The Second Coming as Foretold in the Book of Acts
When I say that the second coming occurred during the same time described in the book of Acts, I am sure to provoke a few knee-jerk reactions. Today, we have been conditioned to believe the second coming happens in the future when Jesus raptures away the Church from the world. This event, as the left behind novels describe it, will leave the pagan world to sort through millions of piles of clothing, surgical implants, and dentures from the vaporized saints Jesus took away to heaven in their birthday suits. This is not what the Bible teaches and can only be described as an insane and laughable reading of the text.
A Metaphor for NT Eschatology
When constructing an eschatology of the New Testament, you will need to do so in layers, kind of like a house begins with a proper foundation, then successive levels get added, one on top of the next, until finally you can put the chimney and shingles on and live in it.
The Foundation: Old Testament Eschatology
In that sense, the foundation of New Testament eschatology, the critical understanding that lies under the surface of the New Testament text, is the manifold witness of the Old Testament. If we do not get our eschatological underpinnings from the men of old, or if we do not understand what they were saying rightly, we could waste a lot of energy and effort constructing an eschatological edifice that will not stand. And while many Old Testament passages have been appealed to in our study so far, a fuller Old Testament eschatology is still forthcoming.
As a reminder, however, of what we have covered so far, the eschaton (the final age of man) was already defined by God in the first age of man. God defined man’s purpose in creation as filling the world with joyful working worshippers (Genesis 1:28). While the first man fell in that task, the rest of the Old Testament is about how a coming man will succeed and have that global Kingdom. While more could be said, that is the point of eschatology in the Old Testament.
The First Floor: The Eschatology of Jesus
On top of that foundation, however, is the next level of New Testament eschatology developed by Jesus within the Gospels. There, you may have been surprised to learn that Jesus’ teaching on the topic did not concern events long into the future but events that would take place soon after His ascension. This is demonstrated most perfectly in Christ’s Olivet discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) and the chapters leading up to it (Matthew 21-23), where Jesus predicts 2 significant events will happen. The first will be that great woes will fall upon the Jewish people for not correctly stewarding the Old Covenant’s mysteries. The apostate Jews will be removed from their station to make way for Jesus’ new bride, the Church, which is made up of Jews and Gentiles who follow Christ.
The second cataclysmic event Jesus prophesied was the end of the Old Covenant order. This means with His coming, the Jerusalem temple would be destroyed, the Levitical priesthood would be severed, the sacrificial system ended, the festivals repealed, and everything existing within the Old Covenant that served as a type and shadow for the coming of Jesus would be moved from the mantle to the museum. All of this would be done to make way for Jesus’ end-time Kingdom, manifesting on earth through the Church as He reigns over it at the right hand of God in heaven. This Kingdom, unlike the one of old, would conquer the world that Adam lost and, through the true and better Adam, deliver back to God a world that is finally and fully filled with worshippers. Jesus predicted this Kingdom would be taken away from the apostate Jews and given to the bride of Christ (Matthew 21:43). He indicated that these earth-shattering events would happen within a single generation (Matthew 24:34). And all throughout that forty-year window of time, as the downfall of the Old Kingdom and the rise of the New is happening, Jesus would provide incredible evidentiary signs and wonders to showcase the truthfulness of His claims.
In previous episodes and blogs, we outlined those Olivet signs and wonders and demonstrated how they do not prove a future eschaton but confirm to His disciples what He said. Again, these were near-term events that actually happened in the disciple’s lifetime and would have been a source of incredible comfort and assurance to them as they walked through these events. The signs Jesus gave them to be on the lookout for were the rise of false messiahs in Judah, the uptick in wars and rumors of wars in the ordinarily peaceful Roman Empire (Pax Romana), a marked increase in large earthquakes and famines, a blistering period of persecutions that Jesus called “tribulations,” “signs of the times” (which included a moral collapse of the Judean people, a period of great evangelism throughout the Roman world, and a great apostasy from increased tortures and persecution), an abomination of desolation in the Jerusalem temple before it was destroyed, a period of great tribulations for the Christians just before Jerusalem was destroyed, a judgment coming of Christ to bring God’s wrath upon the apostate city and temple through the Roman armies (Part 1 and Part 2), and apocalyptic signs and wonders in the heavens to confirm what Jesus was saying. These teachings from Christ in the Gospels encapsulate the first level of New Testament Eschatology that is built upon the witness of Moses and the Prophets.
The Second Floor: The Eschatology of Acts
After constructing a foundation for eschatology from the Old Testament and the first story that was given to us by Christ in the Gospels, we have now made our way up the staircase to the second story of our end-times building, which is provided by Luke in the book of Acts. While many do not think of Acts as an eschatological book, it is the only book in the New Testament that details the earliest days of the Christian Church. And in that sense, it is critical to confirm whether we have understood the Old Testament passages and Jesus rightly.
Think about it like this, a derelict builder may construct a shoddy foundation, with a piss-poor, jerry-rigged first floor, without too many people noticing. The building stands, its flaws can be covered up a bit, and many uninformed consumers will jump on the discounted price, being none-the-wiser. But, the higher a building goes, the more exacerbated foundation-level issues will become. An inconspicuous error on the ground floor of a building, every cockeyed brick or wonky beam, will become a catastrophe on a higher level (as anyone who has ever played Jinga can attest). In this way, the higher floors confirm a foundation’s trustworthiness and faithfulness. This is precisely what the book of Acts does for the eschatology we have been teaching. It proves that we have understood the Old Testament correctly and that Jesus’ prophecies were coming true in the time frame that He has given.
For instance, when it comes to Acts confirming the eschatology of the Old Testament, the book gives several fascinating details. It begins with Jesus going up to heaven with the clouds, fulfilling Daniel 7. Jesus also tells His disciples that He has all authority in fulfillment of Psalm 2 and that His disciples are to take His Kingdom to the ends of the earth, fulfilling Daniel 2, Isaiah 9, and Zechariah 7. We also saw how the coming of the Holy Spirit mirrored God’s coming on Sinai, how speaking in tongues reverses the curse of Babel, and how prophecies like Joel 2 were fulfilled before the onlooking Jerusalem crowd’s eyes at Pentecost. This is a brief sketch, but it does demonstrate how the book confirms a near-term first-century inauguration of the final eschaton.
In the same way, the book of Acts confirms many of the details that Jesus prophesied in the Olivet Discourse and the Gospels.
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Encouraging Bible Passages: 2 Kings 20:5
The truth is, God is sovereign over life and death. If he seeks to heal someone, that is his prerogative. If he seeks not to heal someone, that is also his prerogative. Yes, we can all pray for healing, and all earnestly seek God in this regard. But at the end of the day we must trust him and ask that his will be done.
Okay, I already have a ‘Theology’ sub-section called ‘Difficult Bible Passages’ with 153 articles in it. And in this morning’s reading I came upon a really encouraging passage, as I often do. When I write them up, they might go in my ‘Sermons and Devotionals’ section. But I thought it is time to add this new sub-category. The problem is there would be so many older articles that I need to revisit and add to this new section.
So as my inaugural text, I will use 2 Kings 20:5 which states: “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you.” This comes from the familiar story of King Hezekiah. Below I will offer some theological and hermeneutical thoughts on this, but let me begin with some devotional reflections.
When I read this passage this morning I immediately posted it on my main social media page. I said this about it: “What God said to Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:5 is something we can take hope in: ‘I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you’.”
I also wrote: “He goes on to say that he has added 15 years to his sick life. My wife has been praying that prayer too. And whether or not we do get healing, the first two thirds of that verse is still a game-changer and something to take heart in: ‘I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears’.”
As you know, my wife has terminal cancer, and some time ago she said she was praying for another 15 years. God of course hears our prayers and sees our tears. How he answers our prayers however is another matter. The three main answers he gives are ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘wait’. We should above all want God’s will, not just our own desires fulfilled.
If the two line up, fine, but if God has other ideas from what we want, that is for the best. We have good friends who are in an almost identical situation: a busy Christian worker with a cancer-stricken wife. She has been praying for 20 years! (Maybe we should think bigger as well!)
But her chances are now down to almost zero, so she has to decide if she just stops the chemo altogether and focuses on quality of life for however long that might be, or keep on with the treatments and look at a possible small extension of life. A tough choice indeed.
It is a choice so many have to make, and likely one we too will have to make sooner rather than later. But every single believer in whatever situation he finds himself in can take real hope and encouragement from these two key truths: God hears our prayers and he sees our tears.
Other verses speak to this, most notably Psalm 56:8. As I wrote in an earlier article:
One final passage is well worth looking at however. I find it to be one of the most amazing and comforting passages in the entire OT. I refer to Psalm 56:8. As is often the case with Hebrew poetry, there may be some room to move here in translation, so I offer a few versions of this passage:
“Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll – are they not in your record?” (NIV)
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How Paul Measured the Missionary Task
Paul’s concepts of a “reached area” and the primacy of the taught Word of God can be a help to every church and pastor who are wrestling with how to effectively be about reaching every tribe, language, people, and nation. Is every sent one from the church to go to an unreached location, and is every missions’ dollar to go towards a Romans 15 type ministry? Surely not. But the framework and implications serve us well in teaching, stewarding, and giving some level of priority to “those who have not heard.”
In the 15th chapter of the book of Romans, we have Paul laying out his rationale for why he must press on to new places that have yet to hear the gospel.
He says this; “So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is written: “Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you. But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions, and since I have been longing for many years to visit you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. I hope to see you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey there, after I have enjoyed your company for a while.” Romans 19b-24.
There are two key observations about this passage. The first being that Paul says there are actual places where “there is no more place for me to work.” There was some metric by which Paul, the pioneer missionary, measured completion. Apparently, that metric had been fulfilled from Jerusalem to Illyricum, so Paul pressed on to places that still did not have what Jerusalem through Illyricum had.
This is no small point. Paul saw that there are limits to the missionary task. Every location did not count as a mission field to Paul. At some point, the task Paul was committed to was complete for a particular people group or location. Yes, churches need to be revitalized, least reached and poorly reached areas need help….but those were separate jobs from what Paul was called to do. His job was complete.
The second takeaway is that Paul saw the proclamation of the gospel as central to the missionary task. He is clear on this in Romans 10:13,14; “For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”
The missionary is then to go to places that have no foundation and preach the gospel. Those who have never been taught cannot come to saving faith apart from someone preaching to them. The ambition of missionaries is to preach where Christ has not been known, to build that foundation.
Three implications that come out of those two observations are as follows.
Every Christian is Not a Missionary
This logical outworking from Paul’s statement in Romans 15 is probably the hardest for Christians in our day to accept.
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The Climate Death Cult
Wynn Alan Bruce, climate martyr and climate saint, killed himself in a climate memento mori. We can pass him off as a clearly disturbed man and pray that his soul has found eternal rest, but what to say about the fact that a movement exists that valorizes him? In the long term, like the Shakers before them, climate activists will write themselves out of the future both with purposeful childlessness and by refusing to engage in life on normal terms.
On April 22—Earth Day—the climate activist Wynn Alan Bruce, of Boulder, Colorado, set himself on fire outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington D.C. The day after his death, the climate scientist Kritee Kanko tweeted, “This guy was my friend…This act is not suicide. This is a deeply fearless act of compassion to bring attention to climate crisis. We are piecing together info but he had been planning it for at least one year. #wynnbruce I am so moved.”
Kanko’s sanguine, even proud, reaction to a friend’s self-immolation is an example of what has become increasingly obvious to anyone who has kept up with today’s professional tree huggers: climate activism is now a death cult.
I have family members who work in the field of environmental protection, so I grew up around plastic reduction measures and solar panel installations and manuals about composting and recycling bins. I’ve worked on environmental projects my whole life, and I believe that we have a moral responsibility as the stewards of creation to protect it, especially when we see, for instance, how microplastics are causing infertility or how soil degradation is costing farmers money while lowering our food quality. But the “climate justice” movement, far from fighting to protect us, aims to destroy not only our quality of life today, but the existence of the human race in the future.
Consider the following headlines: “Climate change is making people think twice about having children,” from CNBC, “Your Diet Is Cooking the Planet,” from the Atlantic, “Social Distancing? You Might Be Fighting Climate Change, Too,” from the New York Times, and “Climate change anxiety is real. Here’s how you can manage those feelings,” from NPR. When the mainstream media marches in lockstep on this question, it is clear that there is a concerted push to make you feel bad for being a person. After all, we emit carbon with every exhalation.
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