I recorded an interview that Steve Watters did with me a few days back and it is now uploaded to YouTube. I have also an expanded written piece (10000 words) that go with it. The pdf article is in more detail, the video picks up why I believe Matt. 24 (maybe famous for such statements as ‘wars and rumours of wars’) is not written addressing our future but the future of those who were the immediate recipients of the words of Jesus. He made it clear that all the signs he gave would be fulfilled within the lifetime of ‘this generation’. In the pdf I also give my take on Paul’s rather cryptic reference to ‘the man of lawlessness’, again a fulfilment in the period 66-70AD seems to fit this best. The pdf is found here – read or download:
I will set some dates soon when for those interested I will give a short reflection on the material related to Matt. 24 and then – well who knows where the discussion will go – hopefully not to ‘wars and rumours of wars’!!!
I have today completed and uploaded the next pdf on Eschatology. It focuses on the ‘second horizon’, the fall and destruction of the city of Jerusalem and Temple in AD70. I do not believe there is any justification in trying to make the words of Jesus in Matt. 24 / Mark 13 / Luke 21 fit in to some future time (as related to us) but that he spoke to the future of the disciples who were hearing his words, and he makes this clear with all the signs he gave would be fulfilled in the generation alive at the time. I end with Paul’s words in 2 Thessalonians on ‘the man of lawlessness’ with the suggestion that the time frame he is looking to is the same one that Jesus gave. The first horizon was deeply unexpected as it was initiated by the death of Messiah. They could not imagine that could take place; the second horizon was to occur over the 40 years following.
I enjoyed the first Zoom on eschatology – and if I enjoyed it that surely is all that counts? I think though those who came also enjoyed it. It will be repeated in just over two weeks’ time: Oct. 10th, 7:30pm UK time – I will post details here nearer the time. I think the next two will cover the context for Jesus’ prophetic words (Matt. 24; Luke 21; Mark 13) and some of Paul’s material in Thessalonians being that of the intense time of 66-70AD (I use ‘AD’ as opposed to ‘CE’ though in other contexts I would be more comfortable using that abbreviation). And so much more to cover but to give some idea of where I plan to go after that is into a ‘so what?’ set of notes / videos.
Eschatology is intensely practical. It calls for a ‘how then do we live?’ I do not have time for the ‘this is what is going to happen – and it is really bad… so distance yourself now and bunker down’. I do not deny things could get really bad, extremely tough, I simply do not see how we can let the Bible speak for itself and say ‘all this was prophesied’. That will all wait for videos down the road – the ‘yes there could be a one-world ruler’ but this is not what is prophesied. There could also be some very different and wonderful futures – not prophesied also.
But… a much more practical ‘so what?’ relates to how we live. I understand the pull towards holding fast to Judeo-Christian values – but how do we arrive at those so-called values. Old Testament laws can be clearly used to lead us to hold that maximising profits is NOT a Judeo-Christian value (and I suggest also where the ‘bottom-line’ as profit not being a Judeo-Christian value either)… such laws can help us establish a good and healthy shape. We can add to that New Testament material and end with a ‘biblical’ view on…
However, eschatology calls to a deeper level. If there is ‘new creation’ that is our context (now) we have to be shaped by that, in other words we have to be shaped by what is to come, and that includes what is not to come!
Here comes the wonderful tension of the overlapping of two ‘creations’ (I think it is better to use the ‘creation’ word rather than the ‘world’ word at this point). We do not deny this current fallen creation as a context where we live while embracing that it alone cannot shape us. Indeed it does not shape us, new creation shapes us; this creation modifies the shape. I don’t fully know where this takes us, but I consider that we might arrive at a ‘Judeo-Christian’ view of marriage from wrestling with Scriptures, but the new creation does not have marriage within it. Judeo-Christian values takes us so far, or perhaps better stated set us on a trajectory, but where is the trajectory headed?
New creation: no money (and I presume no trade nor trade agreements); no gender, class and other category divisions; no ‘temple’ in the city… healing for the nations, no untameable source for disruption (no sea). New creation. Many areas to explore.
Over-realized eschatology can lead to many problems and beyond problems to ‘sin’. But sight of ‘new creation’ takes us beyond legislation that calls for abolition of slavery, but whole new working environments, distribution of resources, Jubilee-esque responses.
‘How then should we live?’ becomes the question. I might not believe what ‘popularised’ eschatology gives us on the tribulation, the antiChrist, the one-world government. I might be wrong – though if I am wrong there are degrees of ‘wrongness’!!! Right or wrong I suspect the final exam paper I will sit will be something along the lines of one important question:
Given your context, Martin, how then did you live; how did sight of new creation manifest in and through your life and how did it affect those around you? (Sub question – how do you think it affected your neighbours, J & E, and their two sons? Answer carefully as I also have an exam paper for them with one question on it – how did Martin’s life affect you and your values and approach to living within creation?)
Very practical – always eschatology is practical. I will wait in vain (maybe for 1000 years?) for the exam question of ‘outline what you believed, Mr. Scott?’
Tuesday 12th September, 19:30 UK time (will be repeated on 10th October, 19:30 UK time) I will host a Zoom meeting which will focus on An Introduction to Eschatology. I will present for 15 minutes, then with questions, feedback (oh and pushback!!) I think we will have a very positive time. This session will certainly not answer all the questions but will give us some foundations that might discourage us from simply trying to find all the answers to the future (not the nature of prophecy nor the centre of eschatology). You are not required to agree with my stance to attend and neither is it required that you agree with me at the end of the session!! I expect we will be together for 90 minutes.
The final video setting foundations to how we will approach the subject of ‘eschatology’. This will explore the shift from the one horizon of the Jewish view (Messiah will come) to the multiple horizons of the New Testament: the first being the easter narrative.
The third video that outlines some further foundations that will help us assess how to approach Scripture wen considering what is popularised as ‘end times’.
The second of four videos that will give an introduction as to what foundations I consider are essential to grasp biblical eschatology.
I plan scheduling two Zoom presentations – 15 minutes presentation on the salient points and then open discussion. Dates still to be set. All are welcome – either watch all four videos and / or read the pdf that are the (expanded) notes for this series.
The first of four short videos that address issues that we need to consider as foundational to enabling us make a journey in understanding biblical Eschatology.
I will set two dates when I will present by Zoom for 15 minutes on the introductory foundations from the 4 videos – all welcome. For those wishing to attend watch the four videos and / or read the pdf notes (fuller than the videos). Next video up tomorrow.
We have a long way to travel on our journey through the various Scriptures in order to come to a settled place of understanding and we will need patience. In these previous posts I have urged caution about trying to make (Old Testament) Scriptures fit into the world that we know. They were written into a context; they were not written to us. The nature of the prophecies are not to be understood as simple predictions but as promise that are expressed within their world; the fulfilments of those promises will exceed the literal words.We exercise caution as we read the text and must allow the New Testament to be the lens through which we read Old Testament texts of hope. All the promises are in Jesus, and it is for this reason that the first eschatological event, the first horizon is the crucifixion.
The second horizon, the events that take place some 40 years later will be where the focus of the writings go.
Patience, and allowing the Bible to be there for us, while acknowledging it was not written to us. The words of Jesus (Matt. 24; Luke 21 & Mark 13) were spoken around 30AD and were deeply impactful for those people.
[In this post I will refer to ‘horizons’. This concept is not a new idea but describes a viewpoint, a perspective looking forward. Mountain ranges can be hard to separate one from the other, so the concept is of a blurring of the future so that there only appears to be one ‘horizon’ or the separation of the ranges so that there are multiple horizons. I owe the clarity of this to Andrew Perriman, though our view of what the horizons are differs. I am just too much of a ‘conversion of Constantine was ever so bad’ kind of person to go with Christendom as a fulfilment of hope!]
If we say that ‘Jews believed’ or the ‘Jewish hope was…’ we do have to realise that the Jewish faith was not monolithic, so we have to make allowances for divergent beliefs. We see this with the hope for a Messiah. That could vary from a Messiah who would be royal, or a Messiah who would be priestly, or two Messiahs, or none! Somewhat varied. However, it is certainly not wrong to suggest that widespread among Jews was the hope for an intervention of God (whether through the agency of Messiah or not) that would put all things right and fulfil the hopes of Israel, thus restoring the kingdom to Israel.
This age would end and the age to come would be present (the word often translated ‘eternity’ is simply the word for ‘age’, eternal life being life of ‘the age to come’; the shock of the New Testament was that the life of the age to come was being offered in the here and now). There might be a process involved in this coming age being present but there would be a definite before and after. We can represent this as a ‘one horizon’ view:
The hope was simple – a one horizon view – that God would intervene. It might take place over a period of time but the result would be the end of this present (evil) age, the restoration of Israel, the rule of God over the nations, the kingdom of God would have arrived. Into that there was a predominant view that God would resurrect the righteous to benefit from the new era. Finally, it should be noted that all of the above would occur within this world, the idea of this being a celestial experience in heaven was not held.
There were expectations and hopes for the intervention of God at various times in history and certainly there was a lively expectation expressed in the opening pages of the New Testament. John was asked directly if he was the Messiah. Jesus prophesied that in the years after the crucifixion there would be Messianic figures who would arise. The hopes were alive for the intervention of God for the overriding view was that in spite of a return to the land they were not free; Israel was an occupied land, the people were far from being ‘the head not the tail’. A return to the land did not signify the end of the Exile.
In 587 Jerusalem was destroyed along with the temple by Babylon. The prophets spoke of the hope for the end of exile, and indeed after a span of time some did return, a temple was built, but it was inferior to the one that had been destroyed. Later the land became subservient to the Greek then the Roman empire. The question continued as to when God would intervene.
The two disciples on the way to Emmaus verbalised how their hope had been in Jesus as being the one who would bring about the restoration, they were living (as were the other disciples) with that one horizon viewpoint:
The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel (Lk. 24:19-21).
Within the Jewish world there were those who spoke of the exile as continuing, This perspective is explicitly stated in the inter-testamental work of Baruch:
So to this day there have clung to us the calamities and the curse which the Lord declared through his servant Moses (1:20)
and again
See, we are today in our exile where you have scattered us, to be reproached and cursed and punished for all the iniquities of our ancestors, who forsook the Lord our God (3:8).
So although there was a stream that rejoiced that there had been a return to the land after Babylon the verdict of history was of the Exile, at least in part, continuing. The same ‘exile is continuing’ is framed in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus will forgive his people (Jews) their sins (the reason for the Exile / oppression) and in his person God will be with them, for his name was to be Emmanuel.
The hope then we can express as looking to the future and somewhere on the horizon there would come ‘the restoration of all things’.
The transformation of the one horizon perspective
The coming of Jesus greatly changed the ‘one horizon’ view. What was not embraced was the death of Messiah, for Messiah was to conquer all the enemies of God’s people and purpose, not be conquered by them. The crucifixion was not visible as part of Messiah’s journey to (for example) Peter, who saw Jesus as the Messiah, ‘the Christ of God’. After proclaiming that Jesus was the Christ he then rebuked Jesus for indicating that death in Jerusalem lay ahead. Only a failed (and hence a false) Messiah could be sentenced to death. There was no concept within the one horizon perspective for the crucifixion, indeed it could not be so as anyone who was hung on a tree was considered ‘cursed’, and Messiah certainly could not be cursed (Deut. 21:23; Gal. 3:13).
The death of Jesus at Easter / Passover was not foreseen, indeed it was resisted, and when it took place it destroyed their hopes. The other side of the resurrection, the death on the cross was seen as the defeat of all enemies, even the ultimate enemy, death itself, and this defeat of death was essential as the original story had been that death entered the world through the sin of humanity.
This new horizon gave sight to a God who intervenes not to destroy the perceived enemies of Israel but the spiritual forces that captivated Israel (and the nations). This immediately shifts our understanding of the promises of God within the Old Testament narrative. The resurrection taking place in a garden surrounded by death speaks loudly (as does the identification of Jesus by Mary as ‘the Gardener’) that the crucifixion was restoring the original commission, the possibility now of working to bring creation to a place of restoration was present.
We might take the various events from the cross, the resurrection, the ascension and pentecost as one event, indeed so they are as they all flow together, but if I separate out pentecost we really have a re-enacting of the creation of humanity. Taken from the dust, the life of God being breathed into them, so that they, as community, might be a new humanity. We can take pentecost as a new horizon or part of the same horizon.
From the breathing into those first disciples a movement is released with the last word of Acts being ‘unhindered’, we understand a movement that was always anticipated to continue, not a movement that would fade out. The breath is a new creation, but the mandate from that first creation is picked up. Subduing the earth and multiplying. The growth and expansion is clearly noted throughout Acts. We read phrases such as:
Added to their number (Acts 2:47).
But many of those who heard the word believed (Acts 4:4).
A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem (Acts 5:16).
You have filled Jerusalem with your teaching (Acts 5:28).
The word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith (Acts 6:7).
Samaria had accepted the word of God (Acts 8:14).
Proclaiming the good news to many villages of the Samaritans (Acts 8:25).
He proclaimed the good news to all the town (Acts 8:40).
Meanwhile the church throughout Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and was built up. Living in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers. (Acts 9:31).
This became known throughout Joppa, and many believed in the Lord (Acts 9:42).
But the word of God continued to advance and gain adherents (Acts 12:24).
Thus the word of the Lord spread throughout the region (Acts 13:49).
This continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord (Acts 19:10).
So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed (Acts 19:20).
Without hindrance (Acts 28:31).
Multiply and fill the earth, a new humanity with the breath of God living among the ‘animals’, both domestic and wild (beasts). From the creation narratives the nations were understood to be like animals and some of them – those who sought to oppress others – were described as beasts. This multiplication was taking place throughout all the nations of the earth, the earth was being subdued, not through some top-down force of will, but through a people who were understanding that they were to love, nurture and inspire a bending of powers to heaven’s ways.
A transformation of understanding of that one horizon expectation. The cross was necessary to defeat the powers, to enable the release of those carrying the breath of the Spirit to partner together, and with heaven, in ‘subduing the earth’ and ‘multiplying’.
The ultimate horizon
There are two horizons beyond the pages of Scripture: one we might call the ultimate one – the parousia; the visible appearing of Jesus (‘he will appear a second time’ Heb. 9:28).
This of course is what most people mean when they talk about eschatology, but they often focus more on a set of events that will take place, with the return of Jesus the appendix to a set of events. It is questionable if a set of events that take place in the so-called end-times are indicated in Scripture. What is pointed to is not a set of events but a final appearing of Jesus that ushers in the ‘new heavens and the new earth’, the time when all things are ‘made new’ (not ‘all new things are made’!), that brings about the fullness of the restoration of all things.
I have written about an end-time horizon, from that first Easter to the breath of God into human clay on the day of Pentecost; and in the preceding paragraphs I have written of an ultimate end-time horizon: the parousia of Jesus. Between that first and final horizons lie one other horizon. It is important to grasp this for without that understanding we are likely to try and make some major extensive words of Jesus concerning Jerusalem’s future fit into some end-time scheme. The words of Jesus (as recorded in Matt. 24; Mark 13 and Luke 21) are addressing a future that unfolds after the majority of Scripture has been written and some 40 years after Jesus died. It is important to note those events.
AD70: the fall of Jerusalem
Prior to that final horizon breaking in on us there is an event that was ultra-traumatic, an event that certainly was not anticipated and certainly would never have been seen as a God-intervention. The concept of the total destruction of Jerusalem could only be understood as a major setback and a killer-blow to hope. The war with Rome (66-70AD) occurs after the majority of the writings that we now have that we term the New Testament (I date Revelation, at least in the form that we have, as being later than 70AD and is addressing a different context, the fall of Imperial power), so we do not have details of that war within the pages of the New Testament but we do have clear predictions concerning it.
When we talk of the ‘end of the age’ we should not think primarily of the destruction of everything related to this world, but of such a transition from one era to the next that the world as was known would come to an end. Such was the effect of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD70. It felt like the end of the age, for it was the end of the age, the end of the ordering of the world as it was – it marked a significant before and after.
If we do not take note that many of the Scriptures relate to the period between the first Easter event and the fall of Jerusalem (40 years, the suggested length of a generation) we will universalise those Scriptures and miss the narrative that is being unfolded. Conversely, if we allow those Scriptures to speak into their context we will follow the trajectory of the narrative and allow all Scripture that was not written to us to be powerfully available as being for us.
Jesus in his prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem states that this will take place within a generation,
Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place (Lk. 21:32). Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place (Matt. 24:34).
And in Acts as the proclamation is made to those within Jerusalem we find that there are texts that fit right into how the listeners are to respond. They are to save themselves from ‘this generation’ (Acts 2:40) otherwise they will be ‘will be utterly rooted out of the people’ (Acts 3:23). It is this context that we have to place the declaration that,
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).
Yes it has universal application, but the context is to Jews who could claim Abraham as their ‘father’, the one who was given the covenant of circumcision in which they were included. Something had shifted; Messiah had come; salvation was now in Messiah’s name.
The fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple was devastating. In the closing days of the resistance the Romans were crucifying up to 500 at a time within sight of the walls; cannibalism was taking place inside the city; the corpses of those who died were being thrown over the walls into the valleys outside (one of which was the valley known as Gehenna – often translated as ‘hell’). Jesus warned of what was to come, which Luke records in straightforward language that Gentile converts who were not so accustomed to the language of Daniel (‘the abomination that causes desolation’) could understand:
When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near (Lk. 21:20).
A generation after that first Easter there was truly the end of an age. Time was called, but as we read in Acts, the proclamation of the kingdom of God and the teachings about Jesus continued unhindered.
