us a post-fact world of absurdity and lunacy: a woman is a man, glory is shame, evil is good, and good is evil. How did this come about? The primeval revolt was the rejection of God’s moral order. And it was the denial of the primary foundational distinction, the infinite difference between created and uncreated existence. In the revolt against this most important distinction the attempt to erase subsequent distinctions followed.
Depraved man is hardwired to nature worship (Rom 1:25). Another term for this is pagan cosmology; it is the devil’s cosmology. The serpent’s entire revolutionary movement is a cosmological revolt which places the evil one on the same level as His Creator and Sustainer. This rebellion is an attempt to flatten out the creation structures and divinely ordained ‘furniture’ of the universe. We might add that God’s governance of His creation is by means of the moral order and distinctions He has established.
This obscuring of divinely ordained distinctions results in the pagan spirituality of monism. As Peter Jones said, “in the 1960’s, the East came West.” This toxic mix promulgated spirituality as flowing from the elimination of God-ordained distinctions. The Eastern perspective teaches the consubstantiality of all things. Indeed, by their own admission (coming from their monistic sameness) they are quite open about the suggestion that homosexuality is the sacrament (or holy celebration) of paganism.
The devil’s current war chariot through which he is racing through the cultures of the world is the LGBTQ movement. His unwary victims are blind to the fact that as they become advocates of sexual perversion (homosexuality), they are dragged even further into full-blown pagan cosmology. At times this demonic deception seizes entire continents. Consider that Europe, the cradle of Western Christianity, has relinquished its soul of biblical theism. Consequently, it is defenseless against monistic and unitarian ideologies such as Islam, radical Islam, and Eastern mystic religion. As such, with this warp speed ferment underway, an entire continent by jettisoning its theism has become the plaything of the powers of darkness.
Abandoning the Word of God makes even an educated people incredibly vulnerable to lies that destroy. Remember, theism was abandoned in the name of liberty, equity, diversity, love, and inclusion. Considering this, for the work of the church to be effective in its outreach, it needs to do minimally some cross-cultural study of the West’s worldview. For, the post-Christian West has become the anti-Christian West. It has changed cosmologies so fully that our universities have become training centers of a new religion. Their graduates come forth as dogmatic proponents of pagan worldview. Therefore, the political, governmental, educational, marital, economic, and moral chaos we are witnessing issues from a heretical cosmology.
This is why Christian nationalism will have no more lasting effects than the Moral Majority did. For, right before our eyes, in less than three decades, the Moral Majority morphed into the moral minority. Because of this rapid decline in Bible-based morality, Fallwell could no longer exert leverage through statistics (the stats no longer supported the idea that the majority wanted biblical morality). His organization lost all credence when the rising generation locked arms and declared traditional morality oppressive.
During my nearly three years with Dr. Peter Jones, experiencing and participating in seminars and conferences in nine different states, something remarkable emerged. A very astute pastor in Athens, Georgia came up with a potent illustration summarizing the ministry of Truthxchange. He likened Jones’ ministry to a radar room near Pearl Harbor. The squadron of Japanese Zeros laden with their torpedoes was visible on the radar screen. Warnings went out, but there was no conceivable way to stop the enemy from bombing the harbor. A huge portion of the American Pacific fleet would be decimated. This was a sobering summary offered by the pastor; for his synopsis suggested that Peter Jones’ ministry was far stronger on diagnosis than it was on solution. The pastor went on to say that the solution would be found in biblical cosmology. In fact, I frequently refer to a quote by him, “The cosmology bomb has to hit.” This begs a very crucial question, “How do you preach to a nation that has changed gods and exchanged cosmologies?” In many ways this resembles the apostasy which the major and minor prophets of the Old Testament faced. So deep was Israel’s defection, that only a movement of the Spirit in conjunction with severe judgment could amend their departure from Yahweh. Prayerful determination and courage must accompany our effort to steer people back to the truth. During my time with Peter Jones, a strategy to reach university students eluded us. University Truthxchange was shut down consequently. Enthusiastic responses from churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries were spotty at best. Currently, Truthxchange is focusing its energy upon academic leaders and scholars urging them to hold fast and yield no ground. But, having seen firsthand the chilly reception of Truthxchange by campus ministries, it’s caused this present author to wonder aloud why more serious Christians aren’t clamoring to be taught biblical cosmology. I’ve often thought, “wouldn’t it be great if biblical cosmology became a movement with immense momentum?” But, of late I’m thinking that it may have to start with discipleship at a grassroots level. Still, ideally, I think churches could embrace this vision for cosmology and at the same time bring companion churches and their flocks into this cosmology fold.
What will it take to convince today’s believers that biblical cosmology is the bunker-buster bomb that can penetrate the most fortified strongholds of pagan worldview? Perhaps, we need to drill deeper in exposing the damage pagan cosmology causes. For, it leaves in its wake moral and spiritual chaos, and it sows the seeds of apocalyptic disorder. The seventeenth Century Enlightenment philosophers waited patiently for a ‘messiah’ to emerge wearing a robe of empiricism. He may have been 150 years late, but he did arrive. His name was Charles Darwin! He was their victor because he provided a ‘scientific rationale’ for their anti-theistic theology.
Darwin’s theory removed from the cosmos, the necessity of Christianity’s God, but it did not extinguish man’s worshipping nature. When the Enlightenment and Darwinism joined forces, philosophic naturalism danced on the grave of supernaturalism in celebration of its defeat. Man was finally ‘free’ from the demands of the omnipotent holy God of the Bible. Man had won his imagined autonomy through the advances of philosophy and through Darwin’s theory. But his enthronement of reason was an exercise in double-dealing. For, the God-given power of reasoning created to receive divine revelation was presented as sufficient without God.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, lovers of darkness unable to think straight. It never crossed their minds in their worship of modernity, that their discoveries were not new but, only a fresh marketing of old lies. Romans chapter one reveals that today’s progressivism is but a redux of Babylonian and Greco-Roman paganism. And further, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, all had their version of evolutionary explanations of origins. And yet, they were honest enough to not put a lab coat on it and disguise it as science. They just flat out called it their myth of choice.
Peter Jones has mentioned on many occasions that paganism needs Darwinism to make its cosmology plausible to 21st Century
man. Where is all of this headed? What do you suppose this is doing to prepare the world for the global influence of the Antichrist? Are these pagan elements that are increasingly embraced paving the way towards transhumanism? We know from Scripture what the consummation of God’s plot will be. The Lion of Judah, the Creator and Redeemer alone is worthy to break the seals of the scroll. Human beings were entrusted by their Creator with the works of His hands. Man was to exercise stewardship and dominion. But the appointed stewards of the planet have by their wickedness done much to destroy the creation (Rev 11:18).
Therefore, the Lion of Judah will send plagues. He will reclaim the title deed to planet earth and evict the wicked tenants from the vineyard. What a time that will be when the Day of the Lord strikes. For the worshippers of the creation are afflicted by the creation itself. They never considered that this present cosmology by the Word of God is reserved for fire (2 Pet 3). A massive cosmic-wide cleansing by fire is coming as a prelude to the glorious third cosmology described in 2 Peter 3.
What bitter irony it is that the creation over which humanity was placed and from which bounty was to be enjoyed has now turned against its keepers. But, as Revelation asserts, this judgment is exceedingly appropriate. For, the original mandate of dominion was to be exercised to the glory of God. But the stewards have given their loyalty to God’s arch enemy, Lucifer. This is a cause of both fear and marveling that in the breaking of the seals, the creation itself in loyalty to its Maker will be hostile to the wicked interlopers—ultimately evicting them. Shane Haffey noted recently that Psalm 104 a psalm of cosmology sets forth God’s constant activity and providential care in creation. Yet the last verse in this psalm has war psalm elements, “Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless the Lord, O my soul. Praise the Lord!” (Ps 104:35).
There is a cosmological principle we cannot miss; God has synchronized the restoration of hearts with the restoration of creation. This dynamic principle is repeated in many of the Kingdom promises in the Major Prophets of the O.T. Some of the most concentrated passages illustrating this principle are found in Isaiah. The adversaries of God’s purposes will be expelled and subjected to endless shame (Is 45:9-10, 16 et al). Those who by their wickedness have made the earth a waste place must be purged from the earth before God restores the environment (Is 45:18ff.).
Thus, God bringing about a restored earth is synchronized with God filling the earth with restored worshippers (Is 45:22-25). The consummation of God’s plan is tied to the public revelation of the sons of God (Rom 8:18-25). When the glorified church is revealed to the holy rational universe (angels), the curse will be lifted. For the Scriptures state, “The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). What a cause for marveling that our great God has linked the redemption of our bodies (Rom 8:23) with the redemption of the whole creation. This is God’s ultimate cosmological statement and is His declaration that through the work of His glorious Son—the earth will finally be free of sinners, and linked to that global reality, the creation itself will be finally free from corruption, decay, and futility.