Opus 2025-082: Poor Song Theology

Today in church we sang one of my favorite gospel songs, “When the Role Is Called up Yonder.”  I noticed something that I had never seen before.  The second verse goes,

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise,
And the glory of His resurrection share;
When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies,
And the roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.

Sounds good until you read what the Bible has to say,

(1Th 4:16 KJV)  For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
(1Th 4:17 KJV)  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Notice that the meeting will be in the clouds.

And then you have,

(Rev 1:7 KJV)  Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.

Or this,

(Mat 24:30 KJV)  And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

I don’t think that the song author checked the weather.  It said, “Fair to partly cloudy.”  

I still enjoy the song.

homo unius libri

Opus 2018-027: Forms of Government, part 4 of 5, Our Turn

Christians should have no trouble submitting to a king.  The Bible makes it clear monarchy is acceptable, but as Christian thinking developed and we had forces like the Enlightenment and the Reformation we developed more emphasis on us having an input.  What are the threads we look to for today’s systems?

Moses found that being in charge of the children of Israel was a job too big for one man.  His solution was to appoint elders who would appoint advisors, who would appoint someone under them and so forth.  Some point to this as a precursor of our representative form of government as expressed in our House of Representatives or England’s Parliament.  Later we have the Roman Republic and I am sure there are other forms of counsels that were formed to give advice or leadership.

I came across something that makes me think of the Senate.

(Revelation 7:4 KJV)  And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

And then follows a list of the tribes with 12,000 assigned to each.

In this case each tribe is getting the same number.  Granted it was not two but still the same.  By the time of Jesus Judah was by far the largest and the other tribes had been hauled into obscurity, yet each one will get the same delegation. 

Having said that, these are just seeds.  The idea that the common man would have a right to vote and express a binding opinion on the ruling class was the talk of a crazy man.  Even in Athens, known for democracy, the only ones who could vote were free, male property owners.

But little acorns to mighty oak trees grow.  Or I guess you can say that a strong wind will spread dandelion seeds all over the place.

To be continued...

homo unius libri