Part 37: The End of the World and the Final Coming of God’s Kingdom

There are certainly indications in the synoptic gospels that Jesus believed the end of the world would in fact be a long time coming, including His prediction that “first the gospel must be preached to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14, Mk 13:10). That was hardly a task that could be accomplished in one generation!

Part 37: The End of the World and the Final Coming of God’s Kingdom

By Robert Stackpole, STD

In this weekly web series, Dr. Robert Stackpole, emeritus director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, leads us step-by-step through the life of the Founder of Christianity, from Bethlehem to Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, we pause to consider in-depth the historical debate over the gospel stories of the virginal conception and nativity of Jesus, his message of the Kingdom, his embrace of persecution and death on the Cross, and his glorious bodily resurrection from the dead. Finally, we plunge into the great mystery of the Incarnation, and show how it actually shines through the whole gospel story from beginning to end. Read the series from the beginning.

The most perplexing question about the life and mission of Jesus (at least, in so far as His life is accessible to historical research) is whether or not Jesus predicted that the end of the world would come soon after His death and Resurrection, even within a single generation.

At first glance, several passages in the gospels seem, to suggest that He did (e.g., Mt 16:28 and 24:34; Mk 9:1, 13:30; Lk 9:27, 21:32). Several more passages in the New Testament suggest that the earliest Christians believed that He did (e.g., I Thess 4: 13-19; I Cor 7:26).

In his book The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (2009), Dale Allison, a leading expert on New Testament apocalyptic prophecy, generally sums up the problem this way: 

Jesus apparently did expect the coming of God sooner rather than later, and it is only natural that the passing of time witnessed, if not a far-flung crisis of faith, then at least some uneasiness here and there. … If the quest [for the historical Jesus] has produced an apocalyptic Jesus with a near expectation, then honoring him and the truth means coming to terms with that expectation. Anything else, however sophisticated or attractive, is escapism. [1]

A lot at stake
“If the quest has produced an apocalyptic Jesus with a near expectation....” But that is a big “if,” for, arguably, there is no assured result of historical research on this subject. Moreover, there is a lot more at stake here than just the issue “What did Jesus actually teach about the End of the World?” This is also a theological issue. After all, if our Lord told His disciples that he was going to return to the world within just a single generation after His death, then technically that makes him a “false prophet.”

To begin with, let’s not hide from this problem. We do our faith in Jesus no credit by side-stepping the toughest questions that need to be answered about the historical foundations of our faith. And this one may be the toughest of all.

Much like Allison, another famous New Testament historian, E.P. Sanders, writes as if the claim that Jesus predicted an imminent end of the world is true beyond any reasonable doubt. Certainly, Sanders makes a very strong case that the claim is true:

This is the most substantial issue in the earliest surviving Christian document, Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. There we learn, Paul’s converts were shaken by the fact that some members of the congregation had died; they expected the Lord to return while they were still alive. Paul assured them that the (few) dead Christians would be raised so that they could participate in the coming kingdom along with those who were still alive when the Lord returned. The question of just how soon the great event would occur appears in other books of the New Testament. A saying in the synoptics … promises that “some standing here” will still be alive when the Son of Man comes. In the appendix to the Gospel of John (ch. 21), however, Jesus is depicted as discussing an anonymous disciple, called “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” with Peter: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” The author then explains: “So the rumour spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you” (Jn 21:21-23).

The history of these adjustments to the view that God would do something dramatic while Jesus’ contemporaries were still alive is fairly easy to reconstruct. Jesus originally said that the Son of Man would come in the immediate future, while his hearers were still alive. After his death and resurrection, his followers preached that he would return immediately …. Them when people started dying, they said that some would still be alive. When almost the entire first generation was dead, they maintained that one disciple would still be alive. Then he died, and it became necessary to claim that Jesus had not actually promised even this one disciple that he would live to see the great day. By the time we reach one of the latest books of the New Testament, II Peter, the return of the Lord has been postponed even further: some people scoff and say, “Where is the promise of his coming?” But remember, “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (II Peter 3:3-8). The Lord is not really slow, but rather keeps time by a different calendar.

In the decades after Jesus’ death, then, the Christians had to revise their first expectation again and again. This makes it very probable that the expectation originated with Jesus. We make sense of these pieces of evidence if we think that Jesus himself told his followers that the Son of Man would come while they still lived. The fact that this expectation was difficult for Christians in the first century helps prove that Jesus held it himself. [2]

Stunning admission
All this sounds very convincing — that is, until you look at some of the evidence that Sanders failed to mention (as we will do below). Moreover, a few pages later in his book, Sanders makes a stunning admission that actually casts doubt on the whole case he has made that Jesus claimed that the end of the world and the coming of the final kingdom was just around the corner. Sanders writes:

One of the most striking things about Jesus is that, despite his expectation that the end would soon arrive, and despite the fact that he thought about the coming on a large scale, he nevertheless left behind a rich body of teaching that stresses the relationship between individuals and God in the here and now. [3]

“Striking” indeed! What was the point of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Parables of the Good Shepherd, the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal Son if Jesus really thought that the world was going to end so quickly!

Happily, there are alternative perspectives on this issue to consider. Dale Allison in his book mentions only N.T. Wright among contemporary New Testament scholars who support a more or less classical Christian view that Jesus did not, in fact, predict that the world would end soon, only that it would end suddenly (like a flash of lightning, like a thief in the night: see Mk 13:35-37; Lk 12:39, 17:24, 21:35). Another author in this vein would be Evangelical scholar John Wenham, who made an important contribution to the debate in his book Christ and the Bible (2009 edition), offering two ways to read the gospel evidence which do not require us to believe that Jesus really predicted that He would come back to this world for its dramatic ending within a single generation.

Long time coming
There are certainly indications in the synoptic gospels that Jesus believed the end of the world would in fact be a long time coming, including His prediction that “first the gospel must be preached to all nations, and then the end will come” (Mt 24:14, Mk 13:10). That was hardly a task that could be accomplished in one generation! Moreover:

• In Matthew 24:48, Jesus tells a parable of a wicked steward who mistreats the servants and squanders the property entrusted to him under the pretext, “my Master is delayed” in coming back.
   
• In Matthew 25:5, in the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the bridegroom “tarries long” before coming to the feast, so that the foolish virgins fall asleep waiting for him.
   
• In Matthew 25:19, in the Parable of the Talents, the industrious servants are able to double the talents entrusted to them before their Master returns “after a long time.”

Furthermore, if Jesus clearly had taught that the end of the world would be coming within just a single generation, the ancient Jewish polemicists would have seized on that fact, and made it a cornerstone of their critique of Christian belief that Jesus was the Messiah. After all, how could the Messiah be a false prophet? But there does not seem to be any evidence that the Jews made such an argument in the first centuries of the Christian movement.

Wider context
In addition, with regard to some of the passages in which Jesus seems to predict an imminent end of the world, the wider context shows that this cannot have been his intended meaning. For example, in Mark 13:30, after speaking about many signs (seemingly of the world’s end), Jesus says, “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.” And yet, almost immediately after that, in Mark 13:32, Jesus expressly refuses to make any pronouncement regarding the timing of the end: “But of that day and hour, no man knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

Is it likely that in verse 30 He predicted the end would come within a single generation, and then two verses later He contradicted himself by saying that He did not actually know when the end would come? And if Jesus predicted an imminent end of all things in Mark 13:30, then why did the Risen Jesus later tell his apostles in Acts 1:7 (in response to their question: “Will you at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?”—that is, the New Jerusalem, the final reign of God): “It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority.” If it was not for them to know, then why did He (allegedly) tell his apostles explicitly in Mark 13:30 that “this generation will not pass away” until all the signs of the end of the world would be fulfilled?

It would seem that the only way to unravel this knot is to admit that in Mark 13:30, Jesus was probably not speaking of the end of the world, but of some other event of cosmic importance (an event to which he must have been referring in some or all of the preceding verses). In any case, the matter is certainly very complex, and resists simplistic solutions.

Next: Part 38: Toward a Solution to the “End Times” Dilemma in the Preaching of Jesus.
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Notes
[1]  Dale Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009),  p. 100-101.
[2]  E.P. Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books, 1993) p. 179-180.
[3]  Ibid., p. 193.
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