From Part 3 we recall that we were looking at how Paul knew The Day of the Lord was near and “at hand”. He never names a day; it would come as a thief on the majority.
But among those who had rejected Jesus Christ as Messiah / Saviour, there were people who were in a ruling kind of class. These people had happily become subject to Rome because of the social and religious positions they could keep under Rome.
There were also those who wanted to throw off the yoke of Rome, called Zealots, because of their zeal for a return to Israel’s glorious days of independence and splendour. But in the early parts of the tribulation, among these apostates, no-one thought that their attempts to overthrow Rome would actually end the total destruction of their nation, Jerusalem and its sacrificial temple and religious system.
However, the apostles, and especially Peter and Paul knew the day of reckoning was soon to come. When Paul wrote about The Day of the Lord coming soon, was it a reliance on natural knowledge of the war-like turmoil that he deduced the end of the age? Or was it divine knowledge he had, as John in Revelation foretold, not long before it all came crashing down?
It wasn’t just in “the nations” of the empire that this zealotry was causing “wars and rumours of wars”. The instability across the nations of the empire, and indeed instability in Rome itself, was rising.
Political intrigue, ambition, executions, assassinations sparked rivalries that are spoken of in apocalyptic symbolism in Revelation, ensuring a covering for the one who carried this letter – a letter which would significantly be the last of the New Testament cannon. Had the letter been intercepted by Roman officers, it would have been very dangerous to name past Caesars or the current tyrant, Nero. Hence the cryptic number 666. One would need to put some time and thought into deciphering. As it was the letter could be dismissed as apocalyptic Hebraic religious messages, which would be of little concern to a Roman soldier. Here’s the information about these particular” kings”. Of course, Jesus knew Otho was to follow and not last long, but no-one in Rome would probably have bothered with deciphering the number “code” in apocalyptic genre.
That it is prophecy written in the decade or so before the war is clearly seen by the measuring of the temple which is clearly stated in Revelation Chapter Eleven. That scene in Revelation would make no sense if written in the commonly held date of 90AD as the temple is clearly known to have been utterly destroyed with 70AD along with everything else of value in the land, including most of the population.
In Revelation we read of the certain kings – heads of the beast, which would give the original readers great hope that the “Day of the Lord” was coming:
Revelation 17: 9-11
The seven heads (of the beast / political entity/ ies) are seven mountains (Rome) on which the woman (Apostate Jerusalem) sits. 10 There are also seven kings. Five have fallen,
(The five fallen means fallen frompower or dead). They began with Augustus because Julius Caesar’s rule was not formalised as a king or emperor. He held temporary supreme power and was assassinated. Augustus was the first, then Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero). Where Revelation says “one is”, it means Nero, and the other has not yet come. That would be Galba. Galba followed Nero’s suicide in those politically unsettled times of wars and rumours of wars as Jesus predicted. Galba ruled for 7 months from 8 June AD 68 to 15 January 69. But Vitellius was also acclaimed during that time, by his troops in Germany who refused to recognise Galba. So that makes him one of the seven as Jesus said in Revelation 17:11. That this was a time of rumour and war is indicated by that year of Galba (at the time of writing of Revelation) being the first of four emperors! The one who Revelation says had not yet come was Otho. He would reign from January 69 until April of that same year. This was the short time that Jesus predicted of 91 days. Revelation continues…
“The Beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to destruction.” Here Jesus tells John and the early church that this eighth king (Emperor Vitellius) who had a previous claim to the position, would rule also as part of the Year of the Four emperors – in that same year 69AD. He lasted from April to December for 245 days and his “destruction” that Jesus foretold was his murder at the end of that year of turmoil in the empire.
Vitellius’ generals defeated Otho in battle. His support beyond Italy was as far as the central Alps, to Gaul, and Britain.
That year, 69AD was the recorded Year of Four Emperors all vying for power, involving such turmoil as to bring the shortening of days that allowed the Christians to escape Judea because Vespasian left Judea, hurrying back to Rome to also gain control, and sending his son, Titus to finish the war. This, they were able to do because of the warning Jesus had given to the inner circle of apostles.
When Revelation 17:11 speaks of “this last” (head of the beast) it speaks of a Roman “king” which arose being a different “beast”. It needs to be understood as Hebraism, not literally, i.e., beasts are political entities in biblical apocalyptic writing.
During the Roman-Jewish war itself, a future “king”, later to be Emperor Vespasian had his efforts interrupted by trouble in Rome. He sent his son, Titus (the tenth future king / emperor) back to continue the war against the Jews.
Some scholars think the ten horns, also being kings are from Augustus to Titus. But there is a difference between those who war with the Lamb, being on the side of the Jewish rulers, and those who are described as having no kingdom “as yet”. Clearly Augustus had his kingdom before Jesus was crucified. It may be, that the ten is symbolic, as horns (ruling powers) come out of the “heads” of the seven. So they may be future Roman emperors from Vespasian to the end of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty with Commodus in 192AD. This saw the end of “Pax Romana”. The first two centuries also saw the shift from a time when persecution of the Christians came from the Jewish rulers. Persecution by Jews declined due to the end of the promised land as such, and Rome took to persecuting believers because they then saw Jesus’ followers as distinctive from the Jews they had defeated and wiped out / deported. These who followed the Anointed One as a Jewish King were then seen as distinctive. Rome knew that Jewish kings were anointed, so the persecution was for political and not religious reasons. Caesar had to be their king, not this Jewish Anointed One. That’s what the word we have translated “Christian” means, i.e., followers of the Anointed One.
When John wrote this “Revelation” from Jesus Christ Himself, none of these things about the Roman-Jewish war, and the destruction of the temple or escape of the believers had started. It was prophecy just as Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21, as well as passages in Corinthians, Thessalonians etc., foretold.
But how did Paul know, as he declared in 1 Corinthians 10:11, that the “end of the age” had come upon God’s people? (notice none of the apostles set a specific date of “the end”. But its immediacy was foretold many times in the New Testament with phrases like “had come”. I suggest that his knowledge was two-fold. He had the natural shared knowledge of Jesus’ sayings about the general time frame of one generation. This was biblically understood to be around 40 years. He also had divinely indicated knowledge from heavenly visitations regarding the heavenly position of believers as told in the first part of his letter to the Ephesians. This included information about the coming “inheritance” of the Kingdom of God in a way that would later grow to fill the nations. Paul had divine encounters, albeit, understated, due to his apostleship.
And what was this “man of lawlessness” that had been “held back”? Today people think it is a contemporary one world ruler. A lot of useless guessing continues about this term. But that is not what Paul was talking about.
In Paul’s theology there are two “men” or persons or “bodies”. There is the one of righteousness, that is, Jesus Christ and His “body”. And there is a “man of lawlessness” which simply means all those outside of Christ who reject Him. At the time of writing, this included the Edumean royals, the apostate scribes and Pharisees, the High Priestly class imposed by Rome who had Jesus crucified, and all those who had cried, “We have no king but Caesar” at Jesus’ trial.
These “rulers” were certaily corrected by Jesus’ “rod of iron” as foretold in Psalm 2:9. HOw do we know that is so? Many people think this applies to post-modern political leaders. But we can check who they are by the repetition of this verse in Acts 4 where the apostles use the verse to describe Caiaphas, the (politically appointed) High Priest and associates. Jesus had stood before this high priest and told Caiaphas that he would “see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of The Power and coming on the clouds of heaven. ” Matthew 26:63
Josephus records the fulfilment of those words of Jesus’ words without knowing it as fulfilled prophecy or even that Jesus had said it.
Many of these “rulers” were at loggerheads with the zealots due to their conflict of interest. This is where the sedition arouse, in the early part of the war and continued to the nation’s destruction. The zealots not only fought against Rome throughout the “nations” of the empire but against those who sided with Rome.
It was exactly what Jesus had warned of in Matthew 23 which would herald the Roman army surrounding Jerusalem. Exactly what Jesus also spoke to His inner circle about in Matthew 24. The apostasy had been growing in the rejection of Jesus as coming Messiah during Jesus’ ministry. We note that the scribes and Pharisees and temple merchants were the people that Jesus opposed, not the general run of sinners. In fact, He was accused of being a friend of sinners. Yet Jesus said, He came to “seek and save the lost”. The ones who thought themselves above all this (saving and healing) were the ones who were self-righteous in their keeping of and adding to Moses law. They didn’t want the gracious fulfilled law message of Christ because it reduced them to a sameness with the ordinary population.
These people comprising “the lawless man” are the body of sin the Bible speaks of. They are the ones that cannot see their own need for the Saviour, and instead, rely on what they think of as their own goodness. They are the legalists who love the honour and opinion of men, whether openly or secretly. Whereas, Jesus’ message was about the need to have a humble and contrite heart, and love of the neighbour as of self. This latter group would also be in One Man, Jesus Christ, the perfect Israel, into Whom the imperfect were invited to humbly step.
This is where modern eschatological ideas about the end of the world go awry. The futurist theology fails to recognise just who was about to be judged and punished for horrendous crimes against the innocent righteous in Israel. The Dispensationalist ideas are more about a return to a physical temple, and a (false) Jesus present physically on earth, thus robbing the Kingdom of God of its power.
And this lack of Christian power is what we have seen with every move of God falling into decline, then carnality. That’s what materialistic doctrines do. And these are the places where cults spring from. I do not speak of this judgmentally, as I followed this line of thinking myself until I studied more thoroughly. God forgive us all for time wasted in speculation about the future. We are responsible to affect the future ourselves through the love of Christ. We are forgiven our errors, and by forgiving error in others, we release them to the Lord’s guidance.
So let us follow Daniel’s example and, on behalf of all those church “fathers” who we understand to have got it wrong – we repent. If we do this same vicarious repentance for our governments where they have wronged – then we can expect change. Let’s not rubbish people whom we see as enemies. Repenting on behalf of others is powerful in brining spiritual victory through angelic victory on our behalf. Daniel’s vicarious repentance had such a result as to set his people back on track again. Let us bless and not curse with our idle words, especially in anger.
Regarding the idea of a future temple in Jerusalem we note that when the Presence of God in Christ as explained in John 14 to 16 – that is, His home or tabernacle is in us, where this seems a lesser reality than the physical stuff around us, then we are still carnal in our thinking. Only when we see Him as reigning in us and through us, do we realise the end of the Old Covenant is over in its entirety. Then we recoil from altars and altar calls, a separate priesthood and physical temples, because we don’t want to be cloistered or coerced, nor do we want to do that to others. But our desire becomes to walk in such liberty in Christ, healing, forgiving, and most of all, not fearing the powers of darkness. For they no longer have any say in Jesus’ Kingdom. We who love the Lord have been delivered from the darkness kingdom into the Kingdom of the Son whom God loves. Colossians 1:13
The kingdom of God is within His people; it comes without observation. The “every eye” that would see Him are those who rejected Him, even those who pierced Him of ancient Israel, whose judgment is now passed. But more of this in the next post.
Recommended: Shade Stone has biblical accurate teaching with historical evidence in this video:
