Week 39: Taken
So quick recap so we don't start cold. #34 on our list was
#34 - AWAIT JESUS' RETURN
And in week one we basically came to the conclusion that Jesus' doesn't just want us to sit around waiting for His second coming, twiddling our thumbs and being comfortable and just being amongst ourselves and not out in the world being His active Kingdom.
Now our key verses that we got #34 AWAIT JESUS' RETURN from was Matthew 24:42-44 which says -
So you too, must keep watch! For you don't know what day your Lord is coming. Understand this: If a homeowner knew exactly when a burglar was coming, he would keep watch and not permit his house to be broken into. You also must be ready all the time, for the Son of Man will come when least expected.Matthew 24:42-44
So some people really key in on the "keep watch" part of the passage. And so they make this entry into our Fifty Things more about that -
#34 - KEEP WATCH
And because they misread or misunderstand the verses leading up to this passage in Matthew 24 they think it's about Keeping Watch for the end of the world.
Now last week, we did a deep dive into Matthew 23 which really informs our understanding of Matthew 24 and we also looked at the first 27 verses of Matthew 24 to show that Jesus wasn't talking about the end of the world and to keep watch for the end of the world, but that Jesus was answering two separate questions that the disciples asked that the disciples probably didn't even realize were two separate questions. When was the end of the age and what will be the sign of Jesus' return. So we spent a lot of time explaining that the end of the age was when judgment was pronounced on Israel and the temple was destroyed in AD 70 and all of these other things that Jesus mentioned - they happened between AD 30 - AD 75. In their generation. They were not warnings for us to look for end times phenomena. That's not what Jesus wants us to be about. Keep watch was not a command for us to keep looking for signs to interpret as the end of the world.
And that brings us to where we are now in our exploration of Matthew 24. Cause we've got more to look at. Now, I think we did a pretty good job of explaining that wars and rumors of wars, and famines and earthquakes and false messiahs and a time of unmatched turmoil and fleeing to the hills from Judea and all of that stuff - was about the era between AD 30 -AD 75 last week. But we haven't hit everything in the chapter. And some of us who maybe grew up in certain traditions, maybe you're thinking "Wait Josh! There's still some stuff you didn't cover! Some stuff that still sounds suspiciously like end of the world stuff! You can't just skip over that."
And I'm not. I just ran out of time last week. Let's dive back in.
Now remember, when Jesus is talking and we're parsing the text, we're dealing with two separate events that mark the answers to the two separate questions that the disciples asked Jesus. And the way it is recorded in the book of Matthew there's a lot of back and forth. It makes narrative sense the way we naturally tell stories and speak to our friends - we go back and forth, we Tarantino our stories when we're telling them all the time and we don't even realize we do it. That's what's happening here in the latter parts of Matthew 24 and we need to pay close attention, otherwise we will mix these two time periods and separate incidents up in our minds and see them as one.
We're picking back up in Matthew 24:26
So Jesus has said "So if someone tells you, 'Look, the Messiah is out in the desert,' don't bother to go and look. Or 'Look, he is hiding here,' don't believe it!" That's their present time. Disciples' generation. Then Jesus breaks from that to say "For as lighting flashes in the east and shines to the west, so it will be when the Son of Man comes." Jesus takes a break to explain the difference and talks about the FUTURE. But then after that explanation as an aside, Jesus goes BACK to talking about what would happen in the disciples generation - he's wrapping up everything he's been talking about to be on the lookout for in their generation -
Just as the gathering of vultures shows that there is a carcass nearby, so these signs indicate that the end is near.Matthew 24:26-28
What end is near? The end of the AGE. Not the end of the world. The end of the age of the Second Temple that we have been talking about for two straight chapters.
And Jesus is most likely STILL talking about those days when He says,
Immediately AFTER THE ANGUISH OF THOSE DAYS, (the days Jesus has been warning them about this entire time) the sun will be darkened, the moon will give no light, the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.Matthew 24:29
Sounds kind of end of the world-y but does this line up with what we know happened historically? Yes it does. The historian Josephus talks about the temple and Jerusalem being purged by fire. There were immense amounts of smoke and fire. We read that the blaze was intense enough that when seen from a distance, the flames seemed to be part of the sky. There was tremendous darkness and smoke. We live in California - we know what happens when we get a really bad wildfire. We have seen it. Does the smoke blot out the sky and the sun? Does it make the sky red? Does smoke block and scatter moonlight, turning the moon deep red or orange so the moon no longer gives off light - almost like a lunar eclipse?
The interesting line here that confuses us sometimes and makes us think - well this must be the end of ze world - not the end of the age - is "the stars will fall from the sky." But is there a chance that could've been signals of the end of the age as well? Something that happened during the disciples' generation? Yeah.
The Jewish historian Josephus writes about supernatural phenomena that happened during the fall of Jerusalem. And it seems to be in line with what Jesus prophesies about. Josephus says that there was a star that resembled a sword that hung over the city. There was also a comet that lasted for a year. And this is where it gets really wild - he also records that people saw visions of chariots and soldiers running through the clouds in armor and surrounding cities. Perhaps signals that what was happening in and around Jerusalem was indeed a unique event in history with supernatural implications.
Now in the next verse, it seems that Jesus switches from the judgment that will befall Jerusalem in the disciples generation to the distant FUTURE thousands of years later with His second coming-
And then at last, the sign that the Son of Man is coming will appear in the heavens, and there will be deep mourning among all the peoples of the earth. And THEY will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send out His angels with the mighty blast of a trumpet, and THEY will gather His chosen ones from all over the world - from the farthest ends of the earth and heaven.Matthew 24:30-31
And if you were with us last week, you remember Jesus making the stuff about the destruction and persecution personal to the Disciples - YOU will see… YOU will be arrested, persecuted ad killed. YOU will be hated all over the world. YOU will see what Daniel the prophet has spoken about. THIS VERY GENERATION.
But when Jesus is talking about the distant future which WE have the luxury of knowing is at least two thousand years later…he doesn't say YOU. He says THEY… that's not an accident. Now speaking of time periods - we've gotta deal with "at last."
When is "at last?" Is it right on the heels of the destruction of the temple in 70 AD? No. It can't be. History tells us that. We're thousands of years into the future and it hasn't happened yet. When is "at last?" It's not a specific time period. It's not "in a little bit." It's not "quite a bit later." It's "at last." "At last" is an idiom. We use it to say "Finally." "After a long period of waiting." "Ultimately." We use that language as "the culmination" or an event. When something FINALLY comes to fruition.
"At last" might not be the best translation though. And it confuses the back and forth between two time periods when it's translated that way. Because the Greek for that phrase can be translated a number of ways - it can be translated as "then" - which I think most of the confusion comes from. It can be translated "at that time." Which is like then. But it can also be translated "at the time that…" Small change - big difference. So you can read Matthew 24 as "at the time that the sign that the Son of Man will appear in the heavens" ('is coming' is something added by translators for clarification)
And so we're back to Jesus switching the time on the narrative to the future. He is not saying that His return is immediately on the heels of the destruction of the temple.
But now comes the hardest part of this text - This is what I promised last week - because there does seem to be a conflation - a merging of these two ideas and it happens because of one word in Matthew 24:34 And whenever you have a conflation, it's going to result in confusion. And it has for thousands of years. Let's examine this next part -
Now learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branches bud and it's leaves begin to sprout, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see all these things, you can know His return is right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will not pass from the scene until all these things take place.Matthew 24:32-34
And it would be easy to see Jesus jumping back and forth between the two questions except for this one word "all" "until all these things take place." And it's hard not to marry those two ideas the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the second coming of Christ. I grant you that. The problem is that it makes the rest of the passage not make sense. It takes what is a very obvious and specific addressing of the disciples in their generation for the better part of two chapters - and because of this one word - makes it really confusing.
Couple of ways of dealing with this - we just call it what it most likely is - another time jump in the narrative. But if you want to get deeper into a possible explanation - I think we need to remember that a scribe was not sitting down next to Jesus when He was saying all of these things. Matthew 24 is a recollection put into an account at the very earliest - 10 to 15 years after Jesus told the disciples this. But the most commonly held scholarly consensus tells us that the Gospel of Matthew was most likely written between 70 AD and 90 AD, with most believing that it was written AFTER the destruction of the Jerusalem temple, probably sometime between 75 AD - 85 AD. So we're talking putting what you remember that Jesus said about this conversation in writing probably 45 to 55 years after it happened. And while obviously inspired it was still written by human hands with human voices and human understanding. And you ask yourself - did the writing reflect a misunderstanding or a conflation of ideas in this account? Well, when did the disciples think Jesus was coming back? They thought the second coming would be in their lifetimes. And the writings in other scripture reflects this.
1 Peter 4:7, James 5:8-9
If they didn't understand they were asking two separate questions at the beginning of this passage, the disciples still were probably conflating the two ideas when writing about them and misunderstanding that while they both had to happen, they were not as temporally connected as they understood them to be. They were still looking for Jesus' imminent return at the time of the writing of Matthew - and it would've made sense to their human understanding being that the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of the Temple that was a part of this conversation had probably recently taken place before the authorship of this gospel.
Alright - we're finally moving in on our key verse and at this point in the passage - this has stronger implications for us, more important implications for us - pressing implications because now we are talking about THE FUTURE…
When the Son of Man returns, (FUTURE) it will be like it was in Noah's day. In those days before the flood, the people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered His boat. People didn't realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away. That is the way it will be when the Son of Man comes. Two men will be working together in the field; one will be taken, the other left. Two women will be grinding flour at the mill; one will be taken, the other left.Matthew 24:37-41
So you, too, must keep watch! For you don't know what day your Lord is coming.Matthew 24:42
And I bet I know what a lot of you think of when you read that verse. But do you know why? And is what you imagine this verse to be about really what this verse is about?
Alright. So it's pretty common for Matthew 24:40-41 to be seen by certain segments of the evangelical community as an allusion to an event which has come to be known as The Rapture. And if you see it that way - that's fine. Lot of people do. I don't think any more of you because you do, I don't think any less of you because you do. But just so we get our history and context straight - Matthew 24:37-42 might not be referring to an event where followers of Christ are taken up to the sky to essentially miss out on a time of great tribulation leading to the second coming of Christ and the end of the world while the rest of the world is "left behind" depending on your interpretations or Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, Thessalonians, and Matthew 24 just to name a few.
One of the reasons why a lot of people's brains and imaginations immediately go there - when they read the language "one will be taken, the other left" is because they were already misreading past events like the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple and the abomination that causes desolation and the flight to the hills of Pella from Judea as apocalyptic prophecy for THEIR FUTURE here in the 20th and 21st centuries instead of understanding that that part of what Jesus was addressing were prophecies that had indeed been fulfilled within the disciples own generation and lifetime just like Jesus said they would be. And by the way, be happy about that because that is a demonstration of Jesus as the ultimate, accurate prophet.
But if you read those events as future prophecies and you had future apocalyptic armageddon imagery in your head when you were reading this, of course you would interpret these verses as about a pre-tribulation Rapture. Which is something that not every Christ follower believes in. And that's okay. Because the idea of the Rapture as a separate event from the coming of Christ - not just meeting Him in the clouds at His Second coming, but being whisked away from earth to avoid a 7 year tribulation period and then returning with Jesus at the end of that period only to be whisked back up again- those ideas as we understand them in our time - didn't exist until John Nelson Darby, an Anglican priest in Ireland who visited the United States between 1862 and 1878.
He taught about dispensations - the idea of distinct periods or systems as an understanding of Biblical theology where God interacts with humanity through specific rules and promises that are different based on different times. Each time period 'testing' man's obedience to a new revelation of God's will. This is usually broken up into seven distinct dispensations - and it gets really complicated but suffice it to say that the idea of the rapture theology and 'left behind' books and movies and the 'thief in the night' movies and all that stuff that evangelical christians eat up like it's candy because it scares us while giving us hope, it has all kinds of brutal, visceral, fantastic and horrific imagery and it rides the doom and gloom heavy but ends happily for the Christ follower - and psychologically, the reason why a lot of us eat that stuff up is because it's the theological equivalent of a horror movie - crazy, dark, violent, fantastical imagery but it's safe to read and geek out on because it's 'in the bubble.' Some of us grew up not being able to see Friday the 13th or read Stephen King's The Stand, but we could read 'The Late Great Planet Earth.' Cheap thrills. Ask me which one does more long-term psychological damage… but I digress… anyways - the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture that all came from Darby.
Well… actually not quite. Darby actually developed his pre-tribulation rapture theory after learning of a "two-stage" return of Jesus that a 15 year old Scottish girl named Margaret MacDonald had in a "vision" in 1830. So Darby adopted her idea and formulated other teachings around it. And it spread like wildfire in the states, not so much in other parts of the world - in fact, if you go to Europe or Britain and other parts of the world now where there is less of an evangelical influence, you will find that dispensationalism and the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture is not held with the same regard or taught with the same conviction as it is in the States, particularly among Baptists and Presbyterians and Methodists living in the states.
The reason why it caught on so heavily here is because Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, a Dallas pastor and quite a controversial figure if you check out his history, latched on heavily to Darby's teaching and he published the Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 and updated in 1917 which popularized Darby's teaching. Scofield also helped found the Moody Bible Institute influencing generations of pastors to adopt a pre-tribulation Rapture framework and pre-millennial dispensationalist theology which did not exist prior to John Nelson Darby and the visions of Margaret MacDonald in 1830. But it would go on to influence authors and speakers like Hal Lindsey and John Hagee and a whole cottage industry of people who put a whole lot of anxiety into the church by preaching that followers of Jesus needed to
#34 - KEEP WATCH
And be rapture ready!
#34 - BE READY
And so what has happened over the years is that we have so many followers of Christ, especially Evangelical followers in the States who have taken "KEEP WATCH" "BE READY" in Matthew 24:42 as a command to constantly be looking at the skies and watching the news for signs of an imminent tribulation and apocalypse. To "keep watch" to them means to read prophecy charts and timelines like a conspiracy subreddit. To "Keep Watch" must mean to look at every world leader and political candidate as if they're the possible AntiChrist. To "Keep Watch" must mean to stock up on canned beans and build a backyard bunker because you read a book series with sub-par writing and shoddy understanding of scripture or because you saw a movie with Kirk Cameron or Nic Cage that wouldn't be able to sell a ticket at the $2 dollar matinee on Tuesdays. I said it.
This theological approach while probably well meaning has been overrun by people preaching and profiting off of and further proliferating scare tactics. And somehow because of that, "Be Ready"… turned into "Be Anxious." "Keep Watch"… turned into "Keep Guessing." "Await Jesus' Return"… turned into "Pass the time by sitting around and trying to crack the code."
Folks, Jesus never said that. Never taught us to do that. And it's certainly not what Jesus meant. And Matthew 24:42 about "one will be taken, the other left" isn't about a pre-tribulation rapture. But it is about judgment. Jesus already gave us context in the verses that preceded this one.
Matthew 24:37-39 - "When the Son of Man returns, it will be like was in Noah's day.
Here's our context clue here's the picture to keep in mind -
In those days before the flood, people were enjoying banquets and parties and weddings right up to the time Noah entered his boat. People didn't realize what was going to happen until the flood came and SWEPT THEM ALL AWAY. That's the way it will be when the Son of Man comes.Matthew 24:37-39
Other translations say -
took them all away.Matthew 24:39 (NIV) (BLB) (KJV) (NKJV) (NASB) (LSB) (ASV) (ERV) (NET) (WBT) (WEB) (LSV) (BLB) (YLT) (SLT) (DRB) (ANT) (GNT)
including nearly all of the literal word for word translations.
TOOK - THEY WERE TAKEN.
Who was taken? The righteous or the wicked in the days of Noah? The WICKED were taken. IN JUDGMENT.
This idea of "one will be taken and the other left" - that's not describing a rescue mission with the good guy being taken up to the clouds. It's a warning that the wicked will be TAKEN as they were in the days of Noah - swept away.
This verse is not about watching and being ready for a secret escape plan where the good guys disappear and the rest are left behind.
Taken is 'taken in judgment.'
Left is not 'left behind and abandoned' - it's 'left to enter the Kingdom.'
#34 - KEEP WATCH
It's confusing… we can wind up keeping watch for the wrong things.
#34 - AWAIT JESUS RETURN
Sounds too passive. We're not just supposed to sit around with our bags packed, looking to the skies and keep checking our watches until Jesus comes back.
So let's just go with what it says at the last part of our key verses -
#34 - BE READY
And being ready isn't trying to figure out the date. Keeping watch isn't about having your bags packed, waiting on the doorstep passing the time until Jesus comes to pick you up for a 7 year vacation. You laugh but that has crippled a good section of the church.
The church shouldn't be passively waiting to get pulled out of this world. The church should be actively working to make this world better. The desire of God's people should not be to be removed from this world. It should be to be revealed as The Kingdom of God in this world.
Keep watch, Be ready means to live in a way where you're always ready. To be actively awaiting Jesus faithfully. And how do we do that?
Well, we'll talk about that NEXT WEEK.
Thank you for letting me share with you. And thanks for your patience - which we will also talk about next week. Hey patience has been a thing since week 1 of mini-series. It's all coming together… promise.
Until next time - may the anticipation of Christ's second coming in the future give us a second wind of energy and enthusiasm as a church and as individuals to share His good news in the present.