| Jesus and the End-Time The End-Time in Outline The Beginning of the Last Days |
But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and give ear to my words. For these men ware not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:In the last chapter we tried to see history as God sees it, from the perspective of his Kingdom. It is now our task to see the same history from a human point of view-that of the Church. For the Church is a human institution, subject to the forces, personalities, and politics of human events; nothing describes the Church's situation better than Paul's inspired naming of it as the body of Christ. As Jesus was a human person subject to the limitations of his flesh and to events around him, so the Church is thus limited and influenced. Because we are part of the Church, this is our usual point of view. We examine history from within it, as participants. As the body of Christ, we bear the responsibility and joy of his winning of the Kingdom. At the cross there was an intersection of time and eternity; today that intersection is made continually contemporary in the ministry of Word and sacrament as carried on in the Church. So our participation in history is not entirely horizontal' because we contemporize the cross, it is also vertical. Kingdom history and Church history are not, therefore, accounts of separate events. They are different perspectives on many of the same events, with Church history beginning a little later than Kingdom history. The end-time has been the subject of several elaborate theories which tie the content of Biblical visions to contemporary evens and institutions. For reasons already stated in the chapter on interpretation, I do not propose to add another theory based upon visions. For one thing, I do not understand the symbolic numbers of Daniel and Revelation. For another, since I do not understand them, I can neither prove nor disprove theories based upon them. The theories refer mainly to events that have not yet taken place, so only history as it unfolds can prove or disprove them. Instead, what I propose is an alternate theory. It is not based on Daniel or Revelation but on a few words spoken by Peter on the day of Pentecost: "This is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it shall be…'" The disciples had been visited by wind and fire, they had received the Holy Spirit, and now they were "prophesying" in languages other than their own "the mighty works of God." This event, Peter declared, fulfilled the prophecy of Joel about the last days: And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out 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; yea, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.Peter's reference to Joel shows how the apostles saw themselves as people of the end-time. We, their successors, are also people of the end-time, for the end-time began at Pentecost and continues to the present day. Stated another way, there was never a period in which the Church was not living in the end-time. Peter waited for no other sign in order to declare that the end-time was upon the world. Peter was certain that the last days had begun because he knew that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of God. For any Jew, whether he was an apostle or not, that knowledge would mark the beginning of the last days: the Messiah was the figure of the end-time. Every other sign of the end is subject to this one; if the Messiah had walked the earth, one need not be terribly concerned with the details. The details can obscure the main events-the death and resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit. To the scribes and Pharisees who did not see him as the Messiah, Jesus himself had this answer: Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." But he answered them, "an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here" (Matthew 12:8-42).Doubts based on details are irrelevant and dangerous. Jesus himself is the issue, and it was he who gave to his apostles their sense of the end-time. One of the greatest needs in the Church today is a recovery of their urgency. A positive result of the current theories-skeptical of them though I am-is that they at least agree with the New Testament that we are living in the end-time. It is better to believe that and be mistaken in your reasons than to ignore the end-time entirely and have the men of Nineveh arise at judgment against you. In Peter's reference to Joel there are three evidences that the end-time began on the day of Pentecost; the experience of that day confirmed his conviction that Jesus was the Messiah. The three evidences are the coming of the Holy Spirit, the world in upheaval, and the declaration of salvation for all whom would claim it. When the disciples received the Holy Spirit, they spoke in languages not their own. It is tempting to make this "speaking in tongues," as it is called, the primary even, but the primary event was the coming of the Spirit, and speaking in tongues was only the sign of it. To confuse them is like confusing the contents of a package with its wrapper. We do not discount or deny that the disciples spoke in tongues, but the fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel was not tongues, it was the ability to prophesy-that is, to proclaim "the mighty works of God" (2:11). And the main effect of the coming of the Spirit was not the sign but the power, as promised by Jesus just before his ascension: "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you" (Acts 1:8). Pentecost shows how the Church was to be the instrument of the Spirit and Word of God. Peter tested his experience of the Spirit against the Word as revealed to Joel. It is fair to ask what has happened, since it is obvious that the Church as a whole has lost this sense of living in the end-time as the instrument of the Spirit and Word-or, to use the earlier image, as the body of Christ. A brief Church history supplies the answer. Shortly after Pentecost the organization of the Church became apparent when the apostles called upon the congregation to choose deacons. Indeed, even on the day of Pentecost there was some organization, since it was Peter and the eleven who stood up to explain themselves to the multitude, and not the whole body of 120 disciples. There is nothing wrong with organization. One of the gifts of the Spirit is administration (1 Corinthians 12:28), and no church operates without it. In the earliest part of its history, the Church's organization did not stand in the way of its ministry. The Christians had no difficulty believing that they were living in the end-time because persecution and tribulation were their lot, just as Jesus had foretold. But then in the fourth century Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The pattern of persecution and tribulation was reversed. It was no longer necessary to look to the appearing of the Son of Man for deliverance. Instead, the Church had all the protection it needed from the emperor. To be a Christian meant to be a person of privilege and status in this world. SO there developed over many centuries the idea of "Christendom"; people and priests were Christians, not because of a tough decision to follow Jesus in the face of persecution, but because they lived in the right part of the world (Europe and later America) and submitted themselves to certain rituals. The Church settled down into a theology of place; its buildings became sacred temples rather than meeting houses. Its ministers became merchants of salvation, dispensing grace through an elaborate sacramental system, rather than proclaimers of it. Christendom, over a period of a thousand years, became so established that Protestantism, while issuing a severe challenge to the sacramental system of the Roman church, largely accepted the idea of Christendom. Protestants as well as Catholics were willing for the Church to be the people of the present rather than the people of the future. The Church lost its sense of living in the end-time, the, because for much of its history it had a divided loyalty. It trusted in its organization, its discipline, and its alliance with the world rather than in the lordship of Christ and the leading of his Holy Spirit. Of course, God has used Christendom, too, so it is not my right to condemn it out of hand. I am an inheritor of it. But it is silly to pretend that a multi-million dollar, twentieth-century congregation, with its staff of psychologists, musicians, custodians, and pastors, with its membership of highly educated and highly paid professionals an d executives, is the same in style and attitude as those 120 disciples who were gathered on the day of Pentecost. They may be the same in essence, but not in attitude. In essence they are the body of Christ; but the one group is secure in this world and the other is not. The one group reaps its principal rewards in the present-in wealth, fame, and privilege; the other sees itself as people of the future. It may not be so incidental that the groups in the Church today who emphasize the Holy Spirit and the end-time often arise from social classes that have little of this world's rewards. The present offers them little; the future promises them everything. In this they resemble in style and attitude the first Christians on the day of Pentecost. Let me emphasize that they are not thus more Christian than their wealthy brothers in the big church. But they are indeed more Pentecostal. And, by living on the edge of the end-time, their theology in this respect, at least, is more "true to live." For the second evidence of the end-time in the prophecy of Joel is the world in upheaval. Those who live for the world-even in the Church-will find the things they have lived for passing away. "the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon into blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and manifest day." Whether the words are taken literally or figuratively, they mean the same thing: the present order will pass away before the day of the Lord, and the end-time is the period in which that will occur. That is why people who believe that this is the end-time, for whatever reason, are much closer to the truth than those who put their faith in earthly Utopias-whether scientific, communist, democratic, capitalistic, or churchly. Things as we know them are coming to an end. The only wise course, then, is to flee from dependence on the world or compromise with it. God has called his people to be the people of the future--he only future-because this world is passing away. When the sun turns to darkness and the moon to blood, where else is there to go but to the Lord? It is in the context of the world's upheaval that Joel declares salvation for all who call upon the name of the Lord. "and it shall be that whoever call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." This call to salvation is the third evidence that the end-time is upon us, because Peter, in quoting Joel, issues that call to the world beginning at Pentecost. In context, it has a "man the lifeboats" ring to it. In the dissolution of the present order, signified by the failure of the sun and the moon, all who respond to the call of salvation are saved from disaster in order to be the people of the future. The theme of Peter's sermon is the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus; Joel's prophecy is only the introduction to it. Because of Jesus Peter cites Joel's prophecy; because of Jesus the Holy Spirit comes, the world is in upheaval, and there is a way of salvation for all who want it and ask for it. Peter believed that Pentecost began the end-time and specifically said so. That is my alternate theory to those that claim the end-time is a twentieth-century fact without also being a first-century fact. It is not a new theory. But if you believe this is the end-time without accepting my theory, we still stand closer together, you and I, than we do to those who tie all their hopes to this world and to the present age. 1 Robert Farrar Capon, An Offering of Uncles, Sheed and Ward, 1967, p.16. 2 Bernard Shaw, Arms and the Man, Penguin Books, 1952, p. 77. 3 C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle, Collier Books, 1970, p. 137. 4 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Flower in the Crannied Wall," in English Literature and its Backgrounds, Volume 2, Dryden Press, 1949, p. 482. 5 Glen V. Wiberg, Called to Be His People, Covenant Press, 1970, p. 318. » Next Page — Persecution and Tribulation » Table of Contents » Home |