Donald Andrew Henson II

Posts Tagged ‘Second Coming of Christ’

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2 Thessalonians 2

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the New Testament, Religion and Society on August 12, 2012 at 11:52 pm

Read 2 Thessalonians 2 here.

Sorry for the long delay between posts; I should be back on track for a couple of posts per week. I’ve been reading some very exciting things that I want to blog about, but first –

We were talking about Paul’s vision of the Second Coming of Christ. It seemed to me – though one comment disagreed – that Paul was saying to those who suffered persecution, “it may be tough now, but God’s going to pay everyone back in spades one day”. Paul promises that Jesus will return and destroy everyone who doesn’t believe or follow the gospels. According to the Pew Forum, around 2 billion of the nearly 7 billion people on Earth profess some sort of Christianity. That means, God will destroy 5 billion people if Jesus comes back in the next couple of years. Staggering.

As I said before, this doesn’t sound like the supreme being of the universe to me – the most degenerate human would not dream of such a thing. And remember that half of that 2 billion Christian are Catholic, so if you’re a Protestant, you’d probably rule out another billion. And let’s not forget the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, etc. that Protestants say are not really Christians either. Perhaps God might decide that everyone who didn’t buy a Joel Osteen book or send 10 bucks to TBN is S.O.L.

But wait – before God wipes out billions of people at the blink of an eye, something else unthinkable has to happen – the Antichrist has to appear.

English: Satan as Antichrist

Satan as Antichrist

Chapter 2 opens up by encouraging the believers in Thessaloniki that the end times have not already passed. (Maybe encouraging is the wrong word, in light of what is supposed to happen.  I for one would be relieved to learn that I’d somehow missed out on the apocalypse). Apparently, some teachers were saying that Jesus had already returned – I’m not sure why that would make sense to anyone, due to the fact that their lives / religion / political system remained unchanged. But Paul assures them that Jesus had not yet returned, and reminded them that a key development would have to take place before he could.

Enter, the Antichrist. Here’s where some scholars point out similarities to John’s Revelation, written long after Paul’s death, to say that 2 Thessalonians wasn’t written by Paul. I guess believers could say that the similarities are due to the fact that the Holy Spirit is the true writer. In any event, the New Testament maintains that, in the last days on Earth, an extremely talented and gifted man will take over the political system. He is ‘the man of lawlessness’ or, as some manuscripts have it, ‘the man of sin’. He will apparently do miraculous things, just as Jesus did, but his power will come not from God but from Satan. He will “set himself up in God’s temple”, which I assume to mean the temple in Jerusalem.

If this was written by Paul, the temple would have still existed in Jerusalem – so points to those who favor a Pauline authorship. If this was written around 90 AD as some assert, then some retrograde logic or prophesy regarding a re-building of the temple would be required. Jesus speaks of rebuilding the temple himself, but it is generally regarded by Christians that he was talking about himself, not the building erected by Solomon and restored by Ezekiel and later Herod.

Many American Christians believe this temple will have to be rebuilt a third time at some point in the future for Biblical prophecy to come true. The problem is that there is currently a Muslim mosque, the Dome of the Rock, standing on the exact same site – regarded as third only to Mecca and Medina as the holiest places for Muslims. A good way to start World War III would of course be to try to build such a temple. It’s scary that many Americans would support such a move, so that Jesus could eventually return.

Paul’s justification for the destruction of those who follow the Antichrist is pretty interesting. They didn’t believe in Jesus, even though Jesus performed miracles and the Holy Spirit remained to point the way. Granted, they didn’t see these miracles with their own eyes, but they were supposed to believe anyway. Then, someone appears in their own lifetime, performing many of the miracles that Jesus performed, and is also assisted by a spirit, but this one is evil. They believe what they see over what someone wrote about a couple of thousand years ago, and “for this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth”. Sounds fair to me.

I won’t get into all the nasty things this guy is supposed to do – I’ll save that for our reading of the Revelation; and besides, you’ve seen so many Antichrist movies already, I’m sure. At first, it will seem like he solves a lot of problems. Then, he’ll become supreme dictator of the world. At some point, he will proclaim himself a God.

English: The Dome of The Rock Mosque, in the t...

The Dome of The Rock Mosque

In reality, this isn’t so much a prophecy as it is a thinly veiled indictment of what the Roman emperor had already done in Jerusalem by the end of the 1st century – and Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians and Persians had done before. It was a common practice in the ancient and classical worlds to enter the temple of a defeated nation, proclaim yourself or your god as superior to theirs, usually leave an obelisk or graven image of some kind in the temple that had to be worshiped, either along with or instead of any local god. The Romans respected Judaism at first, due to its antiquity, and exempted Jews from some of the practices that were required of other conquered nations.  This all ended in 70 AD. The Romans, having had their fill of rebellions in Judea, destroyed the temple, killed a million Jewish people, and enslaved perhaps a quarter of a million more.

The mainstream of Jewish religion pretty much changed from that time until now, giving up messianic and apocalyptic prophesy in favor of focusing on how to live a better live in the present. Christian teaching moved in the opposite direction, at least in part because they believed the messiah had already come.

But the real takeaway from this chapter is much more frightening than any Hollywood movie or religious nightmare. There are ultra-Orthodox Jews who want to rebuild their temple on the site of a holy Muslim mosque, so that they can make blood sacrifices as described in the Old Testament. (Not all Jews, but a militant minority). There are Christians who believe this is the right thing to do – after all, the end times and Jesus’ return can’t happen unless the temple is rebuilt. So, a very real conflict could occur in the Middle East because of the religious fantasies held by a few.

If there’s anything more frightening than the specter of the Antichrist, it is the chance that a few religious zealots could return us to the Dark Ages.

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2 Thessalonians 1

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the New Testament on June 24, 2012 at 1:32 pm

Read 2 Thessalonians 1 here.

It’s good to be back to work after a nice, long 10-day vacation – hope you enjoyed the Pale Blue Dot post I left for you while I was away. Let’s continue our chapter-by-chapter examination of the books of the New Testament, picking up where we left off – Thessalonians.

Most traditional commentators consider 2 Thessalonians to be second oldest, written just a few months after the first letter to the same church, sometime in the early to mid 50s. Many secular scholars disagree; in fact, Bart Ehrman thinks it was written at least a generation later, long after Paul the Apostle had already died, due to its focus on persecutions that wouldn’t have yet occurred. However, as I’ve said before, for the purposes of this blog, it doesn’t matter exactly when it was written or who wrote it – what matters to me is how modern Christians interpret the scriptures today, and how some of those interpretations weaken our democracy. So, while I’ll point out the parts that give scholars reason to doubt, we’ll stick with the conservative dating.

Paul begins with a warm greeting. It appears that he is still in the company of Silas and Timothy, as they are part of the greeting as well. He then praises the Thessalonians for their perseverance in the face of persecution – and it’s this verse and others like it that cause some scholars to doubt that it was written while Paul still lived.

The idea that most of us have in our heads of Christians being fed to lions or dying at the hands of gladiators in coliseums comes from events that occurred in the 3rd century AD – not the 1st. Government sponsored persecution of Christians, especially rank and file laity, was sporadic and local until around 250, when Decius and later Valerian began to heat things up. In fact, before Nero blamed the Christians for setting fire to Rome in 64 AD, the only documented accounts of persecution we have are of Jews persecuting Christians in areas of the Empire where Judaism was the majority religion, in Judea.

So the argument goes something like this – if Paul really did author this letter between 51 and 56 AD, what persecutions is he talking about? Thessaloniki is Greek, not Judean. If a group of Christians outside Judea were being persecuted in earnest at the time the letter was written, then the letter must have been written near the end of the 1st century, during Domitian’s reign (when the Revelation was probably written), or very early in the 2nd century, during Trajan’s. This would have been decades after Paul’s death in 67 AD.

But why were Christians persecuted, and what is persecution anyway? At first, Christianity was considered to be just another heretical sect of Judaism, and was prosecuted by the Jewish authorities with ostracism, imprisonment, or death by stoning. While I can never think of this without remembering of Monty Python’s take on it, in reality there are horrific videos available on YouTube illustrating that this is one of the worst deaths imaginable.

As Christianity spread throughout the empire, Christians living in pagan societies often found themselves in the situation of being required to sacrifice to local gods or to the emperor during public festivals, something they felt uncomfortable doing. Jews were allowed to refuse, due to the antiquity of their religion, but it was felt that Christians were trying to have things both ways. They insisted that they were not Jews, but even though they were a new religion, they wanted to be exempt from sacrifices. This often cast them in a suspicious light with local authorities and the public in general, so when anything went wrong, they were a pretty easy target to blame. From 64 to 250 AD there are scattered accounts of persecution, but nothing systematic or widespread. You might say being a Christian was no more dangerous than being some other sort of minority in the empire – remember that the ancient world was not the warm fuzzy world Americans and Europeans enjoy today.

When Roman persecution of Christianity did occur, it was brutal, usually deadly. It annoys me today to hear Christians saying that they are persecuted because they can’t put a cross up in front of the courthouse, or can’t publicly command everyone to pray in a school. This is not persecution – to say so is to belittle the real tribulations that have been faced by believers in the past, and that some still endure in countries like Afghanistan and North Korea. If you want to take your tax-free dollars and build something in a space that needs to serve every member of the community, and has been paid for by every member in the community, and I say I don’t think that’s legal – that’s not persecution. If you say something that you can’t prove, and I call you out on it, that’s not persecution, that’s called rational discourse – something we are certainly short of these days.

But, good news – if you’re the vengeful type. When Jesus comes back, it will be ‘in blazing fire with his powerful angels’. He will punish all those who didn’t believe his gospel with ‘everlasting destruction’ – which is, I suppose, even worse than plain old destruction. (Now I’m thinking of Blackadder, ‘a fate even worse than a fate worse than death’ – haha.) So I guess it doesn’t matter whether you actually participated in persecuting Christians or not; fail to believe in God and the love-your-neighbor guy morphs into the Old Testament fire-and-brimstone, kill everyone God. By this logic, if Jesus returned today, approximately 5 billion people who have never heard of Jesus or who have some other system of belief would be immediately vaporized, their souls destined for eternal damnation. The billion or so left – most of whom conveniently live in some of the richest, most comfortable countries in the world – are the only ones who stand even half a chance. Move over Mussolini, I think we’ve met your match.

This kind of gleeful anticipation of mass destruction bears all the marks of the lowest kind of thinking; it therefore must follow that it could not truly represent the ideas of the supreme being of the universe. It must be a man-made idea. If there is a God, he could not do things that Hitler dare not dream of. If he is willing to take out more than 80 percent of his human creation at the bat of a divine eye – he’s not really our creator.

He is certainly not in any position to ‘bring to fruition your every desire for goodness’ if his plan for our future is to make death by stoning look like a game of tiddly-winks.

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1 Thessalonians 5

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the New Testament on May 29, 2012 at 12:30 am
Thessaloniki Film Festival

Thessaloniki (Photo credit: Recovering Vagabond)

Read 1 Thessalonians 5 here.

In my previous post, I maintained that Paul’s views on the Kingdom of God may have evolved over time – originally, Christ’s followers appeared to have believed that his return was imminent – meaning measured in months, not years. There wasn’t much need to develop an opinion on what might become of someone who converted to Christianity and then died of old age before Jesus’ return. As the years rolled by and people began to die off, the need arose. I suspect that Paul meditated / prayed /thought it over, and decided that Jesus’ resurrection was a precursor to that of believers – the ‘first fruits’ doctrine that he develops later in his letter to the Corinthians.

Conservative Bible commentaries seem to abhor the idea that Paul may have developed this doctrine later, as the situation arose. Most seem to explain 1 Thessalonians 4.13-17 by saying that Paul was simply telling the Thessalonians something he had neglected to mention to them before. I find this implausible. To teach a resurrected Christ without mentioning the promise of resurrection to deceased believers just doesn’t seem likely.

It seems much more likely to me that his central message for two decades had been Christ’s immediate return to set up a kingdom. I think the part about the dead in Christ rising first was something he came up with as the situation changed. This is not to say he made it up necessarily; if you’re a believer, you might think that he simply received further enlightenment from the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure why many commentary writers feel the need to insist that he had simply neglected to inform his flock of so critical a piece of information.

In chapter 5, Paul again returns to the topic of the return of Christ, and the sparing of believers from the coming wrath. It seems to me that it is a topic never far from his mind as the wrote this letter. He tells them to forget about trying to predict the exact time or day when Jesus would be coming back; it wasn’t something that was possible to do. This hasn’t deterred many of his followers from trying to do so over the centuries. Seems the last guy to do so was sometime within the last year or so.

Basically, Jesus is going to sneak up on everyone – just when they think things are going pretty well, he’ll return. However, Christians are not to be caught unaware, for they are to live their lives in a constant state of preparedness for his return. He may not come back tomorrow, but believers should live as if he will.

Again, I would take issue with those who might neglect their civic duty in a democratic government due to their belief that Jesus is going to come back and fix everything. I believe the problems that we face as Americans are quite fixable, so long as everyone is truly interested in fixing them. If a large proportion of the population feel that the purpose of government is to prepare for Jesus’ return – not to try and create a better society – then America suffers due to their belief. Even if you think Jesus is coming back, you shouldn’t stand in the way of progress. What if he waits another 2000 years?

I’ve found several things in this letter that I think do potential harm to American democracy, but finally, here at the end, is some advice that, if taken, would actually improve it.

Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone.  Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

Imagine if we always strove to do what is good for each other and everyone else – what a brilliant democracy we would have. Why is it that we seem to be only looking at what’s best for us personally, or what fits into our particular worldview, instead of what would be good for America? Paul’s admonition to be positive is also not bad advice, as long as we don’t insist that problems don’t exist.

He ends the letter with instructions that prophecy not be treated with contempt; that is, allow people to say ‘thus sayeth the Lord’, but to ‘test’ what they say, and to hold on to the good prophecies and forget the others. However, he doesn’t really spell out what kind of test would be appropriate, and this is troubling. How am I supposed to know when someone is really speaking for God, or when they are just a little stirred up about something themselves? For the average believer, it usually boils down to accepting the prophecies they agree with, and neglecting the ones that might actually require them to change their views.

I actually had one believer tell me, just today, that when she was unsure whether the ‘voice’ she heard in her mind was God or just her own, she might ask God to give her a sign – through her dog, if I understood her correctly. Pardon me if I sound dismissive, but in a democracy, I’d rather folks use the mind God gave them to make important decisions, and not seek out canine oracles. But I guess if  in the Old Testament, God spoke to Balaam through an ass, he must speak through dumb-asses today.

And finally, I don’t know what a holy kiss is – but I’m glad that’s one custom of the early church that didn’t make it to the 21st century.

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1 Thessalonians 3-4

In Blogging the Bible, Blogging the New Testament on May 28, 2012 at 12:11 am

Read 1 Thessalonians 3 here.

I’ve been distracted this week by events in the news and other ideas I’ve come across – so I’m happy today to get back to blogging the NT.

Many Christians have encouraged me to look at the Bible chapter by chapter, and to ignore the ‘crazies’ like those behind the events in North Carolina over the past few weeks. I’ll agree that the folks making all the news aren’t spending as much time reading their Bibles as they are listening to their leaders – or they are selecting a few favorite verses to support their own pet theories.

The third chapter of Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians doesn’t have as much ‘spiritual’ content as the other chapters. Basically, it’s Paul talking about how they were unable to visit Thessaloniki due to persecution, and how they worried that the church might not continue in their absence. Timothy is somehow able to get back in touch, so Paul and Silas are incredibly happy to hear that the church is still thriving.

Paul seems to know what every local pastor today knows as well – faith will flounder if it isn’t talked up on a regular basis. You’d think that such phenomenal revelation of truth would stand up to almost anything. But it seems that if you are left to your own devices for a short time, without any other Christians around, you’ll tend to lose interest. Now I know this can be said of pretty much any group, from bowling leagues to Shriners; the difference is that the gospel is supposed to be powerful – powerful enough to at some point raise us up from the dead. Why does it require a pep talk twice on Sundays and at least once or twice the rest of the week to keep people even minimally engaged?

Paul closes the chapter with another reference to the impending return of Christ – more on this in the next chapter.

Chapter 4 seems to be the real thrust of the whole letter, containing the one or two doctrinal ideas that caused Paul to write the letter in the first place. Timothy must have reported at least an instance or two of sexual immorality between the Thessalonian church members, because Paul seems to be saying, “hey, I know we said that you were to love one another – but that’s not exactly what we had in mind.” He admonishes them to control their bodies when it comes to sexual practices, not to act like pagans. He lets them know that anyone who sleeps around is not disobeying Paul, but disobeying God.

The paralia (promenade) at Aristotelous Square...

Promenade at Aristotelous Square in Thessaloniki

Modern Christians have adopted the idea that your average non-believing Roman lead the life of Caligula – but this isn’t necessarily true. It does seem that citizens of the Roman empire had an obsession with sex, and that many did lead what we would consider immoral lives. However, there are also many Greek and Roman teachers who favored chastity outside of marriage as well – it is not an idea unique to the Judeo-Christian faith.

Believing in Jesus and morality do not necessarily go hand in hand, and Paul knows it. Many of the letters to the churches address the issue; apparently sexual immorality was a big problem – as it is in today’s churches. The power of the gospel doesn’t really seem to help people change to the extent that you would think it could. Adding to this dilemma is the fact that there are people who don’t even believe in God who live lives of higher morality than many Christians.

Some of you will say something about Christians not being perfect or about not judging the church by its worst members or something of the like. But I would respond that if the results are little different from what might be found in any other creed, than the teachings themselves are little if any better.

Paul moves on to encourage his flock to lead a quiet life and work with their hands. Apparently, because they expected Jesus to appear in the clouds at any time, some believers had simply quit working. Why break your back putting away food for next winter if Jesus was going to come back before then? Paul lets them know that they should continue about their daily lives and not become a financial burden to others. This stance might be evidence of the growing suspicion that Jesus wasn’t going to come back as soon as everyone thought.

Bible scholars believe that verse 13 is further evidence of this pivotal shift in early Christian thinking. For two decades, the apostles had been preaching that Jesus was coming soon – and by soon, there’s no doubt they all felt that it was definitely in their own lifetimes. As I said earlier, this is one reason nothing was written about Christ’s life immediately after his death. Now, however, enough time had passed that some believers were beginning to die off – before Christ’s return. This seemed to contradict what they had believed, that Jesus was coming back to set up a new order, and that they would all be part of the Kingdom of God here on earth.

So Paul tells them that he does not want them to be ignorant of what God’s plan is, nor to grieve without hope of the God’s kingdom. He tells them that, upon Christ’s return, the dead believers will rise first, then those who are still alive will rise to meet them. They don’t have to worry that those who died since becoming believers would miss out on anything at all.

Paul’s choice of words in verse 17 make me a bit sad for him – and for the countless others like him as the centuries have rolled by. Notice he doesn’t say that after the dead in Christ rise, “those” who are still alive will be taken up; he says “we” who are still alive will be taken up. There’s no question that Paul was 100 percent sure that Jesus would come back in his lifetime.

I can’t help but wonder how heavily this misplaced faith hung upon him just before the Romans lopped his head off. Or how many others have died in astonishment that Jesus had not come for them.

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