Wow. These questions have hit me in the face over the past few days as I've begun courses in both "Apocalyptic Literature/Revelation" and "Eschatology" (which is the name given to the theological study of the doctrine of "last things"--judgment, heaven, hell, etc. [from the Greek, eschaton, meaning "last things"]). It's not that I've never confessed to believing the doctrine of Christ's return (or his parousia as its often referred to, using the Greek word that is quoted in the NT). It's just that something inside of me started asking: do you really believe this?
I mean, it's been 2,000+ years (!) now since the first advent of Christ. It seems extremely doubtful that any of the apostles or the 1st century Christians could have expected a delay in the parousia this long--most of them expected his return within their own lifetimes to be sure! And even the most generous estimates by Peter in 2 Pet. 3:7-9 only hint toward a one-thousand year waiting period: what if we could go back in time and tell Peter, "hey buddy, we can tell you for sure it's at least two-thousand years." I think we'd blow the biblical authors right out of the water if we went back and told them that--and still we wait.
So do we believe it? Do we believe Jesus is coming back "to judge the quick and the dead"?
Now, let me clear that I am not asking you--nor have I been asking myself--to believe the strictly dispensationalist, premillennial understanding of his return. (If you're unfamiliar with what this means, just pick up Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, or the newer Left Behind series of novels... or better yet, just check out the picture below.) This particular eschatology has arisen over the past 200 years or so, beginning in colonial America, and is very popular amongst North American evangelical groups (though hardly with anyone else) today. While I certainly have to consider the implications of this popular view--and I think we all should--the question I have been confronted with is much more basic, simpler, and more to the point.
The "Rapture"of dispensationalist, premillennial, apocalyptic eschatology. (The idea being presented here is that Christ's parousia will be preceded [by 7 years] by a mysterious removal of all true believers from the earth, which will mark the beginning of the last dispensation of history--the 7-year reign of the antichrist.)What I've really been wrestling with is this: do I--as a fairly comfortable, well-off, North American Christian--really believe that Christ is going to step back into history at a decisive moment in order to judge the world--welcoming some of us into his kingdom and banishing others of us from it? I mean: heaven? hell? judgment? Aren't these words a bit too cryptic to really be taken literally? Do I really think that one day I might just look up at the sky and see JESUS--the bodily resurrected Lord? I mean, come on... SO many Christians have looked for the Lord to return throughout history--many of them setting specific or general dates for his return--and have been either vastly disappointed or even thoroughly humiliated when they're date passes right on by without event. I mean how can modern, 21st-century Christians--with the long history behind us, and surrounded by the scores of out-right wackos and con-men who take this stuff seriously--be expected to say with a straight face, "I believe the Lord Jesus will come again."
And yet... here's my confession: I believe the Lord Jesus will come again.
I don't know how it's all going to take place. I'm almost certain that when someone says they do know details that those details are almost certainly wrong. I don't know when it will take place, but I believe I should be expecting it every day. I don't know who goes to heaven or who goes to hell, but I know Christ has called us to follow him into his kingdom. I am extremely frustrated with the popular images and stories and interpretations in the evangelical Christian world that seem to ask you to suspend your intelligence, jump through a gazillion mental hoops, and sign your name to a time-line of the end of the world, which is the result of adding 400 to 1260 subtracting 7 taking the square root of "pi" and ending up at November 10, 2009. All of this confusion aside, however, and this remains for me....
I believe that history has a beginning and an end, and at both ends we find Christ--the One through Whom everything was made, and the One through Whom everything will come to its culmination.
So I truly pray and hope you'll pray with me: Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
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