Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (38 page)

The witnesses were dead for three and a half days, or half a week, while the Roman world celebrated. It is only slightly longer than the three days that Jesus was in the grave. The time of Israel’s trial was three and a half years, or half of a week of years (GR2). In a fraction of the time it had taken to silence the Old Covenant, the Law and the Prophets were promoted to a City the world could not defeat with armies. It did not take long at all for the empire to realize that it had not permanently silenced the Truth. This is a major theme that rings throughout The Apocalypse: God’s Truth will reign eternally triumphant from this point forward.

This all occurs within the sixth trumpet, which we know extends for three and a half years. Now St. John gives us a major event by which to date this vision within history. If you are unsure of our analysis, here is a reality check. When did the voice of the Old Testament witnesses transfer to the Church? “At that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake” (11:13; GR5).

The Temple occupied about a tenth of the land within Jerusalem. We know when this tenth of the city fell: in August of 70 A.D. On the day the Temple was torched, a large number of Jews also died.
Seven thousand
—ten cubed, multiplied by seven—is a symbolically large number. Yet when the outlaw Zealots were defeated in the Temple, they shifted their defensive stand to the royal palace, slaughtering in cold blood 8,400 Jews who had taken refuge there (
WJ
, VI, 7:1). Yes, they slaughtered their own kinsmen, a shaking of all that was considered important within the holy bloodline of Judaism. Even today, this killing of Jew by Jew is referred to as the
sinat hinam
that precipitated the defeat of the Temple.

By this point, it should be obvious why Victorinus and St. Augustine believed these visions recapitulated one another. This earthquake illustrates again that these visions are not chronological. There was an earthquake in the sixth seal that exactly mirrors this earthquake in the sixth trumpet (6:12 and 11:13; GR8).

The specific location in which these two witnesses are killed is now identified. All of these events transpire in “the great city which is allegorically called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified” (11:8). This city is obviously Jerusalem. First, it is the location of Christ’s Crucifixion, and second, the term “great city” is used elsewhere in reference to Jerusalem. Josephus uses the term as well (
WJ
, VII, 8:7).

St. John uses the allegorical names Sodom and Egypt for Jerusalem. Perhaps it is to protect himself and his readers in case his manuscript were to fall into the hands of the authorities. Perhaps it is merely because his book is apocalyptic. But it should not surprise us, because it is not an innovation. Jerusalem is allegorically called both Sodom and its sister city, Gomorrah, in the Old Testament (Isa. 1:10; Jer. 23:14; Ezek. 16:48).

St. John does not just spring this on the reader, however. As he does so often throughout his work, he has anticipated this theme. In two of the letters to the churches, Christ refers to the “synagogue of Satan,” while warning the Church to prepare for a period of suffering. St. John has let us know that the Jewish leaders were persecuting the Christians. Of course, this was not news to the original readers, since they were living under that very persecution. But the alert reader of the first three chapters would expect the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem to be among the Church’s persecutors during the Great Tribulation.

As we progress in the book, we must keep our minds alert to other allegorical names for Jerusalem that equate it with evils of which other ancient peoples were guilty. Sodom’s primary sin was its blatant disregard for God’s moral law. Egypt’s leaders sinned by trying to keep God’s people in bondage, denying them the freedom to worship. This parallels the actions of the Sanhedrin in 68 A.D.

During this vignette, we are subtly introduced to a new character in The Apocalypse. He is “the beast that ascends from the bottomless pit” (11:7). We will see more of evil beasts shortly. This is another example of St. John’s use of anticipation.

♦
The seventh trumpet, third woe: the Kingdom comes
. The seventh and last trumpet is also the third and last woe. The seventh angel with his trumpet declares, “The kingdom of the world has become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever” (11:15). This phrase and its meaning are so well known to us that it is easy to forget that during the sixth trumpet, this was identified as the mystery of God: “In the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God, as He announced to His servants the prophets, should be fulfilled” (10:7).

What is this mystery of God being fulfilled in The Apocalypse? In all of the Gospels, Jesus refers to a “mystery” (or “secret”) only once. In all three synoptic Gospels this mystery is put into the same context (Matt. 13:11; Mark 4:11; Luke 8:10). It is the mystery of what the Kingdom of the Messiah would really be like. It would not be the physical, political, conquering power for which the Jewish leadership had hoped. No, the Messianic Kingdom would be an
interior
kingdom—the rule of an omnipotent Christ within the lives and hearts of men and women all over the world. For this reason, it would never be defeated or uprooted, as Daniel had foretold in his visions of the statue and the beasts. Because it was a spiritual rule, no unbeliever would be able to enter it, as Zechariah had stated at the end of his oracles (Appendix Three).

The spiritual aspect of the Kingdom of the Messiah was a theme throughout much of the Old Testament prophets. Jesus even reminds His disciples that “many prophets and righteous men longed to see what you see, and did not see it” (Matt. 13:17). Even at the moment of death, Christ emphasized to an unbelieving Pilate that His was a spiritual Kingdom: “My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed over to the Jews; but my kingship is not from the world.… For this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:36–37).

If you look for Jesus’ teaching on what the Messiah’s Kingdom would be like, you will see the obvious silhouette of the Church. The parable of the sower and the soils teaches that entrance to the Kingdom is open to all, but dependent on a personal response to the “word” (Matt. 13:3–23). The public encounter with His family reveals that, in the Kingdom, what matters is no longer a holy bloodline, but doing “the will of my Father in Heaven” (Matt. 12:50). In the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus explains that His Kingdom will have loyal, obedient subjects mingled with the evil and traitorous. Even though His servants recognize this, they are to leave the final judgment to Christ (Matt. 13:24–30, 36–43). This lesson is so important that it is reiterated in the parable of the fishes (Matt. 13:47–51).

In another parable, the mustard seed is a picture of how the Kingdom will be small and hidden in the beginning, yet contain within itself all things necessary to grow into a huge and fruitful tree (Matt. 13:31–32). This is the fulfillment of Daniel’s stone growing into a mountain. This reflects precisely the development of the Church. The
Catechism
clearly teaches that “The Church was catholic [i.e., having correct and complete confession of faith, full sacramental life, and ordained ministry in apostolic succession] on the day of Pentecost and will always be so until the day of the Parousia” (
CCC
, par. 830).

This growth that starts with a small beginning is re-emphasized in the parable of the leaven: it starts out small and invisible, but slowly and surely it changes the very nature of the dough. Just so, the Church does not rule the world as a political entity, but through the unseen process of changing men’s hearts (Matt. 13:33–35). Finally, Jesus gives His disciples two parables to hammer home the idea that His Kingdom, although it would not be visible on the worldly scene at first, would be worth the nurture, effort, and sacrifice. These are the parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value (Matt. 13:44–46).

So the Kingdom of God that Christ offered was radically different from what the Jewish Sanhedrin desired, even though it was in perfect harmony with the Old Testament prophecies. The Jewish leaders were yearning for the good old days; they wanted a return to the thousand-year dynasty of David, with its political power and military muscle. As a result, they missed the unifying theme of the four major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.

Because Christ’s kingdom would be internal, it would supersede ethnic and national distinctions. Jew and Gentile would be accepted on an equal footing. This teaching is integral to the message of the later prophets of the Old Testament. Isaiah prophesied that God would gather His believers from all the nations of the world, and “some of them also I will take for priests and for Levites, says the Lord” (66:21). Isaiah was teaching that these newcomer Gentiles would be accepted on a par with the most worthy of the Jews. I am sure that turned some heads in Isaiah’s day! The Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day seem to have forgotten this promise. The make-up of Christ’s Church, with Jew and Gentile at peace as equals, was a mystery in the Old Covenant.

The Church’s Liturgy connects this prophecy of Isaiah with the teaching of Jesus in Luke. Jesus proclaimed publicly to His Jewish listeners, “You will weep and gnash your teeth, when you see Abraham … in the Kingdom of God and you yourselves thrust out. And men will come from east and west, and from north and south, and sit at table in the Kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (13:28–30). The Sanhedrin rejected this vision of the Kingdom, so they were left out.

St. Paul did not reject this mystery, but embraced it enthusiastically. In Colossians he writes, “This mystery … is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (1:27). In whom was Christ? He dwelt in the gentile Christians of Colossae. St. Paul devotes an entire section of his letter to the Roman church (chs. 9–11) to this mystery. In Romans 10:12–13, he drives the point home. “The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in Him will be put to shame.’ For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and bestows His riches upon all who call upon Him. For, ‘everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved’ ” (note also Rom. 11:25).

The apostles became the “stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1). To put it succinctly, the sum of “the mysteries of God” throughout the ages was that the Kingdom of the Jewish Messiah would be the Church! To think that the Kingdom of the Son of David would not be political, but ecclesiastical; not physical, but spiritual; not ethnic, but personal. To think that, because of the very nature of the Kingdom, a Gentile could be accepted alongside the descendants of Abraham. To think that a master would be no more privileged in this Kingdom than his slave. To think that women and men would be equals in dignity in the Kingdom. But more than anything else, to think that Jews and Gentiles would
eat together at one Table
. The celebration of the Eucharist by the New Testament Church did more to proclaim the gospel than anything else ever could!

All of these conclusions flowed logically and inexorably from the major premise that Jesus taught His disciples: His Kingdom would not be “of this world” (cf. John 18:36). His would be a spiritual Kingdom within the hearts of human beings, working outward from there. His would be an ecclesiastical Kingdom.

This was the message the world was to glean from the destruction of the Temple. “In the days of … the seventh angel, the mystery of God, as He announced to His servants the prophets, should be fulfilled” (10:7). This was the hidden message of the scroll whose seven seals are opened in this initial vision. The Kingdom of Christ is not physically a part of political Judaism. It does not depend on Jerusalem or its Temple. Rather, it extends an invitation to all men and women who desire communion with the one true God.

Was this really such a mystery? Absolutely! Although every Catholic communicant probably understands this well, the Jewish leaders never quite caught on to what the Kingdom was to be like. In fact, even today, there is a group of Christians who do not seem to understand the mystery: that the Messiah came to set up a spiritual Kingdom, and that He was not and never will be interested in ruling the world as an earthly potentate enthroned in Jerusalem. Such Christians are called rapturists.

This was the thrust of Dr. Walvoord’s quotation early in this book. He is the leading, living proponent of rapturist theology, yet he admits that the pretribulationalism (the rapture theology we have been examining) is not taught anywhere in Scripture. Today’s rapturists insist on the same physical Messianic Kingdom that the leaders of Jerusalem did because their view of the Church demands a return of ethnic Israel into the center of God’s plan.