Category: eschatology

Devotional Insights #3

On April 14, 2020

Revelation 22:7: “Behold I am coming soon: Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”

Understanding the text

Christ says, “I am coming soon.” But it’s been two thousand years since John wrote down the things he saw on a particular Sunday in the first century. The final day of judgement has not come. Unless… is Christ talking about the final day of judgment here?

One of the major failures in conservative interpretation of the apocalyptic sections in scripture is ignoring the time markers in the text. They use passages like “to the Lord, a day is like a thousand years,” to supplement their view that these God gave these passages from his time-perspective rather than speaking with man’s notion of time. Or they lift these time markers out of their original contexts and argue that God’s people have to have the attitude that Christ’s coming is always near. They, then, are guilty of abstracting the time markers from their original context.

On the other hand, Liberal text-critics have long argued that the early church believed in an imminent coming. Christ’s final judgment was coming within the 1^st or 2^nd generation of Christians. Christ himself says, “Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matthew 24:34). We can think of a passage like Romans 13, “For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.” Also, 1^st Thessalonians 5, where Paul encourages the Thessalonians to watch out for the Day of the Lord.

Of course, the problem with the liberal interpretation is their belief that the church was wrong to believe that Christ was coming soon. If Paul and Christ were mistaken about the coming of Christ, how are we to trust in the other promises of God?

There is a third option: Christ did come soon, but not in the way we think of the coming of Christ. We are reading the final coming of Christ into this text. The truth is a lot of the apocalyptic sections in scripture refer to the imminent judgment of God upon the city of Jerusalem. Christ came to call his own to himself, but his own did not receive him. Many continued to reject God, when through his church, God called upon them to repent of their hard hearts and believe in the one they had crucified (Acts 2:36). Further, they persecuted the church of Christ. God is now coming in judgment. In Revelation, God prepares the church for the trials that are coming.

Christ’s coming in 70 A. D. in no way undermines the truth that he is finally coming again to judge the living and the dead. In 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 20:11-15, Christ promises that the final judgment is still coming. The judgment upon Jerusalem is a foretaste of that judgment.

This view doesn’t answer every question we might have, but it is by far more satisfactory than any other view. The scripture proves its own integrity. It is hard to argue that there is no sense in the New Testament of the coming of Christ. Here we have confirmation that the scripture means what it says. Just as day means day in Genesis 1, so soon means soon in Revelation 22:7.

However, those who are used to the view that we ought to expect Christ’s final return tomorrow are often left wondering how to apply Christ’s words here to their own lives. How is it a comfort to us today that Christ came upon the clouds to judge Jerusalem in 70 A.D?

The comfort of the text

Christ proved his Lordship by fulfilling his promise to judge Jerusalem. Just as God provides proofs of the cross and the resurrection, so he provides proof of the ascension of Christ. God vindicates those who believe in his name, by destroying the temple, the other institution that claims God’s name. Christ also proves that he continues to be with the church. He preserves her through the terrible persecutions of the Jews and the Romans. Even though she experienced great tribulation, Christ proved that he would protect her to the end. God comforts the church today with the knowledge that he has vindicated his church. He will vindicate her again, even until the final day.

God gives us a perspective on how he works through the church in history. “In history” is the important word here. We are not merely a small group of elect travelling through this world in order to get to heaven, we are on the mission of Christ to reconcile the world to himself. If we abstract the words “I am coming soon” from the text and see this as a reference to final judgment instead of Christ’ active coming in history, we can lose the importance of the work Christ is doing through the church to reconcile the nations to himself.

Through the fall of the Roman Empire, God demonstrated that his church was bigger than the Roman Empire. In the Reformation, God proved that he could save a church that had forgotten the centrality of Christ. Through the modern age, God has expanded his church, despite the predictions of the death of Christianity. God is using the war on terror. God is using failing governments. And God is using the Covid-19 crisis for the sake of his church. God does not wait until the last day to vindicate his church, but he is actively at work in history.

We can think of the vision in Daniel 2. The stone, Christ, that God uses to tumble over the nations of this world, becomes the foundation for a mighty mountain. God is working in history through the suffering of his saints to vindicate his saints. God in Christ is convicting the world of sin and calling all men to repentance.

Revelation reveals a cycle of contraction and expansion. Through the generations Christ brings the saints into various tribulations. At the same time, Christ uses those tribulations to purify his church, but more, to witness to his work. Christ brings his saints through tribulation so he might vindicate them. Once God has vindicated the saints, there is a new outpouring of blessing. This new blessing is followed by a new desire among the nations to serve God. We can think of the vindication of the Jews in the book of Esther. Many convert to Judaism at that moment.

In this way, God comforts us that he is using our suffering to strengthen his church. We reflect Christ, in that through the cross, through tribulation, we point to the salvation of God. We re-affirm here, as well, that this is not through our strength. It is, rather, an application fo the salvation won on the cross of Christ.

That is how we are to understand the current viral crisis. God is doing this for the sake of his church. He will vindicate the righteous one who continues to do righteousness, the holy one who continues to be holy. “Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access to the tree fo life and can enter into the city by the gates.” Wash your robes by placing your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord, who lives and reigns with the great Father of all, with the Holy Spirit, calls you to “Come, and drink of the water of life.”

I respond that I may be changed

By James

On December 3, 2018

In eschatology, Witness, Worship

The title of this website is respondeo etsi mutabor, that is, I respond so that I may be changed. This is a basic philosophical outlook on life: we respond to our parents, to our teachers and so we are formed. Most importantly we respond to God in faith, hope, and love. He commands and we obey, directed ourselves toward his righteousness.

What about when we don’t know how to respond? What if all options for action are not options? According to Romans 8, we groan. We groan already because we long for the redemption of our bodies. However, we groan all the more when we lose the way forward. Further, the Spirit groans with us. Reason fails. We are like Hamlet stuck between action and inaction. So we groan before our God, seeking his wisdom.

Perhaps he changes the situation so that we may move forward in good conscience. Perhaps he gives new wisdom. Regardless he changes us. I groan so that I might be changed.

Some Highlights of Peter Leithart’s Defense of Typological Preterism.

By James

On April 7, 2018

In eschatology, Hermeneutics, Traditionalistic exegesis

Peter Leithart’s new commentary on revelation recently came in the mail. On reading the introduction I came upon these gems, which respectfully but clearly take apart idealist and a-millenial readings of revelation. You can find the commentary here.

One of the biggest questions in reading revelation is how specific John intends his imagery to be. The idealist reading of Revelation argues that John’s writings are not specific to a time or a place but rather are abstract. Leithart argues:

“Idealism” is a coherent, plausible, and venerable method for interpreting the symbols and types of Revelation. It is not however, consistent with the way biblical poetry works. Isaiah describes Jerusalem, not some generic city of man, as Sodom, and so does Ezekiel. Daniel sees beasts coming from the sea, and the beasts are identifiable kingdoms (with some qualifications, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome). Daniel sees a goat racing over the land without touching the ground. It crashes into a ram with two horns and shatters the ram’s horns (Dan. 8:5-8). That is not a generic portrait of “conquest.” It is Alexander’s conquest of the Persians. We can tease our generalized abstracted types from the historical referents: The goat is Alexander, but other fast-moving empires have appeared in history (e.g., Hitler the speeding goat who shatters the horns of Poland and France), and we can and must extend the biblical imagery to assess and evaluate them. There will be other cities like the Babylon of Revelation, and they will display some of the same features that John sees in the city and, importantly, meet the same fate. But John is not referring to those other cities, nor to some transcendent concept or class of “harlot-city” of which there are many specific instances. He refers to a real harlot city, one that existed in his own time, and that harlot city becomes a type of future cities.

He is appealing very simply to the way the rest of the Bible is read. People will often approach the book of Revelation with a whole different set of hermeneutical rules than the rest of the Bible.

A similar problem is encountered with the time markers of Revelation and in the rest of scripture. After summarizing the scriptural evidence for expectations of an immanent apocalypse, Leithart argues:

Faced with this mass of evidence, we have several options in reading Revelation. We might fudge the time frame: God’s arrival is always near. Common as it is, that option is exegetically irresponsible. We cannot eliminate the claims about timing, or the agitation it creates, without excising much of the NT. We might project the time frame into the future: The kingdomis near, but the prophetic clock does not start ticking until much later, perhaps in the thirteenth, or the nineteenth, or the twenty-first century. Once the clock gets all wound up, then it is imminence all the time. Until, then we are in a holding pattern. That too is exegetically irresponsible, the result of digging that chasm between Jude and Revelation I mentioned above. If the Apocalyps is part of the NT, we expect it to have some connection with the concerns of those living in NT times. We might, alternatively, take the time references seriously, and conclude that Jesus, Paul, James, Peter, and all the rest were wrong. Christianity bursts into the Greco-Roman world full of apocalyptic vim, but it soon sovers up, and (like every fervent religious movement?) becomes routinized, regularized, bourgeois, Catholic. That option has the virtue of taking the NT at face value. It has the vice of implying that all the NT writers – Jesus included -are liars.

There is another apotion: The apostles mean what they say when they say the end is near; John means that the events of the Apocalypse are going to happen soon. And they did happen. That has the virtue of taking the time references seriously, but seems ot have the vice of forcing us to fudge everything else. I think not, and this is where our discussion of the OT background of Revelation comes helpfully inot play. When the Lamb opens the sixth seal, the sun goes black, the moon turns red, and stars are shaken from the firmament (Revelation 6:12-17). The universe collapisng? Not if we read Revelation within the imaginitive framework of the OT. Heavenly lights rule the sky and earthly times (Gen. 1:14-16) and symbolize rulers (cf. Isaiah 13-14). The sixth seal describes the “eclips” of political powers, the “fall” of kings and princes from their “high places.” The poison springs and rivers from from the temple, the well-watered place that is supposed to supply living water for Israel. To say that the springs of the alnd are poisoned is to say tha the temple produces somehting deadly rather than something healthful and life-giving. And to say that is just to say what Jesus has already said: “This house shall be a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of thieves.”

At no point does this line of interpretation move from “literal” to “mere figure.” A universe really does collaps when the sixth seal is opened — not the celestial universe, but a political one. The temple really does poison people. The imagery is, always, literal-figurative, nourishment to the metonymic imagination and typological encouragement to faithful discipleship.

Once again, Leithart encourages us to read Revelation just as we would the rest of scripture. That we take the imagery and the time markers seriously. I like that.

Christ fulfills the law: Christ changes spiritual geography

By James

On November 29, 2017

In Applied Hermeneutics, Covenant, eschatology, Reformed Theology

n.b. I recently preached a sermon on Belgic Confession 25. This Article deals with how Christ fulfilled the law. This doctrine is not well understood today and so I thought it was fitting to publish the sermon. I’ve divided it up into blog-sized sections for easier reading:

The basic institution in the Old Testament was the tabernacle or temple. This was the center of Israelite culture and religion. It was even their political center. David ruled from Jerusalem. This was the city where the ark was and later where the temple would be set up. The tabernacle was the place where God could dwell with his people. God set up the system of the law around the tabernacle in order to protect the people from his presence. God is a holy God. Out of his grace and love for mankind, God desired to dwell with his people. But his people needed to be protected from him, his power, and ultimately his holiness. So God gave his people the law so that they would protect themselves from his holiness.

The people of Israel were able to approach God through various washings, through sacrifices, and through keeping themselves clean when approaching the temple, or the tabernacle, of God. God even instituted levels of holiness in Israelite society. There was a division of labor. Everybody in society wasn’t able to keep the law equally rigorously so God gave Israelites a High Priest. He was required to keep the greatest level of Holiness; then Priests, then Levites and finally the rest of the people. The Holiest men were able to come the closest to God for the sake of the rest of the people. These are the ceremonies and symbols of the law, which the Belgic Confession is speaking of. These ceremonies allowed men to approach the God of heaven and earth. The coming of Christ brought an end to all of these.

Why? There is a host of aspects of Christ’s work that we could look at in order to see how he fulfilled every element of the temple, the sacrificial offerings and the various offices that God set up in and around the temple. I want to focus on two aspects. Christ’s fulfillment of the tabernacle itself and his fulfillment of the sacrificial system.

John 1: 14 gives us a hint as to how Christ fulfills the tabernacle system. We are told there that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word, God, came down and took on flesh. He was in a human body. Remember what we said the tabernacle was for? It was a place for God to dwell with his people so that, we could approach him. John gives us a further hint through the Greek word he uses for dwell. The word literally means tabernacled. God dwelt among us in the flesh.

But Jesus did more. He fulfilled the sacrificial system. The ancient Israelites and to repeat the commanded sacrifices again and again so that men could draw near to God. Jesus, by his death, offered a sacrifice that covers all sin; all sin. That means that all the laws of uncleanness no longer apply. We don’t need repeated sacrifices, we don’t need repeated washings. We all need one sacrifice: Christ’s, and we only need one washing: his baptism. This is why God tore the veil of seperation on the night of Christ’s death. Any man could approach God through Christ. There was no need for the institutions of the temple. As the Belgic Confession says, they are abolished.

Ultimately, what happens is that the spiritual geography of the Old Testament is changed. We have a New Testament spiritual geography. The tabernacle is no longer a building, but the flesh of Christ. Because Christ has gone to sit at the right hand of his father, our tabernacle is in heaven. There is more. Christ unites us to himself so that we also change. In Christ, we are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

That is why God destroyed the temple in Jerusalem. After Christ died and sat down at the right hand of God, the temple was no longer necessary. When the Jews, who had rejected Christ, continued to use the rituals and ceremonies of the Old Testament the temple became an abomination. According to Hebrews, Christ’s fulfillment of the Mosaic system means that we may freely and confidently draw near to the throne of Christ. Christ’s truly powerful sacrifice covers corrupt flesh with his blood. Those who defended the temple were now defending a false way to God. In a sense, it was a false Christ, claiming to continue the work that Christ had already accomplished. God’s dwelling was now in Christ and those who were, and are today, united to Him.

And yet the substance of these remain for us in Jesus Christ according to the Belgic Confession. The book of Hebrews gives us a way to understand this. We still have a sacrifice. We still have a tabernacle. Because of Christ’s work their nature changed.

But the Belgic Confession doesn’t stop there, the author adds these words, “We still use these testimonies taken from the law and the prophets.” They have two uses for us. They confirm the gospel to us. We can see a little bit of what that means in seeing how Christ fulfilled the tabernacle and the sacrificial system. The second use is that they help us “order our life in all honesty, according to God’s will and to his glory.”

How does the tabernacle system help us to order our lives? Surely this must refer to the Ten Commandments or maybe some of the civil laws might be helpful for the ordering of the church? Paul’s words to Timothy would suggest differently. He tells us that all scripture is inspired and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness.

How does the tabernacle system train us in righteousness? There is a lot to say, but I will mention a couple things. The tabernacle system teaches us about how holy God is and how sinful we are. Most importantly it teaches us that we may only approach God through the means he provides, namely Christ and his Spirit.

Further, it teaches us that we are to approach God with humility and with the desire to seek righteousness in Him. It teaches us that this is something that is lifelong. It teaches us about God’s desire for purity when we approach him. We can also argue from the law that in Christ we are sacrifices before God. That is what Paul suggests in Romans 12: 1. He tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God. We do so with the same purity and humility that God called his people to in the Old Testament.

The 5th Act.

By James

On September 7, 2017

In education, eschatology, Hermeneutics

The call to improvisation is among N.T. Wright’s many controversial beliefs. In the Old Testament, God laid out all the rules for his people. In general, men and women were closer culturally and historically to the instructions that God had given. Now that the Scripture is finished God calls on the church to improvise. It’s not that there is no improvisation in the Old Testament, but those who come after Christ have a unique relationship with the Spirit in bringing the reconciliation of all things through Christ, You can see him defend these beliefs here, here, and here. My introduction is a very simple summary of his belief.

False improvisation

Unfortunately, Wright’s own understanding of improvisation seems to lead him to embrace new understandings of Genesis and the role of the church. We can see how the logic goes. New understandings have come to light in science, in society, and in the scholarship of scripture and the church needs to improvise in response to that. Wright deserves respect because he attempts the Sisyphean task of defending it all exegetically. He gives a rather radical re-interpretation of the New Testament on the role of women and joining with many others in re-interpreting Genesis 1. (His work on re-interpreting the role of women has an unbelievable degree of subtlety. It’s hard to get away from the idea that he is twisting himself in circles in order to demonstrate his own enlightenment.)

(It may be that the problem here is not so much Wright’s understanding of improvisation but his hermeneutic of scripture. In Wright’s description of improvisation, he is on very solid ground. This quickly becomes quicksand when combined with liberal hermeneutics.)

Improvisation according to the rules.

Even if Wright’s improvising leads him to undermine the clarity of scripture on certain topics, I believe that his understanding of improvisation is laudable. The problem is that he is not following his own rules. He is not listening when Scripture is clear on the rules.

To demonstrate Wright’s point, I’d like to point out the following passages. All of these passages show how the coming of the Holy Spirit should give us confidence in using our God-given wisdom to apply scripture. God gives his church discernment.

In 1 John 2: 20, John says, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” God has given us the Holy Spirit to guide us in our decisions. He is the one who gives us the ability to apply the scripture to our lives; to improvise from the scripture that he has given us.

The new status that we have in Christ confirms our call to improvise. Having proclaimed the salvation Christ gave, Paul also tells us what happened after we are brought into his kingdom in Ephesians 2:6. “He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens, in Christ Jesus.” In Christ, we are ruling in heaven. Paul confirms this in 1 Corinthians 6: 2: “Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world.” In 1 Corinthians Paul is calling the Corinthians to grow in the wisdom of Christ. The need to seek discernment in judging evildoers in their congregation. They need to learn how to make decisions for the church of Christ in Corinth. Paul wants them to grow in maturity. They will judge the world. They need to practice that judgment now.

There is an “already, but not yet” here. In Christ, we already reign, but we do not experience of the fullness of this reign. God calls us to suffer first. 1 Timothy 2:12, “If we endure, we will reign with him.”

Finally, we have James 3: 13-18. There James speaks of wisdom from below and wisdom from above. We have the Wisdom from above. It is accessible to us. With it we can discern what is “pure, then peace-loving, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without favoritism and hypocrisy.”

We have an assumption in the New Testament of a new degree of wisdom given to the saints. This gift is through the Holy Spirit, in order to apply the scripture that God has given to contemporary problems. Naturally, this should be carefully done. Further, it should be done with a desire for obedience to every breath of God. Contradicting historic teachings on Creation and gender roles does not give evidence of that type of desire.

Telescoping?

By James

On December 10, 2016

In eschatology, typology

Telescoping

Telescoping is a hermeneutical tool. Purportedly, it gives us a way to interpret prophetic passages. Prophetic passages foretell certain events in the future. But we notice that these passages not only apply to the events that are soon to come; they also apply to events much farther in the future. There is a double fulfillment. Telescoping is the theory that the prophet speaks in terms of both fulfillments.

In his commentary on Matthew, Hendrikson describes telescoping (he calls it prophetic foreshortening) in terms of a mountain range. We are looking through a telescope at a mountain range. We see the first mountain, which is the fulfillment, but all the mountains behind it (further fulfillments) look like part of that mountain. The prophecy is given in terms that describe all the mountains that the prophet sees. We might call what he sees a mash-up of different future events. (He writes this in the context of Jesus’ prophecies about the fall of the temple in Matthew 24. He sees them as applying both to the destruction of the temple and the 2nd coming.)

This phenomenon is common in Biblical literature. Isaiah speaks of a child that will come in Isaiah 7. In context, this could refer to the King of Judah’s son or even Isaiah’s son. There is a bit of ambiguity. Later Matthew applies Isaiah’s prophecy to the birth of Christ. The passage is fulfilled a second time. Arguably, the same principle is at play in Matthew 24. Here Jesus speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem. He implies a second fulfillment as well: his final coming.

Prophetic Typology

Yet I would argue that this is not the best way to think about the interpretation of these passages. I prefer what I would call “prophetic typology.” The first fulfillment really fulfills the prophecy. Isaiah’s prophecies about the birth of a son a fulfilled soon after he gave them. Then the same prophecy is applied to a later, greater fulfillment. Matthew applies that same birth of a son to Christ. It is applied typologically the 2nd time.

This allows us consistency in the way we interpret the rest of the bible and prophecy. Prophecy is not a completely unique genre with its own set of hermeneutical rules. To an extent it is unique; prophecy speaks of the future, not the present. However, the New Testament uses the narratives of the Old Testament in the same way as it uses the prophecies of the Old Testament. The narrative of David’s sufferings and Moses’ teachings are applied to Christ typologically, just like the prophecy of Isaiah.

The telescoping view contains some truth. Isaiah likely saw that a greater fulfillment was necessary when he saw the first fulfillment. The church always applied Matthew 24 to the 2nd coming of Christ, though he spoke of the fall of Jerusalem in that passage. Christ certainly kn ew that there would be a fuller fulfillment. Even the idea that there is a greater fulfillment in the later type than in the earlier type is not completely wrong-headed. Christ teaches in Luke 24 that all the Old Testament was about him.

What I don’t like is the suggestion we need to separate sections in various prophecies that apply to the first fulfillment and others that apply to later fulfillments. Seeing prophecy as typological gives us a simpler tool for working with prophecy. Advocating for the typological method in interpreting prophetic fulfillment does not completely rule out the idea of telescoping, but it does give consistency in the way we interpret scripture.