See That You Are Not Led Astray: A Study of Matthew 24 and Luke 21

The Doctor:   The year one hundred trillion? That’s impossible.

Martha:           Why? What happens then?

The Doctor:   We’re going to the end of the universe.

Doctor Who S3 E11, ‘Utopia’ (2007)

All right, let’s jump in. You may want to grab a Bible first – or two, actually, for ease of comparison – but who am I kidding, you’re probably reading this on your phone and not feeling inclined to go on a reconnaissance mission to the bookshelf before you scroll onwards. On your own head be it; I can’t promise this isn’t going to get confusing if you don’t have the text at hand to consult.¹

In Matthew 24, Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and they subsequently ask him two questions: when will these things be, and what will be the sign of his coming and of the consummation of the age? In Luke 21, Jesus tells his disciples that not one stone of the Temple will be left upon another, and they subsequently ask him two questions: when will these things be, and what will be the sign when these things are about to take place?

 

This depiction of the sack of Jerusalem was labelled Francesco Hayez on Wikimedia Commons, but I don’t know whether that’s the artist or the uploader, and have no further information at all. Still, it’s definitely the sack of Jerusalem, because look, there’s the menorah.

In both cases, Jesus doesn’t answer the question immediately: he begins with a warning not to be led astray by false messiahs, or alarmed by wars and unrest, which must take place before the end. There’ll be conflicts between nations, earthquakes, famines. And then, according to Matthew – Greek τότε (tóte), which is ‘then’ in the sense of ‘at that time’ rather than ‘after that’ – then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and there’ll be betrayal and false prophets and lawlessness all over the shop. But in Luke, before all these things they will seize you and persecute you and deliver you up to synagogues and prisons and drag you before kings and governors.

So which is it? Does the persecution come at the same time as the false messiahs and wars and earthquakes, or before it? Or, are we in fact talking about two different waves of persecution here? Is Jesus giving two different, albeit similar, answers to two different questions?

Well, let’s keep reading. Both descriptions of persecutions mention proclamation of the gospel and survival through endurance, and then the paths diverge again. In Matthew, Jesus refers to a future time when the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel will stand in the Holy Place. In Luke, he refers to a future time when Jerusalem will be surrounded by armies. That’s not the same thing, is it? The advice Jesus goes on to prescribe is much of a muchness in both circumstances – let those in Judaea flee to the mountains; alas for those pregnant or nursing infants at that time – but it doesn’t follow that the same event is being described in each case, especially given some of the details that each gospel author includes in his description. Matthew says there will be great tribulation such as has never happened since the beginning of the cosmos, nor could happen again. Now, the use of the phrase ‘great tribulation’ in the New Testament is super interesting – but don’t let me get distracted. Where were we? Right, yes, so the great tribulation Matthew describes is so bad that if it weren’t cut short, no flesh would be saved;² but for the sake of the elect, cut short it will be. Luke, meanwhile, talks of days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written; great distress upon the earth (or ‘land’); wrath against this people. They will be violently killed and led captive among all nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.

So the distress Matthew is talking about is whole-world stuff; tribulation unparallelled at any time, anywhere, with the survival of all flesh on the line. The distress Luke is talking about, on the other hand, seems clearly concentrated on the Jewish nation (‘this people’) and its homeland. Two different events. Now, this makes sense of the time discrepancy we had earlier: what Matthew is talking about will occur at the same time as the false messiahs and wars and earthquakes and stuff; what Luke is talking about will occur before all these things. Neat, right? And what’s even neater is that we can match this up with history. The time when the Jews were led captive among all nations and Jerusalem was given over to Gentile occupation was in 70 CE, when the future Roman emperor Titus besieged the city – surrounded it with armies, as it were – and sacked it. According to the historian Josephus, 1.1 million people died in the siege, and ninety-seven thousand were taken into captivity (the reason there were so many people in the city is because the siege began in the middle of Pesach, so all these Jews who’d gone up to Jerusalem for the festival suddenly found themselves trapped).³ The city was destroyed, and, just as Jesus predicted, the Temple was thrown down. And without wanting to get too embroiled in modern politics, to this day, Jerusalem has not been returned to the possession of the Jewish people. The times of the Gentiles, we may conclude, are not yet fulfilled. Note the until there: at some point, it follows, the times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled, and Jerusalem will no longer be trampled underfoot by those to whom God did not give it.

In that one sentence, then, Luke’s taken us all the way from 70 CE to a date that’s still future for us in 2019. And at that point he starts talking about signs in heaven and terror on earth and the powers of the heavens being shaken and the Son of Man coming on the clouds with glory – all your classic day-of-the-LORD stuff.⁴ Matthew brings up all the same things, but he says they will come straight after the ‘great tribulation’ he described. So now we have three reasons why Matthew’s ‘great tribulation’ is not the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans: first, because it will happen directly before the sun and moon go dark and the stars fall and all that jazz; second, because it’s unparallelled tribulation on a worldwide scale, involving all flesh, not just the Jews; and third, because its inaugurating event is the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel standing in the Holy Place, which doesn’t match up with what Titus did at all. Daniel’s abomination of desolation, if you didn’t know, is very definitely Antiochus IV Epiphanes – like, so very definitely that the standard position of scholarship on the matter is that the pertinent sections of the book of Daniel, much as they purport to be prophecy from long before Antiochus’ rule (which was 175-164 BCE, whereas Daniel claims to date from the sixth century BCE), must actually have been written afterwards, because they record the relevant events so accurately. (I mean, accurate prophecy, fancy that.) Antiochus was a ruler in the line of Seleucus, one of Alexander the Great’s generals who inherited a chunk of his empire after he died, and he did some really horrible stuff to the Jewish people, including killing lots of them, but he didn’t sack Jerusalem or destroy the Temple or send them all into captivity or any of that. He did defile the Temple, so that the prescribed sacrifices couldn’t be made for three and a half years, but that’s really not the same thing at all.⁵

 

A bust of Antiochus IV in the Altes Museum in Berlin, apparently; thanks to Yair Haklai, who kindly licensed this photograph for use under the terms found here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bust_of_Antiochus_IV-Altes_Museum_(Berlin).jpg.

You’ll have spotted that, by the time Jesus was chatting to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, Antiochus was long dead, and so it’s pretty obvious that the abomination of desolation Jesus was referring to wasn’t him per se but rather some future antitype.⁶ And since there hasn’t been a Holy Place for an abomination to stand in since Titus destroyed it, it’s equally obvious that the event Jesus was describing definitely can’t have happened yet. So this all fits very nicely with what we’ve seen to the effect that Matthew 24 is dealing almost entirely with stuff that’s still future for us now, whereas Luke deals with some stuff that’s past for us. Take another look at the warning of persecution in Luke: Jesus tells his disciples, they will deliver you up to the synagogues. That’s got to be talking about persecution of Christians – specifically Jewish Christians, or else what authority would a synagogue claim over them – by other Jews, which can only have been happening before 70 CE: after that, the Jews were really not in such a position as to be persecuting anybody. The description of persecution in Matthew, on the other hand, makes no such reference, but rather speaks of being hated by all nations.⁷

What, you may ask, about the declaration, in both Matthew 24 and Luke 21, that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place? Surely, in light of that, it can’t have been so far in the future? Well, for starters, that declaration comes after the bit about the heavens being shaken and the Son of Man coming on the clouds, which I think we’d all agree definitely hasn’t happened yet, so shifting some of the other stuff that’s mentioned back to the first century doesn’t actually help. The solution here comes in the meaning of the word translated ‘generation’. It’s Greek γενεὰ (geneà), which, if I were to coin a new English term to capture the sense of it, I’d want to translate ‘begettage’: it refers to a group of people who have something in common by virtue of their birth, as it were, perhaps because they were all born about the same time – hence ‘generation’ – or alternatively because they were all born from one ancestral origin. (English ‘generation’ and ‘genetic’ are both derived from the same Proto-Indo-European root as γενεὰ.) That latter concept tends to be rendered ‘race’, which I think we can all agree is a bit of a yucky term, but until ‘begettage’ catches on, we’ll have to make do. In any case, the point is, the timing problem is solved if we take γενεὰ to be carrying the second meaning here. Jesus is saying that the ancestry-defined group around him, the Jewish people, will not pass away until these things have taken place. In other words, I know I said the Temple’s going to be utterly destroyed, and I know I said that some really horrible stuff is going to happen to those in Judaea, but please don’t think that any of that will spell the end for the Jewish nation: they’ll be preserved until my return. Be assured of that, Jesus says. My word stands firmer even than heaven and earth, he says.

So there’s my case: Matthew 24 deals pretty much entirely with Jesus’ coming and the consummation of the age, aka the future day of the LORD, as per the question the disciples are recorded to have asked at the beginning of it; whereas Luke 21 deals mostly with events prior to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE, as per the disciples’ different question as recorded there, with a bit about the day of the LORD at the end. I could leave things there, but I feel it would be remiss of me not to deal also with the parallel passage in Mark, namely in chapter 13. Again, Jesus predicts that the Temple will be thrown down. Again, the disciples ask two questions: this time, as in Luke, when will these things be, and what will be the sign when all these things are about to be accomplished? So we’re expecting something about 70 CE or beforehand, and sure enough, after that initial bit about not being led astray by false messiahs, and wars, earthquakes, famines, and so forth, Jesus tells the disciples that they will be handed over to sanhedrins and beaten in synagogues: pre-70-CE persecution.

Mark then diverges from Luke, in that the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not to be is mentioned, rather than Jerusalem being surrounded by armies. There’s no specification of timing there, though, so we can quite happily take it that, as in Luke, Jesus is saying something about near-future events, and then moving on to talk about far-future events; it’s just that the point at which he switches from the one to the other is different. In fact, the first specification of timing we get is that in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and moon will not give its light, stars falling, powers of the heavens shaken, Son of Man coming on the clouds et cetera. Just as in Matthew, then, we’re told that this whole abomination-of-desolation business will come right before Jesus returns in full pomp and glory. I think it was worth looking at Matthew and Luke first, though, because they provide a clearer framework as to how to deal with this stuff in terms of relative timing.

The reason I wanted to write this post is because I’ve heard a lot of teaching on these passages that tries to attach a lot more of what they say to the events of 70 CE than the text really allows for. Indeed, as I’ve demonstrated, Matthew and Mark kind of don’t mention said events at all. Maybe that comes as a bit of a surprise, given that the disciples’ questions were clearly prompted by Jesus’ prediction that the Temple would fall. To be fair, if these three passages are all about the same conversation, then they would have heard everything recorded in Luke 21 at that time as well as everything recorded in the parallel passages – but that in itself makes it striking that Matthew and Mark chose to include the parts of the conversation they did. The stuff about the great tribulation and the abomination of desolation and so forth was clearly a big priority for Jesus in terms of what he wanted to get across to his disciples, if he was bringing it up as part of his answer to a different question. He wants us to understand this. And so do the gospel writers, if the way they shove in a little ‘let the reader understand’ after the abomination-of-desolation bit is anything to go by.

Why does it matter? Well, the answer’s right there: so that we’re not led astray or alarmed. Please don’t imagine that being led astray or alarmed is the preserve of those crazy types like myself who think that the Bible actually gives us some pretty specific information about the events surrounding Jesus’ return, and try to work out what said information is. On the contrary, if you can’t pin down exactly what the scriptures say about that day, and make real, robust sense of it, then you’re going to end up scared of it – because some of it is, genuinely and necessarily, really blooming scary. Or alternatively, you’ll end up ignoring the relevant scary bits of scripture, whether explicitly or just functionally. If that’s not being led astray and alarmed, I’m not sure what is.

So I hope I’ve provided a compelling framework for reading these passages, but more than that, I hope I’ve persuaded you that a compelling framework can be found, and is worth finding. By all means, disagree with me; just please don’t be fobbed off with explanations that skate over the difficult bits to the point where you’re too uncertain about how to interpret these passages to be sure whether you disagree with me or not. By all means, disagree with me; just please don’t be led astray or alarmed.

Footnotes

¹ Might I at least persuade you to open the relevant passages on your web browser? They’re Matthew 24, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+24&version=ESVUK, and Luke 21, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+21&version=ESVUK.

² The ESV says ‘no human being’, but the Greek definitely has ‘no flesh’, which is not the same thing – as I was taught, ironically, by a member of the ESV translation committee.

³ Here’s the relevant chapter: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0148%3Abook%3D6%3Awhiston+chapter%3D9%3Awhiston+section%3D3.

⁴ Seriously, go on a hunt for Old Testament passages that mention ‘the day of the LORD’ and just look at the consistency of their imagery. It blew my tiny mind.

⁵ You’re looking at Daniel 7-9 – so here’s chapter 8, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=dan+8&version=ESVUK – and, for extra context that’s not canon but still cool, do check out 2 Maccabees. Here’s a really depressing chapter about Antiochus’ suppression of Jewish practices: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Maccabees+6&version=NRSVA.

⁶ As in, the fulfilment that the type anticipated, rather than a sort of negative type that works by contrast. ‘Antitype’ can helpfully mean either: https://www.thefreedictionary.com/antitype.

⁷ And I reckon it has to be referring to persecution of Jews, not Christians, but I really haven’t got space to explain why today.

Can We Have Our Apocalypse Back Please?

The Doctor:                  Elizabethan England, not so different from your time. Look over there. They’ve got recycling … water cooler moment …

Street preacher:          And the world will be consumed by flame!

The Doctor:                  … global warming.

Doctor Who S3 E2, ‘The Shakespeare Code’ (2007)

This picture was given the title 'Global Warming Concept' by ponsulak at freedigitalphotos.net. I thought, that’ll do.

The second instalment of the BBC’s Ten Pieces initiative – designed to foster an interest in classical music among children by getting celebrities to talk through the context and significance of selected works by a range of orchestral composers; it’s great, you should check it out – included, as one of its ten, the ‘Dies irae’ movement from Verdi’s Requiem.¹ This component of a requiem mass draws its text from a twelfth-century Latin poem too lengthy to repeat here,² but it begins, Dies irae, dies illa / Solvet saeclum in favilla, which means ‘The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes’ – so you’ll gather it’s pretty heavy stuff for a composer to work with. Verdi’s interpretation is suitably epic and intimidating, and is introduced in Ten Pieces II by Vikki Stone.³ I’ll give you her narration in full.

Welcome to the end of the world. This is what it sounds like. The sky seems to be ripping open with the sound of those drums, and those voices – I can’t seem to get them out of my head. They’re singing, ‘dies irae’. That’s Latin for ‘day of judgement’, and they sing it over and over and over again. It isn’t a question; it’s a statement. Life is over. It’s like disaster movie music: an orchestral storm, destroying everything in its path, including me! That’s because the day of judgement, according to some people, is the time when everyone that’s ever lived will be brought before the throne of God. They’re summoned by a fanfare, a fanfare loud enough to wake the dead, and then, each person’s soul either rises up to heaven or descends into the fiery pits of hell. There’s the trumpets! It’s starting!

This ‘Dies irae’ is by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, who knew that, for believers listening to his music in 1874, the day of judgement was no story. It was real. So Verdi brings that terrible day to life for his audience. It’s his warning, in music, of an incredible power for greater than us. And right now, it still makes me feel small, fragile, scared – maybe because there’s another vast power that we’re all at the mercy of: nature. And this music sound to me like a warning, if we don’t respect nature, of our own possible dies irae.

Well. Isn’t that interesting? And I should add, my transcription can’t communicate the fervency of her tone. Vikki Stone sounds remarkably more afraid of the impending day of judgement than just about anyone else I’ve ever heard talk about it. Which would be an extremely healthy thing: God, in his almighty power, is terrifying, and facing his wrath the most terrifying prospect there could ever be, and only once you grasp that much can you then grasp that, by Jesus’ having borne his Father’s wrath in our place, we are able to be spared the horrors of the coming dies irae, if only we repent and believe in him. It would, therefore, be an extremely healthy thing – extremely fertile ground for the gospel – except that Ms. Stone has the wrong dies irae in mind. For her, being held to account before the throne of God is just a story. The god whose impending wrath she opts to fear instead is Nature.

It’s a very clear and explicit manifestation of a step that I’d argue quite a substantial proportion of our society seems to have made. Just think about the kind of discourse employed by the modern sustainability movement. The impending end of the world; humanity bringing disaster on itself by failing to properly respect that which is greater than us as we ought; the inevitable catastrophe we will face for our greed and selfishness and complacency if we don’t change our ways; the urgent need for a radical change in what we value and how we relate to the world, in order to get off the trajectory we’re currently on; the urgent need, furthermore, to communicate this message to as many people as possible and persuade them of its truth and importance. The Doctor was right: our own time isn’t so different from the sixteenth century, or the nineteenth. People still talk about everything going down in flames. They’ve just taken God off the judgement seat and put the natural environment in his place.

Please don’t think I’m dismissing the whole sustainability movement as a bad or pointless thing. On the contrary, I very much approve of taking good care of the natural world over which God was kind enough to grant humans dominion. I very much approve of seeking contentment with what one has instead of an endless hunger to consume more and more until there are no resources left for anyone else. I very much aprrove of acknowledging that our actions have wider-reaching impacts than we can necessarily see, and therefore warrant our careful consideration. And yes, I think it would be simply marvellous if we could stop chucking plastic into the sea.⁴ My point isn’t that looking after the environment isn’t an important thing. It’s that looking after the environment isn’t the most important thing. It isn’t Nature that resides on the judgement seat of the universe; it’s the LORD of hosts.

 

Because drift-plastic isn’t half as appealing as driftwood.

At some point we stopped preaching fire and brimstone because we were worried it would upset and offend and alienate people, and while our apocalypse was left gathering dust in a cupboard somewhere, the sustainability movement – not unreasonably – went and nicked it. And I think it’s high time we set about trying to claim it back.

What all this discourse about the impending end of the world from a sustainability point of view proves, is that it’s not that aspect of the proceedings that causes people to reject the God of the Bible. It’s not because Christianity urges them to change their ways to avoid coming catastrophe that people have a problem wth it, because the sustainability movement tells them more or less the same thing. So, toning down that particular facet of our faith isn’t going to help the message be accepted; it’s only going to make us lose that sense of crucialness and urgency that the sustainability movement succeeds in getting across so very well. People are perfectly content to talk about the comeuppance for humanity’s wrongdoing so long as they can put a different god on the judgement seat.

Look what a textbook example of old-school idolatry this is: humans exchanging fear of the true God for fear of mere created things. The natural environment is not the great power Vikki Stone makes it out to be; it’s at the beck and call of God who spoke it into existence. If he says it all goes down in flames tomorrow, then tomorrow, down in flames it will all go. And beyond that, he has decreed that at some point, it will all go down in flames. The sustainability movement urges action in the hope of averting the catastrophe from ever happening; Christianity urges action in the hope of being removed from the impact zone before the catastrophe hits.⁵

The great day of the LORD is near,

near and hastening fast;

the sound of the day of the LORD is bitter;

the mighty man cries aloud there.

Welcome to the end of the world. This is what it sounds like.

A day of wrath is that day

 – dies irae dies illa –

a day of distress and anguish,

a day of ruin and devastation,

a day of darkness and gloom

a day of clouds and thick darkness,

a day of trumpet blast and battle cry

against the fortified cities

and against the lofty battlements.

I will bring distress on mankind,

so that they shall walk like the blind,

because they have sinned against the LORD.

Against the LORD, not against nature; wrath comes for abuse of the natural world only insofar as that abuse is a sin against the Creator.

Their blood shall be poured out like dust,

and their flesh like dung.

Neither their silver nor their gold

shall be able to deliver them

on the day of the wrath of the LORD.

In the fire of his jealousy,

all the earth shall be consumed.

That’s a little bit worse than whatever might have been going down in the Amazon rainforest this week just gone, don’t you think?⁶

For a full and sudden end

he will make of all the inhabitants of the earth.

Gather together, yes, gather,

O shameless nation,

before the decree takes effect

– before the day passes away like chaff –

before there comes upon you

the burning anger of the LORD,

before there comes upon you

the day of the anger of the LORD.

Seek the LORD, all you humble of the land,

who do his just commands;

seek righteousness; seek humility;

perhaps you may be hidden

on the day of the anger of the LORD.

See that? Not, perhaps you may avert the disaster, but rather, perhaps you may be hidden from it. Now, a lot of this stuff from Zephaniah kind of works on two levels, because it’s predicting the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 586BCE as well as the coming destruction of the entire present age, but right now, the way to seek the LORD is through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus; God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us so that whether we are awake or asleep, we might live with him.⁷

This is a more radical change than anything that might be demanded of you in the name of sustainability: more radical than going vegan or carbon neutral or zero waste. This is a call to die to yourself and let Christ live in you. And it’s a more urgent call as well. Funny how certain people like setting deadlines for when the damage done to the planet will be irreversible almost as much as certain other people like predicting the precise date of Jesus’ return. I’m not in a position of sufficient education to be able to comment on the former matter, but regarding the latter, I can tell you of a certainty that the day of wrath will arrive suddenly, out of the blue, an unforeseen shock to all on whom that wrath is poured.⁸ In other words, unless you’re ready and waiting all the time already, it’s coming a heck of a lot sooner than you think it is.

While we left our apocalypse gathering dust at the back of the cupboard behind all the prettier doctrines, the sustainability movement stole it, replaced our almighty God with their favoured idol of mere created Nature, and started preaching their adapted version with a boldness and urgency that frankly puts us to shame. But there’s no variety or degree of commitment to sustainability that’ll save you from the coming wrath of God; only Jesus, by his blood shed on your behalf, can do that. So, for the sake of those around us who need to hear where genuine salvation from the coming dies irae is found, we can’t afford not to do our best to reclaim this teaching in its true form. We were here first; it’s our turf; we’ve got dibs. Can we have our apocalypse back please?

Footnotes

¹ Here’s the Ten Pieces choir performing the piece at the Proms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmWIq0rdv7M.

² Wikipedia’ll give you a nice clunky literal English translation as well as the pretty rhyming version endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dies_irae.

³ No, I hadn’t heard of her either, but she does a nice job of narrating.

⁴ Here’s a nice way to cut down plastic use: get yourself a safety razor. It works out a heck of a lot cheaper than any other method of hair removal as well. I have a Rockwell one, https://getrockwell.com/; what sold it for me was the promise of a special baby-steps setting where it’s literally impossible to cut yourself. And sure enough, I’ve never cut myself, even now that I’ve graduated to a setting that involves more exposed blade.

⁵ The section I’m about to quote is from Zephaniah 2 and 3, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=zeph+2&version=ESVUK. I’ve given the ESV today, because there’s quite a lot of it and I couldn’t be bothered to translate it myself this late in the evening.

⁶ Which doesn’t actually seem to be quite as catastrophic as people are making out: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/08/30/what-everyone-gets-wrong-about-the-amazon/. I’ve given you this one in particular because it also makes the point that the sustainability movement has nicked the religious idea of the apocalypse, and I probably owe some credit there. Spiked is generally a lot more sceptical of the sustainability movement than I am, but on most topics I find their articles quite a breath of fresh air.

⁷ I didn’t put that bit in italics to see if you’d spot the quotations all the same. Romans 8 and 1 Thessalonians 5, if you’re wondering. Here’s the Thessalonians: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+thess+5&version=ESVUK.

⁸ Like a thief in the night, at an hour you do not expect, said Jesus as recorded in in Matthew 24 and Luke 12 (which I will probably blog about at some point because you have to be quite careful with them); Paul also quoted that teaching in the chapter of 1 Thessalonians I mentioned last footnote.