Sermon Starters: Best and Worst of Times

Location: Silver Lake Wesleyan Camp

Text: Revelation 11:1-13 
Introduction

• The end times teaching of my childhood and 1990s: A Thief in the Night, Left Behind. These do not reflect what most Bible scholars actually think the Bible teaches exactly.
• I approach Revelation 11 with fear and trembling. But if I have it wrong, the message can be supported from elsewhere in Scripture. We preach from the whole Bible despite uncertainty of interpretation.

I. We are the temple.

• Is it the temple of John's day? Is it some end times rebuilt temple? Or does it symbolize something else?
• Most date Revelation to a time after John's temple. The idea of a future rebuilt temple is biblically dubious and theologically problematic (cf. Hebrews and Revelation 21:22).
• Clue in Revelation 12:6 -- The woman is the true Israel, the church. She has fled to the wilderness (cf. Mark 13:14) after her son (Jesus) was snatched away to God's throne. The 3.5 years in Revelation thus refers to the "church age."
• The temple is measured, protected. But the court outside is trampled by the Gentiles for 42 months, the church age.
• What does this mean? It means that we are the temple. Cf. 1 Cor. 3:16.
• A key to Revelation is that this current age is both the tribulation and the millennium, both at the same time, the best of times and the worst of times.
• We are marked, measured by God. But our courts are trampled by the world.
• When times are good, it's easy to forget that we are not of the world, that we are citizens of a heavenly country (Phil. 3:20). 
• Remember who you are. Illustration of time I was around people whose values overlapped significantly with me but still were of a different belief. I constantly reminded myself. "I don't really belong."
• That's how we ultimately are in the world. The world will trample, but we are marked by God.

II. We are the witnesses.

• Who are the witnesses? Two people from John's day? Two people from the end times? Or do they symbolize something else?
• 11:6 seems a fairly clear allusion to Elijah and Moses. Meanwhile, the mention of the two olive trees makes us think of Joshua and Zerubbabel (Zech. 4). Once again, we have tribulation and millennium.
• Moses and Elijah are the Law and Prophets, witnesses to the world. Joshua and Zerubbabel represent the rebuilt "temple" and the new covenant. For "3.5 days" they witness.
• Once again, this is the church in this current age. In other words, they are us.
• We are the witnesses. 1 Peter 3:15. Although this is often cited as a basis for argumentative apologetics, the context of 1 Peter is much more one of "exile" and persecution. We give witness when we are on trial (tribulation).
• The two witnesses face a double whammy. The beast (Rome) kills them in "the great city" (Jerusalem). Jerusalem is "Sodom and Gomorrah." What a twisted situation. Jerusalem should have been faithful but wasn't. Rome trampled on them.
• Reminds me of Jurassic World. They're being chased by one dinosaur. Then comes a T-Rex.
• It seems inevitable that the institutional church will fail us like Jerusalem failed God.

III. We are the vindicated

• The passage ends with the resurrection of the two witnesses after 3.5 days, after the tribulation, after the church age. So we will be vindicated. So there will be judgment.
• Vindication comes through the cross, not around it.
• Reminds me of Methods of Bible Study students who went through the whole course learning a painstaking method and then wrote a final paper that they could have written before the course. They went through the motions but more or less skipped the middle bit.
• Revenge is not the goal, although there are consequences in judgment on the world and "Jerusalem."
• It is a corporate vindication. There will be justice in the end. "Rome" will be judged.

Conclusion

• We are a "peculiar people" (T-shirts from my childhood youth group, 1 Pet. 2:9, KJV).
• Revelation 11 is about now. We are in a time when Christ has begun to reign. Yet we are in a time when we may face tribulation.
• Remember who you are.  We are a faithful witness. In this life we may be trampled on, but God wins in the end. 

The Sun Will Go Dark, the Moon Turn to Blood

I don't know if I ever officially announced here that I had finished and published the book going through the key concepts and passages often associated with end times prophecy.

Here's the link to the ebook.

Here's the link to the paperback.

Preface: The End Times Plotline 

1. Things will get worse and worse.
2. Israel becomes a nation.
3. We will be caught up in the air.
4. Magog will attack Israel.
5. These have come out of the Great Tribulation.
6. Antichrist is coming.
7. He seats himself in the temple as God.
8. They gathered at the place called Armageddon.
9. They bound him for a thousand years.
10. I saw a great white throne.

Epilog: The Biblical Plotline

From the Great Tribulation

We now come to the distinctive feature of John Darby's dispensationalism: the Great Tribulation. The idea of meeting in the air was not new. The idea of antichrist was not new. But no one before around 1830 had ever suggested that there would be a seven-year period of tribulation after a rapture of the righteous to heaven. This was the distinctive invention of John Nelson Darby.

And it is an ingenious invention! The starting point is Revelation 7:14, the key text for this chapter.
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These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
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We saw in chapter 3 that these individuals were not likely individuals raptured from the earth while alive. Rather, these are likely those who have been martyred for their faith. In chapter 3, we also argued that John probably was especially thinking about those who were martyred under the Roman Empire. 

In this chapter, however, we want to explore where the idea of a seven-year Tribulation came from. There are two places in particular. The one is Daniel 9, and the second is Revelation 12-13.

Daniel 9

2. Just as Ezekiel 38-39 is a passage that doesn't get a lot of attention, John Nelson Darby also noticed another little read passage in Daniel 9:24-27: 
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Seventy weeks are decreed upon your people and your holy city for the fullness of the transgression... from the going out of the word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem to the anointed one, the prince, [will be] seven weeks. And for sixty-two weeks it will return... And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one will be cut off and lose everything. And the people of the coming prince will destroy the city and the sanctuary... And he will make a covenant firm with many for one week. And in the middle of the week, he will stop the sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations, the desolator [will come] until complete and what is decreed is poured out upon the desolator.  
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It is commonly assumed that a "week" here stands for a seven year period. It is hard to make sense of the prophecy historically if it were referring to seven day periods. Given that figurative assumption, Darby then interpreted the years from that point on literally. Since 70 times 7 is 490, he assumed that Daniel was referring to a literal span of 490 years. 

He then took the one who "will be cut off and lose everything" as a reference to Christ. Since that point was 69 weeks into the prophecy, that would put AD 33 or thereabouts 483 years into the prophecy. Counting backwards, that would put the time of the word going out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem at about 450 BC. While not exact, this is about the time that Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem (ca. 444 BC). 

But the most distinctive point of Darby's interpretation is his sense that the counting of weeks went on pause at the point of Jesus' death. At that point God switched "dispensations." God had been working with Israel. Now God switches to the church for a new period of history -- the "Church Age." We are still in this age today. [1]

However, Darby believed that God was still planning to make his math work. At the end of time, after the church was raptured to heaven, God would switch dispensations again. In The Great Tribulation, God would get that last seven-year week. He would finish up his dealings with Israel. In the end, Israel would turn to Christ, as we talked about in chapter 2. 

During that final seven-year period of history, a "desolator" would arise. He will stop the sacrifice and offering of the temple. (By the way, that implies that the Jerusalem temple will need to be rebuilt.) Darby correlated this prophecy with what 2 Thessalonians 2:4 has to say about a man of lawlessness setting himself up in the temple as God. He correlated it with the abomination that causes desolation in Daniel 11:31 and Mark 13:14. He correlated this figure with the Beast from the Sea in Revelation 13:1. He called this figure, "The Antichrist," following 1 John 2:18.

This is all ingenious, the sign of a beautiful mind. Perhaps he was inspired by the Holy Spirit! Nevertheless, we will take the next few chapters to unpack each of these texts to see what each seems to refer to in its own context. Far be it from me to say that God cannot stitch these passages together and fulfill them however he wishes. At the same time, in context, it is not at all clear that these passages naturally go together in this way. 

In this chapter, we especially want to examine his interpretation of the weeks in Daniel.

3. You'll notice that there is a mixture of literal and figurative here, and the weeks don't exactly line up. For example, there is nothing in the text to suggest that we would skip 2000 years between the 69th and 70th week. Darby just made that up with no basis whatsoever in the text of Daniel.

Most Christian interpreters throughout the centuries had taken the prophecy to refer to Jesus' death and perhaps the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. This includes not only early church figures like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian but Protestant Reformers like John Calvin. That is to say, they believed the prophecy was already fulfilled.

Even then, there are questions about how literally we should take the numbers. The whole prophecy is very symbolic. For example, weeks are taken as years. We are on figurative ground from the very beginning. But then we become very literal and precise with how the years are played out. It's like we are mixing genres -- extremely figurative meets extremely literal.

By most reckonings, for example, the span of time from Nehemiah to Christ is remarkably close but a few years off. From 444 BC to 33 AD is 477 years. So it would seem that, by any reckoning, the weeks of seven years are approximate. This is no problem at all given the genre. The symbolism of the sevens was more important than the precision of the years.

But there are other questions too. For example, why start with Nehemiah? I would have thought the more natural referent is 538 BC when Cyrus gave the word to the Jews to "restore and rebuild Jerusalem." Daniel is set in the 500s, not the 400s. Daniel is set during the Babylonian captivity. The most natural way to take the "word to restore and rebuild Jerusalem" is thus in terms of the return of the Jews from captivity, which took place in 538 BC.

But then 490 years puts us in the year 48 BC, a year of no particular note. Are there any other clues in Daniel that might suggest the prophecy is referring to some other event? 

Yes, why yes there are. Daniel 11 reads as a virtual blow-by-blow of the events leading up to the desecration of the Jerusalem temple by Antiochus Epiphanes, the king of Syria, in 167 BC. We have already mentioned that this event was the first fulfillment of Daniel 11:31 and the "abomination that causes desolation." We will return to this passage in chapter 7.

In other words, we know that the book of Daniel has material that is focused on the events surrounding the Maccabean crisis from 167-164 BC. In that material, a desolator puts a halt to the sacrifice and offering of the temple. And he does this approximately halfway through the crisis.

Who then would be the two anointed ones in the passage? The first anointed one is difficult in any rendering. Following Darby's approach, this person would need to live in the early 300s BC, and we know of no such figure.

Starting from the call to return to Jerusalem -- and taking the numbers to be approximate -- there are candidates for the interpretation that starts with 538 BC. For example, Joshua the anointed high priest of Zechariah 3:8 was high priest in the late 500s. Again, taking the numbers to be approximate, one might point to Nehemiah as the anointed one in the mid-400s BC. There are at least options, where there are none for Darby.

The Maccabean crisis is earlier than we might expect if the numbers are taken exactly, but the genre itself suggests that the numbers should not be taken exactly. What then is the final week? The final week would refer to the Maccabean crisis itself, which only came to a head with the desecration of Jerusalem in 167 BC. Antiochus had already been implementing actions to Hellenize Israel since about 175 BC, including a prohibition on circumcision, on the observance of Sabbath, and on keeping food laws. He ordered the construction of Greek institutions like a gymnasium.

The last three years of the crisis were the most intense. You might argue that they came "in the middle of the week."

Who then would be the second anointed one who was "cut off" and lost everything. This is often related to the high priest Onias III, who was deposed and replaced by Antiochus, the Syrian king. This deposing took place at the beginning of the troubles Antiochus brought on Jerusalem in 175 BC, arguably the beginning of the "week" to which Daniel refers.

Is it possible that God planted a double meaning here, one in relation to Jesus as well? Certainly. We find the phenomenon of double interpretation often in the New Testament. However, from a contextual standpoint, the book of Daniel itself more likely points to the Maccabean crisis in Daniel 9.

In either of these cases, there is no week left over for the end times. In this interpretation, Darby went completely beyond anything the text indicates. And indeed, he saw an interpretation that apparently no Christian (or Jew) had ever seen in the passage before him for some 1800 years.

4. What about Revelation then? Does it not mention several 3.5-year periods too? ...

[1] This switching to the church is in part why Darby did not anticipate that Israel would be gathered and be reconstituted as a nation before the Tribulation. The re-establishment of Israel in 1948 thus caused some adjustment to what was by then the standard dispensational understanding.

Is there a Tribulation in Revelation?

... The woman was now waiting for the Messiah's return for a season, symbolically represented by 1,260 days. This year and a half period is not literal but represents the current age of persecution, while we are awaiting Christ’s return.

We find this number in several different forms in Revelation. Here it is 1,260 days (12:6). A little later in the chapter it is a “time, times, and half a time” (that is, three and a half years, 12:14). In Revelation 13:5 it is 42 months.

Some have taken this three and a half year period and connected it to the half week of Daniel 9:27. In this line of thinking, there will be a seven year period during the end times when “the Antichrist” will wreak havoc on the earth. It is an ingenious stitching together of verses from here and there in the Bible to predict what will happen during the “Great Tribulation.”

I would not want to say that things will not play out this way. After all, God often fulfills Scriptures in ways no one originally understood. But we should also be clear that this system of connecting things does not actually pay attention to the meanings these verses had originally.

For example, the book of Revelation does not talk about the Great Tribulation. The verse this phrase comes from is Revelation 7:14, but the verse doesn’t have the word “the” there. It simply says that the individuals there have come out of “great tribulation.” No number of years is associated with this time of hardship there.

Similarly, Revelation never doubles the three and a half years into a seven year Tribulation. It is always the same symbolic three and a half years, even if it is expressed in different ways. So while we cannot say whether there will be a distinctively bad seven year period at the end of time, we can say that Revelation does not speak of one.[3]

A further difference between popular prophecy and Revelation is that the Bible never calls some chief human opponent to God the Antichrist. As we saw in the chapter on 1 John, the only place in Scripture that the word “antichrist” appears is in 1 John, where it refers in general to anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ or that he came in the flesh. 2 Thessalonians 2:3 mentions a “man of lawlessness,” who may or may not be the same individual as the “beast” of Revelation (see the next section).

In the end, these are ingenious connections first made by John Nelson Darby in the mid-1800s. They are brilliant, but they require us to see a great deal in these texts that is not obviously there. They are probably distractions that actually prevent us from hearing the texts for what they actually seem to say.

What Revelation 12 seems to say is that, in the time John was writing, Christians were waiting for Jesus to return from heaven to become king over all the nations. But in the meantime, Satan was waging war against God’s people for a certain period of time, symbolized by 1,260 days. And Satan was waging this war by way of a “beast,” who had emerged against the churches of Asia from the sea (13:1).

 [3] The idea of a seven year period comes from the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24. Since Daniel 11 is clearly about the events that took place in 167BC when the Syrians desecrated the temple, many also take Daniel 9 to be about those events as well.

The Antichrist 6: The Tribulation?

One of the key elements of the Darby-Lindsey-LaHaye end times scheme is a 7 year "Tribulation." Dispensationalists then divide up between those who think there will be a "rapture" or seizure of believers up to the sky to meet Jesus in the air before the Tribulation (pre-trib rapture), half way through the Tribulation (mid-trib rapture), or at the end of the Tribulation (post-trib) rapture.

The idea of a rapture comes from the Latin wording of 1 Thessalonians 4:17--we will be "caught up" to meet the Lord in the air along with the dead who rise. To this extent, the idea of a rapture is biblical enough. Christ will return, his second coming (Heb. 9:28); the dead will rise; and those believers who are alive at that time will ascend to meet Christ in the air.

Now for Paul, this assembly in the sky does not seem to be to go off to heaven (which of course, is the same word, "sky"). Paul seems to see believers coming back down to participate in the final judgment, which in his thinking begins at Christ's "parousia," his arrival back to the earth. Believers will judge the world, including angels (1 Cor. 6:2-3). So believers are meeting Christ like a delegation would go out to escort an ambassador into town.

But Paul knows nothing of a seven year tribulation.

Revelation speaks of "the great tribulation," but it doesn't assign any number of years to it. A figure of 3 1/2 years appears several places in the middle of Revelation, but they all, in my opinion, refer to the same symbolic period:

1. The nations will trample the holy city for forty-two months (Rev. 11:2).

2. Two witnesses will prophesy for 1260 days (Rev. 11:3).

3. The woman that birthed the child who would rule the nations flees to the wilderness for 1260 days (Rev. 12:6).

4. The woman flies to a place to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time (Rev. 12:14).

5. The beast from the sea is allowed to blaspheme God and make war on the saints for "forty-two months" (Rev. 13:5).

So to get to 7 years, dispensationalists (shorthand here for the Darby-Lindsey-LaHaye end times scheme) have to add two of these 3 1/2's together. The "mid-trib" rapture option comes straight from this section too, since the persecution of the church (the woman) is then understood to be for half of the seven year period.

But these are all the same, most likely symbolic 3 1/2 year period of persecution. Taking it as a calendar period goes against the nature of apocalyptic imagery, which if anything, is not meant to be taken literally any more than the idea that the beast will really have ten horns and seven heads.

My best guess is that, at least in its first meaning, all these images symbolized the oppression of the early church in the late first century by the Roman imperial regime. Whether we will find resonances between these images and the time immediately before Christ's return is something we will know when it happens. The temple of 11:1 might very well be the temple destroyed in AD70. After all, this part of Revelation locates "now" during the reign of Vespasian (17:10), during whose reign the temple was "trampled on" and destroyed.

So where did the idea of a 7 year tribulation come from if it doesn't come from the New Testament? It comes from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Daniel 9:27 refers to a ruler who will destroy Jerusalem and the temple for a "week." For half the week he will cause the sacrifice and offering to stop in the temple.

Here we hit pay dirt for the dispensationalist interpretation. The dispensationalist interpretation runs all the New Testament passages relating to the man of lawlessness, the beast, and so forth through this roundhouse ingeniously, weaving together meanings with this passage in Daniel as the template. We have come here last because we wanted to listen to the other passages in their own contexts without forcing this foreign context on them.

As we look at Daniel 9, we remember that apocalyptic literature, from the most optimistic standpoint, seems to blur things together. Mark 13 starts off talking about the destruction of Jerusalem and ends up talking about Christ's second coming. So we would not say that there are not elements of this passage that could relate to some future time.

But when we ask about the first meaning of Daniel 9, we probably need to connect 9:27, which talks about an "abomination that causes desolation" with Daniel 11:31 which speaks of a ruler from the north who will abolish the daily sacrifice and set up an abomination that causes desolation. Mark 13 and Matthew 24 apply this imagery of desolation to the destruction of the temple in AD70. But Daniel 11 reads like a history book of the events leading up to the desecration of the temple by the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes in 167BC, so much so in fact that the overwhelming majority of non-evangelical scholars believe that Daniel was actually written in the early second century BC.

In this light, we should probably see the first meaning of Daniel 9:27 in relation to the troubled period from 167-164BC during which an anointed one, here the high priest Onias III, was cut off, removed from office by Antiochus, and the daily sacrifice interrupted for three years. This is the time of the Maccabean revolt. The feast of Hanukkah celebrates the rededication of the temple in 164BC, brought about by the efforts of Judas Maccabeus.

Now there are some tensions between these texts in Daniel and the events of the Maccabean crisis. One might say that prophecies are blurred here, as in Mark 13. Maybe so. But if so, then we shouldn't expect this passage to map very precisely to any end times events any more than they mapped precisely to their primary fulfillment in the second century BC. Certainly to see the seventh week as a literal seven year period is highly dubious.

I might add as an interesting aside that there is an Apocalypse of Weeks that dates to the period just before the Maccabean crisis. It is found in 1 Enoch 93, 91 (the order of the text is messed up). It divides history up into 10 weeks.

The final post tomorrow, d.v.