Smoodock's Blog

For centuries, actually millennia, believers have struggled with Jesus’ words that he would return within the first century AD. Moreover, all the writers of the New Covenant text, testify the same thing, i.e. Jesus said he would return in that generation, and they preached that he would return in that generation in the first century AD. Jesus was very clear in what he stated about the Gospel. He wasn’t being ambiguous when he said: “For the Son of man will come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, ‘There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom’” (Matthew 16:27-28; emphasis mine). The question is not: ‘what did Jesus mean?’ but do we believe what Jesus said. That’s the struggle many believers have today. What happened, or how can we change the clarity of Christ’s words into an ambiguous statement to point to something else? Do we struggle with Christ, or do we believe Christ?

Jesus spoke those words nearly 2000 years ago. What if Jesus really wanted to tell the people who listened to them that some of them would actually live to see him coming in his Kingdom. What if this is what Jesus really wanted to say to the people. How could he make his meaning clear or clearer than what he said in Matthew 16:27-28? How would you phrase those word to actually mean: some of those standing there and listening would live to see Jesus coming in his Kingdom, in the glory of the Father, with his mighty angels?

Jesus’ challenge for believers in the first century and for us today is the same:

…I said, I am the Son of God? If I am not doing the works of my Father, do not believe me. But if I am doing them, even though ye do not believe me, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the him (John 10:36-38; emphasis mine).

The problem is that teachers in the Church for millennia have claimed that for Jesus to make good on this promise, he would have to physically, visibly come in the person of a cir. six foot Jewish male, on a literal cumulus cloud, to physical Jerusalem, to be enthroned in a rebuilt Temple, sit on a physical throne, and rule the world from the Middle East. And, of course they would also make the claim they are living by faith and not by sight (2Corinthians 5:7). Really?

Ah! But wait! These same teachers who deny the clear words of Christ will tell us to look at second Peter chapter three. Christ could not have come in the first century as he promised he would, if the space / time continuum remains. After all, “…the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up (2Peter 3:10). Look around! This hasn’t happened! All things continue as they have always been since the creation. How could Jesus have come as he said? Where’s the fulfillment of the promise of his coming (2Peter 3:4)?

The problem here is not that Jesus hasn’t come as he said he would. He did in 70 AD and judged the Jewish nation and destroyed the Temple, ending the Old Covenant and establishing the New. The problem with the words of these scoffers / teachers is they don’t know how to interpret scripture. For them, if something is true, it must be literally true. We inherit that concept from the Greeks. This isn’t so for the Jewish mindset in the first century AD and back to Moses. The Lord could come riding on a cloud (Isaiah 19:1), but no one would see him, because the language wasn’t literal, and don’t forget, Jesus claimed that this was how he would come (Matthew 16:27), i.e. in the glory of the Father – just has the Father had come in the past.

So, what did Peter mean when he claimed the Day of the Lord would come and the heavens and the earth would be burnt up? He was speaking of the covenant and the symbol of that covenant. He was speaking of the presence of God with man, which was the Temple at Jerusalem: heaven (the Most Holy Place) met the earth (the Holy Place and the outer precincts of the Temple). When Jesus came in the person of the Roman armies (just as the Father had come in the past in the armies of nations to judge other nations) and burnt up the Temple at Jerusalem, heaven and earth passed away (cp. Matthew 24:35; Mark 13:31; Luke 21:33), and the elements, not the scientific table of elements, which is how many folks interpret Peter’s words, but the fundamental constituent elements of the Mosaic Covenant would be burnt up (2Peter 3:10; i.e. loosed, broken, dissolved, destroyed), in order to make way for the New Covenant (cp. Hebrews 8:13).