When a student in Oxford in the 1980s, I walked into a church bookshop and picked up a landscape-format book full of complex diagrams. It was setting out the seven dispensations of history, apparently according to the Bible, in which God gave humanity in each era a distinct challenge, which it failed, and a unique means of redemption. Jesus’ atoning death applied only in one of these seven, the ‘church dispensation’, but not to others. I thought this was rather odd, and when I asked the assistant in the shop about it, she replied ‘Isn’t that just what the Bible teaches?’
This was one measure of the influence of Hal Lindsey, who died last month aged 95. I don’t think his name is well known in the UK any more, but through his series of best-selling books in America, and the Left Behind film series based on the novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (whose son, Dallas, is behind The Chosen film series) which were informed by them, he shaped Christian thinking about the ‘end times’ for a generation or more. Many older Christians still think that the rapture and the seven-year tribulation are clearly taught in the Bible, that we are in the ‘end times’ in our era, and that the Book of Revelation is a terrifying prediction of events that are happening in our day.
Lindsey was born in 1929 in Houston, served in the Korean War, and graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1962 with a Masters in Theology. He worked for the evangelistic organisation Campus Crusade for Christ until 1969, and also taught in local churches in California. He continued his study of theology, earning a doctorate in 1994 from the California Graduate School of Theology. It was the combination of study and popular preaching that was key to his influence.
His first and best-known book, The Late, Great Planet Earth (Zondervan, 1970) is a classic example of this—and it is no surprise that the material was turned into both novels and films. It was an exercise in popularising for a new generation the frankly bookish and obscure teaching of John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren in the 1830s. Darby was a learned but eccentric Anglican cleric in Ireland, who became disillusioned with the Church, coming to believe that ordination was sinful. He published 32 volumes of Bible commentary, and his work contributed to the publication of the Revised Version of the Bible.
Darby’s work had always depended on others for popularisation, and it only became well known in America by its incorporation in the study notes in the Scofield Bible of 1909. Lindsey continued this popularisation for a new generation in a new context, but he depended on several key elements for his work to succeed.
The first was the general sense of crisis in the Cold War era. At one level, his work was classically US-focused, fitting well with the political ‘right’ in America at the time. It was anti-Communist and pro-Israel, at a time shortly after the Six-Day War of 1967 which alarmed many in Europe and the States. Paradoxically, Lindsey noted the absence of reference to the States in the biblical literature (which is hardly surprising) interpreting this as a prediction that the US would be eclipsed as a world power, either because of subjection to Europe or because of a Communist take-over.
The second key element of his approach to the Bible was to simply ignore its own historical context and reality. Despite, for example, the Book of Revelation being primarily a (prophetic, apocalyptic) letter, which carefully names its actual recipients, and (as scholarship at the same time as Lindsey was writing was clearly demonstrating) expressed in terms that referenced the first-century realities of life, Lindsey took it as a text which was entirely irrelevant to anyone except us, the ‘last generation’.
Thirdly, because of the need to relate the texts of the New Testament to our day and ignore their relevance to their own time, Lindsey described the Bible as a jigsaw puzzle. The texts as we have them, in their place in the New Testament, don’t actually make sense. The task for the interpreter is to empty the box, sort out the puzzle pieces, and put them back together in a different order which will make sense to the modern reader and speak to him or her about their own world. In response to criticism of this method, Lindsey’s defence was simply ‘Look at what a great picture you end up with!’
This final observation then became the undoing of his credibility, and why many of his views have been eclipsed. Based on his reading of Matthew 24.34, he claimed that Jesus would return within one generation (40 years) of the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948. (In case haven’t noticed, he didn’t!). He claimed that the Soviet Union was Gog in Ezekiel 38–39 who would attack the State of Israel, a prediction undone by its collapse in 1991. He predicted that the EU would become a ten-nation confederation to match the ten horns of the beast in Rev 13. And he believed that the secret Rapture of Christians would happen within his lifetime.
The paradox of Lindsey is that, whilst he claimed that the Bible could be matched with contemporary political events, his own teaching matched neither. He had to be highly selective, to cut and paste both politics and the Bible, to make the two match. And whilst denouncing the moral degeneracy of his nation, he himself was divorced and remarried four times.
For a better take on the ‘end times’ and the nature of Christian hope, see my Grove booklet Kingdom, Hope, and the End of the World, my Tyndale Commentary on the Book of Revelation, and my articles on the rapture, tribulation, Matthew, and Revelation at www.psephizo.com.
This article was first published at Premier Christianity.
Here are summary answers on the questions of the rapture, the tribulation, the mark of the beast, and the Millennium.
In Matthew 24.36f, the lack of any warning, so that people are taken unawares, is a striking contrast to what Jesus has said about the destruction of Jerusalem in the previous section, when he urges his disciples to take note of all the signs just as they would meteorological indicators of the coming weather. But there will be no warning signs for the return of Jesus—something he has already made clear, as a contrast, in the comment in Matt 24.27 that his parousia (in contrast to the Son of Man coming to the throne of the Almighty, Matt 24.30) will be both visible to all and without warning, just as lightning is.
The comparison with the ‘days of Noah’ contains a simple logical structure which, because of assumptions we make about the passage, it is easy to miss.
- In the days of Noah, most people were unaware of the coming judgement, and were pre-occupied with the mundane realities of life, as if these were all that mattered.
- When the flood came, they were taken away, whilst Noah and has family, having taken notice of God and made ready, remained behind in the ark and stayed to repopulate the earth.
- In the same way, people will be pre-occupied with the mundane realities of life, as if these were all that mattered, but when Jesus returns they will be swept away in judgement.
- Those who follow the teaching of Jesus and have made ready will be left behind to receive and live in the coming kingdom, the New Jerusalem which will come from heaven to earth (Rev 21).
The logic of this is quite clear: in the days of Noah, it was the wicked facing judgement who were swept away, and the righteous who were left. In the same way it will be those absorbed with this life who will be swept away, whilst those who are ready for Jesus will be left behind.
Therefore I want to be left behind, and you should too. (For more detail see this post on Matt 24.)
On the question of ‘the great tribulation‘ (Rev 7.14), there are several things we need to note.
First, the people here are the great multitude from ‘every nation, tribe, people, and language’ that John sees, having heard them being counted out as the 144,000 of the tribes of Israel. This is the new Israel in Jesus, followers of the lamb who have been redeemed by his blood (compare Rev 5.9, echoed in the second half of Rev 7.14). The phrase ‘they have come out of’ οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἐρχόμενοι ἐκ τῆς θλίψεως τῆς μεγάλης doesn’t imply they have avoided this tribulation, but have come through it. Now, before God, the tribulation has come to an end and they enjoy the shelter of his presence (Rev 7.15).
Second, there is nowhere any mention anywhere of a ‘seven-year tribulation’.
Thirdly, John himself already believes that both he and his readers are ‘in tribulation’, and this is because of being ‘in Jesus’. John opens his apocalyptic prophetic letter by saying: ‘I, John, [am] your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus.’ In Jesus we share both in the kingdom (the new creation breaking into the present) and tribulation, and thus we need to develop this quality of patient endurance (compare Luke 8.15).
Fourthly, why does John believe this? Because it was the teaching of Jesus and (following his example) Paul. Jesus is very clear in speaking to his disciples in his farewell discourse: ‘In this world, you will have tribulation—but take heart! I have overcome the world!’ (John 16.33). The verb ‘overcome’ is nikao which is precisely the term used at the end of each of the messages to the assemblies in the seven cities in Rev 2–3 (‘to the one who overcomes…’). Luke summarises the teaching of Paul in his first ‘missionary journey’ in Acts 14.22: ‘Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.’ English translations often obscure this language of tribulation by translating the term thlipsis as ‘tribulation’ in Rev 7.14 but by another term in other places.
The great tribulation is what every follower of Jesus must endure if they walk faithfully in this world which is opposed to Jesus yet needs to receive his love. ‘If they hate you, understand that they hated me first’ (John 15.18). ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account…’ (Matt 5.11).
The beast is a central figure in the drama of the Book of Revelation. Although there are anticipations of the figure earlier in the text, the ‘beast from the sea’ is fully introduced in Rev 13 as one of an ‘evil trinity’ along with the dragon/Satan, and the ‘beast from the earth’ (Rev 13.1) which later in the text is described as ‘the false prophet’.
The beast from the sea look very much like the dragon which is described in chapter 12—and both together combine the features of the four beasts that emerge from the sea in Daniel 7, which many commentators believe symbolise the four great world empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome. And far from making this beast future and mysterious, he appears to go to some lengths to help his readers understand who this beast is, by asking them to ‘calculate’ (the Greek term psephizo) or work out, the number of the beast, which stands for a man’s name.
For some time, there has been a strong scholarly consensus that 666 refers to Nero by means of a numerology known as gematria or isopsephism—adding the value of the letters in a word so that every word has a value, and equating two words with equal value. We know that Nero’s name was sometimes spelled with a final -n; ‘Neron Caesar’ when written in Greek, but transliterated into Hebrew letters adds up to 666 (see the image to the right for the sums).
There are several significant pieces of supporting evidence for this. First, when you write the Greek for ‘beast’, therion, in Hebrew letters, you also arrive at 666, making it clear that 666 is the number of ‘the beast’. Secondly, when you do the same with ‘angel’ in Rev 21, you get the number 144. Third, an early manuscript from Oxyrhynchus in Egypt corrects 666 to 616, which you would do if you understood the gematria, but thought that ‘Nero’ should be spelled without the final n. (There isn’t really any other plausible explanation for why this variant should arise.)
This ‘beast’ is identified with neither the ‘man of lawlessness’ in Paul nor the ‘antichrist’ in John, and in fact neither of these terms occur anywhere in Revelation.
The millennium, the thousand-year reign of the saints with Jesus in Rev 20 is one of the most confusing and debated issues in discussion about the ‘end times’. There are postmillennialists, amillennialists, dispensational mid-tribulation rapture premillennialists—the list goes on! Personally, I am a pro-millennialist—I am all for it. Or perhaps I am a pan-millennialist—I think it will all pan out in the end!
We get confused when we treat the sequence of visions in Revelation as a vision of sequences—as a chronology of the ‘end times’, in which John offers us a timetable of the (to him distant) future. This cannot be the case! When John wrote, it was recognised that he was speaking to people he knew and addressing their situation; the text is full of references to real life in the first century. And no-one has ever read this text and said ‘This says nothing to me—it must be about the distant future!’ Rev 22.10 makes this clear; where Daniel has been told to ‘seal up these words’ for a future time (Dan 12.4), John is told ‘Do not seal up these words, for the time is near!’ Just as the four horsemen in chapter 6 describe four aspects of disaster in the world and not a sequence of four separate events, and the three sequences of seals, trumpets, and bowls describe the world in three different ways, so the seven visions John has in chapters 19 to 21 (‘and I saw…’ occurs at the beginning of each at Rev 19.11, 19.17, 19.19, 20.1, 20.4, 20.11, 21.1) offer seven different perspectives on the parousia of Jesus and what it means.
What does this vision, of the thousand years, tell us? First, that God truly has won the victory over Satan and the forces of evil. That victory was won on the cross (‘they have triumphed by the blood of the lamb’ Rev 12.11), and it breaks into the world through lives that honour him, but it will be fully revealed at The End. Second, the saints will be vindicated; those who have suffered most will take pride of place in the new creation. Thirdly, the earth will not be destroyed but renewed—we will reign on earth with him forever. It is a wonderful vision of hope!
Well said! All of it.
“Lindsey thought that the task of the interpreter is to empty the box, sort out the puzzle pieces, and put them back together in a different order which will make sense to the modern reader and speak to him or her about their own world.”
And that surely encapsulates the fundamental problem with systematic theology.
That’s perhaps a little unfair on systematic theology. Robert Jenson starts chapter 4, “The Way of God’s Identity” of his systematic theology with this:
“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having before raised Israel from Egypt.”
I take this basically to mean that what we can know of God and His ways is to be found in the biblical story. Jonathan Sachs in his “Covenant and Conversation” series says that the Jews do philosophy by telling a story. Story is a problem for those who like to consider things in terms of propositions. Systematic theology is an attempt to turn story into propositions by creating categories into which facets of the Story can be fitted; Christology, Soteriology, Pneumatology, Ecclesiology, etc. This should not be a problem as long as the primacy of the original Story is retained. The danger is that other stories creep in.
The problem with Lindsay, it would seem, is that he would take the Story apart, and construct a new story from the bits.
Systematic theology is not the same thing, not the same category.
Systematic theology seeks to consider the ‘whole Counsel of God’ across the canon.
Hear hear
Any system can be stitched together from old and new patches.
Indeed. Which is why asking questions of method is so important.
Thank you. It’s so good to see others voicing what I’ve come to discover in my own Bible study.
It gives hope for the future of the church learning that it’s bringing His kingdom to earth that matters not the desperate hope of escape.
I didn’t know Dallas Jenkins relationship to the Left Behind Series. I wonder if his eschatology is that of his father… Does anyone know?
I don’t know, and I don’t watch The Chosen so could not comment on that.
We were shown an episode in Church last week—and it was lifted from the Protoevangelium of James, and not the NT.
That’s an interesting comment, Ian. I’ve been considering watching The Chosen, and this makes it less likely. Was it an episode about Christmas?
Great article, I heartedly concur…
Remind me – was not the Protoevangelium of James the source material for our 20th century version of the Nativity where it deviates from Scripture?
Yes, at many points. It was denounced as heretical by a succession of popes.
So are we saying that we can’t interpret the current times in any particular way – that we should just ‘having done all – to stand’? This makes sense, but circumstances are always changing and we surely do need to ask what God is saying to us in our time. We do have things to do in this world, with Him. He does have plans for now. The great and amazing missionary endeavours of the 1800s (which included helpful social/economic change), the work of Wilberforce Shaftesbury etc, Wesley, Cromwell and Commonwealth, the Reformation, Tyndale, Wycliffe – these were key movements of God. What is he calling us to now? I think it is to recovering a wholistic Christian vision for life in all its aspects Arts, Economics, Sport, Family, Science, Civil Government, History. As you say there will be tribulation – there is a good deal – and we need the encouragement of the return of Jesus to sustain us, we need that beautiful sight. I think Bunyan experienced this. We need to evangelise this hope and how it works out in practical terms for people: ‘Build a country you want to live in’.
I think I would observe that interpreting our current times and speaking into it is the task of theology and ethics—not eschatology.
Lindsey’s approached appeared to be not to *understand* the times we are in, but to decode them, and locate them on the map of his (eccentric) end-times timetable.
Jesus clearly rejects that approach—or calls us to—and instead says that we should be like good stewards who continue working for their master in his absence.
Does that make sense?
I was more commenting on the eschatology part, which was helpful. Bunyan. Early Church (et al!) find it important, especially when in tribulation. All of history is effectively part of eschatology ‘and then the end’, which we helpfully don’t know the time of. We pray ‘thy Kingdom come’ which anticipates some form of human structure and movement. It’s not all steady-state. We do need to understand-the-times and know what to do. Re @Anton, I don’t think Jesus just saves souls as he honours and redeems the whole of creation, esp humans and expects us to reflect his good-news in all areas. The very pointing to a better way is a part of spreading good-news and people are drawn to that. So we are expected to fight for His models of flourishing. It is a foretaste of Heaven but still at least that!
If you wish to create a ‘Christian country’ then you will have to do a lot better than any that has been tried to date!
I differ, Jons. Just introduce people to Jesus Christ (i,e. evangelise) and stand fast against evil wherever you find it in your own life. This world and human culture is doomed, because every aspect of it is fallen.
Thanks, Ian, it’s good to be reminded of the Biblical basis of our hope in the middle of Advent! It seems to me that, through Lindsey and LaHaye/Jenkins, J N Darby’s idiosyncratic theology has cast a long shadow on the UK church. This was particularly prevalent in the 70s and 80s, when there was a dearth of popular level books in the UK on the end times and prophecy, so US imports filled that gap, and brought Darby’s ideas to prominence, especially in evangelical and charismatic circles.
From my personal experience, I think that influence persists among Christians of ‘a certain age’, including those, like myself, who are in ordained ministry. It can be quite difficult to shake off, especially as the CW lectionary includes very few lections from Revelation, so we are not regularly exposed to the corrective of interaction with Biblical texts that refute these teachings.
So, thanks for highlighting this once again, and (free unsolicited plug!) can I commend to others your commentary on Revelation as an accessible and helpful way into a better understanding of these issues.
Yes you can!
I agree that the lack of coverage of Revelation is a problem with the Sunday lectionary, though it is covered in the weekdays.
What I find fascinating is the periods of history where Christians simply fail to talk about eschatology, despite its pretty central importance in the NT.
You’ll be pleased to hear that I have bought a copy of your commentary on Revelation and it is on my pile of books to be read.
To me the solution to that is simple. Ignore the lectionary – a concept I was completely unaware of until a few years ago, and find (from your writing as much as anything else) singularly useless. I suppose it’s better than only having the Bible available in Latin, though not by much. Jigsaw puzzles again (ref your comment about Hal Lindsey’s approach).
Sadly being reimported into the UK in some circles.
Really? Oh dear.
Very sad to hear this. Do you have any examples?
I am relieved that in 1986 I was introduced to a book called “The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian World View” by Brian J Walsh and J Richard Middleton, which powerfully and convincingly made your point above about not wanting to be “taken away”, using the same Biblical arguments.
As you know, Ian, I am very interested in the connection between the Bible and post-Biblical history, and eschatology is surely part of this. But isn’t the reason Christians in some times fail to talk about eschatology because a) people like Hal Lindsay have discredited it for many; and b) 2000 years is a long time, and almost the only thing we know is that it will be unexpected and we should all be ready?
And being ready in context seems to mean being faithful to our God and Saviour, which surely we do talk about (or should).
I think those two authors might have diverged in theology since then…?
Middleton is still writing on this subject.
Yes, I think you are right that Lindsey discredited it for many. That is why some of us are working hard to make sure the question is rehabilitated…
To understand the origins of the Hal Lindsey interpretation you need to go a step further back than Darby; the real originator of this modern(ish) prophetic interpretation was the Scottish cleric Edward Irving. At that time (late 1700s/early 1800s) Scottish Protestantism generally saw the Second Coming as ‘post-millennial’, and further saw the millennium as still future, or at best only recently started in the Enlightenment. This rather detracted from the urgency of the Second Coming!!
Irving began preaching instead a Second Coming that could be ‘any minute now’ with the millennium to follow Jesus’ return, and this idea became very popular and people studied the Bible and held ‘prophetic conferences’ to explore issues like “Who is the AntiChrist”. These studies rapidly revealed a problem for an ‘any-minute-now’ return – unfulfilled prophecies requiring several years for fulfilment, and with no place where they could be fulfilled if the Return of Jesus led directly to the Millennial Reign.
Biblically there was a simple answer to this; in I Thessalonians Paul dealt with a similar issue by in effect saying “You can go back from ‘Red Alert’ to ‘Amber Alert’ – there are prophecies to be fulfilled before Jesus returns, for example of the ‘Man of Lawlessness’ and until you see those fulfilled the Return is not imminent”. Irving’s followers could have applied that point to the unfulfilled prophecies they had discovered, and got on with their lives while they waited for them to come about….
The trouble as I see it is that they had got so ‘psyched up’ about the any-minute-now return that they were simply unwilling, indeed psychologically unable, to accept that solution – they thought they needed a solution that gave a place for the unfulfilled prophecies while still allowing an any-minute-now Return. Darby, with some help from people with gifts of prophecy (Irving had also experimented with an early form of charismatic gift theology) came up with the answer – the Return could indeed be any minute now, but would not be the end, it would be Jesus coming for his Church who would be ‘raptured’ to join him in heaven while everyone else would be left behind to see prophecies such as the AntiChrist, the Tribulation, and the Jewish return to Israel come about.
A useful book about this is Iain Murray’s “The Puritan Hope” published by Banner of Truth a long time ago. Unfortunately doesn’t seem available as an e-book…..
Thanks for this. Yes, of course Irving taught this, leading to the ‘great disappointment’ of 1844.
But I don’t think he located this in the dispensational framework of Darby, did he?
If you think the ‘man of lawlessness’ will be a figure who comes immediately before The End, two problems:
a. how come it is mentioned almost nowhere, other than one short passage?
b. We must surely then believe that Paul was mistaken in his expectation of imminence?
Hi Ian – I asked you about the ‘man of lawlessness’ recently in another blog post, but you didnt respond.
As I said there, the problem is that Paul uses the word ‘parousia’ in that passage and you have consistently maintained that a big clue to look for if a passage is really talking about the return of Jesus is the use of that word. So given this, Paul seems to be saying the rise of this man of lawlessness will be ended by the return of Jesus.
But that doesnt fit in with your understanding of the end times.
Peter
I address that question in my post about it here. Did you comment on that one?
https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/who-are-the-antichrist-the-man-of-lawlessness-and-the-beast/
Yes I made a similar point on 8 Sept 2023 on that blog post, though I didnt specifically refer to ‘parousia’ and you didnt respond then either!
In that post you seem to argue that the ‘man of lawlessness’ refers to the 1st century, with a link to the 2nd beast of Rev (signs and wonders etc), but per my point above that doesnt fit in with said man being destroyed at Jesus’ return, his parousia. Unless Paul got it wrong, ie he thought Jesus really was returning probably within his own lifetime. I think there is evidence for that. I think Christopher suggested Nero as this man, but again Jesus’ return clearly didnt destroy him.
So from what I can see you havent been able to explain this passage in Thessalonians in the context of it not referring to an end times scenario, beyond the 1st century.
Ian
1) Although the “‘great disappointment’ of 1844” was one of many consequences of Irving’s ideas, it’s also a rather indirect connection, not least because that disappointment involved not an “any-minute-now” surprise Return but a calculated date supposedly known in advance. It was key to Irving and so to Darby’s development that the Return would be almost any second and emphatically NOT knowable in advance.
As I understand it, Irving would have been essentially happy with the Darby development as on the one hand retaining the any-minute-now aspect while allowing prophetic fulfilments which would otherwise be impossible before the Return. At the same time, the Darby development was bound to be ultimately unsatisfactory because it was a ‘patch repair’ of a problem that was never real in the first place. I think by the way that if you had told Irving and Darby in the early 1800s that we would still be awaiting the Return in 2024 they would not have believed you….
2) On the face of it wouldn’t Paul’s “expectation of imminence” have been at least in terms of the completion of the mission to the Gentiles, and so not all that imminent. Years at least…. It seems reasonable to me to think in terms of “Whenever it is, Christians who are ‘awake’ will get some warning in the appearance of this figure”. And anyway, in opposition to what is often drawn from the Irving/Darby idea, Paul is clear that the ‘rapture’ he portrays is the end followed by the judgement.
But what if Hal Lindsey got some things wrong and some right? You say above, Ian, that “interpreting our current times and speaking into it is the task of theology and ethics—not eschatology”. But the Bible does not single out eschatology or apocalyptic as divinely ordained categories of writing, whereas it does distinguish prophecy – and there are elements of foretelling as well as forthtelling in prophecy, the prophecies of Jesus Christ being an outstanding example. It is ob vious which is which and, when a prophet foretells, the faithful are given adequate detail to know whether the prophecy has come true. Some prophecies necessarily imply preceding events, moreover.
A reasonably natural way of reading eschatology is that the Jews will return as a people to the Holy Land, will experience a revival of belief in Jesus Christ there, and will be attacked by a world army. The Jews *have* returned, the word ‘globalism’ is on everybody’s lips, anti-semitism (and persecution of Christians) is rising, and the human race has invented nuclear and biological weapons of mass destruction; yet many Christians regard these things as mere coincidence! They use Lindsey’s over-commitment to the Russia-America Cold War as eschatology to rubbish the interpretation.
I agree that the ‘pre-tribulation rapture’, in which Christians suddenly vanish from this world, has no scriptural license. It is based selectively on scriptures saying it will be a total surprise (as you, Ian, think Christ’s second coming will be); but Jesus told his followers to keep watch and what signs to look for. No contradiction exists: Jesus’ return is a surprise to the unbelieving world, but not to discerning believers – of whom a few will be alive at his return, whether converts or survivors. At that time the world will be reeling from the disasters chronicled in the book of Revelation, but prior to those short years life will have gone on as usual (as in the days preceding the Flood). The differing scriptures about the Rapture relate to the experiences of differing people – believers and unbelievers. Jesus made no mention of any pre-Tribulation rapture when on the Mount of Olives he gave his followers the sequence of events leading to his return, but he did warn of persecution. There is no unambiguous statement of the pre-Tribulation rapture in any verse of scripture. This doctrine grew popular in a culture where the church had forgotten what it is like to be persecuted, and it is a promise of “peace, when there is no peace.” That was not the experience of the martyrs in the early church or in communist China. God guides his people through trouble, not round it. The Rapture takes place at the time Jesus returns to this world in power and glory. He will land on the Mout of Olives, fulfilling the prophecy of the angels in Acts 1:11 that his return will look like a videotape of his departure played backwards and Zechariah 14:4.
But I am willing to argue for pre-millennialism, the view that Jesus Christ returns in power to this world and rules it as Israel’s king and world emperor for a thousand (figurative or literal) years, prior to universal judgement and the inauguration of the New Jerusalem. Try to read the later parts of the Book of Revelation without the (uninspired) chapter divisions. It’s artificial to regard Revelation 20 – the millennial passage – as a recapitulation of what has gone before, namely the church era. It cannot be so, because Revelation 20 portrays Satan as bound, yet he is active in the church era, as scripture (1 John 5:18-19, Galatians 1:4), endless wars, and enduring and horrible persecutions of Christians and Jews all show.
As for 666, when did Nero demand a charagma (mark) on everybody’s right hand or forehead in order to be able to buy or sell? I believe that digital ID and digital currency are coming worldwide, and will somehow be attached to our person in order to prevent fraud – although that is merely my best guess.
Thanks. But this: ‘A reasonably natural way of reading eschatology is that the Jews will return as a people to the Holy Land.’
Can you point me to any verse in the New Testament which says this?
Acts 1:11 makes little sense without it, nor Matthew 23:39. But the Old Testament is as valid as the New and Isaiah (11:11-12) prophesies that “God’s hand will a second time recover a remnant of his people… he will… gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.” That describes exactly what has happened in the last 150 years: Jews have come back to the Holy Land from all parts of the world, whereas the first return of a remnant was from Babylon.
I cannot see any connection between Acts 1.11 and Jews returning to a particular patch of land. Can you explain? ‘Come in the same way’ refers to clouds ie the presence of God.
Again, Matt 23.39 makes no reference to any return to the land.
The ‘gathering of the remnant’ is consistently interpreted in the NT as a reference to the gentile mission, which is the means by which God gathers those who are far together with those who are near into one body by the cross; see Eph 2.13.
The clearest expression of this comes in John 11.49–51: Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! 50 You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.”
John 11:51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.
This is so striking that I wrote a whole article on this meaning of ‘gathering’: https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/why-and-how-does-jesus-gather-his-people/
Ian: Jerusalem will not see Christ again until its inhabitants cry “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. He means a body of Jewish believers in him who represent their nation. What are they doing there?
From Acts 1: he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
To assert that “this same way” refers merely to the presence of cloud is to focus on a detail (cloud) while missing the main point (going up; coming back down).
You skewed the question by demanding NT texts only, but Isaiah 11:9-11 is clear as a bell.
Let me add to my longer comment that fact that the end will come when the gospel has been preached to all nations and that this is only decades away, and that a standard pattern is that god puts an end to sin when it has reached full measure. Does not God explain what that means in regard to the whole human race, when the division He instituted at Babel is undone by a world polity?
I wish you would summarise your eschatology in a thousand words or so, rather than write detailed commentaries on endtime scriptures and attack other views. We are left to infer what yours is.
Are you aware that the ‘Blessed’ saying is in a different place in Luke?
The angel says ‘in the same way’, not ‘to the same place’!
Yes, Is 11.9–11 is clear as a bell—in pointing to the gentile mission. Look at the parallel passage in Amos 9.11f, and its take up in Acts 15.16.
And see my article above, particularly John 11.49f. The gathering of God’s people was achieved in Jesus.
That is why there is not a single verse in the NT that even mentions the return of ethnic Jews to the land—which is why you cannot find one.
Ian: “in the same way” means run the videotape backwards – far more than clouds.
I never claimed that Luke said Christ would return to the Mount of Olives. Zechariah did that.
You say that Isaiah 11:11-12 “point[s] to the gentile mission”. Here is the passage: “God’s hand will a second time recover a remnant of his people… he will… gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.”
I do not believe you are anti-semitic but I believe you have been drinking at theological wells which have been poisoned by anti-semitism. I urge you to discuss your theology with some Jewish believers in Jesus.
Zechariah didn’t prophesy that Jesus would ‘return’ to the Mount of Olives. How could he do that? He is writing before Jesus’ first coming!
The gospels see Jesus being on the Mount of Olives as fulfilling that prophecy.
It is important to read the texts in the order they were written…unless you want to be a Hal Lindsey jigsaw puzzler!
If you think the gathering of God’s people pointing to the Gentiles is anti-semitic, then you need to take that up with John in John 11, and the Council of Jerusalem (oh, all Jews!) in their use of Amos. I don’t think you’ve actually engaged with either of those.
Your interpretation of Isaiah 11, Ian, is an example of supersessionism aka replacement theology, the view that the church is the ‘new Israel’ (a phrase nowhere in the NT) and that the Jews, for rejecting Jesus, have been thrown on the scrapheap of history. The origins of this view in the antisemitism of many writers in the early church is detailed in Appendix 1 of this online document about Israel for Christians:
https://www.maranathacommunity.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/The-State-of-Israel-An-Appraisal.pdf
What about God’s promise to Abraham, “the whole land of Canaan where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your seed” (Genesis 17:8)? Is the covenant with Abraham like the covenant with Moses, fulfilled in Christ’s first coming 2000 years ago? Or is it like the covenant with Noah guaranteeing no second Flood, and still in force? Paul said that it is still in force. Even as he claimed freedom from the Mosaic covenant and its laws (Romans 6:14), Paul wrote that “as far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account [Jews who reject Jesus], but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28-29). The church should, then, recognise that Jewish occupation of Canaan is the rule, and exile the exception. This pattern has nothing to do with the length of any exile. The continuing validity of the Abrahamic covenant explains why the Jews maintained their identity during those 18 centuries without any political self-determination – a survival unprecedented in the history of any race. Christians know that this lengthy exile was for rejection of God’s son, Messiah Yeshua, exactly as He warned – they did not ‘recognise the time they were visited’ (Luke 19:44). But even the 18 centuries between the Romans laying waste to Judea and the 20th century are an exception to the rule, and post-1948 the rule.
It would be great if you could discuss this on Zoom with some Jewish believers in Jesus in the Holy Land.
‘Your interpretation of Isaiah 11, Ian, is an example of supersessionism aka replacement theology’. No it isn’t. It is about Jesus being a fulfilment of all OT prophecies, as Paul says.
Who are the ‘seed of Abraham’? As Paul says, those who live by faith as he did, and who are Abraham’s children as the offspring of Jesus, whether Jew or gentile. He has made the two one.
The rest of Zechariah 12 does not match Jesus being on the Mt of Olives prior to his ascension in Acts 1.
If you want to have the Bible in the order it was written then you’ll need a sharp knife!
Jesus came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets (Matt 5:17). Paul details how he fulfils the law, and his life obviously fulfils many prophecies. But the idea that *every* prophecy in the OT that was not fulfilled prior to the Incarnation was fulfilled by Jesus between then and His Ascension is questionable. Do you believe that no OT prophecies refer to his Second Coming? If not, why should there not be other unfulfilled prophecies in the OT?
I agree that the covenant with Abraham has been enlarged to encompass gentile believers in Jesus, but – vitally – nonbelieving Jews have not been kicked out of it as in replacement theology, for faith is nowhere stipulated to be a condition of that covenant, only circumcision (Genesis 17 – and even secular Jews have continued to circumcise, interestingly).
Paul notes in Galatians 3:16 that covenants were made with Abraham and his ‘seed’ in the singular sense, and says this means Christ. But the words of the confirmation of the covenant to Isaac and Jacob/Israel, and the command to circumcise, imply that bodily descendants were meant as well.
The interpretation of Matthew 23:39, which I have heard elsewhere, seems very strange. The context is the end of a diatribe against “teachers of the law and Pharisees” (v29). Therefore the logical ‘you’ addressed in v39 is these same teachers of the law and Pharisees. I cannot see how it refers to some future generation of Jews in general.
Then one has to understand the grammar of the sentence itself. The second part, the condition, is expressed in a way that it is in no way certain that it will be fulfilled. Dick France comments in his commentary (footnote on p882): “The sense here might better be represented by ‘unless’.”
Then in the commentary itself he writes:
“There is no prediction here, only a condition. Or, rather, the only prediction is an emphatic negative, ‘from now on you will certainly not see me,’ to which the following ‘until’ clause provides the only possible exception. They will not see him again until they welcome him, but the indefinite phrasing of the second clause give no assurance tha such a welcome will ever be forthcoming.” (p884, italics his).
This moment recorded in the Gospel is a significant one. Jesus leaves the temple never to return, and then tells the disciples that it will be destroyed.
‘As for 666, when did Nero demand a charagma (mark) on everybody’s right hand or forehead in order to be able to buy or sell?’
Did the living God actually mark the saints on the forehead?
I disagree with a spiritual interpretation of the mark but what has that to do with being excluded from markets?
Anyone who did not offer incense to the emperor would be excluded from the guilds and thus unable to trade.
Worldwide?
In all the known world.
Known to God?
If you weren’t a member of a guild then perhaps you couldn’t sell, but anybody could buy – all you needed was cash, shopkeepers didn’t ask to see your incense certificate and in any case it wasn’t stamped on your head or hand. This fails to match Revelation about the charagma in multiple major ways.
After the confusion of a few house moves I’ve lost track of the exact reference but I recall that in I think the 1890s there was a decree in Russia, on behalf of the Russian Orthodox Church against dissenters which alarmingly paralleled the Revelation passage. If I remember rightly it not only forbade buying and selling but also proposed that their children would be taken from them, and explicitly stated an intent that they would be literally’unable to live’ in Russia.
Major pogroms in Imperial Russia (mostly parts corresponding to Ukraine and Belarus today) took place in 1881-4 and 1903-6. Those pogroms also triggered the migration to America of some two million Jews. The large number on the move caused Britain to limit its immigration for the first time (in the Aliens Act passed by PM Arthur Balfour’s Conservative government in 1905).
Hi Anton – you had asked for the relevant verses re ‘guarantee’ – Ive posted those on that blog post. I would be interested in your response.
I have come across a very interesting take on the “mark of the beast.”
In Deuteronomy 6:6-9, we read
“6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
There is a distinct parallel between v8 and Revelation 13:16:
“It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, ”
The mark of the beast takes the place of God’s commandments.
Interesting.
‘Rebellion…Man of sin’ 2Th 3.4.
‘Sin is lawlessness’ 1 Jn 3.4.
2 Th 2.3 not 3.4
Thank you for this incredible anthology of eschstological material. It will be helpful resource for members of our church!
I wonder if any historical connections can be made between the “rapture doctrine” of Darby and the “gnostic return” theory of scholars like Cyril O’ Regan. Resurgent gnosticisms were thundering away in England, only a generation before Darby, in writers like William Blake. The rapture not only violates Biblical eschatology and its historical / cultural context, but also the entirety of Christian cosmology.
The rapture takes a faith built upon physical death and resurrection of Jesus and His followers and mutates it into a false religion surrounding a spiritual escape from the material world. I can think of few doctrines more harmful to the American Protestant churches than the rapture. It promotes apathy, ethnic elitism, a poor view of Creation, the scapegoating of other churches / traditions, a denial of Christian suffering, prosperity gospels, a denial of the exclusivity of salvation in Jesus… And its broader dispensational framework encourages “cheap grace,” a lack of conversion, a nonchalant attitude towards sin, a triviality in sanctification, a low or negative view of the Church, and many more travesties. I’ll make a highly Pentecostal assertion and say, “rapturism seems to share the ‘same spirit’ as the gnostic heresies of the Early Church.”
Thank you, Ian, for your work in Biblically disentangling what will likely pan out to be a most destructive heresy of 20th and 21st century English and American Protestantism! I pray a day is coming when rapturism will be “raptured out” of the Biblical thinking of believers…
Me too! That is a very interesting question about ‘gnostic return’. I wonder whether it is actually part of a wider theological theme of the anti-material, in which the material world (including our bodies) has little value. Underlying all these is the approach of Platonism, is it not?
Dispensationlist theology goes back further than Darby et al. Professor Andrew Walker in his book ‘Restoring the Kingdom’ states that the origins of dispensationalist-like theology goes back as far as three Jesuits specifically Riberia in 1591, Alcazar in 1613, and Lucunza in 1801 which may have influenced Darby and Irving.
From what I have read of Darby, he comes across as quite an unpleasant individual who brooked no dissent to his views and was singularly nasty to Irving in the early Brethren movement. In recent times I know of a number of ex- Brethren who have been badly treated by their families. In fact the whole outfit seems to me to be more like a religious cult.
Chris
Lacunza was a direct influence on Irving’s Millennialism; not sure about the ‘dipensationalism’.
My experience of the Brethren has largely been with the ‘Open’ Brethren who are, well, fairly open, but generally committed to the ‘Left Behind’ view of prophecy. The ‘Exclusive’ Brethren started with Darby. Their major ‘Taylorite’ group was somewhat off the rails in my younger days but have recovered from that. While at Uni I knew some members of a minor ‘exclusive’ group called the Glanton Brethren. In broad terms Exclusives are ‘connexional’, a fairly close knit organisation, and could be said to have ‘cult-like’ features. Open Brethren churches are independent and increasingly hard to tell from various other independent evangelical churches.
The ‘house church ‘movement of the 70s 80s was strongly influenced by brethrenism but added a charismatic emphasis. Many of the house churches of that era l came across taught rapture theology. The Open Brethren as you say are more like very conservative evangelical churches although in my experience many still have exclusive overtones.
For reference — I believe Ferdinand Christian Baur was the first theologian to synthesize a “gnostic return” theory regarding Christian soteriology and eschatology.
I wonder how that relates to his philosophical outlook…?
Note that he was a follower of Schleiermacher and then Hegel, and appears to have a completely humanist and anti-supernatural view of the world.
“Taken as a whole, it is the first thorough and satisfactory attempt to explain the rise of Christianity and the Church on strictly historical lines, i.e. as a natural development of the religious spirit of our race under the combined operation of various human causes” (Development of Theology, p. 288)
Of Hal Lindsey
“ It was an exercise in popularising for a new generation the frankly bookish and obscure teaching of John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren in the 1830s. Darby was a learned but eccentric Anglican cleric in Ireland, I note with interest you summarily dismiss JN Derby as above.
One commentator suggests that Darby’s influence on Protestant thought was superseded by only three others—Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John Wesley. Be that as it may. Of Derby’s “Exclusivism” it is said of M L Jones that he had the same leanings but few could assert that MLJ was
Biblically illiterate, eccentric or obscure.
I have read precious little of JND, however that little I found quite salutary and hungry for more, as with MLJ. I have since read several scholarly critiques on JND’S Life and Works, too many to mention on here, given the limitations. May I thus suggest Googling Critique J N Derby the first 3 websites mentioned are excellent scholarly appraisals and do remark that some subsequent authors, as mentioned above, have distorted his thinking.
One does hope that post mortem IP is not so cursorily dismissed.
For further thoughts on the Judgement and Salvation and the “end times” I recommend a meditation of Isaiah 24 and subsequent chapters.
‘Darby rode a horse; MLJ rode a horse. I hope you won’t dismiss the two in the same way.’
Just because two people share a practice hardly means that they share the same judgement.
If IP is dismissed post mortem, why should IP worry? If his concern is to point people to the Scriptures and the living Jesus found therein, that is enough.
My analysis shows, I hope, that this was not the final fruit of dispensationalism.
There’s so much with which to disagree in this blog, not least the tone that rubbishes anyone not of the same persuasion. For anyone interested in an alternative view, I refer them to my own book When the Towers Fall: A Prophecy of What Must Happen Soon, the fruit of two and a half years’ intensive study of these questions, pursued, moreover, in the light gained from spending many years looking into how the event described in Genesis 7-9 was reflected in the geological record. Scripture talks about real events after all, and as Jesus indicates, one is unlikely to take his parousia seriously if one does not take his/Genesis’s account of the Deluge seriously.
In Matthew he says this: “… they were unaware until the flood [kataclusmos] came and took [vb: airw] them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken [vb: paralambanw = take to oneself] and one left.”
Noah and his family did not ‘remain behind’. Everyone else was, and consequently perished. The ark was lifted above the waters of destruction, and that is where we need to be – lifted up to the marriage feast of the Lamb in heaven. The purpose of Jesus’s taking us to himself is to spare us from the bowls of wrath that will be poured on the earth. People then will not be ‘swept away’ to some other place while believers stay behind; they will suffer his wrath on earth (as described in Rev 16:2) while the Bride (= those whom Jesus will come back to claim, the redeemed) celebrates her marriage with the Bridegroom in heaven. When the seventh and last trumpet sounds, we who remain [vb: perileipw, i.e. survive the terrible events described in Rev 8-9] will be snatched away [harpazw] in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (I Thes 4:17). Having been taken up, the Bride will come down (Rev 21:2). It must be so, for we are already raised up with him and seated with him (Eph 2:6), and when Christ appears, we will appear with him (Col 3:4). Were it not so, and the saints are left behind on earth, what becomes of the wrath? The wrath that God visits on the ‘inhabitants of the earth’ (Rev 6:10, 8:13) is not some miraculous process that spirits the reprobate off to suffer judgement elsewhere, leaving the saints staying put.
Anyone who reads Genesis 7 will see that the ark floated in the waters, for 150 days no less, and was therefore not stationary. If one is to push the parallel with the Deluge to its extreme, Noah’s return to the earth from having floated above it is like the Bride coming down to earth from heaven, after the earth has been purged. But the key points are to be found in the NT passages, which are explicit.
The point that Jesus makes in Matt 24:37-39 is that the people knew nothing about what would happen. It was a surprise. It was not a surprise to Noah and his family. Noah must have spent quite a long time building the ark, and then all the animals turn up and are loaded.
When Jesus describes in vv40-41 men in a field and women grinding, these are linked to the people who were surprised at the time of Noah. Noah and his family are not among these. The contrast between the time of Noah and what Jesus describes is that he says that there is a distinction. Unlike the time of Noah, some remain and some are taken. In a way it matters not which way round it is.
(I would also point out that people killed by floods are washed away from where they were. They do not ‘remain’.)
The surprise element is clear. But my comment was made in the context of the attempt to contradict Jesus’s and Paul’s unequivocal testimony that there will be a rapture, which I see you too are inclined to deny. To repeat: the saints who have not died in the natural disasters and persecution will need to be lifted up from the earth in order to escape the wrath that God will pour on the earth. We who believe have been saved from wrath by the blood of the cross. This is a serious matter, and not to be trivialised by e.g. observations that those killed by floods do not stay standing where they are. Heed Jesus’s words, which I repeat for you:
“… they were unaware until the flood came and took them all [away, i.e. they did not stay put, but they nonetheless perished in the flood], so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken [different verb, paralambanw, meaning to take closer to the one performing the action] and one will be left [i.e. not taken].”
paralambanw ‘take to oneself’ – in the same sense as Joseph took his wife Mary (Matt 1:20), as the two of them took their child and fled to Egypt (Matt 2:13), and as Jesus took with him Peter, James and John up the mountain where he was transfigured (Matt 17:1). On the day that the saints are taken up to be with Jesus forever (I Thes 4:17) they too will be transfigured, in the blink of an eye.
‘the attempt to contradict Jesus’s and Paul’s unequivocal testimony that there will be a rapture, which I see you too are inclined to deny.’
It certainly is not the clear teaching of either. You appear to be ignoring Jesus’ actual words here: it was the wicked who were taken away by the flood.
If Jesus wanted to tell us that the saved would be ‘lifted up’ then he would have used that language. But he doesn’t.
The fact that you need to invent this language which is not in the text is the reason why no-one thought of this till the modern era.
I think you are ignoring both my actual words and the actual words of the texts, to which I refer carefully and in detail.
Of course ‘it was the wicked who were taken away by the flood’. I really think you should take up Anton’s request that you ‘summarise your eschatology in a thousand words or so, rather than write detailed commentaries on endtime scriptures and attack other views. We are left to infer what yours is.’ Until you do, the inference is evasion and confusion.
Ian
I Thessalonians 4; 17 rather clearly refers to a ‘being caught up’ to meet the Lord ‘in the air’ and is presumably the origin of the ‘rapture’ idea – ‘rapture’ originally meaning a ‘seizing/capturing’. At the same time ch5; 4 makes clear that for the unbelievers who are not so caught up this the end with no escape, not a prelude to a seven-year-long ‘second chance’.
For followers of Irving who had become fixated on an ‘any-minute-now’ return it must have seemed logical that the ‘left behind’ would then experience the unfulfilled prophecies also apparently ‘left behind’ by the rapture – but to say that twists that actual meaning of the rapture/catching-up being the end with no escape for the unbelievers.
To be clear, Ian Paul’s argument is nothing less than an attack on the resurrection itself – not Jesus’s resurrection but the resurrection of the righteous’ (Luke 14:14).
I Thes 4:14-17 (ESV)
‘God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.’
I have already referred to Col 3:4. The first part of I Thes 4:14 says the same thing – believers come down from heaven with Christ when he returns (also Rev 21:2), having been raised from the dead. The passage above is describing the resurrection at the last trumpet (I Cor 15:22). This is what the so-called ‘rapture’ is: the resurrection of the saints.
Resurrection is a rising up. Others are left behind. That a minister of the Church of England should be saying “I want to be left behind, and you should too” … who would have thought it?
‘To be clear, Ian Paul’s argument is nothing less than an attack on the resurrection itself’
How bizarre. It is one thing to make the words of scripture (whose authors are not alive to correct you) mean what you want. It is another to do the same with someone who can correct you. What you say here about my beliefs is nonsense—and the fact that you can so wilfully misinterpret me gives me no confidence in your reading of the texts!
Let the reader judge. You deny but make no specific rebuttal.
Thanks Ian, excellent commentary as ever.
I think your claim that Matthew 24:30 refers simply to the ascension and resurrection needs to be questioned though. The issue is the timing and visibility of the event. Matthew is clear in presenting the event as coming “immediately after the distress of those days” (v29, ie the destruction of the temple that has caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to flee) and as being very visible: “all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven” (v30). Neither the timing nor the character of the event described are a good match for the ascension and resurrection, which occurred around AD 30, decades before the “distress” of AD 70, and were not publicly seen, suggesting there is something not quite right, or complete, about your account.
Here’s the relevant section for reference:
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory. 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
Fair point. Though some similar language appears in Peter’s speech in Acts 2, which he says clearly has now been fulfilled. But yes 30 & 31 above do seem to imply a world-wide event, even if it’s just the Roman world. And why do they mourn? Because of their impending judgement?
Nope, not a world-wide event. ‘The tribes of the land’. See my reply below.
will you be responding to my comments on the man of lawlessness, though I appreciate this is a busy time of the year for you!
Thanks anyway
Peter
Thanks Will.
In Matt 24.30, you are following those incorrect translations who allow the presupposition that this is the parousia to skew their approach. The Greek is:
πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς καὶ ὄψονται
‘all the tribes of the land’. This is very clearly an allusion to Zech 12.10, 12, where it is the tribes of Israel who mourn over the ‘one they have pierced.’
I think this is also what Luke has in mind when he records the repentance of the people at Pentecost ”when they heard this they were cut to the heart’ Acts 2.37.
OK?
Whatever problems you see in my reading of these verses, the insurmountable obstacle remains Jesus’ solemn declaration ‘all these things will happen before this generation passes away’ in Matt 24.34.
That is why there is not a single verse in the NT that even mentions the return of ethnic Jews to the land.
Yet here you are arguing that Matt 24:30 is saying that – ‘very clearly’ – all the tribes of Israel will be in the land of Israel.
But your reading is far from evident. Matthew is describing the parousia, a cosmic event which every nation will know about. Immediately afterwards Christ sends out his angels to gather his elect from one end of the earth to the other.
The phrase ‘tribes [Heb. mishpachah, Gk. phulai of the land [Heb. erets, Gk. ge]’, meaning Israel, as far as I know appears nowhere in the OT. The phrase ‘tribes [or ‘families’] of the erets‘, referring to the whole earth, appears several times, first in Gen 12:3 and finally in Zech 14:17.
The exegete must allow Matt 24:29-31 (indeed the whole of Matt 24:3-31) to speak for itself, and then decide how to deal with Matt 24:34. Not start with Matt 24:34 and then conclude that Matt 24:29-31 cannot be describing the parousia and likewise that Rev 1:7 must be referring only to the tribes of Israel. It is then evident that Matt 24:34 is referring to the generation that witnesses the events described in Matt 24:29-33 and indeed back to v. 9.
The events of Matt 24:15-27 are explicitly linked with the parousia in Luke 17:24-37.
As far as I know, not a single verse in the NT prophesies the Jews’ deportation from the land, so it would be unreasonable to expect the NT to refer to their ‘return’. However, since Jesus, in Jerusalem, is addressing a Jewish audience, Matt 24:16 implies that Jews will be in the land of Israel when he returns. Therefore, from our perspective, his words do imply the return of Jews to the land.
If you think ‘Matthew is describing the parousia’, then Jesus stern saying in Matt 24.34—that ‘all these things will happen before this generation pass away’ means not only that Matthew was wrong, but that Matthew was describing Jesus as being wrong, and yet that this was included in the canon of scripture.
How?
I gave the answer: The exegete must allow Matt 24:29-31 (indeed the whole of Matt 24:3-31) to speak for itself, and then decide how to deal with Matt 24:34. Not start with Matt 24:34 and then conclude that Matt 24:29-31 cannot be describing the parousia and likewise that Rev 1:7 must be referring only to the tribes of Israel. It is then evident that Matt 24:34 is referring to the generation that witnesses the events described in Matt 24:29-33 and indeed back to v. 9. [Moreover] The events of Matt 24:15-27 are explicitly linked with the parousia in Luke 17:24-37.
‘This’ in ‘this generation’ is an internal reference to the generation that witnesses ‘these’ things. Matthew was not wrong. Jesus was not wrong. What is needed is an ability to read contextually. The idea that false messiahs will come and go, wars be fought over the holy land about which the Jews themselves would hear only reports (NB ‘the end is not yet’), then international wars involving numerous Gentile kingdoms (NB this is still ‘just the beginning of the birth pangs’), following which will be a period of intense persecution during which the gospel will be proclaimed to all the world, all within one generation strikes me as quite absurd. Equally absurd is the idea that follows from that, that all these things happened in AD 30-70, along with a preternatural illumination of the heavens from one end to the other, a darkening of sun and moon, asteroids falling and angels going out to the four corners of the earth to gather the elect (the Jews).
How?
What is this but a reading that renders Jesus’s words false because the events prophesied manifestly did not happen in AD 30-70?
Presumably you will not be arguing that Matt 24:29 refers to the darkening of the sun at the time of crucifixion. The context is after the events of Matt 24:5-28 and ‘immediately after the tribulation of those days’.
Everything in Matt 24 is in answer to the question, “What will be the sign of your parousia and of the end of the age?” Jesus gives a straight answer and Matthew gives a correct record of the answer. You deny that Jesus refers to his parousia in the chapter, you deny that there is such a thing as a rapture (a term derive from I Thes 4) and thus deny the resurrection of the dead, you deny that Revelation is a prophecy (contra Rev 1:3, 19, 4:1), as illustrated by the suggestion that the Beast was actually Nero, and when challenged on specific points you merely duck. What is one to make of this?
‘not a single verse in the NT prophesies the Jews’ deportation from the land’. The account in Luke 21.20 ‘But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near’ makes explicit (for non-Jewish readers) what is implicit in Matthew and Mark—that the city will be destroyed by a foreign power.
The idea that ‘Jesus is talking about Jews in the land, so they must have returned’ confirms that this is simply a figment of your interpretation, and confirms what I note: not a single verse anywhere in the NT talks of a return to the land.
Luke 19:43f foretells the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem, but as I show in my book, Luke 21:20 refers to events yet to occur. There is no gratuitous repetition.
Sorry, what is a figment of my imagination? The words in quotation marks are not an accurate quotation, and I’m afraid I don’t understand your point.
Thanks Ian.
I’m not arguing it’s the parousia – I agree with you on that. But the timing is still completely wrong for the resurrection and ascension.
Jesus presents the “coming in clouds” event as a decisive intervention that ends and reverses the “distress” that precedes it. It is a promise of divine intervention and deliverance for the afflicted elect. This fits with the original meaning of the image in Daniel. In Daniel 13:22 and 13:27 the meaning of the “coming in clouds” image is explained to Daniel thus: “[T]he Ancient of Days came and pronounced judgement in favour of the holy people of the Most High, and the time came when they possessed the kingdom… The sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High.” I.e., the “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven” who “approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence” is said in Daniel to represent the holy people being led into God’s courtroom to receive judgement in their favour – and thus deliverance from their tribulation and a complete reversal of fortunes.
So when Jesus used the phrase he may have intended it to convey the same kind of meaning as it does in Daniel: a promise that, when God’s people suffer at the time of the temple’s destruction, God will ensure the tables are turned and they emerge vindicated and victorious.
The reference to the gathering of the elect (v31) may be intended as a reversal of the fleeing to the mountains (v16) – the latter occurring when the abomination appears, the former when the sign of the Son of Man appears.
Apologies, I obviously mean Daniel 7:22 and 7:27, not chapter 13 (Daniel doesn’t even have 13 chapters…)
Regarding the order of events in Revelation.
Margaret Barker, in “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”, suggests that it reads a lot better if you follow what she conjectures as the original order of the text, following Rev 20:3:
21:9 to 22:5
20:4 to 21:8 (in which the original ending was 21:5a ‘Behold I make all things new’; and 21:5b and following verses are collected _fragmenta_)
She suggests this came about because the text started out as a single codex, of which the final page became detached early on, and was rebound along the wrong (outer) edge.
There is also a history of literary-critical scholarship on previous rationales for reorganising the final chapters, which I do not recall the details of, but I find MB’s the simplest and most convincing. I did a cut and paste job so I could easily read it this way. Try it.
Revelation is a tightly organised, pacy narrative with an inner symbolic logic of its own – we should have an expectation that it makes sense. I think too many people listened to that man who described it as “a bad acid trip”, such that you would just expect there to be odd narrative transitions and jumps.
I am not going to follow the suggestions of any interpreter who tells us that they know better than either the author or the earliest readers the right order of the text. If there is no text-critical evidence for this, I don’t think it is worth anything.
On the place of the Jews and their return to ‘the Land’ – as the Rapture was originally conceived the return of the Jews to Israel, rebuilding of the Temple etc would be one of those unfulfilled prophecies which would come to pass in the seven year Tribulation. Logically all the dispensationalists should have woken up on the day the state of Israel was founded and said “Oh ***** – we’ve been left behind…!” This incidentally points out that far from being all clear from the start, the disensational view has actually been constantly revised to fit the historic changes since the idea was invented.
‘Supercession’ is definitely wrong. But the point is that Jesus is indeed ‘King of the Jews’, and his ‘ekklesia’ is the CONTINUATION of the ‘congregation’ of Israel – ‘ekklesia’ in the Gk Septuagint OT. As a continuation it is now supposed to be a mixed Jewish/adopted-Gentile body, while as Paul says in Romans 9 “by no means all who descend from Israel are Israel’s, neither are all Abraham’s children because they are his offspring”. That is, Jews who reject Jesus as King exclude themselves from the promises, including the right to the Land. Hebrews 11; 14-16 suggests an interesting ‘transposition’ of the promises.
Jesus as King of the Jews has only one people, the Church; NOT two peoples, Church and Jews, operating in very different ways in the world, one pacifist and supranational, the other nationalist and as headlines remind us at the moment, warlike and violent.
‘ Paul says in Romans 9 “by no means all who descend from Israel are Israel’s, neither are all Abraham’s children because they are his offspring”.
Spot on. Paul is very clear about this; I am baffled why others don’t pay attention to it.
what does Paul mean by ‘All Israel will be saved’?
As the Jews are one of the 12 tribes it must mean all the other tribes. How to identify them then ? Unless is is a way of describing all who struggle with God. ..
Paul distinguishes ‘Israel’ from Gentiles here, so he was being quite specific.
I think Paul saw an olive tree, the Israel of God, pruned back to one bough, Judah, pruned back to one branch, Jesus. Into Jesus, the only twig left, God has grafted wild olive shoots. It has grown over 2000 years and sometimes clippings of the old tree get grafted back in too. This tree is now worldwide. It stands in opposition to other wild olive trees and above the piles of clippings.
To develop Paul’s image, the plant that is grafted onto the ‘stock’ plant does not survive if the stock dies…
Interesting Anton. I think the metaphor of the tree only applies after the Ascension. I think the metaphor before that was the ‘Land’. It’s a metaphor not employed, but I think it should be.
*Spot on”? “Paul is very clear about this.”? However the commentary of Stephen Langton above on this text while neglecting other significant passages including the introduction to Romans 9 for example, coupled with the omission of a large section of chapter 11, does at least direct the whole topic away from “spotting” to the necessity for more serious reflection on textual analysis.
Unfortunately, in his case, the vitrolic and contentious sentiments expressed in the final paragraph towards Israel point to someone who relies heavily , both in relation to biblical insights and contemporary Middle Eastern politics, on prejudicial leanings rather than going thoroughing research.
Colin – you are making a lot of assumptions there about my total position (not to mention about how much research I do) and most of those assumptions are I suspect wrong.
Are you disputing that Jesus is the Messiah, the King of the Jews? And does he have one ‘ekklesia’ continuous between the Old and New Covenants but also expanded in the New Covenant by the adoption of faithful Gentiles? Or does the ‘ekklesia’ of the Jews somehow have a separate existence disobeying their King and ipso facto with all kinds of problems?
Colin
No way I’ll be able to explain my ‘total position’ here – though my blog, ‘stevesfreechurchblog’ would fill out a lot for you; but a few things of immediate relevance….
1) As you could see from many of my psephizo comments, my basic position is ‘Anabaptist’. The important bit here is that in the New Covenant Jesus fulfils his Messianic role not as the military conqueror many Jews had expected, but by having a ‘kingdom not of/from this world’. A kingdom, that is, of the ‘born again’ faithful, voluntary followers. And instead therefore of a kingdom of a regular earthly style nation, this kingdom is in effect the international Church itself, operating somewhat like the Jewish ‘Diaspora’, Christians as ‘resident aliens’ in any and all nations of ‘the world’. This kingdom is ‘in continuity with’ OT Israel, but includes faithful Gentiles adopted into the family of Abraham. And as Paul tells us, the Christians are indeed ‘at war’ but it is a warfare not with physical weapons.
2) That New Covenant kingdom may be in continuity with the OT kingdom, a point made by the common title ‘ekklesia’ of the congregation of Israel and the congregation of Jesus; but as a congregation of faith, the deal is in effect that faithful Gentiles are included, but faithless Jews are (self-)excluded. That is both a major implication of Romans 9-11, and of Hebrews, an epistle whose aim is to tell Jews that they need Jesus to be saved, and without faith in Jesus they can miss out on the ‘great salvation’. As Hebrews points out, ‘The Land’ was a pledge of a greater eternal kingdom. In the New Covenant era Jews rejecting Jesus and seeking the Land are actually outside the covenant and have no right to the Land.
3) Your comment on ‘prejudicial leanings’ – I think you’re trying to accuse me of ‘anti-Jewish racism’ (a better term than ‘anti-semitism’ as the category ‘Semite’ is far wider than just the Jewish people – as I understand it it would include almost all Israel’s middle-eastern opponents – inter alia the Gazans!!).
NO – ethnic Jewishness doesn’t bother me at all; after all, I worship one ethnic Jew as the incarnation of God, and another Jew, Paul, is my major other theological teacher. What I am is perhaps describable as ‘religiously anti-Judaic’; because I believe Jesus the Messiah is the fulfilment of the Old Covenant with Abraham’s descendants, I inevitably can’t accept the validity of an attempt to continue the OT faith without the Messiah. And ipso facto I cannot accept the quite explicit ‘pro-Jewish racism’ seen in much of the current conduct of the modern state of Israel. And I’m worried by ‘Christian Zionists’ who do seem to find it acceptable. I note also that many ethnic Jews see much of the conduct of modern Israel as betraying Jewish ideals…..
1 Corinthians 18, 25-28
Belief is the great and unique unifying leveller, in salvific conversion to Jesus:
God in Triunity.
The Rest is Fractious Factionism.
1 Corinthians 18??
Thanks Anton.
All verses are in 1 Corinthians1:18, 22-25.