Why is this question important?

Many peo­ple who study the Bible believe that the Sec­ond Com­ing of Jesus is immi­nent. They believe that the signs of the Last Days can be clear­ly seen in our times. For this rea­son, on the fol­low­ing pages we would like to take a clos­er look at some Bible pas­sages which we con­sid­er cru­cial in this con­text. We want to show why it is not in keep­ing with the Chris­t­ian spir­it to spec­u­late about the time of Jesus’ sec­ond com­ing. Jesus calls us to fol­low Him, to serve Him faith­ful­ly in humil­i­ty and obe­di­ence. We know that he is coming—but for Chris­tians it is not impor­tant when.

1 Can We Know Approximately When Jesus Will Return?

After the Lord’s res­ur­rec­tion, when the dis­ci­ples were once again look­ing for­ward full of hope to the begin­ning of the king­dom of God, they asked him:

So when they had come togeth­er, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the king­dom to Israel?” He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or sea­sons that the Father has fixed by his own author­i­ty. But you will receive pow­er when the Holy Spir­it has come upon you, and you will be my wit­ness­es in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (Acts 1:6–8)

With his answer, Jesus turns their atten­tion on the one hand to the task they should ful­fil. On the oth­er hand, he clear­ly states that any pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with the time of his return is not their busi­ness. Times and points in time (Greek “chronos” and “kairos”) include both time peri­ods and con­crete points in time. So who­ev­er spec­u­lates about the time or even the point in time of the Sec­ond Com­ing of Christ must ulti­mate­ly con­sid­er him­self to be greater than the apos­tles, oth­er­wise he would adhere to Jesus’ word, just as they did.

Jesus had told his dis­ci­ples about his return ear­li­er:

But con­cern­ing that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heav­en, nor the Son, but the Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

Even the Son does­n’t know! How arro­gant must some­one be who believes they can know or guess the time of the return? Some of these inter­preters refer to Jesus’ words and say that although no-one knows the day and hour, the approx­i­mate time is dis­cernible. Jesus did not mean, how­ev­er, that he or the angels did not know exact­ly (so to say: no one knows the hour and day, but the week or year we can know) but not at all. He also makes this clear by his words about the thief in the night:

There­fore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is com­ing. But know this, that if the mas­ter of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was com­ing, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be bro­ken into. There­fore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is com­ing at an hour you do not expect. (Matthew 24:42–44)

Peter (2 Peter 3:10) and Paul also use the para­ble of the thief in the night to show that it is impos­si­ble to fore­see the time of Jesus’ com­ing:

Now con­cern­ing the times and the sea­sons, broth­ers, you have no need to have any­thing writ­ten to you. For you your­selves are ful­ly aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While peo­ple are say­ing, “There is peace and secu­ri­ty”, then sud­den destruc­tion will come upon them as labour pains come upon a preg­nant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in dark­ness, broth­ers, for that day to sur­prise you like a thief. For you are all chil­dren of light, chil­dren of the day. We are not of the night or of the dark­ness. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:1–5)

This pas­sage proves that “day and hour” means noth­ing more than “times and points in time”. We do not know when the Lord will come, nor can we know it! The Sons of Light are not con­cerned about the par­tic­u­lar time of His com­ing, but they can look for­ward every day to the Day of the Lord, because they live every day for His good plea­sure.

2 Why Does the Lord Nevertheless Speak of Discernible Signs?

Much of what Jesus said to his con­tem­po­raries is also of con­tin­u­ing rel­e­vance for all future gen­er­a­tions. His announce­ment of the destruc­tion of Jerusalem, how­ev­er, was first and fore­most aimed at his lis­ten­ers, the apos­tles. These men and the Chris­tians of Judea should rec­og­nize the signs that pre­cede the dis­as­ter and act accord­ing­ly. An impor­tant approach to the Bible which also saves us from jump­ing to con­clu­sions is to first con­sid­er what the direct addressees were sup­posed to under­stand. This applies above all to the so-called apoc­a­lyp­tic dis­cours­es in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21.

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the dis­ci­ples came to him pri­vate­ly, say­ing, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your com­ing and of the close of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)

Did the dis­ci­ples real­ly want to know when their Lord was com­ing back? Would­n’t that pre­sup­pose that they had at that time¹ already under­stood and accept­ed that Jesus would be reject­ed, abused and exe­cut­ed, and would then rise, go to the Father and only then come back? Though the Greek word “parou­sia”, which is ren­dered here with “com­ing”, can also mean “return”, but the Gospels clear­ly show that the dis­ci­ples did not even com­pre­hend when Jesus made direct announce­ments of his suf­fer­ing (Luke 18:31–34). Con­se­quent­ly, even here, when they asked Jesus for the signs of his com­ing, they did not think of a pos­si­ble sec­ond com­ing. How­ev­er, with his com­ing they con­nect­ed the vis­i­ble begin­ning of his pow­er as Mes­si­ah, as the undis­put­ed King of Israel. The ques­tion of the close of the age here is not linked to the end of the world, but rather with the con­cept that when the promised king takes over his reign, it marks the begin­ning of the new, mes­sian­ic age.

In his answer, Jesus first of all responds to the signs before the com­ing destruc­tion of Jerusalem, in which the Chris­tians of Judaea should rec­og­nize when his day would come, so that they must leave the city in time. He describes this judg­ment as his com­ing, that is, his com­ing as a judge of the dis­obe­di­ent nation. Start­ing from this event, he then refers back to his return, in which he will also come as a judge, but for which there will be no sign what­so­ev­er. In Appen­dix 1 of Matthew 24 we will dis­cuss this in more detail.

At first glance, it may seem hard to under­stand why Jesus describes the destruc­tion of the city as his com­ing or his day, but in the Old Tes­ta­ment the prophets some­times pro­claimed the judg­ment of the dis­obe­di­ent peo­ple in this way:

Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is near, and as destruc­tion from the Almighty it comes. (Joel 1:15)

Thus says the Lord God: Dis­as­ter after dis­as­ter! Behold, it comes. An end has come; the end has come; it has awak­ened against you. Behold, it comes. Your doom has come to you, O inhab­i­tant of the land. The time has come; the day is near, a day of tumult, and not of joy­ful shout­ing on the moun­tains. (Ezekiel 7:5–7)

The end that Ezekiel pro­claims is that of the city and the tem­ple. His words were ful­filled with­in a few years of his prophe­cy: Jerusalem was destroyed by the Baby­lo­ni­ans in 586 BC.

Start­ing from his announce­ment of the destruc­tion of the tem­ple, Jesus also speaks to his dis­ci­ples of the end, mean­ing the end of the city:

And when you hear of wars and tumults, do not be ter­ri­fied, for these things must first take place, but the end will not be at once. (Luke 21:9)

But when you see Jerusalem sur­round­ed by armies, then know that its des­o­la­tion has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the moun­tains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the coun­try enter it, for these are days of vengeance, to ful­fil all that is writ­ten. (Luke 21:20–22)

In oth­er places he calls the same event the Day of the Son of Man, for here too he urges his lis­ten­ers to flee:

… so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, let the one who is on the house­top, with his goods in the house, not come down to take them away, and like­wise let the one who is in the field not turn back. (Luke 17:30–31)

Because of their great rebel­lion against the com­mand­ments, the Israelites often lost God’s pro­tec­tion. But when was Israel’s resis­tance to God greater than at the time when he sent his only beloved Son to them? And who could there­fore fore­see the com­ing judg­ment bet­ter than the Son of Man him­self?

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, say­ing, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hid­den from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your ene­mies will set up a bar­ri­cade round you and sur­round you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your chil­dren with­in you. And they will not leave one stone upon anoth­er in you, because you did not know the time of your vis­i­ta­tion.” (Luke 19:41–44)

Jesus also referred to this event on oth­er occa­sions. This is what he says to his dis­ci­ples:

When they per­se­cute you in one town, flee to the next, for tru­ly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. (Matthew 10:23)

In the pre­ced­ing vers­es 16–22, Jesus pre­dicts severe per­se­cu­tions, espe­cial­ly by their fel­low coun­try­men. He com­forts them with the fact that they will always find refuge until his com­ing, name­ly, when God will judge the peo­ple for the rejec­tion of the Mes­si­ah. If he had meant here his return in the life­time of his dis­ci­ples, we would have to reject him and ulti­mate­ly his entire mes­sage, for then he would have been mis­tak­en². But it is not a mis­take, but by this say­ing Jesus empha­sizes the mean­ing of the destruc­tion of the tem­ple, which some of the dis­ci­ples were still to expe­ri­ence. This com­ing as judge over Israel is a pre­cur­sor of the Last Judge­ment, which will ulti­mate­ly over­throw all those who despise God and are reli­gious hyp­ocrites. The spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion between these two “Judge­ment Days” becomes clear in the fol­low­ing state­ment, for exam­ple:

For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glo­ry of his Father, and then he will repay each per­son accord­ing to what he has done. Tru­ly, I say to you, there are some stand­ing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man com­ing in his king­dom. (Matthew 16:27–28)

With­out a doubt Jesus speaks in verse 27 of the judg­ment at his return. It is there­fore obvi­ous that verse 28 is also about Jesus’ judg­ment, which some of the dis­ci­ples will even expe­ri­ence. Jerusalem was destroyed about 40 years after Jesus spoke these words. At that time some of the dis­ci­ples were no longer alive, but some had not yet tast­ed death.

3 The Fulfilment of Time, the Last Days, the Last Hour—What Is It All About?

From the very begin­ning of his min­istry, Jesus spoke of the ful­fil­ment of time and urged his lis­ten­ers to repent:

Now after John was arrest­ed, Jesus came into Galilee, pro­claim­ing the gospel of God, and say­ing, “The time is ful­filled, and the king­dom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14–15)

The time was ful­filled, not because the end of the world was near, but because God’s grace stood before them in per­son. It was high time for the Jews to give up their mis­con­cep­tions about the Mes­si­ah³ and their spe­cial posi­tion before God⁴. Rather, they should learn to serve the Lord in faith, that is, in deep trust.

The New Tes­ta­ment shows us that the last days began with Jesus’ first com­ing.

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spo­ken to us by his Son, whom he appoint­ed the heir of all things, through whom also he cre­at­ed the world. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

The Let­ter to the Hebrews⁵ begins with these words. We can see that not only the peo­ple of the 20th or 21st cen­tu­ry lived in the end times, but also the first Chris­tians. Jesus’ life in per­fect obe­di­ence shows us the way to the Father, much more pow­er­ful­ly than the prophets did before. In addi­tion, as a son he is the very image of God’s nature. He is the strongest and thus the last rev­e­la­tion of God in his­to­ry. The next event in the his­to­ry of sal­va­tion will be his sec­ond com­ing. The expres­sion “in these last days” does not say any­thing about the dura­tion of this peri­od.

Paul writes to Tim­o­thy about the last days:

But under­stand this, that in the last days there will come times of dif­fi­cul­ty. For peo­ple will be lovers of self, lovers of mon­ey, proud, arro­gant, abu­sive, dis­obe­di­ent to their par­ents, ungrate­ful, unholy, heart­less, unap­peasable, slan­der­ous, with­out self-con­trol, bru­tal, not lov­ing good, treach­er­ous, reck­less, swollen with con­ceit, lovers of plea­sure rather than lovers of God, hav­ing the appear­ance of god­li­ness, but deny­ing its pow­er. Avoid such peo­ple. (2 Tim­o­thy 3:1–5)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, through­out all eras, most peo­ple were self­ish, mon­ey-lov­ing, boast­ful, as the sto­ry of the Flood teach­es us. Paul does not want to say here that peo­ple in gen­er­al were bet­ter ear­li­er than in the last times. Nor does he talk about an era that would only begin much lat­er. It would make no sense to inform Tim­o­thy about the cor­rup­tion of the peo­ple of the 21st cen­tu­ry. As verse 5 shows, they both already live in the last days, because Tim­o­thy should keep away from such peo­ple. In the time after Jesus there will be many peo­ple who feel close to God and “… who have the appear­ance of god­li­ness, but deny its pow­er”. Paul thus pre­dicts, on the basis of the devel­op­ment in his own time, the appear­ance of pseu­do-Chris­tian­i­ty, whose roots actu­al­ly reach back to the first cen­tu­ry. This is also explained in chap­ter 4:1–5. He warns that many believ­ers or those inter­est­ed in faith will turn away from the truth and turn to fables, and there­fore urges Tim­o­thy to hold fast to the right doc­trine. The fact that this sit­u­a­tion does not only occur in lat­er times, but that it was already a real­i­ty in the time of Paul is also evi­dent from 1 Tim­o­thy 4:1–11, 6:20–21, Acts 20:29–30.

The dis­tor­tion of Chris­t­ian doc­trine is the back­ground of the Apos­tle John’s state­ments about the com­ing of the antichrist:

Chil­dren, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is com­ing, so now many antichrists have come. There­fore we know that it is the last hour. (1 John 2:18)

John did not want to arouse in the read­ers of his let­ter an expec­ta­tion of the immi­nent Sec­ond Com­ing of Jesus⁶—there is not even the slight­est ref­er­ence to this in the rest of the let­ter. But the appear­ance of the first false teach­ers in the New Tes­ta­ment church­es reveals the truth of the words of Jesus:

And he said to his dis­ci­ples, “Temp­ta­tions to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through whom they come! It would be bet­ter for him if a mill­stone were hung round his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these lit­tle ones to sin.” (Luke 17:1–2)

So temp­ta­tions will come. The ear­ly church­es were threat­ened main­ly by the work of Judaiz­ers⁷ and the influ­ence of Gno­sis⁸. Self-con­ceived teach­ings already exist­ed before Jesus, but the clar­i­ty of his words and his absolute claim to truth made the decep­tions even more sub­tle. Satan, the father of lies, wants to dis­tract peo­ple away from the truth with state­ments that appear to be scrip­tur­al. In his let­ter, the apos­tle shows us that apart from the dif­fer­ences in the con­tent of the doc­trine, above all, the lack of broth­er­ly love is a sure tes­ti­mo­ny to the deceit­ful­ness of the false teach­ers. This is also true today, so that for an hon­est per­son, despite many here­sies, it is pos­si­ble to judge whether a fel­low­ship fol­lows the com­mand­ments of Jesus faith­ful­ly or not.

4 What Is Jesus Talking About When He Speaks of His Return?

Jesus con­stant­ly empha­sizes the impor­tance of sin­cer­i­ty and vig­i­lance. All the words we find in the Gospels con­cern­ing his return nev­er talk about rec­og­niz­able signs, but about a life of integri­ty and truth­ful­ness:

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burn­ing, and be like men who are wait­ing for their mas­ter to come home from the wed­ding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those ser­vants whom the mas­ter finds awake when he comes. Tru­ly, I say to you, he will dress him­self for ser­vice and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them. If he comes in the sec­ond watch, or in the third, and finds them awake, blessed are those ser­vants!” (Luke 12:35–38)

Only sin­cere love for the Lord saves us from hav­ing a hyp­o­crit­i­cal atti­tude. This is con­firmed by Jesus with the fol­low­ing para­bles of the thief in the night⁹ and the faith­ful and unfaith­ful ser­vant:

Blessed is that ser­vant whom his mas­ter will find so doing when he comes. Tru­ly, I say to you, he will set him over all his pos­ses­sions. But if that ser­vant says to him­self, ‘My mas­ter is delayed in com­ing’, and begins to beat the male and female ser­vants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the mas­ter of that ser­vant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaith­ful. (Luke 12:43–46)

Jesus teach­es with down­right urgency that it is always impor­tant to serve him obe­di­ent­ly and with an undi­vid­ed heart and not to be occu­pied with oth­er things let alone fol­low one’s own desires. The fact that no one knows when he is com­ing should also make us aware that there is no oth­er way to God.

Fur­ther­more, we must bear in mind that most peo­ple expe­ri­ence the day of the Sec­ond Com­ing when they die. The unfaith­ful ser­vant does not rep­re­sent the last gen­er­a­tion of mankind. Striv­ing for self-denial and obe­di­ence is always nec­es­sary, because resis­tance to the com­mand­ments of God will soon lead to hard­en­ing. We should not be “mer­ci­ful” with our­selves and think that we can still repent lat­er on. We don’t have that under our con­trol! That is why Jesus warns his Church­es and speaks of his com­ing with­out mean­ing that his return on earth is immi­nent:

Wake up, and strength­en what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works com­plete in the sight of my God. Remem­ber, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. (Rev­e­la­tion 3:2)

Jesus uses the image of the thief here to warn the self-con­fi­dent believ­ers of the church of Sardis so that they do not fall away. It is impos­si­ble to per­sist in dis­obe­di­ence despite warn­ings and yet to par­tic­i­pate in the heav­en­ly ban­quet with Jesus.

The absolute urgency of sin­cer­i­ty and obe­di­ence, even in severe per­se­cu­tions, is the focus of John’s Rev­e­la­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this book has been the focus of spec­u­la­tion about the time of the Sec­ond Com­ing for many cen­turies. It is no coin­ci­dence that many ear­li­er and cur­rent com­men­ta­tors read a pre­cise course of his­to­ry into the numer­ous pic­tures. Being able to pre­dict the future or even the Sec­ond Com­ing can be a very appeal­ing prospect. At the same time, the expo­nents of these pre­dic­tions usu­al­ly belong to reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in which the call of Jesus to deny one­self and actu­al­ly fol­low him, to love the broth­ers and sis­ters, and to live with them in the uni­ty of the Spir­it is prac­ti­cal­ly bypassed by a series of false teach­ings.

But Christ did not give us Rev­e­la­tion as a source of spec­u­la­tion, but so that we might not be deceived by the world.

Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of tri­al that is com­ing on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. I am com­ing soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. The one who con­quers, I will make him a pil­lar in the tem­ple of my God. Nev­er shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heav­en, and my own new name. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spir­it says to the church­es. (Rev­e­la­tion 3:10–13)

Jesus prais­es the church of Perga­mum for its obe­di­ence and promis­es her pro­tec­tion in times of tri­al. The phrase “I am com­ing soon” is to be under­stood here and gen­er­al­ly in Rev­e­la­tion rather as an encour­age­ment for the faith­ful to hold fast to obe­di­ence under all cir­cum­stances, because redemp­tion is near.

There are many oth­er pas­sages where Jesus and the apos­tles call us to keep to the pure teach­ings of Christ and to walk in them. We hope that, despite the brevi­ty and imper­fec­tion of the thoughts out­lined here, we have been able to help the read­er gain more clar­i­ty about the mean­ing of the state­ments on the last days. We are grate­ful for every let­ter and look for­ward to get­ting in touch with inter­est­ed read­ers to exchange more about this and oth­er mat­ters of faith.

Appendix 1: Matthew 24

In the fol­low­ing sec­tion, we will rough­ly retrace the train of thought of this chap­ter in order to deep­en the argu­ments already list­ed in the main text. The signs men­tioned by Jesus can only be signs for the destruc­tion of Jerusalem. His com­ing as a judge of all peo­ple is cer­tain, but when he comes can­not be pre­dict­ed.

The dis­ci­ples mar­veled at the mag­nif­i­cent build­ings of the tem­ple, which seemed to sym­bol­ize the great­ness and invin­ci­bil­i­ty of God. It must have moved them very much, there­fore, that instead of being impressed, Jesus pre­dicts the destruc­tion of this build­ing. They not only want­ed to know when this would hap­pen, but they imag­ined such an event only in con­nec­tion with the com­ple­tion of the age, with the begin­ning of the Mes­sian­ic time.

In vers­es 4–28 and 32–34 Jesus answers the ques­tion of when it hap­pens and what signs there are for it, and the deceivers in verse 5, who come in his name¹⁰, are the false Christs also men­tioned in verse 24. Indeed, dur­ing the war with the Romans, some rebel lead­ers claimed the title of Mes­si­ah for them­selves.

In the fol­low­ing vers­es 6–13, Jesus makes clear the dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the gen­er­al cir­cum­stances and also fore­tells per­se­cu­tion and decep­tion. It is vital to hold fast to the his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of these prophet­ic words of Jesus! Jesus lat­er empha­sizes clear­ly that there is no sign at all for his return. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are many peo­ple who refer the signs men­tioned in Matthew 24:3–28¹¹ to the signs of wars and earth­quakes just before Jesus’ return. They see the Last Days as her­ald­ed by such events in their own time. As a result, they claim that Jesus will soon come. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at all times many peo­ple were deceived by such spec­tac­u­lar inter­pre­ta­tions. The false­ness of ear­li­er pre­dic­tions of this kind has become evi­dent on the one hand through the progress of his­to­ry. But on the oth­er hand, one has to ask one­self the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Was there ever a time in this world with­out wars and earth­quakes? Cer­tain­ly, a lim­it­ed ter­ri­to­ry can remain untouched by nat­ur­al dis­as­ters for many decades and expe­ri­ence longer peri­ods of peace. For the peo­ple of such an area, a threat of war will be the first sign of a marked dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the sit­u­a­tion. But from a glob­al per­spec­tive, how­ev­er, there have nev­er been longer peri­ods of peace, which is why rumours of war would be com­plete­ly unsuit­able as a sign for the Last Judge­ment, if there were any at all. In addi­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal progress has made weapons much more pow­er­ful, so that the num­ber of deaths in armed con­flicts has increased tremen­dous­ly since the 19th cen­tu­ry. In addi­tion, the world’s pop­u­la­tion has increased many times over since the time of Jesus, which is why wars and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters often cause many more casu­al­ties than in ear­li­er times. And above all, we are exposed to a flood of bad news every day through the devel­op­ment of the mass media, so it may seem that the fre­quen­cy of such events has increased rapid­ly. But Jesus did not want to encour­age his dis­ci­ples or us to gath­er sta­tis­tics on the num­ber of cur­rent wars and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, on the basis of which we could then derive an impor­tant spir­i­tu­al insight. His words are addressed to his dis­ci­ples who should draw the right con­clu­sion from the signs in their own time.

Verse 14 is also under­stand­able in the con­tem­po­rary his­tor­i­cal con­text of the gen­er­a­tion of the first Chris­tians. In the first cen­tu­ry, many Jews did not live in Judea and Galilee, but scat­tered all over the world¹², i. e. in the Roman Empire and beyond. Nev­er­the­less, most of them were prob­a­bly strong­ly con­nect­ed to the land of their fathers, not least because of the impor­tant feasts in Jerusalem which they often vis­it­ed as pil­grims¹³. Although these dias­po­ra Jews were influ­enced by Greek cul­ture and there­fore per­haps felt a lit­tle less com­mit­ted to the Law than those in Pales­tine, they too were filled with Mes­sian­ic expec­ta­tions. It is very like­ly that many of them sym­pa­thized with their broth­ers fight­ing against the Romans at the time of the Jew­ish War (66 – 70 AD). The end that Jesus talks about, the ter­ri­ble end of the tem­ple, the city and all the fight­ers who were fight­ing for (the false under­stand­ing of) God’s king­dom would have been an inevitable cause of com­plete despair for all those peo­ple, if they had not already expe­ri­enced the mes­sage of the gospel of Jesus through the mis­sion­ary activ­i­ty of the apos­tles. And it was also good for all the oth­er inhab­i­tants of the world to be able to under­stand the deep­er mean­ing of this defeat.

Vers­es 15–28 now deal direct­ly with the com­ing tribu­la­tion. It is also not an exact descrip­tion of events, but by remind­ing us of an ear­li­er time of dis­tress, Jesus empha­sizes that the saints must by all means flee. At that time, dur­ing the reign of the Seleu­cid king Anti­ochus Epiphanes, who, in addi­tion to many oth­er evils, des­e­crat­ed the tem­ple, the Jews who remained faith­ful to the Law had to flee to the moun­tains. The abom­i­na­tion of des­o­la­tion must still have been a sym­bol for every Jew of a time of great tribu­la­tion. Judaea’s Chris­tians are to pray that the escape would not take place in win­ter or on a Sab­bath. More­over, no one should be deceived by the mar­velous suc­cess­es of the rebels in the fight against the Romans. All hopes of a rebel vic­to­ry are unre­al­is­tic. The eagles (the sym­bol of the Roman legions) come and will con­sume the car­rion, the doomed fight­ers trapped in the city. This is the unmis­tak­able con­dem­na­tion and judg­ment of God on his peo­ple who reject­ed his Son and his mes­sage of peace¹⁴.

In vers­es 29–31, Jesus draws the con­nec­tion from the tribu­la­tion of the Jew­ish war to his vis­i­ble return¹⁵. The ancient nation of God los­es its posi­tion (v.29), while the church of the Lord is the sign of the Sav­iour, through which Israelites will still mourn, that is to say, find repen­tance (v.30). Final­ly, all Chris­tians are gath­ered togeth­er with the Lord (v.31).

In vers­es 34–36 Jesus empha­sizes that his prophe­cy will be ful­filled with cer­tain­ty, for his words are God’s words. In verse 34, he states a clear time frame for the arrival of the Judge­ment on the Jews: This will hap­pen in the gen­er­a­tion of his lis­ten­ers. In con­trast, it is impos­si­ble to know when “that” day will come, name­ly the final judg­ment already men­tioned in verse 31, so that Jesus — as a human being — includes even him­self among those who have no knowl­edge of it.

All the state­ments fol­low­ing verse 36 have this com­mon denom­i­na­tor: there is no sign at all for this day! Chris­tians will not con­cern them­selves with the “signs” because they know from the words of Jesus that such signs do not exist. The exam­ple of Noah shows that the life of the peo­ple car­ried on in the usu­al way, so the judg­ment hit them while they were com­plete­ly unpre­pared¹⁶. Peter (2 Peter 3:10) and Paul (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:2) also apply the pic­ture of the thief in the night to encour­age the faith­ful to walk care­ful­ly and eager­ly in the com­mand­ments of the Lord and to remove all grounds for spec­u­la­tion. Only per­se­ver­ance, self­less love and hum­ble ser­vice in accor­dance with the words of Jesus will make this day a joy­ful day for us, no mat­ter when he comes. Those who do not per­se­vere in fol­low­ing Jesus and being anx­ious to please the Lord and to do good can­not take part in the feast in eter­ni­ty, regard­less of whether they expect­ed him not to come very soon (see the para­ble of the unfaith­ful ser­vant Matthew 24:45–51), or whether they expect­ed him much ear­li­er (like the ten vir­gins, Matthew 25:1–13), or whether in their lazi­ness, they even want­ed to secure a place for them­selves method­i­cal­ly (like in the para­ble of the tal­ents, Matthew 25:14–30).

Appendix 2: Is There a Rapture of the Faithful Before the Last Judgement?

Jesus and the New Tes­ta­ment speak only about a sin­gle return of Jesus on the last day. On this day the ungod­ly are judged and the faith­ful are raised up, as Jesus explains to his dis­ci­ples, for exam­ple, in the para­ble of the weeds of the field:

Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his dis­ci­ples came to him, say­ing, “Explain to us the para­ble of the weeds of the field.” He answered, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the king­dom. The weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the ene­my who sowed them is the dev­il. The har­vest is the close of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are gath­ered and burned with fire, so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gath­er out of his king­dom all caus­es of sin and all law-break­ers, and throw them into the fiery fur­nace. In that place there will be weep­ing and gnash­ing of teeth. Then the right­eous will shine like the sun in the king­dom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” (Matthew 13:36–43)

He also speaks of the res­ur­rec­tion of the faith­ful in the fol­low­ing pas­sage:

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose noth­ing of all that he has giv­en me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every­one who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eter­nal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:39–40)

Accord­ing to many free church­es, how­ev­er, before the begin­ning of an alleged­ly immi­nent Mil­len­ni­al King­dom of Peace on earth, even before the Last Day, Chris­tians liv­ing at that time and all those who have already died are rap­tured up to heav­en. How­ev­er, only Rev­e­la­tion 20 speaks of a mil­len­ni­al reign of Christ. Since the mes­sage of this book, in con­trast to all oth­er New Tes­ta­ment writ­ings, is almost entire­ly encod­ed with images and sym­bols, and num­bers are usu­al­ly not to be under­stood lit­er­al­ly, it is dan­ger­ous to derive con­crete lessons about future events from it. There­fore, the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of this teach­ing endeav­our to find ref­er­ences in oth­er writ­ings. Some see it in Matthew 24:40–41:

Then two men will be in the field; one will be tak­en and one left. Two women will be grind­ing at the mill; one will be tak­en and one left.

In the con­text of this verse, Jesus urges the believ­ers to remain faith­ful and vig­i­lant because of the unfore­see­able time of judg­ment. This is also shown in the com­par­i­son with the Flood (vs. 38–39). It can­not there­fore be a descrip­tion of a rap­ture that sup­pos­ed­ly takes place before the judg­ment. Some advo­cates of this teach­ing also admit that.

They also often refer John 14:2–3 to the Rap­ture:

In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to pre­pare a place for you? And if I go and pre­pare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Jesus speaks here of his return to take the dis­ci­ples back to be with him, but there is no rea­son to believe that this will not hap­pen on Judg­ment Day, but before­hand. Rather, one can see from the entire­ty of Jesus’ words con­cern­ing the Sec­ond Com­ing that every­one will then be reward­ed accord­ing to his actions (e. g. Matthew 7:21–22, 16:27, 24:45–25:46, 26:64, John 5:28–29). The para­ble of the wheat and the weeds men­tioned above and that of the drag­net (Matthew 13:24–43 and 13:47–50) also show that there is a day of judg­ment and ret­ri­bu­tion: the faith­ful fol­low­ers of the Lord and all the right­eous go to eter­nal life, while the evil­do­ers, all the arro­gant and unmer­ci­ful will nev­er be able to par­tic­i­pate in it. We must there­fore note that there is no evi­dence what­so­ev­er in the Gospels of a sud­den depar­ture of Chris­tians from their dai­ly lives.

There­fore, one of the main argu­ments is tak­en from first Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans:

But we do not want you to be unin­formed, broth­ers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as oth­ers do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fall­en asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the com­ing of the Lord, will not pre­cede those who have fall­en asleep. For the Lord him­self will descend from heav­en with a cry of com­mand, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trum­pet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up togeth­er with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. There­fore encour­age one anoth­er with these words. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4:13–18)

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the rap­ture doc­trine argue that accord­ing to these words Chris­tians are caught up in the clouds with the Lord, which means that Christ does not come here to the earth. The believ­ers meet the Lord in the upper lay­ers of the atmos­phere. That is why, they say, we can only talk about the Rap­ture and not about the judg­ment on the last day. Although they believe that this is the best way to do jus­tice to the word­ing of the text, we think it is very ques­tion­able to draw such a con­clu­sion from this detail. As we shall see, both the text itself and the fol­low­ing chap­ter of the let­ter speak against this inter­pre­ta­tion.

We can only guess what the exact rea­son for the sad­ness of some of the still very young Chris­tians in this city was. It is impor­tant that Paul, in his dec­la­ra­tion that both the liv­ing Chris­tians and those who have already fall­en asleep go to the Lord at the same time, cites a word of the Lord. As we saw before, the doc­trine of the rap­ture can­not be derived from any word of Jesus, which is why its pro­po­nents refer to 1 Corinthi­ans 15:51, where Paul obvi­ous­ly speaks of the same event, but calls it a mys­tery:

Behold! I tell you a mys­tery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twin­kling of an eye, at the last trum­pet. For the trum­pet will sound, and the dead will be raised imper­ish­able, and we shall be changed. For this per­ish­able body must put on the imper­ish­able, and this mor­tal body must put on immor­tal­i­ty. (1 Corinthi­ans 15:51–53)

The fact that Paul speaks of a “mys­tery” assumes that Jesus did not talk about the Rap­ture dur­ing his min­istry, but revealed it through the Apos­tle’s word. How­ev­er, Paul does not speak here at all of a rap­ture in the course of his­to­ry, but of the trans­for­ma­tion of the dead and the liv­ing — name­ly at the last trum­pet, that is to say, the Last Day. The fact that he only address­es the res­ur­rec­tion and trans­for­ma­tion of believ­ers is not an argu­ment against it. Begin­ning with the exam­ple of Jesus, Paul teach­es fun­da­men­tal things about the ulti­mate des­tiny of life—the resurrection—because some of the Corinthi­ans held an opin­ion that ran counter to the Chris­t­ian doc­trine. It is a sad real­i­ty that many peo­ple now come under eter­nal judg­ment because of their deci­sions against God. But Paul did not want to refer to the eter­nal exis­tence of these peo­ple in spir­i­tu­al death as immor­tal­i­ty in a pos­i­tive sense.

Paul thus does not reveal the mys­tery of the rap­ture here or in the Let­ter to the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans. The mys­tery, a real­i­ty that had not been so clear­ly expressed before, is rather that some Chris­tians are trans­formed with­out expe­ri­enc­ing death. If Paul was refer­ring to a word of Jesus that had been giv­en only to him, he would have quot­ed it. How­ev­er, the con­tent of what is said can be deduced from the famil­iar words of Jesus, even if we do not know a pre­cise quo­ta­tion. Paul wants to put an end the igno­rance of some Chris­tians in Thes­sa­loni­ca with a clear ref­er­ence to Jesus’ teach­ing. We find such a word about the res­ur­rec­tion in the Gospel of John:

For as the Father has life in him­self, so he has grant­ed the Son also to have life in him­self. And he has giv­en him author­i­ty to exe­cute judge­ment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not mar­vel at this, for an hour is com­ing when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the res­ur­rec­tion of life, and those who have done evil to the res­ur­rec­tion of judge­ment. (John 5:26–29)

In that hour all the dead will be res­ur­rect­ed and will stand before the judg­ment seat of the Mes­si­ah, and since Jesus is the judge of all men, this also includes those liv­ing on earth at that time. As men­tioned above, the sub­se­quent thoughts of Paul in the Let­ter to the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans do not per­mit any oth­er con­clu­sion:

Now con­cern­ing the times and the sea­sons, broth­ers, you have no need to have any­thing writ­ten to you. For you your­selves are ful­ly aware that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While peo­ple are say­ing, “There is peace and secu­ri­ty”, then sud­den destruc­tion will come upon them as labour pains come upon a preg­nant woman, and they will not escape. But you are not in dark­ness, broth­ers, for that day to sur­prise you like a thief. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:1–4)

Here Paul writes plain­ly about the Last Day and there is no rea­son to believe that he might have meant anoth­er event in chap­ter 4. This is shown, among oth­er things, by the fact that Chris­tians are not sur­prised by this day because they are sons of the Light and of the Day. If Paul had believed in the rap­ture of Chris­tians before the judg­ment, these words would have no mean­ing.

Now that we have estab­lished that there is no pas­sage in the New Tes­ta­ment except in Rev­e­la­tion which talks of a rap­ture of Chris­tians, a first res­ur­rec­tion before the judg­ment, the ques­tion of remains, what it was that John is talk­ing about:

Then I saw thrones, and seat­ed on them were those to whom the author­i­ty to judge was com­mit­ted. Also I saw the souls of those who had been behead­ed for the tes­ti­mo­ny of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not wor­shipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their fore­heads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thou­sand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thou­sand years were end­ed. This is the first res­ur­rec­tion. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first res­ur­rec­tion! Over such the sec­ond death has no pow­er, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thou­sand years. (Rev­e­la­tion 20:4–6)

As men­tioned above, the inter­pre­ta­tion of Rev­e­la­tion is dif­fi­cult due to the abun­dant use of sym­bol­ic expres­sions. Nev­er­the­less, it is still advis­able to under­stand first of all what mes­sage this scrip­ture con­tains for its ini­tial recip­i­ents, that is, Chris­tians in the sec­ond half of the first cen­tu­ry. Thus we learn that the Apos­tle John received the con­tents dur­ing his cap­tiv­i­ty on the island of Pat­mos. The epis­tles to sev­en small Asian church­es in chap­ters 2 and 3 give us insight into their spir­i­tu­al sit­u­a­tion. These mes­sages alone, which are clear­ly anchored in the his­tor­i­cal con­text of this time, have been the object of spec­u­la­tion for many cen­turies. It is claimed to be about the sev­en eras of church his­to­ry, where­by peo­ple usu­al­ly think that they them­selves live in the sec­ond-last or last of these eras. The text does not sup­port these thoughts. The ques­tion is also jus­ti­fied as to whether the “church his­to­ry” we have access to is indeed the his­to­ry of the Church¹⁷.

More­over, what goal could God have pur­sued with such a pre­view of his­to­ry? What sense would it make if the read­er found him­self in any of these eras? Should he real­ize that it will be a long time before Jesus returns? No, that’s not what God is con­cerned with. The warn­ings and encour­age­ment con­tained there­in to love, to assess the false teach­ers, to per­se­vere in per­se­cu­tion, apply to the direct addressees. Like all the oth­er let­ters of the NT, the epis­tles to the church­es are of great val­ue to all Chris­tians, because they encour­age self-exam­i­na­tion, per­se­ver­ance, faith­ful­ness and the right doc­trine.

If even these chap­ters are mis­in­ter­pret­ed in this way, the dan­ger is even greater for the rest of the book. We think that the con­tent of the book is pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed to encour­age and com­fort the Chris­tians per­se­cut­ed in the first cen­tu­ry, and that this is why it reflects also upon what has already hap­pened. How­ev­er, some com­men­ta­tors exclude ref­er­ences to sit­u­a­tions before and dur­ing the peri­od of writ­ing. Of course, we too think that all believ­ers who live lat­er will be encour­aged by it to endure per­se­cu­tion. How­ev­er, this should nev­er cre­ate room for spu­ri­ous spec­u­la­tion.

This also holds true for Rev­e­la­tion 20: Those Chris­tians who remained stead­fast in per­se­cu­tion and many of whom were killed, will reign with Christ. Who­ev­er takes the thou­sand years lit­er­al­ly does not appre­ci­ate the sym­bol­ic use of num­bers, espe­cial­ly in Rev­e­la­tion. There is no peri­od of time in all bib­li­cal writ­ings that exceeds a thou­sand years. Only about God it is said that a thou­sand years are like a day. This should not lead us to think that two thou­sand years would be like two days. Rather, this num­ber sym­bol­izes an incon­ceiv­able great­ness, befit­ting God, who also cre­at­ed time. It not only express­es his supe­ri­or­i­ty over time, but also his great pow­er. Thus, the great pow­er of God and those who belong to him are faced with the pow­er­less rebel­lion of Satan for a short time. There is also anoth­er rea­son why it is advis­able not to view this chap­ter as a suc­ces­sion of events, but rather to see them as the pow­er rela­tions expressed in chrono­log­i­cal form. For if God had already com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ed Satan, the ques­tion would arise as to why he should then let go of Satan again in order to allow the evil one to seduce peo­ple again. In this way, God would be more than just the one who allows the evil activ­i­ty to take place, he would also be the one who gives the evil one space to act.

The idea of those who fol­low the doc­trine of the Rap­ture, that sud­den­ly many peo­ple dis­ap­pear with­out a trace, may pro­vide mate­r­i­al for enter­tain­ing films; but such thoughts have noth­ing to do with the doc­trine of the Bible. Nor would it be in keep­ing with the nature of God to exert pres­sure through such mas­sive super­nat­ur­al and unnat­ur­al events. He wants us to trust him because of the truth in Jesus, to repent of our old sin­ful life and to become fol­low­ers of his Son out of love for him.

Appendix 3: Arbitrary Calculations of the So-called Last Days from the Book of Daniel

Although the book Daniel con­tains prophet­ic texts, it dif­fers strong­ly from the prophet­ic books of the Bible in its over­all form. This is not the place to start explain­ing why this is the case, but in our opin­ion the lit­er­ary char­ac­ter of the depict­ed sto­ries can­not be over­looked. More­over, Daniel is not found among the prophets in the canon of the Hebrew Bible, but among the Writ­ings¹⁸, which may be due to its late com­ple­tion.

For us as Chris­tians, it con­tains very impor­tant prophet­ic state­ments. Jesus makes ref­er­ence to Daniel 12:2 in a speech about his min­istry in con­nec­tion with the res­ur­rec­tion, the clear­est pas­sage about this real­i­ty. His self-des­ig­na­tion “Son of Man” is tak­en from the Mes­sian­ic prophe­cy in chap­ter 7. And even the death of the Mes­si­ah and the renewed destruc­tion of the Jerusalem Tem­ple are pre­dict­ed in 9:24–26.

No oth­er Old Tes­ta­ment book deals so inten­sive­ly with dreams and visions and their inter­pre­ta­tions. This makes it espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing for peo­ple who want to pre­dict the future. Reli­gious groups such as Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es and the Adven­tists owe their exis­tence large­ly to spec­u­la­tive inter­pre­ta­tions of some of the texts in this book. That is why we want to look at such texts in order to show the arbi­trari­ness and irra­tional­i­ty of these inter­pre­ta­tions.

Seven Times = 2520 Years?

In chap­ter 4, King Neb­uchad­nez­zar expe­ri­ences a dream that wor­ries him. He sees a tree reach­ing to the sky, which is cut down and its stump put in chains for sev­en times. Only Daniel is capa­ble of inter­pret­ing the dream. It is a warn­ing from God to the king to break with his sins and to live in right­eous­ness and mer­cy. How­ev­er, since he does not change but remains proud, the evil pre­dict­ed by Daniel hap­pens one year lat­er. Neb­uchad­nez­zar is removed from throne and soci­ety and ekes out a mis­er­able exis­tence like a wild ani­mal. But at the end of sev­en years his san­i­ty returns to him, he looks to heav­en, prais­es God and con­fess­es:

At the end of the days I, Neb­uchad­nez­zar, lift­ed my eyes to heav­en, and my rea­son returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and hon­oured him who lives for ever, for his domin­ion is an ever­last­ing domin­ion, and his king­dom endures from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. (Daniel 4:34)

In doing so, he express­es the most impor­tant les­son, the deci­sive con­clu­sion of this sto­ry.

If one remained true to the prin­ci­ple of “not going beyond what is writ­ten” (1 Corinthi­ans 4:6), the dan­ger of rein­ter­pre­ta­tion and over-inter­pre­ta­tion would be avert­ed. But since the book of Daniel talks about the time of the end in oth­er places, it was seen as jus­ti­fied to gain a hid­den, deep­er “inter­pre­ta­tion” of this sto­ry.

“Sev­en times” in chap­ter 4 means sev­en years. This short peri­od of time is not suit­ed at all for pre­dic­tions that sup­pos­ed­ly reach into our mod­ern epoch. Sev­er­al pas­sages in the OT express that one day sym­bol­i­cal­ly stands for one year.

The prophet Ezekiel is told to lie 390 days on his one side and 40 days on his oth­er side, in order to bear the guilt of Israel (the north­ern king­dom) and Judah (the south­ern king­dom) (Ezekiel 4:4–7).

In Chap­ter 9 of the book of Daniel an angel rein­ter­prets the 70-year prophe­cy of Jere­mi­ah. He is talk­ing about 70 “sev­ens”. If this meant 70 weeks, it would only result in a peri­od of less than 2 years. How­ev­er, it can be con­clud­ed from the text that the time frame has to be extend­ed. There­fore, one must under­stand the “sev­ens” here as year-weeks, result­ing in a peri­od of 70 x 7 years = 490 years.

Encour­aged by such exam­ples, the “Bible Stu­dents” sup­posed that they could also apply the rule “one day for one year” to Daniel 4. 7 x 360 days result in 2520 days, which should now be the equiv­a­lent of 2520 years. In order to be able to use it for a state­ment of the Last Days, how­ev­er, it was also nec­es­sary to rein­ter­pret the con­tent of the chap­ter. It was decid­ed to under­stand the dis­em­pow­er­ment of Neb­uchad­nez­zar as the end of Jerusalem and the king­ship of David. This is a very strange inter­pre­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing that it was Neb­uchad­nez­zar who destroyed the city. From one word of Jesus it was con­clud­ed that the destruc­tion of Jerusalem by the Baby­lo­ni­ans rep­re­sent­ed the begin­ning of the times of the Gen­tiles¹⁹.

His­to­ri­ans unan­i­mous­ly agree that the Baby­lo­ni­ans destroyed Jerusalem in 587/586 BC. The Jeho­vah’s Wit­ness­es claim to this day, that this hap­pened in 607 BC. This date, how­ev­er, does not stem from his­tor­i­cal research, but from a fun­da­men­tal­ist under­stand­ing of the Bible cou­pled with wil­ful inter­pre­ta­tions.

607 B. C. + 2520 results in 1914. Accord­ing to the pre­dic­tion C. T. Rus­sell made in the 19th cen­tu­ry, this would be the year of the begin­ning of Christ’s King­dom of Peace on earth. He had for­mer­ly pre­dict­ed the invis­i­ble return of Jesus for the year 1874. Rus­sel­l’s suc­ces­sor, J. F. Ruther­ford, declared 1914 as the year of the invis­i­ble return. In his book of 1920 “Mil­lions now liv­ing will nev­er die,” he pre­dict­ed the res­ur­rec­tion of the bib­li­cal patri­archs in 1925. Due to the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Matthew 24:35, it was claimed that the gen­er­a­tion of 1914 would not pass away until the end of the sys­tem of things. For a long time it was pre­dict­ed with great cer­tain­ty that 1975 would be the year of the end.

With­out going into more detail, we hope that with these few thoughts we have shown the utter unten­abil­i­ty of the whole approach.

2300 Evenings and Mornings = 2300 Years?

The Sev­enth-day Adven­tist Com­mu­ni­ty also takes an impor­tant date from the book of Daniel. Daniel chap­ter 8 says that Daniel sees a vision of a ram and a goat. The empire of the Medes and Per­sians (ram) is con­quered by a great king from Greece (goat = Alexan­der the Great). But its realm is falling apart. In one of the par­tial king­doms a wicked man will take over the reign, who will then for­bid the Jews even to prac­tise their reli­gion. He takes the reg­u­lar sac­ri­fice away from them and des­e­crates the tem­ple in the worst pos­si­ble way. Still with­in the frame­work of the vision, a saint asks how long this sit­u­a­tion will last and he gets an answer:

Then I heard a holy one speak­ing, and anoth­er holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision con­cern­ing the reg­u­lar burnt offer­ing, the trans­gres­sion that makes des­o­late, and the giv­ing over of the sanc­tu­ary and host to be tram­pled under­foot?” And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and morn­ings. Then the sanc­tu­ary shall be restored to its right­ful state.” (Daniel 8:13–14)

In these words, there is noth­ing to indi­cate that the his­tor­i­cal frame­work of the vision is being aban­doned. The only ques­tion is whether it is 2,300 days or just 1,150 days. The reg­u­lar sac­ri­fice that the enquir­er is con­cerned with was offered every evening and every morn­ing. There­fore, it is obvi­ous that the dura­tion of the des­e­cra­tion of the tem­ple is 1,150 days, which quite accu­rate­ly cor­re­sponds to the actu­al event under the Seleu­cid King Anti­ochus IV Epiphanes²⁰.

In the sub­se­quent inter­pre­ta­tion of the vision, the time of the end is spo­ken of twice (vs. 17+19). How­ev­er, this end does not have to be the end of the world, but can refer to the time of ful­fil­ment of the events that have just been observed. How­ev­er, 19th-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can Bap­tist preach­er William Miller want­ed to inter­pret the vision as refer­ring to the alleged immi­nent end of the world. First, he over­looked the fact that it was only 1,150 days. Then he inter­pret­ed the now 2,300 days as just as many years. In his opin­ion, the com­mand of the Per­sian king Artax­erx­es I to rebuild Jerusalem was a suit­able start­ing point for the 2,300 years. Alleged­ly Ezra had writ­ten this down in the 7th year of the king, which accord­ing to our cal­en­dar is then the year 457 BC. On this basis he pro­claimed 1843 as the year of Christ’s return. When this failed to mate­ri­al­ize, he post­poned the date sev­er­al times by a few months, and final­ly even set the exact date—October 22nd, 1844.

The move­ment he ini­ti­at­ed soon dis­in­te­grat­ed, but some held on to the cal­cu­lat­ed date, giv­ing it a new con­tent. It is sup­posed that Jesus entered the heav­en­ly sanc­tu­ary in 1844 and began the ser­vice in the heav­en­ly sanc­tu­ary. This doc­trine is main­ly upheld by the Sev­enth-day Adven­tists and con­tin­ues to form the basis for their expec­ta­tion of the immi­nent return, with­out dar­ing any­more to set a date for it.

It would be too much to describe and eval­u­ate all of Miller’s argu­ments and those of the Adven­tists for 1844. By ran­dom­ly com­bin­ing dif­fer­ent texts and rein­ter­pret­ing them you can eas­i­ly read many things into the Holy Scrip­tures. Those who employ such futile meth­ods and thus seduce oth­er, gullible peo­ple will have to answer for it on the last day.

On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not proph­esy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I nev­er knew you; depart from me, you work­ers of law­less­ness.’ (Matt 7:22–23)

1. prob­a­bly in the last year of his min­istry ↩
2. This view is wide­spread among lib­er­al the­olo­gians. How­ev­er, it con­tra­dicts anoth­er well-estab­lished assump­tion in mod­ern the­ol­o­gy, name­ly that a great part of Jesus’ words in the Gospels are in fact the words of men from the church­es of the late first cen­tu­ry. They claim that the Chris­tians at that time believed that Jesus would come back in their life­time. Since this did not hap­pen, Jesus’ words were rein­ter­pret­ed or changed to explain the delay. Why none of these bold and cre­ative men has removed such a dras­tic error as in Matthew 10:23, how­ev­er, remains a mys­tery. ↩
3. The Hebrew word Mes­si­ah trans­lat­ed into Greek as “Cristos”, into Latin as “Chris­tus”, and into Eng­lish as “the Anoint­ed” was, accord­ing to Jew­ish ideas, some­one who was anoint­ed as king. At that time there were high expec­ta­tions of a strong polit­i­cal leader, a new David. ↩
4. see Luke 3:7–9 ↩
5. writ­ten around the year AD 65 ↩
6. If you imag­ine time as a series of even­ly dis­trib­uted years on a time­line, you might think that John thought that the end of all time was immi­nent. In Jew­ish thought, how­ev­er, the con­tent of time is more impor­tant than its mere dura­tion. It is of no sig­nif­i­cance how long it will be before Jesus returns. In such con­texts, we must not take tem­po­ral con­cepts lit­er­al­ly as if the last hour were the final peri­od of the last days, just as lit­tle as the last days rep­re­sent the final stage of the last time. ↩
7. Jews who regard­ed Jesus as the Mes­si­ah, but deemed the obser­vance of the Mosa­ic Law nec­es­sary for sal­va­tion, even for Gen­tile Chris­tians ↩
8. A col­lec­tive term for doc­trines of Greek ori­gin in which mate­r­i­al exis­tence was regard­ed as the rea­son for evil. Gnos­tics were inter­est­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty and used Chris­t­ian vocab­u­lary, but filled it with their own con­tent, con­trary to the apos­tolic doc­trine. ↩
9. Luke 12:39–40; see also sec­tion 2 ↩
10. This does not mean that in the dis­tant future peo­ple will appear pre­tend­ing to be Jesus. Such peo­ple would be com­plete­ly unbe­liev­able because Jesus’ sec­ond com­ing will bring the his­to­ry of mankind to an end. ↩
11. We are aware that some state­ments in the text seem to fit the return of Jesus at first glance much bet­ter. ↩
12. see Luke 2:1–3. The authors of antiq­ui­ty, when writ­ing about the „world“, did not imag­ine the whole globe as it is known to us today, but the inhab­it­ed world known at that time or even only the Roman Empire. ↩
13. This is con­firmed by Luke’s report in Acts 2:5–11 ↩
14. see also the Para­ble of the Ten­ants, Matthew 21:33–46 ↩
15. Jesus’ speech, which under­pins the immense sig­nif­i­cance of the destruc­tion of the tem­ple with sym­bol­ic lan­guage, must not be inter­pret­ed as refer­ring to a cos­mic and ter­res­tri­al cat­a­stro­phe by tak­ing these sym­bols lit­er­al­ly. We also find sim­i­lar lan­guage in the Prophets when major polit­i­cal or spir­i­tu­al changes are pre­dict­ed. Com­pare the end of Baby­lon in Isa­iah 13:9–22, the end of Egypt in Ezekiel 32:1–15 or the out­pour­ing of the Spir­it in Joel 3:1–5/Acts 2:14–21 ↩
16. We are aware that the same pic­ture ful­fils a slight­ly dif­fer­ent func­tion in Luke 17:26–27, where it is in the con­text of the destruc­tion of Jerusalem. On the one hand, we know from the Gospels that Jesus some­times used iden­ti­cal or sim­i­lar images or para­bles for dif­fer­ent pur­pos­es. On the oth­er hand, it can­not be ruled out that the authors of the Gospels report Jesus’ state­ments in dif­fer­ent con­texts. ↩
17. see our arti­cle “The Church in the New Tes­ta­ment”. ↩
18. The Hebrew Bible (known to Chris­tians as the Old Tes­ta­ment) is divid­ed into three groups: the Law, the Prophets and the Writ­ings. The Book of Daniel is count­ed among the Writ­ings (such as the Psalms, Chron­i­cles, and Ruth) and not among the Prophets (such as Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isa­iah, Jere­mi­ah, Ezekiel, and the twelve Minor Prophets). ↩
19. see Luke 21:24—in fact, here Jesus speaks about the destruc­tion of the city by the Romans, which took place in the year AD 70 ↩
20. He des­e­crat­ed the tem­ple by hav­ing a stat­ue of Zeus erect­ed on the altar of burnt offer­ings in Decem­ber 167 BC. A lit­tle more than three years lat­er, in Decem­ber 164 BC, a new altar was con­se­crat­ed for Yah­weh. ↩