Let us reflect on how radically Christianity conflicts with secular culture, with modern thought that all assures us that history has no purpose and no goal. This is the way that fashionable skeptics speak, and I quote liberal scholar G.M. Clark:
There is no secret and no plan in history to be discovered. I do not believe that any future consummation could make sense of all the irrationalities of the preceding ages.That is just an honest view of secularism, and by the way it condemns secularism. He is saying,We have a worldview that we’re committed to and it makes no sense of things.We would agree with that. You may know the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins, mocking Christianity. Here is what he candidly says:The universe we observe has, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.Well, my friends, ideas have consequences, and we have been living in a stretch of time, quite a long stretch now in our culture, where that idea has the consequence of sensual self-serving decadence. Why should you live on a high moral plane? You are just an animal; you are just a collection of molecules, there is no purpose to anything! What did Paul say?
If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.That is the logical consequence that has produced the society we are living in. And let me say that Christians then ought to look upon our secular society, on unbelieving people, with great sympathy. The meaning of history is a dark mystery to them; they actually believe that. Now partly it is because apart from God’s Word, it is all that they know. All they have is the story of sinful mankind that admittedly is absolutely tragic. It is hopeless, and if we did not have the Word of God, we would likely think the same way.I was converted a little later in life. I was thirty when I was converted. I well remember being that person I was struggling against. I was raised with ideals, but actual reality in our world was chipping away my ideals and trying to lead me on a downward plane. That is what is going on in our society. Oh, how grateful I am for the Word of God, or that would be continually true of me as well. We must admit, though, that secularists’ ignorance is a culpable ignorance. There is an unwillingness to receive the Word of God. There is a lack of interest in the gospel. Secularism has willingly shut itself up to the story of salvation.
And God’s Word says there is a purpose to history. There is a purpose to your life; you have vast meaning. You have vast significance, the Bible says. And ultimately, here it is in verse 10: -
Dr. Richard D. PhillipsGod is uniting all things together in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.1
9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ