The DNA of History

By Pete Schwalm

This book discusses the three themes of grace, mercy, and judgment within the context of four major time frames. The first three epochs, each culminating in unique judgments, provide historical precedents to the fourth, in which we live. As we near what might be the end of the fourth and final epoch, it is imperative that we learn from the first three. By grasping the first three historical precedents as prelude to the fourth, people can choose to become informed, prepare personally, and live

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781628388541

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While this book emerged from a lifetime journey of faith and faltering obedience, it would not have the readability, coherence, and focus without the very hard work, professional editing, and continuing communication with my editors, Drs. Allen and Roberta Hye. They first heard a series of presentations and then approached me with an offer to edit, commiserate, and work side by side with me in the process of authoring this book. Their friendship, support, and consistent help were and continue to be an invaluable asset, for which I will be forever grateful. I believe the story in this book is a 21st-century version of His story and may serve as an important warning to the serious reader about history’s conclusion. Therefore, their participation will pay long-term, indeed eternal dividends.

Gratitude is also expressed to my friend Dr. Paul Robbins, who read the manuscript and offered a variety of valuable insights and helpful guidance. Having met in Wheaton, Illinois in 1974, we have a friendship that spans 40 years.

I am also indebted to Mrs. Annie Molnar, who helped in the early stages of editing a draft of the manuscript.

A special thank you goes to Ms. Rachel Baker, who deciphered my longhand scribbling to get the first draft typed.

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INTRODUCTION

The author, poet, and critic Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) said, The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world. It is because I share Warren’s deep concern that I have written this book."

The DNA referred to in the title of this book is a key analogy to its content, but how? In layman’s terms, DNA is a unit of heredity, the genetic transmission of characteristics from one generation to another. Let me illustrate with a personal example from childhood. My mother died when I was three years old. A few months later, my father left me with his mother-in-law, my grandmother, and then my mother’s sister and her husband became my adoptive parents. I received the gift of a wonderful home, loving and affirming parents, a deep appreciation and love of music, and a clear but nominal introduction to the Christian faith and church. I was an only child with an ideal opportunity to grow.

After my adoptive parents died when I was 28 years of age, I looked up my biological father. Driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, I saw an exit sign where I had been told he lived and took the exit on the spur of the moment. I called him from a phone booth, and he answered; I was within three blocks of his home. It had been 27 years since he left and had any contact with me. As I came up his front sidewalk, he stood behind a screen door and I heard him gasp, Oh, my god!! I bear the unmistakable physical characteristics of my biological mother and grandfather. The past was walking into his life from 27 years before. Heredity, the DNA, had transmitted characteristics to me from previous generations, just as it does for all of us.

Now, how does that translate to the DNA of history? I believe that, like biological heredity, the innermost traits of human nature and activity replicate themselves in history, and essential elements of God’s nature do the same. The idea of the transmission of human and divine characteristics from one generation to succeeding generations is a primary focus of this book—the DNA of history.

As the pastor of a sizeable congregation in Dayton, Ohio for 23 years, I was always processing history and Scripture, much of which I had committed to memory. It was my custom to exercise by running around the local high school track early in the morning, usually in the dark and alone, and as I ran, I concentrated on the worship of the living God. During one morning run, I was struck by the idea that history as written in Scripture had repeated itself again and again over a period of more than 5,000 years. I then focused my thoughts on how God had continually worked His grace, mercy, and judgment in human affairs as history repeated itself. That process led me to three conclusions:

There is a concluding repetition coming.

We who are alive in the 21st century have much to learn from the historical precedents to our age.

We can make a difference, at a minimum, by the influence we are able to exert in our personal world and to the larger world as we incarnate and articulate a grace-driven, prophetic voice as salt and light.

Citing the sins of his ancestors, St. Paul, the apostle, suggests that biblical history was in part written as an example to keep us from setting our hearts on evil (1Co 10:6). Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 10 four examples of evils from which people of faith (believers) should abstain: idolatry (Ex 32), sexual immorality (Num 25), testing the Lord (Num 21), and grumbling (Num 16). These examples, says Paul, are warnings written so that informed people may be encouraged to stand in the midst of temptations that have existed for millennia. In other words, history sets an example from which to learn. Thus, we might conclude that history is meant in part to teach us a measure of progressive revelation, that we might not keep making the same mistakes. However, in my opinion, we are not learning that lesson well—not personally, relationally, nationally, internationally, or spiritually. As we will see later, St. John’s Revelation (the Apocalypse), summarizes and demonstrates this point dynamically.

Nowhere have I found the Revelation more compellingly interpreted than in Eugene H. Peterson’s Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John & the Praying Imagination, a study that warranted multiple readings. If my contemplation on the repetition of history was the culmination of a life of reading, preaching, and ministry, it was Peterson’s study—especially his chapter on evil—that crystallized my earlier thoughts and prompted me to write this book.

In his Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, gives another good illustration of how God works His will in history, citing Micah’s prophecy some 700 years prior, which pinpointed the exact location of Jesus’ birth: But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor bears a son, and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites (Mic 5:2-3).

The circumstances surrounding that prophecy are profound. Writes Pope Benedict about the Roman Empire at the time of Christ:

For the first time, there is a great expanse of peace in which everyone’s property can be registered and placed at the service of the wider community. Only now when there is commonality of law and property on a large scale and when a universal language has made it possible for a cultural community to trade in ideas and goods, only now can a message of universal salvation, a universal Savior, enter the world: it is indeed the fullness of time.¹

Because of the legal and cultural advancement of the Roman Empire, the events of Luke 2—the census of the entire Roman world and Joseph bringing Mary to Bethlehem—were now possible for the first time in history. Benedict continues, The history of the Roman Empire is interwoven with the salvation history that God established with Israel (64). Now if God worked history out in this case to send us His Son, it is certainly feasible to consider that God works history out from beginning to end, from first to last. He lets empires rise and makes them crumble when they disobey Him; as the prophet Isaiah says: He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff (Is 40:23-24).

While history’s beginning was good (Gen 1) and the end will be good (Rev 21-22), John in his Apocalypse says that Jesus Christ represents the book ends of history, the First and the Last, and the Beginning and the End. ’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ’who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty’ (Rev 1:8). It is what is in between—disappointments, tragedies, arrogance, murder, war, illness, disease, depravity, death, evil—from which history must emerge if indeed the end is to be good. St. John states that it is so in the last book of the canon of Scripture.

Sixty-six books written over almost 1,500 years, in three languages, by many human authors reveal a plot in history, a pattern of God’s sovereign working in human affairs, from which we may learn if we so choose. I wish here to highlight three central themes—what I call the DNA—that run like threads through four epochs in God’s salvation history. Like the Apostle Paul citing historical examples to warn the Corinthians, or the prophet Ezekiel sounding the watchman’s alarm, I hope to point 21st-century people to the lessons of the past, warn them of present dangers, and alert them to history’s coming conclusion.

The Central Themes

Written in the context of history repeating itself are three central themes, which to me represent the DNA of history: grace, mercy, and judgment.

Grace (Gk.Charis). The theme of grace, as we will see, runs from Genesis to Revelation. The word for grace is used about 190 times in the OT and about 155 times in the NT. The most common meaning is unmerited favor or kindness, a gift that we don’t deserve. We can also speak of common grace, something provided by God in daily life to everyone. The receiving of grace makes us accountable to God and His Law: Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God (Ro 3:19).

In this book, I often use