Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (21 page)

This extra thirty days was still a time of tremendous bloodshed. Josephus wrote, “Around the altar a pile of corpses was accumulating; down the steps of the sanctuary flowed a stream of blood, and the bodies of the victims killed above went sliding to the bottom.” The Romans “set fire to the houses … but they ran
everyone
through whom they met … and made the whole city run down with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire of many of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood” (
WJ
, VI, 8:5).

Finally on the eighth of
Elul
(September 9, 70 A.D.), Titus ordered the Roman army to halt the wholesale slaughter of Jews, “since his soldiers were already quite tired with killing men” (
WJ
, VI, 9:2). While some killing occurred after that point, the worst was over.

This is the best understanding of the additional thirty days. It took 1,260 days for the conquest and fall of the Temple, but there was still urban warfare in the rest of Jerusalem for another thirty days. “There shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days” of killing and abominations when the city is overthrown (12:11).

The vision has just one more detail. The vision encourages readers to “wait and come to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days” (12:12). In other words, forty-five days after all of Jerusalem fell, safety would finally be attainable. To what could this extra time refer?

The inhabitants of Jerusalem who had escaped death during the urban warfare of the last thirty days still had somehow to survive this next forty-five-day period. After Titus had ordered a halt to the wholesale killing at the 1,290th day, the Roman soldiers herded the inhabitants of Jerusalem into the women’s court of the Temple, which was walled. One of Titus’s friends by the name of Fronto was “to determine everyone’s fate, according to his merits. So this Fronto slew all those that … were impeached one by another; but of the young men he chose out the tallest and most beautiful, and reserved them for the triumph; and as for the rest … he put them into bonds, and sent them to the Egyptian mines. Titus also sent a great number into the provinces, as a present to them, that they might be destroyed upon their theaters, by the sword and by the wild beasts; but those that were under seventeen years of age were sold for slaves. Now, during the days wherein Fronto was distinguishing these men, there perished, for want of food, eleven thousand; some of whom did not taste any food” (
WJ
, VI, 9:2).

It was a gruesome forty-five days. One had to hope for food, all the while watching others die of starvation, or be executed as potentially seditious, or be sorted into one of the many slave pools.

The events that occurred in Judea from 66 to 70 A.D. were seen by more than just the Church as the fulfillment of Daniel’s visions. No doubt the prophecy of Daniel gnawed on the minds of these Jews during these forty-five days as well. Upon his capture three years earlier, Josephus had informed the Romans that “he was not unacquainted with the prophecies contained in the sacred books.” (
WJ
, III, 8:3). But for the wicked, they did not understand the meaning of these events until it was much too late. It is doubtful that any of them ever understood the mystery of the Kingdom.

During these forty-five days, the Roman army captured virtually all the outlaw Zealots, who had retreated to the many subterranean caves around Jerusalem in the hope of waiting out the Romans and re-emerging when they had left (
WJ
, VI, 8:5). The Jewish Zealots very well may have thought that if they could just wait out the forty-five days, they might experience the promise of Daniel: “Blessed is he who waits and comes to the thousand three hundred and thirty-five days” (12:11).

But they didn’t make it that far. Virtually to a man, the rebels were caught. The Romans worked particularly diligently to capture the two major leaders of the Jerusalem revolt, John and Simon. John was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Simon got the death sentence. It seems that none of the Zealots survived the extra forty-five days to the relative peace that Daniel foresaw.

Josephus tells us that after Titus thought that he had Judea completely subdued, the Roman army regrouped and rewarded its heroes of the war. A month and a half after the city had been completely taken, much of the anger of the Roman soldiers had dissipated, and much of the army had been rewarded and had disbanded. The remaining army concerned itself with the task of dismantling the Temple stone by stone.

But “the wise” did “understand,” and those who were patient and faithful in their waiting were “blessed.” This mention of the blessed brings to mind the Church that fled into the wilderness before Jerusalem’s defeat, following Christ’s warning in the Olivet Discourse. They patiently waited in relative safety, and their faithfulness to Christ’s warning had secured their survival. The blessed were still safe when the 1,335 days were fulfilled. To them was entrusted the mystery of Christ’s Kingdom. That Kingdom now was free to blossom in the ancient Roman Empire without the confusion that Temple worship engendered.

So we see that this vision actually has two endings. The wicked are caught in the consequences of their own choices, blind to the truth until it is too late. For God’s people, it ends with the “blessed,” who have survived the desolation and destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, and are ready to enjoy the Kingdom’s benefits.

Even though Daniel will not live long enough to understand completely his visions and their mysteries, he is given personal hope at the end of this vision. Daniel is informed that he will die, but still “shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days” (12:13). For the first time in Daniel, the scope extends all the way to the final eschaton. When the final judgment occurs, Daniel will be rewarded appropriately. This is one of the earliest promises in the Bible regarding the immortality of the human soul. For Daniel it is good news, but in fact, all humans will be judged at the end of time. This is the general judgment, the “Great White Throne” judgment of The Apocalypse.

This is as close as Daniel gets to envisioning the second coming. But this vision of Daniel has taken us from here to eternity, right up to the final eschaton. No more details of the final judgment are given, but it is quite clear in the vision that the timing of Daniel’s judgment is not to be confused with the time of the “shattering.”

In this vision, the mention of the final events is almost an afterthought, a personal consolation given to Daniel. This structure will be borrowed in The Apocalypse, when St. John’s last vision also extends its scope to the final eschaton.

Let us sum up the evidence we have gleaned from Daniel. Rapturists claim that Daniel gives the entire timetable of their system: the seven years of Great Tribulation that follow on the heels of the rapture, the refocusing of God’s redemptive work exclusively through ethnic Israel during those seven years, the rebuilding of the Temple at the very beginning or even before those seven years, the coming of an antichrist who sets up his covenant with Israel at the beginning of the seven years, the breaking of the antichrist’s covenant halfway through the seven years, and the resurrection immediately after the seven years are completed.

On closer examination, this is clearly not the best way to understand these texts; in most instances, it is not even a reasonable way. In every case, rapturists have had to insert a massive gap into the time line that Daniel delineates. This is their colossal mistake. They do not take the visions for what they are plainly trying to teach—the timing and meaning of the first advent—and thus they completely twist the meaning of Daniel’s predictions concerning the time of salvation that was to come. The presumptuous parenthesis is necessary because of the rapturists’ refusal to accept Daniel’s overall message: God’s spiritual Kingdom came when the Messiah appeared during the ancient Roman Empire. The seventy weeks ended in 67 to 70 A.D., by which time the blessings bestowed on Christ’s Church were evident to the world.

This view, the Church’s historical understanding, emerges as both reasonable and superior. Christ’s birth, death, Resurrection, and founding of the Church, and the judgment upon those who rejected His new Kingdom are the fulfillment of these prophecies. From Daniel’s perspective, the drama of the Incarnation spanned seven decades of covenantal transition. Other than the final judgment of the man Daniel, there is nothing in these visions still awaiting fulfillment, except in the sense that all these events point to a still future death and resurrection of our world itself, and the founding of a new Heaven and a new earth at the final eschaton (GR3).

Four hundred years ago, a famous mathematician, Blaise Pascal, summed up Daniel very well: “One must be bold to predict the same thing in so many ways. It was necessary that the four idolatrous or pagan monarchies, the end of the kingdom of Judah, and the seventy weeks, should happen at the same time, and all this before the second Temple was destroyed.… The time foretold by the state of the Jewish people, by the state of the heathen, by the state of the Temple, by the number of years.… Christ will then be killed … in the last week.… In the seventieth week of Daniel … the heathen should be … brought to the knowledge of the God worshiped by the Jews; that those who loved Him should be delivered from their enemies, and filled with His fear and love.…
And it happened
” (
PEN
, XI, 708–722).

Pascal summarized these visions well. Daniel predicted the Roman Empire would be in power when Messiah came. And it happened. He predicted the rebuilding of Jerusalem and its Temple as a precondition for the first advent. And it happened. He predicted the Great Tribulation of Christ’s fledgling Church. And it happened. He predicted the Passion of our Lord along with its benefits. And it happened. He predicted the establishment of the new strong covenant. And it happened. He predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple, and biblical Judaism. And it happened. Daniel even predicted his own final judgment. What he did
not
predict is the second coming of Christ. That would have to wait for another Prophet.

We have now completed Daniel, which contains the most difficult passages in the entire Old Testament, and we are ready to proceed to the New Testament. You might first want to read Appendix Three, however, for a brief discussion of the Old Testament book of Zechariah. Rapturists claim that there are events in Zechariah that require that Jerusalem’s Temple be rebuilt and the animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant be reinstituted. They claim that this plan for ethnic Israel will be independent of the Church. Yet we have already seen that Daniel allows no time for that.

What we will find is that rapturists are working under a minor misunderstanding. Zechariah makes it crystal clear that God will never return to His Old Covenant with ethnic Israel—that God broke that relationship forever during Daniel’s seventieth week.

After Daniel, the rapturist argument boils down to one simple assertion: the events portrayed in the apocalyptic passages of the Bible have not yet been fulfilled. Central to this assertion is the refusal to accept that Christ did indeed set up the Kingdom of God during His first advent. As we saw in Daniel, this leads to the presumptuous parenthesis, the rapturists’ colossal mistake.

We must give credit where it is due. Rapturists believe that the prophecies of the Bible must be fulfilled. I do not disagree in the least. I do disagree with the claim that there remains much unfulfilled prophecy.

Because this is the sum and substance of their argument, we will approach the New Testament passages differently from the way we approached Daniel. In the New Testament, we will attempt to determine whether the key prophetic proof texts in the rapturists’ system could already have been fulfilled.

Of course, at least some New Testament passages have not yet been fulfilled, because the second advent is still in the future. We will examine these passages to determine whether they teach a two-stage coming: a secret rapture first with the second advent seven years later. If all the passages have either been fulfilled or are easily understood without resorting to a secret rapture, then the heart will have been ripped out of the rapturist position. Without any biblical support, why believe it?

Perhaps no other part of the Gospels has caused the casual reader as much confusion as has the Olivet Discourse. It undoubtedly contains important information, because all three of the synoptic Gospel authors (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) deemed it important enough to include.