JESUS – PROPHET TO THE NATION

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, the Sunday before the crucifixion. Palm Sunday was the start of four days intensive of prophetic warning by Jesus to the Jewish nation and to Jerusalem.

Jesus began that Sunday by riding a donkey down the hill from Olivet into Jerusalem, declaring himself prophetically the King of Peace. However, he stopped half way down, with Jerusalem spread out before him, and, seemingly incongruously, prophesied the destruction of the city. It was a prophetic lament, spoken with tears. It was detailed; the city would be besieged and taken; not one stone would be left on another; the people, including children, would likewise be destroyed. For even as he rode the donkey it was rejecting his offer of peace.

The next day, Monday, Jesus cursed a fig tree that bore no fruit. It withered and died. The fig tree was the historic symbol of the nation, and Jesus was clearly enacting in stark parabolic manner what was to happen to a nation in which he could find no fruit. He followed this up by going on to cleanse the Temple, and with violence, saying it had become “a den of robbers”. In so doing, he was giving a foretaste of what was to come.

In the two or three days that followed Jesus would not allow this strong prophetic theme of judgement to rest. Using parables he spoke directly and at length with the rulers of the nation about their fate. In the parable of the tenants he told them about the tenants of a vineyard who refused to give the owner the fruit due to him, and who successively ill treated the owner’s servants and finally killed his son in order to get the vineyard for themselves. Consequently their end was to be destruction. It was abundantly clear to the rulers that the parable was directed at them. Jesus went on to pronounce seven lengthy and severe woes on the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, concluding with another lament for Jerusalem, “O Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, how often have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks but you were not willing. Look your house is left to you desolate”. Finally, in his “Apocalyptic Discourse” Jesus, gazing at the majestic Temple, the wonder of Jerusalem, prophesied that not one stone would be left standing on another.

All this should not be seen simply as a hard act of condemnation by Jesus, but rather as a persistent attempt to get the leaders to see the predicament that faced them and to repent. It was a last attempt to save the nation, an act of grace. The destruction had to come if the nation continued to reject him and the things that belonged to its peace. Jesus did not want that. Sadly the national leaders not merely rejected him, but crucified him. The destruction therefore came, exactly as Jesus prophesied, It came in AD 70 with a Roman siege and appalling destruction and loss of life. That is what judgement meant.

Thus Jesus towered over the nation as prophet to the nation in the last week of his earthly life. He was the Amos of his day, the Jeremiah of his own generation, and had the same message. There was reluctance and heartbreak in the message because judgement is an utterly devastating matter and not something God seeks. This truth of judgement seems almost obscured from our own generation – the reality and appalling nature of judgement. The awfulness of sin, the appalling consequences of rejecting God and his Christ, and the consequences of disdaining the peace-giving commandments of God are not registered very deeply by a self indulgent generation, even a consumer Christian generation. This message of the horror of judgement, however, was going to be brought to humanity even more deeply in the death of Jesus on the Friday of that same week.

For our generation the cross this Easter will be more important a meditation than ever. We cannot treat the things of God lightly, nor the awful fact of judgement – that is the message our own nation finds difficult to read.

Bob

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"THEY WILL PERSECUTE YOU'

When Jesus looked down the course of history and prophesied earthquakes, famines, plagues and nations at war with each other, he also added a further major characteristic; the persecution of his followers. His accuracy with regard to such persecution through the ages is on a par with his accuracy on the other characteristics. Like them persecution does not in itself constitute a mark of the end of world history, but as with them we may anticipate a marked increase in the incidence of persecution as history reaches a conclusion.

In the book of Revelation there is a very graphic explanation of the dynamic behind this persecution (Rev. 12). John, the author, saw a Dragon ready to pounce on a child about to be born, a child who was to rule the nations (quite evidently Jesus). The child, however, was snatched away from the Dragon to the throne of God. The woman who gave birth to the child fled to the wilderness and was protected. The Dragon, however, made continuous war against her, and against the followers of her child. This is an astonishing prophetic vision of the historic persecution of the Jewish nation (the woman) and the Christian church. It is a persecution rooted in the struggle between Satanic forces and the Kingdom of God and his Christ. It would last throughout the ages, and could be expected to climax as the ages came to a close.

This prophecy explains a number of features evident in the persecution of Christians. It explains first why such persecution comes from every conceivable human “power base” on the earth. The “Prince of this World”, (as in effect Jesus described the Dragon), exerts his rule by force, fear and oppression from any religious, ideological, political base under his control, wherever that may be in the world. That control is widespread and where he exercises it persecution will come. The prophecy explains the dogged persistence of persecution throughout the ages. It explains the viciousness of it and the hatred that so often accompanies it. It explains why, as the gospel reaches more and more to the end of the earth, persecution is likely to escalate in extent and intensity. It explains why the church suffers so much persecution where it grows the fastest.

So, historically, we find that persecution attacked the Christian church from the very first, and from such diverse sources as the Jewish religious leadership and pagan Roman rulers. Even when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire persecution raised its head in bitter in-fighting among Christians. The mediaeval Catholic Church degenerated into an appallingly oppressive political power base and became the perpetrator of unbelievably inhuman persecution against genuine spiritual Christianity. In modern times it is not simply other religions like Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism that have been the persecution centres, but, perhaps even more so, the secular ideological totalitarian dictatorships such as Russia and China.

The appalling widespread persecution of Christians across the world today is, therefore a remarkable endorsement of the prophetic scenario sketched out by Jesus for world history up to the end times. What has happened and what is happening is precisely as he foretold. However, despite the certainty it gives us of the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom and of the church of Christ, persecution remains very much part of the “beginnings of sorrows”, and it calls for much prayer for those most exposed to it.

There has never been a time of greater need for intercession for those suffering for the sake of the gospel. Thank God this is reflected in the fact that there are more agencies getting involved in such intercession than ever before. The church needs to take it to heart.

As a postscript, one might add that the prophetic vision from Revelation, pointing as it does at the constant attempt of the dragon to destroy the mother of the child born to rule has much to teach us concerning the nature of the vicious and persistent anti-Semitism that the world has witnessed down the ages, since that mother clearly personifies Israel.

Bob

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“THERE WILL BE EARTHQUAKES”

The first four days of Easter Week saw Jesus making great prophetic statements. The majority of these were concerned with the Jewish nation and spoke of the judgement on the nation that would follow its rejection of him.That destructive judgement came 40 years after his death.

Other statements, however, had a much wider reach and a much longer time perspective; they encompassed the world, and reached to the “end” time. One of these wider prophetic statements is all too topical; Jesus said very simply that over the course of history “there will be earthquakes” (Matt24:7), or “great earthquakes” (Lk.21:11). He also said that there would be famines and plagues (widespread diseases). Furthermore he warned of “wars and rumours of wars”, with “nations rising against nations”. This was not an “optimistic”, “liberal” or “evolutionary” forecast, and could be seen as negative and best forgotten. But 2000 years of history have shown it to be a remarkably accurate statement. It is still as true to-day as ever it has been over those two millennia despite all the humanistic and well meaning declarations of the twentieth century about “a war to end war” and a “war on poverty” etc.

Jesus made it clear that these signs (earthquakes, famines and plagues) in themselves do not mark “the end” of the course of history(Matt 24:6). What he said was that “all these are the beginnings of birth pangs” (Matt 24:8). They are painful reminders of greater pain yet to come, an intense pain that will herald a new creation. In other words the culmination of the historic process in the world will be a period of much greater and intense cataclysm and pain than these "beginnings"No doubt part of that greater pain would be a far greater manifestation and intensity of these “beginnings”,of earthquakes, famines and plagues. For all its difficulties in interpretation this is a plain basic message of the book of Revelation – which itself, it must be remembered, is a prophecy from Jesus through his servant John.

However, Jesus made it clear that “the end” would be marked out by two features in particular. One would be “signs in the sun, moon and stars”, “with nations in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea” Lk. 21:23. The other would be “this gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations (and then the end will come)” (Matt. 24:14). This latter feature we are able to monitor to a degree, and what we see today in the world should fill us with joy for we see an extraordinary and growing fulfillment of Jesus’ words. The former “roaring of the sea” etc. certainly does not seem unrealistic! As we learn more about the earth and the universe it gets more and more credibl.It is really a matter of time.

To describe such events as this as “birth pangs” makes Jesus' message one of great and very positive hope. It is not a “doom” story. These events are the prelude to something new. It is not going to be “the end” in the sense that after these cataclysms there will be nothing – it is not the finish of humanity or creation. It is the start of a re-birth. No one can possibly consider the present state of the world and humanity as being ideal. It has to be reborn. The real problem with the present creation is the warped nature of humanity, rebellious and out of touch with its Maker. The re-birth will deal precisely with that problem. It will bring creation and humanity to the place where God wants it to be. That is why the “end”, the moment of rebirth, will be characterized most of all by the return of Jesus. At the point of greatest pain and anguish he will appear to restore. He will come as Judge ,and the great birth pain will be an expression of his judgement, but he will also come as King, Saviour and Restorer. It will be a massive time of rejoicing. As he himself said, when a woman comes to the point of delivery there is great pain, but the pain is forgotten in the joy of the new child.

We need a perspective beyond the earthquakes – Jesus gave it.

Bob

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