Fordtunate Son

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Religious Pron - The End Times 2 of?

Mar 18, 2024, 4:26 PM

The tension between the light and the dark didn’t begin just yesterday.

It’s an old, old struggle. And some say will culminate with the Book of Revelation. In Part One, we started with some Jewish and Christian history that led up to that wild vision.

But a vision like Revelation doesn’t just develop overnight. And that means we have to go back, way back, to the some of the earliest texts in the Bible. Back to words from the hand of man, thousands of years old:

But finding which texts are the earliest texts, and dating the Bible in general, isn’t always an easy task. It’s like walking into a library and saying “Nice library. When was it written?”

Some Bible books are easy. The author gives us an exact date:

Daniel 1:1 “In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it.”

Some books are by inference: “If the author is talking about Assyrian invaders, he must be living and writing around 700ish BCE.”

And some books are just impossible to date. No clues, no hints…just helpful wisdom for the ages.

And it’s even more complicated than that. Some books seem to have been appended through history. Daniel feels so much like 2 books that were sewn together that I just call them Daniel I (Chapters 1-6) and Daniel II (Chapters 7-12). The events between them are separated by almost 400 years, so either Daniel was a very old man, or there were two or more authors. And Isaiah feels like 3 books written over 200 years. Yikes.

Plus, we can’t even be sure that an author was writing when he said he was writing. For instance, unless the author was standing beside God, taking notes while God created the universe, the story of Genesis had to be written later. The Bible doesn’t say, “On the first day God created a scribe to document his activities, and on the second day he started making the universe.”

So while Genesis is the first book presented in the Bible, that doesn’t mean it was the first book written in the Bible.

And the Bible doesn’t always present history chronologically, either. Since it’s more of a library, it’s not really a front-to-back linear story. No one goes into a library and starts reading at the front door, expecting the story to end at the back door.

Some books overlap. Some books summarize. Some books just have wisdom and no history at all. The Bible is all over the place. Like library books stored here, there, and everywhere.

Plus, every author was from a different time, and place, and often, political affiliation or social strata. Some talk about Israel in the north, some talk about Judah in the south, some were in the court of David, some in Babylonian captivity. It’s a whole quilt of the national history of Israel in the OT, and the history of early Christianity in the NT.

And not every book talks about the End Time. That’s actually good, because it helps us narrow this specific task down and really focus in on a manageable search.

Nahum, for instance, only seems to be interested in taking Assyria down, so he doesn’t really talk about the end of the world, or anything else for that matter. He’s sort of a one-issue prophet, with three little chapters of pure, concentrated rage.

Haggai is only focused on getting the Temple rebuilt after the Exile. So he contributes two more chapters of soothing construction inspiration in the Bible.

On the other hand, Team Isaiah has a LOT to say. Sixty-five chapters covering all kinds of topics. And the Ezekiel Writer’s Guild throws in another 48 chapters. Here they are hard at work, in 600 BCE.

So, how to sort through all 66 Books and 1189 chapters in the Bible for what we want?

Well, it helps to know some of the history of ancient Israel. Here’s a simple graphic of some of the most important historical events in the Bible. There’s plenty more, but an awful lot of the OT, at least, was written about, or between, these few events. They almost seem obsessed by them.

So, if we know the underlying historical events, we can often place a writer at a particular point in time. If Amos is railing on Assyria, or about alligators, it’s reasonable to deduce he was writing close to 700ish BCE. It’s not an iron-clad dating system, but it’s a start.

And what one finds is, in relation to the End Times, expectations built up across those events. For instance, when Amos was writing in 700ish BCE, the only huge national (as opposed to tribal) tragedy was the Assyrian invasion. So, getting those 10 tribes back was a part of his, and the national, End Times expectation.

Amos 9:13 “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, [when] I will bring my people, Israel, back…

Amos’s vision of the End Times didn’t include any Babylonian Exiles being released, because when he was writing there were no Babylonian Exiles. Only Assyrian ones. Who sadly, are still lost.

By the time of Jeremiah though, getting the Babylonian exiles AND the 10 Tribes lost to Assyria back were both expectations of the End Times.

Jeremiah 28:4 “I will bring back to this place [Jerusalem] … all the exiles from Judah who went to Babylon,’ declares the LORD.”

And by the time of Jesus, and the culmination of 1200+ years of historical events, there was a whole laundry list of End Time expectations. Not all to be completed all at once, of course.

Obviously, Yahweh would never end the earth until he did all these things first:

1) Return the 10 Tribes to Israel – box not checked off to this day
2) Free the Jews from Babylonian captivity – box checked off by Cyrus
3) Rebuild the Temple (checked off by Nehemiah, but later unchecked by the Romans)
4) Restore the Davidic Line – unchecked for Jews since King Zedekiah, checked for Christians by Jesus
5) Send a pre-Messiah Messenger, Elijah – unchecked for Jews, checked for Christians
6) Send the Messiah himself, to usher in the End Times – unchecked for Jews; checked for Christians
7) Have all nations recognize that the God of Israel is the one true God – unchecked by all
8) Resurrect all the dead – unchecked by all
9) Create a new Heaven and Earth – unchecked for all

Whew. So there’s a pretty extensive list going even day, as a result of a lot of history long ago.

So where does that leave us with Revelation? Well, I did an extensive and exhaustively comprehensive search (about 10 minutes worth) for terms in the Bible one might associate with the End Time.

Terms like “End Time,” “Day of the Lord,” “End of Days,” “Dragon,” “Beast,” etc. And I came up with about 10 good candidate books that speak, in some way, of those terms.

And the first, and oldest, hit I got took me to the literary wilderness…The Book of Obadiah. Obadiah? Who reads Obadiah?

I had the very same reaction.

Now, the Book of Obadiah is not as old as the Exodus, or Judges, or Samuel, or a lot of other books. But I couldn’t find any hits on “End Timey” terms in any of those books.

Maybe they didn’t talk about the End Times, or maybe they just didn’t write it down. But Obadiah does. So, if anyone finds anything earlier, bring it up and we’ll take a look.

Till then, Obadiah is our oldest known reference, so that’s where we’ll start.

You good with that, Obadiah? Blink if you have a problem starting us off.

There are actually a lot of Obadiahs in the Bible, but the one we are looking for lived about 850 BCE, in Judah, and griped a lot about his neighbors.

His one-chapter book is only 600 words long, so only about a quarter of one of my typical 1500-2000 word Religious Pron posts. Obadiah was a man of few words, but he didn’t use as many funny memes and gifs as I do.

Obadiah channels God’s rage at Israel’s southern neighbor, Edom. You might remember the story of Jacob, Esau, a bowl of soup, and an inheritance. That Edom. It seems that the hill country of Edom attacked Jerusalem, took their water supply and wimmen, and God wanted it all back.

1:11 “…strangers carried off his [Yahweh’s] wealth and foreigners entered his gates and cast lots for Jerusalem, you [Edom] were like one of them.”

The very same incident is recounted in 2 Kings 8:20 and 2 Chronicles 21:7

8:20 In the time of Jehoram, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up its own king.
21:7 They [Edom] attacked Judah, invaded it and carried off all the goods found in the king’s palace, together with his sons and wives.

That’s some nice internal corroboration. But what we’re here for is Obadiah 1:15

“The day of the LORD is near for all nations.”

And there it is. The very first reference I can find to anything “End Timey” in the Bible - “ The Day of the Lord.”

Thanks, Obadiah.

But what was, or is, the Day of the Lord? We know it was nearby in 850 BCE, but what did it entail? Well, there’s not much that can be gleaned about it, sadly. But it seems to have to do with vengeance first and foremost. Obadiah lays it out for us:

1:15 “The day of the LORD is near for all nations.
1:15 “As you have done [Edom], it will be done to you; your deeds will return upon your own head.”
1:18 “There will be no survivors from Esau’s [kin in Edom.]” The LORD has spoken.”

Whoa.

So payback is the first order of the day. But there is one more important tidbit here about the Day of the Lord.

1:16 “Just as you [Edom] drank on my holy hill [Jerusalem], so all the nations will drink continually…”

I read that as an anticipation that at some point in the future, all nations will come to Israel, and drink, forever. Now consider this line written almost 1000 years later. It’s also about Jerusalem. And it’s in Revelation.

21:26 “The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it [Jerusalem].”

I call that pretty cool. One simple concept carried across almost 1000 years of history. The nations of the world will come to Jerusalem. Now, in 850 BCE, Jerusalem is not described as having streets of gold, nor is it described as coming down from heaven, nor are there any beasts, or dragons, or mass resurrections.

There’s not even any mention of sin, or salvation, or a lot of other stuff that will appear in later texts.

But the simple core concepts of 1) retribution on enemies, and 2) the world accepting the premier Jewish city and Jewish God, goes way, way back. It’s our very first brick in the wall. And that should be enough to make anyone shout out with joy.

We’re past our 1500-word limit, so our path to Revelation will have to wait till the next installment. When we’ll return to my very favorite fire-breather, Amos. Amos lived about 100 years after Obadiah, in roughly 740 BCE. And one thing about Amos…that guy could wither the paint off the walls with his sermons:

Amos 7:17 “‘Your wife will become a prostitute, and your sons and daughters will die by the sword.
Your land will be divided up, and you will die in a pagan country!”

Whew! Amos, don’t hold back. Tell us what you REALLY think.

So we’ll try to build on those two concepts, and add a few more bricks on our way to 7-headed Dragons coming from the sea.
Next time.

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Starting to get lost down in this thread.
The Big Dog®
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That's interesting. I'll have to take a deeper look into their findings and evidence. I'm starting to see similar, though not entirely the same, evidence, in my own independent readings.

For instance, many of Jesus's miracles involved healing and driving out spirits. But Jewish priests healed and drove out spirits as well. How to pay offerings for healing was laid out way back in Leviticus. Jesus even empowered his apostles to heal and exorcise. So when people were amazed at Jesus's healing, were they amazed that he healed, or just amazed that he was a non-priest who was healing? And he forgives sins very, very infrequently. But, priests could do that also. His other miracles are a different matter, of course.

Jesus definitely had a beef about how the Law was being administered. And he was not alone. Half of the prophets of old, it seems, griped about the very same thing for centuries. Several times Jesus refers to the letter of the Law vs. the intent of the Law. That one is pretty obvious. But tied to that is what he thought of the Law. And he seemed to defend it to the hilt. That ties in with a following thought, coming up.

I do think that Jesus thought he was the Son of God. But's that's not quite exactly the same as a messiah. Cyrus was a messiah, and definitely not the son of God. So this one is harder to parse out. Jesus refers to himself repeatedly as the Son, and he does acknowledge he’s the messiah in John 4:25 and Mark 8:29. But he doesn’t exactly shout it from the rooftops. He just quietly acknowledges it.

He makes deliberate efforts to see through prophecy from the OT, but it's not necessarily always relevant to his own time. For instance, in context, Bethlehem and Immanuel are in reference to a prophecy regarding a military leader who was to save Israel from Assyria in 700 BCE, a country long since destroyed by Jesus's time in 30 AD. So it feels as if there are a lot of mixed messages, and mixed expectations, and mixed claims, going on. Everyone thinking they are right, but they are all inadvertently on the wrong page with each other.

Jesus seems to be very judicious with his message. He can’t avoid the growing crowds, but he speaks in parables and explains that’s to keep everyone from understanding. “…Otherwise they might see with their eyes, and hear with their ears…” He moves around Galilee but doesn’t take his message on the road to farther places, like Paul. He deliberately tells his apostles to avoid certain towns, and certain people. He tells people to keep quiet about what he is doing. It’s all very paradoxical.

I’m starting to think he thought his purpose was to be a herald to the End of the World. And not much more. That is, it wasn’t his task, as Son of God, to be saving people left and right. He could remove sin, just like a priest could, but that wasn't his primary task. One got saved by obeying the Law, and obeying the Father. Jesus's job was to tell Jews, and Jews only, that the End of the World was imminent. Others (Greeks, other gentiles, etc.) might hear that message, because he had to spread the word at his sermons. But if they didn’t understand, too bad for them. As he said, ““I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” And I think he was fully invested in the Jewish view of God descending on earth and New Jerusalem, and all that. He perhaps thought of himself as the classic Jewish messenger from God, only with the ultimate, and final message…the End of the World.

Which brings me back around to the point I skipped on earlier. If he thought the end of the world was imminent, then there’s no need to replace or remove the Law, or to save anyone other than Jews. There would be no need for permanent salvation, because the world was about to end, and Judgement Day was at hand. So Jesus was to die, the world was to end right after his death “within this generation” and that was the start of the new order of the world.

As I said, it’s an idea I’ve been pondering for a couple of years now, and actually, it is independent of any possible divinity of Jesus. All of the above could be true, or false, whether Jesus was man, or divine. Four separate possibilities - true and human, true and divine, false and human, false and divine. So I do see those as separate matters. But it’s still a work in progress on my part. I do find it interesting that the Seminar came to a similar possibilities, based on their readings and understandings.

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I like the Reader's Digest version of all these prophesies.

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