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Hades in The Gospels – Part 2 of 2 (Lazarus and The Rich Man)

November 10, 2010 By Randy Olds 18 Comments

"The Rich Man Going to Hell" by David Teniers the Younger (c. 1647)

We come at last to what many who hold to view of hell as eternal conscious torment will hold up as ironclad proof of their claims. Eventually any discussion on hell will come around to  the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man found in Luke 16:19-31. “How can you possibly refute such hard evidence for hell”, they will say. “The Rich Man is clearly in hell, Jesus even describes the flames he is tormented by.” Traditionalists eyes will light up as they whip out their Bible and turn to the middle of the third gospel to prove their point. The image above of a demon leading the Rich Man to Hell is what many envision in this parable.

Using Luke 16 to prove hell, however descriptive the language therein, is very problematic. First, even if this parable did prove hell, all it would prove is that rich people go to hell and beggars go to Paradise. Secondly, the place in question here is Hades, which is the intermediate state, and has no bearing on the final eschatological disposition of the damned. Third, the place described in this parable much more closely resembles the Greek Hades and some of the places described in apocalyptic pseudepigrapha than anything found in the Old or New Testaments. My final objection is that focusing on Lazarus and the Rich Man as Jesus’ “Lesson about Hell” entirely misses out on the point that Jesus was making in this parable.

So what is this parable about? Well, first I want to unpack this story a little bit.

I have read a number of articles that link the Rich Man with Caiaphas, the High Priest. These articles normally claim that the Lazarus in this parable is the same Lazarus whom Jesus raised from the dead in John 12. After carefully considering all of the evidence I am convinced that this is a valid claim. A decent article with all of the scriptural references as well as references to the proper locations in Josephus’ Antiquities can be found here. I do not agree with all of the conclusions reached in the article, but the points made about Caiaphas being the Rich Man and Lazarus being Lazarus are solid. The descriptions of the clothing of the High Priest (purple and fine linen) can clearly go back to the descriptions in Exodus 28 and the five brothers from his fathers house clearly seem to echo the five brothers-in-law of Caiaphas. Add to that the fact that Caiaphas was a Sadducee and the entire point of the story revolves around Lazarus’ resurrection, something that the Sadducees denied, and I would think that the Pharisees would know precisely who Jesus was fingering in this parable.

In the parable, Jesus was obviously still addressing the Pharisees and He was telling them a story to make a point.  The point of course is found in verse 31 and is that even if a person were to come back from the dead as Lazarus had they would still not be convinced of what He was telling them. Much like many other parables Jesus was using imagery  from the culture and beliefs of His audience so that His audience would remember the story. In this case, He used popular Jewish myths that had arisen concerning the Underworld to center His story around.

As I pointed out in Hell and Hellenization, during the post-exilic period Greek ideas had penetrated into the Jewish mindset.  And as I brought out here and here, Intertestamental writings like 1 Enoch and the Apocalypse of Zephaniah more closely resembled the Greek Hades than anything in the Bible. Jewish writings from throughout the first century continued to show that the Pharisees and other Jewish sects pretty much believed in an Underworld precisely as Jesus is describing in this parable.

But was Jesus accurately describing what He perceived to be a true depiction of the Underworld? I don’t think that Jesus intended to validate the myths that the Pharisees believed in any more than Paul intended to validate the deity of Zeus at Mars Mill in Acts 17. Throughout the Gospels Jesus always taught about the judgment at the resurrection and never taught about anything having to do with the intermediate state. In fact, throughout the previous parables in Luke 15 it is the resurrection that is clearly in view. Jesus consistently taught about the Kingdom of God and the resurrection, and I see no reason we He would have felt the need to dispel the Jewish myths at this time. I believe that Jesus was using the vivid images from 1 Enoch to drive home the point that continued resistance to the Kingdom of God could mean missing out on the resurrection of the dead at the eschaton. In fact, provided that Lazarus is in fact Lazarus, then resurrection is in the background of this parable all along!

As we saw in my posts concerning Gehenna (I will get into more of this as we move through the New Testament), it is at the final Judgment where the dead are thrown into “Hell”. The fact that Luke uses the language of Gehenna elsewhere is a clear indicator that Gehenna and Hades are not the same place, as I pointed out in my Introduction to Hades.  And although the Catholics have teachings on “Particular Judgment”, what sense does it make to be thrown into Hell to be resurrected and judged a couple of thousand years later, only to be thrown into an altogether different “Hell”? Additionally, nowhere else in the Bible is there a teaching anything like this concerning a place of punishment immediately after death. From Daniel 12:2 to Revelation 20:15, judgment is consistently placed at the eschaton, not at death.

It is amazing to me how people look for “history” in this parable rather than “story”. In none of Jesus’ other parables do we do this. For instance, there have never been any archeological digs attempting to find the vineyard found in the Parable of the Landowner of Matthew 21. Nor do we try and locate on a map the location of the estate found in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. We automatically recognize these parables as “Story”  and do do not attach any historical or geographic significance to them, and instead look for the underlying elements and lessons. But with the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, people seem to get all bumfuzzled, miss the entire point of the parable and simply regard this as proof of Hell. And what is even of more puzzlement to me is how people associate this “Story” with the disposition of souls in eternal hell, when the language used clearly points toward the intermediate state rather than at the eschaton, and a mythological one to boot!

I don’t think that this parable was meant by Jesus to teach us anything about hell or even about the intermediate state in Sheol/Hades. It was simply a parable much like all of His other parables with a hidden lesson that He wanted for us to dig out. Unfortunately, later theologians took this parable along with other Jewish mythologies and crafted a doctrine of Hell around it, something I rather doubt that Jesus ever intended. If there is to be a Hell at the Judgment for the wicked, I believe that we are going to have to look elsewhere for descriptions of it.

In my next post on Hell, I am going to look at a doctrine known as Conditional Mortality, something necessary if the annihilationists are to make their claim. I’m then going to examine a little word known as aion that we will be finding in the Gospels as well as terms such as “unquenchable fire” “outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth”.  I figure it will take me three or four more posts to examine the rest of the allusions to Hell in the Gospels. I can then run swiftly through the rest of the New Testament looking for Hell (there is not much there) and finish up with Revelation. I’ll then move on to Christian apocrypha and then to the Patristics.

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Filed Under: eschatology, Hades, Hell, Jesus Christ, The Bible, theology

Waterloo, Gehenna, Hiroshima, Armageddon

October 10, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Continued from a previous post.

What do these four words have in common? How are they different? How long will these words live on in the cultures from whence they came?

Waterloo, Belgium (Dome is War Memorial)

All four are connected to literal, geographical locations that you can find on a world map. Waterloo is small community in Belgium. Gehenna is a transliteration of the Valley of Hinnom located to the southwest of Jerusalem. Hiroshima is a large city in Japan. Armageddon is a transliteration of the mountain of Megiddo, which is located about two hours north of Jerusalem. If a person had no knowledge of the history surrounding these four locations and went for a quick visit, odds are that the visitor would have absolutely no sense of fear, dread or awe.

However, once one becomes intimate with either the historical or possible future implications of any one of these places, the whole complexion of the visit is quite likely to change. Even though all four places attest very little to the naked eye of the historical nature or possible futuristic events associated with them, in reality being quite pleasant places to visit, mere knowledge of the writings associated with them from a historical or possible prophetical viewpoint automatically puts the visitor in a position to look around the site with an attitude of “what if?”

Hiroshima Today

Hiroshima and Waterloo are of course significantly different than Gehenna and Armageddon in the sense that the prior are the scenes of crushing military defeats and the latter are viewed in the sense of God’s judgment.  However, for someone to have “met one’s Waterloo” remains a popular aphorism nearly two hundred years after Napoleons humiliating defeat there, and simply is taken to mean complete, total defeat. Likewise, if a person was to make the threat to turn someplace into a “Hiroshima” anywhere around the world, the threat would immediately be perceived to indicate that a fiery, if not nuclear conflagration was perhaps eminent. What power lies in the use of a single word.

Jesus was known for His use of powerful wording to make a point, and He often used words that were in the common vernacular and changed them to make His points.  His use of the word “hypocrite” is a prime example.  ὑποκρίτης (Hypokrites) was the Greek word originally used for the stage actors that performed in the theaters, and Jesus’  re-appropriation of the term to denote those who were acting righteously but in fact had wicked hearts gave the word a whole new meaning. Gehenna is likely another example of Jesus adopting a word and giving it an entirely new meaning that has endured for two millenia.

So the question arises of “What did the the Jews of Jesus’ day think of when they heard Him use the term Gehenna?” Probably nothing close to what we think of Hell today. As we have seen from our studies on Gehenna in the Old Testament here and here, the First Century Jews primarily knew Gehenna as a place where a lot of bad things had happened in the history of their nation. For post-mortum experiences they were much more familiar with the use of Sheol and as the result of Hellenization, Hades and perhaps Abraham’s Bosom as well.

Concerning the Jewish memories of Gehenna (Valley of Hinnom), there was the centuries of idolatry and child-sacrifices to the god Moloch (or Baal) that had involved even the Kings of Judah. Then King Josiah ritually defiled the Valley during a short-lived reform of Israel.  Next was the slaughter of 185,000 Assyrian soldiers that had taken place during the time of King Hezekiah as had been prophesied by Isaiah. Not much more than a century later, Jeremiah went down into Gehenna and prophesied that pretty much the same fate was in store for the Israelites and Jerusalem. Shortly thereafter, Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and more than likely filled the valley with corpses as was prophesied in Jeremiah 19.

After the return from exile, some salient apocalyptic writings started circulating that seemed to indicate that this “accursed valley“  might have some after-death consequences as well ( see my post on Hell and 1 Enoch as well as Further Development of Hell in The Intertestamental Period). It seems rather likely that these texts were widely disseminated by Jesus time, and although the opinion on them was probably divided, most of Jesus’ audience would likely have been aware of them. That Jesus knew of these texts is almost certain as His half-brother Jude incorporated a portion of 1 Enoch into his homily and Peter alluded to 1 Enoch on a number of occasions in his epistles. Whether or not these writings attested to any eternal consequences of Gehenna is possible, but rather unlikely, although a post-mortum visit in Gehenna for the wicked seems likely in 1 Enoch particularly. With that said, I rather doubt that Jesus viewed 1 Enoch as an inspired piece of literature any more that He viewed the Greek mythologies concerning Hades as inspired writings.

The tradition that Gehenna had become a smoldering garbage dump where perpetual fires and worms consumed rubbish, carcasses and the bodies of criminals by the time of Jesus definitely adds flavor to the discussion, but should not be used to base our conclusions on.  I personally think that what we can confirm about Gehenna is sufficient to base our studies on, even if Gehenna in the time of Jesus was a relatively clean, peaceful valley as it exists today (although I am of the opinion that the garbage dump tradition is sustainable to some degree).

I get the definite feeling that when Jesus spoke about judgment in Gehenna that the average Jew would have gotten a feeling of dread and contempt simply based upon the history of the place. Add to that the prophecies concerning the valley as well as the picture painted by 1 Enoch, and I would tend to think that a certain degree of fear and foreboding would set in when  Jesus made his statements concerning judgment in Gehenna and Gehenna fire. The Jews knew their history and the fact that many bodies, both Jewish and otherwise, had been deposited there before by the hand of God was firmly in their memories, and the possibility of it happening again would likely be horrifying. I would tend to think that the Scribes and Pharisees in Jesus listening audience would have gone back to their scrolls of Isaiah and Jeremiah (not to mention the other prophets) to try to determine which prophecies in them might not yet be completely fulfilled.  However, considering how dense they had been in missing the prophecies concerning their Messiah, the majority quite possibly read right over the prophecies without any real sense of comprehension of what Jesus was referring to.

Tel Megiddo

I think that it is important to remember that nearly 600 years had passed since the events that we read about in the Old Testament concerning Gehenna had occurred when Jesus started using it in His homilies. However, nearly 200 years have passed since Napoleon had his Waterloo, and that word lives on. I imagine that Hiroshima will still bring to mind the nuclear devastation suffered there for centuries to come. And, although the word Armageddon is used only once in the New Testament (Revelation 16:16), that single word has brought a sense of impending calamity to those hearing it for nearly two millenia.

Valley of Hinnom (coutesy Biblewalk)

While Israel was waiting for a prophesied Messiah to deliver them from the hands of Rome, would they really have received Jesus words about judgment and Gehenna fire in terms that preterists assert that they should have; that is as a soon coming judgment on Israel (by God) with the Valley of Hinnom filled with the corpses of dead Jews to the point that they would have to be burned since there was no place left for burial?  Or would they lean more in understanding Gehenna in the terms of 1 Enoch, that is a post-mortum place where they would face God’s wrathful judgment? And leaving aside for a moment what Jesus’ audience might have understood at the time that He was speaking, what was Jesus’ intent when He spoke about the judgment of Gehenna?

These are very important questions that I want to start dealing with as soon as I am finished with my next post concerning the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.  I want to examine exactly what did happen in 70 C.E. in and around Jerusalem, especially as it might relate to the judgment of Gehenna.  Until I recently read Josephus War of the Jews, I really did not have any idea just how complete the destruction was nor how dire the situation became in the weeks and months just prior to the Fall of Jerusalem. I am going to primarily draw from Josephus’ works, although I am going to try and use the Roman historian Tacitus if possible for corroboration of Josephus’ histories. I have come to the opinion that a good understanding of the historical events of 66-70 C.E are necessary to understand some of the possible implications of Jesus’ usage of Gehenna in the Gospels. What Jesus’ audience might not have understood we can see much more clearly looking at the entire picture. After all, hindsight is said to be 20/20 (okay, maybe 30/60).

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Filed Under: 1 Enoch, eschatology, Gehenna, Hell, The Bible, theology Tagged With:

Gehenna and Eschatology

October 5, 2010 By Randy Olds 8 Comments

I have realized a good portion of what I am going to be discussing in the next several posts is directly tied in to eschatology, and that perhaps some readers might not be aware of the eschatological  differences that define this discussion, and that defining the purpose and scope of the next few posts might be helpful to some readers, so I want to briefly define why understanding eschatology (the Theology of End-Times) as it relates to Gehenna is of import.

The Destuction of Jerusalem, 70 C.E. by David Roberts & Louis Hague

If you are an evangelical Christian in the United States, there is a very good possibility that you have been exposed to a premillenial or Dispensational view of end-times prophecy. This is the teaching that asserts that the majority of Biblical prophecy has yet to be fulfilled and that there is going to be, sometime in the near future, a complete meltdown in the world leading to Armageddon and then the return of Christ. The best-selling Left Behind series assumes this eschatological viewpoint.

However, there are a  good many Christian theologians who hold to what is known as a preterist or partial-preterist view of Biblical eschatology. Preterists believe that all or most of the prophecies in The Olivet Discourse and/or Revelation as well as many of the prophecies in Daniel and the other Old Testament prophets to have  been fulfilled in 70 C.E. when Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Partial preterists believe that most prophecy was fulfilled, but there is still a bit left over (like Christ’s second coming).  Full preterists will go so far as to say that Jesus actually returned in 70 C.E.  There are all sorts of views in between. The views of Heaven and Hell among preterists and partial preterists are varied, with some holding to traditional views, some to annihilationism, and some even holding to Universalism.

Why does this matter to a discussion on Hell?

From a preterist or partial preterist view, a good bit of what Jesus had to say about judgment and fire and destruction an all of that had to do with the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Titus, including the warnings about Gehenna. In fact some hyper preterists will go so far as to say that the Lake of Fire in Revelation was in reference to Gehenna as well, with the judgment simply being on the unbelieving Israel (I think this view is far too extreme). Conversely, most dispensationalists and a good many historical premillenialists believe that the only significant prophecy fulfilled in 70 C.E.  was the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Why this matters to the discussion on Hell is this. If you read through the apocalyptic sayings as well as the stern warnings that Jesus uttered in the Gospels with a preterist worldview, it is very easy to assign nearly all of these sayings to the judgment on unrepentant Israel and see the fulfillment of these sayings in the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman army under Titus, which is what many biblical scholars and theologians assert. Moreover, those who hold to this viewpoint assert that those listening to Jesus would have known that, when He was talking about Judgment and Gehenna fire, He was addressing Israel as a nation, much like the Old Testament prophets before Him had done.

With the background that I am going to give over the next few posts on Gehenna, I want to see if these assertions can be sustained. I am going to keep the scope of the discussion on Gehenna itself and am assuming that those reading along have at least a fair understanding of the eschatological views that I have presented.  I primarily want to explore two things. First, would Jesus’ listening audience have identified his warnings of Gehenna as a pronouncement of doom to Jerusalem instead of our traditional view of Hell. Secondly, can we reliably posit that these pronouncements of Judgment were fulfilled in 70 C.E. with the sack of Jerusalem?

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Filed Under: eschatology, Gehenna, Hell, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

7 Reasons Why I am Still a Premillenialist

March 11, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

Although I have considered other alternatives, I still remain a post-tribulation premillenialist. I won’t get into why I am post-trib in this post, but I do want to briefly outline a few of the reasons that I still believe in a futurist interpretation of Biblical prophecy in general and a premillenial view in particular.

1. In order to take a preterist view of prophecy you must either dismiss the book of Revelation entirely or hold to a very early date of the vision that John received, around 67-68 CE. The traditional view of the dating of Revelation is 96 CE during the rule of Domitian and this view was held by most of the Church Fathers including Iraeneus, Eusubius and Jerome.

If John had indeed written Revelation prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE it only makes sense that John would have at a later date explained that his revelation was about the destruction of Jerusalem and it would have been viewed as a book of fulfilled prophecy.

Although the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was a very apocalyptic event with Josephus claiming a death toll of over 1,100,000 souls, a great number of the things prophesied in Revelation can’t be substantiated in the actual events without taking a very large amount of creative license.

2. Although I will accede that a large portion of the Olivet Discourse can be viewed in a Preterist light, there are also many problems that I have with a preterist view.

The largest of these is what Jesus Himself said about the ‘great tribulation’ in Matthew 24:21-22. Jesus said of this tribulation that there will have never been one like it in the history of the world and that there would never be one like it again. He goes on to say that if the days weren’t cut short then nobody would survive.

Now, I’m not saying that the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 wasn’t bad, but I am somewhat a student of history and know full well that there have definitely been worse ‘tribulations’ since then, most recently the two world wars in the last century. Either Jesus was using extreme hyperbole in this statement, or was mistaken, or He was referring to something other than the destruction of Jerusalem in 35 or 40 years.

Additionally, all of the celestial events in Matthew 24:29 don’t seem to have occurred nor is there any indication that Jesus Himself returned to our earthly plane in 70 CE to gather his elect as is spoken of in vv. 29-31.

3. The ‘resurrection’ of Israel as a nation in November of 1947 really bugs me. Not that I am anti-semitic or anything like that. It’s just that at no time in the history of the world has a nation-state been vanquished for nearly two-thousand years and then suddenly arise back to power in the way that Israel has.

The fact that Israel exists as a nation has only one of two possible explanations to me. Either it was a result of God’s divine intervention and part of His master plan or it was the result of a self-fulfilling prophecy for the fundamentalists who wanted for Israel to exist as a nation so that their interpretation of the Bible could come to pass.

Now I don’t pretend to have the magic answer for all of the prophecies in Daniel, Isaiah, Romans or Revelation concerning Israel’s part to play in future events, but the Bible is full of them.

4. This probably ought to be “3b” but I figures I’d make a separate bullet for this one, and that is the plans to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. I you go to the Temple Institutes Home Page you can see firsthand how far along the Israelis are in their plan to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Pretty interesting website with a lot of really cool stuff, but the bottom line is that the orthodox Jews have every intent to rebuild the Temple and resume animal sacrifices there, preferably sooner than later.

Whether you are a dispensationalist or a covenant theologian or any other premillenialist for that matter, having the Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem is key to the fulfilment of Biblical prophecy, most particularly those of Daniel 7 and the tie-ins to Revelation and 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4 . It is even rumoured that the Israelis have discovered the remains of the ashes of the Red Heifer which are key to resuming animal sacrifices in the Holy Temple.

5. The Internet. As much as I love the Information Age, the Internet and all of the associated technology scares me on several fronts. First, the Internet makes it possible for the first time in history to be able to broadcast in real time any event in the world. Events that have been prophesied such as the witness of and subsequent slaying of the two witnesses in Revelation 11 could be broadcast live across the world.

Additionally, the Internet and related technology really do make it possible for the first time in history to set up the New World Order that would be necessary for the Beast and False Prophet to arise and take true power over the entire world.

6. Hollywood special effects. I think that most everybody knows that there are some conspiracy theorists out there that don’t believe that we landed on the moon and that the whole thing was shot on a Hollywood sound stage. For the record I’m not one of those. I pretty much think that we really did land on the moon.

However, with the special effects available now, a person or people in complete charge of the media could make anything seem possible and there is no one except those on the scene who would know any different. And those people could be made to be kept quiet.

The point is that whoever the Beast or False Prophet may end up being could seemingly perform miraculous things like those in the book in Revelation, have those broadcast over government controlled news channels and the Internet and no one would be the wiser.

It’s kind of like Jesus said in Matthew 24:24, if it were possible, even the elect would be deceived.

7. The moral decay of the world around us. Yea, sure, I know that there have been times that the world was probably just as steeped in sin and misery as it is now. Every generation laments the apostasy, irreverence and sins of the generation following them. I won’t get into the crime statistics, or the proliferation of homosexuality and it’s subsequent acceptance as being ‘normal’, nor the abortion rates or proliferation of pornography. I want even go into the rise of the ‘New Atheists’ who want to eradicate all religion from the earth as if religion itself is the plague that is causing all of the worlds problems.

There have definitely been other times in history that seemed pretty bad morally. It just seems to me that we are headed in a very wrong direction in a very big hurry with the morality of the world at large. I’ll leave it at that for the time being.

Although I don’t put a lot of effort into eschatology these days, I still dabble into it from time to time. And although I respect the time and effort that the amillenialists have put into their eschatology, I’m still not convinced. It sounds all well and good, but to me one must put a huge amount of effort into manipulating the Bible to come away with a preterist or amillennial view.

All of this doesn’t mean that I have it all figured out, because I don’t. I’ll continue to read and study, although my trips into eschatology are less frequent these days. I’m much more concerned with discipleship than I am with ‘waiting for the end.’ Living my life in a manner that is pleasing to God is my highest priority, but I’ll still watch the world around me so that I am hopefully not caught unaware.

Filed Under: eschatology

Lulled to Sleep by Amillennialism?

March 10, 2010 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

When it comes to eschatology, I have been a post-trib premillenialist for many years. That means that I believe that Jesus Christ will someday return to earth and set up a literal one thousand year rule prior to the Final Judgement. It also means that I DO NOT believe in a ‘rapture’ of all (or any) Christians prior to Christ’s return. Not before the “Great Tribulation,’ not in the middle of it nor before the ‘wrath of God’ time period as some of the ‘Pre-Wrath’ proponents now say.

With that said, I must admit that I don’t spend nearly as much time these days studying end-times prophecy as I did say fifteen or twenty years ago. After exiting the Worldwide Church of God, I spent the majority of my Bible time on two areas. The first area was disproving the legalistic teaching of Herbert Armstrong and the second area was eschatology.

My studies in eschatology went way beyond just the Biblical teachings found in Daniel, Revelation and related areas but also extended into all sorts of extra-biblical readings about the coming One-World government (New World Order) and into conspiracy theories of all sorts. I was reading about the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Rothschild’s and how all of these groups were working to bring about the New World Order and hence give rise to the end-times Antichrist and thus the fulfillment of biblical prophecy before the Internet ever came along.

During these years I seriously considered moving out to the wilderness with my family so that I could somehow or another escape the (in my mind) soon coming bad times. I’ve since seen how ludicrous that idea was and have set my mind to live out my life as a Christian and let the end times worry about themselves. If the end does come in my lifetime, I’ll simply have to rely on Christ to see me through, and if I’m not to survive….well, like Paul says, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”

I don’t read nearly so much about end-times stuff anymore. I have realized that Christianity isn’t about waiting for the sky to fall, but to rather be as much of a disciple of Christ as possible and to strive every day to live a life worthy of the sacrifice that Christ made two millenia ago.

During the last year or two, I have even begun to wonder if I might not be wrong about my entire pre-trib pre-millenial beliefs. I have read a lot of John Wesley’s writings and he was post-millenial. I have also read a lot of N.T. Wrights writings and he appears to be an ammillenialist. I have revisited the Olivet Discourse several times with an eye towards the preterist viewpoint and have come away somewhat convinced.

After all, I have asked myself, isn’t the majority of Christendom amillenial? The Catholics, the Anglicans, the Orthodox, and most Methodists scholars and theologians appear to be either post- or a-millennial. Could the majority of Christians around the world be wrong about their eschatology? And even within those who are premillennial, I am in the minority with my post-tribulation views. Most of the Protestants who ascribe to premillennialism espouse the ‘rapture’, which I believe is only wishful thinking.

I do think that many of the Christians who are premillenial focus way too much on end-times prophecy to the point that they end up not living the life that they could be living. Instead of helping the poor and spreading the Gospel, they are ‘getting ready for the end.’ I have read many commentaries by more liberal theologians and preachers criticizing Western Christianity for the end-times views that many of us have and how, because of those end-times views, we aren’t doing enough good in the world. They say that it seems that many Christians don’t see any point in doing good for a world that they are convinced that is getting ready to come to an end anyway.

I have found myself agreeing with statements like this, and have also found myself questioning my own pre-millennial views quite often. However, whenever I get back into the Bible and start reading the Olivet Discourse or Revelation again, I can’t explain away large parts of it nor attribute it all to preterism.

Additionally, as I view what I perceive as a general decay in the moral fabric of the society in which I live in and watch world events, not the least the ongoing drama in the Middle East, I inevitably find myself thinking that we simply must be living in the end-times.

Or are we?

Could all of the amillenialists be right and all of the premillenialists just be alarmists who deep inside want for the end to come so that we can finally live in a world with no more tears and no more pain? Are we reading more into the Bible than is actually there and are all of our pointing toward world events and social decay simply a matter of our own discontent with the world in which we live in? Can all of the books and Internet sites devoted to the coming Antichrist and Armageddon simply a product of fundamentalist paranoia? Haven’t Christians throughout the ages been convinced that they were the ones living in the last days, only to have generation after generation rise up after them believing the same thing and pointing out where and why the previous generations had been wrong?

Or, could the premillenialists actually be right? And could Jesus return actually be imminent?

Could we being lulled to sleep by the ammillenialists?

Should we be watching with a close eye “the signs of the times?” What would the ammillenialists say and do if the Temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem and Temple sacrifices were allowed to resume? Would the ammillennialists even recognise ‘The Beast” or the “False Prophet” if they were to suddenly arise?

Although I respect N.T. Wright and have enjoyed reading his books and have for the most part shed my fundamentalist past life, I still remain a premillenialist. Like I tell those who buy into the whole ‘rapture’ business, I’ll tell the ammillenialist the same thing; I hope that you’re right, but I don’t think that you are. Deep in my bones, I still feel like the end is coming, and probably sooner than later.

In my next post, I’ll list the reasons that I’m still a premillenialist. I’m still open for someone to convince me otherwise, but I’m not sure that they can.

Filed Under: eschatology

My Latest Eschatology Bunny Hunt

October 12, 2009 By Randy Olds Leave a Comment

I hate it when I start chasing the elusive eschatology bunny across the Internet. I started out reading on my local news feed an AP story where the Mayans are wanting to debunk the story floating around that the Mayan Calendar (and therefore the world) is going to end on December 21, 2012. I then decided to review a link that I had read about a Pastor in Washington State who has written some interesting things about eclipses occurring on Passover and Tabernacles in 2015. I ended up reading all sorts of things all over the place from may different people making their case for Jesus’ return sometime really-really-really soon. Now my head hurts!

I had been meaning to read more about what Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries had to say ever since Felix Taylor posted a link to him over at My Own Generous Orthodoxy a few weeks ago. I actually went over to his website tonight and browsed around a little and then watched a video that he has there. It appears that Biltz is a Messianic Jew who has studied the eclipse patterns over the last few thousand years on the NASA website and thinks that the solar and lunar eclipse pattern during the 2014-2015 Holy Day period are significant and could signal either the Tribulation or Christ’s actual return. I didn’t study enough of what he had to say to make a qualified judgement of it, but it seems pretty interesting.

Somehow or another, while I got to checking out some of the claims that Biltz was making, I ended up on the eschatological bunny hunt that I mentioned earlier. It appears that there are a whole lot of people who think that something big with regards to Bible prophecy is going to happen sometime between 2012 and 2017. And, of course, there are many that think that we have already entered the Great Tribulation. It’s enough to make you want to hide underneath your computer desk!

About fifteen years ago, I spent an inordinately large amount of time studying Bible prophecy. I read all kinds of books about it and studied all of the familiar passages in both the Old and New Testaments. It was during this time that I came to believe that the whole pre-tribulation Rapture theory didn’t stand up. I never quite got to the point of stockpiling food, although the thought did occur to me.

I have since come to the point of a wait and see attitude. My walk with God has become much more important to me than having to know the date on which He returns. I still watch the signs, however, and when I see something like what Biltz has to see, I catches my interest. I watch world events and observe the general moral decay going on around us and can’t help but to think that it can’t be long until Jesus returns to set things right. Of course, I also try to keep in mind that people have had the same thoughts for the last two thousand years.

There are of course a number of things that are different today than have ever been in the last two thousand years. The Internet. The restoration of the Nation of Israel. The European Union. The rise of Islam. Just to name a few.

So far everyone (including Armstrong) who predicted a year was wrong. Does that mean that no one will ever get it right? Will Jesus come like a thief in the night and catch everyone unaware, or is there a way to at least get pretty close to the Day when He will return? I dunno anymore, and althoughI don’t worry about it near as much as I used to, I can’t help but occasionally see what other people are thinking and writing about Jesus’ eventual return.

I personally think that the time is very short, but that’s just my opinion. I try to live every day as if Jesus is returning just after my lunch break. I figure that’s the safest bet. Keep the lanterns full and the wicks trimmed and watch for the signs in the sky (but continue to pay my light bill).

Filed Under: eschatology
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