Michael C Champlin

“as a futurist in my college days, the pretense of consistent literalism was challenged by Revelation’s wild imagery. In any given verse, we might pivot from literal to figurative interpretations and back again. Using the Church in Revelation again as our example, it was easy to discern that the collective billions who constitute the Bride of Christ are not one literal female colossus in a humongous wedding dress waiting to consummate union with Jesus in actual lovemaking. We knew this was symbolic. Yet in the very same verse, we stumbled over our literalism into the New Jerusalem. Some of the popular futurist commentaries of the day quibbled over the Holy City’s dimensions—whether it will be a pyramid or a cube and what the rooms, streets, and transportation will be like.4 I tried to picture a city that was fifteen hundred miles tall and wondered what that would do to the earth’s rotation. I also wondered what kind of oysters could produce pearls large enough to become the city’s twelve gates (Rev 21:21).”
― Bradley Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem

“I’m often asked if I have hope for Christianity. These days, I say, “My hope for Christianity depends on my hope for humanity, and we humans are not trending well.” And in that realization, I find a compelling reason to stay Christian.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“A growing proportion of smart and honest Christians of each new generation will abandon the sinking ship, just as they have been doing for centuries in Europe and decades in the United States. In the not-too-distant future, Christianity will only exist in those enclaves where authoritarian leaders rule over submissive flocks who enfold their religious lives within the assumptions of the first axial age.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Sometimes we miss the immediacy of Jesus’ warnings because we project his parousia74 into the eschatological distance. When we read his parables that refer to a returning bridegroom, landlord, or king,75 we usually assume that Jesus was foretelling his second coming and the judgments of hellfire. In fact, the surprise visit/return in most of these parables probably refers initially to Jesus’ incarnation, his resurrection, or once he is rejected, to the resulting chain of events that bring down Jerusalem in AD 70. In other words, if the parousia refers to Jesus’ own generation, rather than to the end of time, then Jesus’ use of the historic destruction in Gehenna circa 587 BC is not a metaphor for John’s eschatological lake of fire. Exactly the opposite. John’s apocalyptic lake of fire is a visionary picture of Gehenna’s historic pyres, prophesied by Jesus (reiterating Jeremiah) and fulfilled in AD 70. More simply, Jerusalem’s destruction does not direct us to apocalyptic visions of fire; the heavenly visions indicate the earthly reality.”
― Bradley Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem