Introduction
A few days ago I stumbled upon the trailer for the 1970s apocalyptic thriller A Thief In The Night, a dramatic depiction of the rapture of Christians and the fresh hellscape awaiting those left behind. I had watched it as a young boy and it opened the door to a new breed of anxiety that crawled up and nested in that junction between the head and the heart. Every train horn was the trumpet blast of Christ’s return; my parents delay of ten minutes meant orphanhood from a silent rapture; every winsome politician was a potential Antichrist. Truly the thought of the End Times was terrifying.
As the fear of this apocalypse abated in the light of faith, I have since been able to scrutinize it from the safety of salvation. It’s curious how may generations really believed they were living in the last days. In fact, since the early 1800s, not a generation has gone by that wasn’t scouring the headlines looking for the signs of the times, each equally convinced theirs was the last generation, and each dying with the world still turning.
At this point, with so many mistaken certainties, one is justified in asking if we are understanding these passages in the Bible that speak of the “last days” correctly. We know the Lord will return, but since no one can know the time, none but the Father, any guesses are futile, even educated ones. But what, then, are we to do with all of those passages which clearly foretell of the tumultuous zeitgeist of the last days?
What I want to do here is take a few common passages of scripture which are often commandeered by Christians as apocalyptic telltales, and explore how a more robust reading of the Bible can contextualize it and locate it in history. I will not be addressing most of the passages, since that would necessitate an entire book, and many have already been written on the topic, relieving me of the burden. This is just a brief nibble of a few choice morsels and a suggestion for a more nuanced approach to these texts.
The Great Scoffing
Among the choice scripture passages often cited as evidence we are currently living in the last days is 2 Peter 3:3.
This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.
2 Peter 3:1-4 (ESV)
The “last days” image generated in the mind is widespread licentiousness both within and without the church, and a brand of scoffing towards Christ and his people only achievable by the blackest hearts of man and some species of hyena. Peter says one reason for this scoffing will be that Jesus’s apocalyptic predictions (Matthew 24) are seen as empty threats. Jesus said the Temple would be wrecked “in this generation” and as of the writing of Peter’s epistle (early 60s BC), “this generation” was as fine as frog hair. This presumed failed prediction fueled their insolence, since the scoffers were the generation Jesus was talking about, and so their mocking was of the missed me-missed me, neener-neener type.
The assumption we often take away from this passage is that the Earth is ramping up to a Great Scoffing Event, followed closely on the heels by the return of our Savior through the clouds – the end of history. It is not hard to find examples of bitter jeering all over our world to justify the opinion that we are currently living in this is the future scoffing Peter foresaw, the immediate antecedent to the apocalypse.
But there are a few interesting questions we ought to ask. The “last days”of what? And how are we to know the scoffers of our future are the scoffers being referred to here, as opposed to the gobs of scoffers that have been present in every generation since the ascension?
If we turn to the book of Jude, that curious little napkin note just before Revelation, we find a hint that helps contextualized these last days.
Hey Jude
Jude identifies himself as the brother of James – one of the Twelve, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and a martyr who had just recently been stoned outside the Temple. His intended audience appears to be all Christians everywhere. He opens his letter saying he had intended to write so he could gush along with them about the glories of their common salvation, but a new threat demanded instead a call to man the battlements against some nefarious infiltrates.
Some greasy false teachers had crept into the congregation intending to pervert God’s grace and deny Jesus Christ (v 4). Most likely this was some form of antinomianism that both Paul and Peter forewarned in their letters. Not only did these men teach that God’s grace was a hall pass for all sexual desires, but also that there was no authority that ought to be over them, be it ecclesiastical, governmental, or spiritual. Their arrogance was terrifying.
Jude scorches the false teachers with some fantastic mixed metaphors. These men are “shepherds who only feed themselves”, “twice-dead fruit trees”, “shipwrecking reefs hidden in the surf”, and “windswept waterless clouds”. These men followed in the footsteps of the murderous Cain, whored themselves like Balaam, and were partakers of the same insolent rebellion as Korah. Basically, these guys were the composite of all the arch villains of Israel’s comic universe. In their pomposity, the imbeciles even went so far as to impugn against the heavenly beings, angelic principalities, with acrid blasphemes that the archangel Michael wouldn’t even conjure when confronting Satan (v 9).
Then Jude pulls together an apostolic predication with its present fulfillment:
But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They said to you, “In the last time there will be scoffers, following their own ungodly passions.
Jude 1:17-18 (ESV)
The origin of the prediction Jude mentions is evident. This quote is near verbatim the warning of Peter quoted above, and is most likely the apostle that Jude is referring to here. Jude uses the prediction of Peter to locate the “last times” (or “last days”, same diff) contemporaneously with the time of the first century church. You know all those scoffers the apostles predicted? Yeah, these are the chumps he was talking about, and these are those last times.
But still the question persists, the last of what times? One thing we need to understand is that when the Bible talks about the” last days”, or the “last times”, it isn’t all talking about one single event at the end of history. There are several ‘lasts’ which have different meanings and different locations in the timeline of history, more on that below.
In other places, Peter denotes that the last days forewarned were uunfolding right in front of the eyes of the first century Jews. During his Pentecost speech he quotes the prophet Joel:
‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
Acts 2:17 (ESV)
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved
Peter reveals to his audience that those very things Joel uttered were happening as he spoke, declaring that those were the last days Joel foresaw:
“Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.”
Acts 2:33 (ESV)
Too, in Peter’s first letter we see a similar reference to the last days with his concurrent generation, his audience.
He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
1 Peter 1:20-21 (ESV)
So we see here that at least in these verses here the last day or last times are not referring to the end of history Second Advent, but the end of a specified time that terminated in the first century. As the Joel passage tells us, the last days precede a great and magnificent coming of the Lord.
If Peter says Joel’s prophecy was being fulfilled in real time, then it stands to reason the “day of the Lord” was about to soon follow. The markers of that day, we are told, will be signs in the heavens, a darkened sun and bloody moon, and general nastiness on earth below. Joel is using what is called decreation language here, which in all circumstances of its use in the Old Testament is poetic language describing the fall of earthly government and powers. In other words, Joel’s prediction was all coming true in the first century and neither he, nor Peter, are talking about some future apocalypse in our immediate or distant future.
Ages
Other phrases in the Bible also trigger an immediate association with the end times. And complicating the matter, sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells his audience the “end of the ages” has come upon them:
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.
1 Corinthians 10:11
And the author of Hebrews uses the same terminology for the same purpose:
for then [Jesus] would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself
Hebrews 9:26
And again, Hebrews…
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world
Hebrews 1:1-2
This Hebrews passage is referring to an epoch of time. If you are a Tolkien nut you could understand this as the Third Age of Middle earth giving way to the Fourth Age which began when the Ring of Sauron was destroyed. The age of the dominion of men had arrived, and the elves went, somehow sadly, to the everlasting life in the Undying Lands. In the same way, there was a regime change with the resurrection of Christ that ended one age and ushered in the next. We have been living in the “last days” since the time of Christ in this sense.
At least in these two portions of scripture, the end of the age was the age of the old covenant and the centrality of the Temple through which the world had access to God. This age came to an end in 70 AD, when Jesu’s prediction of Matthew 24 was fulfilled. During the forty or so years between Christ’s ascension and the Temple destruction, there was a baton hand-off, so to speak, and the New Covenant took off where access to God was by faith in Christ, and the Temple was now inside their hearts.
Timmy
As a last example, Paul’s second letter to Timothy is often shuffled into the end of the world category, but on closer inspection, ought to be seen as an immediate application for Timothy’s situation.
But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. 2For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, 4treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 5having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. 6For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, 7always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.
2Timothy 3::1-6
Paul says in the last days people will be jerks, and then he tells Timothy to avoid those jerks. He tells him to avoid those jerks because they are near enough to rub shoulders with. Admonishing Timothy to avoid interacting with people that will live two millennia in the future, in the last days of human history, is as useless as me telling you to avoid hanging out with that Hitler kid. Among this group that are the jerks, are also the ones that Timothy is seeing creeping into the women’s houses and preying on their gullibility.
“Last days”, here, is not referring to the last days of human history. But it is pointing to the last days of something, and I think Paul’s description here is a pretty adequate summary of the last days of anything. This disposition towards the Rolladex of sins Paul lists is called decadence, that sickly smell of cultural death as it rots. If you want to know what that smells like, and you are in America, go outside and sniff.
But again, these last days here were talking about the old order that was rotting and about to give birth to the new.
Day Of The Lord
Another phrase that carries apocalyptic weight is “the Day of the Lord”. We see this many times in the Old Testament and also in the New. This phrase, like the last days or last times, is often uprooted from its context and made to apply to a future time when the Lord will have his Day and Jesus Christ will return.
But we also must understand that there isn’t one “Day of the Lord” that all these various authors are pointing to. Instead, the Day of the Lord is a phrase that applies to the act of God’s judgement on a specific people for specific infractions. David praises God for his salvation from the Saul on the Day that God’s judgment was visited on his enemies (2 Samuel 22). Amos speaks of the Day of the Lord, but the target of God’s judgement is Israel, as they have forsaken the poor and disobeyed God’s laws. The Day came when the Assyrians descended from the north and scattered the northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BC. Isaiah prophesies a Day of the Lord coming in judgement against Babylon (Isaiah 13), which was visited upon them in 539 BC when they fell to the Medes. Joel mentions the Day of the Lord, which we know Peter is locating contemporaneously with the first century. Again, this is God visiting Israel in judgement for the rejection of His Messiah. Malachi says the Day of the Lord will be preceded by Elijah showing up (Malachi 4:5), which Jesus tells us was John the Baptist, denoting along with Peter that the first advent of Christ was associated with a Day of the Lord.
Peter’s cataclysmic “Day of the Lord” in his second epistle is a good example of the phrase that is more obscure.
But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness as you anticipate and hasten the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with God’s promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells
2 Peter 3:10-13
Put this into an AI image generator and you would get some images of apocalyptic doom that would make your blood run like rain. Some see this verse as referring to the end of the world when God lights a match on the whole thing in order to make room for the New Heavens and Earth. Others think that this is also referring to the destruction of the Temple era in 70 AD, but sort of talking about it from a cosmic perspective, where the “elements” are not like hydrogen, magnesium, and boron, but the elementary principles of the old order. Personally, I lean towards the latter, but I’m not sold on it.
You get the idea, the Day of the Lord is not just on specific day that all references are referring to. It means a Day that the Lord comes in judgement and salvation on and for a specific people, whether that is the Egypt, Israel, Babylon, Assyria, America, or all the unrighteousness of humanity.
Conclusion
There are plenty of references to the end of time, the Second Advent, when the Lord will return to judge the quick and the dead. This is the intention in Jesus’s use of the phrase (Mark 10:30; Matt 13:39, 49, John 6:39-40, 44 and others). And several places in the letters also clearly talk about the glorious end when the Lord will return. Here my intention was suggestion caution and attention to certain phrases which modern Americans assume all mean one thing or pointing to the same future event.
None of this is to imply that there is not a future Day of the Lord, or Last Days of history or any of that. My goal is to suggest care when reading the Bible and not divorcing it from its historical context and an understanding that would have been readily understood by the people to whom these letters were written. If we fail to do this we will miss the glory of God’s plan of what has already been accomplished and project it onto a future that it does not apply to, and was never meant to.
Thought Butter 