The Biblical Articles: The Dangers of Literalism

"Will the Last Judgment come on a Tuesday?""Will the Second Coming take place in the year 2000?" People are always trying to date these things. But next time someone tells you that Judgment Day is coming on October 24, at 7:32 A.M., remember Jesus' words, "Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" ( Matt. 24: 36). It is a little presumptuous to claim more knowledge than Jesus had himself.

Rather than claiming inside information on just when and how the fulfillment of God's purposes will come, it is more important to believe that the fulfillment will come, that history is moving in a significant direction, and that in God's own good time his purposes will be fulfilled, as his power expresses itself over human life and destiny. We can assert this kind of belief, furthermore, without worrying about heaven's geography and hell's temperature. Such notions are not our worry, and whether they even have any meaning can safely be left to God to determine.

How Biblical Eschatology Has Been Expressed

The Old Testament looks to the future. The present is ambiguous: God chooses a people and that people forsakes him; power in God's world goes to nations who do not acknowledge him; the way of the wicked prospers. Consequently, the Old Testament asserts, these ambiguities will finally be overcome. God will intervene to re-establish his righteousness. The writers describe this fact by such eschatological phrases as the "Day of the Lord," the "Age to Come," the "Last Days."

Sometimes this Day of the Lord is interpreted as a judgment:"It is darkness, and not light" ( Amos 5: 18).

Sometimes it is interpreted as a restoration: rebellious nations will be trampled underfoot, and the people of God will be restored, after their experience of suffering.

Sometimes it is connected with the hope of a Messiah who will come to vindicate God and God's people. Then God will be all in all, the people will follow his will, and there will be a kind of earthly paradise:

The cow and the bear shall feed;

their young shall lie down together;

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. . . .

They shall not hurt or destroy

in all my holy mountain;

for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

( Isa. 11: 7, 9)

Toward the end of the Old Testament period we see a shift in this thinking. In Daniel (the last Old Testament book to be written) the scene of the New Age seems to shift from earth to somewhere else. There will be violent interruption of the historical process, history itself will be transformed into something utterly different, and in an indescribable way God's rule will be manifested, not just on earth, but throughout the entire cosmos.

The New Testament atmosphere is somewhat different. It is claimed that the "end" has come, but in a way very different from what the Old Testament expected. With the sending of his Son, Jesus Christ, God has actively intervened in human life. Christ has come, and with him has come the beginning of the Day of the Lord. And very soon, the New Testament avers, the full consummation will take place, Christ will return again, and the "end" which has already broken into history, will be completed. In the interim, Christians are to live as citizens both of the present age and of the "age to come."