What shapes your worldview? Which eschatological position do you hold?

[Iconoclast]

AustinC,

First, the US is not in a covenant relationship with God

.
Agreed...This nation is not. All the Kingdom members by new birth are in Covenant relationship with God, however. With that privilege comes responsibility.

We are exiles in wretched world.

What are you basing this on Austin???I can think of a few passages that you might have in mind, but if you could clarify where you get this view, it would be helpful here.

We occupy space on this planet.

Is that what you understand from Luke !9:11-27?
I do not see the idea of occupying "space on the planet. It looks like work was expected.

We do not work to create our own vision of heaven on earth.

Which end-time view do you currently hold to? And what vision of heaven and earth do you see in scripture?

We are ambassadors. This means we are not citizens in the kingdoms of men.

Did Paul appeal to earthly citizenship, or only heavenly?

[QUOTE]We go to our Kings embassy (local church) to hear what our King has to say. As Ambassadors, we tell citizens in the kingdoms of men that they need to reconcile with our King because our King is returning and when He does He will judge this world by fire. He will separate the sheep from the goats.[/QUOTE]

okay

The more people who are reconciled with the King, the more righteous and holy the community will be on earth.

Agreed

Christians have one purpose on this earth. Our purpose is to call all humanity to reconciliation with God.

I think that we are to be involved in both working and occupying here and now with a view toward that which is eternal.

 

[Iconoclast]

Isaiah 51:7 Commentaries: "Listen to Me, you who know righteousness, A people in whose heart is My law; Do not fear the reproach of man, Nor be dismayed at their revilings.
Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
Upon this magnificent promise of the final triumph of the counsel of God, an exhortation is founded to the persecuted church, not to be afraid of men. "Hearken unto me, ye that know about righteousness, thou people with my law in the heart; fear ye not the reproach of mortals, and be ye not alarmed at their revilings. For the moth will devour them like a garment, and the worm devour them like woollen cloth; and my righteousness will stand for ever, and my salvation to distant generations." The idea of the "servant of Jehovah," in its middle sense, viz., as denoting the true Israel, is most clearly set forth in the address here. They that pursue after righteousness, and seek Jehovah (Isaiah 51:1), that is to say, the servants of Jehovah (Isaiah 65:8-9), are embraced in the unity of a "people," as in Isaiah 65:10 (cf., Isaiah 10:24), i.e., of the true people of God in the people of His choice, and therefore of the kernel in the heart of the whole mass - an integral intermediate link in the organism of the general idea, which Hvernick and, to a certain extent, Hofmann eliminate from it,

 

[Iconoclast]

pt2.
(Note: Hvernick, in his Lectures on the Theology of the Old Testament, published by H. A. Hahn, 1848, and in a second edition by H. Schultz, 1863; Drechsler, in his article on the Servant of Jehovah, in the Luth. Zeitschrift, 1852; V. Hofmann, in his Schriftbeweis, ii. 1, 147.

The first two understand by the servant of Jehovah as an individual, the true Israel personified: the idea has simply Israel as a whole at its base, i.e., Israel which did not answer to its ideal, and the Messiah as the summit, in whom the ideal of Israel was fully realized.



Drechsler goes so far as to call the central link, viz., an Israel true to its vocation, a modern abstraction that has no support in the Scriptures. Hofmann, however, says that he has no wish to exclude this central idea, and merely wishes to guard against the notion that a number of individuals, whether Israelites generally or pious Israelites, are ever intended by the epithet "servant of Jehovah." "The nation," he says himself at p. 145, "was called as a nation to be the servant of God, but it fulfilled its calling as a church of believers." And so say we; but we also add that this church is a kernel always existing within the outer ecclesia mixta, and therefore always a number of individuals, though they are only known to God.)

 

[Iconoclast]

Here is Gill;
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness,.... The righteousness of God, and of his law; the purity of his nature, what righteousness is agreeable to him, and required by him; the imperfection and insufficiency of a man's own righteousness, and the glory and fulness of Christ's righteousness, revealed in the Gospel; and so know that, as to approve of it, follow after it, lay hold upon it, believe in it, and rejoice in it, as their justifying righteousness:
the people in whose heart is my law; not in their heads only, but in their hearts; having an understanding of it, an affection for it, and the bias of their minds toward it; being written there by the finger of the divine Spirit, according to the covenant of grace, Jeremiah 31:33, and not in tables of stone, as the law of Moses, and of which this is not to be understood; but of the law or doctrine of Christ, even the everlasting Gospel; which coming with power, and the Holy Ghost, into the hearts of the Lord's people, is received by them with great approbation and affection, in faith and love; they obey it from their hearts, and are cast into the mould of it:

fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings; either of the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees, for renouncing a pharisaical righteousness, and embracing the righteousness of Christ; for rejecting the traditions of the elders, the rituals of the ceremonial law, and the doctrine of justification by the works of the moral law; and for cordially receiving the pure Gospel of Christ: or of idolatrous Heathens, from whom they were called, and that for leaving the religion of their country, and the gods of their fathers, and professing the one only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent: or of the antichristian worshippers, and of the man of sin at the head of them, who belches out his blasphemies against God and Christ, his tabernacle and saints; but neither their shocking blasphemies, nor spiteful taunts and jeers, nor menacing words, nor even cruel persecutions, should deter the saints from the profession of Christ and his Gospel.