Eschatology – Page 3 – What Does This Mean?

Last Things #15: The Judgment Seat of Christ

[Twenty-Third in a series of posts on Last Things] 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 judgment 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, so the Holy Spirit has revealed in Scripture the things we can understand in words and images, sometimes in ways we can’t easily put together. 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 deed we thought secret. The standard for judging 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 are 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 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 judgment, the Marriage Feast of the Lamb will begin. We will live with God and his people forever in a celebration that never ends.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Last Things #14: The Missing Millennium

[Twenty-Third in a series of posts on Last Things] 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 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 by three, the number of God, it means 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 what Christ has commanded us to do. It reads 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.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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!

[Twenty-Second in a series of posts on Last Things] Encore Post: They were ordinary days. The seaside resort of Pompeii was bustling with the daily activities of the luxurious retreat for the most affluent Romans, who escaped 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 usual 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 their daily lives 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 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!

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastoral Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Stir up Your Power, O Lord, and Come!

Encore Post: Great forest fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods are all over our news. Acts of unspeakable evil and cruelty occur on almost a weekly basis. A nation routinely kills babies in the womb, celebrates immorality, and lectures the church when it doesn’t join them. All the signs of the end of days fill our TVs, cell phones, and computer screens. It makes you just want to scream, “Tear open the heavens and get down here, Lord, and do something about it! What are you waiting for? (See Isaiah 64)

To most of the world’s religions, the high god who made the world is a distant god, who made the world and is tired of it, going away to leave it to lesser gods and our own devices. We are left alone to deal with the mess that is our world and our part in making it worse. Even more modern thinkers, like the Deists, thought of God as a great watchmaker, who made the world capable of running itself, wound it up, and walked away. Pop songs muse: “God is watching us… from a distance” and “The Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died.” We just have to cope, they advise.

Advent breaks into that mood and reminds us that it is not true at all. The God who made the world and called it “very good” intends to do something about it. He promised to come himself, in the person of his Son, born of a woman, to become one of us. It reminds us that he kept that promise and to prepare to celebrate his coming, receive him as he comes to us each day, and how he will finally come to set things right.

The season of Advent developed over the centuries to do just that. Like Lent prepares the church to celebrate Easter, Advent prepares the church to celebrate Christmas. For some, it was also a season of repentance, as a deliberate counter to the wild and immoral way pagans celebrate their December holidays. So in many places, during Advent, the color is purple or black; the Gloria is not sung, and people fast. For others, it is a season of hope, with blue as the color and carols sung to anticipate Christmas.

Either way, the church cries out: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come!” Come as you did, born to die that we might live. Come with your grace and live among us. Come and bring us all home to be with you. Come, Lord Jesus, Come!

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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

[Twentieth in a series of posts on Last Things] 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 that 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 was set in the 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 prophecies written in figurative and symbolic language at face value 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 the 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 for 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, a millennium, and a tribulation are not in the Bible.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

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

[Nineteenth in a series of posts on Last Things] 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 a pilgrimage. Some gathered with the Pope to celebrate the last moments of the millennium. It is said some died of heart attacks, expecting 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 onto 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!

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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

[Thirteenth in a series of posts on last things] 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 disaster, the hand of the creator is present everywhere. Breathtaking sunrises and sunsets, seashore views and gentle, 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 with it 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 caring 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. It is why Jesus calls on us to stay awake! We remember 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, and the time will come when we can no longer work. All the while, we pray: Come, Lord Jesus, come!

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

It is the End of the World

Encore post: Yes, we are living in the last days. All the signs of the return of Christ have been fulfilled. Jesus may return any moment now. So be ready! He is coming for you!

Now, to be fair, it has been the last days for nearly 2000 years now. The signs of the Second Advent were fulfilled before the New Testament Scriptures were written down. That is why the Apostles and every generation since their time fully expected to greet Jesus. Just like a child thinks a day lasts forever while days clip by ever faster as adults grow older, so two thousand years are to God short as the watch that ends the night before the rising sun. (2 Peter 3:8-10) Even if the end of days does not come in our day, the end of our days will come.

So, the end times are not a complicated weave of events, hidden in riddles recorded in the Book of Revelation. It is already here, ushered in when Jesus died, rose and ascended into heaven. Jesus is quite clear that “no one knows the day or hour” that he will return suddenly, like a thief in the night. It will be like the days of Noah. He doesn’t tip us off so we will remain alert, rather than relax and grow lazy.

In fact, the way Jesus tells us about that day is very simple and straightforward. He will return suddenly, accompanied by the angels and the saints. It will be sudden, complete and final. The angels gather us before the judgment throne. We are judged and the righteous live forever, the unrighteous thrown into hell with Satan and his demons.

For a Christian, this is greatly comforting. God will live with us forever. There will be no more sorrow, crying, grief and pain. Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

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.

Originally posted at What does this Mean? Blog: https://whatdoesthismean.blog

The posts in the blog What does this Mean? are now available at What does this Mean? | Rev. Robert E. Smith | Substack

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Life Everlasting

Encore Post: Three words in the creeds go by quickly when we confess them — but we talk about them very little. The closest we come is when we think about what happens when we die or when we comfort each other at the death of a Christian loved one. “She’s in heaven now,” we say. Or “my baby is now an angel.” There are a lot of misconceptions packed into these thoughts. Perhaps the greatest of these is that things cannot get any better for them. But that is far from true. Things are very good indeed for them, for they are with Jesus and at rest from their labors. But the best is yet to come.

On a day we do not know, Jesus will return from heaven. He will bring an end to sin, suffering, grief and pain. He will raise them and us from the dead, reuniting their spirits with their bodies and transforming them to be like his. We will be reunited with them in the sky. After the last judgement, the real joy begins. It is so far beyond our comprehension that words cannot describe it. So God’s Word tells us bits and pieces, in symbol, metaphor and image. The bottom line: we will see Jesus and there can be no greater joy. God will have restored his creation to the state he intended from the very beginning. He will again call it “very good.”

The announcement in the Book of Revelation says it best:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:1-5)

Rev. Robert E. Smith

Pastor Emeritus

Fort Wayne, Indiana