When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem

As one of the evangelical movement’s most interesting and fruitful popularizers, Richard Mouw can almost be imagined rolling out of bed and dashing off an intriguing treatment of Isaiah’s sixtieth chapter, then placing it the next day in his readers’ hands. Such is the effervescent ease of his prose. Yet surely a book like this discloses instead years of reflection about what the Christian gospel has to say about God’s final purpose(s) with his world and how that ought to shape human conduct meanwhile. As a signal of his (and this world’s) destination, Mouw writes early on that … ‘Isaiah 60 records a vision of a magnificent city. In it the prophet is speaking to the city, calling attention to various aspects of its appearance. His tone is joyful, his mood excited. This city is not like any other that he has seen among the products of human efforts at urbanization; it is a city built by God. Sometimes Isaiah addresses the city in the present tense; at other points he employs the language of future fulfillment. Though the city has not yet been established, he is certain that it will someday arrive. It is clearly a transformed city. Many of the people and objects from Isaiah’s own day appear within its walls, but they have assumed different roles, they perform new functions.’ 'Transformation' of what God has made and what has fallen from its intended purpose is a core feature of Mouw’s vision of history’s destiny. His argument broadens out beyond exposition of one chapter of an Old Testament book’s sixty-six to offer a richly traced counterproposal to skinny Christian views of human fulfillment as ‘dying and going to heaven’. Mouw wants to know—as apparently did the Isaianic tradition—what will become of all of this, not just of me and of people who believe things like the ones I believe. The result, in this reader’s assessment, is a stirring vision in which all nations bring their best stuff, the cultural, religious and existential product to the beautification of a city that is resplendent in both beauty and justice. Mouw sees the walled but gates-flung-open city of Isaianic vision as something of a metaphor for this world when it has been duly refined, purged—again, transformed. It stands along more familiar descriptions of the same that travel under the title ‘new heavens and new earth’. The author avoids narrow definitions of ‘how things will be’ that fail to recognize the vivid power of imagistic description. Yet for all this Mouw never distances himself from the vision’s concreteness, whether in its beauty, its justice, its joyfulness, or its inclusion of surprising agents and elements. This delightfully readable book has retained its value since its genesis in the early 1970s and its revision at the onset of a new century. It deserves strong recommendation still, particularly to potential readers who are interested in Old Testament prophetic vision, biblical theology, missional eschatology, or hope in a context of hopelessness.

Richard Mouw's reading of Isaiah 60 in "When the Kings Come Marching In" is a very readable volume that offers valuable insights to the enduring problem of the relationship between Christianity and culture. We may discern three essential ways by which it informs our understanding of God's work in culture both now and in the future. It reminds us, firstly, of the scope of God's redemption: that it is broad and all-encompassing. Against pietistic, spiritualistic views that "only things with `souls'" matter in salvation - views better seen as "incomplete" rather than blatantly "false" - Mouw affirms God's care for the totality of human culture (21, 120). However sinful they might be, all the "languages, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organizations, inherited artifacts, technical processes, and values" of human civilizations comprise "the fullness of the cosmos for which Christ died" (113). What Christ is reconciling to himself in the present and the future is nothing less than the Imago Dei itself, "parceled out" among and "collectively possessed" by all the peoples of the world (84). Secondly, "When the Kings Come Marching In" deepens our understanding of the restorative or reformative manner of God's redemptive work in culture. In light of the "cheap grace" that simplistic "Christ of Culture" positions may sometimes smack of, as a good Reformed theologian of culture Mouw wisely emphasizes both the "radicality of sin" presently pervading human relations and institutions, as well as on the judgment that pagan culture stands under as a result (68, 31). This judgment, however, is a "purifying," rather than "annihilating" one: what is destroyed are not the "ships of Tarshish" or the "cedars of Lebanon" per se, but their "former function" (29, 30). Once employed for idolatrous, rebellious, or vainglorious ends, "the wealth of the nations" is to be "cleansed" and "healed" through God's work both now and in the future, that they might be "freed for service to the Lord and his people" (32, 30). In this light, the book can help us develop a more holistic appreciation of Christ's tripartite role in culture: as source, judge, and healer (114). The third and perhaps most important thing we can learn concerns the provisional and even restrained nature of God's redemptive work in culture in the present, and how this informs the Christian's attitude towards participation in cultural activity. Though somewhat surprising given the cultural mandate theme underlying the book, two points that Mouw concludes with presented a challenge to my existing theology of culture (42). Firstly, even as the Christian community "ought to function as a model of, a pointer to, what life will be like in the Eternal City of God" as it "[shares] in "God's restless yearning for the renewal of the cosmos," Mouw takes care to stress that "there is no clear biblical command to Christians to `transform culture' in any general way" (93, 111, 129). Whatever cultural reformation attempted must not be done in any "grandiose or triumphalistic manner," but ought rather to be the secondary, natural corollary of obeying what the Bible does plainly command: to alleviate and identify with the suffering of the afflicted, the same suffering that Christ himself bore when he was rejected and despised "outside the camp" (129, 130, 125). And this is the second corrective that the closing paragraphs of the book offers. If Mouw's tone seems characterized by a certain reservation towards the unequivocal embrace of cultural engagement, it can be traced to a fidelity towards not only the general witness of Scripture, but also the very genre of Isaiah 60 itself: it is a "fore-telling prophecy," with its third stage of fulfillment (with the first two already accomplished in the Old and New Testaments times) remaining necessarily incomplete during this present evil age (9, 87-88). Contrary to any premature or over-realized eschatological idealism, we see that "God's ownership over the `filling' must be vindicated," but only "at the end of history" (37). Until then, Christians are still called to "diligent activity" and labor, while finding comfort (especially when "efforts are less than completely successful - as they usually are") in the trust that God will fulfill the vision of Isaiah 60 "in his own time" (45, 131). Besides reminding Christians of the fact that they are ultimately citizens of a city that is to come, Mouw's conclusions affirm the need for a humble, patient awareness of divine sovereignty in all cultural activity. Paraphrasing Paul, we might say that we ought continue working in culture with reverent "fear and trembling," for it is God who works and wills in our enculturated lives "according to his good purpose," whether now or in the future (Philippians 2:13).

The question of Isaiah, the Messiah and the New Jerusalem continues to fascinate all who are looking forward to the kingdom of God to arrive. This book is very accessible and quite fascinating.

This book is a must read! I'm a bit biased since I did take Dr. Mouw's Christ & Culture class about a decade ago at Fuller Theological Seminary. It influenced my Christian worldview profoundly. This is one of those books that has a knack for presenting complicated concepts in a very simple and easily readable style without sacrificing the depth of the material. The heart of the book is an exposition of Isaiah 60 and the hopeful expectations of the prophet, not only for his people, but for the whole world. As many have noted, the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city. And Isaiah 60 sits right in the middle of that developmental journey: the transformation of culture.

Interesting theory though many of his major points do not have concrete Scriptural backing.

Mouw wonderfully lays out the grand plan of God to renew, reorder, and recreate the cosmos to the authority of Jesus Christ. His book offers such great hope for this broken world in a very accessible way to the reader. I particularly appreciated how he wrote about the various ways sin has penetrated so deeply into all cultures, but how Christ will transform all cultures redemptively. He also reminds us how the Church should join Christ “outside” the city to do the work of Christ while also understanding it is Jesus Himself who will complete this work perfectly. So, we work and worship while waiting for this glorious city whose lamp is the Lamb.

This is a very important contribution to the conversation about mission and culture and God’s ultimate purpose in the world. I found this to be a really refreshing and important take on dynamics of eschatology in the kingdom of God that can easily be wrongly assumed. Namely, that there are aspects of our world and cultural expressions, that not only have value now, but will have redeemed ultimate value still to come. I recommend this book for anyone studying culture mission and theology. It is especially cool to see the book of Isaiah’s prophetic vision unpacked, so as to even get a glimpse from some of the inspiration that the book of Revelation had and it’s writing.

I must like Dr. Mouw's little book of surprising big thoughts as I've keep giving copies away or recommending tne book ever since Dr. Ralph Winter passed on his sample copy from Dr. Mouw ...sometime not long before the intriguing polished version publicly becoming well known. Lately, over maybe three years I have found "When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah And The New Jerusalem a great companion volume to submit with a separate Amazon purchase of "The Controversy or Zion and the Time of Jacob's Trouble" authored by Dalton Lifsey (New Zealand) I must add a disclaimer in that the authors may never have met, nor did they have any intention of using one book to promote the other. These two books along with dozens of others just happen to work in my mind and that's the long and short of it..