Time, history are going somewhere

The ancient pagans had a circular view of history, where patterns and cycles repeat endlessly. One side-effect of this view is that there is no room for any lasting progress or change. Whatever you might build today will be demolished tomorrow, because that’s how the cycle works. We can’t make real change, because the cycle is coming back around and we’ll be starting over soon.

You can see how they got this. Seasons come and go, predictably. Sunrise leads to sunset, and midnight, and then sunrise again. Harvest follows planting, and then planting follows harvest. Looking only at the natural world, it’s not shocking that they arrived at the belief that, “Tomorrow will be like today, only more so.” (Isaiah 56:12, NASB)

The idea of history being linear (and not circular) as commonplace as it is among us all today, was actually an innovation, and a startling one, when the ancient Hebrews started believing it. Of course, they started believing it, because it’s what God revealed to them through all the prophets.

There was a definite day of creation. Everything really changed when humanity fell into sin. God began a process of redemption that was meant to grow, blossom, and culminate in the coming of a Messiah, whose kingdom would represent something never seen before. There is a judgment day coming, when this will all be finished, and what remains after that will be truly “new” and frankly unimaginable.

In that simple story, we have real development; surprising plot-points that change everything forever; and, a satisfying culmination. History moves from A to B to C, period. We don’t circle back around to A.

Now, although there isn’t a Marxist cell in my body, I can admit that Karl Marx displayed a stroke of genius in his writings, when he came up with a way for pagans to believe in linear history. Specifically, he envisioned a method for real progress and innovation to happen, apart from God. He taught an optimistic, even Utopian, view of history while maintaining a pagan theory of being (ontology).

Not surprisingly, this theory appealed to a whole host of people. In fact, it became so popular that many Christians decided to answer its challenge by retreating into defeatist/escapist theories of the future, or by focusing on purely internal things, like how holy do I feel in my heart today?

This century-long retreat into pessimism and pietism has left us facing a generation of folks who’ve read no history books, and are determined to have us repeat all the worst things written in them.

The age-old challenge for us today is to answer the questions: Who is driving history? Who determines its conclusion? How do we get from here to there, where “there” is the desired destination?

These apply both to big things, like national and world politics, but also to the courses of our individual lives.

Thankfully, there aren’t a lot of possible answers. There are really only two: God, or not-God. Put another way, God’s law vs. man’s law, Christ or antichrist.

Choose wisely, friends.

Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at:

[email protected]