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Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 42
Gary concludes his response to John Piper’s book, “Come, Lord Jesus.”
Throughout the period between the crucifixion and the destruction of Jerusalem, many Jews (a remnant: Rom. 9:27; 11:5) came to believe that Jesus was the promised Redeemer. In Acts 2:37, after hearing Peter’s Pentecost message, the Jews “were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’” Peter told them that they must “repent” in order to “be saved from this perverse generation” (2:38, 40), the same generation that Jesus said would witness the events described by Him in the Olivet Discourse.
Three thousand Jewish converts were added to the believing community “that day” (2:41), “the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved” (2:47), and the disciples were “increasing in numbers” (6:1), so much so that “a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith” (6:7). Luke records, “many of those who had heard the message believed; and the number of the men came to be about five thousand” (4:4). The very thing Jesus said must happen (Matt. 23:39) did happen. Paul confirms this when he wrote, “I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Rom 11:1).
Bear in mind that what Jesus declared on the Mount of Olives and what Matthew records for us was a prophecy about the future of Israel’s then-living generation. Jesus spoke to His present audience around AD 33, and the temple was destroyed in AD 70. The destruction of the temple was future, but only a future that was a generation in length! The entire prophecy was about the future, a future that was in the generational sights of that first-century generation and is now fulfilled!
The entire [Olivet] discourse was about the future when Jesus answered His disciples regarding their questions about the destruction of the temple and the end of the age (Matt. 24:2-3). There is nothing figurative about earthquakes, wars and rumors of wars, famines, false prophets, false christs, a great tribulation, and fleeing to literal mountains in literal Judea. The reason preterists take a non-figurative approach is because the Bible does. When a symbolic or “figurative” approach is followed in particular passages, it’s because the Bible follows such an approach. The Bible is the best interpreter of itself.
Wars and Rumors of Wars
A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.
Buy NowGary concludes his response to John Piper’s book, Come, Lord Jesus. Time statements, context, and other books of the Bible help us to understand what words and phrases in the Bible actually mean. We also need to be careful that we are interpreting biblical words in light of how an ancient audience would understand it, not how a 21st century audience does.
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