What Does Jesus Say About His Coming?
Fifth in a Series of Six Messages
What
is to come?
October
15, 1995
loosely
based on The End, by Conyers
Snyder
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PREVIEW
End Times Fiction: A Biblical Consideration of the Left Behind Theology
Mark 13:18-20 (NIV) Pray that this will
not take place in winter, because those will be days of distress unequaled from
the beginning, when God created the world, until now--and never to be equaled
again. If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for
the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them.
In a
previous message we answered the question "when? - When is the Jesus to
come?" Today we tackle the question of "what? - What will happen when
he comes?" As we do, we take up a
topic that is often avoided by Bible teachers today - the subject of Yahweh’s
judgment through Christ.
Yahweh's Judgment
Troubling
Jesus' description of judgment and the
wrath of the Almighty is troubling to many modern Christians. That a god of
boundless love could also carry out the punishment of the wicked is a confusing
paradox. The idea that the Anointed One came first to compassionately save and
heal, yet will return to cast many into torment is unacceptable to the modern
mind. Shouldn't Jesus' return be exclusively good news?
But Jesus' words are bad news! He foretells
of national and social disasters, of persecutions and falling away of the
faithful, of temptations and trials, of general disorder and turmoil, of
tribulation, sorrow, hardship, disease, misery and death. Besides predictions of local upheaval, like
the destruction of the temple, Jesus leads us on to envisioning disaster of
global and universal proportions. Jesus warns in Matthew 24:29:
Immediately after the distress of those
days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars
will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
Such cosmic
occurrences will bring matchless fear, as is predicted in Luke 21:25-26:
There will be signs in the sun, moon and
stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring
and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is
coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken.
All these
mysterious events are seen by Jesus as God’s wrath, as indicated in Luke 21:23:
There will be great distress in the land
and wrath against this people.
"Wrath"
is an old time word, translated from the Greek orge, which means
"violent, passionate anger or vengeance." Our God is not simply
"a concept by which we measure our pain" (as John Lennon taught young
people in the 70's). But he is a real person -- intelligent, emotional,
passionate, loving, but also vengeful when it comes to paying back the evil
humanity has perpetrated against his creation and his children. As the writer
of Hebrews emphasizes,
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands
of an angry god. (Hebrews 10:31).
In Jesus'
seven end-time parables, found in Matthew 24 and 25 (covered earlier), four
refer explicitly to the punishment of the wicked. For the wicked, there will be
mourning and weeping (24:30; 25:30),
gnashing of teeth in anguish (25:30),
cursing (25:41),
casting out from the presence of Christ
(25:41),
a taking away (24:39),
a throwing away into nuclear fire (25:41).
If Jesus is
telling the truth, The Father's judgment upon lost humanity will be frightful
and everlasting. And the gentle Jesus will be the agent of such wrath.
A Contrast
and Resolution
Friends, if our idea of the Yahshua ben
Yahweh (Jesus) is limited to the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild" in the
manger in Bethlehem, these words of judgment will shock and dismay -- we will
long to deny this facet of Jesus' character and mission. Yet, because of our
distorted myths of Christmas, most people only understand Jesus as some kind of
miracle child grown into the charismatic sissy of Hollywood. Worldlings certainly
will never celebrate a Jesus who is the agent in their judgment! When the
time comes, all will be expecting some kind of Santa Claus with his eight tiny
reindeers -- but they will instead meet Yahweh Sabaoth with his myriads of
avenging saints and angels.
In the words of the hymn by Charles Wesley,
Those who set at naught and sold him,
Pierced and nailed him to the tree.
Every eye shall behold him,
Robed in dreadful majesty.
We who are
serious in the faith need to rediscover something vital to that faith -- that
the image of Jesus, the meek child-king, who came to save, is not incompatible
with the image of Jesus, the Lord of Hosts, who will come to avenge. Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel may have
best expressed the compatibility of the two images of God - that of meek
sufferer and strong tormentor. Heschel believed that God is moved and affected
by what happens in the world, and reacts accordingly. In the biblical view,
man's deeds may move him, affect him, grieve him, or, on the other hand, gladden
and please him. This notion that God can be intimately affected, that he
possesses not merely intelligence and will, but also affection, defines the
consciousness of God. What Heschel is
saying is that who we are and what we do has a significant effect on
God's feelings and actions!
Though we know the Father is a person and
that he feels for us, it doesn't mean that he is human; for God is not a
man. What it does imply is that the Creator chooses to live in relationship to
that which he has created. The Father is sympathetic to his creation. And like
a father, he is sympathetic to our needs.
Parental
Correction
Friends, we understand that most parents
suffer when their children are ill. In the days after my daughter Gina was
born, she suffered serious allergies. I was up with her two nights in a row,
rocking her and singing to her. I loved her so. I didn't know what was wrong,
only that it seemed her little life was in jeopardy. And though I didn't feel
the exquisite pain of the newborn, I still suffered greatly on account of her
suffering. As a father, I was sympathetic to my girl's distress - and I was
distressed.
She survived, and six years later, Gina
decided that she'd throw a fit in the middle of church to get attention. When
we got home, I took her to her room and soundly spanked her fanny, letting her
know exactly why she was receiving punishment. And though she has acted up in
many ways many times since then, it was the very last time she acted up
in church. As a father, I tried to be sympathetic to Gina's need for
correction.
Likewise, the Father sympathetically
suffers with his children as a loving father should. He also appropriately
chastises them, as a loving father should. He reacts and responds to all
people; but because people are emotionally and perceptively limited, people
experience the Father's reaction to their needs as either the affection of love
or the affection of anger. Whether the Father expressed love or anger, both are
expressed out of affection.
The Father
is Absolutely Perfectly Personal
Discovering an angry god brings us to
another difficulty pertaining to judgment. Professor Conyers relates that a
student in his theology class had a complaint. Kevin stood up and said, "I
have a problem with the idea of God’s anger. When I think of anger," he
continued, "I think of someone who is out of control. That is not what I
want to believe about God; it would make life too uncertain."
This is a common objection to the idea that
the Father gets angry. We as humans interpret wrath through our experience as
humans - human love and wrath can be unbridled; human love and wrath can go too
far, can be unjust, can be fickle, can be abusive, can be murderous. Human
anger, when unchecked, kills the body and destroys the spirit of both innocent
and guilty. Everyone in this room has been victimized in one way or another by
human emotion.
The solution to the problem of divine wrath
is in understanding that the Father is not a man. We call him ‘him’ out of
convention only – he has traits common with both male and female humans. I had a lady in church once that couldn’t
get this concept. She was sure that God
was a man, like an old man on a throne in heaven. Her father was an old man with a beard who sat on a rocking chair
and got up to beat her. He was god to
her. It disturbed her at first to find
that Yahweh is a spiritual being. His
ways are higher than our ways. We can't understand his favor or anger through
our human experience, because he's not human. The Bible consistently presses
the view that, though people are unjust, "there is justice in all his
ways." When the dear lady realized
that God was not a man like her father, she was soon freed up, and came into
the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
You see, the Father can be just in both his
favor and his wrath, for he is absolutely, perfectly personal. The Father is devoid of anything
impersonal. He is intimately involved
in our lives. He is completely in
control (of himself).
Therefore, his justice and mercy are perfect,
because they address each need from a standpoint of God’s knowing everything
there is to know about each situation and applying the perfect response.
(This is
called beneficent omniscience). "And our god could not very well love us
if he did not hate the sin that bring us to harm and death." Yes, the
Father in Heaven is perfectly sympathetic, and answers the need for justice
from an eternal perspective.
The Father
is Sympathetic
Elie Wiesel spent WWII in a concentration
camp. He tells the story in his memoirs of three men who were condemned by the
Nazis to hang. Two were accused of hoarding arms. The third, a young boy much
loved in the camp, refused under torture to give information. The three were
made to stand on chairs with ropes around their necks. The boy was between the
two men; he was light of body and very frightened. Inmates were lined up in
rows, forced to watch the show.
The chairs were kicked out from under the
victims. The two adults, who were heavier, died quickly. But the boy writhed at
the end of his tether in anguish, suffocating slowly, choking. As he was dying, someone muttered,
"Where is God? Where is God?" No one answered. Later, as the
prisoners were being led away, the question was asked again, "Where is God
now?" Wiesel heard the answer within him: "Where is he? Here he is.
He is hanging here -- on this gallows."
In the person of the boy, the suffering
Jesus is once again hanging between two thieves. The Father suffers
sympathetically with his children who are suffering. And he comforts his own
because he is intimately acquainted with their suffering and affliction. When
you suffer, God suffers with you.
But does this experience of Father also
apply to sin and evil? If so, wouldn't we experience both the comfort of his
presence and the sting of his wrath in our lives? If we take the wrong road,
doesn't it make sense that Father would try to would set us aright, if he is
indeed absolutely perfectly personal?
We are never alone, or on our own. Big
Brother is not only watching, but is intimately involved in our doings. We are
always in relationship with him, whether we like it or not, whether we want to
or not, whether that relationship is good or bad! Wrath refers to one side of that relationship. It too is an
experience of the Father's love. When we stubbornly refuse his love and care
out of rebellion, disobedience, or backsliding, then we may expect to
experience his love as wrath. We get spanked, and hopefully, we get
rehabilitated.
The End of
What?
Notice that the Father's judgment in the
teachings of Jesus is not arbitrary or purposeless. It is perfectly precise. It
focuses on the End of the Age. Jesus
tells us that, in the calamities to come, "he who stands firm to the end
will be saved" (Matthew 24:13). Furthermore, he said
"this gospel of the kingdom will be
preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end
will come" (24:14).
What the end
refers to may be uncertain. We must ask, "The end of what?"
First let's speak of what the end is not...
It is not
the end of history.
It is not
the end of the world.
It is not
the end of our experience with God.
Clearly,
Jesus is speaking of the end of evil. The finishing of all things that oppose
the Creator, defile the earth, and undermine the perfect purpose of our god for
humanity. When Jesus comes, he will bring an end to the agents of war, disease,
crime, revenge, hatred, envy, lust.
Judgment, then, is about the end - the end of all evil, the end
of all corruption, the end of the wicked one and his wicked ones, the end of
death, the end of hell.
The good news is that we have assurance
that the things that should last will last. All that Jesus taught and stood for will last. All that the
Father meant for his children to be will last. "Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will never pass away" (Mark 13:31). Read the last two
chapters of the Revelation, if you want to know what will last. For the Word
and all the goodness he stands for was willed in the beginning, and it is this
word of love and fellowship with the Father that Jesus proclaims. And it will
endure when all else is burned upon the ash heap. To believe in the Father's judgment is to believe that all that
is good will prevail and that evil will finally be overcome. This is what the
end is all about! Without judgment, the Father's love fades into indifference.
Where do you stand when it comes to the end
of evil? Will the end of evil spell the end of you? If you think not, have you
taken into account the saying, "None are righteous, no, not one."
Brother, sister, you need a Savior. The Savior you need is the one
you'll eventually stand before. None other will do. Accept no substitutes!
When I stand at the judgment seat of
Christ
And He shows me His plan for me.
The plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way, and I see.
How I blocked Him here, and I checked Him
there,
And I would not yield my will --
Will there be grief in my Savior's eyes,
Grief, though He loves me still?
He would have me rich, and I stand there
poor,
Stripped of all but His grace,
While memory runs like a hunted thing
Down the paths I cannot retrace.
Then my desolate heart will well-nigh
break
With the tears that I cannot shed;
I shall cover my face with my empty hands,
I shall bow my uncrowned head...
{Let us pray}
Lord - of the years that are left to me,
I give them to Thy hand;
Take me and break me, mold me to
The pattern Thou hast planned! (author
unknown)