Which Generation?
Matthew Chapter 24 as History
As premillenials do, we awaited the Great Tribulation and Rapture with great anticipation. Every headline, every disaster, every disturbance in the Middle East pointed toward the rebuilding of the Temple and the rise of Antichrist.
It seems all so macabre in hindsight.
But in order to get to our Blessed Hope, this all needs to go down first. Just turn on TBN on any day and you will see those spokesmen for the Creator tell us why America and the World in general (but mostly America) is going to face the Wrath of God and really soon.
As I went down the path in pursuit of the truth of things, I was pointed to this passage from The Wars of the Jews by Flavius Josephus:
Accordingly, it appears to me that the misfortunes of all men, from the beginning of the world, if they be compared to these of the Jews are not so considerable as they were; while the authors of them were not foreigners neither. This makes it impossible for me to contain my lamentations. But if any one be inflexible in his censures of me, let him attribute the facts themselves to the historical part, and the lamentations to the writer himself only. (Preface, section 4)
It sounded an awful lot like what Jesus said in the Olivet discourse to me. An awful lot like it (it never entered my mind until months later that this possibly wasn't a prophecy at all, but written after the fact...more on that later).
Preterism
That used to be a dirty word to me. Preterism is the belief that most (if not all) of the prophecies in scripture have already been fulfilled. Crazy, right? I knew that Catholics and most mainline Protestants were partial Preterists, meaning that all events except for the second coming of Jesus were already done. But hey, they just didn't understand prophecy correctly, they were all led astray by the Catholic church, blah, blah, blah. But now I started to see why. I searched it out and found that the things Jesus said would happen to "this generation" actually did.
Ask any futurist and they will change the meaning of generation. I did. But what if Jesus meant what he said and was saying it to the actual persons that he was addressing, not people hundreds of centuries in the future?
There are some here that will not taste death...All these things will come upon this generation...When YOU see Jerusalem surrounded by armies...
Really, go back and read Jesus's prediction of the destruction of the Temple and then Revelation and then go and read what Josephus recorded as what historically happened.
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Applying the words of Jesus and John to things that had already historically been recorded was satisfying in a way that I cannot even describe. It was like I had been putting a puzzle together with the wrong pieces and someone had finally given me the correct ones. There was no more speculating about how and when all this would happen, it was over, past history. Although I had no idea where I would end up, I knew that I could never, ever see it the way I had before. This just made too much sense. Jesus said these things would happen soon, very soon, upon this generation, very quickly.
And they did.
Why was I just now hearing about this?
I felt a bit embarrassed at myself for all the time and effort and energy I had spent on trying to map out the End Times, but I tried not to dwell on that. There were still a few correct pieces that I needed to finish this puzzle once and for all, I was almost there.
Part Eight
Hope you are doing well.
ReplyDeleteHi Alice, your writing on this topic continues to be interesting. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI thin a lot depends on what ideas we are taught, or come across, or work out for ourselves.
When I read Matt 24, even as a young christian, I tried to allocate all the statements to the immediate future or the distant future, and I cam to the conclusion that most were the immediate future, some were unclear, and none were clearly the distant future.
Some people say the apocalyptic stuff (sun being darkened, stars falling from the sky, etc) are clear end times stuff, but Peter quotes the same stuff in Acts 2 and says they were being fulfilled right then.
Once I came to that view, the questions about "this generation" were easily answered.
Thanks again.
Acts 12...Peter speaking:
ReplyDelete"but this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel:
17 And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams:
18 Yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days Will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.
19 And I will show wonders in the heaven above, And signs on the earth beneath; Blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke:
20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the day of the Lord come, That great and notable day.
21 And it shall be, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Would you like to tell me just when these things...verses 19-20... happened already?
From what I was able to work out, Joel is using figurative language to describe the coming of the Holy Spirit in a way in which it had never come before. It had just been poured on on the whole upper room during at Pentecost, which never had happened in the OT. It was the fulfillment of Pentecost, the beginning of the end of the Temple system and the Old Covenant.
DeletePlease see this to see how this type of language was used in the OT to refer to events that happened:.
http://covenant-theology.blogspot.com/2006/11/apocalyptic-language-in-bible_27.html
Also, Peter said this was fulfilled, so if it wasn't, then Peter was mistaken (after being filled with the Spirit).
It's a twofold prophecy, where verses 17-18 were fulfilled in Jesus' day,
Deleteand verses 19-21 are for today.
It's the same concept as in Isaiah 61:1-2 where Jesus fulfilled the first part of the prophecy, just like it says in the Gospel.
Isaiah 61:1-2 ''1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;'' Jesus fulfilled this prophecy from the start of verse 1 to the first comma of verse 2. The day of vengeance of our God is yet future.
So you see, it's a twofold prophecy.
I do understand that reading of it, although Peter didn't put a gap in his proclamation (although I will admit Jesus didn't finish the verse he was reading).
DeleteJesus did say that the generation he was addressing, though, would not pass away until all things were fulfilled, and I believe there is really something to that.
It always bothered me that Daniel was told to seal up his prophecy since it was for a future time, but revelation said the time was at hand. I really think if one steps back and tries to look at this whole thing without the assumption that all this is still in the future, a new perspective can be seen, even if one does not agree.
If you're really interested, I would suggest researching it out for yourself. I got to the point where I was more interested in truth than holding onto the eschatology that I preferred and that led me to actually think that I had been wrong, but I'm sure not all will come to the same conclusions.
In the end, though, I found that there was nothing there to hold onto at all. But I'll get to that later.
It's a twofold prophecy, where verses 17-18 were fulfilled in Jesus' day, and verses 19-21 are for today.
DeleteExcuse me...... a "twofold prophecy"? At face-value, this looks like nothing more than an "fail-safe" apologetic. With that sort of logic, anyone can predict any ol' thing and then sit there and count the "hits"(if any), while conveniently writing-off the misses as, "Oh, that? That hasn't happened yet, but it will pretty soon".
Maybe one (or both) of the guest Xian posters can explain how, if the bible is "Prophetic" as to when the end will come, how, then, is everything else - including the existence of skeptics/nonbelievers/backsliders, etc - not part of "God's Plan", since the bible tells its followers that they WILL encounter those who won't believe or those who will fall away and backslide..e.g...Alice, myself, and an ever-increasing number of people. IOW(in other words), an omniscient "God" carries a few serious implications, one of which is that the future set of events is fixed and immovable. It may seem slightly off-topic, but really, it's not that far off. Thx.
ReplyDeletePretty much what I thought.......::tumbleweeds::
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Great to see still interested in these things Alice.
ReplyDelete