In a year of many elections in countries all over the globe, I’ve noticed a resurgence of the “look how the Bible is being fulfilled” posts on Facebook. It reminded me of a few years ago when I was in Houston there was an eclipse and a couple of other events which resulted in someone I know posting about this was the end of days because, among other things, “the sun and moon are not giving their light”! This way of (mis-)reading the Bible and applying it to today is the interpretative equivalent of taking 2 + 2 and making 593².

Let’s keep it simple and consider just these few thoughts:

1. If you want to talk end times, you must start here: we’ve been in them for 2,000 years. It started with Jesus: the new age has already begun. Jesus has been raised. It seems to me people often focus on a future “end of days” because they haven’t really grasped the significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus which has already happened (and that's not even mentioning Pentecost).
2. There have been eclipses throughout history. It’s quite presumptuous (and more than a little self-centred, generationally speaking) to conclude that what was written in a text 2,000 years ago is being fulfilled right now.
3. This kind of approach to the Bible is based on taking a verse and applying it wildly. Or taking multiple, different verses and working them together into some kind of theological monstrosity. Imagine taking your favourite novel and choosing 6 sentences from various chapters, combining them and then using them to make a claim about what the author meant by the sum of the parts. To be blunt: it says far more about the person doing the choosing than anything the book (or indeed author) might be saying. So why do we do it with the Bible? [If you want an example of this kind of hermeneutical mistake see here. Or observe that Jeremiah 29:11 is given to a people in the middle of facing the ravages of conquest and displacement which God said was punishment for their pathological wrongdoing and idolatry. It makes it a little stranger and incongruent that such a verse should appear on greetings cards!]
4. Proclaiming that the culmination of God's purposes is happening right here in the present age is nothing new: Christians have been doing this throughout history in one way or another. Take the European Reformation, where there were Christians in Germany who hailed the city of Münster as the “New Jerusalem.” It is a perennial temptation for Christians to take the Bible, with its promises and hope, and distort them to fulfil our hopes and (often political) dreams, putting us bang in the centre. But if the testimony of the saints is anything to go by, doing God’s will usually involves sacrifice, denial of self, and willingness to do things and go places we’d rather not. It's on this basis that I raise an eyebrow when someone proclaims the fulfilment of some dream that happens to coincide with their natural proclivities. We are human and we are tempted all too often to try and turn God into a god of our convenience and a god who ratifies our idols.
5. More often than not, when I see a “look how the Bible is being fulfilled” post it is in relation to the political arena. A particular political candidate, sometimes in support of a particular nation over and against another. The question I want to ask, and address in a follow-up post is this: what does the Bible really say about political powers and empires in particular? What do passages like Genesis 4-11, Isaiah 13, 34, Daniel 7, Ezekiel 29, 32, Mark 13, Revelation 12-13 and so on, have to say? What does Jesus say? The answer to all this could last a lifetime, so my next post will be like taking a tour bus through a historic city – we’ll see some of the key buildings but there won’t be much opportunity to get off the bus and look inside. I hope that this will prove useful and give some hints and direction as to what a faithful story and understanding of political power in the Bible might look like. In turn, my hope is that this might help you filter through and discern the information that comes our way on the digital Wild West that is Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.

If you have any particular questions in regards to this, feel free to drop me a note (you can submit questions through this website or email me).

More soon!

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Photo by Pop & Zebra on Unsplash