Eschatology – Page 2 – What Does This Mean?

The Colorful End of the Church Year

Encore post: Fall brings changing colors to landscapes in northern areas of the United States. Green leaves change to a breathtaking variety of red, orange, yellow and brown. People will drive miles to just take in all in. The beauty of it all brings out praise of God for his creation.

In Lutheran Churches, colors change in the sanctuary almost weekly during late October and early November as the church marks the last weeks of ordinary time. This time begins with red paraments for Reformation Day, celebrated on the nearest Sunday before October 31. Red is the color used for the Holy Spirit and his work and martyrdom.

The color soon changes to white for All Saints’ Sunday, celebrated the Sunday after November 1, All Saints’ Day. White is the color of the resurrection, celebration and the saints, who wash their robes white in the Blood of the Lamb.

The next week or two, the color returns to the green of Pentecost or Trinity season (the name depends on how your church counts the Sundays of ordinary time) Green is the color of life and growth. It is also used in Epiphany Season.

The theme for the last three Sundays of the church year is preparation for the Second Advent of Christ. In fact, in some lectionaries, the Sundays are referred to as the Third-Last Sunday, Second-Last Sunday and the Last Sunday of the Church year. Some churches call the last Sunday the Sunday of the Fulfillment or Christ the King Sunday. Some churches change color to white.

Finally, the new church year begins with a change to the color blue or purple for the season of Advent and the beginning of a new church year. Purple is the color of repentance and is traditionally used for Lent — where the church fasts to receive Jesus as the Son of God and Son of Mary. Blue is the color of hope and used more recently, where Advent is celebrated as a season of joy.

One more color change happens in some churches (to white) in the United States for Thanksgiving Day, which is the celebration of the good gifts God has given to us and our thanks to him for these blessings.

Enjoy this season of meditation, joy, expectation and hope as we consider the various blessing Jesus has given and will give to us because of his love for us, shown by his incarnation, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension and soon return in glory.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2018-2023 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

Last Things 7G: Stay Awake! Don’t Close Your Eyes!

Encore Post: Even with the effects of the fall, the world can be very sweet, pleasant and beautiful. When God finished creating the world, he stood back, looked it all over and said, “very good.” (Genesis 1:31) Even after sin entered the world, bringing with it death, sorrow, grief, pain, disease and the disaster, the hand of the creator is present everywhere. Breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, seashore views and gentile, warm breezes, mountain valleys and peaks all speak to us of his majesty. Even cloud patterns before a storm cause us to admire his majesty. There is the pleasure of the presence of loved ones, holding your child or grandchild for the first time.

Life is very precious to us. It absorbs us in planning, working towards goals, saving, dreaming and enjoying the many gifts God gives to us. We deal as best as we can with the tragedies of life, but there are long stretches of time when we think it will never end. We forget that this world — and more to the point — our world is passing away. We go to sleep spiritually. The work that God calls us to do, especially to witness to the Good News of salvation in Jesus, doesn’t seem quite so important. When sports tournaments are held on Sunday, we skip worship to watch our kids compete. We put care for the poor, contributing to the work of the church with our resources and time second, we put off uncomfortable conversations with loved ones who wander from the faith.

Yet it is very much at times like these that our Lord will return for us. He will do so suddenly, without warning, the way that the flood came in the day of Noah, the way the sudden attacks on Pearl Harbor Day and 9/11 came. It may be at the end of time or at the end of our time. So it is that Jesus calls on us to stay awake! We remember that he came at the fullness of time, lived the perfect life for us, suffered and died for us, rose again for us and ascended to prepare a place for us. And so we set the watch, day and night, knowing that he is coming for us. In the meantime, we work, for the day in short and the time is coming when we cannot work. All the while, we pray: come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #15: The Judgment Seat of Christ

Encore Post: When Jesus returns from heaven, all Christians will be united with him forever. Those who have died will rise from the grave, their souls reunited with their bodies. All will be restored to be just like him, sin and death removed forever. While that is much more than enough for us, it is not the only thing he intends. He will make a new heaven and a new earth, removing the effects of sin and death forever. A key event in that restoration is the judgement seat of Christ.

The angels sent forth to raise the dead will gather all before the throne — both the saved and the lost, all angels and demons will be brought before him. Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Saints and angels will all sing his praises. These events are beyond our comprehension and so the Holy Spirit has revealed in Scripture the things we can understand in words and images, sometimes in ways we can’t put together easily. Yet all are true.

At the throne of judgement, the Book of Life will be opened, where the names of all God’s people are written. Every event in human history, along with every thought and deeds we thought secret. The standard to judge these deeds will be God’s Holy Law. The verdict is clear — God is righteous and no one else. Yet for the sake of the sacrifice of the Lamb-who-was-slain, all who trust in Jesus will be declared not guilty. All their sins were forgiven and forgotten. All that remains is the good deeds done for the sake of Christ. These will follow us into eternal life.

Jesus himself recounts how this works: whenever we cared for the least of his children, we did it to him. The lost, however, will be remembered for what they did not do. So, in the end, the saved will shine in the joy of God the father and live forever with him. The lost will be thrown into hell with the demons forever separated from God and his love.

Following the judgement, the Marriage Feast of the Lamb will begin. We will live with God and his people forever in a celebration that never ends.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #14: The Missing Millennium

Encore Post: Called the “Jewish opinion” by the Lutheran Confessions, the belief in a Millennium comes from a face value reading of Old Testament prophecy and poetry about the Church or about eternal life with God after the Second Advent. It also treats the Book of Revelation, written in a symbolic code called apocalyptic, in a similar way. By doing so, it uses difficult to understand passages to complicate the very clear words of Jesus, Peter, Paul and other New Testament writers. It is the view of the Pharisees that caused them to rule out Jesus as the Messiah, because he did not intend to battle the Romans and to miss that the Scriptures pointed to the birth, life, sufferings, death and Resurrection of the Son of God.

The word itself comes from Revelation 20, where the reign of Christ through in his church is described as 1000 years. This number is not a literal 1000 years, but is Jewish numerology. The number ten meant to them perfection and when multiplied three times, the number of God, it means when everything is completed. It points to our times when the Gospel has reached every corner of the earth.

While it may seem harmless to believe such things, it detracts from the what Christ has commanded us in order to read every event, looking for the return of Christ. Instead, we should be ready, as Jesus instructs us, making disciples of all nations by baptizing and teaching them, knowing he is with us always.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

©2018, 2023 Robert E. Smith. All rights reserved. Permission granted to copy, share and display freely for non-commercial purposes. Direct all other rights and permissions inquiries to cosmithb@gmail.com

Last Things #13: Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Encore Post: They were ordinary days. The seaside resort of Pompeii was bustling with the daily activities of the luxurious retreat for the richest of Romans, escaping the pressures of the imperial capital of ancient Rome. That is until Mount Vesuvius buried it in ash for 1700 years. It was a lazy Sunday morning in Hawaii, slower than normal for a navy base — until Japanese bombs shattered Pearl Harbor that December 7, 1941. On a bright, lovely September morning, a pastor drove from downtown Fort Wayne, practicing a sermon for chapel on the first regular day of classes for Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne — a sermon he rewrote on the ride in as he learned airplanes had destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City that September 11, 2001. Life was normal — until the world changed.

On another ordinary day, when people will go about daily life as usual, eating, drinking, marrying, working in the field and in businesses, Jesus will return from Heaven. (Matthew 24:37-41) He will appear in the sky with the angel armies of Heaven and the souls of his people with him. Every eye will see him. He will send his angels to gather both those who are saved to meet him and the damned to be judged. ( Matthew 13:41, 49, Matthew 24:30-31) There will be no rapture, where Christ appears secretly to claim his own and leave the world in tribulation. This notion comes from a misunderstanding of the dispensationalists.

At that time, Jesus will break the seal of the grave forever. All people will rise from the dead in the great resurrection of the dead. All souls will be reunited with their bodies and Christ’s own will be transformed to be just like him. (1 Thessalonians 4:14-17) As much as great dread has been put in this day, it is for Christians, the most joyful day of all, even with the next event — the Last Judgment — coming. For the goal of the suffering, death and resurrection of our Lord is this day — when all is made right, we are restored to his image and we will shine like the stars in his kingdom. So, the Church has always prayed: Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastoral Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #11: Rapture and Tribulation and Millennium — Oh My!

Encore Post: Many of our evangelical brothers and sisters are fascinated by Biblical prophecy. Seeing the evil around us, they are convinced that we are living in the very last years and months before Christ returns to raise the dead, bring an end to sin, death and the power of the devil, gather all in the final judgement and begin the marriage feast of the lamb that has no end. They are not alone — in every period, Christians were convinced they were living in such times — even St. Paul and Martin Luther!

What makes their view unique in the church’s history is they accept a theological view called Dispensationalism, a Christian school of thought that was born in the 1800s. It adopted the ancient view that Christ would reign on earth literally for 1000 years after he returned in glory. It set this view in a way of looking at history inspired by the 19th century cultural movement known as Romanticism. Dispensationalism was developed by Charles Nelson Darby, D. L. Moody and C. I. Scofield.

Dispensationalists believe God divided the world into seven dispensations (also called economies and administrations). In each age, God supposedly revealed himself in different ways. Salvation was offered according to different plans for each age (for example, under the Law of Moses, salvation was by works, but in the church age, by grace) and humans were held accountable to the set of rules for that age. They get to these views by treating at face value prophecies written in figurative and symbolic language and using the interpretations they discover to understand in a complex way the simple and clear words of Jesus and the apostles.

For them, this age will end when events predicted in prophecy occur. They look to current events to fulfill these prophecies, treating the Bible as a giant algebra problem. Some have used such calculations to predict end-time events. Among these are the rapture, when all true Christians will suddenly be removed from the world, leaving only unbelievers, the Tribulation, when they will be punished, and those who come to faith seeing these events are persecuted and the Millennium, when Christ and the church will rule the world a thousand years. Two problems with this: Christ promised he would return suddenly and the last judgement follows immediately (so the Bible is not an algebra problem) and these versions of a rapture, millennium and tribulation are not in the Bible.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #10: The End of Days and the End of Your Days

Encore Post: As the turn of the millennium approached, people began to wonder if maybe Jesus would return. They sold all their property and gave the money to the poor. They went on pilgrimages. Some gathered with the Pope to celebrate the last moments of the millennium. It is said some died of heart attacks anticipating the end of days. But when the bells of St. Peter’s tolled in the New Year and Pope Silvester the First made the sign of the cross in benediction, the Trumpet did not sound and the dead were not raised. With great relief, they welcomed in the year 1000.

840 years later, a Baptist farmer became convinced that he had decoded the Bible’s prophecies of the second advent. It would be on March 21st, 1843, he announced. So people sold all their property and gave the money to the poor. They traveled distances to hear William Miller. When March 21st came, they gathered with him in white robes. But the Trumpet did not sound, and the dead were not raised. The disillusioned called it the Great Disappointment.

Throughout the years, Christians have been tempted to ignore Jesus’ warning that no one knows the day or the hour. (Matthew 24:36) In 1988, one man claimed, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t know the month and the year.” Truly distressed by the trials of this world, they latched on to the thought that they were in the last days. In the process, they missed the work that God had for them to do.

Rather than focus on any one day, Jesus calls on us to always be ready, because we do not know when he will return. That is true not only of the end of days but of the end of your own days. Our lives are short and in God’s hands, who alone knows when it is best for us to be by his side. When that day comes, be it in the end of days or at the end of our days, his angels will come and escort us home forever. In the meantime, be alert! Work while it is still day, because you do not know when you will rest from your labors. Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

You’re No Angel: Things Angels are Not

Encore Post: Beautiful young women in long, flowing white gowns, with big, downy wings, with a glowing, gold halo. A chubby, winged baby. The spirits of deceased Christians, also bearing wings and a halo, carrying a harp, floating on clouds. Images like these fill our pictures, movies, TV shows and songs. Yet none of these are real nor share much in common with God’s Holy Angels. They are very different creatures and are not mild, gentle beings. They are God’s Heavenly Army, powerful and, when they appear, command respect.

First of all, angels are not people. They are spirits created by God to serve him. (Hebrews 1) Christians do not become angels when they die. Our spirits are unnaturally separated from our bodies at death — bodies which decay. But we do not remain in that state. On the last day, God will raise our bodies from the dead and reunite our spirits with them.

Angels are powerful beings, sometimes tasked with battling Satan and his demons (these are fallen angelic creatures). They guard us, plead for us before the throne of God and stand in his eternal presence. When they appear to people, they so often inspire fear that almost always their first words to humans are “fear not.” Some of God’s people are even tempted when they appear to fall down in worship. Scripture even poetically refers to them as gods.

Unlike the popular TV series and movies, angels are not like humans with flaws, prone to temptation and sin. Good angels are now eternally sinless, having been tested by Lucifer’s rebellion. They have a perfect knowledge of God. While they always take the form of a male human when they appear to humans, they never marry. They also are not young, having existed since before the fall of Adam and Eve, nor are they ever female. The scriptures do not mention halos (these are put into medieval art to draw eyes to images of holy people and beings, especially in stained glass) and only describe angels with wings when referring to seraphim and cherubim).

Most importantly, they ministered to Jesus during his earthly ministry. Angels are used by God to draw us to Jesus. On our last day and the last day, they will escort us to the throne of God, where we will live with God forever. So we thank God for the ministry of Angels and sing with them his praises, both here on earth and forever.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Sunday School: Malachi, The Last of the Old Testament Prophets — Almost

Encore Post: The people of Judah had returned from exile in Babylon. Through the Persian ruler Cyrus, the people had resettled in the promised land. They rebuilt the temple — although not nearly to the glory of Solomon’s Temple. They rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem — and their lives. And then the people felt forgotten and isolated, a small province of a foreign empire — vast and worldwide. God sent the prophet Malachi. His name means Messenger, Angel.

Malachi assured Judah of God’s love, called on them to repent — especially the priests. He then lifted their eyes to look towards the future. He would send another Malachi — a messenger — Elijah, to prepare the way of the Lord. He would turn their hearts to each other, so that the Lord would not need to destroy them completely. With that, the voice of the prophets fall silent. It would be at least four hundred years before God would again speak through a prophet.

The people would not forget this time. They would bring together all the prophecies and types of the Messiah and his Malachi — Messenger. They came to look for an earthly kingdom and the day of the Lord. And so they missed the return of the Prophets — a Son of Levi and David — a second Zechariah and his son, the last and greatest prophet. But that is another story!

While God was silent, he was not absent or idle. In the time of between the testaments, God began to prepare the ground for his prophets — and for his Son. The next few posts will go into the ways he did this.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Sunday School: Prophets Told of Jesus Coming

Encore Post: A prophet is someone who speaks for God. In the Old Testament, God called many individuals to serve as His voice among the people of Israel. While we think of a prophet as someone who predicts the future, mostly a prophet preached to God’s people, calling them to repentance and bringing a word of comfort to them. Once in a long while, a few prophets would see into the future and tell God’s people what God was going to do.

The Messiah would be a descendant of Eve, whom Satan would kill, but who would defeat Satan. (Genesis 3:15) He would be born of a virgin. (Isaiah 7:14) in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). The Messiah would be a descendant of David and called God. (Isaiah 9:6-6) He would be crucified as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. (Psalm 22, Isaiah 53:4-12)

As important as the prophets were, Jesus is the greater than all of them. He was a prophet like Moses. (Deuteronomy 18:15-19) The writer of Hebrews tells us that “in many and various ways, God spoke in ancient times through the prophets, but now in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son.” Prophets spoke the word of God, but Jesus was the Word of God. When we hear Jesus, we hear the Father, when we see Jesus, we see the Father. When we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus.

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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