So far we have looked at the three major views which are held on the teaching in the Bible about the future, riffled through the 'hard basket', and looked in the teaching of Jesus Himself for a 'story line' into which to try and fit all the pieces of the jigsaw together.
We have not reinforced it by looking at what the apostles said. Nothing they said changes that story-line, save for Paul's indication that before the Second Coming a 'man of lawlessness' will emerge who will, 'by the activity of Satan,' head up a widespread rebellion against God with 'all power and pretended signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish.' He says quite emphatically that it will precede the 'assembling of the saints to meet' the Lord, so that the notion of a pre-tribulation rapture is simply untenable.
Nothing in either the Gospels or the Epistles carries even a hint of a Millennium. Believing as I do that John's reference to the Millennium in Revelation ch. 20 is yet another figure under which he describes the Gospel Age, I understand his reference to the devil being 'loosed for a season' at its end to deceive the nations to correspond to that emergence of antichrist of which Paul speaks, the deception he brings being 'by the activity of Satan.'
The Old Testament prophecies have to be fitted into the scheme Jesus and the apostles outlined, not the other way round. And apart from the question whether the time of tribulation Jesus referred to in Mark 13.19, Matt. 24.21 and Luke 21.20 applies to the Great Tribulation of the Pre-Millennialists, or to the literal destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, (Luke 21.20 suggests that the latter is correct) there is no indication anywhere in the Gospels or the Epistles of any elaborate program of events to follow the Second Coming. The clear impression given, rather, is that our Lord's return marks a single-stage climax to the age which issues in final judgment.
We need now to concentrate on three principles of interpretation which everyone who tries to come to grips with what the Bible says about the future has to make up his mind about somewhere along the line. Let me put three questions that will introduce them, and then fill them out a little.
1. Must we understand
every prophecy literally, or is it right and proper to understand
some prophecies figuratively?
2. Must we understand every prophecy about Israel as referring to the
nation Israel, or is it right to understand 'Israel' sometimes
to mean the church?
3. Will God suddenly change His tactics in the way He deals with
sinful humanity at the Second Coming, or will what He does then be
consistent with the method He revealed in the Cross and resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ?
1. Old Testament prophecies do not have to be interpreted literally
One of the principles often enunciated, especially by Pre-Millennialists, is that they do. In fact it is a cornerstone on which their view is built.
I do not agree with it, for the simple reason that Jesus Himself did not.
The last prophecy the Old Testament contains is Mal. 4:5: "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible Day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse." That reads like a plain, downright, no-nonsense prophecy: Elijah, who went up by a whirlwind to heaven, will return in person to earth. But when the disciples asked Jesus about that prophecy, He said plainly that it had been fulfilled in the ministry of John the Baptist - Matt. 17:12, Mark 9:13.
Now was John the Baptist literally Elijah? If He was, then Jesus Himself here affirmed reincarnation! Either John the Baptist was literally Elijah, or he was not. The disciples, remember, had just seen Elijah in person on the Mount of Transfiguration ... there was no doubt in their minds that Elijah and John were two different people. But if John the Baptist was not a reincarnation of Elijah, then Jesus interpreted the prophecy figuratively, not literally. There is no arguing with that. And if Jesus did it, it cannot be wrong to do so. So the principle, 'interpret literally,' does not have to be followed. We have the Lord's own authority for that.
Of itself, that by no means answers all the questions; but at least it indicates that in our desire to be true to the Scriptures, we are not bound to accept the elaborate scheme of the Dispensational Pre-Millennialists. Neither, for the same reason, is it wrong to interpret the climactic visions in the book of Ezekiel, for example, that way ... or the Millennium in Revelation ch. 20 ... or the figures of speech Jesus used to indicate the separation of believers from unbelievers at His coming.
2. Not every prophecy about Israel refers to the nation Israel, but may find its fulfilment in the church, the 'New Israel.'
A key illustration of that is the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts ch. 15. The church there had to deal with the question whether Gentiles, when they responded to the Gospel, must become Jews first before they could become Christians. Many Jewish believers wanted to make the Gentiles jump through all the Jewish hoops, like circumcision. Peter made the point that Jews and Gentiles alike are saved by grace, not works. Paul and Barnabas then related how God had brought Gentiles to faith through their ministry. Then James settled the debate by pointing out that Old Testament prophecies were having their fulfilment in the birth of the Gentile Church. What he says is of great interest - I quote:
"Simeon (that is Peter) has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written, 'After this I will return, and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will set it up, that the rest of men may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord.' Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but write to them only to abstain from idolatry and unchastity etc."
"... I will rebuild the dwelling of David which has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins and set it up." If that does not read like a prophecy of a literal Temple rebuilt in the Palestinian city of Jerusalem, I do not know what does. But James plainly understood it to be having its fulfilment in the building up of the Gentile Church; that was the temple being built. An apostle said a prophecy about Israel was being fulfilled in the Church! ... as Paul did in Ephesians.
During His ministry, Jesus, as the Messiah of the Jews, formally disinherited Israel as God's chosen instrument to bless the world, and instated the Church in her place. Matt. 21:43: "I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it."
So Paul, to the Jews in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia (Acts 13:35 ff) quoted Isaiah 55:3, "I will give you the holy and sure blessings of David", and at once affirmed that that promise was fulfilled, not in some future Millennial Kingdom, but in the forgiveness of sins being proclaimed to Jew and Gentile alike there and then .
Peter in his first letter applies directly to the Church all the Old Testament phrases that describe Israel: "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people." I Peter 2:9
Believers are the true 'seed of Abraham'; all the promises made to him are made over to them. Rom. 9:8
In Eph. 2:11 ff Paul clearly shows that the separating wall between believing Jews and Gentiles has been broken down. God has reconciled both to Himself in one body through the Cross; believing Gentiles belong in the same household of God in which believing Jews belong. Is God going to set up that wall again? All thought of a separate divine purpose for Israel as an ethnic group is here excluded.
As to Rom. 11:26, where Paul says, "and so all Israel will be saved," the 'so' means 'in the same way.' The fulness of the Jews will be gathered in in the same way the fulness of the Gentiles will be gathered in: namely through faith in Christ. More really cannot be made of it than that. This understanding of Paul's statement may be illustrated thus:
When Paul discusses the conversion of Jews and Gentiles under the figure of their being grafted into and out of an olive tree, Paul is adamant that both will in the end be grafted into the one olive tree, not two.
And even if it be insisted that some prophecies do require a fulfilment for Israel as an ethnic group, is it not more reasonable to suppose that they will have a permanent fulfilment in the new earth rather than a mere thousand years in a Millennial Kingdom? (... one day for the Lord!) So many of those promises imply that their fulfilment is for ever ... a prospect that cannot be realised in a period of time that has a foreseeable end.
3. The Second Coming will be consistent with God's method of dealing with sin revealed in the Cross and resurrection.
God's final act in the drama of this world's redemption will be the 'Parousia,' to use the Greek word - the appearing in glory of Him Who once was crucified; and that means that when God speaks His last word it is the Way of the Cross that He will vindicate. The 'Way of the Cross' is God's way; that is the way He moves to victory, and not any other way.
I believe it is of the utmost importance to say this, for it has a profound bearing on the way we think of the Second Coming of Christ. We tend to think of it, it seems to me, in a most unbiblical and irrational way - as God finally establishing His rule simply by smashing the opposition. He will abandon the humble, suffering way of the Cross, and adopt instead the big, assertive way of sheer omnipotence. He will do at last what He should perhaps have done in the first place - just wipe out the whole shambles at a stroke and start over.
But if that is so, then how He handles the opposition at the Second Coming bears no relation to the way He handled it at the Cross; it is as though at the Second Coming He will change His method of dealing with evil entirely ... a complete change of policy on God's part.
That would make the cleansing of sin through the blood of Christ an exception to God's preferred way of dealing with sin - as though salvation through the Cross were a relatively brief episode in which God was gentle, when in fact His only final way to keep control is to be ruthless with sinners. The implications for our ability to trust God are appalling. It would mean that He is not really the righteous, loving Father we see revealed at the Cross at all, but some other kind ... a god in the image of the worst tyrants, in fact, who smash their way to victory. If we believe that, we make the solemn truth revealed in the Cross to be not the truth at all ... in which case there is no trusting Him: we simply do not know what to believe about Him.
What is more, the demand He makes of believers that we live out our lives on earth in the spirit of the Cross - seeking to overcome evil with good, preferring to suffer evil rather than do it (by taking matters into our own hands) - is really a shameful confidence trick He has pulled on us, because in the end that is not going to be His way of handling things.
Is He always going to be the God He showed Himself to be in the Cross and the Resurrection - or is He going to change? If He is not going to change, then He will bring about His final victory on the same principles revealed in the Cross and the Resurrection. He will honour the same necessities He honoured there, and He will honour them in the same way. He will express His holiness and His love at the Second Coming in the same way He expressed them at the Cross. That means that the process of judgment will come to a climax worldwide in the same way that it came to a head at the Cross; and the method of redemption will be the same as we see revealed at the Cross, only on a grander scale.
i. The process of judgment that has been going on in the world since sin first entered it will go relentlessly on - as it did at the Cross - until it reaches a final horrendous climax. The New Testament repeatedly says so. That is why the fearful visions of the end that confront us in Scripture are presented as being inevitable. Judgment will work itself out with tragic inevitability to a final, worldwide, cataclysmic finale. It must be so, since God can never compromise His righteousness. (See Note 1 below)
ii. But as in the Cross and the Resurrection, the seeming defeat imposed upon Christ by evil men became itself, in God's hands, the raw material out of which He fashioned His victory, so the final climax of judgment will itself become the very means whereby the new earth and the new heavens are established. "When all these things begin to take place, look up, for your redemption is drawing near."
Just the way it was at the Cross, so it will be at the Parousia: what looks like the defeat of God by the alliance of evil will in fact turn out to be God's victory. Where it will look as though the arms of God are stretched out wide in final surrender, like Christ's on the Cross, they will in fact be stretched out so as to engulf the world in a final embrace that shall issue in its total renewal.
God will not redeem creation in spite of the disaster that befalls it: He will redeem creation by means of it. The final act of judgment on the old world will supply the raw material for the final act of grace that ushers in the new. Let us remind ourselves here of the promise made in Rom. 8:19-24, "The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved."
In order to make creation carry an unmistakable warning to us that we must not - at peril of our souls - give our hearts to it, God subjected it to futility, decay and death ... but He did so in hope. The creation will not always be the way it is now. This present order of creation (the 'old') is doomed to destruction; but to what end? That it might be redeemed ... just as the body of Jesus was delivered up to death that it might be raised up glorified. Paul says: "The creation itself will be freed from its bondage to decay and share in the glory of mankind's redeemed existence." (Rom. 8:21) The universe will find its perfection only when humanity is perfected; it is perfecting is held back till then.
And mankind comes to perfection only through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So not just our souls in some ethereal heaven, but our bodies in a renewed earth, will witness to God's ultimate success with His creation. He will not obliterate it: He will redeem it. Because Christ is "the firstborn of all creation," all creation will come to its perfection in Him.
Creation's future, because Christ has joined it, is Christ's future. Humanity's future, because Christ has joined it, is Christ's future.
And that means that the new earth and the new heavens will bear the same sort of relation to the old earth and the old heavens, and our resurrection bodies to our present earthly bodies, that the resurrection body of Jesus bore to the body of His flesh. What we will inhabit with Christ after His Second Coming, therefore, will be the old earth ... made new. The connection between the two is characterised by both continuity and discontinuity: there is discontinuity, because mere "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God." But there is also continuity, because the "body of glory" will still be my body, and I shall be recognisable in it as me - just as Jesus in His resurrection body was recognisable in it as Him (and Moses and Elijah on the Mount of transfiguration). The new earth, when it is redeemed, will be recognisably the same created earth we know now.
Now remember that the redemption process as it is revealed in Christ does not occur except by the death of the old. So it was with Christ ... so it will be with us; and so it will be with the creation too, therefore. The new is always born in the grave of the old. That is how it will be at the Second coming of Christ. The old will be destroyed, and out of its destruction the new will emerge. No-one knows how, of course; it is a mystery, as Paul said.
This is where those prophecies fit in about the "dissolving away of the elements in fervent heat," and "the heavens being rolled up like a scroll." The old earth and the old heavens will be destroyed, but out of their death the new earth and the new heavens will be born. That is when the rapture of the saints will take place. Our assembling to meet the Lord in the heavens will be simultaneous with the total, cataclysmic, unimaginable transformation that will happen at the Second Coming, when the 'mystery' Paul showed us will occur: that mystery when, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, we shall be changed. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall all be changed." Like the death and resurrection of our Lord, the Second Coming, when it happens, will be at the same time a horrendous and a breath-takingly glorious event - the most awesome event that has ever befallen our world since it first sprang forth from the creating hand of God.
"Look eagerly for the coming of the Day of God; that day will set the heavens ablaze and melt its elements in flames," says Peter. (II Peter 3:12) If we ask how that can be earnestly desired, Peter's answer is, "Because, according to His promise, we wait for a new heaven and a new earth wherein righteousness shall dwell."
As at the Cross the process of judgment worked itself out to the extremest limits where Christ bore the judgment, so at the end judgment will work itself out to the extremest limits where men who will not consent to let Him bear it for them will bear it for themselves.
And as at the Cross the process of redemption worked itself out in the transformation of that judgment into grace, so at the end, for those who have received Him, the process of redemption will be accomplished through the transformation of that judgment into grace. The old will perish and out of its death the new will be born. We shall perish in the final cataclysm, and yet not a hair of our head shall be harmed; rather we shall be reborn out of that general death.
The Second Coming and the Last Judgment will be concurrent.
In the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus we have already been given the key that unlocks the mystery of the future.
Note 1:
It seems not inconceivable to me, and in keeping with the Biblical
'style' of judgment throughout the course of Biblical history, that
this final destruction may be wrought by the hand of man. It would
not be any the less a judgment of God if it were, for the Bible shows
us again and again that His judgments overtake us by the works of our
own hands.
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