In this session we're going to begin a series
in the field of eschatology. Now, I know for some of you that term sounds
a little bit technical, but it's a common term in theology, and eschatology is a subdivision
of systematic theology that is particularly concerned about the last things, or the future
things, or what we call the "last days" coming from the Greek word for last times. Now, when we enter the arena of eschatology
we enter a fascinating subject, but one in which there's very little consensus among
Christians. There's probably more disagreement about matters
relating to eschatology among Christian people than among all of the other doctrines that
tend to divide us put together. And because of that there has been something
of a crisis in our time in terms of trying to understand the teaching of Scripture with
respect to future prophecy. Now, I need to alert you at the beginning
that as I canvass some of these issues of eschatology in this series I'm going to be
taking a position on eschatology that is a minority report. And in fact it'll be a viewpoint on eschatology
that many, if not most of you, who are hearing this will be hearing for the first time perhaps. And it may even come as a shock to you to
hear some of the positions that I take because my own thinking on eschatological matters
has undergone a transition from earlier times. I've been through various stages in my own
understanding of these things, and even where I come down today, I come down not with a
fierce dogmatism because that's a dangerous thing to do with respect to eschatology because
the subject itself is so difficult. Now, I'm going to be following basically the
structure and pattern of the content that I set forth in this book entitled "The Last
Days According to Jesus" and subtitled, "When Did Jesus say He would Return?" So, as I said, there is less of a consensus
in eschatology than perhaps any other aspect of theology, and we repeatedly hear about
debates concerning the time and nature of the millennium which is predicted in the book
of Revelation, the question of the relationship of Old Testament Israel to the New Testament
church, issues over the identity of this mysterious figure that we call the Anti-Christ, questions
about the nature and the time of the rapture, and the relationship between the return of
Jesus and the biblical concept of the rapture. Now, these are the kinds of issues that I
assume most of us are aware of, but what I want to focus attention on, not just today
but throughout this series, is another crisis of eschatology that is often overlooked or
ignored within evangelical circles of the Christian church, which crisis I believe is
the most serious crisis of all with respect to our understanding of future prophecy. And that crisis has to do with the question
of credibility, and it has to do with the credibility of two distinct objects. First of all, it has to do with the credibility
and trustworthiness of the Bible itself, as I will try to show you. And secondly it has to do even more importantly
with the credibility of Jesus Himself. And that's why I'm concerned to look at what
Jesus taught about the last things. I won't be covering many of the common issues
of eschatology, interpretations for example of the book of Daniel and the 70 weeks of
the Old Testament and that sort of thing, because I'm going to be focusing more on the
New Testament, and specifically the teaching of Jesus, for this reason: the point that
is often overlooked among evangelicals is that for the last 200 years there has been
an unprecedented assault against the trustworthiness of the Scriptures. Now, it's not that there was never criticism
of the Bible prior to the enlightenment, but since the enlightenment there has been a radical
escalation of criticism leveled against the believability, the credibility, of the biblical
documents. And that attack has not come simply from outside
the church, but for the most part in the last century or so the guns of criticism have been
leveled against the authority of the Bible from inside the church. Now, there are many reasons why the higher
critics level their attacks against the authenticity of sacred Scripture, but far and away the
number one central point of attack of higher criticism against the inspiration and authority
of the Bible focuses on matters relating to eschatology. It's been said that two-thirds of the content
of the New Testament deals with future prophecy. And if that prophecy is suspect with respect
to criticism, then, of course, that raises serious questions about our whole understanding
of the nature and credibility of the Bible. I'll just give you a little personal anecdote
in terms of my own background and studies. When I was a seminary student in an institution
that was not known for its passion for Christian Orthodoxy, in which I was exposed to most
of the radical theories of our day concerning the Bible, it seemed like there was no end
to the professors' criticizing the integrity of the Bible particularly with respect to
the predictions found in the New Testament regarding the coming of Christ and future
events that surrounded it. As I say, the critics focused on these issues
in their assault on the trustworthiness of the Bible. Now, even more significant than the question
of the credibility of the Bible is, of course, the credibility of Christ Himself. Even outside the church there are those who,
though they do not accept the deity of Christ, will affirm that He was a great teacher or
that He was even a prophet. But when we examine the future prophecies
of Jesus the critics come to these and say that the prophecies that Jesus made with respect
to the future did not come to pass within the specific timeframe that He said they would
come to pass. And if that is true, namely, if the prophecies
of Jesus fail to come to pass in the timeframes in which He said they would come to pass,
that would, bottom line, reduce Jesus to the role of false prophet. So let me just pause for a second here and
say my two biggest concerns, as I approach these questions of New Testament prophecy,
are to deal with the critical attack against the Bible on the one hand and against the
teaching of Jesus Himself on the other hand. Let me illustrate this problem as we discover
it not simply among biblical scholars, which we will look at later, but as it is summarized
for us in the famous criticism leveled at Christianity by the British philosopher Bertrand
Russell. Russell published a little book entitled,
Why I am Not a Christian, and in that book he gave a series of criticisms against historic
Christianity, against arguments for the existence of God and so on, but he focused his attention
on the central importance of Jesus to historic Christianity. He came at this problem saying that in his
opinion religion in general and Christianity in particular is positively harmful. The net impact on the human race and the safety
of culture and civilization of religion according to Russell has been negative. All the religious wars and the hostilities
and the fighting and the prejudice and the witch hunts and all of that that are part
of the blemish of church history he puts all together in one package and says that the
bottom line is that the net result of religion is harmful. And he said that he thinks that it was doubtful
if there ever was a Jesus of Nazareth. That is, from a historical perspective, Russell
doubted whether Jesus ever lived. Now, he's not alone in that, as we have seen
many critical theories particularly in the twentieth century in the various quests for
the historical Jesus that have raised questions about whether Jesus is completely mythological
and an invention of the biblical writers and never really existed in space and time. And we've seen the radical criticism of the
'Jesus Seminar' even in our own day that play around the edges of this kind of thinking. Yet, at the same time, Bertrand Russell made
a distinction between the real historical Jesus, which he doesn't think we can know,
and the Jesus that is presented to us in the literature of the New Testament, particularly
in the gospels. Now, he did have some good things to say about
Jesus. He had a certain degree of respect for the
moral character of Jesus, at least the Jesus who appears in the New Testament documents. Now, I find that somewhat fascinating as a
parenthesis because even the most fierce critics of Christianity find it difficult to attack
the personal integrity of the Jesus of the New Testament. On one occasion George Bernard Shaw was criticizing
Jesus for teaching one of the things He taught. He said on this particular occasion Jesus
didn't behave like a Christian. And I thought that that was somewhat funny
that when he was leveling this criticism, he couldn't think of any higher standard by
which to judge Jesus than the standard of Jesus Himself. But beyond that Bertrand Russell said that
though the Christ of the gospels displays a high ethical and moral character, He does
not display a great deal of wisdom. Isn't that interesting that this One who has
been regarded as the greatest teacher who ever trod the earth was considered by Bertrand
Russell to be not particularly wise. Now, his question regarding the wisdom of
Jesus focused chiefly on Jesus' teaching about the future. Let me give you a quote from Bertrand Russell
where Russell says, again, I quote, "He [that is, Jesus] certainly thought that His second
coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living
at that time." "Jesus certainly thought that His second coming
would occur in clouds of glory before the death of the people who were living at that
time." That's the chief criticism of Bertrand Russell. And, I might add, that that is the chief criticism
of the biblical critics and the biblical scholars of the last 200 years; namely, that Jesus
thought and taught that He would return, that He would appear, that He would come again,
that his parousia, His coming or manifestation would occur within a certain timeframe, a
timeframe that was restricted to the first century, and to the context of no more than
40 years from the time that He predicted it. Now, the three texts that most scholars make
reference to and all of which were referred to by Bertrand Russell in his criticism of
the New Testament at this point are these: First of all, the statement that Jesus made
to His disciples in Matthew 10:23, "You shall not have gone over all the cities of Israel
till the Son of Man be come." Now, here Jesus says that they, namely the
disciples, would not finish their missionary outreach beyond the sphere of all of the cities
of Israel before the Son of Man, and the Son of Man is a title obviously that is Jesus'
favorite self-designation -- He's talking clearly about Himself here -- until the Son
of Man be come. Now again, how long did it take the early
church to finish their mission of spreading the gospel across the city of Israel? -- long before the end of the first century. It certainly hasn't taken up till the modern
day for that mission to have been completed. And so here is a timeframe that Jesus gives
– you won't go over all of the cities of Israel until the Son of Man be come. Now second, "There are some standing here
that shall not taste death until the Son of Man comes into His kingdom." Now, again Jesus is addressing His contemporaries,
and of those who were crowding around to hear Him speak. He makes this statement, "some of you" – He's
not talking about us – He's talking to the people who were there listening to His prophecy. He said to them, "Some of you will not taste
death until the Son of Man comes into His kingdom." Now, we're going to look at that later on,
and of course, ask the question immediately what does Jesus mean by coming into His kingdom? Was He referring to His second advent or was
He referring to some other event? That's one of the questions that we will examine. But for now, just remember that this is the
second text that Bertrand Russell cites as evidence of the failure of Jesus' prophecies
to come to pass. The third one, which is perhaps the most problematic
of all, and the one that we will be taking great pains to examine in this series is the
statement we find in Mark's gospel, chapter 13, verse 30, in which Jesus declared to His
disciples after He had talked in great detail about His coming in glory, that He said, quote,
"This generation will by no means pass away until all of these things take place." This generation will not pass away until all
of these things be fulfilled or come to pass. What do you do with that? The way in which evangelical scholars have
handled these timeframe references have been in many cases far less than satisfying, and
certainly not satisfying to the critics who say that the plain and obvious meaning of
Jesus' words in these texts are that He intended to manifest Himself, to come again in glory,
within the framework of no longer than a generation, and in Hebrew terms a generation is approximately
40 years. Now, in addition to these three critical texts,
Russell and others point to a host of other statements in the Scriptures that indicate
that the early church – the apostolic community, certainly the Apostle Paul – that these
writers all had a sense of urgency about the nearness or the imminence of the coming of
Christ. And yet, according to the critics, those things
that Christ predicted would take place within a span of 40 years have not taken place even
to this day. The book of Revelation, which is the favorite
source for speculation about future matters and the return of Jesus also contains timeframe
references that we'll look at that speak about those things that must shortly come to pass. And if the book of Revelation in its majority
of its content is referring to the final consummation of the kingdom of Christ and His final appearing
in history – it's hard to see, since it's been 2,000 years since the book was written,
in any way that we examine this, that that which was promised to take place shortly can
hardly take 2,000 years and still be considered shortly unless we spiritualize these words
and talk about a day in the Lord's sight as though a thousand years, and so it's only
been two days since the prophecy's been given and so on. But in light of the teaching of the documents
of the New Testament, it is clear that the early church, the early Christian community
had this urgent sense of expectation. And, of course, the critics say that when
time began to pass and these things did not occur as had been predicted certain adjustments
were made to their expectation so that as the later books of the New Testament appear
there is more room left open for a long gap in history before the times of fulfillment
take place. But that's the kind of thing that we're going
to be looking at here. But the major concern of this series will
be to focus on how we understand these timeframe references that people have used to criticize
both the credibility of the Bible and the credibility of our Lord Himself.
