Is all this talk of the message of Jesus’ prediction about the fall of the Temple being an included and important part of the message of the earliest Christ-followers pure conjecture? Is there any scriptural basis, or any evidence from the time period of the early church upon which to base such conjecture and related assertions? The second letter of Peter presents an interesting case. Now, this will not be an open and shut case by any means. Again, this is conjecture, and we are far from being dogmatic, especially considering the questions that surround the composition of the letter itself.
Second Peter is something of a mystery. There are many that insist that it is a composition of the Apostle Peter himself, while there are just as many that insist that it is a composition by another individual, composed well after the time of his death. If it was composed by Peter, then according to the traditions about the dating of Peter’s death, which is said to have occurred in the late sixties, it had to have been written before the fall of the Temple, which took place in the year seventy. If we adopt the mindset that the prediction about the fall of the Temple, which would coincide with the Son of Man receiving His kingdom from the Ancient of Days and which Jesus said was going to be seen by the generation to which He was speaking, was a crucial component of the message about Jesus, greatly serving to validate the message about Him, then we are provided with an interesting backdrop by which we are able to view a portion of second Peter. If our conjecture is not too terribly wide of the mark, this may actually perform a role in the ongoing debate about authorship and time frame for the letter.
So, if the letter was composed by Peter before the fall of the Temple, and if we believe that the fall of the Temple (and all that goes along with that) is crucial to the message of Jesus, and if the ongoing presence of the Temple, in light of the fact that the traditions about Jesus included His well-understood prediction that the Temple would fall relatively soon, the fact that the Temple remained standing would have been a major thorn in the side of the young church community, practically mocking their allegiance to Jesus (who would be little more than a false prophet perhaps rightly executed if the Temple continued to stand), we make note of much of the third chapter with a renewed interest and focus. Beginning in the third verse we can read: “Above all, understand this: In the last days blatant scoffers will come,” understanding quite well what is meant by the “last days” (essentially, the time before the Son of Man receives His kingdom), “being propelled by their own evil urges and saying, ‘Where is His promised return?” (3:3-4a)
Continuing the scoffing towards the claims of the Christians, and especially the claims concerning the Temple, with a still-standing Temple serving to counterfeit all other claims being made about Jesus, including His Resurrection, we hear “For ever since our ancestors died,” thinking about Jesus’ assertion (reported identically in the synoptic Gospels) that this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, “all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation” (3:4b). While the church claimed that God had acted dramatically within history to resurrect Jesus, to which the church then pointed as the evidence of the beginning of the renewal of God’s creation, even not-so-keen observers could scoff at this remark, offering up the insistence that things are continuing pretty much as they have always been. In response to the scoffing, the author appears to remind them of the days of Noah, in which God initially warned Noah about the pending judgment (as we think about the judgment that Jesus pronounced in the Temple, the carrying out of that judgment by the Romans in the year seventy, and the judgment rendered in favor of the saints of the Most High God when the Son of Man receives His kingdom, which Jesus linked to the fall of the Temple), but withheld the watery judgment of the earth for what appears to be at least one hundred years (and possibly one hundred twenty years), writing “For they deliberately suppress this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago and an earth was formed out of water and by means of water. Through these things the world existing at that time was destroyed when it was deluged with water. But by the same word the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, by being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (3:5-7).
Now, if we allow our minds to wander, we’ll again be tempted to retreat into inappropriate ways of hearing what has been said. However, if we remain focused, we hear the Daniel seven context and the favorable judgment on behalf of those being persecuted. Without going into too much detail, we can also think about the fact that Jesus, at His trial, had accused the High Priest---the chief Temple authority---of being the very entity that was warring against the saints of God in the seventh chapter of Daniel. According to the book of Acts, Stephen made this same accusation at his trial. In both instances, the accuser died at the hands of the accused.
No comments:
Post a Comment