The Church in Eclipse: Restoring the Light

By Victor Shane

The magnitude of the darkness that we see engulfing the world today suggests that something is blocking the light of God’s truth at its earthly source—within the institution of the Christian Church. But what that could that be? That is the question the author tries to answer in The Church in Eclipse.<

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781973658641

Victor Shane

Victor Shane is a California sailor, author, entrepreneur and business owner. He has written several books for millennials, including Millennial Economics and The Authentic Life. In 1979, he sailed a twenty-four-foot trimaran from California to Hawaii and back singlehandedly, spending sixty days alone at sea.

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Copyright © 2019 Victor Shane.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version® of the Bible, copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Inc., and Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-9736-5863-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5865-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9736-5864-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903839

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/01/2019

This book is dedicated to truth seekers in the Kingdom of God.

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

(Matthew 9:35–38)

Contents

Foreword

Author’s Introduction

Section I

God and the Creation

Chapter 1     A World in Darkness

Chapter 2     Light and Darkness

Chapter 3     Avoiding Fatalism

Chapter 4     God and Science

Chapter 5     God and Time

Chapter 6     The Origins of Life

Chapter 7     God and Evolution

Section II

God and History

Chapter 8     God’s Strategic Plan in History

Chapter 9     Two Witnesses

Chapter 10   The Second Witness

Chapter 11   Judah and the Jews

Chapter 12   Judea and the Jews

Chapter 13   The Lost Sheep of the House of Israel

Chapter 14   Jesus Christ of Nazareth

Chapter 15   Democracy

Chapter 16   Government

Chapter 17   America

Section III

God and Prophecy

Chapter 18   The Prophetic Word of God

Chapter 19   Prophetic Symbols

Chapter 20   End of Time

Chapter 21   The Rapture

Chapter 22   The Parousia

Chapter 23   The Antichrist

Chapter 24   666

Chapter 25   The 70th Week of Daniel

Chapter 26   The Gospel

Chapter 27   Restoring the Light

Foreword

Merriam-Webster defines an eclipse as, the total or partial obscuring of one celestial body by another. While we do not often think of the concept of an eclipse as applicable to the church, when we examine Victor Shane’s latest work no word is a better fit. The church that should be unconditionally illuminated by the light of Jesus is currently being eclipsed by muddled thinking and a run of prophecy teachers that would draw attention to their prognostications rather than proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Victor Shane has a wide knowledge of biological science, economics, and religion that makes his book simultaneously enjoyable and thought-provoking. Years of systematic research have provided the foundation for his biblical and church history analysis. The biblical premise is that… no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). Each component of the argument in this book rests on the fact that our interpretations of biblical text should not be projections or speculations on future events but solid confirmation of actual events as they happen that line up with the Bible. Because the church in history has been entangled with the darkness of fatalism and other misguided philosophies, the momentum of the church has been stalled from accomplishing the great commission commanded by Jesus Himself.

The reader will find this book well built from beginning to end. Tracing the threads of thought that have led the church to its current state is no easy task, and yet each chapter builds upon one another toward the target of bringing the church back to the light of the Gospel. Chapters on God and Science, God and Time, and The Origins of Life are strong cases for a God that works in complete concert with science, in and outside of time, and formed the earth with intent purposes that continue to be revealed. Section II addresses God and History, explaining God’s strategic plan in terms of His blessing brought through Abraham’s family to all the descendants of the earth. Jews and Gentiles, the Two Witnesses, then bear witness to God’s strategic plan. The strategic plan of God is then ultimately revealed in Jesus Christ of Nazareth for the entire world to look upon for salvation.

The work beautifully culminates in Section III God and Prophecy. Remarkable in the third section is the degree of biblical context that is taken into account as the reader is led through a systematic eschatology of the Rapture and Parousia. Whether readers agree with the interpretations put forth regarding these end times events is not the issue. The issue is whether their argument can be held to the high standard of sola scriptura. After disarming speculations and scenarios put forth by prophecy preachers (not to mention the entertainment industry), Victor Shane makes a compelling case for the Parousia at the end of time as the consummate event of prophetic history encapsulating all biblical texts. This simple approach untangles us from all the hype of modern-day prophecy teachers and leaves the church to do what Jesus commissioned her to do all along, to make disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:18-20).

After setting aside these false teachings that eclipse the light of the Gospel, an elegant exposition of the Gospel ensues. The love of God pours from these chapters in such a pure way, and the reader’s heart will be brought to remember their first love of Jesus or even to believe for the first time.

The challenge of The Church in Eclipse is to not follow the bandwagon of prophecy preachers but to inspect and research the scriptures in a way that anyone can affirm simply by looking at the text in context. The meticulous work in this book is challenging to business-as-usual prophecy interpretation and invites a new perspective that pays amazing dividends in bringing the church back to clarity and focus. My hope and prayers are that each person who reads this book will adopt a clear view of prophecy supported by the scripture and a greater focus on expanding the Kingdom of God through the simple, powerful Gospel of Jesus Christ. Once the church has been freed from its eclipse, it will be the powerful force on earth it was always intended to be to expand the Kingdom of God in the name of Jesus.

— Lars Linton, PhD.

Anthem Chapel

January 27, 2019

Author’s Introduction

At the onset of the new millennium the world seems to be sliding closer and closer to the abyss of some primeval darkness. Meanwhile, the one abiding hope that the world has for light and direction would also seem to be confused and in a delirium, and we are referring to the churches of God. Amidst the most unprecedented upheavals of history, at a time when the world is so desperately in need of a lamp unto its pathway, the one agency that was commissioned by Christ to serve as that lamp is hiding under a bushel, waiting to be whisked away from it all.

Instead of shedding beams of light athwart the darkness of the human condition, Churchianity is preoccupied with a morbid interest in the end of the world. The salt of the earth and the light of the world have all but resigned themselves to fatalism and are now sitting around waiting for the Antichrist to show up, so that they can be raptured into the wild blue yonder.

Ancient cultures used to view eclipses as bad omens, imagining that angry gods had removed the sun from the sky. Today we know the phenomenon to be nothing more than a temporary occlusion of light. During an eclipse of the sun the light of day may give way to the darkness of night, but that doesn’t mean that the sun has stopped shining, does it? No, it just means that its light is being blocked by something.

The magnitude of the moral darkness engulfing the world today is telling us a similar story. Does it mean that the light of God’s truth has been extinguished? No, it just means that something is blocking it at its earthly source—within the institution of the Christian Church. But what that could that be? That is the question we will try to answer in this book.

In doing so we will divide our quest into three sections. In the first section, God and the Creation, we will attempt to disclose muddled views relating to the nature of the world, the earth, time, natural science, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, so on and forth, unbiblical views that may be contributing to the eclipse of the Church in general.

In the second section, God and History, we will attempt to disclose muddled view relating to the strategic plan of God concerning His promise to Abraham, the election of the twelve tribes of Israel, the division of Israel into two witnesses, the Assyrian captivity and Diaspora of Israel, the Babylonian captivities of Judah, the post-captivity return of the Judah remnant to Jerusalem, the first Advent of Jesus Christ, the democratization of the Kingdom of God, the falling away into the Dark Ages, the Reformation, and the subsequent emergence of the United States of America, unbiblical views that may be also contributing to the eclipse of the Church in general.

In the third section, God and Prophecy, we will attempt to identify muddled views relating to so-called end time events, among them errors relating to the rapture, the Antichrist, 666, the Parousia, so on and so forth, unbiblical teaching that may be contributing to the eclipse of the Church in particular.

Section I

God and the Creation

Chapter 1

A World in Darkness

You are the light of the world.

A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.

Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket,

but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.

(Matthew 5:14)

A t the onset of the new millennium the world seems to be sliding closer and closer to the abyss of some primeval darkness. America has slid off her godly foundations and the whole world has followed suit. The planet earth is in convulsion. There has never been so much uncertainty, chaos, confusion, fear, insecurity, and instability in the world. Kingdoms are tottering. Economies are collapsing. The Middle East is a slaughterhouse. China doesn’t know her left hand from her right. Russia is reverting to her darker days. The United States Congress is in disarray. The European Union is unraveling at the seams. The United Nations is a house full of squabbling delegates. There is no genuine interest in the common good.

Things are falling apart all over the world. Infrastructures are disintegrating. Natural resources—oceans, rivers, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat—are undergoing systemic degradation. The most powerful institutions on earth are those that underwrite fear, debt, disease, death, and destruction. And now, even the conventions of good and evil have been reversed! Godliness is ridiculed, and godlessness is dignified! Goodness is scorned, and evil is admired! Uprightness is reviled, and immorality is praised! Virtue is sneered, at and perversion is applauded!

Truth has fallen in the public forum. Deceit, lies, fake news, iniquity, larceny, graft, corruption, greed, lawlessness, rioting, looting, shooting, burning, crime, vandalism, lewdness, pornography, profanity, obscenity, and addiction have become societal norms. Billions don’t know right from wrong anymore. They have jettisoned all absolutes. They have lost their moral compass. They have lost their bearings. They have no reliable frame of reference to navigate by. They have no anchor, no mooring, no chart, no compass, and no star to steer by. They stumble about in thick darkness. They stumble and fall.

The Church in Eclipse

Meanwhile, the one abiding hope that the world has for light and direction would also seem to be confused and in a delirium, and we are referring to the churches of God. Amidst the most unprecedented upheavals of history, at a time when the world is so critically in need of a lamp unto its pathway, the one agency that was commissioned by Christ to serve as that lamp is hiding under a bushel.

Instead of shedding beams of light athwart the darkness of the human condition, Churchianity is preoccupied with a morbid interest in the end of the world. The salt of the earth and the light of world have all but resigned themselves to fatalism and are now sitting around waiting for the Antichrist to show up so that they can be whisked away from it all—Beam me up, Scottie!

What does Churchianity have to offer the world in its darkest hour? The hope of a real deliverance? The good news of the proximity of the Kingdom of God? No! All that it has to offer is apocalyptic bad news instead.

What are we to think? Are we to think that God’s plan of salvation is no more than an evacuation program? Is God’s purpose in creating the world to go up in a puff of smoke? Did God bring this world of people and nations down the centuries in vain? Did He fail to fulfill His unconditional promise to Abraham? Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of Christian commission, purpose, duty, and responsibility, than a latter-day doctrine that encourages Christ’s harvesters to get ready to be evacuated from the earth at a time when its fields are white unto harvest?

The Divided Sheepfold

What is the picture that we have of the Christian Church today? Is it one of harmony and resolve? Is it one of churches pulling together to harvest the earth to the glory of God? No! The picture before us is an altogether different one. It is one of a divided sheepfold! Divided on doctrine, divided on theology, divided on eschatology. Can truth divide? Can churches claim to derive their doctrines from the same Bible, and yet differ on so many points of belief? How so?

The greater part of the Church seems to have gone off on a wild goose chase, veered off from the rational testimony of the Bible and turned to the fatalism of the Ionian Greeks, or the dualism of the Gnostics, believing that the physical world is hopelessly doomed, damned, and lost, and all future hope lies in floating about up in the air somewhere.

Eclipse

Ancient cultures used to view solar eclipses as bad omens, imagining that angry gods had removed the sun from the sky. Today we know the phenomenon to be nothing more than a temporary occlusion of light. During a total eclipse of the sun, for example, the light of day may give way to the darkness of night, but that doesn’t mean that the sun has stopped shining, does it? No, it just means that the light of the sun is being blocked by something. The magnitude of the moral darkness that we see engulfing the world today is telling us a similar story. Let us recall the words of Jesus:

You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:14–16).

Does the darkness of the world mean that the light of God’s truth has been extinguished? No, it just means that something is blocking it at its earthly source—within the institution of the Christian Church. But what could that be? That is the question we will try to answer in this book.

Chapter 2

Light and Darkness

Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying,

"I am the light of the world. He who follows Me

shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life."

(John 8:12)

L ight and darkness cannot coexist simultaneously. In the contest between light and darkness light will win every time, because darkness is nothing more than the absence of light.

Whom did Jesus appoint to serve as the purveyors of light? Did He say to atheists, You are the light of the world? Did He say to the liberal left, You are the light of the world? Did He say to Hollywood, You are the light of the world? Did He say to the mainstream media, You are the light of the world? Let us not go blaming atheists, liberals, Hollywood, and the mainstream media for the darkness of the world. That would be like blaming darkness for being dark! Let us instead blame ourselves for failing to expose that darkness to the brilliant light of the Gospel.

In this publication, we will take light to correspond with God’s truth resident within the Christian Church, and we will take darkness to correspond with the falsehood resident in the world. The thesis of this publication can, therefore, be stated thus:

➢ Where there is no light, darkness will be selected by default.

➢ Where there is light, darkness will flee as a matter of course.

The task that God lays at our feet at this eleventh hour is clear. It is to identify and remove the false doctrines that are eclipsing the light of His truth within the institution of the Christian Church.

False Doctrines

What do we mean by false doctrines? We mean doctrines that cast doubt on the ability of God to fulfill His unconditional oath to Abraham. We mean doctrines that mislead us into believing that somewhere along the line something unexpected had happened to throw God off course. We mean doctrines that fool us into believing that the world, the flesh, and the devil have somehow succeeded in frustrating God’s plan—that they have caused Him to alter it, change horses in midstream, stop the prophecy clock, so on and so forth.

By false doctrines we mean sideshows and distractions that confuse the truth and sidetrack our resolve until there is no room left for God’s rational plan of salvation. We mean misrepresentations of the Word of God that make the foundation of hope to fall out from under us. We mean wrong beliefs that make us theorize, theologize, speculate, and philosophize ad nauseam, ever citing chapter and verse, but never coming to a knowledge of the rational plan of God, much less the reasonable mandate of the Christian Church. In short, we mean precisely those doctrines that are now obscuring the light of the Church and need to be exposed and removed from the Body of Christ.

Okay, so where do we start? What do we use for our guiding principle? What do we use for a