New Thoughts (09/28/11-09/30/11)
Before I pursue my comments on this passage, I feel the need to comment on the paraphrased translation offered us by Mr. Wuest. I will provide it here in full, as pertains to these few verses. “And there shall be attesting miracles in the realm of the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth, national distress in the midst of perplexity, sea and billows roaring, men fainting because of fear and expectation of the things that are coming upon the Roman empire [revived], for the natural powers that regulate the heavenly bodies shall be disorganized.” This strikes me as being a pointed overstepping of the boundaries permitted us in handling the text.
Now, some of what we find in this paraphrase is to the effect of amplifying specific words to emphasize their significance. Thus, for instance, we find ‘attesting miracles’ instead of ‘signs’. However, even such an emphasis is a choosing to place one’s specific understanding upon the passage. Are the signs Jesus speaks of intended as ‘attesting miracles’, or more as portents of what is coming? I would tend to parse ‘attesting miracles’ as signifying the sorts of signs and wonders which were to mark the validity of the apostles (and which could also be counterfeited by the servants of antichrist). But, if they are more in the way of omens, occurrences beyond the normal course of nature pointing to major events to come, does that not fit the passage more cleanly?
That is, however, the lesser offense in this particular translation. What truly comes through as an overstep is this injection of the revived Roman empire. There is absolutely nothing in the text to support taking such liberties. This is a very clear case of reading opinion into the text rather than forming opinion from the text. To see the Roman empire implied in the least already requires having predetermined the meaning of what Jesus is saying in the surrounding text. Yes, He has spoken of the siege of Jerusalem, but it remains debatable whether His intent was to focus solely upon events that lay thirty years forward in time. Allowing the parallel texts of Matthew and Mark to comment on Luke, it seems clear that if He was looking to that event, He was also looking at something far greater.
To speak, however, of a revived Roman empire: There is simply nothing in the original language of Scripture to justify such a reading. The whole concept of there being a revived Roman empire is a matter of interpretation. It is the product of a particular eschatology, a viewpoint. It is fine to have such a viewpoint, and to be convinced that this is the implication of the apocalyptic material in the New Testament. It is quite another thing, however, to inject that back into what is set forward as a translation of the text. Even for a paraphrase, this is beyond the pale. Nor is this the only place I have found this insistence upon some revived Roman empire injected into this particular translation. There was another bit from the passages in my previous study which were given the same injected significance.
Let me reiterate: There is nothing here that requires one to suppose some reconstituted Roman empire as being part of the setting of the last days. It is misleading in the extreme to inject such a thought into sacred Scripture as if it were native to the original writings. It is as misleading, I think, as those who insist that the reinstitution of Old Testament style worship in a reconstituted Jerusalem temple are a necessary precursor of the end, and in this case, part of what God desires. What possible basis is there to suppose that God would wish to reestablish types and shadows when the Real is come? Greater care is required of us, as we come to His word. And, I should note that I am as subject to that requirement as any. For all that I am inclined to paraphrase, I should look at the results of this effort and be warned by it. There is always going to be a bit of reading in one’s perspective when paraphrasing. The caution, then, is to be certain that what one is reading in is actually there to be read out in the first place. It is fine, I think, to seek to put the intended meaning in one’s own words, and thereby etch the point more fully on one’s thoughts. It is not, however, fine to put one’s own meaning into a passage, when the passage has no such meaning.
Looking at these two verses, I find that they bear the marks of that poetic parallelism so common in the wisdom books. In verse 25 Jesus considers first the heavens and then the earth. In verse 26 He reverses the sequence, speaking first of the earth and then of the heavens. What is to be noted here is that in all that He mentions, the action is reserved to the forces of nature. The nations are mentioned, but only for their dismay and confusion, for the effect that events in the universe around them are having on them. So, in verse 25 He speaks of signs in the heavens above, and in verse 26 we find those signs described as the heavens being shaken.
Now, here’s an interesting thing: We are so often told by the unbelieving community that the text of Scripture is scientifically unsound. Indeed, much of what passes for the Church has taken this to heart, to the point that in many corners, the very possibility that the miracles described in Scripture were actually matters of God intervening in the natural order is rejected. Yet, as Jesus describes this disruption of the heavenly order, isn’t interesting that one of the few earthly effects He mentions is that the sea is roaring and the waves are beyond the ordinary. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe that the connection had as yet been made between the orbit of the moon and the tides of the ocean. Yet, that connection is on display here.
More to the point, though, all of these events to which Jesus points are events of a nature wholly beyond the capacity of man to control. He is discussing, after all, a shift in the course of sun, moon and stars. It may be described in terms of our perceptions of the event, that we will find the sun and moon dimmed, perhaps even eclipsed. But, the point is that the immutable order of creation will have been mutated, changed. It is not said exactly whether this is a momentary disturbance or permanent. As concerns the fallout, it would matter little one way or the other. The impact would be devastation even if the duration were brief.
Science has advanced enough to understand that much, and even to posit some scenarios under which things such as are being described here might come about. Suppose, for instance, a particularly large asteroid happened to pass too near to our earth? Or, suppose one of the moons of one of our neighboring planets breaks its orbit and does a near miss on our happy home? The impact of such gravitational shockwaves would be on a scale that would certainly fit the descriptions given us in Scripture of the final days of this age.
But, note this and note it well: Science may be able to describe and theorize how these things could come about, but they cannot orchestrate them. Neither can they orchestrate the means to prevent them. This brings us to a very critical point to have in mind as we read what Jesus is saying. He can. He does. That is perhaps the key point to understand in what He is relaying to His disciples and to us. Men will faint from the expectant fear of what they know is coming, because science has theorized and recognized the inevitable conclusion of what their instruments report. But the believer will know and understand that these uncontrollable events are most assuredly under precision control. They are under the control of that same One Who first set the stars and planets in their courses.
This is the limitation that the modern scientific debates refuse to look upon. However well the theories of astrophysicists may describe the courses of stars, planets and even galaxies; however well they may even succeed in explaining the growth cycles of these things, they cannot explain how the whole thing got started. No matter how far back their theories push, there is always the step before. If we look to the Big Bang as the beginning point, then one must come to the question of what caused the Big Bang. If that question is answered, then we must arrive at the question of what caused that which caused the Big Bang. And so on, ad infinitum. Like Zeno’s paradox, we can probe nearer and nearer the true original action, but never arrive at the ultimate cause. Except we arrive at God. Except we arrive at the One Who created all that is ex nihilo, out of nothing.
Let us suppose and even accept that the theories proposed for the origins of the universe are accurate. They still fall short, and must inevitably do so until they arrive at that which can cause nothing to become something. This is the failure point. This is the point where the staunchest opponents to a created order will suddenly arrive at theorizing things like alien beings seeding the universe. Fine. But, where did they come from? And what was their beginning? The riddle has not been solved, only avoided.
Now, then: Here in the unscientific, unenlightened age of two millennia ago, we find this One sitting and declaring with certainty that the courses which are barely even comprehended as being anything more than staid and unchanging facts of life are going to change. How can He speak with any certainty on such matters? It is precisely because He is the One Who sets their course. All of these things that are so very far beyond the control of man are perfectly within His control. They proceed in their steady courses because He has determined that they should do so. They will cease to remain steady in exactly that moment that He determines they should not.
The whole of history demonstrates that this is the case for peoples and nations, that the tides of empire are determined not so much by the men of empire, but by the God of creation. Daniel’s prophecies, which were glanced at in connection with the previous passage in this study, made that abundantly clear. Empires rise and fall, but there is One Who alone determines the timing of these events. They are in power only so long as He requires them to be, and when their hour is over, there is nothing in all the might of that empire that can lengthen its duration. This is a matter we do well to recognize for our own nation. If its day is truly over, then all our efforts to lengthen its time of supremacy are but spitting into the wind of God. If its day is not over, then all the conniving and chicanery of our worst politicians and the most delusional of our citizenry cannot succeed in bringing it down.
That this is the case is, again, to be observed throughout the historical texts of the Bible. It is the story of Israel, that God controls the tides of national power. It is recapitulated in the life of Jesus, against Whom the nations raged and yet, whose life was sacrosanct and untouchable so long as ‘the time was not yet come’. And, when the time was come, it was equally impossible to stop His death. Pilate tried. Even Judas tried, after his fashion. Why? Because the devil, having worked so hard to destroy the Son, to prevent His ever coming into being, had begun to realize that he had been snookered. He was once more trying to thwart the plan of God. If he couldn’t stop the Son from coming, perhaps he could prevent Him from going. But, no. He can prevent nothing that is in God’s purpose, and if he cannot, then we ought surely to recognize that we haven’t the power to do so.
So, then, these signs of which Jesus speaks are the more awesome because they are the marks of the One Who can move not only nations, not merely mountains, but suns and planets. He set them where they are and He can remove them from their places as He wills. There is, it would seem, only one reason in His will that would cause Him to do so, and that is as announcement of His own arrival. He has reserved the awesome shock of these events for a one time purpose, and until it is that time in His schedule for that purpose to be met in history, they shall not be moved.
Therefore, we have cause not to be terrified by the events Jesus describes. Oh, they are dire. If all we had was the certainty that everything He is describing will assuredly take place, we would be devoid of all hope. But, that is not all we have. We have the assurance that those who endure will live. More to the point, we have the assurance that our arrival at Life is in His hands and therefore we will endure. Our endurance is nothing of our own strength and all by His Spirit.
See, if we look forward but one verse we find the purpose for all this cataclysm: “Then they will see the Son of Man coming” (Lk 21:27). On His first visit, he had a man as His forerunner, announcing His arrival and calling upon His people to be prepared for a Royal visit. The ripples and shockwaves of that first visit are still playing out through this world. On His next visit, it won’t be a man that announces His arrival, but the very bowing of the heavens!
Is that what is being described here? Am I expressing nothing but my own imagination? I find my description from the word used to describe the event. Jesus speaks of the heavens being shaken. That term translates the Greek saleutheesontai. That word has its roots in the term salos, which describes a wave, a billow (being a particularly great wave). Saleutheesontai expands upon that meaning to speak of a wavering, an agitation or disturbance. It also has that inferred sense of the destruction caused by those actions.
We might be put in mind of the images seen of that tsunami that so recently devastated Japan. The images are shocking: the ocean is doing things it ought not to be doing. It’s a slow motion, unstoppable line of advancing destruction. I can easily envision that same slow but unstoppable line of advancing destruction describing scenes of battle both in the period to which Jesus was born and even into recent history. But, imagine something of a similar nature rolling across the skies. Isaiah wrote of the skies being rolled up like a scroll (Isa 34:4). It’s not hard to see why that passage would show up as a parallel to what is described here. Think about the white caps coming to shore at the beach. Those combers have an appearance not unlike the edge of a scroll being rolled up. Now do what you can to transfer that image to what lies overhead. Imagine it on a night in one of those rare spaces on the earth where the band of the Milky Way is plainly visible, and then imagine the horror of seeing that familiar display disrupted, disappearing. That is the sort of thing I find Jesus describing here. He’s outdone some of the finest writers in science fiction, and He’s done so in one sentence!
The question remains, though, whether that could rightly be construed as creation bowing to its Creator. Granted, that is assigning certain human attributes to what we would generally construe as inanimate. But, Scripture is not without reference to such things. Whether they ought to be taken with any degree of literality is a question, to be sure. But, we have mention of the trees clapping their hands (Isa 55:12). We have Paul explaining that the whole of creation groans as it awaits the revealing of the sons of God (Ro 8:22). Whether one chooses to keep these as figurative, fanciful depictions of the event, or as a more literal description, the impact is little changed. Creation cannot but react to its Creator. If, then, there is some form of consciousness beyond our understanding that is to be found even in the rock and magma that forms our earth’s core, it must surely respond to the presence of its Maker, even as we must.
We are told that when He comes, every knee will bow (Isa 45:23, Ro 14:11, Php 2:10). The power of He Who comes is such that even those who hate Him will necessarily bow down to Him. He will be acknowledged. Is it such a stretch, then, to suppose that the rest of the created order will likewise acknowledge the arrival of its King? I think not. What a marvelous image that provides! The Red Sea parted its waves to allow the passage of the people of the King. The very universe parts itself to allow the passage of the King Himself. Will it not bow down to Him Who reigns over all? I dare say if it is at all possible, then it surely shall be!
The Living Bible considers these words and arrives at the understanding that, ‘the stability of the very heavens will be broken up’. No doubt this is what it will look like to those who stand witness to the event. But, it’s not broken up, is it? Perhaps it is. It is just as reasonable, though, to suppose that what is being witnessed is not a destabilization but only a course correction. Indeed, if we live in a fallen world and that world is to be refashioned in perfection at His coming, could it not just as reasonably be said that the stability of the heavens is finally being established? What seems to us to be stability, what we deem the normal course, is a course that has always been flawed. That it has always been what it is does not require us to suppose that it has always been right. The most we can assert is that it has always been. But, what it shall be when God makes it as it was intended, fully establishes His shalom upon the created order, who can say apart from Himself?
As concerns the scene Jesus describes, it is not some new revelation He is offering, but a reiteration of what Joel had revealed in his prophecies. In Joel 2:10, for example, we have mention of the earth quaking and the heavens trembling, with sun and moon gone dark and even the stars dimmed. Could one arrive at a natural explanation for such things? Yes, it’s certainly possible. Something like what one might observe in proximity to a volcanic eruption comes to mind. But, again, that fails to arrive at the core why of the event, stopping at having explained the how. Joel later writes, of how the sun will become dark, and the moon to blood before the awesome day of the Lord comes (Joel 2:31). One could read this as describing an eclipse. We understand that a solar eclipse can lead to the localized appearance of a darkened sun, and that in some cases a lunar eclipse can leave the moon reflecting far more of red light than normal. But, both of these cannot occur simultaneously in the natural order of nature. Does Joel imply a simultaneous occurrence? That’s not clear.
What is clear is that the events leading up to the day of the Lord are awesome in a most terrifying way. With what Jesus describes in this passage, it is also clear that these events will be no surprise to those who witness them. They will have seen it coming. Note carefully the message of Luke 21:26. “Men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things are coming upon the world.” It’s the expectation, the anticipation of what is clearly coming and clearly unstoppable. Having recently passed the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the World Trade Center, we have been reminded of the last moments of those who found themselves trapped on its top floors. The floors below them were afire, and all means of escape were cut off by those flames. They could not have known at first that the destruction was so great as to fell the towers, but they were clearly well aware that their own situation was hopeless. Rescue would not be coming, could not come. There was only the anticipation of what the end would be like, not yet burned by the flames, but knowing it must come, and that it must come rather slowly. There would be time and enough to agonize before death came.
Many, facing this anticipatory agony, chose instead to jump to an equally certain death, hoping for nothing more than to shorten the period of their suffering. Others, no doubt, fainted from fear, particularly as the end drew nearer. But, the point I am making here is that the anticipation was worse in many ways than the end itself. Death is but a moment. For the atheist, it ought, one supposes, be particularly easy to face, for once it’s over there’s nothing, or so he supposes. This may well explain the jumpers. To die is to end the fear and the pain and enter into an oblivion that nothing can disturb. It’s wrong, but it is a mindset that could lead one to speed the process when the end is shown to be inevitable.
Yet, the terrible experience of those in the tower and the milder terrors we faced as witnesses to the event are as nothing measured against what Jesus is talking about. This is destruction on a global scale, a universal scale. If there was no escape from the upper floors of those towers, there is assuredly no escape when the heavens themselves are roiled! That book I alluded to, that sought to provide a more scientific explanation for the sorts of end time annihilation described in Scripture: the pictures it painted of humanity in such a crisis may be very accurate. Some, facing such dire days, may respond heroically, as we saw amongst the emergency responders in New York. Others will find in the chaos both reason and excuse to behave in beastly fashion, as we see in far too many cases, particularly of urban calamity.
All of this is pretty stark. Where is the hope, Jesus? Where is the certainty upon which to stand in the midst of such chaos and doom? Well, it follows quite immediately in Joel’s message as well as in what Jesus is relaying. Joel, having described the day, concludes by saying, “It will come about that whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered. […] There will be those who escape, the survivors whom the Lord calls” (Joel 2:32). Peter, repeating this message in his preaching, simplifies the point to “It shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Ac 2:21). The assurance Jesus offers is a bit more oblique. “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk 21:27). The focus is still on them, but the undertones for us are positive. The imagery is fully intended to keep us mindful of the full context of Joel’s message. Those who call upon the Lord will be saved. Those whom the Lord calls will be saved.
Let me just zero in on that message from Joel. Do you notice that there is a correlation being presented here? Those who call up on the Lord are those whom the Lord calls. This is not, we understand, a case of the Lord answering their call. It is a case of His preceding call having given them cause and permission to call upon Him in their turn. This returns me to what remains the critical point to carry from these two verses. Let me reintroduce that point with the words of the Psalmist. This one Who has called us is also the One “Who dost still the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the tumult of the peoples” (Ps 65:7).
Hear that! As He describes these events in the cosmos and amongst the nations, He speaks as the One Who is able to still them as He pleases. He is in control! He is in control of the natural order, for He created it, and He upholds it. Paul pronounced, “In Him we live and move and exist” (Ac 17:28). Indeed, were He to turn His attention aside from Creation for the briefest of moments we should all perish. Planets would part their orbits, the winds ceasing or spiraling out of control. All of life would collapse. I cannot, I find, describe this as well as I should like. The sum of it, however, is quite simple: The whole of Creation is and ever has been in God’s hands to do with as He pleases. Nothing is beyond His control and nothing escapes His control. Nothing takes Him unawares. All of these events that Jesus is speaking of are things that occur not because God has lost it, but because He has required it. He is greater than all these things.
He is greater than all these things, and He has already pronounced the outcome: Those who call upon the Lord, whom the Lord has called, will be saved. Go back to the preceding portion of His message. “Yet, not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives” (Lk 21:18-19). Remember that this declaration comes on the heals of informing them that some of them would be put to death (Lk 21:16). Yet, you will live. It is so very clear that this is not a conditional, if you manage to endure you will live. First, that would be a pointless statement to make. It’s about as useful as telling you that if you don’t die you’ll live. It must be heard in the certainty of the preceding statement: Not one hair of your head will perish. Though you be put to death, death is not the end. Death cannot hold you any more than it held Him. He has the keys of death and of Hades! He has conquered that final enemy, and He Who is Life, He Who is King of kings, has declared that you will live.
It is written. If indeed we are those whom God has called, our names have been set down in His book of Life. He has made His call and it being His, there is no place for doubting that what He has decreed shall indeed be the way it is. Though we be the generation that lives to see the Day of His coming, though we be the generation that endures these horrible signs, we endure them in the hope, in the certainty, that He Who orchestrates the signs has already orchestrated the means of our enduring, of our surviving, of our arriving at Mount Zion, the New Jerusalem. Even so, Lord Jesus! Even so, come quickly!
