Advent Poems

For the past 25 years, John Piper has written and read an advent poem for each Sunday of Advent at Bethlehem Baptist Church. This year his poems are on Nebuchadnezzar. Piper notes:

The poems aim to speak truth about God and his ways with man, but they are imaginative reconstructions behind figures of the Bible of what may have been, but probably was not. Historically, my aim is not to create anything that could not have been or that in any way contradicts what the Bible says.

I write them because the effort to say things differently helps me see things more deeply and love God more deeply. And I hope they help you in that same way.

This year my plan is to read a four part cycle on Nebuchadnezzar. We know him mainly from the books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, and Daniel. He was the king of Babylon who came and destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC and carried the exiles away to Babylon. At one level his behavior seems inexplicable and it is an open question in the Bible whether he really was a true convert to the worship of Yahweh. My own imagination is that he was entangled in a secret cult of moon worship. But what becomes of him, I will save for the last poem.

You can read the first of this years poems (and those to follow) here. To look at his previous advent poems click here.