New Thoughts: (03/05/23-03/10/23)

We have, once again, a fair amount of ground to cover in considering what we can discern as to any sequence of events.  Perhaps I should begin by identifying the pieces in motion.  We have seen reference to these last days, which I tend to thing synonymous with the Tribulation.  We have seen several occurrences of the day of the Lord, which I have noted comes on a somewhat more individualized basis to each nation and each man.  We have seen that above and beyond this is the great subject of this whole exercise, the Last Day.  And with that Last Day, we find some connection with the Last Battle.  We also find this idea of the Rapture.  So, I think it somewhat natural that our concerns tend to be with how Rapture relates to Tribulation and how these relate to the Last Battle.

As I say, the day of the Lord extends over everything up to the Last Day.  It is a day of finality for those for whom it comes, whenever it comes.  It is the crisis moment, the moment when evidence has been weighed and the court’s decision rendered.  Well, let me put a slightly different spin on that, because throughout, when I have looked at that point, it has been as regards the unbeliever, the unredeemed.  But cannot the same be said of the believer?  Go back to that moment of salvation in your thoughts.  I don’t know.  I suppose there are many for whom pinpointing that moment proves impossible, the memory elusive:  I’ve always been a Christian, so long as I can remember.  Okay, fair enough.  This exercise isn’t for you then.  But for those who can, go back.  Do you not recognize that in that moment, the assessment was made of you?  Do you not recognize that in that moment, the full price of your debt before this heavenly court had been marked, “paid in full,” and the decision rendered?  This one is righteous.  That has been your legal standing ever since.  And it has no doubt confused and amazed you at times that it is so.  I know for my own part it would be hard to look upon my record even at this present day and suggest it was clear evidence of a holy man.  For all that, it’s hard to look at Abraham, or Aaron, or David, or Moses and find such clear evidence.  Sure, and they had a pretty good track record overall.  But pretty good isn’t what this court demands.  Perfection is.  “You shall be holy, for I AM holy” (1Pe 1:16-17).  And as Peter continues, He whom you now call Father is the One who impartially judges each man according to his works.  And this, he says, ought to lend a certain urgency to our efforts to conduct ourselves in reverent fear so long as life here continues.

But we do so with this recognition that judicially, before the court of this perfectly impartial judge, our case has already been heard and decision rendered.   Let’s be clear.  It’s not, “This one is innocent of all charges.”  No.  It may well be, “I see no record of any charges.”  For, as I have commented often enough now, we have this imagery from Paul of the debt wiped from the record, all mention obliterated, erased from the page so that there can be no bringing it up again later.  The bill has been nailed to the Cross, the document destroyed.  There’s nothing to refer to.  “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?  God is the one who justifies!” (Ro 8:33).  Do you feel the power of that?  It’s no longer possible!  There are those who argue that Satan is no longer at liberty to appear before this court, except, I suppose, as defendant himself in that final judgment.  But again, judgment has already been determined.  It’s the sentencing that remains.  And for us, for the elect?  At bare minimum, I dare say we shall hear, “You are free to go.”  Whether there is notice of debt paid, whether there is review of the record and I am wrong to think it erased, still the final outcome remains unaltered.  All penalties paid in full.  You may go.  The court is satisfied.

We have already visited with Joel a number of times in pursuit of this subject of the Last Day, but let us hear from him again.  We say the tide turning from disciplinary punishment to blessing.  We saw a vast army come, and we saw that the Lord Himself will deal with them, so that His own could ‘rejoice and be glad in the LORD your God,’ whose people will ‘never be put to shame’.  And with that all said, we come to that passage that Peter saw fit to utilize in his first sermon, recognizing that he was, in that very moment, experiencing the fulfillment of it.  “And it will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind.  Your sons and daughters will prophesy.  Your old men will dream dreams.  Your young men will see visions.  Even on your servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days.  Wonders in the sky, wonders in the earth, blood, fire, and smoky columns; and the sun darkened, the moon turned bloody…  All this before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes” (Joel 2:28-31).

Well, there’s clearly sequence to this, isn’t there?  And much of it could be accounted of a cyclical nature.  Israel is comfortable, then Israel sins.  Israel sins, then comes disciplinary punishment.  Discipline is applied, then comes repentance.  Repentance leads to forgiveness leads to blessing, and we’re right back at comfortable.  And the cycle repeats.  And repeats.  And repeats.  Until comes this new step of God’s Spirit poured out on all mankind.  This is something very much new.  Certainly, Israel had known occasions of the Spirit being poured into one man or another.  Bezalel and Oholiab come to mind, filled with the Spirit of God so as to craft all the components of the tabernacle (Ex 31:1-11).  Or, of course, we could look at Moses, or David, or any of the prophets.  But this is something new:  the whole people filled, and not just the whole people.  It goes even farther.  All mankind!

And reading that note to the message, I suppose I should have to conclude that what Peter and company experienced was still as yet but the first wave of this fulfillment.  I almost go so far as to say they only experienced a partial fulfillment, and we yet await the fullness of it.  But that likely over-reads the message.  For the Gospel did go forth from Jerusalem, and with its expansion, so the Spirit of God has been poured out in all manner of peoples and nations, surely sufficient to satisfy the rather loose quantification of all mankind.  And if it wasn’t so in those first brief decades, well!  It hasn’t stopped, has it?

Oh, but some would say no, this was but a moment, a brief outpouring in which the matters of prophecy and visions applied.  And to be fair, so far as I know, we have not seen this display of wonders in the heavens or on the earth.  I mean, we still have folks looking for signs that this day of darkened sun and bloodied moon are drawing near.  Fair enough.  The sequence continues, for all of this, he tells us, comes before the Day of the LORD.  We’re still looking at last days more generally, or some period between that and the final scene.  After all, those tribulations which I have come to associate with this disciplinary visitation of trouble upon God’s own certainly continue in our own time.  We in the West have our problems, and see rising animosity, and rising incidents of trials and tribulations that are not so obviously directly connected to being a people of faith.  I’ve touched on that already.  It’s hard at times not to hear bits of the Revelation echoing in our thoughts.  A third of the earth burnt up, a third of the sea bloodied, a third of its animals dead and a third of shipping destroyed (Rev 8:7-13).  It goes on.  A third of the waters gone poisonous, a third of the lights of heaven dimmed such that a third of the day was in complete darkness.  We may not be quite at those ratios yet, but the wreckage is piling up, the troubles growing, and it seems that by and large we refuse to see anything but accidents and natural occurrences in it all.  But the LORD utters His voice before His army…  Who can endure it?  And the cry continues.  “Even now, return to Me with all your heart”  (Joel 2:11-12).

Are you enjoying a personal time of plenty, of comfort?  Be careful!  The cycle continues.  Comfort too easily leads to sin, and the flesh is weak.  Pray, therefore, that the Spirit may indeed be poured out in abundance, that you may stand firm in faith and resist the temptations of the evil one.  Pray, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”  For this promise still holds.  “It will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD will be delivered.  On Mount Zion there will be those who escape, those survivors whom the LORD calls” (Joel 2:32).

Sequence.  All of these difficulties, and the periods of blessing and plenty, precede.  The period of prophecy, whether you choose to see it as finalized and finished with the close of the Apostolic age, or whether you consider it ongoing and yet vital to the life of the Church, precedes.  All of this, it seems, falls into the broad expanse of the last days, of these last days.  And only then do we arrive at the final Day.

Malachi gives us another checkpoint.  “Behold!  I send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and terrible day of the LORD.  He will restore hearts:  fathers to children, and children to fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (Mal 4:5-6).  And, we might note, with that, God fell silent.  Until at last, one came in the spirit of Elijah, John the Baptist going forth as a voice in the wilderness, crying out, ‘Make ready the way of the Lord!  Make His paths straight!’ (Mt 3:3).  But Malachi references a terrible day of the LORD.  It’s that crisis point we have spoken of.  This is not, I think, the glorious day in which our Savior returns in glory with the clouds of heaven.  This is the assessment made, decision rendered.  It is that singular moment in the individual or national life which determines outcome.  And look at that which constitutes the deciding factor here!  In a certain light, it’s the strength of the family unit.  But that is no doubt a forced reading.  But it certainly would appear that the strength and expression of real, heartfelt love amongst the people is very much the yardstick, or to borrow from Amos, the plumb-line.  How’s your construction going?  What have you built on My foundation?

Now, we have seen some sense of sequence with these two, an interplay of this then that.  But I am not as yet ready to cast any firm declaration of sequence from the materials at hand.  Let’s have a look at what our Lord has said.  And this may take us a while, as we have at least the whole of Matthew 24 to consider.  The disciples, much like ourselves, heard news of what was coming, and it only made them curious, and perhaps a bit concerned.  I mean, they had just been commenting on this edifice built for the worship of God.  Look at this temple, Jesus!  Isn’t it marvelous?  What a wonderful bit of work it has been, and how Your people have contributed to its growing beauty!  Consider that all their lives they had known this place under construction, and only now, it seems, was it in something like final form.  And how does the Son of God respond?  Yeah, very nice.  But you know what?  It’s all coming down.  Not one stone will be left atop another.  WHAT?  Warning:  This is your Prophet speaking.  You wanted prophecy, you got it!

Alright, let’s pause even before we get going.  What’s up with this?  Well, first off, we might consider that this temple, so far as we know, was never authorized.  It was the whim of Herod, looking not so much to glorify God as to make a name for himself.  This was, after all, hardly a godly man.  Indeed, his wickedness was such that even in Rome they found him reprehensible.  But there is more to it than just the cause of its construction.  Here is another bit of the cyclical nature of our experience.  “Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘this is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!’  If you don’t get your act together, it’s going down, just as I had to do with Shiloh, where first I made My name to dwell.  Will you indeed steal and murder and lie, and pursue your sexual sins, and give sacrifices to Baal and other gods you have not known, and then come waltzing into My house saying, ‘We are delivered!’?  Really?  You want My blessing so you can go on with your abominations?  No, I tell you!  I will do to this house just as I did to Shiloh.  I will cast you out of My sight” (Jer 7:4-15).

What was going on was that even these closest companions of Jesus were ready to trust more in earthly things than in heavenly realities.  They saw this great edifice and thought, here is God being glorified.  Far from it!  The cleansing of the temple by their Lord ought to put paid to any such idea.  That clamorous noise that occupied the court of the Gentiles, making it all but impossible that the nations should come and worship?  This was hardly glorifying God.  The profiteering on sacrifices, rather than honoring the provisions made in Scripture, such that even the lowliest individual could come up with that which they could sacrifice?  No.  This was not something God found pleasing in His sight.  And, as I have often enough observed, go look at the fall of Jerusalem, and the accounts of the horrors and atrocities committed by those who once more came to think that the presence of the temple meant that they could get away with murder and fear no consequences, even murder in the temple itself.  “Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, relying on horses and chariots.  They do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the LORD!” (Isa 31:1).  It’s the same old story.

One could readily look at the sort of nationalist fervor that grips the church from season to season and see something of the same mindset playing out.  And we wouldn’t be the first, we likely won’t be the last.  Israel certainly suffered from this perspective, and for this perspective, for it is a perspective that rapidly becomes a deceptive wrap laid over serious corruption.  Britain found the same thing, she who thought herself the New Jerusalem as she spread empire around the globe.  Behold what a wonder we are.  Surely, God cannot do without us!  But He did and He does.  And now, we have this shining city on a hill, and many read that with swelling pride in their hearts, and point to the legacy of missionaries sent out, and think this will be enough.  God must preserve us.  But there is no God must.  There is no demanding payment from Him Who owns and deploys all.  At best, we have occasionally managed to do as we must, being His servants.  But an honest assessment must surely recognize that these occasions have been rare, and grow rarer still.  Must preserve?  Far from it.  A more accurate assessment must surely conclude that if there is any must at all, it is that His Justice requires that He demand satisfaction for crimes committed against His holiness.

So, yes.  The disciples hear this rather shocking response from their Teacher, and are rightly shaken by it.  If the temple is to be destroyed, then can it possibly be otherwise than that the whole of Israel is destroyed together with it?  I mean, this is not a huge place.  And Rome!  Rome is a powerhouse.  They’re not given to surgical strikes.  They tend more towards overrun, for shock and awe, as the phrase was when the US went to rescue Kuwait, and proceeded on into Baghdad.  And so, when they again have a relatively quiet moment, they come to Jesus asking, “When is this happening?  When are You coming?  What signs will tell us that the end of the age is upon us?” (Mt 24:3).

And with that question asked, Jesus answers.  And at least by Matthew’s report, He answers at length.  It could well be that Matthew has collected together multiple sessions.  But it could as easily have been a talk as they returned to Bethany from Jerusalem, or as they sat together that evening.  It really doesn’t matter how it was delivered, does it?  There is a purpose in having this message set out in one body, and in part that is in order that we can see the scope and the sequence of the thing.  And Jesus begins with an interesting starting point, when you think about it.  The first thing He has to say in answer to this is, “See to it that no one misleads you.”  And then, He proceeds to lay out those signs we have been considering, those first birth pangs of the Last Day (Mt 24:4-8).  Wars and famines and earthquakes and false Messiahs?  These aren’t the signs if immediacy.  These are the first notes.  And as we have observed, they aren’t the sort of signs that we could account as one time events.  They are something of a constant, aren’t they, in these last days?

And with that we arrive at our first note of sequence:  “Then they will deliver you to tribulation and kill you.  Then you will be hated by all on account of My name, and many will fall away, delivering each other up and hating each other.  False prophets will arise and succeed in misleading many, and given the increased lawlessness, most people’s love will grow cold” (Mt 24:9-14).  Again it would be pretty easy to accept that we are already in this period, wouldn’t it?  Believers killed for no other reason than that they believe?  Check.  Hated by all?  Check and check.  There is something that I think we would acknowledge is on the rise here in the West.  Everything is to be tolerated except Christians.  A falling away?  Well, certainly we have plentiful polls indicating decreasing attendance at churches, don’t we?  And if we weren’t seeing it before the Covid business, that certainly put things moving in that direction.  And we saw tribulation and trouble come against any church that dared defy  the government’s efforts at total control even in the realm of religion.

As to false prophets, I suppose we could lump a fair number of televangelists in there, but I think it’s gone well beyond them.  The internet has brought about an age when false prophets have easy access to the living rooms and offices of those who make easy marks.  And they mislead many.  They speak so well!  They refer to Scriptures, maybe, or tell you that there’s some new revelations come along that render such references outdated.  They promise much, claim much.  But they deliver nothing but death.  But do you know, I think it’s that last signal that really strikes hard.  The love of many will grow cold.  It’s tempting to try and expand that beyond concerns within the body, and to see it as a more general comment on society.  But Jesus speaks specifically of love in the agape form which is indication that He is indeed still considering the body of His church.  You can hear this echoed in the letter to the church in Ephesus.  “I have this against you:  You have left your first love.  Remember, and repent.  Get back to what you were, or I will remove your lampstand out of its place” (Rev 2:4-5).

So we come back to our passage and read, “The one who endures to the end shall be saved.”  And all of this has got to make you ask what happened to assurance?  Where is the treasured perseverance of the saints?  If this is going to so decimate the church, how secure can we be in our faith?  Well, I will simply insist that nothing has changed there.  John’s assessment holds.  “They went out from us to show that they were never truly of us” (1Jn 2:19).  But to that point they still seemed to be.  They could talk the talk, and walk the walk at least enough to convince us that here were kindred hearts.  So, no, what is in view here is not heated struggles between denominations, not even, I would say, the division of Catholic and Protestant.  This is within.  This is something happening at the local level, however small you wish to define local.  Within the church you attend of a Sunday, here it comes:  The ones in the pew over there will prove false, delivering up the true believers to the authorities, hating the true believers for their belief.  But still, the message rings out.  Still, the Church stands victorious, even in such affliction as this, perhaps we should say, most vigorously in affliction such as this.  From earliest years this was recognized.  We have Tertullian’s declaration, which has been something of a motto in the Church ever since.  “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”  And we see it play out over and over again, even in the present day.  Look to Iran.  Look to China.  Look even to the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church, after long years of vicious suppression.  And then hear your Teacher’s summation of this phase.  “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached to the whole world for a witness to all the nations.   Then the end will come.”

Now, that’s a step that many have taken to heart, for one purpose or another.  It is at the core of missions work, isn’t it?  Here are the frontline workers in bearing the gospel to all nations.  It’s at the core of the efforts of those who see to it that the Bible, and sound teaching materials are translated into as many languages as can be achieved, even, in some cases, helping to develop written language so that the work can be done amongst people groups who have, until now, remained unlettered.  Others look at the work remaining, the peoples yet unreached, and take it as a comforting note that the end remains at some distance.  It becomes an excuse to take one’s leisure, and not get overly worked up about this Last Day business.  Don’t suppose yourself immune to such thinking.  Chances are pretty good you’re not.  I know I can fall into that thinking when I look at those birth pang signs.  I know those who get deeply excited with anticipation at every news report of some new disaster in the world.  It’s as exciting as hearing of revivals breaking out.  He’s coming!  Any day now.  It can be exhausting to be with such believers.  But there’s the opposite danger of becoming so ho-hum about the whole affair that we join those Peter warned about, the skeptics who look about and say, “Yeah, yeah.  Everything is as it has always been.  What’s the excitement?  Where is He, then?”  No, we might not take that last step, but we’ve got one foot in the air in preparation to do so.  Watch out!  “At that time many will fall away.”  Many will be found false, not truly having the faith they claimed, and perhaps even thought they really possessed.

So, we get a new sign added, something beyond those first birth pangs.  “When you see the abomination of desolation in the holy place, he of which Daniel spoke, get out!  Flee to the mountains and don’t stop to retrieve anything.  Just go.  For at this point in the flow of events there will be a great tribulation, the like of which has never been seen before nor will it again.  It’s going to be so bad that unless this period is cut short, nobody will survive it” (Mt 24:15-22).  This is terrible!  I thought we were already in the Tribulation.  But no.  This is to the Tribulation as foothills are to a mountain range.  You thought those were high?   Look beyond.  You thought this was bad?  Look what’s coming.  But look with the eyes of faith.  “But for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short.”  Hear this in conjunction with what we already know from the prophets.  “On Mount Zion I shall have My remnant.”  Perseverance of the saints proceeds.  And we might also observe this from our Lord, before we get too panicked about this great trial.  “He who believes in Me shall live even if he dies” (Jn 11:25).  “Don’t fear those who kill the body but can’t touch the soul.  Rather fear Him who is able to destroy both in hell” (Mt 10:28).  Keep your eye on the Lord.  Keep your thoughts upon heaven, wherein is stored your inheritance.

So what is the nature of this new tribulation?  Well, we’re going to hear claims that Jesus has appeared here or there.  This, I think, goes well beyond claims of revival.  I would like to think that most of those claimed revivals are valid.  I don’t incline to pack up a bag and go see live and in person.  That reeks too much of fandom and falsehood to me.  But if indeed revivals are breaking out around the world, and if indeed people are truly coming to life-redeeming faith at these events?  Praise God, and may it continue!  But we have this caution.  This is not it, not even these revivals.  False Christs and false prophets will arise.  Well, yes.  And here, too, it seems pretty clear that we have something that’s been happening almost non-stop down through the ages.  Even John was dealing with the like, and Peter and Paul and the other Apostles.  But the message we need to latch onto is this:  When He truly comes, there will be no missing it.  There will be no cause to inform others of where He has appeared.  It’s going to be universally obvious, impossible to miss.  Like a vast lightning storm, nobody’s going to fail to see the flash.  But this goes well beyond anything like that.  This goes beyond even some oddness with sun or moon, which would need at least a day to register to all points of the globe, although I suppose newscasts might send notice ahead of visible evidence.  But again, “No need for anybody to tell you.”  God, Who is outside Creation, Who is Spirit and not to be contained in any physical container, is not limited, even to the limits of physics and aerospace.  He is perfectly able to make Himself present to all, in all their varied locations, at one and the same time.  Nothing prevents Him doing so.  Nothing could.  So, we get that odd message.  “Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather” (Mt 24:15-28).  But all He is conveying here is the same base message:  You don’t need somebody telling you where I am on that day, and if they do, you can be certain they are wrong.

But we’re still not at that moment of the Last Day yet.  We have this.  “Immediately after the Tribulation” comes that dark day we’ve been hearing about since Joel.  The Sun goes out.  The moon, lacking sun to reflect, goes dark.  Stars fall from the sky.  The very heavens are shaken.  “And THEN the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky” (Mt 24:29-31).  Then.  And with all lights out, the appearance of our Lord upon the stage shall make for a most magnificent entrance, don’t you think?  And He will send His angels to gather the elect.  Here are the dead called back to life.  Here are the living snatched from the earth to join Him in the air.  Here is the last battle.  And in many ways, I should think we must take this as the most terrible note, even as it ushers in our most wondrous joy.  Here, it seems to me, is Jesus’ answer to the pre-Trib / post-Trib question, and it is most vehemently post.  I mean that’s hard to counter, isn’t it?  It’s direct and unambiguous, after the Tribulation, that period so terrible that it must needs be cut short to preserve the elect, after the heavens blink out, only then do we arrive at the scene of our Lord upon His throne appearing to all the earth and calling the elect to Himself.  And though it does not have mention here, I think we would have to accept that here, too, is the calling of the condemned to receive sentence and go on into an eternity of punishment.  “An hour is coming when all in the tombs shall hear His voice and come forth; those who did good to a resurrection of life, those who did evil to a resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:28-29).  No, you won’t need anybody telling you it’s time.  Even the dead know it.

Jesus closes the teaching with a parable, that of the fig tree (Mt 24:32-39).  You can look at the tree and tell the seasons.  It’s not hard.  You see the leaves and you know summer is at hand.  Even so, when you see these things, He is at hand.  And there is this difficult declaration.  “This generation will not pass away until these things take place.”  What?  Yeah, I don’t know either.  I know this:  All of those who sat listening to this message have long since departed this earthly life, John included.  I know too that all those who have believed, going back even to Adam, yet live.  That is Jesus’ message.  Though he dies, yet shall he live.  I could observe, too, that with the death of Christ on the cross, and His resurrection, we could in some sense see a fulfillment of sorts of these things.  The sun was darkened for a brief time.  The temple, the Church of the day was divided, and ready to tear out these Christians.  See Paul before conversion.  He wasn’t some anomaly.  But however clear the signs, yet it remains:  It shall be like Noah’s day.  They didn’t understand then until the flood took them away.  They won’t understand now, until the Son of Man appears and time is done.  Opportunity knocked.  There was a time for repentance.  That time has passed.  Judgment has been rendered.  There remains only the sentencing, and then, an eternal incarceration.

But again, we must recognize that for all that we have these signs laid out, this sequence of events forecast, the fundamental truth, Christ’s Truth, remains.  “You do not know the day your Lord is coming” (Mt 24:42).  “The Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will” (Mt 24:44).  “The Master will come on a day when his servants don’t expect him, an hour they don’t know” (Mt 24:50).  The call, then, is not to try and get so familiar with the sequence that you have his return pinpointed so you can be ready.  The call is to be always ready because you never know.  You don’t know the timing, and for all that we have these signs laid out, you don’t really know the specifics.  You do, however, know the outcome, and it is for that which you hold on.  It is for that cause that you seek as best you may to be ready, whenever this should come.

Okay, so one might suppose that having heard our Lord’s word on these things, we have them settled.  But then we come to what Paul has to say of these events when he again writes to Thessalonica.  The reason given for that letter is clear enough.  Some in the congregation had become convinced that this Last Day, promised to come before this generation passed away, had already come.  After all, it had been some twenty and more years since Jesus rose, and that generation was already some ways into their years at the time.  How much longer could it be?  Remember, they knew it as something imminent, but had not had opportunity to be taught in depth, as Paul would have preferred.  So, there had been speculation.  There had been, it seems likely, false teachers come among them, or perhaps just the loud whispers of the unbelievers around them, mocking their newfound devotion.  It would be in keeping with Peter’s observations as to mockers, wouldn’t it?  But what has he to say to his charges on this matter, other than to assure them that no, the day of our Lord’s return has not yet come?  I mean that much should have been obvious, given our Lord’s description of His return.  It will not be something that one could possibly miss.  But perhaps their discipling had not been able to address that part.

Well, Paul sets out some precursors, prerequisite conditions (2Th 2:1-10).  There will first be ‘the apostasy’.  There will be a great falling away.  Okay, but there have been fallings away all along, haven’t there?  The disciples were told at the outset, “You will all fall away because of Me this very night” (Mt 26:31).  But that’s something different, and as it proved, something temporary.  But there was also that said in the passage we were just looking at.  “Many will fall away and deliver up their brothers, hating them” (Mt 24:10).  These are two very different things.  Paul is looking at that earlier case, the irreparable case.  As to that falling away of the disciples, surely it is a message of hope for us, that even when we have proven timorous and shied away from boldly speaking our faith, there remains the sure hope of salvation, there remains the comfort of forgiveness and a returning to His love.

This, though, is an altogether different affair.  This goes hand in hand with the revealing of the lawless son of destruction, who exalts himself as God in his own right, even taking his seat in the temple.  Here is that abomination of which Daniel wrote, another sign Jesus had set forward.  So, Paul is not fashioning some new set of indicators here.  He is teaching what his Teacher taught.  And look!  It wasn’t as though he had left these things unsaid while with them.  That excuse for misunderstanding is removed.  “Do you not remember?  I was telling you these things when I was there with you!” (2Th 2:5).  That one will come, he will be revealed, but know this:  The LORD will slay him with the mere breath of His mouth, and put an end to him by His return.  This dark forerunner works in accord with Satan, and he will have his own signs and wonders to perform, though they are false signs, false wonders.  And his goal is simply to deceive.  But he deceives those who perish, because they are the ones who did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved.

So, what do we glean from this?  I’ll tell you what I have just gleaned.  This apostasy is not a case of believers losing faith.  It is those already perishing who fall away, those who did not receive the love of the truth.  That is the same as to say that they were never saved in the first place.  They may have professed belief, but they did not possess belief.  They may have looked the part, but they were never of us.  Here, then, we may see the separating of the wheat from the tares, if one cares to bring that parable into the mix.  Or we might account them the seed sown among rocks.  The word took root, it is true, and they received it with joy at the outset, but it did not root firmly, and when affliction and persecution arose on account of that same word of God, they fell away immediately (Mt 13:20-21).  The last days are a time of sifting, a time of revealing the validity of our claimed faith.  And for those in whom faith is truly found, that faith shall in fact prove valid.  Those whom the Lord loves will stand fast, because He causes them to stand fast.  He has given us everything needful to life and godliness, and He has given us the enormous boon of the indwelling Holy Spirit to speak to us and remind us of that equipping, to encourage us to take up our equipment, recall our training, and withstand the assault, firm in faith, eyes fixed on heaven.

With that, we might have a look at Paul’s other discussion of the Last Day, or at least a portion of it.  I will save some of it for the next section, and have likely already considered other parts of it by now.  I’m losing track, to be honest.  It’s been a long exercise.  But there is this portion in his lengthy teaching on resurrection which speaks somewhat to matters of sequence.  “But each in his own order:  Christ first, then those who are His at His coming.  And then comes the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule, all authority, all power.  For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.  The last enemy to be abolished will be death” (1Co 15:23-28).  Is there conflict here with what has been said already?  It sounds sort of like there is, for now we have the Rapture, that resurrection which is his great theme through this section, seemingly arriving before the last battle, before the defeat of our enemy and of death.  But is that really what we have here?

We are down to events, in that first declaration of order, which he himself indicates transpire ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ (1Co 15:52).  This is his focal point:  The resurrection in all its glory and all its significance.  But we have this in the middle of that exercise, and it’s not a diversion such as I might pursue.  It’s very much to the purpose of his message.  We rise, then comes the end.  But the point here is that this is the end.  The time to turn the kingdom back over to the Father is at hand in that very moment, for the last enemy has just been abolished, hasn’t it?  In that rising, in that resurrection, death has been abolished.  And His own are gathered to Him around His throne to witness this.  I would surmise that it is here, in this very moment, that we find the scene of our Lord separating mankind into sheep and goat columns for their final disposition.  But as we have already had cause to observe, judgment was already determined.  And we must also recognize in this description Paul supplies that the last battle has already come and gone.  His enemies are already under His feet, death included.  This is it.

And can it be – I have to say that this is highly speculative, but it does seem hinted at – that He, in turning over the kingdom to the Father, joins His sheep and goes into that heavenly New Jerusalem together with them?  Could it be that like our own blessed hope, He enters in no more to depart that place?  After all, we could look upon the New Jerusalem as now encompassing the whole of that kingdom anyway.  If all who opposed Him have been dispensed with and banished to an eternity in Hell, what remains but heaven?  I don’t know as I’d wish to insist on this as an intended implication of the text, but it does seem a possible aspect of the thing.

I see that I have as yet two more passages of some length to consider under this head, so I suspect I shall be at least one day more on it, probably more.  But for today, I think this enough to consider and to chew on for a bit.

The next passage I have in mind to consider is Isaiah 66:15-24.  This is the final message of that lengthy book, and it is probably worthwhile to back up at least to the beginning of the chapter to set the scene.  Honestly, this is a portion from which one could happily go farther back, for the preceding chapter is full of goodness for God’s people.  “I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people.”  “Before they call, I will answer.”  “The wolf and the lamb shall graze together, the lion eat straw like an ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s food.  They shall do no evil or harm in all My holy mountain” (Isa 65:19-25).  And this leads to a familiar notice.  “Heaven is My throne.  The earth is My footstool.  What house, then, could you build for Me in which to rest?  I made all of this, their being is through Me.  But I will look to him who is humble and of contrite spirit, who trembles at My word” (Isa 66:1-2). 

And on that note, things get a bit heavy.  He is assessing, and the assessment is not good.  There is no real difference between those who perform their rituals before Him and those who perform for the idols.  Of all of them, He says that they have chosen their own ways, and on that basis, He shall choose their punishments.  What a terrible conclusion, this!  “I spoke, but they did not listen.  They did evil in My sight, chose things in which I do not delight” (Isa 66:3-4).  But still, there are those who remain faithful, those whose brothers hate them and exclude them for the Lord’s sake.  And upon those who hate the faithful, God’s recompense comes, for they have made themselves His enemies.  And the message becomes curious.  Comparison is made to a woman in the pains of birth, and this Zion of God is that woman.  “Before she travailed, she brought forth.  Before her pain, she gave birth to a boy.  Who has heard of such a thing?  Can a nation be brought forth all at once?  Yet, as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her sons.  And shall I bring to the point of birth and not deliver?” (Isa 66:5-9).

So, He calls to His own:  Be joyful!  Rejoice with her, you who love her.  And rejoice with her, you who mourn for her, for the LORD extends peace to her, and the glory of the nations, overflowing like a river.  You shall indeed be comforted in Jerusalem.  You will see this and be glad.  “And the hand of the LORD will be made known to His servants.  But He shall be indignant toward His enemies” (Isa 66:10-14).  And that brings us to the mighty conclusion of this great book.

That conclusion begins with wrath, a wrath that is given in describing that ‘then you will see’.  He will come with fire, like a whirlwind, to vent His furious anger, and rebuke with fire, executing judgment by fire and sword alike.  “And those slain by the LORD will be many.”  And the description is once more one of cleansing among those who ought rightly to be seen as His own people.  But it is those whose practices are idolatrous defilements.  Of these He says that they shall come to an end altogether.  (Isa 66:14-17).  And this brings us to a point which needs some consideration.  “The time is coming to gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My glory.  And I will set a sign among them, and send survivors from them to the nations to declare My glory among those nations that have neither heard of Me nor seen Me” (Isa 66:18-21).  And dig this!  They shall bring your brethren from these nations as an offering to the LORD, bring them to ‘My holy mountain Jerusalem’, and He will take some of these as priests and Levites.

Okay, so what are we looking at?  Is this another glimpse at Armageddon?  Or is this something far different?  Much of it comes across as setting before us the very events that we see play out in the Gospels and onward through the acts of the Apostles and the rise of the Church.  What do we see?  We see a sign set among man, certainly, in the Son who came to live amongst His own, and His own rejected Him.  “I spoke, but they did not listen.”  And the birth of the church was explosive, relatively instantaneous.  Three years He spent in ministry, and even then, it really comes down to three days, doesn’t it?  In His death and resurrection came the birth of a nation, a nation transcendent, without borders, without bounds.  And in so short a time it had spread out from Jerusalem into the nations.  Here comes the gathering of the nations.  Here were a remnant of survivors sent out to bear witness to His glory, and what witness they bore!

Now, for all that, what we don’t see, at least in that immediate dispersion of the Gospel, is the execution of judgment by fire and sword.  What we don’t see is this purging of all false worship.  At some level, it would have been rather wonderful had it been so, but the destruction entailed in that would have been severe indeed.  And it would not be so difficult as all that to see at least a downpayment on fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem.  Here was an end to the corrupted practices of the Sadducees, at the very least, though the Pharisees continue on.  But there must be a greater fulfillment yet to come.  And that is certainly hinted at with the description of this Zion of God.  This goes so far beyond the geographic region we know as Israel.  This is Zion in full, the new kingdom come down, the final Kingdom, in which, as was said, lion and lamb can be at peace with one another, and death is no longer a necessary component of maintaining life.

So, is this in fact showing us anything pertaining to the sequence of events that surround the Last Day?  I had thought that perhaps in that notice of survivors sent out there was cause to see that the Rapture must follow after the Last Battle.  But I’m not so sure.  Perhaps there is another fulfillment of this yet to come.  Perhaps the initial establishing of the Church as transcending the limited scope of Jerusalem and that remnant of the Jews who believed.  Perhaps we shall see another such explosion of faith.  There have certainly been such explosions down through history.  We just went out last night to see the “Jesus Revolution” movie, with its reliving of that revival that transpired in the early seventies.  And we could look at others; the Great Awakening, the Welsh Revival, and others.  We could look at places around the globe where Christianity has come to those who knew nothing of those few years in Israel, nor of Israel’s God.  In Africa, in South America, in the islands of the Pacific, still His Word goes forth, and still it finds fertile soil in which to take root and truly flourish.  And some of that is down to those who, from among earlier nations, have taken up the task of being sent as witness to these other places.  Somebody had to tell them.  Somebody had to be the priest, the Levite, bearing word of God to those who most needed to hear.  I am not sure.  It seems to me that by and large this describes the whole period from Christ’s Incarnation right through to the end.  It describes the period we are in.  The sign has been set among them, and survivors continue to go out to declare His glory.  The revilers continue to come under judgment, and the redeemed continue to be delivered.  And we continue to await that day in which the new heavens and the new earth are made manifest, and manifestly permanent.

So, let me turn to one last passage, that of Revelation 14, and see what that might tell us of the order of events.  Reading through that chapter, my first reaction is that one would be hard-pressed to say with certainty where this fits in, or even exactly what’s going on.  We see that there are those identified as the 144,000.  Some take this to indicate the whole of the elect, I think, but I don’t see it.  For one, the number is far too small, and for another, this is not their sole qualification.  John is specific:  These are ones who kept themselves from women, purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the Lamb (Rev 14:4).  That says to me, subset.  They are not the whole of the harvest, certainly, for that hits nearer the end of this chapter, and these are already present and accounted for.  Now, apart from this notice of their presence, and that they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, there doesn’t really appear to be much else said of them. They are here.  End of message.

The scene moves on.  An angel proclaims the gospel to all the earth, announcing that judgment has come.  This is given as reason to worship God and fear Him.  Another angel follows, declaring the end of Babylon.  Yet, there comes a third angel warning that any who worship the beast or receive his mark will know the wrath of God upon them, a judgment of torment forever in the presence of the Lamb.  And John closes this part with a comment that might seem out of place to us.  “Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep God’s commandments, and keep their faith in Jesus” (Rev 14:6-12).  So, what are we being shown?  Well, to the degree that time and sequence have proper application to this vision, I would have to say it is showing us a heavenly perspective.  Time is nigh to meaningless, and events seem much more compressed.  I could take the first angel, for example, as being the birth of the Church and her mission, and I could say that this was clearly happening even as John was receiving this vision, and continues its course even to now.  But the fall of Babylon points us towards the Last Battle, doesn’t it?  Here is final victory, right?  Yet, if that’s the case, where is there continued cause for concern that some might take the mark of the beast?  If, indeed, there is sequence here, then we must find the fall of Babylon elsewhere, I should think.  Indeed, we might have to shift that first angel back just a bit and mark it down to the Advent of Christ, with the second angel marking His death and resurrection.  That would leave the third angel pursuing his ends throughout the current age.  I don’t know as that’s a proper assessment of these things, but it’s something.

So, the beast and his worshipers are condemned and dispensed with.  I would normally have associated that with the separating of the sheep and the goats before the throne of Christ at the final judgment, but this does not appear to be what is laid out here.  For one, the message that follows on John’s notice of the perseverance of the saints is a heavenly voice telling him to take a note.  “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!”  So, with all that these three angels have just pronounced, it would seem the Rapture has not as yet transpired, and believers remain earthbound, even though possessed of this assurance that in death they but rest from their labors.  And that actually is a beautiful and assuring thought, quite fitting to our concerns overall with this study of the Last Day.

And only then does our vision turn to ‘one like a son of man’ enthroned in clouds, who reaps the earth to receive her harvest.  And this is followed by another, an angel with sickle, gathering the clusters to be pressed in the fierce winepress of God’s wrath.  That really covers the remainder of this chapter (Rev 14:13-20).  There is a two-fold harvest, some to salvation, some to perdition, and in both, one sees a finality.  Yet, chapter 15 continues forward, with the seven plagues.  Is this a cycling back around or a continuation?  I don’t know, and I’m not going to proceed farther in the text at this point.  I have plenty to chew on with this one chapter, don’t I?

What have we seen, then?  Is there anything we can pull out from this to speak to matters of sequence?  Whatever we see, it must surely align with what has already been seen, if in fact we have seen clearly until now.  That much we can say, for Truth is Truth and does not shift and change before our eyes.  It seems to me that any sequence we are going to find must begin with that first angel proclaiming the gospel, and end with the one who reaps the grapes of wrath.  And between?  Well, we have that preaching, Babylon fallen, and then a period wherein there are still those who insist on worshiping the beast as well as those who are steadfast in their faith in Christ.  As I observed, this seems a fairly apt description of history from at least the Ascension of Christ to the present day.  Call it the period when the wheat and the tares are growing together.  It may not always be so obvious as we might like who is worshiping whom.  We have seen plentiful cause for concern that there must be a cleansing of the Temple, a falling away of those whose professed faith was false, and whose motives were nefarious.  There must be a purifying, a refining of the ore of this rich treasure that belongs to our Lord.  But again, however this sequence plays, it seems clear that John’s vision has compressed long ages into matters of but a moment.  But there will come that day, which I think we might rightly cast as the Last Day, when the harvest is ready and the Lord and His angels complete the work.

What is there to say to this, Father?  May I indeed be found amongst those who persevere.  May I be found going about those things I have been given to do on the day You come.  I could know great fear and concern in contemplating that readiness and the need for it, for I know I am far from any claim of being blameless, like those 144,000 before Your throne.  And I know blameless perfection is the standard.  But I know, too, that You have blessed me with that standing in Your Son, He Who died for us, and in dying put an end to Babylon’s deception.  And I cannot but be driven to explosions of gratitude, knowing this to be the case.  Here is Life offered out of the very ashes of death.  Here is hope where all is hopeless.  Here, indeed, is assurance.  I shall persevere because You are in me.  I shall persevere because You have purchased me.  Lord, preserve!  Lead me not into temptation.  Deliver me from every machination of the evil one, who seeks to distract and dissuade, that I may indeed be wholly Yours, not just in thought, but in deed.  For it is not our words that You declare will follow us even through the rest of death, but our deeds.  I know that these are not deeds of merit, done to earn my place with You, but rather deeds that express the work You are doing in me already, evidence of that character which You have formed in me, and which You continue to perfect in me, that declares like nothing else that indeed, here is one who is Your son.  Lord, seal me.  I am Yours.  Let me be a servant in Your household forever, and I shall be forever blessed.  So may it be.  Amen!