End Times Stuff – Part 4

For the last 3 posts in this series I have challenged the classic pentecostal pre millennial stance on the end times. However I think it would be unfair to do so without offering some king of alternative.

The first looking at what we know as clear and basic biblical truth, then  I want to look at what this means in terms of biblical intrepretation and how we read the bible.

The basic truths about the end times which I believe are self evident in the New Testament.

• Jesus will come again physically, this will mark the completion of this age.
• Every eye will see him when he comes again.
• He will judge the living and the dead.
• No one knows the date or the hour of his return.
• It will be proceeded by a time of struggle strife and persecution for the church.
• It will be proceeded by false prophets, and messiahs.
• After he comes he will establish the completion of his kingdom.
• When Jesus speaks of his Kingdom in the gospels he is not always reffereing to the end times, but often to his rule in the here and now.
• That we have been in the last days since his crucifixion.

Most serious evangelical scholars of any position ( pre-millenial, post -millenial or a-millenial.), will agree with the abover statements, and to my mind it forms a basis of biblical truth on the subject that can be preached without causing strife or grief between believers.

My stance is somewhere between what Jason Bee calls pan millenialsim (it will all pan out in the end) and an a-millenial stance which sees end times teaching as a simple progressions of

1. Jesus first coming – Recorded in the gosepls
2. Church Age ( which is the millenium mentioned in Revalation 20 )
3. Tribulation and trials – including false prophest and teachers – which leads into
4. The coming of the final antichrist(s)
5. The 2nd coming of Christ – including what most people call the rapture.
6. Judgement
7. The New Heaven and the New Earth

Compared to the classic penetcostal stance which Paul Williams has taught this is am much simpler model , which holds very closely with the direct teaching of Jesus in Matthew 23. This leads one to ask why people have come to the understanding which Paul has preached recently.

The answers is how we treate and use the book of Revelation. The classic pentecostal stance sees Revelation as a book of one (or sometimes two seperate visions), which are all placed in the future, which are linear in progression and are as literalistic as possible in interpretation.  If you take this stance on how to read the book of Revalation you start to need to do the theological somersaults that a pre millenial stand takes.

The question remains  ‘Is this correct way to interpret the book of Revelation?’.  My resounding answer would be No. I believe it is applying standard to the book of Revelation which the book was never written for.

In the last 300 years our socities view of truth has become scientific, we regard truth is only what is seen as being sceintifically, physically and literally true. Other forms of revalation and belief are seen as opinion and not ‘truth’.

Thus if we believe the bible to be the Word of God and to be true. We start to understand this in solely terms all of the bible needing to be literal and scientifically true, to be seen as beign  authorative. In this mindset to interpret any form of biblical litearture as none literal, symbolic or allegorical, is to see it as less true or an attack on the authority of scripture.

I dont see this as being appropriate for reading literature that was written 2000 years ago, to apply a modern sceitific and literalistic mindset to a form of ancient writing written 1700 years before that mindset became common place seems out of place, and to a certain extent a shows desire to twist scripture in a way that was never meant at its time of writitng. We need to understand revelation as it was written not by a modern set of standards or by a modern standard of truth.

I am quite clear in my view that the book of revelation is not one clear, linear prediction of the future. But a number of illustartion of things which have happened in the past and will happen in the future described and explained from numerous angles with numerous emphasis. These visions use large degress of imagery from the Old Testament, and are not plainly spoken.

Evidence for this comes from

1. Repeated themes recurring in the books.
2. Clear references to things in the Life of Christ, and in cosmological history (the fall of a thirds of the angels).
3. The vivid use of Old testament pictoral langauge.
4. The progression of themes from vision to vision in the book.
5. Scholarly opinion on the nature of apocolyptic literature.
6. The need of John ot to be planespoken in his writing as he was in prison in patmos at the time of writing

One Response to “End Times Stuff – Part 4”

1. Daniel Forse says:

   March 15, 2011 at 3:06 pm

   Hey jon, this was good to read!

   I’m in agreement with much of what you’ve said in parts 1-4. I agree with what chaz said soon after the afformentioned series by paul in that a message from god should serve to unite the church, and that a sermon that serves to divide a church for no particularly good reason should certainly be questioned. Of course that’s not to say that all sermons should be firmly within the church’s average comfort zone! Jesus preached the message of love throughout his preaching life and still regularly corrected people and wound people up! hehe, but of course these things were to eventually provide the “rebukee’s” with a better life in the here and now.

   And I think that’s my main concern. If a sermon really has to rub a few people up the wrong way, it needs to be for good reason. While reading and meditating on revelations is a good thing (wouldn’t be in the bible if it wasn’t!) I’m not sure whether trying to ‘figure out’ the end times is of any real practical use in our daily lives! All that we NEED to know is spoken by Jesus himself in Luke 21, and more importantly, he doesn’t just say what is going to happen, but how we should behave accordingly.

   So when you have some time jon, my main question is what do you think is the importance of studying the end-times? How does knowledge of this help us live our lives for the better in the here-and-now?

   Really good read tho! Cheers for putting the time into it.

   dan