I’ve always rolled my eyes when I encountered the “Revelation” nuts in the church: obsession with the day’s headlines, thinking that they elucidate the details of the fulfillment of end-times prophecy, this bugs the ever-loving stew out of me.

I realize I’ve been talking a lot of eschatology lately. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m a one-trick pony or that I’m unhealthily devoted to discussion of this particular doctrine. I thought I’d dedicate a post explaining why I’ve been talking about this, and why I am not likely to completely stop posting about eschatology in the future (although I’m sure it will slack off here and there).

I never could stomach codswallop, and especially widely celebrated codswallop. It’s always been natural for me to be critical of things handed to me to believe, even when I understand that the majority believes it. And then sometimes I discover that I have unquestioned, inaccurate presuppositions on a subject. Now, when I realize that I have been eating food with a hair in it, I make absolutely sure that I have purged my mouth by rinsing it with drink and stuffing it with a prodigious amount of uncontaminated food. So it was with my eschatology. Having long since rinsed my mouth out and cleared away the bunk I believed before, for the last few years I have been on the mission of preparing and chewing up the replacement meal. I am using this blog as a way of probing everything and getting my own ducks in a row, but also of answering the questions of some friends who have lately been asking questions.

Although my interests are by no means limited to one or two topics, I do bury myself in one or two at a time until 1) I reach a dead end, 2) I’m distracted by the luster of another topic, or 3) I obtain a measure of comfort with what I believe on that topic. And when this last is achieved, the teacher in me makes me dig just a bit deeper so that I can explain it to others.

This is where I am with eschatology. I am fully aware that there are some divisive topics which do not request to be voiced abroad, or if so, more as a heads-up full disclosure than a “Repent of your contrary belief!” sort of thing. Christianity can tolerate a lack of homogeneity of belief on a number of peripheral topics.

But eschatology is different. Not only does futurism needlessly make Christianity a laughingstock with its endless failed predictions, it’s based solely on a ludicrous hermeneutic for Scripture interpretation that undermines even our Lord’s own credibility. Moreover, my eschatology needs to make substantial gains in acceptance within the Church if its chief implication, the victory of Christianity throughout the world, is to be realized any time soon.

So please don’t roll your eyes when you see me writing about this particular topic, and please do make sure that you’ve tried to understand why it means so much to me and that you are satisfied that you have given it the level of importance that it deserves.

I am firmly indebted to Don Preston for his presentation on the Millennium at the 2004 Preterist Research Institute Conference for much of the layout and content of the following.

Biblical eschatology is Jewish eschatology. A “time of the end” for the Church is never addressed in Scripture. Every passage that futurists and partial preterists say applies to a yet future apocalyptic event is easily tied to a promise made to Old Covenant Israel and fulfilled with the birth of New Covenant Israel.

The Resurrection of the Dead was the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.

1 Corinthians 15 is, of course, the sine qua non of the doctrine of the Resurrection. Paul goes into much more depth here than anywhere else, and this one passage hosts a number of thematic and linguistic links to other passages that strongly suggest an integral unity between them. Let’s start by looking at verses 54 and 55. [All the following citations are from the NIV.]

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?

Paul alludes to two Old Testament passages. Most commentators see in verse 54 that he applies language from Isaiah 25:7-8 to the Resurrection. Here is what it says:

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death for ever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken.

Next, he paraphrases Hosea 13:14, which reads:

I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?

Now, this is the kicker: why must the Resurrection have occurred in the first century? Look at Paul’s next statement (v. 56):

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law.

When the Resurrection occurs, the Law is done away with. The Resurrection is the final fulfillment of the Law. Remember, Jesus says in Matthew 5:18 that “not one jot or tittle” could disappear before the Law was completely and totally fulfilled. Now, is the Law still in effect? If you don’t believe that the Law has been abolished, I trust you are still making animal sacrifices and following Mosaic dietary laws! Note also the correlation between sin and the Law that we see in Romans. Sin was finally done away with when the only true propitiation was made for it, which was Christ’s sacrifice, and the New Covenant was ratified and took full effect (cf. Hebrew 10:16-18). Paul correlates the Resurrection with the end of the Old and the beginning of the New Covenant in Romans 11:15, “For if their [Old Covenant Israel's] rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their [the remnant comprising New Covenant Israel's] acceptance be but life from the dead?” Do not miss, however, the fact that Paul in numerous places implies that the Law still lingered during his time: this ended with the destruction of the temple and of the Holy City.

Sheol. The grave. The pit. Hades. What do all these have in common?

They’re the same thing. At least, in the Bible they are.

The Hebrew word sheol, ubiquitous in the Old Testament, is translated in various Bible passages and translations as “the grave” or “the pit”, and in others left as is. The Alexandrian Jews who translated the Old Testament into Greek around 200 BC (the Septuagint), seeing what they considered an equivalent concept in Greek thought, used the Greek word Hades to translate the Hebrew word.

Hades was thought by the Greeks to be the location of the underworld for all the dead, good and evil alike; the earliest conception of the underworld was that it was a place not of torture or delight, but of bland oblivion. This, indeed, was the conception of Sheol throughout the Old Testament; in fact, the word “sleep” is used to describe the Sheol experience. Neither the righteous nor the unrighteous relished the thoughts of going to Sheol. It is unclear if the early Hebrews truly thought there was an otherworldly holding ground or if they were using a metaphor to describe post-mortem nothingness: non-existence is a lofty concept, and it is much easier for the human mind to speak of a dead soul existing somewhere else, even without a developed belief in an after-life. Yet the existence of a holding place for the souls of the departed was bolstered in Scriptures such as Daniel 12:2, which promised to surrender its sleeping prisoners at the time of the Promised One. This is the most clear indication that anyone living in Old Testament times was expecting what is known in later Jewish thought and in the New Testament as “The Resurrection of the Dead”. It was partly because this doctrine was not as well-established in the Tanakh as we tend to think it was that the Sadducees scoffed at the concept (Matt 22).

The Resurrection of the Dead mentioned in 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 Corinthians 15, Revelation 20, etc. are the fulfillments of Daniel’s prophecy of the emptying of Sheol. Daniel 12 and Matthew 25 (the “Sheep and the Goats” parable) teach that the souls of the departed were to be brought to life and judged, each according to his deeds.

Paul shows the dead being resurrected and the living changed at the time the trumpet sounds and Jesus returns (1 Thess 4). Typical dispensational and other futurist dogma has our physical corpses rising and being replaced by new, not wholly spiritual bodies. Paul, however, was quite clear on what he thought of that in 1 Cor 15:35-44, which concludes,

So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. (NIV)

What could Paul have said differently if he wanted to convince us that the Resurrection was to be spiritual and not physical?

Some argue that since Jesus was raised physically and He was the first fruit of the Resurrection (1 Cor 15:20), then the fruit that follows must be in the form of physical resurrection. Yet this is a false, albeit understandable, conclusion. Christ’s physical resurrection served as an observable confirmation of the unobservable spiritual reality of His spiritual resurrection; the spiritual aspect of His resurrection was sure what was unprecedented and unique, since many physical bodies had been resurrected before Christ’s resurrection. The Resurrection of the Dead was the spirit’s quickening and subsequent transformation to immortality (or “incorruptibility”, see 1 Cor 15:53,54).

If, as preterists contend, the coming of the Son of Man in clouds of glory was apocalyptic imagery for the judgment of the Old Covenant system and apostate Israel, then the Resurrection of the Dead has already occurred (or rather, been occurring). It is all tied in together.

I, like Josh, don’t believe the Bible teaches a “rapture”. Shocking as that may be for some, the passage that serves as the primary source for the doctrine was never about a rapture, at least as commonly understood. That passage is 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Let’s get a picture of what’s going on here.

Most modern translations of 1 Thessalonians 4:16 apparently take their cue from the KJV: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NKJV)

“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of {the} archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NASB)

“For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” (NIV)

Close scrutiny of both the grammar and vocabulary made me question the propriety of this translation. Let’s start with the vocabulary.

Generally speaking, I am of the opinion that, all time and culture considerations aside, the political philosophy held by most of the Founding Fathers matched the basic ideals of the modern libertarian philosophy. The core belief of libertarianism, ignoring the distinctions of all the various permutations of it as well as the whole anarchist strand, is the philosophy of Paine that government is a necessary evil and must hence be limited to doing the things that make it a necessity at all: that is, government should only ever be about the business of protecting the life, liberty, and property of its citizens. It is in essence passive, and must be restrained from intruding upon noninjurious liberty. The Bill of Rights is an heir to that concern.

Libertarians are on steadiest ground against government regulation of economics. They are generally firmly capitalistic, which is to say that they think government intrusion into economics always leads to decreased liberty and profitability for all parties. Most libertarians are equally insistent that the government not make any law abridging people’s freedom on social issues. This latter is a reason that I shy away from committing to the libertarian ideal. It’s not that I think the government has a vested (or Constitutional) interest in invading our personal lives or that it is particularly effective when it does so. These are my dilemmas.

Above, in passing, I allowed a distinction between the political philosophy of the Founders and modern libertarianism. This factor is the state of the society’s morality. The Founders would not have wished a government that intrudes on personal liberty; there is no doubt about that. However, neither would they have wished (or imagined) a society whose personal liberties looked so non-traditional and scandalous. On this point, I often quote John Adams:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Libertarians are generally in favor of the legalization of drugs, prostitution, gambling, and abortion - in short, all the social issues that left-wing philosophers champion and right-wing philosophers unequivocally condemn! But, following the Founders’ principle against the impingement on personal liberty (seen, for instance in the right to bear arms, free speech, and the practice of religion) and absent any explicit Constitutional prohibition of the moral vices I mentioned above, the modern libertarian view appears to be quite consistent with the Founders’ philosophy. “Times change,” libertarians say, “and the vices of the past are the personal prerogatives of the present.”

So what should we do? Should we just let it go? Should we “fight back”? What does that look like politically?

The government cannot dictate morality; it can only enforce punishment against behavior decided upon as unacceptable by those who constitute the government. The contention of the Founders and the libertarians is that the only behavior that should be sanctioned by government is behavior that violates the life, liberty, or property of others. Some conservative groups, seeking to compensate for the disparity of early and modern American moral standards, include behavior that violates specifically Christian morality in the list of legal prohibitions. This includes prostitution: how does this violate the rights of anyone? Someone sells a service to someone — sounds like a typical capitalistic win-win enterprise when Christian morality is removed from the equation. (The issue of abortion is completely different: even biologically, without reference to religious concerns, there is no excuse for the killing of the unborn.)

The problem is the question of whether we should pick and choose things that offend our (and God’s) morality to legislate and then prosecute violations of those mores. There is a segment of Christian society that thinks that might makes right, and any decisions we make, any liberty we prohibit, as long as it is done in God’s name, is obedience. I wonder if such people can cite a case in which a system like this was enforced and it turned out well; God’s own chosen people bucked against these sorts of restraints under the theocratic Torah-established government. It didn’t take long before they were ignoring whole swaths of the most central laws. This was because all the Law could do was bring consciousness of sin and bestow condemnation, and was powerless to evince the changes necessary to avoid breaking the laws: it could not create pure hearts.

What are the solutions? One the one hand, we could “update” the Founders’ philosophy and legislate matters of conscience with which non-Christians may be in disagreement and hope that doing so will…appease God? make them change their minds about the behavior? On the other hand, we could stop trying to keep people from making personal sins that affect only those who wish to be involved and lean more heavily on the Church to change the hearts of the population. Sounds like I’m advocating the latter, doesn’t it? Not necessarily; I realize that the issue is more complicated than that.

The problem is that some of those “personal sins” (homosexuality, prostitution, drug-use) pollute the culture such that it becomes unfit for our posterity’s consumption; I don’t want my children exposed to so much of that stuff before I have time to ground them in our faith’s morality. That’s a major reason why we’re homeschooling. But even that doesn’t much mitigate the frog-in-hot-water factor of Christians in a degenerating culture; and there is a distinct possibility that the water heats even more imperceptibly if the legalization of questionable behavior is confused with tacit approval. To this Christian libertarians might respond, “Well, even if so, Christians just need to raise their influence level a few notches so that we can take back the culture more quickly.” I don’t doubt that we can do that — but will I have to sacrifice the innocence and well-being of my children and grandchildren for it?

What’s the answer?

You tell me.

What would it take to wipe out hunger and give all poor nations a chance at development?

Better yet, why aren’t more Christians asking this question?

This is something that’s been in my mind of late. Thoughts of children suffering and dying and their parents helpless to prevent it are so burdensome that only my strong defense mechanism (called “ignoring it”) keeps me from being constantly disturbed. But I ask myself - if you knew that your sibling(s) and/or parents were somewhere far away suffering the same way unaided, would you be content to put it out of your mind? Where’s the love for “the least of these”?

The U.N. tells us that 24,000 people die from starvation/malnutrition every single day. This figure is one of the lower I’ve read, so don’t think the U.N. is making it look worse than it is. Nor does this data even take into account the number of deaths that happen because of untreated, though easily treatable, medical problems.

Does any of that shock you? Or are they just statistics?

I have been disturbed to hear committed evangelical Christians shrug their shoulders at the insurmountable tasks I pointed out above. Three common responses:

1) If they’d just get off their lazy butts, they’d be able to do something about it.

It’s not the well who need a doctor, but the sick. Jesus came to seek and save the lost: even given occasional accuracy of the “laziness” accusation, those who are lost in self-destructive habits are prime examples of those who need our Savior’s administration in their lives.

2) All we can hope is to spread the gospel to as many places as possible so that Jesus can come back and end poverty once and for all.

This is a load of garbage (since I try to use more than four letters for all of my descriptive words, I will leave it at that). This is a perfect example of why futurist eschatology is dysfunctional and dangerous. That aside, this mindset makes the gospel look irrelevant: it ignores the example of Jesus who customarily treated the physical need before (or as a way of) ministering to the heart.

3) We do send missionaries to help where they can. We’re helping out little by little.