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

Antichrist is coming.

For some reason, probably because of the freedom God has built into the creation, good almost always has its opponents. Whether it be Pharaoh at the time of the exodus or the high priest when Jesus was on earth, there is almost always a bad guy in the story. The Bible is full of them.

As we saw in the previous chapter, the archetypal bad guy in the key passages in Daniel turns out to be a Syrian king named Antiochus Epiphanes. He is the one who, in 175 BC, deposes the anointed high priest and puts his own favorite in charge of Israel (Dan. 9:26). It is he who in 167 BC puts an end to the sacrifice and offering (Dan. 9:37). He defiles the temple with a "desolating abomination" (Dan. 11:31). He offers a pig on the altar and constructs an altar to Zeus in the temple. Some three years later, the temple was purified and restored (164 BC). 

In other words, the prophecies of Daniel were initially fulfilled even before the time of Christ, including its prophecies about a "desolater." There was already a secondary fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem (Mark 13:14). Who knows, perhaps there will be a third fulfillment in the end times. There wouldn't need to be. We'll find out.

Antichrists

2. There's a good chance that you have heard of the Antichrist. The Antichrist is the archetypal opponent of Christ and Christianity. The term itself comes from 1 John 2.
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"Little children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now, many antichrists have arisen. Thus we know it is the last hour." (1 John 2:18)

"Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son." (2:22)

"Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard that it was coming and is already in the world"  (4:3)

"Many deceivers have gone out into the world that are not confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist" (2 John 1:7)
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Because of the noise in our heads from other passages and contemporary debates, we can easily overread these passages. If we can bracket those other voices out and listen to these passages in context, none of them are necessarily referring to an individual person. In fact, the lead-off verse in 1 John 2:18 says that many antichrists are here, not a single figure. 

There is also no "the" on the word antichrist in 2:18. In Greek, that doesn't mean that we should put the word "an" in front -- "an antichrist is coming." It may simply say that opposition to Christ is a predictable element in the equation.  

The very next verse hints at who John the elder actually had in mind. It is a group that had split off from John's church (2:19). 2 John 1:7 suggests that they were early Gnostics who denied that Jesus had come to earth in the flesh (cf. 1 John 4:2). We call this group "Docetists" because they thought Jesus only seemed to be human. [1] They may have been Jewish since they seem to have acknowledged God the Father but denied Jesus the Son (1 John 2:22).

The bottom line is that the antichrists of 1 and 2 John are not primarily an end times figure like the Antichrist we have heard of. There will always be antichrists in the world. Opposition to Christ is always coming. Ironically, the passages from which we get the name "Antichrist" are not primarily about the Antichrist.

Now, John may allude to teaching about an Antichrist. When he says, "You have heard antichrist is coming," he may be alluding to teaching in the church about an archetypal opponent to Christ. It is possible. He may allude to some of the other teachings we will examine in this chapter. But in general, he was referring to some of the Gnostic resistance to a proper understanding of Jesus that existed in the late first century in certain church circles.

Bottom line: 1 John does not clearly refer to an end-times figure known as the Antichrist. It could allude to such teaching, but its primary concern was a group in the late first-century church who opposed a proper understanding of Jesus.

The Man of Lawlessness

3. One of the most enigmatic passages in the Bible is 2 Thessalonians 2. It mentions a "man of lawlessness" who opposes God. He would certainly qualify as an antichrist, although the word is not used of him here.
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[The Day of the Lord will not come] unless the apostasy should come first, and the man of lawlessness should be revealed, the son of destruction. [He is] the one who opposes and exalts himself against everything called "God" or any object of worship. Accordingly, he seats himself in the temple of God trying to demonstrate that he is God. Don't you remember that I was telling you about these things while I was still around?

And you know what is restraining him now so that he might be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already working -- [there is] only the one restraining until he should be out of the midst. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will destroy with the Spirit of his mouth, and he will destroy with the appearance of his arrival.

The arrival of [the lawless one] is accompanied by the working of Satan with all power and signs and false wonders and with all the deceit of unrighteousness to those who are perishing because they did not receive the love of the truth so that they might be saved. So God sends on them the working of delusion that they might believe in the lie.

2 Thess. 2:3-11
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This is a difficult passage because nothing is said of the temple being destroyed (still less of it being reconstructed). The most natural way to think of this prediction is thus that it relates to Paul's own day and to the time before the temple was destroyed.

It is also very cryptic like there is code language here in case someone would read the letter. "You know," but the letter doesn't say. "Didn't I already talk about this when I was with you?" Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. This secret quality of the letter again reinforces a sense that it is about events that were unfolding at the time of writing.

As we have said repeatedly, that does not mean that it cannot be about the end times as well. Paul can be inspired to say more than he knows he is saying. But in his mind, something in his own time was likely going on.

What or who was keeping the man of lawlessness from fully emerging? Again, the language is very cryptic. No answer seems completely satisfying. The Holy Spirit is both a "what" (the Greek word for spirit is neuter) and a "who" (the Holy Spirit is a person), but it is not clear how the Spirit would ever be taken out of the way.

One theory is that the reference is to Paul himself. A self-reference might explain the cryptic nature of those comments. "You know what is keeping him from unleashing" (that is, me). "But when he is taken out of the way" (that is, me), he will come full on. 

4. The dating of 2 Thessalonians is often considered straightforward. The standard answer is that 2 Thessalonians was written at about the same time as 1 Thessalonians, around AD 50-52. Perhaps Paul writes 1 Thessalonians to explain the resurrection. Then some overreact and think the Day of the Lord has already happened.

However, there is nothing we know about at the time that fits the secretive nature of 2 Thessalonians. For example, there seems to be concern that its message be authenticated. Paul's signature is emphasized at the end (2 Thess. 3:17). There is also a strong parallel between the beginning of the letter and the beginning of 1 Thessalonians. Some have even suggested it has been copied.

For these reasons, I have hypothesized that the real context of 2 Thessalonians is in the last days of Paul before he was put to death by Nero. [2] This would put it in the range of AD 62 to 68. Some have suggested that 2 Thessalonians was "pseudonymous," written under Paul's name. If that were the case, we would still imagine it written soon after his death, when he would have been taken "out of the way."

As we will see in the rest of this chapter, the image of Nero as an antichrist figure, even if the word antichrist is not used, seems to be a major part of the imagery of Revelation as well. So it would be in keeping with this strand of New Testament thinking if 2 Thessalonians also had Nero in mind.

The imagery of 2 Thessalonians 2 also fits the tone and flavor of Mark 13. For example, both talk about signs and wonders accompanying false messiahs. They both suggest that there will be those who are deceived among the people of God. A context of the Jewish War -- which overlapped with Nero's rule -- would make some sense of these comments. 2 Thessalonians then, like Mark 13, would pertain to the lead-up to the temple's destruction ("sets up in the temple as God").

The bottom line is that Paul had some figure in his own day in mind and that the temple to which he refers was the temple that was standing at that time. More on the temple in the next chapter. Is it possible that there will be another man of lawlessness in the end times, even another temple? Far be it from me to say that there will not be. 

My point in this book is more to indicate that most of the prophecies that are part of the dispensationalist approach already had fulfillments in biblical times. God can do whatever he wants in the future. We'll know that when it comes. But these prophecies had a great deal to do with their own times. 

The Beasts of Revelation

5. [The chapter continues...]

[1] The Greek word dokeo means to "seem."

[2] See my Explanatory Notes on 1 and 2 Thessalonians (Marion: Independently Published, 2020).

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.

What do ya know: Obama's the Antichrist...

A friend of mine sent me this video link that makes us wonder if Obama is the antichrist. It was delightful.

Here's the argument:

1. In Luke 10:18 Jesus says he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

2. In Hebrew, one word for lightning is baraq.

3. In Hebrew, one word for heights is bamah, a word used in Isaiah 14:12-19 of Satan.

4. The Hebrew word for "and" is O.

5. So baraq o-bamah is something like "lightning and the heavens" or "lightning from the heavens."

6. Therefore, Jesus might have been predicting in the Aramaic original of Luke 10:18, "I saw Satan as Barak Obama."

I'm going to be nice (although this post would be a lot funnier if I wasn't). But here's my response:

First, this argument seems riddled with problems, but I can't be too sarcastic, because it is not too unlike some of the ancient Jewish exegesis like we find in Philo, the rabbis, and indeed, the New Testament. I can't prove that this person isn't inspired, even though their argument seems throroughly flawed.

For one, it is a little ironic that the name Barack is actually the Semitic word that corresponds to the Hebrew, barach, which means "blessing." This isn't a stretch. It's where the word is actually from.

Secondly, it is true that the Hebrew word "and" is the letter waw attached the beginning of a word. But it is always pronounced vuh- (or wuh-) in this position (or oo when it comes before a b, m, or p). The letter only is pronounced "oh" in Hebrew when it is being used in the middle of a word as a hint that a long o goes there.

I might also add that this person is wrong to say that Aramaic is the oldest form of Hebrew. Both languages existed alongside each other as separate Semitic languages. Aramaic has the long o with waw I mentioned in the last paragraph less frequently than Hebrew does. This is because the Hebrew language did a dance called the Canaanite shift around the time of David, while Aramaic didn't.

Basically, the "O" part of the video is extremely comical. And how he gets from "and" to "from" is a great mystery. Both Aramaic and Hebrew use a preposition min- for "from." The expression "lightning from heaven" would thus, if we used baraq, most obviously be in Aramaic baraq mish-shuhmaya', which doesn't look anything like Barack Obama.

I'm having flashbacks to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Tell me any word and I'll show you how it goes back to Greek. Give me the name of any charismatic Democratic president and I'll show you how he is the antichrist. Really, everyone thus far in history who has suggested a specific name for the Antichrist has been wrong. So, basically, just don't go there. Those who do are almost certainly destined to be thought of the way I think of the now out of print book Eighty-Eight Reasons Why the Lord is Coming Back in 1988.

Isaiah 14 of course originally had nothing whatsoever to do with Satan. In context it is clearly about the human king of Babylon, although it uses poetic and hyberbolic language to describe him. Of course it is possible that Luke 10:18 was echoing Isaiah 14 understood spiritually in relation to Satan. If so, there would be some reason to think that the word "heights" was in view in Jesus' words.

Again, if bamah was used, its plural in Aramaic I think would be baman. "The heights," our local Semitist Elaine Bernius pointed out, would be bamata'. In that case, even with all these assumptions, we have Satan falling like baraq mib-bamata'. I should point out that we have no way of knowing if the Aramaic equivalents of these Hebrew words were even used in Galilee at the time, as far as I know.

Nope, doesn't really work, does it.

I don't believe you need to know Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic to hear or be a minister of God's word. But if you're not going to do the hard work to learn them, you shouldn't probably be cooking up stuff like this.

The Antichrist 0: Introduction

For most of Christian history, Christians have been optimistic about the future here on earth. In his book The City of God, Augustine (400's) suggests that while the (political) kingdom of this world will more and more diminish, the reign of God will steadily take over the earth more and more. Most Christians up until the 1800's were what we today might call "postmillennial," taking an image from Revelation 20. Now is the reign of Christ in the world, and the final judgment is what is left to come.

In the early 1800's, an Irishman named John Darby gave rise to a movement that has had an immense impact on popular American Christian thought ever since. Countless little Christian groups have sprung up as they have pursued his approach to the Bible, helped along by the immensely popular Scofield Reference Bible of the early twentieth century. The movement is known as "dispensationalism," and it sees history as a series of eras leading up to the "end times" and the fulfilment of biblical prophecy.

Darby's scheme was ingenious. Daniel 9 speaks of a number of "weeks" until the anointed one comes. But then there is a "week" of great persecution mentioned as well. Darby dubbs this week the "Tribulation," and understands it to be a 7 year period during the end times, the "Great Tribulation" of Revelation 7:14.

He then merges together a figure from Revelation 13 and 17, the Beast, and calls this person the "Antichrist," using a term from 1 John. A major figure of evil will thus arise in the end times to oppose the people of God, the Antichrist. But Christians, he believed, would be snatched from the earth in a "secret rapture" just before the seven year Tribulation begins.

Darby's interpretation was a major force within the Zionism of the late 1800's and early 1900's. He believed that the nation of Israel would be restored as a nation in fulfilment of prophecy, and the Jerusalem temple would be rebuilt. Whether he was inspired or it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, Israel was restored as a nation in 1948, which fueled and reinforced the dispensationalist interpretation even more.

People believed that the last generation had arrived, in keeping with Mark 13:30. Understanding the restoration of Israel to be the budding of the fig tree, many believed that "this generation," the one living at that time, would "not pass away until all these things are fulfilled." Since a generation is traditionally understood to be 40 years, it is no surprise that a little booklet came out in 1988 entitled, "Eighty-Eight Reasons Why the Lord is Coming Back in 1988."

The way in which Darby and the later dispensationalists have woven Scripture together is amazing. The concrete impact of this one man's thinking is staggering. Millions of dollars have flowed to Israel. It is astounding just to think of the way in which this line of thought has probably impacted U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East on a subconscious level.

Christian denominations, colleges, and seminaries with major influence were founded in its train, places like Dallas Theological Seminary. Television shows, newsletters, best selling Christian novels have generated millions and millions of dollars following this train of thought. If you want to know what is going on in the world, watch one of these shows in the never-ending attempt to see whether something going on in the world might hint that the end is near.

Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth in the 1970's did it in the time of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. A slate of films like A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder followed. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins have written a series of best selling novels in more recent times. Each generation takes the current enemy number one and makes it the Antichrist or one of the players on his team. Is the Pope the Antichrist or Barack Obama? Will it be the Soviet Union or Iran that attacks Israel?

The next few posts (or rather, the previous ones :-) explore and unpack the key elements of the dispensationalist view, looking at the relevant Scriptures in their original contexts.

The Antichrist 7: Conclusion

So what does the Bible actually teach about the age to come?

In its original meaning, the Old Testament has almost nothing to say on the topic. The first meaning of the Old Testament books looked only to the ongoing extension of their present or the restoration of the near past--a cyclical view of history. When they looked for a Davidic king to come, they were waiting for a human like David to return to the throne and for the nation of Israel to regain political autonomy to its full boundaries.

Suffice it to say, Jesus was a massive upgrade from anything the Old Testament was expecting. Even the language of a new heaven and a new earth in Isaiah 66 was originally a beautiful and symbolic way of looking to God hitting the reset button on Israel as a nation. Of course there was the hope that the rest of the world would come to acknowledge YHWH as the true God as well.

There is one exception, and that is Daniel 12:2-3. For the first time, we find a clear expectation of future resurrection for at least some in the future. To be sure, we do find some figurative passages that some take to be about future resurrection (e.g., Ezek. 37). But Daniel is the only one that everyone agrees refers to a literal resurrection in the future for some of the dead, some to everlasting life and some to everlasting contempt.

The situation is completely different in the New Testament. Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, understands Jesus' resurrection to be the first of a resurrection for all those in Christ, soon to come. Paul never speaks of heaven or hell as a place of eternal destiny. His focus is purely on a coming point in time when the dead in Christ will rise.

The "parousia" or arrival of Jesus from heaven will accompany that resurrection. On the Day of the Lord, Jesus will return to earth from heaven; the dead in Christ will rise; and the final judgment will ensue. Every knee will bow and confess Jesus as Lord--every knee on earth, every "knee" of every spiritual being in the sky, and every knee of the dead under the earth (Phil. 2:10-11).

The Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke have similar expectations. Jesus the Lord will come from heaven. Matthew has more to say about Gehenna, hell, than any other part of the New Testament. Jesus speaks in Matthew 25 of an appearance before Jesus as judge, just as Paul speaks of the judgment seat of Christ (e.g., 2 Cor. 5:10). In Matthew the "sheep" are separated from the "goats," just as in Matthew 13 the "wheat" is separated from the "weeds." Goats or weeds are both destined for "weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth," the fire.

John and Hebrews believe in resurrection as well, but they are less clear on where believers will go. They seem more to picture the traditional eternity in heaven, while the Synoptic Gospels and Revelation sound more like a destiny on a restored earth. Paul also looks to the redemption of the earth from enslavement to the power of corruption.

Beyond these images, the New Testament gets more and more nebulous. We get some sense of really hard times prior to Christ's return, but the basis for such imagery seems closely tied to various events in the first century like the destruction of Jerusalem and the persecution of early Christians by various Roman imperial powers.

If the way the New Testament understands the Old Testament to be fulfilled is any indication, we won't be able to predict what will happen very well from a literal reading of the New Testament texts. Rather, fulfilments will probably make a whole lot more sense in hindsight. So since even Jesus didn't know when all these things would happen (e.g., Mark 13:32), believers should probably just keep their lamps trimmed (Matt. 25:1-13). End times speculation is a fun hobby, but one that thus far has consistently led nowhere.

More important is going about the business of loving God and our neighbors everywhere. And surely it is also in keeping with the gospel to let the Spirit work through us to see God's will done "on earth as it is in heaven," to defend the widow and the orphan, to be salt and light. God has given the world the freedom not to choose Him, but He is wooing the world to choose Him.

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.

The Antichrist 5: The Destiny of Israel

Honor to those who are veterans today, thanks to those who honorably serve in the defense of their people and in defense of the weak in the world.

Now the fifth installment, the destiny of the nation of Israel. You might remember:

1. The Title "Antichrist"

2. The Beast from the Sea

3. Things will get worse and worse...

4. A Rebuilt Temple?

5. The Destiny of Israel
The Zionist movement of the early twentieth century saw the creation of the nation of Israel as the fulfillment of prophecies in the Old Testament relating to the gathering of Israel back from the ends of the earth. Verses like Isaiah 43:6 no doubt played a strong role in this drive:

"I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth..." (RSV).

Isaiah 11:12 is another, "He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth" (ESV).

It is easy to see how verses like these could have been taken as a banner call for Jews to return to Israel to reconstitute the nation of Israel.

One important thing to realize is that, of course, Israel did return from a dispersion in 538BC. The first verse above speaks to the context of the Babylonian captivity, after the Babylonians had destroyed Jerusalem and taken a good number of Jerusalem elite back to Babylon as slaves. This is the original context of, say, Jeremiah 32:37:

"Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety" (ESV).

Passages like these, in effect, have been fulfilled for 2500 years. Ezekiel 37 pictures Israel coming back to life and God bringing them "to their own land, and I will make them one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel, and one king shall be king over them all and they shall no longer be two nations and two kingdoms" (37:21-22). Like the temple of Ezekiel 40, the return didn't quite play out as grandly as this passage pictures.

But Israel did return. And the New Testament largely reinterpreted language of a Davidic king such as Ezekiel 37:24 in terms of Jesus as the Davidic king for all time.

The infamous Gog and Magog passage in Ezekiel 38-39, taken during the Cold War to predict an attack by Russia on Israel in the end times, is sandwiched between the restoration of Israel in 37 and the rebuilt temple in 40. We've already seen that these passages were fulfilled on a small scale with the restoration of Israel in 538BC and its temple in 516BC and that the New Testament authors would have taken some of the unfulfilled aspects of these passages figuratively of Jesus and his atonement.

So the literal meaning of the chapters in between surely refers to that time as well, perhaps to the judgment of Babylon (which Jeremiah 25:9 also considers the foe from the north), where Ezekiel was captive.

The Isaiah 11 passage above is often taken as a messianic passage ("a shoot will come from the stump of Jesse," 11:1). 11:6 speaks of the wolf living with the lamb, an image often taken of the messianic kingdom. 11:11 speaks of the return of God's people from Assyria and Egypt, which perhaps recalls the destruction of the northern kingdom in 722BC.

This thought raises some big questions, such as how literally we are meant to take these comments. For example, it seems doubtful that the image of a wolf lying down with a lamb was meant literally, but is meant to symbolize a time of great peace. Even more to the point, it would be hard to fulfill 11:11 literally in the way Isaiah would have been thinking, for the captives of the Assyrian captivity are effectively long, long lost to history.

And even at the time of Christ, Jerusalem could not have held all the Jews in the rest of the world. There were apparently more Jews living in a fifth of the city of Alexandria at the time of Christ than there were in the whole city of Jerusalem. The idea of all Jews returning to Palestine from the Diaspora is not physically possible and wasn't even 2000 years ago.

So was the creation of the nation of Israel in 1948 a spiritual fulfillment of prophecy (since it doesn't seem to have been a literal one)? I won't say it wasn't. It would be in the spirit of gathering Israel from where God had scattered it. At the same time, I think I would have seriously cautioned the Zionist movement in the early twentieth century from thinking Jews had some divine right to Palestine on the basis of the Scriptures above. The Scriptures above reflect a different point in time and mostly speak to a different dispersion.

From Paul's perspective in the New Testament, there is no longer a premium on the political nation of Israel. He does believe the people of Israel have a place in the kingdom, but he seriously downgrades the earthly city in Galatians 4. His allegory of the Sarah-Hagar story considers Hagar the earthly Jerusalem and tells the Galatians to cast out the slave woman as an orienting principle. He means the Jewish law, of course, but he links it to the Jerusalem of his day.

New Testament books like Hebrews and John, which I believe were written after Jerusalem's destruction, seem to reorient space heavenward accordingly. They do not have the sense of a restored earth that we find in other NT writings. In Hebrews 12:22 it is the heavenly Jerusalem to which the audience has come, not the earthly one, "for we have here no city that remains" (13:14). In John Jesus goes to prepare a place in heaven for his followers, "that where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:3). The new Jerusalem of Revelation 21 does not arrive until after the judgment has been fully accomplished.

In short, there was no basis in the New Testament for a Christian in 1948 to have expected the nation of Israel to be reconstituted as a political entity. Quite the contrary, Paul had redefined Israel in terms of those who have faith in what God has done by raising Jesus from the dead: "not all who are descended from Israel are Israel and not all are children of Abraham who are his descendants" (Romans 9:6-7).

But what of Romans 11:26--"and then all Israel will be saved"? Does this statement not refer to those in ethnic Israel who were experiencing a "hardening" in Paul's day? Yes, it does. Paul teaches here that the vast majority of ethnic Jews would believe on Jesus as Messiah around the time of Christ's return, which he expected to take place much sooner than it has.

But notice that Paul is saying nothing about the reconstitution of Israel politically. Indeed, Israel had not even been destroyed at this time. Paul is saying that, around the time of the second coming, the vast majority of Jews will become believers. He says nothing of where they will be when they become believers.

The long and short of all these things is that it would be perilous to make contemporary political decisions in relation to the nation of Israel and the Middle East on the basis of supposed biblical prophecy. The Jews hold a place of honor for the Christian as those to whom the oracles of God were entrusted (cf. Rom. 3:2). It was, "to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (e.g., Rom. 1:16).

But it would also go against the spirit of the Bible to think this honor gives political Israel any excuse to act unjustly. God shows no partiality is equally a part of these texts, and God judges Israel when they violate His commands (cf. Jer. 7:4-11). If there is a NT message on this score, it is that God loves the Palestinian just as much as the Jew or the Iraqi or Iranian.

Present day Israel is not the Israel of Romans 11:26. The overwhelming majority of Israelis today do not believe Jesus is the Messiah. In fact most of them are not even particularly observant Jews. It is illegal to try to convert a Jew to Christianity in Israel. Meanwhile, Nazareth and Bethlehem are predominantly Christian cities, even though their population is overwhelmingly Palestinian in make up. There are far more Palestinian Christians than there are Jewish Christians today in Palestine.

These are warnings to American Christians, who unthinkingly have sent significant amounts of money in the past to Jewish organizations whose members are, if anything, hostile to Christianity. And to the extent to which Israel oppresses the Palestinians, they are violating commands in the Jewish law with regard to the stranger in their midst. Of course the Palestinians would question who is the stranger in whose midst.

The conclusion of the matter is to do justice and to love mercy toward both Jew and Palestinian. But it is dangerous in the extreme to use any Scripture such as those we have mentioned above as any factor whatsoever in making political decisions in the world today.

The Antichrist 4: A Rebuilt Temple?

Today, the next installment in the series.

1. The title "Antichrist" itself

2. Revelation's Beast from the Sea

3. Things will get worse and worse...

4. A rebuilt temple?

Ezekiel 40-42 speaks of a glorious temple. The description follows God's promise in 39:25-29 that God will bring Israel back to their land and will pour out his Spirit on them. Is this a temple that will be built in the end times?

Probably not. For one thing, we should remember that the temple was rebuilt in 516BC. All the prophecies in the OT about the rebuilding of a temple relate to a time 1500 hundred years ago when the temple had been destroyed. But a second temple was built and lasted almost 600 years before it was destroyed again in AD70 by the Romans. Similarly, many prophecies of Israel returning to Palestine were fulfilled in 538BC when the Persian king Cyrus allowed them to return from captivity.

It is true that the rebuilt temple was not the glorious structure Ezekiel describes. Until Herod the Great launched a stone by stone refurbishment in 20BC, the temple was at times underwhelming, it would seem. Could Ezekiel by-pass the first rebuilding to speak of a rebuilding yet to come?

Probably not, at least not if Hebrews is right. In Ezekiel 43, the Glory of the LORD returns to the temple. In Ezekiel 10, Ezekiel had seen the Glory of the LORD leave the temple prior to Jerusalem's destruction. Here he sees the Glory return.

The problem is that for Hebrews, Christ's sacrificial death has made any earthly temple obsolete (10:14). Indeed, the book of Revelation has no temple in the new Jerusalem (21:22). From a Christian perspective, Ezekiel 43 could no longer be literally fulfilled from the time of Christ's death on. We must either take it symbolically or as prophecy God changed like He changed the verdict Jonah brought to Ninevah.

There is thus only one possible indication in the Bible that the temple will be rebuilt, and if it points to a rebuilding, it only does so indirectly. 2 Thessalonians 2 speaks of a "man of lawlessness" that the Darby-Lindsey-LaHaye school equates with the Beast of Revelation and the Antichrist of 1-2 John. In 2 Thessalonians 2:4 says that he "sets himself up in the temple as God."

If this verse refers to a literal temple, then one will have to be rebuilt. Mind you, there was a temple standing when this verse was written. The passage says nothing about it being destroyed and then rebuilt. But if this passage is yet to be fulfilled, if it does not refer to the church as the temple of God or was not somehow fulfilled before AD70, then a temple will have to be rebuilt for it to come to pass.

2 Thessalonians 2 is enigmatic all the way around. There will be a "falling away" before the Day of the Lord. In 2 Thessalonians, this would appear to be a time of oppression of believers and the Jews. I suspect that any mid-first century audience hearing these words would immediately remember Caligula's attempt in the late 30's to set up a statue of himself in the Jerusalem temple. Indeed, I imagine the original audience picturing a Roman emperor in the bubble above their heads when they hear this chapter.

Something was holding this man of lawlessness from coming, something or someone that needed taken out of the way before the man of lawlessness would be revealed. But then the crisis would come to a head and the Lord would destroy him.

It is difficult to know what all this means. If it is yet to be fulfilled and the temple here is literal, then we will expect a temple to be rebuilt. At the same time, it is always shaky to base an expectation of the future or a practice or a belief on one passage in Scripture alone. And that is what we have here--and an ambiguous passage at that!

The Antichrist 3: Things will get worse and worse...

This is now the third post in this series.

The first dealt with the title "Antichrist" itself in 1 and 2 John.

The second dealt with the "Beast from the Sea" in Revelation.

In this post we want to look at Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21, which the Darby-Hal Lindsey-Tim LaHaye school of prophecy applies to the time of the Antichrist leading up to the second coming of Christ.

Many Christians function with a "things will get worse and worse before the end" paradigm. This is usually an unexamined assumption, a lens through which they read the Bible and the culture around them. Interestingly, it is not the way most Christians prior to the 1800's read the Bible. If Christians prior to the 1800's had a paradigm on this score, it would have been that we are preparing the world for Christ's return, making it more and more Christian in preparation for his arrival.

These views do interact with Revelation. The view that things will get worse and worse is generally called "premillennial" because the idea is that we have not yet come to the time of Christ's 1000 year reign in Revelation. The view that things will get more and more Christian is generally called "postmillennial," where the present time is viewed as a time of Christ's reign prior to the final resurrection.

Of course the millennial imagery of Revelation is difficult in some respects when we try to integrate it with the rest of the New Testament. Revelation has two resurrections--one of martyred Christians prior to Christ's 1000 year reign on earth and one of everyone after that reign. Paul and the rest of the NT know nothing of this scenario.

Since Revelation is so symbolic anyway, it is safer to base our understanding of the second coming more on the rest rather than this one unique passage that doesn't seem to fit neatly with the rest. The position that takes the millennium symbolically rather than as a literal time between resurrections when Christ will reign on earth before a final confrontation with Satan is called the "amillennial" interpretation.

So what are we to make of the worse and worse of Revelation? It's certainly there. It is complicated by the fact that Revelation is primarily about its own time and the fact that the book is so symbolic, but it's there. I won't tell you that the world won't be in crisis just prior to Christ's return.

But it is seriously problematic to go and make these things self-contained prophecies. There is a certain line of thought you sometimes hear people say, something like, "The Bible says 'they will cry peace, peace, but there will be no peace.'" So why try, they say. They might say, "It's foolish to try to make peace between the Palestinians and Israel because the Bible already says there will be no peace.

Like so much prophecy teaching, this use of a theme in Jeremiah and Ezekiel rips the words out of their context and randomly applies them to today (Jer. 6:14; 8:11; Ezek. 13:10, 16). Jeremiah and Ezekiel addressed a time when Israel was conquered by the Babylonians in 586BC. All the imagery about false predictions of peace had to do with those who said God wouldn't allow the Babylonians to conquer them. And, by the way, the predictions of return to land and rebuilt temples in these books... well they returned in 538 and the temple was rebuilt in 516BC, 2500 years ago. We'll mention Ezekiel's temple tomorrow, d.v.

So unless you're a prophet the likes modern prophecy teaching has never seen, stop using your blind interpretations of passages that were fulfilled 2500 years ago as the basis of taking positions on modern foreign policy. The Christian thing to do is to pursue peace between parties on every level, not to surrender to defeat without even trying or giving it a half hearted attempt.

So we finally get to Mark 13 and friends. These verses are often applied to the end times in relation to a rebuilt temple yet to come. The reasoning is clear enough. These passages have material on the return of Christ and the events they tell sure seem to take place just prior to that return. Therefore, these passages tell us how events will unfold just prior to Christ's return.

The problem is that the passages themselves lead us in another direction. Jesus leaves the temple with his disciples. They make a remark on how big the temple stones are. Jesus predicts the destruction of them--"See these stones? No two will be left standing on one another." Then they go across to the Mount of Olives and the disciples ask him when this will happen. That is the literary setting of Mark 13, Matthew 24, and Luke 21.

The temple about which they are asking is not some end times temple. It was the temple standing in AD33. And as Jesus predicts, it was destroyed in AD70. There is "end times" material mixed in Mark 13, to be sure. Matthew 24 distinguishes the material more carefully, "When will these things be and what will be the sign of your coming?" Luke 21 takes out most of the material that would relate to the second coming and focuses the prophecy on the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70--"When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies" is its "The Message" translation of the more opaque "When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it should not stand."

So the context makes it clear that this chapter, at least up to the part about the second coming, is about the events prior to Jerusalem's destruction in AD70 than about the end times. It is about that time that Mark 13 says things like,

"Many will come in my name..." "There will be wars and rumors of wars..."
The period just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 was the Jewish War. Israel tried to throw off Roman rule to reestablish its autonomy and would no doubt have installed a ruler if they had won.

"You will be beaten in synagogues..."
The "you" of Mark 13 refers to Peter, James, and John, although we might expand it to the disciples and Jerusalem community around AD70. Obviously few of us today are in danger of being beaten in synagogues, but this passage is not talking about us or our times.

"When you see the abomination, flee Judea..."
And according to tradition the early Christians did flee Jerusalem for Pella when the Roman armies were approaching. And they did desecrate the temple by sacrificing to their standards in the temple precincts. And of course they destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.

"Tribulation like never before and never again..." "If the Lord didn't cut those days short no one would be saved..."

These last two comments are where people get the idea that things will get worse and worse. But if we read them in context, they would be about the time of Jerusalem's destruction in AD70. The word "tribulation" here does not have the special sense of a particular seven year period but refers to a troubled time. Given modern prophecy teaching, we probably shouldn't even translate the word that way to save confusion. When Revelation 7:14 speaks of great tribulation, it similarly does not mention a 7 year period.

I might add that the comment "the gospel must first be preached to all the nations" was understood by the early Christians to be fulfilled in their time. Colossians 1:23 already considers the gospel to have been preached "to every creature under heaven." We remember that they saw the world as much smaller than we do, with the civilized world pretty much ending with Rome in the West, maybe Spain.

So it is highly dubious to read contemporary events against the backdrop of a "worse and worse" philosophy. The relevant passages in the gospels and Revelation were primarily about the days surrounding Jerusalem's destruction and the reign of Domitian. The burden of proof is on anyone who wants to apply them to now.

As we look back at history, history has not been one continuous decline from the time of Jesus to today, to where things are worse now than they have ever been before. Indeed, you can only have this "worse and worse" mentality if you have short term memory. I am befuddled that a person of sixty or seventy could hold this view when the world goes up and down even within a person's lifetime. But if we lived for five or six hundred years, no one would have the silly view that things are getting worse right now as a sign of Christ's return.

It is self-defeating, self-fulfilling and in general lacks a long view of history. And, once again, it makes Christians look stupid. Things are worse today in America than they were ten years ago. But I guarantee you that the average quality of life in America is tremendously better than the overwhelming majority of those who have walked this earth.

Is Obama the Antichrist? Not because of today's set of verses...

The Antichrist 2: The Beast from the Sea

The first post yesterday talked about the title "Antichrist" itself.

Today let's look at the "Beast" of Revelation 13 and 17. In terms of their original meanings, there is no apparent connection between the antichrists of 1 and 2 John and the beasts of Revelation. And Revelation does have two beasts.

The beast that popular end times teaching today focuses on is the first beast of Revelation 13, the "beast from the sea." There is a second "beast from the land" later on in the chapter. Its function is to cause the earth to worship the first beast.

Revelation says several things about the beast from the sea of which here are a few key ones:

1. It had seven heads, one of which seemed mortally wounded, but healed.
2. Men worshipped both the dragon (Satan) and the beast.
3. It makes war on the saints and conquers them.
4. It has authority over all the earth.

This is all very vague to us. Revelation 17 brings these prophecies into clearer focus. Again, we remember that we are not the first audience of this text. It was written to the churches of late first century Asia Minor (see Rev. 2-3). None of the original recipients have been alive for almost 1900 years.

So how would a person living in Asia Minor in the first century hear the following words?

1. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman is seated (17:9). Hmm. What would someone living in the Roman empire in the late first century think here. There is a city with seven hills called Rome, that just happens to be the HQ of the empire. Hmmm.

2. There are also seven kings, five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come and whenever he comes it is necessary for him to remain a little while. And the beast that was and is not. He himself is eighth and is from the seven and he departs to destruction (17:10-11).

If I were living in Asia in the first century and was hearing about seven kings relating to a city with seven hills, I think I would probably at this point think: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero. We would now be the reign of Vespasian (not counting the year of three emperors). Titus was after him. An eighth might then be Domitian.

Most scholars think of Revelation being written during the reign of Domitian. Of course I think Robinson in his Redating the New Testament might have used this verse as an argument for a date around 70. Another possibility sometimes mentioned is that this particular part of Revelation was written during the reign of Vespasian and then later incorporated into the later, expanded, final version of Revelation during the reign of Domitian.

In any case, it seems very likely that a first century audience of these words would be thinking of Roman emperors when they heard these words.

So what's the deal with the fatal wound that has healed? Two of the first five emperors died violent deaths. Caligula was assasinated. Nero committed suicide. Interestingly enough, many Romans apparently found it hard to believe he was really dead (kind of like Hitler or Elvis). There was a rumor floating around that Nero would return and have his day.

Here's an excerpt from the Sibylline Oracles, which dates from around the time of Revelation:

"In the last time a war will take place arond the time of the waning of the moon. This war will throw the world into confusion and be deceptive in guile. A man who killed his mother will come from the ends of the earth in flight, devising penetrating schemes in his mind. He will destroy every land and conquer all and consider all things more wisely than all men.

"He will immediately seize the one because of whom he himself perished. He will destroy many men and great rulers, and he will set fire to all men as no one else ever did. Through zeal he will raise up those who were crouched in fear. There will come upon men a great war from the West. Blood will flow up to the band of deep-eddying rivers. Wrath will drip in the plains of Macedonia, an alliance to the people horn the West, but destruction for the king." (5:361-374).

Several comments in the Oracles make it clear that this prophecy refers to Nero, who had been dead for some time when this was written. Revelation seems at least to use this legend of the return of Nero as the basis for its imagery of the beast from the sea. An eighth king will be like Nero returned from the dead.

Nero fits the bill for the number 666 as well. If you take the letters of the word Caesar Nero and treat them as numbers instead of letters (the ancients didn't have separate symbols for numbers), they add up to 666. You'll remember that Nero was the one who put both Peter and Paul to death as well as many other Christians. He was responsible for the first real persecution of Christians, which took place in Rome around the year 64-65.

If we ask how the original audiences of Revelation would have heard the passages about the two beasts, therefore, it seems very likely that they would have heard them in terms of the Roman empire and its emperors. They expected very bad times indeed to come with the return of an emperor like Nero (or perhaps they would have even expected the return of Nero himself?). By the time Revelation reached its final form, they might have equated this beast with Domitian.

Emperor worship was a strong force in Asia Minor, in which the emperor was worshipped as a god. The beast from the land might thus correlate to whatever Roman administrator was responsible for the emperor cult in Asia Minor. Remembering that Roman coinage during the time of Domitian called him "Lord" and "God" and that he more than any emperor before him insisted on worship well before his death, we can at least conjecture the conflict of conscience it might have caused Jew and Christian to decide whether to use his coinage or not, to "take his mark" and not to be able to buy or sell if you didn't.

Could we take this imagery spiritually in terms of someone yet to come? I won't dare tell the Holy Spirit not to speak this way to someone or create "spiritual fulfillments" in this way. But these parts of Revelation have very, very strong connections to the first century, at least in their original meanings. "Babylon," for example, was a code word for Rome that Jews and early Christians used in the period after Rome destroyed Jerusalem (cf. 1 Peter 5:13).

Certainly there has been no literal millennial reign or literal resurrection of matyrs or white throne judgment. But the distress represented in the symbolism of Revelation has in the first place to do with the distress of at least a segment of the late first century church. Those who have used it of contemporary times have done so over and over again these last two hundred years... And so far they've been wrong every time (cf. that now out of print book, "88 Reasons the Lord is Coming Back in 1988").

In short, those who relate these parts of Revelation to contemporary events have ended up looking stupid every single time thus far. Just think of all the people who have speculated about who the Antichrist will be thus far. Just think of all the movements and cults that have started off of particular prophetic interpretations. Every last one of them has been wrong!

So unless you're a prophet of the kind of stature of Jeremiah or Isaiah, I'd give up calling Obama the antichrist on this one. Has he even been to Rome? Does he look like Nero to you--OK, maybe the hair cut is the same...

The Antichrist 1: The Word Itself

There's so much talk of Obama being the Antichrist, that I thought I might throw a couple posts that direction.

Some background:

First, this whole idea of an Antichrist comes directly from a set of pre-modern interpretations of several different passages ingeniously woven together in a pre-modern way. By pre-modern, I mean an unreflective reading that is unaware of the difference between how the text is being read and what the text originally meant.

The whole Darby-Hal Lindsey-Tim LaHaye end times scenario weaves together Scriptures from Daniel, Ezekiel, Mark 13/Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians 2, 1 John, and Revelation ingeniously without

1. ... recognizing that these are different books addressing different situations that use words differently from each other and refer to different times...

2. ... or that these books to a large extent were not addressing today but their own times and situations. We want to leave open the door that some of their material might be addressing today. But our default expectation is that they were actually relevant to the people for whom they were actually written.

I want to reiterate my hermeneutic. To varying degrees, the NT generally does not read the OT in context. Paul can take the story of Sarah and Hagar and say that Sarah allegorically represents the Jerusalem above and Hagar the earthly Jerusalem--when this story is located some 800 years before Jerusalem even existed as an Israelite city. Matthew can see Jesus growing up in Nazareth as a prophetic triangulation of Scriptures like "Samson will be called a Nazirite" and "A branch [nazir] will come from the stump of Jesse."

In short, a Christian hermeneutic should probably allow for strange Spiritual "reader-response" variations like LaHaye. Maybe L & Friends are right and prophetically inspired. At the same time, what I want to point out in this post and a couple more is that 1) their interpretation is vastly unaware of what these texts originally meant and 2) their interpretation is not the long standing interpretation of Christendom. For my three-fold understanding of Christian hermeneutics, see this post.

The title "Antichrist"
This morning I want to start by pointing out that there is nowhere in the Bible where a figure is called the Antichrist. The word comes from 1 John (2:18, 22; 4:3). In 1 John, the term does not refer to a solitary figure who is coming at the end of time:

2:18: "Children, it is the last hour, and even as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come."

2:22: "Who is the liar if not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son."

4:3: "And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus [is the Christ] is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, that you have heard is coming and is already now in the world."

The first rule of contextual (original meaning) interpretation is not to see more meaning in a verse than its original context requires. This distinguishes it from "theological interpretation" where one brings a Christian (reader-response) context to bear on the words beyond the original contexts. In this case, neither approach yields the Darbian interpretation.

So we should immediately recognize that 1 John has no teaching about a single figure in the end times who will set himself up in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem as God during a seven year tribulation. It is legitimate to ask whether the "you have heard" element of this passage maps to 2 Thessalonians 2's "man of lawlessness" or Revelation 13 and 17's "beast." But from the standpoint of contextual interpretation, we cannot just assume they are all the same figure.

So what do we notice about these passages in 1 John?

1. The likely antichrists of 1 John have to do with its situation, which we can sketch from comments scattered throughout this homily of sorts. The church in question has undergone a split in the late first century AD. A group of early Gnostics, probably Docetists (who believed Jesus only seemed to be human) have left the church. The references to antichrists more than likely refer directly to them, to people who have been dead for 1900 years.

2. The first reference, "antichrist is coming" does not have the word "the" in front, despite the as usual horribly inadequate NIV. "You have heard that antichrist is coming." The reference is not to one individual but to a type of individual, as the next sentence indicates, "Many antichrists have come."

3. Who is such an antichrist: "the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ." It would thus seem that there are a lot of antichrists in the world today. 1 John knows nothing, though, about a single Antichrist.

So ironically, the only place where the actual word "Antichrist" is used in the Bible has nothing to do with any solitary end times figure.

I might add in closing today as well that the "last hour" John is talking about was 1900 years ago. Of course a last hour can last 2000 years. In which case there have been many antichrists these last few minutes.

Revelation tomorrow, d.v.