Jesus, like Isaiah,
is employing apocalyptic imagery, and by doing so is vesting His words with the
weight that He believes is due them, and doing it by utilizing the familiar
words of one of Israel’s great prophets---words that came to pass and, owing to
the fact that Israel had been in subjection to a foreign power and therefore
under their God’s continued judgment from that point on, served to define
Israel’s existence to that very day. Naturally, if one has been
successfully disabused of the notion that Jesus is somehow speaking about the
end of the world, and is now positioned as a responsible hearer of His words
and reader of the text, then there will be no falling into the trap of thinking
about “the end” as “the end of the world”.
What Jesus can be
heard saying, as He continues to speak unswervingly about the Temple and as He
builds upon the words and actions of judgment against the Temple and its regime
that were delivered in the wake of His triumphal entry, is that the Temple has
become corrupt and that the Creator God is going to bring judgment against
it. Israel’s God did it before by the instrument of the Babylonians, and
now, given the situation that was then in existence, it is obvious that it is
Rome that is going to perform the role of Babylon.
Jesus then goes on to
link this judging event to the Son of Man’s coming to the Ancient of Days,
adding “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven,” or the sky, “
and all the tribes of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man
arriving on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30).
Once again, Jesus references Daniel chapter seven, and in doing so combines the
time of the fall of the Temple with the time when the Son of Man receives His
kingdom.
So when will the Son
of Man come (to the Ancient of Days) and receive His kingdom and all power and
authority? When the Temple falls. When will the Temple fall?
When the Son of Man receives His kingdom and all power and authority.
By now, because the reader is squarely focused on the Temple and is
hearing things correctly as first-century Jews that are inhabiting the
narrative, it is possible to successfully resist the temptation to see the Son
of Man arriving on the clouds of heaven as a movement to earth, and instead rightly
understand it as the movement of an event in the heavenly realm.
After speaking again
about the arrival of the Son of Man on the clouds of heaven, as the Son of Man
goes before the Ancient of Days to receive His kingdom (power and glory) rather
than coming to earth, Jesus says “And He will send His angels with a loud
trumpet blast and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end
of heaven to the other” (24:31). Because attention has again been called
to Daniel’s seventh chapter, it would not be inappropriate to hear these words
about the gathering of the elect amidst the falling echoes of the
kingdom-of-God-laced words about the Son of Man. Doing so, it is
appropriate to reflect on words such as “While I was watching, that horn began
to wage war against the holy ones,” God’s elect people, “and was defeating
them, until the Ancient of Days arrived and judgment was rendered in favor of
the holy ones of the Most High. Then the time came for the holy ones to
take possession of the kingdom” (Daniel 7:21-22).
It is not impossible
to hear about the gathering of the elect from the four winds, from one end of
heaven to the other, as an approximation of these words from Daniel, especially
if Jesus is using veiled language to say that which He cannot overtly
say. Likewise, since this judgment in favor of the holy ones occurs in
conjunction with the report of the Son of Man’s actions in Daniel, why would
this not be that to which Jesus is making reference here in Matthew (along with
Mark and Luke)? Indeed, it would seem incongruous to think that Jesus is
referring to anything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment