Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (26 page)

These two verses are a brief tangent. They contrast the true Christ in His return with the false messiahs who would come first. Jesus needed to assure His disciples that they need not worry about missing His second advent. We will examine these two verses later because they supply details concerning the second question of the disciples. (Remember that Luke’s account makes this division between questions very clear.) In a moment, Jesus will return to the topic of His eschatological return, but He is not done yet with the events of 70 A.D.

At this point in His discourse, Jesus further amplifies our understanding of the events accompanying the destruction of the Temple. He uses accepted Jewish apocalyptic language to describe what will happen to those who will persecute His people during the Great Tribulation: “Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt. 24:29).

Rapturists look at these verses and claim that they must be fulfilled literally. They want to see the sun stop shining. They demand the spectacle of shooting stars. But this ignores how the Bible itself uses such language. Apocalyptic prophecy repeatedly uses heavenly disruptions to describe political upheavals (GR5).

Even the Jewish literature that described the fall of Jerusalem after the fact used this type of language to describe the events surrounding 70 A.D. The
Sibylline Oracles
, written sometime after 70 A.D., says, “He seized the divinely built Temple.… For on his appearance the whole creation was shaken and kings perished” (
SO
, 5:150–154;
OTP
, 1:396).

There is nothing here in Matthew that is at all unlike the language of Isaiah. “The stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light.… I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place” (Isa. 13:10–13). Isaiah is predicting the defeat of Babylon. Remember Belshazzar’s folly?

Jesus is foretelling the overthrow of those political dynasties that persecuted His Church. He draws a parallel between the “shaking” of Babylon (the conqueror of God’s Old Covenant people) and the “shaking” of Jerusalem (the persecutor of God’s New Covenant people). One disciple, John, will remember this parallel and use it as a backdrop for Vision III:D in The Apocalypse.

Actually, Jesus was not the first to draw this parallel. The prophet Haggai told Jerusalem that one day it would be “shaken” just as Babylon had been: “Thus says the Lord of hosts: Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with splendor, says the Lord of hosts” (Hag. 2:6–7).

What was this “splendor”? In explaining this Haggai passage, St. Augustine wrote that the “splendor” that filled this house was Christ, while the “house” was the New Covenant Temple, the Church. Haggai was predicting the shaking, or overthrow, of Jerusalem so that “the treasures of all nations,” the Church, could be revealed (
COG
, XVIII:48). The shaking of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. cleared the way for the unimpeded growth of the Church.

The New Testament book of Hebrews makes it clear that Christianity remained in a precarious position as long as the Temple sacrifices continued. Many Jewish Christians were turning back to the Temple worship as Jesus had predicted in sign 6. Hebrews reiterates a favorite passage (Hab. 2:3–4) calling for patience in the promises of God. “Do not throw away your confidence.… You have need of endurance.… ‘For yet a little while, and the coming one shall come and shall not tarry; but my righteous one shall live by faith …’ We are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and keep their souls” (Heb. 10:36–39).

Jesus’ amplification on the political upheaval accompanying the end of Daniel’s final week in 70 A.D. is a message of hope designed to build up “confidence,” “endurance,” and “faith.” Any Jewish reader with an elementary grasp of his own history would have understood this at once. The nations that hate and persecute God’s people will be judged, but only in God’s good time (GR3).

In point of fact, both of the political dynasties that instigated the Great Tribulation of Christians were destroyed. Nero was the last in his dynasty. The next Roman emperor, Vespasian, was not of his lineage. Yet in just one more generation, Vespasian’s dynasty was also obliterated.

But this prophecy probably speaks even more directly to the end of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem. This Jewish political machine had hounded the Christians since Pentecost. The Romans joined in the persecution only after three decades of pestering by the Sanhedrin. After the Temple’s destruction in 70 A.D., no high priest could lay legitimate claim to Aaron’s mantle. The Sanhedrin was uprooted forever, never to be validly re-established again.

We now come to the heart of the Olivet Discourse. It is here that Lewis, Russell, and rapturist all agree. Surely, they say, we cannot claim that this prophecy of Jesus has been fulfilled already! Yet because we did our homework in Daniel, that is exactly what we will discover.

Here is how the Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates this verse: at the judgment of Jerusalem, there “Then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and He will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other” (Matt. 24:30–31).

When the context of Daniel is understood, a strong case can be made for its fulfillment in 70 A.D. Jesus uses the term “Son of man” to describe Himself. This ought to prompt us at least to investigate the possibility that this might be referring to the same event as in Daniel’s prophecy.

Neither the Jewish historian Josephus nor the Roman historian Tacitus ever claimed to be a Christian, nor was either particularly sympathetic to the Christian cause. Yet without ulterior motive, both recorded the appearance of strange heavenly signs at the time of the fall of Jerusalem (
WJ
, VI, 5:3;
THI
, 1:5–7, 1:2–3). These could have been “the sign of the Son of man in the Heaven.”

Lest we think that both historians were just gullible ancients, Josephus assures his readers that these events were hard to believe and credible only because of the eyewitnesses involved: “I suppose [this] account … would seem to be a fable, were it not related by those who saw it, and were not the events that followed it of so considerable a nature as to deserve such signals.

“There was
a star resembling a sword
, which stood over the city, and a comet, that continued a whole year.… Before the Jews’ rebellion … so great a light shone round the altar and the holy house, that it appeared to be bright daytime; which lasted for half an hour.… Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court of the Temple … was seen to be opened of its own accord about the sixth hour of the night.… The men of learning understood it, that
the security of their holy house was dissolved
of its own accord.… So these publicly declared that
the signal foreshowed the desolation
that was coming upon them.… A few days after … before sunsetting, chariots and troops of soldiers in their armor were seen running about among the clouds.… Moreover, at that feast which we call Pentecost, as the priests were going by night into the inner court of the Temple, as their custom was, to perform their sacred ministrations, they said that, in the first place, they felt a quaking, and heard a great noise, and after that they heard a sound as of a great multitude, saying, ‘Let us remove hence.’ ”

This cross-like star could easily have been the “sign of the Son of man.” Three centuries later, something very similar to this sign appeared to Constantine just before he fought the battle that made him emperor of Rome. Add the heavenly chariots and the angels that were witnessed in the sky in 70 A.D., and it seems even more likely that the “sign of the Son of man” really did appear above Jerusalem to warn them of their coming judgment by “the Son of man coming on the clouds of Heaven with power.”

We must be careful not to assume that the coming of the Son of man on clouds means that the Son must be coming to earth. Jesus lifted the “Son of man” language directly out of Daniel 7:13–14, so we must respect that context (GR3). We already determined that in Daniel it is perfectly clear that the Son of man is coming toward the Ancient of Days, not to earth!

We have already seen that Daniel’s “Son of man” was publicly recognized as the victor at the judgment of the Sanhedrin in 70 A.D. This is the point at which Christ was vindicated as Judge of His accusers, and the Kingdom was publicly given to the saints, as Daniel’s vision foretold. “The greatness of the kingdoms under the whole Heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; their kingdom shall be an everlasting kingdom” (Dan. 7:27). What happened here on earth was just the by-product of the heavenly reality.

Of course, the “clouds of Heaven” symbolize the majesty and glory of the Son of man when He judges His enemies. It does not mean that this event of coming could not have occurred on a cloudless day (GR6).

Never lose sight of the fact that Daniel’s Son of man is a
judge
. In this case, there will be a judgment of the Sanhedrin of Jesus’ generation for what they had done to the Messiah. This is exactly what Jesus predicted when He stood before those very men: “You will see the Son of man … coming on the clouds of Heaven” (Matt. 26:64).

Luke 19:41–44 draws this connection clearly. “When [Jesus] … saw the city, He wept over it, saying … ‘The days shall come upon you, when your enemies will cast up a bank about you and surround you, and hem you in on every side … and they will not leave one stone upon another in you;
because you did not know the time of your visitation
.’ ” The Sanhedrin’s rejection of their Messiah had consequences.

When we start to understand the significance of 70 A.D., the words of Jesus at the Transfiguration take on new meaning. Jesus said to those present, “For the Son of man is to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will repay every man for what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of man coming in His Kingdom” (Matt. 16:27–28). If Jesus publicly came into His Kingdom in 70 A.D., then He was absolutely correct in telling His disciples at the Transfiguration that some of them would live to see that event. Notice that Jesus links His “coming in His Kingdom” to the fact that “He will repay every man for what he has done.” This need not be primarily a reference to the final judgment, but to the judgment of the Sanhedrin.

The view we are developing understands the prophecies in Daniel, in the Transfiguration, in the Olivet Discourse, and in the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin as all relating to the same event. They all occurred within the generation that Jesus had promised. At the same time, the judgment of 70 A.D. is also a prophecy of the final eschaton (GR3).

By this view, Jesus and His Kingdom were progressively revealed to more and more people through a series of revelatory events. First, there were the miracles of His birth and childhood, to which only a very small group were privy. Then His glory was revealed to a few disciples in the Transfiguration. His glorious power was made evident to many more in the Resurrection, but still primarily to those who believed. Then even His enemies saw the glorious power of Christ when He judged Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The same Christ whom they had rejected was publicly exalted by God the Father. Finally, at the second advent, this same Christ will return in glory for all to see. All will be rewarded for their loyalty, or punished for lack of it.

The modernist does not like this view. He enjoys claiming to the uninformed Christian in the pew that the Apostles expected the second coming very quickly. He points to these very passages as proof that even Jesus thought the final eschaton would occur within a generation. I hate to rain on the modernists’ parade (I take that back; I enjoy raining on their parade), but their exegesis of these passages lacks an in-depth understanding of Daniel’s “Son of man” prophecy.

We now come to the response of people who would witness this coming of the Son of man in judgment. As Appendix Three notes, this response reflects the language of Zechariah: “Then all the tribes of the earth will mourn” (Matt. 24:30).

What does Jesus mean by “all the tribes of the earth”? This certainly need not imply that the entire planet is mourning over the events in Jerusalem. The Greek word for
earth
here is
ge
. It is often better translated as “land.” In Jewish literature, it was common to use
land
as a reference for Israel and
sea
to refer to the gentile nations.

In other words, if these signs that Josephus and Tacitus recorded really occurred (and we have no good reason to doubt that they did, aside from our twenty-first-century rationalistic prejudices), then the mourning would be done by the tribes of the land of Israel. It is not at all hard to believe that the Jewish tribes would mourn the impending destruction of the Temple. In fact, they still commemorate that destruction on the ninth of
Av
every year, in a solemn day called
Tisha B’Av
.