The author examines the Bible's teaching about the future, covering the history of prophecy, the meaning of apocalyptic writings, the interpretation of Daniel and Revelation, the expectations of Jesus, and the hopes of early Christians. Original.
In God's Time
The Bible and the Future
By Craig C. Hill
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
Copyright © 2002
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-8028-6090-7
Chapter One
The History of the Future
The future has a long and colorful past. For untold millennia, human
beings have contemplated what lay around the next bend, or
season, or lifetime. Indeed, the ability to imagine and plan for the future
is fundamental to our intelligence and essential to our survival.
Our forebears were hardly the most imposing species to trek the African
plain: without fang or claw for attack, without speed or camouflage
for defense, humans needed all of the forethought they could
muster. Add to the mix consciousness - and with it, a voracious appetite
for meaning - and it is easy to see why people have looked to the
future as a way of understanding their world and interpreting their
purpose. Although true eschatologies (systems of belief about God's
ultimate victory) probably came on the scene fairly recently, that is,
only about 2,500 years ago, their antecedents are much more ancient.
Of course, not all interest in the future springs from lofty purpose.
Knowledge of the future is valuable in countless practical ways. So farmers
listen to weather reports and investors read market projections.
Those who possess, or at least are believed by others to possess, reliable
information about the future control a vital and desirable commodity.
This truth has not escaped the notice of a thousand generations of diviners,
seers, mediums, oracles, and other prognostic professionals, to
which one could add modern-day economists and "futurists." (The examination
of birthrates and income trends seems a tad more rational
than the analysis of entrails, but both pay the rent.) Moreover, knowledge
of the future is a much wished-for antidote to the nagging, sometimes
paralyzing uncertainty of life. A trip to the local Tarot card reader
or equivalent may assure anxious souls of future happiness. Some seek
to dodge personal responsibility by offloading important decisions
onto others: "No, I can't visit Grandma today. My horoscope plotter
warned me not to leave town on Thursdays." It may well be that much
knowledge of the future is not good for us, encouraging passivity, resignation,
and moral infantilization.
The idea that we can know the future and the conviction that the
future is inevitable are closely related. Each opinion naturally but not
necessarily leads to the other. (I have heard it argued that God exists beyond
space and therefore also outside of time; therefore, God may have
foreknowledge of events that, technically speaking, are not predestined.
I confess that such matters are beyond my small powers.) Not surprisingly,
belief in both prediction and destiny was widespread in the ancient
world. Modern readers are often struck by the fatalism they encounter
in Greco-Roman texts. The world had a given structure,
individuals had a station in it, and that was that. Often this attitude
was reinforced by a cyclical view of history modeled on the endlessly repeating
pattern of the seasons. In short, history was not going anywhere
and neither were you. Much of the moral philosophy of the day
taught that it is best to learn to be happy where you are. After all, the
lowliest slave could be inwardly free and content, while the mightiest
king could be enslaved to passion and beset with worry. (Of course, I
might choose to be a free and contented king, but that option was not
suggested.) Wrote Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, "I am without a
home, without a city, without property.... Yet what do I lack? ... Who,
when he lays eyes upon me, does not feel that he is seeing his king and
his master?" Those who sought a better fate - a destiny upgrade, so to
speak - could pursue various forms of popular religion or magic (incantations
and charms, not tricks with rabbits) in hopes of altering the
course of future events. The classic expression of the conflict between
fate and choice is Sophocles' play Oedipus Rex. Oedipus was told by an
oracle that he would kill his father and have children with his mother.
This was disquieting news, to say the least. He fled, but in his very attempt
to outrun fate, Oedipus raced toward fate's terrible conclusion.
Against his will and yet by his choice, he fulfilled his destiny. What's a
good tragic hero to do? Apparently nothing. Though the future may be
ours to see, "whatever will be will be."
Unlike most first-century religions, Judaism and Christianity
linked piety toward God with morality toward others. The human response
to God is first and foremost that of behaving righteously, not
that of offering sacrifices or performing rituals. This emphasis on
right behavior appears to assume a measure of choice, else how could
God hold us responsible for our actions? Nevertheless, the impulse toward
a belief in predestination is strong in monotheistic religions. To
the extent that other beings - whether human, angelic, or demonic - can
make things happen, God's power is limited. The difficulty is particularly
acute with reference to the existence of evil. If God is all-powerful,
why are wickedness and suffering tolerated? One way of dealing
with the problem is to postulate a degree of divine self-limitation.
God has ceded some authority to others while still overseeing the big
picture. I vividly recall a conversation that I had with a woman whose
son had been murdered several months before. She left the church after
a minister, undoubtedly acting with the best of intentions, consoled
her with the news that her boy's death had been God's will. Understandably,
she found little comfort in this report and was repelled by
the idea that God could have wished her son to be fatally stabbed. I responded
by saying that I considered the murder to be a tragedy, not an
act of God. I was first startled and then moved as she wept with obvious
relief. I had never been so aware that airy theological ideas have
tangible earthly consequences.
The degree to which God both knows and controls history has
been disputed for centuries in both Judaism and Christianity. Many of
the historical books of the Hebrew Bible (another title for what Christians
traditionally call the Old Testament) were written from a
"Deuteronomistic" perspective in which God rewards good and punishes
evil in the here and now (see below). This viewpoint is evident also
in the book of Proverbs, for example, in 10:3: "The Lord does not let the
righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked," and
10:22: "The blessing of the Lord makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with
it." In other words, God actively governs this world, and humans pretty
much get what they deserve. Job is prominent among the OT books
that call into question the simple association of prosperity with virtue
and suffering with wickedness. Job's accusers suppose that his miseries
are proportionate to his sinning, but the reader knows otherwise. Bad
things can happen to good people. Similarly, Paul wrestles with the
question of human responsibility in the face of divine action (or inaction)
in Romans 9:6-29. Protestantism itself is split between those like
Calvin who emphasize Providence and those like Wesley who tip the
balance to the side of human freedom. (You might have heard the story
about the Calvinist who, after falling down the stairs, said, "I'm glad I
got that over with!")
It is important to observe that biblical prophecy as a whole is more
concerned with influencing the present than with revealing the future.
The linkage between right behavior and right worship is central to the
Hebrew Bible's prophetic literature. Self-acknowledged "prophets"
were two-a-shekel in the ancient world, as the famous conflict between
Elijah and the 450 prophets of Baal illustrates (1 Kings 18). When the
great Hebrew prophets did foretell the future, often as not it was to prevent
some impending disaster. "Here is what things will look like if you
do not straighten up." Such prophecy called the nation to repentance,
warning the people of Israel not to take God's favor for granted. Their
future was not inevitable; it was conditional. This sort of prophecy is
quite dissimilar to the fatalism of Oedipus and quite unlike the determinism
of the later apocalyptic writings. Generally speaking, Hebrew
prophecy assumed both that human choice could affect the future,
and that God's will was beneficent. In time, it also came to view history
from a linear perspective, that is, to assume that history is going somewhere,
that ultimately the future will be better than the past. The New
Testament itself is predicated on this belief. But, as humans are prone
to do, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Biblical Prophecy in Context
A prophet is one who speaks for God, whatever the form or content of
the communication. The Hebrew word for prophet, nabî', means literally
"one who calls" or, possibly, "one who is called." In NT Greek the
word is prophetes, meaning "one who speaks for another." Both senses
are evident, for example, in Exodus 7:1, in which Aaron is appointed to
be the "prophet," the mouthpiece, of Moses. In fact, the Greek version
of the OT, the Septuagint, translates nabî} as prophetes.
It is common for theistic religions (that is, religions that believe in
a god or gods) to affirm the existence of human intermediaries, persons
specially equipped to address, hear, and speak for the god(s). This
is entirely understandable; a speechless idol might be of some decorative
value, but it is of little practical use. Nevertheless, unlike Ray Kinsella
in the movie Field of Dreams ("If you build it, he will come"), most
people do not appear as a matter of course to receive messages from the
divine. If they did, there would be no need for mediators; hence Moses'
wish in Numbers 11:29: "Would that all the Lord's people were prophets,
and that the Lord would put his spirit on them." Even the early
Christians, who unhesitatingly affirmed that they possessed the Spirit
(see especially Acts 2:16-21), regarded prophecy as a particular endowment
given only to certain individuals.
Prophecy is a very ancient phenomenon, predating the birth of Israel
by centuries at least. Examples of prophetic texts from other Near
Eastern cultures abound. For example, a prophet at Mari recorded this
message some 3,800 years ago:
Am I not Adad the lord of Kallassu who reared him ... and restored
him to the throne of his father's house? ... Now, since I
restored him to the throne of his father's house, I should receive
from him an hereditary property.... If he grants my request, I
will give him throne upon throne, house upon house, territory
upon territory, city upon city; even the land from east to west
will I give him.
It is likely that the prophet was associated with the temple, which
would be the beneficiary of the king's gift, should he obey the words
of the prophecy. I once visited a large "charismatic" church that was
in the midst of a building campaign. A handful of people stood during
the service to give prophecies (e.g., "Richly give to the building
fund, and richly will I bless you") that sounded eerily similar to the
above oracle!
Nearly four millennia ago, a woman prophet named Baia of Arbela
spoke the following:
Fear not, Esarhaddon! I, the god Bel, speak to you. The beams of
your heart I strengthen, like your mother, who caused you to exist.
Sixty great gods are standing together with me and protect
you.... Do not trust men! Turn your eyes to me, look at me! I
am Ishtar of Arbela; I have turned Ashur's favour unto you.
When you were small, I sustained you. Fear not, praise me!
Where is the enemy which blew over you when I did not notice?
The future is like the past! I am the god Nabu, lord of the tablet
stylus, praise me!
Centuries later, an unknown Assyrian prophet spoke this oracle:
Fear not, [King] Ashurbanipal! Now, as I have spoken, it will
come to pass: I shall grant (it) to you. Over the people of the four
languages (and) over the armament of the princes you will exercise
sovereignty.... Fear not! As she that bears for her child, (so)
I care for you.... Fear not, my son, whom I have raised.
We see numerous parallels to biblical prophecy in these three examples,
including mention of the authority of God over the king, the
ability of God to know and control history, the favor of God toward
obedient subjects, the call to put one's trust in God rather than in humans,
and so on. It is clear that prophecy was a long-established activity
that included conventional vocabulary and topics, much of which is
represented in the Bible. Many of the stylized behaviors of ancient Near
Eastern prophets are also found in Scripture, especially in the accounts
of Israel's early history. For example, it was common to think that
prophets possessed or were possessed by a divine spirit, which was
thought to produce the ecstatic or trance state in which they prophesied.
Note the rather odd story recorded in Numbers 11:24-25:
So Moses went out and told the people the words of the Lord;
and he gathered seventy elders of the people, and placed them
all around the tent. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and
spoke to him, and took some of the spirit that was on him and
put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon
them, they prophesied. But they did not do so again.
- and the even odder story in 1 Samuel 19:20-21:
Then Saul sent messengers to take David. When they saw the
company of the prophets in a frenzy, with Samuel standing in
charge of them, the spirit of God came upon the messengers of
Saul, and they also fell into a prophetic frenzy. When Saul was
told, he sent other messengers, and they also fell into a frenzy.
Saul sent messengers again the third time, and they also fell into
a frenzy.
Music was often employed to induce the prophetic trance state, as,
for example, in Exodus 15:20 and 1 Samuel 10:5. (Church choir directors
please note.) A particularly fascinating incident is mentioned in 2 Kings
3. Elisha was asked by the king of Israel to prophesy. In response, he requested
a musician. "And then, while the musician was playing, the
power of the Lord came on him" (v. 15). Compare Samuel's charge to
Saul (1 Sam. 10:5-6):
After that you shall come to Gibeath-elohim, at the place where
the Philistine garrison is; there, as you come to the town, you
will meet a band of prophets coming down from the shrine with
harp, tambourine, flute, and lyre playing in front of them; they
will be in a prophetic frenzy. Then the spirit of the Lord will possess
you, and you will be in a prophetic frenzy along with them
and be turned into a different person.
Of course, the use of music (and dance with it; e.g., 2 Sam. 6:14-16)
to create an altered state of consciousness is a practice of many religious
people today, from Whirling Dervishes to Pentecostals, perhaps
even the occasional Methodist or Presbyterian.
Ancient prophets received their communications in signs, visions,
dreams, and words (cf. 1 Sam. 28:6). The first means, which includes the
use of omens and divination, is the rarest in the Bible. The clearest example
is the priest's use of the Urim and Thummin, what appear to
have been sacred dice that could yield a yes-or-no answer. (If the
thought of priests huddled over a table throwing dice strikes you as a
bit incongruous, you are not alone!) We also hear from time to time
about the casting of lots. Other forms of divination, such as the examination
of the livers of sacrificed animals, were strongly discouraged or
forbidden, as was the practice of magic and necromancy (calling up the
spirits of the dead). See, for example, Joshua 13:22; 1 Samuel 15:23; Deuteronomy
18:10-12; and Isaiah 8:19.
Prophetic dreams are mentioned frequently in Scripture, although
the interpretation of dreams is usually credited to "wise men,"
such as Joseph and Daniel, and not to prophets. The distinction between
dreams and visions is often vague; typically one speaks of a sleeping
person having a dream and a fully conscious person having a vision,
but the biblical authors sometimes refer to dreams as visions.
The content of visions and dreams is wide ranging indeed, everything
from an appearance of God (Gen. 15:1) to the sight of a fiery chariot
(Ezek. 1:4-28) to a glimpse of Jerusalem's destruction (Jer. 38:21-23) and
restoration (Isa. 40:1-5). The New Testament records its share of visions,
for example, the appearance to Peter of the sheet containing unclean
animals, which he interprets as a sign that uncircumcised Gentiles
(non-Jews) should be admitted into the church (Acts 10:9-29).
It is the third form of communication, the word from God, that
dominates the Bible's prophetic literature. The well-known phrase
"Thus says the Lord" was modeled on an already existing messenger
formula. (See Gen. 32:4: "'Thus you shall say to my lord Esau: Thus says
your servant Jacob ...'") Given the number of such statements, it is remarkable
how little the Bible actually has to say about the manner in
which these messages were received. Occasionally, Scripture speaks of
hearing a literal voice of God. Sometimes words are conveyed in a vision.
Far more often, we are told only that "the word of the Lord came
to" someone.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from In God's Time
by Craig C. Hill
Copyright © 2002 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Eschatology is a hot subject. "Prophecy" is a regular feature in supermarket tabloids, and it recently made the cover of Time magazine. Interest in the subject fuels countless water cooler conversations, myriad "end-times" Web sites and the whole Left Behind publishing juggernaut. But in many quarters of the Christian community, that same intrigue over "what happens at the end of the story" is balanced by bewilderment, even embarrassment over what the Bible and its various interpreters say. For these Christians in particular (and less so for inerrantist end-time enthusiasts), this book is a welcome, comprehensive and accessible guide to exploring what the Bible says about the future. Hill, a professor of New Testament at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., wants to show "that the idea of God's triumph is central to Christian faith and that a working knowledge of the concept is essential to an informed reading of the Bible, particularly the New Testament." He begins with a primer on biblical interpretation, then addresses prophecy throughout history, the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation, Jesus' expectations for the future and what those expectations were for the earliest Christians. The book closes with an appendix on the Rapture. It all reads like a good lecture, punctuated with summary lists, illustrative diagrams and funny asides (though some readers may find the latter off-putting). Like a well-prepared and practiced professor, Hill leads his readers through this difficult material with ease and expertise, sensitivity and a sense of humor. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
