Regard prisoners as if you were in prison with them. Look on victims of abuse as if what happened to them had happened to you. (Hebrews 13:3)

As the East Asian Spring Festival has commenced, we remember in prayer Wáng Yí, 王怡, a legal scholar and founding pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church. He continues in prison (arrested in 2018) for his advocating for church-state separation and for his challenging China’s state church.
Yí’s “Declaration of Faithful Disobedience” is wisdom for American Christians who want to stay faithful to Jesus, love our country and our neighbors, but without being seduced by religious nationalism, that makes a religious idol out of the secular authority.
Wáng Yí, in a time-honored tradition of Chinese intellectuals, speaks as the “conscience of his nation.”

Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. (1 John 5:21)

After Constantine’s conversion (AD 312) the Roman Empire recognized the Christian church. Official persecution of Christians ended. Orthodoxy was affirmed and summarized in the Nicene Creed (AD 325). But the new imperial favor meant Christianity was politically and socially popular. Corruption grew in both high society and church-state relations.

Enter John Chrysostom (AD 347-407). Born in a well-educated family in Antioch, he became known as the “Golden-Mouth.” John's sermons and writings were Bible-based, clear, practical, and attracted large crowds.

After he became bishop of Constantinople, he was a public witness against social immorality, callous treatment of the urban poor, and the extravagant spending in the imperial capital. So John made enemies in both the church and state, including the Emperor’s wife. He was charged with treason and deported from Constantinople. Chrysostom died in exile.

There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9), so it’s “back to the future.” If the state and the church do not stay free and independent, corruption grows. The church may curry the state’s favor to promote or protect its work. Or the state may seek to control the church and to regulate its prophetic witness.

Last week, a U.S. Representative from my home state said that the Washington Cathedral’s bishop should be deported. Others in Congress have called for the POTUS and the government to seize or shut down the Cathedral. Lost in the political drama and theatrics — historical ignorance and irony.

Should churches be regulated, or sermons state-controlled, if not ideologically aligned? American patriots fought for religious liberty against a state-controlled church. Nazis required the state German church to comply with party ideology. The People's Republic of China regulates religion, pursues “sinicization,” disbands house churches, and registers only state-controlled churches.

So, where are today’s Chrysostom’s? Bonhoeffer’s? Or Wáng Yí’s? All who love their countries but whose citizenship is in heaven (Philippians 3:20). The need in an imperial state: a public witness to Jesus Christ with more ”golden mouths” — and fewer religious sycophants and court jesters.

For now almost five decades, Robert M. M’Cheyne’s Bible Reading Calendar has guided my devotions. Today’s chapters were timely.

• Genesis 6: Remember that the earth is filled with corruption and violence because of willful wickedness residing in human hearts. Not only we, but God our Creator is grieved.

• Ezra 6: Remember that rebuilding the temple prospered by God’s Word proclaimed by God’s prophets. God’s decrees overrule the permissive decrees of human rulers. God’s Word fulfills God's Purposes — through human agency.

• Acts 6: Remember that all other good works can be delegated. To grow God’s people, priority must be given to Prayer and the ministry of the Word.

• Matthew 6: Remember to not be anxious about the future. Seek first God’s kingdom and righteousness.

The Bible contains images of chaos creatures — like leviathan and behemoth — that corrupt, disrupt, and destroy the beauty of God’s creation. God alone can and must do what we feeble and sinful mortals can never do — subdue monstrous evil.

God’s original design was to create a sacred space on earth, a royal sanctuary, a footstool for the Creator's rule, a place to dwell with the mortals sustained by God’s gift of life. Humans would serve as God’s image-bearers, royal priests, “little L lords," to order and fill the earth with knowledge and glory, to roll back the disordered chaos, and to cultivate the earth as the Garden of the LORD, a holy temple where God would dwell with us.

But now the earth is blighted and cursed. Sinful mortals lost access to the Giver of life, Tree of life, and River of life. We are subject to death and decay. The incarnation of God's eternal Son fulfilled God’s promise that the “seed of the woman” would “crush the serpent’s head.” (Genesis 3:15). Advent celebrates God’s Son coming to take on our humanity, become the second Adam, the perfect image of God’s immortal glory. (Hebrews 1:3) He became like his brothers and sisters in every way except our sin. (Hebrews 2:17, 4:15) He came from heaven as our kinsman-redeemer, to purchase our release from all debts, to shed his own blood as God’s Lamb.

After the Father's work of creation and before the Son’s work of redemption, God planted an interim garden spot in the midst of the nations. Israel was redeemed from Egypt, and planted like a vine (Psalm 80:8). But Israel became corrupt — a desolate wasteland (Isaiah 5:1-7). That is why God’s Son is the true Vine (John 15:1-8) in whom we may abide and be fruitful. Jesus entered our world, confronted the evil serpent in the wilderness, and his signs reveal that he came to heal the creation, as “far as the curse is found.”

God’s temple was built by the son of David, Solomon. In the temple was a huge bronze basin (15 ft diameter) known as The Sea, supported by twelve bronze bulls (behemoths?). It held water for ritual washings, but it was probably also a symbol of God’s power. At creation, God had contained the sea, the symbol of chaos. In our chaotic world, God upholds the created order and overrules all the principalities and powers — the forces that threaten God's creation.

In front of the temple’s portico stood two huge pillars (25+ ft high). They were freestanding, named Jakin (establish) and Boaz (strength). The full inscriptions may have read, “the LORD establishes (jakin) your throne," and “in the LORD’s strength [boaz] the king rejoices.” God promised that the royal line of David would be established, forever, by the LORD’s own strength.

As Mary exclaimed after the angel’s Annunciation, her promised son “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David … of his kingdom there will be no end.” (Luke 2:32-33) Everything God has promised, God will surely fulfill, by God's own power.

At Christ’s final Advent, the new creation will fulfill all of these images. New Jerusalem will be a Garden-City. The entire city will be cubic, like the Holy of Holies. (Revelation 21:15-25) The City of God will be a holy sanctuary city for the nations. The Tree of Life will grow on both sides of the River of Life to heal the cosmos (Revelation 22:1-5). Finally, “there will be no sea.” (Revelation 21:1). All sin, death, disease, and chaos monsters will be banished forever!

In these Advent meditations we consider the Bible’s images about the incarnation. An angel of the Lord reassured Joseph that he should marry a scandalously but miraculously pregnant Mary. They should name their child Jesus, because he was the one God promised to deliver his people from their sins (Matthew 1:18-22).

Angels from the realms of glory rarely appear unless God will soon set in motion extraordinary, saving events. But the story of Israel contained images of celestial creatures. Inside the Ark of the Covenant were the tablets of God’s moral Law. The atonement cover over the Law was the Mercy Seat. Blood of sacrificial lambs was sprinkled on this lid — testifying that God would provide atonement for his people’s sins. Wrought into the atonement cover were two cherubim, angels gazing down in wonder at the sacrifice God was prepared make to atone for sinners. As the Apostle Peter would later exclaim, “Even angels long to look into these things!” (1 Peter 1:12) God was prepared to send his one and only Son as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” (John 1:29)

Even before Advent on earth in “the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4) there was war in heaven between God and the evil one. We see cosmic and cryptic images in Revelation 12:1-6:

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant … crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. His tail swept down la third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.

Apocalyptic literature often has indecipherable images. But much in this passage is clear. Revelation Chapter 12 is central and pivotal. The red dragon represents the devil, cast down to the earth. The pregnant woman represents God’s chosen people, specifically Mary, in whose womb the Savior was conceived to be born into the world. King Herod was part of the dragon’s plot to kill the newborn Son of David who would rule the nations. It was all predicted: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and … his Anointed (Messiah).” (Psalm 2:2) John's Apocalypse skips over the historical ministry of Jesus to his ascension to God’s throne, on the heavenly Mount Zion.

The Great Christ Comet is an intriguing, well-researched, but debated book. Author Colin R. Nicholl finds an astronomical basis for this thesis: the cosmic nativity scene in John's vision is what the Magi actually observed from the East. A great comet appeared in the constellation Virgo (the virgin), with a meteor shower emanating from the constellation Scorpio (the dragon).

Did Mesopotamian astrologers connect their celestial observations to the warning of Balaam, learned from the Jewish Diaspora in Babylon? “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near: a star shall come out of Jacob, and a scepter shall rise out of Israel; it shall crush the forehead of Moab and break down all the sons of Sheth … and one from Jacob shall exercise dominion.” (Numbers 24:17,19) Did a comet’s tail appear to rise out of Israel to guide the Magi to Palestine? Ancient astrology and modern science alike change and are fallible. The Magi had to consult Scripture (Micah 5:2) to find the Christ child at Bethlehem.

The Bible’s Advent images are bizarre, strange, and yet true. From the first promise of a Savior (Genesis 3:15) to Balaam’s warning, all of the images, prophecies, and promises are fulfilled by Jesus, the Seed of the woman, who crushes the head of the serpent. Advent is more than images of a crèche, a Nativity scene. Advent is God’s cosmic victory over all his and our enemies.