Dating the Advent (or Not!)

This was published originally in the Green Lake Church Gazette, Apirl, 2013

In the summer of 1994 I spent a week preaching at a Midwestern campmeeting. Halfway through the week, a genial couple invited me to lunch. Food out of the way, we got down to the real reason for their invitation: they wanted to share with me the good news that Jesus would return before the end of the year.

A couple of years previously, they had moved out of the city and purchased an ostrich farm where they could protect their children from the chaos that would engulf America's cities as we entered the final months of earth's history. They were enjoying the quietness and serenity of country life and the extra time with their children. But the conversation did not focus on the benefits of country living. We talked about the good news that within a matter of months Jesus would be here! They showed me charts of jubilee cycles. I heard complicated mathematical calculations. But most of all I sensed their excitement that Jesus was coming . . . and soon!

My hosts were gracious and courteous. They didn't demand that I agree. But they just

had to share the good news with me. Jesus was coming. Without setting a precise day, they

were absolutely convinced by the signs and chronological charts that Jesus was coming before

the end of the year.

They won my heart. I liked them. I was drawn to their obvious sincerity and sweet Christian spirit. But there were a couple of problems with what they had to say. First, they were Adventists, and Adventists should know better. Our history teaches us the folly of focusing on even approximate schedules for the Second Coming. Second, they were ignoring the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 24 and 25.

Adventist History

Date setting is our blood as a denomination. Our most famous date for the Second Coming was 1844.  Oops. Groups of Adventists have predicted the Second Coming 1847, 1851, 1964, 1994, 1998, and 2000. Most of us are coy about our date setting now. We are like Billy Graham, who was asked by reporter in the early nineteen sixties, “When will Jesus return?” Graham's reply some forty years ago, “We can't know the exact date, but I don't see how it can be more than five years from now.”

I’ve known people who actually lived out their belief that the end of time was very soon, people who decided not to pursue advanced education because time was too short for them to be able to complete their degree, people who married precipitously because they wanted to experience conjugal bliss before the possibility was snatched away by the second coming, people who failed to plan and save for retirement. In every case these Adventists lived to regret their decisions.

Once, I asked Marvin Moore, an Adventist expert on the end times, “What decision have you made in the last five years that was guided by your knowledge of end time events?” His reply, “None.” Moore has written books about end time events, but those books offer no help for his real life. They are pure theory.

If the dates we set are always wrong, if acting on the belief that time is short leads to regrettable decisions, if the experts on end time events can offer nothing helpful for our actual lives today, maybe it's time to take another look at the passage in the Bible that is most frequently cited in support of the idea that we can know the approximate time of the Advent.

Signs of the Times, Matthew 24 and 25

Adventist preoccupation with “signs of the end” is frequently based on a few verses in Matthew 24. This chapter and chapter 25 are an integrated literary unit. At the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus and the Twelve were leaving the temple in Jerusalem. The disciples called Jesus' attention to the exquisite artistry and massive solidity of the temple buildings. Jesus responded, "Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down." The disciples were startled. How could God's temple be destroyed? Surely the destruction of the temple could be accomplished by nothing less than the end of the world.

A little later, when they were sitting on the Mount of Olives across the valley from Jerusalem, the disciples asked about Jesus' prediction. They had one concern: when is it going to happen? They wanted a chronology. Jesus began answering their question:

Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, I am the Christ,' and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . (Matthew 24:4-6).

Given the disciples' question and these opening words, I half expect the next sentence

to say something like: “These events prove my return is just around the corner. Sell your houses, cash in your stocks and bonds. Give everything you have for the work of spreading the gospel before it is too late!”

But what in fact did Jesus actually say?

. . . You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is not yet (Matthew 24:4-6).

When we see civilization in turmoil and the environment disturbed we long for the Second Coming. The worse things seem around us, the more intense our desire for Jesus to come and make everything right. Often, it's a short step from our desire for the return of Jesus to being seduced by theories purporting to predict the schedule of the end of the world. Jesus described chaos, then cautioned, the end is not yet.

In Matthew 24, after describing trouble and evil and stating that these are not proof of the end, Jesus launches into a series of seven parables. The first parables teach us how to think about time with respect to the Advent. In the final two parables a concern for end time events or schedules are shown to be essentially irrelevant in spiritual life.

Parable one. In Noah's day, people were eating, drinking and getting married. Life went on as usual right up until the very day of the flood. Then catastrophe overtook the world. In the same way, in the last days life will go on as usual. Nothing will seem to be out of the ordinary until suddenly Jesus appears in the clouds of heaven.

Parables two and three. Two men will be in the field, working . . . as usual. Two women will be grinding grain . . . their everyday routine. Nothing out of the ordinary . . . until one is taken and the other left.

We don't have to guess what these parables mean; Jesus Himself tells us.

"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. . . You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him" (Matthew 24:42-44).

Parable four. A servant left in charge of an estate in his master's absence imagines the master will be gone forever and begins to mistreat his fellow servants, only to be surprised by the Master's unexpectedly early return. The message: Don't imagine the day of accountability is off in the misty future. It will arrive sooner than you think.

Parable five, “The Ten Virgins.” In a 180 degree shift from the previous parable, the fools in this story are those who imagine time is short. The foolish virgins are foolish precisely in their certainty that the bridegroom will return real soon. Just like people who failed to pursue their education or to plan for retirement because they knew for sure Jesus was coming soon, so these virgins came to grief because of their utter confidence that their wait would be brief.

In each of these parables, Jesus presents the same message: If you imagine that you know God's schedule you will find yourself embarrassed. Actual time will inevitably, inescapably, unavoidably, ineluctably, necessarily (have I used enough adverbs yet?) be different from your expectation. Theories about the schedule of the end always mislead. Always.

Parable six, “The Investors.” A master calls in three servants, announces he is leaving for an extended period of time and entrusts to each of them some money to manage while he is gone. You might think this is going to be another parable about time. But time plays no role in this story. The master leaves. The master returns. Nothing is mentioned about whether he returned sooner or later than expected. Instead when the servants are audited by the master, the crucial factor turns out to be what they thought of the master's character. The two servants who trusted the master, made bold and successful investments. The servant who did not trust the master, buried his money and was harshly condemned.

Parable seven, “The Sheep and Goats.” On judgment day, humanity is divided into two groups. The blessed group is commended for showing compassion to Jesus. The cursed group is condemned for neglecting Jesus. Both groups protest they never saw Jesus at all. Jesus replies: What you did for the nobodies, you did for me. Ultimately theories about the schedule of end time events will prove irrelevant. Even theology, our high-flown theories about God, recedes as the most important question. This section of Matthew begins with the disciples asking about the calendar: when is the temple going to be destroyed? When is the end of the world? Jesus answers by steering their minds to questions of character: what do you know of the character of God? What character is revealed in your response to human need? Get the answers to these questions wrong and even the most accurate end time schedule will do you no good. Get the answers to these questions about character right, and time is of no concern.

What to Do in 2011

Sermon preached at North Hill Adventist Fellowship, Sabbath, January 1, 2011


What are you going to do in 2011? My first thought is I would like a little inside information to help me make wise decisions. Some possible relevant questions:

How long before the economy collapses?
How long before the gold bubble collapses?
How long before my health fails?
When will my company downsize again?
When will Muslim terrorists stage a successful attack on U.S. Soil?
When will the Sunday law happen?
When will Jesus return?

That last one is especially important. If Jesus is coming within the next two years, I don't need to put any more money in my retirement plan. I don't need to worry about my arteries. I don't need to get out of debt. I can drop out of school. We don't need to keep pouring money into health research. If we knew time would last two years or less there are any number of long term investments we could ignore.

There would be some other short term investments that might make lots of sense.

We are naturally curious about the future. As we plan our lives, it makes sense to try to understand how much time is available to us.

Near the end of Jesus ministry, he and his disciples were leaving the temple ground in Jerusalem. The disciples remarked to Jesus about the magnificence of the temple buildings. To their astonishment, Jesus said, “You see all this? It's all going to be demolished. Completely. Razed to the ground.” The disciples were speechless. How could this be?

Jesus and his entourage continued out of the city, down across the Kidron Valley and up the other side to the Mt. Olives. Sitting there with a full view of the temple buildings and walls, the disciples asked Jesus about his prediction. “When is it going to happen? What signs will there be that it was about to happen?”

They were all ears as Jesus began answering their question.

Jesus first words were a caution: “Don't get snookered.” [That's my translation.] “There are going to be a lot of charlatans, false Christs and false prophets. There will be trouble—wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes, persecution. But don't get buffaloed by people claiming special knowledge, special power or special insight.”

Wars, famines, earthquakes: Sound like any place you know? Yep. Sounds like our world. And it has sounded like “our world” to every generation of believers from A.D. 33 till now. This is the normal condition of the world as we know it. These words offer the first hint that Jesus is going to throw his disciples a curve. They asked “When?” Jesus' answer offered not even a hint of chronology. The so-called “signs” that Adventist evangelists love to preach reveal nothing about how many months or years remain between “now” and the second coming. They are merely the characteristics of all time before the second coming.

The last sign in verses 1-14 is the one Adventists often point to with the greatest confidence. “This gospel of kingdom will be preached in all the world and then the end will come.” When I was younger we carefully counted the number of countries the Adventist Church had an organized presence in (however small). Now, I'm not sure how we justify clinging to this verse as a help in figuring out the chronology of the second coming. The notion that “the end will come” immediately following the completion of the gospel going to the whole world raises some interesting problems. The first and most dramatic problem with this view is that Paul believed the gospel had already gone to the whole world in his day (Romans 1:8, Colossians 1:6). That was about 2000 years ago. In more modern times, with the advent of short wave radio, the gospel was demonstrably available world wide. People had short wave receivers even in remote villages untouched by electricity. Recently I read a novel challenge to this kind of calculation. If the gospel going to the whole world means the message of Jesus must be presented to every person in a way that could reasonably be expected to be understood, then the birth of every infant delays the second coming by a few more years. Because until that infant becomes old enough to understand the gospel, then we cannot say the gospel has gone to the whole world.
If we turn from these kinds of quibbles and ask what did Jesus plainly teach about the time of his coming in Matthew 24 and 25, the answer is unequivocal.

Jesus assures us the end will come. “as lightning flashes from the east and is visible all the way to the west so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” The end is going to come. Dramatically. For sure. The angels “will gather his elect from one end of heaven to the other.” Good news. And when will this happen? (How effective will the “signs” prove to be in working out the calendar?) “No one knows about that day or hour . . . you do not know on what day your Lord will come . . . you must be ready because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (24:36, 42, 44).

At this point in the sermon Jesus switches to telling stories. Which signals he is coming to the punch line, the climax, the grand conclusion. [Matthew 24 and 25 form a single teaching unit. In form they are reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7) and the Parables of the Kingdom (chapter 13).

In the first story, Jesus tells about a servant who is put in charge of a household while his master is gone. The Master tells the servant to be sure everyone receives their food in a timely manner. After the Master leaves, the servant says to himself, He'll be gone practically forever. I can do whatever I want. The servant acts like a jerk mistreating the rest of the household, assuring himself all the while that he has plenty of time to cover up all evidence of his wrong doing before the Master returns.

The Master returns. The servant has not destroyed the evidence. What happens to the servant is not pretty.

The moral of this story: Don't think you have all the time in the world. There will be a day of reckoning. And if you are acting like a jerk, that day is bound to come “too soon.”

What does the food in this story represent? Some preachers historically have linked the food in this story with the words of Matthew 4, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” So food is the Word of God and the way we prepare for the second coming is to provide food, i.e. the Word of God, to the world.

It's a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but it obviously is not the meaning of the parable. The point Jesus is making has to do with our attitude toward time. While it is true we ought to share the good news, that is not the point of this parable.

The next parable is about the ten virgins or to put it in modern idiom, “The Ten Bridesmaids.”

There is a wedding in the offing. The ten bridesmaids are waiting for the bridegroom's party to come and fetch them for the wedding. The girls are all dolled up. They have lamps because it is going to be an evening affair. The groom is late. The girls all fall asleep. Hours later the girl's are awakened. The groom is coming! The girls fix their hair and straighten their gowns and trim their lamps. Oops. The lamps are out of oil. (The groom is really, really late.) No problem. Five of the girls have brought along little flasks of oil. They fill their lamps and are ready to go. The other five however, did not bring any extra. They go to the store to get some but by the time they return from the store, the bridal party has already reached the venue and the door to the wedding is shut.

What is the point of this story? The foolish girls are those who “knew the groom was coming soon.” In the previous story, the fool was the servant who knew his Master was going to be a long time in coming. In this story, the fools are those who know the groom is coming soon. The common element in these stories: People who think they have figured out God's calendar. Long or short, if you are living your life on the basis of what you “know” about God's calendar, you are a fool.

The wise bridesmaids did not know they were going to need the extra oil. They expected the groom at the same time the foolish girls did. They brought extra oil "just in case."

When I travel around Western Washington, I do not carry a gas can in my car. But when I go on vacation across eastern Oregon, I not only carry a gas can. I carry a gas can with gas in it. I don't plan to run out of gas. I take the extra gas just in case, because gas stations in Oregon's outback can be very far apart. On my last trip (and my wife was along on this trip) for the first time, I ran out of gas. In the middle of nowhere. At least fifty miles from the nearest gas station. Fortunately, since my wife does not like hitchhiking, I had the extra gas. Saved.

So with the wise virgins. They had the extra oil just in case the groom did not meet their expectations. The foolish virgins "knew" they didn't need any extra oil because they knew when the groom was coming.

What does the oil represent in this story? Oil. It does not represent anything. It does not represent the Holy Spirit. This parable is not about the Holy Spirit any more than the previous parable was about preaching. Both parables address the question originally asked by the disciples at the beginning of chapter 24: When? And both parables drive home the point: “when?” is a distracting question. Pursuing the question of when will never bring you to wise action as a Christian.

Those who use this parable to teach about the Holy Spirit need to be honest that what they are doing is a poetic, imaginative use of Bible language, but they are not working with the plain meaning of what the Bible actually says. There is nothing in the context of Matthew 24 and 25 that supports the idea that the oil in this parable represents the Holy Spirit or that the overall meaning of this parable is somehow a message about “the reception of the Holy Spirit in Latter Rain fullness.” The use of this parable in this connection is at best sweet, holy fiction. It has nothing to do with exegesis or the proper interpretation of the text of the Bible.

So if “signs” don't give us a calendar for the second coming, if “when?” is a distracting, unhelpful question, just what are the relevant issues in view of the fact that Jesus will come again? What kinds of questions should we be asking?

Jesus addresses this in the final two stories of Matthew 25.


The Parable of the Ten Talents.

A rich man called in three servants. He gave the first one fifty thousand dollars, the second twenty thousand and the third ten thousand. Then the Master took off on a journey. After awhile he returns and calls the servants in to see what they've done with their money. The first two have doubled their money. The master is pleased and commends them. The third guy comes in and says, “You are an unreasonable man. I was afraid of you. So I risked nothing. I buried my money. Here is, all ten thousand.”

The Master blew up. “What? You knew I was demanding? Why didn't you at least put my money in the bank where it could have earned a few percent.” What happened to the servant was not pretty.

What is the issue in the story? What makes the difference between being ready for the end and being condemned in the end? What one thinks of the Master. The first two servants trusted their master and went to work. They did the best they could. The master was happy. The third guy buried his gift because he was afraid of the Master.

We prepared for the end by trusting God and taking risks. By really living. Serving others. Making a difference. Attempting to love like Jesus did. There is actually no risk in doing this, because in this story the servants are not graded on their productivity but their willingness to risk based on their confidence in their master.

The Parable of the Sheep and Goats

The final story is written especially for theologians, for those who become infatuated with their theories of the character of God.

At the end God will separate humanity into two groups like a shepherd separates sheep and goats. God will say to the sheep, the people on the right. “Welcome to the heavenly party. When I was hungry you fed me. When I was in prison, you visited me. When I needed stuff, you provided it.”

The sheep are amazed and protest. “Excuse us, but we never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff.”

Jesus smiles and says, “That's true. You never saw me. But you fed me any way. Because when you fed the least of these, you fed me.”

God says to the goats, “Out of here! Because when I was hungry you refused to feed me. When I was in prison, you never visited me. When I needed stuff, you refused to provide it.”

The goats begin protesting, “Wait a minute. We never saw you hungry or in prison or needing stuff. And in fact we cast out demons in your name and worked miracles. We're your people. You can't boot us.” (See Matthew 7:22)

Jesus agrees with them. “You're right you didn't see me. All you saw was lazy bums and irresponsible people. Weaklings and losers. Unfortunates. Crazy people. But when you refused to serve the bums and irresponsible people, the weaklings and losers, the unfortunates and crazy people, you refused me.”

The relevant issue for us to address in view of the end of the world is this: What do we think of God? Then those who think have gotten that one figured out can turn their test over and address the final question: How does your view of God impact the way you treat people?

Here at the end of the sermon, Jesus makes it crystal clear: figuring out time lines, prophetic charts and heavenly calendars are at best idle curiosities. The job of “last day Christians” is exactly the same as “first day Christians.” The call to holiness in the first century A. D. is the same as the call to holiness in the last century A. D. It is simply this: Trust your Master and take care of his kids.

Debates about “a perfect final generation” or how we can engineer a revival that will bring on the Latter Rain or attempts to figure out just how close we are to the end are all distractions. They never lead to wise living.

Even when people avoid setting a date in their minds, those who focus on “the time” end up setting a date in their hearts. And that date is always wrong. Either it puts off the second coming. (Jesus can't come in the next six months because our prophetic scenario for the end times requires more than six months to play out!) Or it puts the second coming too close. (I know I will see the second coming in my life time.) Either way, we are distracted from the central mission of the church: To love God and neighbor.

So what is our mission in 2011: Trust God and take care of his kids. (Let God take care of the calendar. He's going to, anyway.)