Eschatology Enigma

I was born and raised a Pre-millennial Dispensationalist. Don't know the term? No problem. You certainly know the concept. It is by far the most prevalent view on end times (eschatology) today. Here's the basic package. Jesus came once, lived, died, and rose again. The Bible is certainly clear that there will be a Second Coming. (Yes, we even capitalize that term because it's so big.) While views vary on that event, the most common is this Pre-millennial Dispensational one. The idea is that at some point in the future (most of us believe in the near future) there will be an event commonly referred to as "the Rapture" where all Christians (true believers, mind you) will be taken up out of this world. This will start the period known as "the Great Tribulation" (which, again, is so great that we capitalize that term, too). We know a lot about this time. There will be 3 1/2 years of peace and 3 1/2 years of horror. There will be a character called "the Antichrist" (who is, in some way, different than John's references to "antichrists") who will be the one-world leader. As "the Beast" along with Satan as a God-the-Father mimic (the Dragon) and the False Prophet, he will be a major part of the unholy trinity that rules the world during this 7-year period. We know that there will be 144,000 Jews saved during this time, that all sorts of wrath from God will be poured out during this time, and that it will end in Armageddon, the ultimate battle between Christ and the Antichrist. Then begins the Millennium (thus the concept of "pre-millennium"), a thousand-year period of Christ's reign followed by a showdown between Satan and Christ that ends in Satan's defeat and brings on the Great White Throne Judgment ... end of story. Well, of course, not the end. More like beginning. But you get the idea.

This is what I grew up with and this is what I believed. We had lots of information about it. We knew, for instance, that the "locust" with "lion's teeth" and "tails like scorpions" would likely be some sort of modern attack helicopters. We had a pretty detailed time line of what would happen when and, while the accounts were vague (because they were largely written by a 1st century guy looking into the 21st century), we had a pretty good idea of what it all meant. It is, to this day, the prevailing view.

Atheist Bertrand Russell wrote Why I Am Not a Christian. In it he offers what he considered to be a great problem for Christianity -- the Second Coming of Christ. You see ... it didn't happen. It is clear in Scripture that the authors and Jesus thought it would be soon, but we figured out that terms like "quickly" didn't actually mean "quickly", but something different. I understood that when Jesus said, "This generation will not pass away ..." (Matt 24:34), He actually meant "the generation that is around when it starts". But, to be honest, even C.S. Lewis identified this as "the most embarrassing verse in the Bible".

So I was interested one day when someone (I can't remember who) challenged me to read Gary Demar's Last Days Madness. In it, Demar lays out what I have learned is the Partial-Preterist Amillennial view. This view holds that (most of) the events of Revelation and Matthew 24 have already happened. (It is "partial-preterist" because the full preterist would say that all have occurred, a position I cannot fathom.) Now, while the Pre-disp (so I don't have to type out that whole long name every time) would say, "Those preterists are taking Scripture as analogy rather than literally true like we are", the truth is that the preterists are taking some Scriptures as literal and others as analogy while the pre-disps are taking those literal Scriptures as analogy and the other as literal. Note, also, that one of the keys to the pre-disp position is the dating of the Revelation (you know, that last book in the Bible). If, as Demar (and others) argues, the book was written prior to 70AD instead of closer to the mid-90s, then the prophecies would more likely be about things reflected in 70AD instead of some distant future.

Well, as I said, I was grew up as a pre-disp. Changing that was not going to be easy. After reading Demar's book, I concluded, "Huh ... now I'm not sure anymore." He made the point that all those repeated references to "soon" and "quickly" and "near" really seemed to indicate "soon" and "quickly" and "near". So I was no longer convinced of either. Lately I have been reading in Matthew. In Matthew 10 Jesus is sending His disciples out on their first "missions trip". He specifies, "Go nowhere among the Gentiles and enter no town of the Samaritans", so this is a limited (as opposed to global) mission. He tells them, "Truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes" (Matt 10:23). Now, that's a bit more specific than "quickly" or "near" or even "this generation". And it isn't the only place. In Matthew 16, Jesus says, "Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." Again, this is pretty specific. He references "some standing here", much more clear than "this generation". And the event they would see was "the Son of Man coming in His kingdom".

Now, there seems to me to be only a few possibilities. First, it could be that Jesus was wrong. Of course, we have to throw that one out if we want to retain Christianity at all. So we'll move to the second. It could be that He didn't mean what He said. No, no, I don't mean that like it sounds. Maybe He meant "some standing here" to mean something other than that or "the Son of Man coming in His kingdom" to mean something other than that. Some, for instance, have suggested that He simply referenced the next event -- the Transfiguration. The third possibility would be that He meant exactly what He said. No dodging about. No allegorizing. Some of those standing there at that time would see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom. Of course, then we'd have to figure out what that meant. The preterists would argue that this is a reference to the events of 70AD when the Jewish Temple was destroyed. (Preterists, by the way, explain that there actually was an event in the sky that would have corresponded to the event in Matt. 24:30 that says, "the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky.") Of course, if this is true, then the popular pre-disp concepts that I offered at the beginning begin to fall apart. Anyway, something to think about.