Category: Prophecy

Q. What is the doctrine of Balaam (and also of the Nicolaitans) in the book of Revelation?  Jesus says in his letter to Pergamum, “But I have a few things against you, because you have there those who hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balak to put a stumbling block before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit sexual immorality.” The New Testament tells us that all food is good, for example, in Romans and in 1 Corinthians. So why is this mentioned here as problematic?

Basically, the situation in western Asia Minor in the AD 80s, which the book of Revelation addresses, was different from the situation there in the AD 50s, which Paul addresses in Romans and 1 Corinthians.  Paul was speaking to social situations—a friend invites you to dinner in his home or even at the temple; you buy meat in the marketplace.  Revelation is speaking to a different situation, in which the Roman emperor is insisting on being worshiped as God.

The cities of western Asia Minor were competing with each other in the AD 80s for the emperor’s favor by building or improving temples to the various Roman gods, and holding feasts in their honor.  For Christians, it was a “choose up sides” moment.  You either had to say “I’m in” to the Roman emperor-as-god, and join these temple feasts, or say “I’m in” to Jesus and refuse to honor anyone or anything else as God.

The book of Revelation was originally written to warn believers that they must now face this choice.  The “Nicolaitans” and “Balaam” (probably symbolic names for a group and a leader) said instead—and this was their “doctrine”—“You have to go along to get along.  No big deal, just eat the food in honor of the Roman god and nobody will bother you.  You can then get on with your ‘witness for Jesus.’” The book of Revelation says in no uncertain terms that they are wrong about this.

To put this more generally, there are some situations where something that’s otherwise neutral becomes wrong for a Christian to do.  For example, when I was in college, I had no religious objection to drinking in moderation.  But when I went to parties, I never drank at them, because the whole idea was that people there were drinking to get drunk, and I didn’t want to be part of drinking that had that purpose, even if I wasn’t going to get drunk myself.  In the same way, if eating food offered to idols was a declaration of allegiance to the emperor as God, then a person who otherwise had no issue with eating that food in an ordinary social situation shouldn’t and couldn’t do it, if they wanted to remain faithful to Jesus.

(Apparently the “Nicolaitans” also saw no problem with patronizing temple prostitutes, either—hence the reference to “sexual immorality.”  This was a different case.  Visiting prostitutes is not morally neutral so long as it is not done in honor of false gods!  There are strong moral and social-justice imperatives not only to refrain from participating in prostitution, but also to work actively to end the sexual exploitation it represents.)

Hope this is helpful.  We should all be very discerning about the situations we find ourselves in today, and make sure, when it comes to things that are morally neutral generally, that we are “free to do and free not to do,” depending on what the situation calls for.

Q.  I’m wondering why Jesus hasn’t returned yet. I realize it’s not our lot in life to know the exact time, but it sure seems like this would be a good time.  Throughout the ages folks have made predictions but of course we are still here.  I don’t want to second-guess God, but I gotta say in my opinion I would love to see Jesus return tomorrow.

The question of why Jesus hasn’t returned yet was being asked even in New Testament times, just one generation after Jesus lived on earth.  In his second letter, Peter speaks of “scoffers” who were asking, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised?”  These were people who were arguing that if Jesus hadn’t come back yet, he wasn’t coming at all, and they were using as an excuse to “follow their own evil desires.”

But Peter also speaks to those who, like you, are genuinely longing for Jesus’ return, in distress over the condition of the world, explaining, “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”  For me, that’s the essential reason why Jesus hasn’t returned yet: God wants as many people as possible to have the opportunity to hear the good news and respond.  When we consider that, because of the exponential growth of the human population, half of the people who’ve ever lived on earth are alive today, we realize that if Christ had returned a generation ago, only half as many people would have had the chance of knowing him as the Lord and Savior.  So this is reason both to wait patiently and to give a good testimony for Christ in the way we live, how we treat others, and what we say.

It’s also a mandate to live charitably and constructively as we await his return, doing all we can about the conditions around us as a way of expressing our faith in the kind of world Jesus will bring about when he does return.  He himself cautioned his followers that he might not return as soon as they expected, but that they were entrusted with a positive duty in the meantime.  He told this parable: “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose the servant says to himself, ‘My master is taking a long time in coming,’ and he then begins to beat the other servants, both men and women, and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the unbelievers.”  (Ouch!)

So we should “make the most of every opportunity in these evil days,” as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, even as what we see around us makes us long and pray for Jesus to return.  And all the while we can remember, in the words of the hymn “The Church’s One Foundation”:

Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!

Q. Is there any proof that Revelation talks about the United States (or that the book of Daniel does)?

Whether we see the United States (or any modern-day individuals, nations, or institutions) in the biblical apocalyptic books of Revelation and Daniel depends on the interpretive presuppositions we adopt as we approach these books.  As I explain in my Daniel-Revelation study guide in the case of Revelation (similar things might be said about Daniel):

The book of Revelation is interpreted in four major ways.  The futurist approach understands it to be a description of the events of the “end times,” at the end of human history.  (Works like the novels and movies in the Left Behind series follow this approach.)  The historicist view sees the book as a prediction of the whole course of history, from Jesus and the apostles down through the present to the end of the world.  The idealist interpretation is that Revelation depicts the struggles and triumphs that followers of Jesus will experience everywhere, but it doesn’t have any particular place or time in view.  The preterist approach is to try to understand the book by reference to the time and place it was written in–western Asia Minor towards the close of the first century.

I personally believe that a preterist approach is the most responsible one to take, as it is consistent with the way we approach every other book of the Bible, trying to understand it in light of its original historical and literary context.  From that perspective, the characters and symbols in Revelation have directly in view the resumption of imperial persecution of Christians under Domitian in the late 80s or early 90s A.D.  The visions in the book of Daniel, for their part, are initially envisioning the suffering of the Jews under Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who ruled from 175-164 B.C.

Applications to any other historical periods are secondary and need to be made by inference and analogy, although these biblical books can certainly inform us very effectively about what conditions are like, and what a faithful response should be, in comparable situations.  Certainly those who are suffering for their testimony to Christ in our world today can and should find encouragement and challenge in many of the admonitions in the books of Daniel and Revelation, for example, “This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.”

I think we are better advised, in fact, to understand Daniel and Revelation as speaking to us today out of situations of persecution in the past, and so calling us to sympathy and solidarity with those who are suffering now, than we are to try to synchronize their characters and symbols with modern-day actors. That is a necessarily speculative exercise that may not lead to any response or action on our part.

Q. How does the genealogy of Christ work? Because if this is recorded in a patriarchal society, this is the line of Joseph, right? Doesn’t that mean none of this genealogy actually flows through Jesus’s blood? How is he from the line of King David if his real father is God and not Joseph?

The purpose of the genealogy in Matthew’s gospel is to demonstrate that Jesus is “the son of David, the son of Abraham,” that is, the legal heir of both of these men and thus the beneficiary (and ultimate fulfillment) of the covenant promises that God made to them.

All Jews were descended from Abraham.  But Jesus was not descended from David, who was from the tribe of Judah, through his mother Mary, because she was instead a descendant of Aaron from the tribe of Levi.  We know this because Luke’s gospel tells us that Mary was a “relative” of Elizabeth, who was a “descendant of Aaron.”

But when Joseph, who was descended from David, married Mary, this also constituted his legal adoption of the son she would bear. The language of Matthew’s genealogy reflects this legal understanding: “Joseph, the husband of Mary . . . the mother of Jesus.”

Later in Matthew’s gospel we see from the narrative that Jesus was considered to be Joseph’s son just as much as the other children that Mary and Joseph had together.  The people of Nazareth ask, after Jesus tells a series of parables, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?”

Accordingly Paul can say of Jesus at the beginning of his letter to the Romans, “who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead.”

Luke says similarly in his genealogy that Jesus was “thought” or “supposed” to be the son of Joseph; the International Standard Version says that he was “legally calculated” to be Joseph’s son, and I think that’s a good way of expressing the meaning here.

So Jesus was the son of Joseph in the full legal sense, because he was adopted when Joseph married Mary, and thus Jesus is also considered to be a legal descendant of David.

Q. This morning I was reading Luke and was confused about Jesus’ response to the women who were following him, wailing and lamenting, as he walked towards his crucifixion. His remarks seem hard to understand at first glance and harsh. The women seem to be doing a very human and appropriate thing, that is, mourning the mistreatment of the Son of God. I see myself doing exactly the same thing. Yet he turns to them and says, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and your children.” That’s confusing enough, but then he goes on to say, “Blessed are the childless women.”  His words seem very out of context with the events that are taking place.

I believe that even here, on his way to the cross, Jesus is looking ahead to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 at the end of the first Jewish-Roman War, and he is expressing his pity and compassion for the victims of that impending conflict.

This is actually the third place in the gospel of Luke where Jesus does this.  The first time is when he approaches Jerusalem on this final visit and sees the city in the distance. He weeps over it and says, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

In other words, by rejecting the understanding of the kingdom of God that Jesus brought, and by following other leaders into a political and military revolt, the Jewish people would put themselves on a collision course with Rome that within a generation would have this tragic result.

Then, when Jesus and his disciples are touring the temple, he predicts that it will be destroyed, so that “not one stone will be left on another.”  When his disciples ask when this will happen, he describes the destruction of the city in more detail. (This is in the so-called Olivet Discourse, a long speech that also looks farther ahead, at its end, to Jesus’ Second Coming ).  Once again Jesus expresses his compassion for the innocent people who will suffer: “How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land.”  This is a second reference to the destruction of Jerusalem in the Jewish-Roman war, in which Jesus recognizes the suffering it will bring to innocent people.

The statement Jesus makes to the women of the Jerusalem as he is walking towards his crucifixion is a third such reference.  The suffering will be so terrible, we discover, that people will consider women fortunate who have not had children who will have to go through it.

And so it’s not that reflecting on Jesus’ sufferings and expressing sorrow over them is a bad thing to do. It was appropriate for those women, and it is still appropriate for us today.  But Jesus knew that terrible sufferings also awaited them, so he both warned them and expressed compassion for their impending fate.

Showing concern for others’ sufferings, even as he was about to be crucified, demonstrates our Savior’s heart of selfless compassion for others.  And so I believe he is honored in this Lenten season not only when we meditate on his sufferings, even weeping over them as these women did (and as countless believers have done in the centuries since), but also when we show the same compassion for the suffering of the innocent that he did.

Q.  I’m pretty sure I know what they mean when they ask John the Baptist at the beginning of the gospel of John,“Are you the Christ?” I kind of know what they mean when they ask, “Are you Elijah?” (although I don’t know if they were thinking actual reincarnation, or just a similar spirit, or whether they would have thought of those as two different things). But I don’t know what they are referring to when they ask, “Are you the Prophet?”  Was there a particular prophet they were expecting whose coming was predicted by earlier prophets? And why does John the Baptist say no to this question?  It seems like he is at least “a” prophet, right?

“The Prophet” who is asked about here is the one foretold by Moses in Deuteronomy:  “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites.”  Later in the gospel of John, the people wonder whether Jesus himself might be this Prophet:  “After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’”  This was one version of the deliverer figure, along with the Christ or Messiah, that the Jews were expecting in the time of Jesus.

The expectation about Elijah came from a prophecy of Malachi:  “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the LORD comes.”  John the Baptist’s father Zechariah explained in his song of rejoicing over his son’s birth that he would fulfill this prophecy:  “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah.”  It was accepted that the “spirit” of a prophet might come to rest on successor.  Right after Elijah himself dies, the narrative in Samuel-Kings reports:  “When [Elisha] struck the water, it divided to the right and to the left, and he crossed over. The company of the prophets from Jericho, who were watching, said, ‘The spirit of Elijah is resting on Elisha.’”  I think it was in this sense that Jesus could say about John, “If you are willing to accept it, he is the Elijah who was to come.”

From episodes such as the one you’re asking about, as well as the episode reported in Matthew, Mark, and Luke in which Jesus is associated with John the Baptist (presumably raised from the dead after Herod had executed him), Elijah, or another one of the prophets, it appears that the Jews in Jesus’ time were expecting a figure who would come and turn around the fortunes of the nation, fulfilling the prophecies made in the Old Testament about the Christ or Messiah; Elijah; and “the Prophet.”  These figures seem not always to have been clearly distinguished from one another in the popular imagination, as a given person might be regarded as potentially embodying any of them. But there was an important distinction between one of these figures and the other two.

John the Baptist, as we have seen, was definitively identified by both Jesus and his father Zechariah as the “Elijah” who was to come.  For his part, the apostle Peter identified Jesus both as the Messiah and as the Prophet when he spoke at the temple after the healing of the lame man there.  So while all three of these figures were popularly identified with one another, i.e. regarded almost as if they were one and the same person, it was John the Baptist who fulfilled the prophecies about Elijah, while Jesus fulfilled those about the Messiah (the anointed one) and the Prophet (the successor to Moses).

Q. Why did God, through Isaiah, instruct King Ahaz to ask for a sign? It reads like God was weary with Ahaz for not asking. Do you know why?

We tend to think of asking for a sign as a negative thing because of Jesus’ statements in the gospels that, for example, “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign.” But this refers to asking for a sign from God as a condition of belief or obedience, or as proof that God is really present with us.  On other occasions God offers a sign, or even invites us to ask for one, as a token and pledge that He will keep a promise, and as evidence that He is already at work to fulfill it.

Jesus himself refused to ask for a sign as a condition of belief and obedience when the devil tempted him to throw himself off the heights of the temple to prove that God would rescue him.  To reject this temptation, Jesus quoted what Moses said in Deuteronomy:  “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”  Moses was referring to what the Israelites had done in the wilderness when they reached a place where there was no water and asked, “Is the Lord among us or not?”  In other words, the Israelites were making the miraculous provision of water there a condition of their continuing belief and obedience.

It may appear that Ahaz is simply following this same principle, because he also says, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.”  But most interpreters agree that this is actually just a pious excuse, because Ahaz wants to continue on the course he has already chosen–not to trust in the Lord, but to make a military and political alliance with Assyria, which will require him to worship Assyrian gods instead.

God sends Isaiah to assure Ahaz that he can trust Him instead, and God even offers to let Ahaz ask for any sign he wants (“let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven“) as a token and pledge that God plans to deliver him from the nations that are invading. But Ahaz declines, and that is why God is weary with him.

We see God offering this same kind of sign in other places in the Bible as well.  For example, when King Hezekiah (Ahaz’s son, but a good and godly king) was ill, God promised him through Isaiah that he would recover.  Isaiah offered, referring to the royal sundial, “This shall be the sign to you from the Lord, that the Lord will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?”  Hezekiah chose the much more remarkable sign of the shadow going backward, and it was granted.

So we today should be on the lookout for any “sign” God may be offering us in token and pledge that He will fulfill His promises to us (including matters of individual guidance that we have received), and as evidence that He is already at work to this end.  Perhaps we may even feel the freedom to ask for such a sign–not as a condition of belief or obedience, but as confirmation that we have heard correctly and are hoping and working for the right things, in cooperation with God’s purposes.

(This, I believe, was the nature of the sign that Gideon, for example, asked for using a fleece of wool.  He was already actively involved in the mission God had assigned to him; when God granted this sign, it was simply to confirm the instructions and strengthen Gideon in his obedience.)