0710 SIGNS OF THE (END)TIMES

JULY 10 = 2 THESSALONIANS 2

SIGNS OF THE (END)TIMES

Back in the 1970s, shortly after my own conversion to Christ, I discovered several authors and radio preachers who had it figured out that Jesus would return within their lifetimes, and possibly that the Great Tribulation was already starting, or that the Secret Rapture would be any second. They saw the news and projected it into the near future and made a lot of money telling everyone about it. After the ‘80s had passed and the political climate had changed, I had grown rather skeptical of the impending doom gospel. 

However, there was a sense even back in Paul’s generation that the coming of the Lord was near. They prophesied and went into detail about what would happen. We haven’t come across many of these end times passages up to this point, so we would do well to see what Paul has to say about the second coming of Jesus.

“Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter—asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, … 

It’s hard to imagine why such rumors would be flying about the end of all things, just a dozen years into the life of the church of Christ. The history of Jews in Rome hints at why so many rumors would be flying around saying that the end has come. Many Jews had fled from Israel and other lands, because of economic hard times and war going on around them. There in Rome, the Jewish quarter flourished, and they were thriving economically. 

There were problems with the Jews, however. They refused to declare Caesar as Lord, and that was considered to be in dangerous rebellion against the government. How could the empire hold together if its people would not submit? So Rome offered to let Jews pay a heavy tax in return for their refusal to worship Caesar.

Herod the Great was declared by Rome to be “king of the Jews” in the year 40 B.C. Herod remodeled and enlarged the temple area, calling it “Herod’s temple,” which, of course, stirred the pot all the more. The stability of these arrangements were fraying as the years passed. 

Uprisings in the region of Palestine (as the Romans called the geographic land of Israel) were constant, and it was apparent that sooner or later, Rome would come down hard on these religious rebels. Eventually, by the year A.D. 70, some 40 years (one generation) after Jesus’ ministry, it happened. The temple was destroyed, never to be rebuilt, and the city was emptied of Jews. Once again, they were scattered to the wind.

But Jews were being persecuted throughout the Roman Empire. They had been banned from synagogue meetings back in 41, and by 54 they would be exiled from the city of Rome. This letter was written around A.D. 51-52. And over in Jerusalem things were even worse, heading toward that city under Roman control, and by 70 simply laying siege to it and wiping it out, including destroying the temple, in fulfillment of many prophecies. So when Paul is writing this letter, relationships were tense and it was clear that the hammer was about to drop on the heads of Jews.

In the meantime, Christians who were turning the world upside down all over the empire. And since the persecution that Saul the Pharisee had initiated, now there were various active persecutions of Christians. Nero was famous for burning Christians as human torches for his garden, and for blaming Christians for burning down Rome in the year A.D. 64. Put all this persecution together, and you can imagine how some would say that this was the moment that Jesus was returning. They didn’t have the book of Revelation to tell them official future history. And even at that, it was not yet clear how to interpret those prophecies. 

…for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.”

Who is/was the man of lawlessness? Did someone enter the temple and set himself in the place of God? Did anyone do that? Herod the Great had done something like it, when he profaned the temple by slaughtering pigs in it. But he then rebuilt the temple, using tax money from Rome to do the magnificent structure. The temple was still standing at the time of this writing, though it was clear that things were tense.

Three centuries after Nero, Diocletian became emperor, and he renewed vicious persecution against Christians. Could those have been the ultimate moment? Are we now on a 2000-year pause, waiting for God’s response?

The problem is, I don’t have the easy answers today that we once saw in the 1970s. It seems apparent that Jesus has not yet done the great cleansing and wiped evil from the earth, setting up his throne on earth and bringing about the wedding feast. At least, not literally.

The answers are not easy. But the response is: be watchful! Amen.