-1-
change the world with the manifold richness
Prophetic
Evangelism
towards a confrontative and
redemptive
announcement of the gospel of Jesus
Famous evangelist Billy Graham once said that
he was a “New Testament evangelist [and] not
an Old Testament prophet.”1 Does such
perspective draw a false dichotomy as the
Christian community meets those outside the
church’s walls? More specifically, what are some
roads to be travelled by the Christian
community as it seeks, in the power of God’s
Spirit, to confront the earthly powers opposing
God’s reign exercised in Jesus Christ? Aiming to
address this issue, this essay will argue for that
the way forward is that of prophetic evangelism:
a confrontative yet redeeming and hopeful
announcement of the gospel of Jesus.
* * *
Space forbidding it, I will only sketch the
bedrock assumptions this essay is built upon.
First, "The church influences the world most
when it seeks to be truly church, and not
[merely] a political or evangelistic
organization."2 This essay is built upon such
conviction—that is, if the church pretends to
1 (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 198-
As quoted in Mortimer Arias, Announcing the Reign of
God: Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of Jesus
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), N.
2 Powers,” 227.
Vinoth Ramachandra, Faiths in Conflict?: Christian
Integrity in a Multicultural World (Downers Grove, Ill:
InterVarsity Press, 1999), 171.
of a fully-blown gospel, it first needs to allow
the gospel to change her, at all levels. As
Stevens suggests
As far as possible Christians should
bring God’s kingdom peace to the
powers through involvement in
creational tasks: subjecting the
resources of the world in education,
politics and culture to serve man as
defined by God’s intention. . . . [The
church] is appointed and equipped to be
a public exponent of grace and unity.3
Second, the task is to be embodied and
outworked in a multiplicity of ways by whole
communities in all their God-given diversity:
each member exercising their own gifts, yet
united in mind, in spirit, and in purpose.4
Third, following a synthesis on Peter
O’Brien’s discussion on the powers, I share
the weariness of reducing the analysis of evil
to mere psychological and sociological
terms, leaving spiritual realities behind.5 In a
critique of the Enlightenment’s worldview,
Stevens argues that “[s]ome of these powers
have taken on a life of their own, making
idolatrous claims of human beings:
government, religion, culture, isms, being
symbolized by names and titles that
dominate the news.”6 Bluntly, it is my
conviction that many seemingly autonomous
powers can be colonized by Satan and his
hordes. This carries the corollary that ‘the
powerful’ and ‘the oppressors’ are
themselves oppressed: idolatry being the
nature of the game.7
3
R. Paul Stevens, “Resistance - Grappling with the
Powers,” in The Other Six Days: Vocation, Work, and
Ministry in Biblical Perspective (Grand Rapids, Mich:
Eerdmans, 2000), 228.
4
cf. 1 Cor. 1:10; Phil. 2:1-5; Eph. 4:1-6.
5
See Stevens, “Resistance - Grappling with the
Powers,” Ch. 9.; This view is similarly sustained by
Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
210.
6
Stevens, “Resistance - Grappling with the
7
Here I am indebted to Christopher J. H Wright,
The Mission of God: Unlocking the Bible's Grand

Having said that, let us return to our opening
question—which will be dealt with in two main
sections. The first one outlines my
hermeneutical approach; the second one
focuses on the importance of addressing
idolatry when confronting those in power.
* Furthermore, the texts’ final editorial
I. Wider meanings: progressive revelation and
canonical reading. Before writing this essay, I
held the view that in highlighting the prophetic
oracles against the nations one could find a
justification for preaching an impending doom
upon the powerful.8 However, proof-texting is
always a risky venture. How are we to handle
these oracles?
Certainly not by treating them as isolated
speeches. Not even their literary contexts within
each prophetic book provide a sufficient
interpretative framework. By questioning
atomizing assumptions that uphold historical
meaning as the highest hermeneutical aim,
Christopher Seitz and others have appealed to
the canonical shape of the whole body of
prophetic literature.9 While prophetic
consciousness and authorial intention play an
important part, for Seitz, a model that
recognizes that the Book of the Twelve—to use
an example—is “greater than the sum of its
parts” is to be welcomed. For him, “[t]he
presentation of the Major and Minor Prophets is
its own kind of theological and historical
statement.”10 In editing and reordering of the
oracles, the editors are trying to say something.
Thus the interest lays on interpreting “the way
Narrative (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2006), 177ff.
See also 'Spiritual Powers' in George Eldon Ladd, A
Theology of the New Testament, Rev. ed. (Grand Rapids,
Mich: Eerdmans, 1993), 440ff.
8
Chiefly, Isa. 13—23; Jer. 46—51; Ezek. 25—32, 35;
Amos 1—2; Obadiah.
9 Biblical Content' in Paul J. Achtemeier, Inspiration and
Standing on the postulates of Brevard Childs,
advocates include R. E Clements, Old Testament Prophecy:
From Oracles to Canon, 1st ed. (Louisville, Ky: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1996), 191-203; Craig G Bartholomew and
Anthony C. Thiselton, eds., Canon and Biblical
Interpretation (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2006), 294-
325; Willem VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word
(Grand Rapids, Mich: Academie Books, 1990), 79-85.
10
Christopher R Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics:
Toward a New Introduction to the Prophets (Grand Rapids,
Mich: Baker Academic, 2007), 90. Emphasis added.
-2-
the prophetic figures have been presented in
the mature form of the witness.”11 As R.E.
Clements puts it, “it is abundantly clear . . .
[t]hat the literary form of prophecy in the Old
Testament establishes not simply a medium
of preservation, but also a medium of
interpretation.”12
perspective embodies a historical distance
which—when recognized—allows for the
possibility of grasping “the penetrating
insight offered through the canonical witness
. . . [and] that which had gone unheeded or
was only partially comprehended in the days
of [the oracles’] first delivery.”13 For these
and other reasons,14 one is to be mindful that
the “canonical shaping helps us see that
even the individual prophets belong to a
larger history and sweep that they as
individuals were not able to recognize at the
time.”15
Hence, for instance, “it is the
theologically expansive witness of Hosea
that serves to illuminate the more partial
accounts of Amos.”16 Similarly, Obadiah’s
condemnation of Edom cannot be read apart
from Jonah, or from Hosea as the first of the
Twelve. The editorial notes present
throughout make it clear that
the unilateral judgment of Edom . . . is
not seen as the only means by which
the God of Israel relates to the nations.
The nations are also created by God,
and he cares for them in accordance
11
Ibid., 95. Emphasis added.
12
Clements, Old Testament Prophecy, 219 Italics
added.
13
Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 126.
14
cf. Bartholomew and Thiselton, Canon and
Biblical Interpretation, 167-235; and very significantly,
see 'How the Scriptures Were Formed' and 'Nature of
Authority: Nature and Function of Christian Scripture
(Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), 64-80,
132-143.
15
Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 242; cf. N. T.
Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 1st
ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 121f; ‘Wider
Meanings beyond the Literal,’ in Raymond E. Brown, An
Introduction to the New Testament, 1st ed. (New York:
Doubleday, 1997), 41-6.
16
Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 132.

with his character as compassionate and
merciful, slow to anger (Jon. 4:2).17
In this way, Jonah is a reminder that God can
treat the nations with the same patience and
kindness he has lavished upon his own people.
The prophetic canon provides a “frame of
reference” by which each prophetic book has
been affected: the framework being one where
salvation outgrows God’s threats,
denunciations, and warnings of the coming
judgment upon godless people.18 Salvation looks
beyond doom.
Interestingly, nonetheless, “Micah
establishes the limits of God's patience, now
toward the preserved remnant of Judah,
strikingly at the exact middle point of the
Twelve as a whole (Mic. 3:12).”19 Judgment and
mercy, condemnation and patience stand at the
heart of God’s purposes for Israel and the world
—the remnant being their focal point! Thus Seitz
concludes that:
Israel's history as depicted in the Twelve is
a type or figure of a larger history, and a
story that takes two testaments to tell.
Amos is a man among Twelve, and the
Twelve are men related to one man—Jesus
Christ.20
To this, he adds that we are to
enclose the prophets in a history larger
than themselves, and then reach out and
locate us in its grand sweep—in judgment
and in mercy—before that same holy God.
He makes known those two great
dispensations of his character—final
judgment and final mercy—in his only Son,
that we might at last by his grace identify
17
Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 120-1. In regards
to God's wrath and mercy, Abraham Heschel comments
that "it would be easier if God's anger became effective
automatically: once wickedness had reached its full
measure, punishment would destroy it. . . . God does not
delight in unleashing anger. In what, then, does God
delight? ‘I am the Lord who practices kindness, justice, and
righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight,
says the Lord’ (Jer. 9:24)." The Prophets, 1st ed. (New York:
Harper & Row, 1962), 287.
18
cf. Clements, Old Testament Prophecy, 200-1.
19
Seitz, Prophecy and Hermeneutics, 237. Emphasis
added.
20
Ibid., 242.
-3-
even with him and see through the
judgments of our day into the eternity of
his purposes.21
Therefore, as Willem VanGemeren has
noted, in “the new revelation of God in Jesus
Christ, the prophetic canon underwent
another challenge.”22 Jesus functions as the
prism through which God’s judgment and
mercy are to be newly understood.
Accordingly, Luke interprets Jesus’ life and
death as the fulfilment of all the prophetic
hopes: ‘And beginning with Moses and all the
Prophets, he explained to them what was
said in all the Scriptures concerning himself’
(Lk. 24:27). Here we find an understanding
based on a unity of the prophetic
message, a unity which is often not
visible to an atomistic, historical
analysis. But when entire range of the
literature is seen, patterns of judgment
and restoration emerge clearly. . . . this
represents an understanding of
prophecy that surveys the Law and the
Prophets panoramically.23
Jesus is the climax of what the law and
the prophets pointed to. “I have not come to
abolish, but to fulfil” (Mt. 5:17). Not
surprisingly, in the mount of transfiguration
only Jesus remains after Moses and Elijah
have vanished: he is the goal of the Torah,
the goal of the prophets, the goal of the
21
Ibid., 245. For an insightful study of God's wrath
and mercy, see Abraham Joshua Heschel, The
Prophets, 1st ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962),
187-194, 283-297, where he argues that divine anger
does not exists for its own sake, but "to bring about
repentance. Its purpose and consummation is its own
disappearance" (287).
22
VanGemeren, Interpreting the Prophetic Word,
85.
23
Stephen G. Dempster, in Bartholomew and
Thiselton, Canon and Biblical Interpretation, 311; In
this line Seitz argues that "the New Testament relates
to the Old Testament not in terms of a reconstructed
tradition-history, but in something like the character of
its present canonical shaping . . .", in Prophecy and
Hermeneutics, 111.

canon, the Alpha, the Omega.24 To Jesus and his
Gospel we now turn.
* René Padilla invites us to acknowledge that
II. Confronting idolatry, freeing idolaters. As
mentioned above, the reality of the demonic has
infected this world, both on personal and
structural levels. We must bear this in mind in
confronting the powerful: there is a greater evil
behind them. In Jesus and Politics, Alan Storkey
reminds us that “Our basic problems are not just
or mainly political, but human. Through greed,
power, justice, and pride, human sin plays into
politics, but the problem is bigger and deeper
than politics in itself.”25 Thus, to quote
Bonhoeffer,
Neither the triumph of the successful nor
the bitter hatred which the successful
arouse in the hearts of the unsuccessful
can ultimately overcome the world. Jesus
is certainly no apologist for the successful
men in history, but neither does he head
the insurrection of shipwrecked
existences against their successful
rivals.26
The solution for revolution is not revolution,
nor hatred. Ramachandra is succinct:
If, on the other hand, we challenge the
power-structures of society on any other
foundation than that of the glorious
proclamation of the crucified and risen
Jesus, and by evading the vulnerability of
the way of the cross, we shall, likewise, be
confronting idolatry with idolatry.27
We are not to fight evil on its own terms. As
Tom Wright has put it, he was a ‘revolutionary
against the revolutionaries’.28 The way of Jesus
24
cf. 2 Cor. 1:20, and see 'The Glory of God in the Face
of Christ' in Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining
Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1997),
esp. 84ff.
25
Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 262.
26
As quoted in Vinoth Ramachandra, Gods That Fail:
Modern Idolatry and Christian Mission (Carlisle, U.K:
Paternoster Press, 1996), 209.
27
Ibid., 222-3.
28
See 'What's Wrong' in N. T. Wright, Jesus and the
Victory of God, 1st ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996),
-4-
is a far more costly one. Besides, he is our
hope; the new creation through the power of
God is our hope. Thus, in this train of thought
no human reform can build the kingdom of
God. A theology of revolution, he says,
“idealizes man and consequently converts
the gospel into a utopian ideology that
employs theological terminology but has
little relation to the eschatological message
of the Bible.”29
This urges us to avoid would-be Christian
ideologies committed to placing some
agenda other than Christ himself as the only
true liberator.30 Justice and liberation of the
poor and oppressed are praiseworthy
endeavours, yet not enough in themselves
given that the poor are also sinners.
Similarly, the rich and powerful will remain
sinners—and unless their worship of
Mammon is dealt with—such idolatrous
adoration will continually lead to the
oppression of others. Both the problem of sin
and the social structures need to be dealt
with.31 “For out of the heart come evil
thought, murder…” (Mt. 15:19). Human sin
and estrangement are the problem.
Yet those of us set free by Jesus from sin,
death, and the power of the devil, live in the
tension of the ‘already, not yet’
characteristic of an inaugurated eschatology.
“Divine infection, not divine perfection, has
set in,” to quote from Gordon Fee’s short, yet
powerful book.32 We are broken healers who
—for all we are still subject to fall and to live
446-66. In a more ambiguous treatment addressing
non-violence, see 'Final War or Final Banquet' in John
Dominic Crossan, God and Empire: Jesus Against
Rome, Then and Now, 1st ed. (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 83-95.
29
“Revolution and Revelation,” in Is Revolution
Change?, ed. Brian Griffiths (London: Inter-Varsity
Press, 1972), 81.
30
See Ibid., 70-83 for some of the pitfalls of a
limited engagement only at the level either of social
structures or of personal sin.
31
In these respects, see 'Exodus and Mission' in
Wright, The Mission of God, 275-288; Arias,
Announcing the Reign of God, xiv ff; 'Building for the
Kingdom' in N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope:
Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission
of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 207-232.

hypocritically—are called to partake in God’s
“Great Divine Cleanup.”33
Simultaneously, we are also to be mindful of
our ‘totalitolerant’ age’s great sin: that of
indifference. We remain neutral, impartial, and
not easily moved by the wrongs of other
peoples. Heschel contrasts our conformist and
coward response to inequality with the vulgar
scandal it represents for God:
Indifference to evil is more insidious than
evil itself; it is more universal, more
contagious, more dangerous. A silent
justification, it makes possible an evil
erupting as an exception becoming the rule
and being in turn accepted.34
Therefore, in collaborating in God’s
confrontative and restoritative Cleanup, how
should individuals and Christian communities—
still prone to the worship of idols—come to
terms with the fact that we are subject to the
very same evil we are called to confront?
First and foremost, we need to remind
ourselves that this is not our business. This is
nothing we do on or for our own merits, nor to
prove our value, nor to indulge the
propagandistic ego of those who see themselves
as the ‘evangelizing’ elite. The Gospel is not
ours, but God’s. Nor did we send ourselves, but
God sent us (Rom. 1:1, 5). Second, the gospel
itself is powerful in itself (Rom. 1:16). It calls us
not to confuse being arrogant, with being overt,
blunt, and brave.35 It calls us not to confuse a
would-be neutral, tolerant political correctness
with the call to meekly be willing to be nailed to
a cross. Neutrality is never neutral. We are
called to take sides. In a world of comfortable
both/ands, we are faced with the scandal of the
either/or of the Gospel: either we stand for
Jesus, or we stand against him. And we all know
which side Satan advocates.
We must also acknowledge that the tame
Lion is the Lamb, yet always being mindful that
the Lamb never ceases to be the roaring Lion
32
Gordon D Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God
(Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1996), 137.
33
A praiseworthy term employed by Crossan, God and
Empire, 110.
34
The Prophets, 284.
35
Cf. Acts 4:29; 19:8; 1 Cor. 16:13; Eph. 6:20; Tit. 2:15
-5-
(Amos 1:2). Certainly the bloody history of
Christianity (both past and present) is to
humble us from taking the sword of arrogant
triumphalism on one hand while holding the
cross on the other.36 Yet in that humility, in
recognizing our weakness and sinfulness we
are also faced with the need for boldness.
After all, “we don’t preach ourselves, but
Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your
slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor. 4.5).
Thus, in my judgment, a way forward out
of this muddled post-modern mess the
church has sold herself to is to recover the
sense of the prophetic as we simultaneously
uphold (not the option) but the imperative of
proclaiming the full-blown evangel. In Arias’
terms, we ought to pursue a “prophetic
evangelization.”37 We ought to free ourselves
from the lie that we have to get it all strait
up before we can proclaim the Gospel to
challenge the world in the power of the
Spirit. “There is no evangelism without
prophecy,” Arias affirms. Such truncation
turns evangelism into “evangelical publicity,
or religious propaganda, but it is not
prophetic evangelization. Our silence may be
the countersign of the good news, the
negation of hope.”38
Tom Wright argues for putting works of
justice and of beauty ahead of evangelism.39
Presumably he is weary of the church’s bad
testimony stemming from an escapist
eschatology narrowly understood as only
‘saving souls.’ By all means we are to avoid
the spiritual gospel. Yet I still wonder why
dichotomize justice and evangelism. Should
we not, instead, understand social justice as
evangelism and evangelism as social justice
—both reinforcing one another in a sharply
explosive perichoresis? The proclamation of
Jesus as Lord, if received in repentance and
faith, should lead the powerful to modify the
structures that trample the frail. The powers
36
cf. Fee, Paul, the Spirit, and the People of God,
140.
37
See 'Prophetic Evangelization: Announcing the
Kingdom as hope' in Arias, Announcing the Reign of
God, 83-99.
38
Ibid., 93.
39
cf. Wright, Surprised by Hope, 207ff.

that oppress the weak will not succumb unless
they are unmasked and naked before the One
Lord, summoned to surrender to him in trusting
obedience. Padilla is correct in this regard.
If Jesus Christ is Lord, men must be
confronted with his authority over the
totality of life. Evangelism is not, and
cannot be, a mere offer of benefits
achieved by Jesus Christ. Christ’s work is
inseparable from his person, the Jesus who
died for our sins is the Lord of the whole
universe, and the announcement of
forgiveness in his name is inseparable from
the call to repentance, the call to turn from
'the rulers of the world' to the Lord of
glory.40
He proceeds by emphasising that in its
prophetic ministry the church “lays open the
evils that frustrate the purpose of God in
society, in its evangelization it seeks to
integrate men into the purpose of God the full
realization of which is to take place in the
Kingdom to come.”41 According to Arias, this
takes the shape of prophetic denunciation
of personal and public sin; of confrontation
of powers and institutions; of unmasking
ideologies and traditions; of challenge to
unbelief, prejudice, and hostility; and of
challenge also to triumphalistic belief.
Finally, it takes the form of repentance,
conversion, and radical discipleship.42
Exposing idolatry is crucial to our task. And
we cannot shrink back.
In the limited knowledge stemming from my
short eighteen months living in post-everything
Vancouver, I have been repeatedly startled by
the silence of the church in our city. I wonder if
we have forgotten that “[f]rom the start, Jesus’
proclamation of God’s kingdom was fighting
talk.”43 He embodied the grand sweep of the
prophetic tradition, characterized by the
40
C. René Padilla, Mission Between the Times: Essays
(Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1985), 21. Emphasis
added.
41
Ibid., 31.
42
Arias, Announcing the Reign of God, 53.
43
N. T. Wright, “God and Caesar, Then and Now,”
2003, 5,
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_God_Caesar.pdf.
-6-
interplay of wrath and mercy. He personified
the divine mystery that without judgment,
there is no restoration; nor without death,
resurrection.
The invisible yet embodied beastly
powers need to be faced, and looked at the
eye. In doing so, however, we are to be
mindful, first, that the church needs an
appropriate posture for living in exile;44 and
second, that “denunciation is not merely
political agitation but a genuine expression
of the proclamation of hope in the reign of
God.”45 We are not agents of God’s wrath;
God alone is.46 And even more urgently, we
must remember that he himself has endured
his wrath on behalf of his enemies—that is,
on behalf of all of us: rich, poor, weak, and
strong. Surely God resists the powerful and
the arrogant, yet he loves them (us) to the
point of dying for them. This is why as we
address those in power we should offer, as
Arias puts it best, bread of hope instead of
the “stones of the impending doom of
Armageddon”. Neither should we substitute
the gospel with “the anti-gospel of nihilism,
cynicism, or the sinister sadism of the
prophets of doomsday.”47
On the contrary, we are servants, heralds
that stand at the feet of the cross as we
witness to “light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2
Cor. 4:6; cf. Acts 1:8). “To evangelize is to
proclaim the good news as good news,” Arias
exhorts us.48 After exposing the cancers of
idolatry and after urging those in power to
renounce their allegiance to the idols
themselves, we proclaim forgiveness as
sheer grace, and invite them to accept that
we have been accepted.
44
Basic nuances of life in exile are well captured by
Walter Brueggemann, Cadences of Home: Preaching
Among Exiles, 1st ed. (Westminster John Knox Press,
1997), 3ff; The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering
Word (Fortress Press, 2008), 147ff. See below.
45
Arias, Announcing the Reign of God, 96.
46
Cf. Rom. 12:19-21
47
Arias, Announcing the Reign of God, 85.
48
Ibid., 72.

After studying Paul’s mode of interaction
with the Gentiles in the Book of Acts,49 in ‘The
Living God Confronts Idolatry,’ Chris Wright
highlights that which the apostle considered
appropriate in addressing an ignorant and
pagan audience: God’s providence, kindness,
and patience. Interestingly, however, one of
Paul’s speeches does insist on God’s judgment50
—and that being his most ineffective one.
Wright continues by urging us to
acknowledge that our “battle is fought with love,
not triumphalism. . . . Our primary aim is not to
‘win’ but to serve.” We do so because “[f]alse
gods destroy and devour lives, health and
resources; they distort and diminish our
humanity; they preside over injustice, greed,
perversion, cruelty, lust and violence.”51 From
this we may rightly assume that little is gained
in setting standards and condemning people’s
failure in up with them. Paul and the prophets
may have something to remind us in that
respect. I quote at length Wright’s masterful
conclusion on the issue of idolatry, as I think he
clearly grasps this caveat.
Only the gospel exposes the cancer of
idolatry. Only the gospel is good for people.
Our missional motivation, therefore, needs
to be carefully examined. Spiritual warfare .
. . is a matter of deep compassion for those
oppressed by the forces of evil and idolatry
—with all their attendant social, economic,
political, spiritual and personal effects. We
battle with idolatry because, like God whose
mission we thereby share, we know that in
doing so we seek the best interest of those
we are called to serve in his name. We
combat idolatry not only to glorify God but
also to bless humanity. Spiritual warfare,
like all forms of biblical mission, is to be
motivated and exercised with profound
love, humility and compassion—as
modelled in Jesus himself.52
* * *
49
Acts 14:8-20; 17:16-34; 19:23-41.
50
cf. Wright, The Mission of God, 182.
51
Wright, The Mission of God, 178. Similarly, Stevens
highlights how "Our duty is not to bring the powers to our
knees: this is Christ's task." See Stevens, “Resistance -
Grappling with the Powers,” 230.
52
Wright, The Mission of God, 179. Emphasis added.
-7-
Acknowledging alongside the Preacher that
“there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl.
1:9), at this point I would like offer what I see
as a way forward: a recovery of what many
of us have lost.
The need for compassion cannot be
overstressed. Judgment alone does not
change anyone, and—lest we forget—we are
no more worthy than the ‘the sinning
powerful’. Furthermore, if we ignore that
spiritual forces of darkness are also
compliant behind all this, we will distort the
nature of this “struggle,” and end up fighting
“flesh and blood” instead of standing against
“the cosmic powers of this present darkness”
(Eph. 6:12). Thus our impending obligation of
preaching Jesus the Nazarene, and him
crucified, for it is him who has bound them in
his cross.
Oracles of doom? Is the cleansing of the
temple a viable model to follow? In my
current understanding I cannot answer such
question. All I can say is ‘perhaps,’ when all
other avenues are exhausted.53 Yet we are to
be mindful that Jesus is Jesus, and we are
not. He cleansed the Temple and went to the
Cross as a one-off, unrepeatable prophetic
action, never claiming nor exercising self-
serving power. He enacted a statement, and
through subversive parables, questions, and
riddles, he exposed the evil of the powerful.
Interestingly, though, he did not persecute
the blind and corrupt leaders. It was them
who sought him after his public denunciation
which perfectly embodied God’s zeal for his
house—God’s “righteous indignation,” as
Heschel would put it.54
We should also be mindful that the
Herods and Caesars of our age are trapped
by a still regnant modern consciousness: that
of Darwin, Adam Smith, Marx, Nietzsche,
Freud, Jefferson, etc. Our society has
strongly inbuilt Christian antibodies. The
narcissism that marks our day complicates
things even further. In light of that, it seems
to me, the way forward for the gospel of
53
I owe this insight to Professor R. Paul Stevens.
54
Heschel, The Prophets, 283.

judgment and restoration is not an in-your-face
confrontation from the outset.
What we need is a subversive confrontation:
one which introduces a new way of seeing the
world as it simultaneously ‘turns the tables’ of
the intellect and casts out demonic spirits. In a
way, we are to enter through the back door and
drop time-bombs to undermine underlying
presuppositions. As Paul suggested to the
Corinthians, ‘catch the wise in their craftiness’
and destroy ‘strongholds’ ‘raised up against the
knowledge of God’.55 Brueggemann is helpful:
“Preaching is never the dominant version . . .
[but] is always a sub-version: always a version,
a rendering of reality that lives under the
dominant version.”56
On the other, we ought to avoid any phoney,
hidden, insincere, or propagandistic
connotations; and instead, in Spirit-filled wisdom
and self-emptying power be clear and upfront as
to Who it is that we stand for. Rodney Clapp is
clear as he considers that which makes
Christians useless:
there is a place [the Christians church] in a
post-modern world, not as typically decent
human beings but as unapologetic followers
of the Way . . . not as a sponsorial
propaganda for nation-states, but as a
community called by the God explicitly
named Father, Son and Holy Spirit.57
Hopefully, once the bombs are planted and
the ground shaken, once underlying
presuppositions are undermined and
overthrown, like Jeremiah we will build up that
which has been torn down (cf. Jer. 1:10). With
the costly, confrontational, ever glorious Gospel
of Jesus, we passionately herald the righteous
God who saves. Judgment and restoration have
55
1 Cor. 3:20; 2 Cor. 10:5.
56
Brueggemann, The Word Militant, 151-2; cf. also
Brian Walsh and Bud Olson, “From Colossae to Vancouver,”
in Scripture, Poetry & a Liberated Imagination (presented
at the Evening Public Lectures, Regent College, Vancouver,
2005).
57
Rodney Clapp, A Peculiar People: The Church as
Culture in a Post-Christian Society (Downers Grove, Ill:
InterVarsity Press, 1996), 32. Mike Booker rightfully
remarks that 'telling it as it is' is “more honest than a self-
conscious reticence” in Evangelism: Which Way Now?, 2nd
ed. (London: Church House publishing, 2005), 96.
-8-
been reversed in Christ’s death and
resurrection: the good news have been
brought to the forefront.
As we proclaim this, we must ever by
mindful that Jesus is ‘the hope of glory’.
Christians-in-the-making are not given glory;
only power—and that to proclaim, to hope, to
love, and yes, to suffer. We herald God’s
providence and patience; not ours. We don’t
defame the idols; but point out the
dehumanizing effect and the deadly cost of
worshiping them. And then we call people to
repent and ‘throw themselves into Jesus’—
for it is in Jesus that the tension between
judgment and restoration is uniquely and
fully discharged. In preaching him as Lord,
we allow those who believe to be ‘in Christ,’
mysteriously judged, yet gloriously
acquitted.
Prophetic evangelism? Subversive
Gospel? Certainly so. ‘There is no one
righteous, not one’… but One. Next to the
Father’s embrace, the outpouring of the
Spirit, and the fellowship of the Christian
community, it is no other thing but the name
of Jesus which has been given to us (Acts
4:12). It is all about Jesus. The Jesus who—in
the love of the Father through the Living
Spirit—is very much all about people. As for
us, however, the only way of standing for the
people Jesus stands for is by standing
ourselves and inviting others to stand, first
and foremost, for Jesus. For he is He, the I
AM in whom all things are made new.
Bring forth the people who are blind, yet
have eyes,
who are deaf, yet have ears!
Let all the nations gather together,
and let the peoples assemble.
Who among them declared this,
and foretold to us the former things?
Let them bring their witnesses to justify
them,
and let them hear and say, ‘It is true.’
You are my witnesses, says YHWH,
and my servant whom I have chosen,
that you may know and believe me
and understand that I am He.
Before me no god was formed,

nor shall there be any after me.
I, I am YHWH,
and besides me there is no savior.
I declared and saved and proclaimed,
when there was no strange god among
you;
and you are my witnesses, says YHWH.
I am God, and also henceforth I am He;
there is no one who can deliver from my
hand;
I work and who can hinder it?
(Isaiah 43:8-13)
General Bibliography
Besides thosel referenced above, listed below are
other works alluded in some way or another.
Conversations with Professors Iain Provan, Rikk
Watts and Sarah Williams from Regent College
have also shaped my present understanding.
Achtemeier, Paul J. Inspiration and Authority:
Nature and Function of Christian Scripture.
Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999.
Arias, Mortimer. Announcing the Reign of God:
Evangelization and the Subversive Memory of
Jesus. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
———. “Out of Captivity: The Theology of
Liberation.” In The Cry of My People: Out of
Captivity in Latin America. New York:
Friendship Press, 1980.
Bartholomew, Craig G, and Anthony C. Thiselton,
eds. Canon and Biblical Interpretation. Grand
Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 2006.
Booker, Mike. Evangelism: Which Way Now? 2nd
ed. London: Church House publishing, 2005.
Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New
Testament. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday,
1997.
Brueggemann, Walter. Biblical Perspectives on
Evangelism: Living in a Three-Storied Universe.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993.
———. Cadences of Home: Preaching Among
-9-
Exiles. 1st ed. Westminster John Knox Press,
1997.
———. “From Exodus to Sinai: The Journey to
the Common Good.” In The Church in
Joyous Obedience: Biblical Expositions.
Regent College, Vancouver, 2008.
———. The Word Militant: Preaching a
Decentering Word. Fortress Press, 2008.
Clapp, Rodney. A Peculiar People: The Church
as Culture in a Post-Christian Society.
Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1996.
Clements, R. E. Old Testament Prophecy: From
Oracles to Canon. 1st ed. Louisville, Ky:
Westminster John Knox Press, 1996.
Crossan, John Dominic. God and Empire: Jesus
Against Rome, Then and Now. 1st ed. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007.
Fee, Gordon D. Paul, the Spirit, and the People
of God. Peabody, Massachussets:
Hendrickson, 1996.
Hauerwas, Stanley. The Hauerwas Reader.
Durham, North Carolina: Duke University
Press, 2001.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets. 1st
ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
Ladd, George Eldon. A Theology of the New
Testament. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, Mich:
Eerdmans, 1993.
Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist
Society. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1989.
Padilla, C. René. Mission Between the Times:
Essays. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans,
1985.
———. “Revolution and Revelation.” In Is
Revolution Change?, edited by Brian
Griffiths. London: Inter-Varsity Press, 1972.
Ramachandra, Vinoth. Faiths in Conflict?:
Christian Integrity in a Multicultural World.
Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1999.
———. Gods That Fail: Modern Idolatry and
Christian Mission. Carlisle, U.K: Paternoster
Press, 1996.
Seitz, Christopher R. Prophecy and
Hermeneutics: Toward a New Introduction
to the Prophets. Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker
Academic, 2007.
Stevens, R. Paul. “Resistance - Grappling with
the Powers.” In The Other Six Days:
Vocation, Work, and Ministry in Biblical
Perspective. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans,
2000.
 - 10 -

Storkey, Alan. Jesus and Politics: Confronting the

Powers. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic,
2005.
VanGemeren, Willem. Interpreting the Prophetic
Word. Grand Rapids, Mich: Academie Books,
1990.
Vargas, Marcelo. “Contextual Marketplace
Theology: Latin America.” In Marketplace
Theology Consultation. Sidney, 2001.
Walsh, Brian, and Bud Olson. “From Colossae to
Vancouver.” In Scripture, Poetry & a Liberated
Imagination. Regent College, Vancouver, 2005.
Waltke, Bruce. Prophecy. DVD. Vol. 12. 13 vols.
Biblical Theology: Old Testament. Vancouver:
Regent College, 1985.
Watson, Francis. Text and Truth: Redefining
Biblical Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich:
Eerdmans, 1997.
Wright, Christopher J. H. The Mission of God:
Unlocking the Bible's Grand Narrative. Downers
Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2006.
Wright, N. T. “God and Caesar, Then and Now,”
2003.
http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_God_Cae
sar.pdf.
———. Jesus and the Victory of God. 1st ed.
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.
———. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the
Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church.
New York: HarperOne, 2008.
———. The New Testament and the People of God.
1st ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
———. “Transforming the Culture.” Waikanae,
1999.
Yoder, John Howard. The Priestly Kingdom: Social
Ethics as Gospel. Notre Dame, Ind: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1985.