Thursday
Thursday
“I Am Coming Soon!”
Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.
Revelation 22:12
One of the striking features of Revelation 22 is that it is punctuated three times by the cry of Jesus, “I am coming soon!” (vv. 7, 12, 20). How are we to interpret this? Does it mean that Jesus predicted that his return would take place almost immediately, and that he was mistaken? This is a widely held view, but it is not necessary to reach this conclusion for a number of reasons.
Firstly, Jesus said he did not know the day of his coming (Mark 13:32); only his Father knew it. It is therefore unlikely that he would now pronounce on what he knew he did not know. He was not ignorant of his ignorance. Secondly, Jesus and his apostles urged his followers in other places to marry and have children, to earn their own living, and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth. These instructions are not compatible with belief in an imminent Parousia.
Thirdly, Jesus did predict the destruction of Jerusalem within the lifetime of his contemporaries, and it is sometimes hard to discern whether he is referring to this or to the end. Fourthly, “apocalyptic” is a particular literary genre with its own literary conventions. For example, it expresses what will happen suddenly in terms of what will happen soon. This was so in Old Testament prophecies.
How then should we understand the adverb soon? We need to remember that, with the great events of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and exaltation, the new age had already dawned and that there is now nothing on God’s eschatological calendar before the Parousia. The Parousia is the very next event on his timetable. It was, and still is, true to say, wrote Charles Cranfield, “that the Parousia is at hand.” Thus Christian disciples are characterized by faith, hope, and love. Faith apprehends the already of Christ’s achievement. Hope looks forward to the not yet of his salvation. And love marks our life now in the meanwhile. So soon may be chronologically inexact, but at the same time it is theologically correct.
For further reading: Mark 13:28–37