Everett L. Wilson

Jesus and the End-Time

The Imminence of the End-Time
He is Coming Soon

"From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is n ear, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place" Matthew 24:32-35

In the year 1831 a Baptist farmer in New England by the name of William Miller began to preach in the churches of his neighborhood. His message was unique in that time and place, for he claimed to know the date of the return of Christ. He knew this, he said, through his understanding of certain passages in Daniel and Revelation. Although he was unsure of the precise day-he thought it might be March 21-he did know the year: 1843.

In the twelve years between 1831 and 1843 Miller became known throughout the country, and by the time the fateful year arrived an estimated 50,000 people-some put the figure as high as one million-were eagerly waiting with him for the coming of the Lord. When 1843 dawned, Miller said:

"This year…O glorious year! The trump of jubilee will be blown, the exiled children will return, the pilgrims reach their home, from earth and heaven the scattered remnants come and meet in the middle air…fathers before the flood, Noah and his sons, Abraham and his, the Jew and the Gentile-this year! the long looked-for year of years! The best! It has dawned!"¹

On March 21 the faithful climbed to the hilltops in order to see the coming of the Lord. When the day passed without incident, Miller reminded them that his main prediction was for the year and not a specific day; so they waited through the year, and even through March 21, 1844.

Miller was dismayed. He had sincerely believed in his own calculations. He set no more dates himself, but some of his followers tried again for October 22, 1844; on that day watchers gathered even in cemeteries-where, apparently, they could witness the resurrection along with the Lord's appearing. When that prediction failed also, the Millerites gave u specific predictions and settled for the more basic conviction that the Lord would surely return, but no one know precisely when.

It is easy to laugh at the Millerites today, but I have not told their story in order to laugh at them. Indeed, the mistake they made is easily made, almost common-which is to "set dates" for the coming of the Lord. Date-setting today is more subtle than Miller's; instead of pinpointing a calendar year, date-setters say things like "I believe the Lord will come in my lifetime" or "they way things are going , he will almost certainly come before the close of the century." The principle is the same as Miller's, whether the time predicted is a day, a year, a lifespan, or a century. On the other hand, the principle is also the same in the case of those who claim that the Lord is not going to come in their lifetime, or the twentieth century, and so on.

The discussion of the end-time begins with this concern, which arises from the most difficult problem connected with the subject. Throughout history sincere believers have lived with the conviction that the Lord is coming soon. This was the expectation of the early Church, as expressed by such sayings as the promise of Jesus at the end of Revelation: "Surely I am coming soon" (Revelation 22:20). Almost 1900 years have elapsed from the time John heard that promise from Jesus; what then did Jesus mean by "soon"? Granted the word does not imply a specific date. But if you promise a child you are going to take him for an ice cream cone "pretty soon" he does not understand that you mean in fifteen years or more-he certainly does not expect that ice cream cone several hundred years after his death. He assumes you mean within the next five minutes or, failing that, within the hour. If you haven't kept your promise by then, he concludes that you won't.

An adult's perception of time is not the same as a child's, so "soon" can, in some contexts, imply months or even years. But the Greek text of Revelation 22:20 does not give us much hope that this is what it means here. The Greek word translated soon means just that-at once, or quickly, or without delay.

By anyone's rational definition of "at once," "quickly," and "without delay," the time has obviously run out on Jesus' promise-except in a special sense which I shall try to explain.

Time is both personal and historical. Man measures time in years; his life, his civilization, his continent, his planet, his solar system he presumes to measure in years. But of all these things man measures, Christian man presumes that only man is eternal; that is, when he dies he passes from time into eternity, where past, present, and future (as time is divided) may all be apprehended at once. In a personal sense, therefore, your death and mine are the close of an age for each of us; any future historical even, such as the coming of the Lord, may be apprehended by us at once, with no more waiting period. What this means is that every person living on the planet now is literally running out of time; if I am going to die in the next five minutes, or the next fifty years, that is all the time I have. It doesn't make any difference to me, therefore, whether the Lord comes in a historical sense five years or a thousand years after I die. I am in eternity experiencing past, present, and future (including the coming of the Lord).² Whether you agree with this understanding of time and eternity or not, you surely live with the common-sense realization that this life is your only certain opportunity to serve the Lord before his coming.

But the end-time covers more than your personal allotment of time. It is historical in the sense that it deals with the destiny of societies, nations, civilizations, and planets-indeed, of the whole cosmos. In this larger sense the Lord does not necessarily come soon, as men measure time; rather, we infer that his coming is near, that it is possible at any time.³ This is the explicit meaning of the parable of the fig tree. Through it we can show how near the coming of the Lord is. It is imminent.

Before going further, certain terms need definition. The end-time is the period of time which precedes the return of Christ. It will become apparent as we proceed that we are now living in the end-time. The return of Christ, the coming of the Lord, the second coming all refer to the same event: the appearance of Jesus, physically and unmistakably, in the clouds of heaven, as clearly predicted in Acts 1:9-11. The return of Christ marks the close of the age, so these expressions are used interchangeably.

In Matthew 24 Jesus shows how the events of the end-time relate to one another in response to the question of the disciples, "What will be the sign of your coming, and of the close of the age?" (v. 3). Since our subject is Jesus and the end-time, we will return to this chapter again and again as his own clearest teaching on the subject. But now we will focus on the fig tree in response to the urgent question "When is he coming?" We want to discover how much of that question is answerable.

"From the fig tree learn its lesson; as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near." After a hard winter the most hopeful sign of the approach of warm weather is the first show of green in the branches of the trees. So Jesus says, when you see the events described, you will know that the Son of man is ready to come. "So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates." Some commentators say that the fig tree is Israel and its leafing is the return of Jews to the land, but that interpretation takes the parable out of context; it is an example of the scissors method of interpretation described earlier. In context Jesus is talking about the signs which he has just outlined in the preceding verses. When he says all these things, he is referring to them. If the fig tree is Israel, it is one thing, one sign; Jesus would not have said all these things but simply this. "When you see this taking place." The parable is simple: just as leaves are the sign of the approach of summer, so are the events described the sign of the approach of the close of the age. This is the interpretation Jesus himself gives to the parable.

Then Jesus utters what C.S. Lewis calls the most embarrassing statement in the Bible.⁴ "This generation will not pass away till all these things take place." Note, however, that Jesus uses the same phrase here as earlier, and it is identical in Greek as in English. The phrase all these things refers, reasonably, to the same things described in the previous sentence, unless Jesus and Matthew deliberately tried to confuse us. In the previous sentence all these things referred to the signs leading up to but not including the close of the age, since the close of the age was the event to which they pointed. That is also what it means here. In other words, Jesus does not foretell that the close of the age would take place in the generation then living and hearing him, but that the signs leading up to the close of the age would be fulfilled. The sentence is not quite as embarrassing as Lewis thought.

The signs of the end, according to Jesus, were to be fulfilled in the first century of our era-that is, within the lifetime of his hearers. They were not to be delayed until the twentieth century or any other century. Again, some commentators say that the generation Jesus refers to is a future generation, but there are two problems with that interpretation. First, Jesus says this generation, and his hearers would take what he said as an obvious reference to themselves and their contemporaries. Second, if he were referring to a future generation, then the anticipation of the New Testament people, who looked so plainly and eagerly for the coming of the Lord, was mistaken. That is difficult to accept, since the expectation of the eminent return of Christ is integral to the inspired text of the New Testament.⁵

I do not believe the writers of the New Testament were mistaken. I believe they looked for the coming of the Lord with eagerness because they knew that the signs of the end were even then being fulfilled, so that the Lord could come at a moment they "knew not."

The coming of Jesus is near, therefore, not because William Miller or his modern-day counterparts have decoded Daniel and Revelation, and not even because the Jews have returned to Israel, but because the Gospel promises it. It always has. The only assumption, in fact, that we dare make about the coming of the Lord is that it will be soon. That was the only safe assumption in the first century of the church's history and in all the centuries since. It is better to believe that it will occur soon-even in point of time-because it could occur at any time, than to wait for the fulfillment of other signs and be unexpectant.

When the signs are fulfilled, Jesus said, then he is at the very gates. No on e knows when he may enter. The world can do nothing to prevent him from coming and nothing must happen in the world before he comes.

The question lingers whether all the signs are fulfilled, as Jesus said they would be. The signs as listed in Matthew 24:3-28 are general in character except for two. The general signs are persecution, false prophets, famines and earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, and the multiplication of wickedness in the world. That certainly sounds like the twentieth century but it also sounded like the first century and most of the centuries in between. There is nothing particularly specific or unusual about any of them. The specific signs are of more interest-the desecration and fall of the Temple in Jerusalem and the preaching of the Gospel throughout the whole world. As it happens, the desecration and fall of the Temple did occur in the lifetime of several of Jesus' hearers-in A.D. 70, when the armies of Rome smashed Jerusalem. The preaching of the Gospel to the whole world presents a different kind of problem-the question of how language is being used. We tend to literalize the expression "the whole world" and take it to refer to the most remote tribes in the most hidden mountain valleys-but the biblical writers did not understand it in this literal sense. The expression in Greek means "the inhabited earth," but it was used in a limited way. In Luke 2:1 we read that "a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled." The expression all the world is the same in Greek as the whole world in Matthew 24:14. But of course Caesar Augustus did not send out a decree that the most remote tribe in the most hidden valleys of South America should be enrolled; he didn't know about them. Rome, with customary arrogance, equated her empire with the whole inhabited earth, though it wasn't that by a long shot. But the biblical writers picked up the expression and used it, as inhabitants of the Roman Empire, in the customary sense of that day. We must remember that the Greek expression belongs to Matthew or a previous writer who translated the original words of Jesus from Aramaic. And the words Matthew gives us as the equivalent of Jesus' words meant as one usage "the Roman Empire." We do the same thing, of course. Japan is a great baseball country, but when, in your memory, was the World Series ever played in Tokyo?

Our command to preach the Gospel is not limited to the Roman Empire, but the sign Jesus promised as preparing the way for his return was, in the understanding of his contemporaries. That was, after all, their world; when the message went out with such great speed in the first century, the apostles fulfilled the sign.

If all the signs are fulfilled in the first century, then is there no sign reserved to give us warning of the close of the age? Not according to Matthew 24, unless one takes the "tribulation" of verse 29 as separate from the tribulation mentioned earlier; this is possible, since Jesus says, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days." It is possible, but not likely.⁶ The end of all things is as sudden as "the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west" (v. 27).

The thrust of the interpretation is that the Lord could return at any time. The close of the age is imminent; it has been throughout the history of the Church from the first century on. As sensational as date-setting interpretations can be, I find this more sensational. Sensational, but not scary to the believer-other than a healthy fear of the unexpected that is the lot of everyone. To the believer, the coming of Jesus is the appearance of the Savior, not the advent of a stranger.

In one of the Narnia stories there is an episode in which a boy must ride a strange path over a mountain pass at night. There is fog so thick he cannot even see the head of his horse. But as he goes, he senses a presence alongside him; he cannot see it, but he can speak to it and it to him. At first he is terrified, but as the night draws on he tells his unseen companion all about himself. Then the light breaks and he sees that he is in the presence of Aslan, the great Lion-king of Narnia. And he discovers, as he sees his path for the first time, that it was the presence of Aslan alongside that kept him from plunging off the narrow way and down the mountainside.⁷

Christians live like that; we are in the presence of Christ and the presence of catastrophe. But at any moment the light may break, and we will be able to see him who has been our companion and guardian along the way.

¹ The story of William Miller and the quotation from him are in W.W. Sweet, The Story of Religion in America, Harper and Brothers, 1950, pp.277-279.

² It is also possible to view eternity as unending time. The Bible is not explicit on the subject of time and eternity; both views are inferences drawn from the Bible.

³ G.C. Berkouwer, The Return of Christ, Eerdman's, 1972, pp. 94, 95, 168.

⁴ C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night and Other Essays, Harvest Books, p. 98.

⁵ See Lindsey, op. cit., pp. 53, 54, for an alternate interpretation of the parable and saying.

⁶ The "immediately" of Matthew 24:29 must be taken in the same sense as the "soon" of Revelation 22:20, in order to avoid an impossible contradiction. See Eerdman's Handbook to the Bible, Eerdman's, 1973, p.491.

⁷ C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy, Collier Books, 1972, pp. 155-162.

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