Don't You want to Go?

The Gospel train is coming,
Oh, don't you want to go,
And leave this world of sorrow
and trouble here below


”See, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will never see Me again until you say, Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.”

As Jesus left and was going out of the temple complex, His disciples came up and called His attention to the temple buildings. Then He replied to them, “Don’t you see all these things? I assure you: Not one stone will be left here on another that will not be thrown down!”

While He was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached Him privately and said, “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what is the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” -- Matthew 23:38,39; 24:1-3

The last two verses of Matthew 23 are quoted above. They end Christ’s lament over Jerusalem. Then Matthew 24 begins. It is always good to keep in mind that the Bible is divided into chapter and verse simply for the purposes of convenient referencing. Matthew’s book had no divisions of any sort as he wrote it. Thus it is important to base one’s interpretations on the immediate context as well as the general ideas expressed.

Futurists – particularly pre-millennial, pre-tribulation futurists use Matthew 24 as part of their hermeneutical argument. Matthew 24:15-22 is quoted as proof of the coming “Great Tribulation”. I have no quarrel with futurists, or preterists for that matter – frankly I just don’t care. My eschatological view is summed up in Jesus’ command to “occupy until I come”. I got my job and I’m here for the duration.

I do have a quarrel about tribulation. If I begin reading in Matthew 23 and continue on through the 24th chapter, without any preconceived notions about what is being said, I get the distinct, clear impression that Jesus is talking about a future destruction of Jerusalem and of Herod’s temple. The Lord speaks like an Old Testament prophet in declaring that because Israel had refused to accept her Messiah, she must suffer. It is an echo of Isaiah and Jeremiah and especially of Ezekiel who saw a vision of the glory of the Lord departing from the temple prior to the Babylonians’ capture and devastation of the city and its temple.

When the passage speaks of Jesus’ return, it seems to be referring to His return in judgment to chastise the Jews for rejecting Christ. This would be fulfilled in 66-70 A.D. with the siege of Jerusalem by the forces of Rome under Titus. As recorded by Josephus in his history, this was indeed a time of “great tribulation”. It appears to fulfill much – if not all -- of Christ’s prophetic declaration in Matthew 24. Josephus even records an incident of one of the legions, with its pagan standard, entering the temple complex and then being forced to withdraw prior to the fall of the city itself that would equate to the “abomination of desolation”.

As I said, though, my gripe with futurists is about tribulation. Jesus said, “In this world you will have tribulation...” – John 16:33. The believer is in hostile territory. This was certainly true under tyrants like Nero and Domitian who aggressively persecuted Christians. It was true under Communist rule in the Soviet Union, and under Mao in China. It is true today in many Muslim countries where people are killed for converting to Christianity. Given all the suffering, death and destruction of the Holocaust, one would be hard-pressed not to say that in sheer numbers Hitler’s persecution of the Jews was a “great tribulation”. But Jesus was not talking about suffering in general He was speaking specifically of Jerusalem.

Now, I understand the principle of “double fulfillment” in Scripture, i.e., that a prophecy can have an immediate specific fulfillment as well as some greater future fulfillment, and futurists apply that idea here.

The trouble is that there seems to be this idea that the Christian life should be a picnic and that we will be snatched out of the world prior to anything really bad taking place. The fallacy of this should be evident to anyone not currently in a coma. But, the futurist counters, the Great Tribulation will be really, really bad. My answer: they can only hang you once. It’s been done. Christians were tortured and martyred in many places. For the person those are great tribulations. The futurist seems to think that suffering worldwide, collectively is a greater degree but that is not true.

I recently watched the film We Were Soldiers. This is a decidedly Christian story and somewhat of an allegory for the Christian life. We are in enemy territory – in the world but not of it – in a hot LZ. We’ve got the choppers coming in with what we need for the fight, but we have to do the fighting. The battle is the Lord’s but those are my boots on the ground. They could evacuate some but it would be at a loss and the battle would be lost. I could go, but who would watch my buddy’s back? Of course, one could argue that Jesus has an advantage over Too Tall and Old Snake when it comes to getting His people out in one swoop, but it is still surrendering the field to the enemy. No, we are here to win both the battle and the war. We go out only when the enemy flees into his hole, devastated and defeated.

We will have trouble. We will suffer. It is not necessarily because of some sin we have committed. It is not because of our negative confession or our lack of faith. We face trials because we are alive and human, and especially because we are seeking God. Testing perfects our faith. Suffering can move us toward God. We miss the whole point if we are looking for an easy way out. I am not looking for the Rapture. I am looking for victory. I don’t need evac; I need more ammo. Instead of my clothes falling empty to the sidewalk when I am “changed in the twinkling of an eye”, I want to “put off the old man and put on Christ” and be “transformed by the renewing of my mind.”

As I said, I’m not a partisan when it comes to eschatology so if the futurists are right, all well and good. If Jesus wants to come back today, I would be thrilled. That means we have won.

Meanwhile:

Talk about sufferin’
Here below
And let’s keep a’followin’
Jesus
Talk about sufferin’
Here below
And let’s keep a’lovin’
Jesus