31st Dec

2 Chronicles 36                       Revelation 22              Malachi 4

And so we come, fittingly at the end of the year, to ‘The End of the World,’ in 3 different scenarios. As far as the Jews were concerned, the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple in 586 BC and the subsequent deportation of the cream of their people, must have seemed like the end of the world. Psalm 137 gives some sense of the desolation felt by those exiled. But even in this terrible situation, the Lord is at work. He has already inspired Jeremiah to prophesy a limit to the time of Exile (25:1-14) during the reign of Jehoiakim, the 3^rd but last of Judah’s kings. And our chapter ends with the beginning of the fulfillment of that prophetic word (repeated almost word for word at the beginning of Ezra). Ezra 6:15, with its specific references to a specific month in a specific year of a specific king, informs us that the temple was finally re-dedicated in 516 BC, exactly 70 years on from the fall of Jerusalem, just as revealed to Jeremiah.

Malachi continues to look forward to ‘the Day of the Lord.’ We have noted before that biblical prophecy often fuses together different levels of fulfillment. Here, Malachi mixes images from the Incarnation of Jesus and his Second Coming. Verses 1–3 have clear references to the very end of all things, the image of fiery destruction taken up by Peter in 2 Peter 3:10. Verse 3 supports the interpretation of the Millennium as outlined a day or so ago. Whether Malachi knows his words will ‘close’ scripture for 400 years of silence we cannot tell. But he ends by straining his prophetic sight into the future, and seeing the one God would send to prepare the way for Jesus, John the Baptist (Matthew 17:11-13).

Revelation is truly the end of the world – or, to be more theologically accurate, the re-beginning of the world. ‘I am making everything new,’ says God in 21:5. His ultimate plan is nothing less than the complete restoration or recreation of the entire cosmos, and these final chapters of scripture outline the wonderful beauty of this new world. In 22:2 we read that the old divisions and hatreds of human existence will disappear, because there will be healing for the nations.

I love C S Lewis’s phrase in the Narnia Chronicles, as the children enter Aslan’s Country (Lewis certainly grasped the fundamental biblical concept that the future for which we are saved is a physical, created one) – ‘Further on and further in, further up and further in’.  There is progression in eternity.  There’s a glorious cosmopolitan harmony awaiting us in the city of God. This should inspire our social concern and our social action for areas of deprivation and need.

The image of the bride of Christ should also strengthen our commitment to the Church. It’s so easy to knock the Church, especially when things are hard in a fellowship. Some feel that they can be more Christian by not going to church. But you can’t. God’s new order is God’s people in social form. The gates of the City are the Patriarchs of the Old Testament; its foundations the Apostles of the New. To be a Christian now is to be part of an entirely new social order, ahead of time.  Augustine said there is no salvation outside the Church; and although those words have been abused over the centuries, there is still truth in them. Get stuck into the Church, John seems to be saying, because one day, the day when God’s glory comes to take up permanent residence on the new earth, it’s going to be the Bride. 

The local church, with all its faults, prepares us for the new order that is to come. Whatever your experience of Church, you are nearer Heaven when you’re with your fellow Christians than when you are in isolation at home. And the Church may seem dull and boring and unexciting now, but on its wedding day, you won’t be embarrassed to belong any more.

One of the wonderful things about the closing chapters of Revelation is the way John describes the complete reversal of the consequences of sin:-

·         evil & chaos will have no place (21:1)

·         there will be no more suffering (21:4)

·         there will be no more dissatisfaction (21:6)

·         there will be no more wrath (21:9)

·         there will be no more night (22:5)

·         there will no longer be any curse (22:3)

·         there will be no more threat to peace (21:25)

·         there will be exquisite intimacy with God

ü      the image of parenthood (21:7)

ü      the image of matrimony (21:9) (think of Jesus in Matthew 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke 20:35)

ü      the image of servanthood (2:3, 4) - ‘They will see his face’

In short, there will be all the potential of Eden – ‘Behold, I make everything new’ (21:5). We cannot take it in, and can only turn to the poets and the visionaries, who help us to understand why St Paul and countless other believers since, simply could not wait to enter this new world.

“The things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world ... had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

C.S. Lewis – the Last Battle

(member of the clergy)

30th Dec

2 Chronicles 35                       Revelation 21              Malachi 3

Josiah continues his reforms, now re-establishing the pattern of worship lost for so long. Particular emphasis is placed on the Passover, the annual remembrance of God’s great act of salvation in leading his people out of slavery in Egypt. Today, we daily remember of God’s great act of salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

The death of Josiah shows that we can never relax our guard, and that God’s word can come through the most unexpected sources. That is not to say that we accept whatever we are told, but nor should we simply dismiss it as Josiah does here. Whenever we are faced with someone claiming to speak from God, we must weigh it carefully, however unlikely it seems. For Josiah, it is a fatal mistake. 31 years of good kingship comes to an end in one of the most famous battles in human history, the battle of Carchemish, which again helps us to ‘peg’ biblical history. We know that this battle happened in 609 BC. The Babylonians had overrun the Assyrian Capital Nineveh in 612, and the Assyrians had settled for a final stand in the city of Carchemish. Contemporary accounts record that the Assyrian Army was delayed at Megiddo by the king of Judah, and record his defeat and death. The Babylonian victory at Carchemish ended Assyria’s period as a super-power, and also inflicted a crushing defeat on Assyria’s ally, Egypt, from which it never fully recovered. Biblically, the stage is now set for the final act in the Kings of Judah.

Malachi 3:1 refers to the coming of Christ at the first Christmas, and may have influenced John, alone among the gospel writers, to set the cleansing of the temple right at the beginning of his gospel, just after the wedding in Cana – a ‘sudden coming’ indeed! 3:2 reminds us that Jesus is not the meek and mild figure of popular, liberal Christian myth. Rather, his presence and ministry – and, crucially, humanity’s response to them – will determine the ultimate fault-line of judgment, and on which side of that line we find ourselves. Think Matthew 3:12, a verse we so often ignore in our excitement at the previous verse. Our Lord comes to us as refiner, and refining involves a degree of heat sufficient to make us pliable to his Will and Purpose. Human nature doesn’t change as radically as we sometimes imagine. A key way in which the Lord’s refining work plays out in everyday life, whether in Malachi’s day or our own, is our use of money. ‘Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand’ may be ancient words (1 Chronicles 29:14), but they should inform our thinking today. The word ‘possessions’ is not a Christian one.

It is only after Revelation 19 and 20 that we can begin to read Revelation 21 and 22.  It is only on the basis of a cosmos purged of evil, that we can see the new created order, represented here by the new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.  Are you a bit surprised to find that John’s image of eternity is a city? It means people living together; it means organised social living – and that’s precisely what John intends us to take from this. 

The Christian hope is solid, material, it’s social and it’s perfect. Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:13 that ‘We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness’. We notice in 21:24 that cultural diversity will continue.  There will still be nations, which will still be governed by rulers, but they will bring their splendour into the gates of God’s city. 

All those Old Testament images of Jerusalem, the City of Peace, are here brought to the most glorious fulfillment – a city where righteousness dwells. A city where, because of Christ, you and I will live in perfect harmony with creation. A city in which labour will bring joy and fulfillment. 

But we need to be clear that John’s vision of the New Jerusalem is not a simple continuation of human history, nor the final flowering of human achievement. New Jerusalem comes down from Heaven – God’s new creation, completely gifted to us.  And it stands on the other side of the line which the return of Christ will draw across the page of human history. 

(member of the clergy)

29th Dec

2 Chronicles 34                       Revelation 20              Malachi 2

Can you remember what you were doing when you were 8? Maybe you are 8! Imagining becoming king at that age – this is what happened to Josiah 640 years BC. I love the description of Josiah’s faithfulness in verse 2; ‘He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord … not turning aside to the right or to the left.’ [see below] Can that be said of us today?

When Josiah was 16 (the text underlines the fact that ‘he was still young’), ‘he began to seek the God of his father [ancestor rather than actual father] David’. What a wonderful description of what we all need to do. How fervently are we ‘seeking’ God, in our private devotions and in our public gatherings? Note that this seeking is an ongoing, daily choice (‘he began to seek’) and that it is never simply an internal or private journey. It means outward change too, here expressed in the destruction of the elements of pagan worship introduced and allowed by Josiah’s predecessors. His next work is to rebuild the temple. Are there things in our lives that should not be there? Will be faithful in tearing them down? Is there anything of the Lord’s work in us that we have allowed to fall into disrepair? Will we be faithful in rebuilding? During this rebuilding, the book of the law of Moses (most scholars believe this to be the book we know as Deuteronomy) is discovered. Here we see the root of the problem – God’s people have literally lost sight of his Word. It’s interesting that, 4 times in Deuteronomy, God calls on his people not to turn to the right or left from following his commands. Whenever that happens today, we will experience similar problems – disobedience, unfaithfulness and defeat. Let us thank God for the central place of his Word in our lives today.

Malachi turns his prophetic wrath on the leaders of God’s people in chapter two. Their sin? ‘Turning from the way and causing many to stumble.’ How? By not proclaiming the message of the Lord so as to instruct the people with knowledge (2:7, 8). Secondly, Malachi accuses the people of ‘breaking faith with one another.’ We need to read and heed these words, and take to heart the call: ‘So guard yourself in your spirit, and do not break faith.’

Revelation 20 is one of the most contested passages in the whole of scripture, and one of the most difficult to interpret. With regard to the Millennium (or thousand-year reign of Christ), there have historically been 3 major positions among Christians

Post-millennialism

• Jesus will return after a millennium of worldwide Christian dominance
• This is barely credible – certainly, Jesus in his final teaching (Matthew 24 & 25) gives no such indication: the Church can expect to see the gospel spread across the whole earth, with many coming to faith, but also persecution and tribulation

A-millennialism

• we are living in the millennium now – 1000 years is purely figurative
• The major problem here is the banishing of Satan in 20:1–3. Can we really say that Satan is absent from the world today?

Pre-millennialism

• Jesus will return to earth, dead and living saints meeting together in the air (the rapture), & reign with them for a lengthy period on this present earth
• The major problem here is the release of Satan (20:7–10)

This is not an area of theology over which we should fall out with other Christians; but I believe the pre-millenialist position is the most faithful to scripture, for the following reasons

1. It is the oldest view, held by all the ‘Church Fathers’ until Augustine’s Greek ideas.
2. It best fits the plain pattern of Rev 19 – 22 & the plain sense of 20:1–6 in particular
• 1000 years is specified 6 times
• the focus throughout is on earth (19:11–16, 17–21; 20:1, 4, 8, 11)
• the destruction of the beast & false prophet leaves a vacuum in world government
• the verb ‘come to life’ (20:4) always refers to physical resurrection (e.g the raising of Lazarus in John 11:25)
3. It is supported elsewhere in scripture (Revelation 2:27, 5:10, 11:15; 1 Corinthians 6:3; Philippians 2:10, 3:11; 2 Timothy 2:12; Acts 1:6, 3:21; Luke 1:32, 23.38; Matthew 2:2; Isaiah 2:1–4; Micah 4:3; Zechariah 14:9, Isaiah 11:9; Habbakuk 2:14; Daniel 7:9–13, 18, 22–27)

Taking this position, the release of Satan does make some sense. If, after such a period of gracious and just rule by Jesus and his saints, the people of earth once again choose to rebel and follow the Enemy, then God’s final judgement is utterly justified.

The scene of final judgement is a sobering one, as books are opened, and all secrets are laid bare, just as Jesus said they would be (Luke 12:2-4). We also see the fulfilment of the promise made in 1 Corinthians that ‘the final enemy to be destroyed is death.’

(member of the clergy)