Again, I have argued thus:
Not really as it began being trampled about 2,000 years ago in 70AD as Romans and muslims count as gentiles. It ceased being trampled on in 1967.
I’ve yet to read Surprised by Hope, but apparently TW answers some of the questions concerning the ‘Second Coming’ etc. so I’m anxious to read it.
I can’t verify the accuracy of this post, but I found it somewhere on the www:
quote
Now that this is established he moves on to the question of the second coming in chapter eight, “When He Appears.” First, he says, Jesus never himself talked about his second coming. Here he appears to be advocating a form of partial preterism, though I’m not familiar enough with preterism to say this with certainty. The second coming was a doctrine worked out among the earliest Christians (before the time of Paul) as a conclusion drawn from the doctrines of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Wright defines parousia, the word used by Paul to describe the second coming, not as “coming,” but as “presence.” The word was in common use as meaning either the “mysterious presence of a god” or the visit of a person of high rank – like the emperor – to a subject state; it is obvious why Paul would have used the word to describe the second coming.
This “presence” then does not mean that Jesus is going to literally descend from the heaven “up there” at his coming. Since heaven and earth are both two dimensions of the same reality what the second coming means is that those two dimensions will be joined – think of the New Jerusalem of Rev. 21 - and Jesus will be truly present with us. And this appearance will make all things new.
There will come a time, which might indeed come at any time, when, in the great renewal of the world that Easter itself foreshadowed, Jesus himself will be personally present and will be the agent and model of the transformation that will happen both to the whole world and also to believers. end quote
Now I will apologize - this next is kind of lengthy, but it’s the clearest expression of what TW means by ‘second coming’ that I’ve come across. The link to the full thing is at the end.
quote
Christian future hope
Before we can address that, however, a word is needed about future hope. Some, particularly those nurtured on lurid speculations about the future, may suppose that in questioning these interpretations of biblical texts I am denying future hope altogether. Nothing could be further [39] from the truth. I attack the caricature in order to allow the reality to re-emerge from the shadows.
The reality is one of hope, not optimism. For the last two or three centuries the Western world has been nurtured on a belief in Progress. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we have been taught to believe that the world is getting better and better. Industrial progress, technological innovation, and the many-sided wisdom of the Enlightenment, have produced and will produce a world in which old evils will be left behind. Try telling that to a Holocaust survivor, a Tutsi refugee, a Honduran peasant. Fortunately, their voices and others like them have now been heard, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, the arrogance of “modernist” optimism has been properly challenged by the movement known as “postmodernity”. But where does that leave hope?
Hope has to do, not with steady progress, but with a belief that the world is God’s world and that God has continuing plans for it. The signs of this hope within the world at large are not the evidences of an evolution from lower to higher forms of life, or from one ethical or political system to another, but the signs built in to the created order itself: music, the birth of a baby, the appearance of spring flowers, grass growing through concrete, the irrepressibility of human love. Some parts [40] of our world simply point beyond themselves, and say “Look! Despite all, there is hope.”
Within the biblical story, there are several moments that give particular focus and clarity to this hope. The Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt after their slavery. The return from exile in Babylon. The public career of Jesus, announcing the kingdom of God. And particularly, after his shameful and unspeakably awful death, Jesus’ astonishing resurrection from the dead. From the very beginning of Christianity, the events concerning Jesus were seen as the fulfillment of the hope to which the Exodus had pointed. This was the real liberation. The future had arrived in the present. Hope came to meet us in person.
But (and at this point Christians and Jews would agree) the world has not yet become all that the biblical hope would indicate. We do not yet see peace and justice reigning hand in hand. The very first Christian writer known to us, the apostle Paul, wrestled with this question and came up with a clear solution. The hope arrives in two stages. Jesus’ resurrection was the prototype, the beginning and the model for the new world that is yet to be. His coming out of the tomb into a new life was the personal, close-up equivalent of the Israelites emerging from their slavery in Egypt. The hope is that God will [41] eventually do for the whole creation what he did for Jesus; God is at work in the present, by the Spirit of Jesus, to prepare the world for that great remaking, that great unveiling (that great apocalypse , in fact) of the future plan.
But that future, when it arrives, will not mean the abandonment of the present world, but rather its fulfillment. The whole creation, says Paul, will be liberated from its present enslavement to the forces of decay and death. You don’t liberate something by destroying it. All the beauty, all the goodness, all the pulsating life of the present creation, is to be enhanced, lifted to a new level, in the world that is to be. There is no room here for the dualism that goes with so much apocalypticism. Rather there is a strong incentive to work, in the present, to anticipate the new world in every possible way. Those who are grasped by the vision of God’s new world unveiled in Jesus’ resurrection are already sharing in that newness, and are called to produce, in the present time, more and more signposts to point to this eventual and glorious future.
The central feature of the hope held out in the Bible is of course the personal presence of Jesus himself. Many Christians, not least those who tend towards apocalypticism, have reduced this feature of the hope to the belief [42] that one day Jesus will appear, flying downwards from the sky, perhaps riding on a cloud. This event, the “second coming”, is in fact the event for which many of the groups who see great significance in the year 2000 are getting ready, not least those going off to Jerusalem to witness it.
However, most of the biblical passages that are quoted in support of the idea of Jesus returning by flying downwards on a cloud are best seen as classic examples of apocalyptic language, rich biblical metaphor. They are not to be taken with wooden literalness. “The son of man coming on the clouds”, in Mark 13.26 and elsewhere, does not refer to Jesus’ return to earth, but to Jesus’ vindication , “coming” from earth to heaven, to be enthroned as Lord of the world. (For fuller details, see my Jesus and the Victory of God , SPCK/Fortress, 1996, chapters 8 and 11.) And the one occasion when Paul uses the language of descent and ascent (1 Thessalonians 4.16) is almost certainly to be taken in the same way, as a vivid metaphorical description of the wider reality he describes at more length in Romans and 1 Corinthians.
Does this mean abandoning belief in the “second coming”? Certainly not. It means taking seriously the whole biblical picture, instead of highlighting, and misinterpreting, one part of it. The problem has been, in [43] the last two centuries in particular, that certain texts have been read from within the worldview of dualistic apocalypticism, and have thus produced a less than fully biblical picture, with Jesus flying around like a spaceman and the physical world being destroyed. And if we really suppose – as, alas, many seem to – that this will be the meaning of the Millennium, we will miss the point entirely. Rather, the Bible points to God’s new world, where heaven and earth are fully integrated at last, and whose central feature is the personal, loving and healing presence of Jesus himself, the living embodiment of the one true God as well as the prototype of full, liberated humanity. When we talk about Jesus’ “coming”, the reality to which we point is his personal presence within God’s new creation.
The present challenge of future hope
What then is the challenge of God’s future for the present? How do we rightly interpret, and re-appropriate, the apocalyptic hope?
The proper way of interpreting the great biblical hope is to see the present work of healing and liberation, the accomplishment of salvation at every level, as the bridge between what happened in Jesus and what will happen at the end. Deeds that truly embody justice, mercy, hope [44] and freedom in the present are signposts pointing back to Jesus’ resurrection, the ground of hope, and on to God’s future, to the final presence of Jesus, the fulfillment of hope. The task, for those grasped by this vision, is so to act in the present that only apocalyptic language will do justice to the reality that is unfolding before us.
How, after all, can we begin to describe the full significance of what we are doing, when we plant a tree in a devastated landscape, dig a well in a desert, give hope and love to an abandoned child, or campaign for an end to war? Only poetry, art and music can begin to do justice to such things; the flat one-dimensional language of ordinary post-Enlightenment analysis into economic or political forces will remain earthbound. Like our biblical forebears, we need to rediscover the many dimensions available to us for describing what look like this-worldly events and investing them with their heavenly significance. We need to rediscover, for our own age, how to write today’s equivalent of truly apocalyptic language: language that will speak of earth and resonate with the music of heaven.
This challenge, and this new emerging set of possibilities, takes a particular form within Western culture at this very moment. One of the features of our present sense of fin de si è cle , of great crisis and transition, is [45] that the dreams our culture cherished for two hundred years or more have let us down. The so-called “modern” world has been challenged in the name of something calling itself “postmodernity”. end quote
http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/04/04/apocalypse-now/
Also ref:
Resurrection still future
I begin at the end. The bodily resurrection is still in the future for everyone except Jesus. Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 15.23: Christ is raised as the first-fruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ will be raised as he has been raised. The ‘coming’ of which Paul speaks has not yet happened; therefore, clearly, the dead in Christ have not yet been raised. This is actually the official view of all mainstream orthodox theologians, Catholic and Protestant, except for those who think that after death we pass at once into an eternity in which all moments are present — a quite popular view but one which contains many serious difficulties. I do not know whether Paul knew about the strange risings from the dead reported in Matthew 27.52-3, but had he done so he would certainly have seen them as peculiar signs and foretastes, not people actually being transformed into the likeness of Christ as he predicts in passages like Philippians 3.20-21 and 1 Corinthians 15 itself. from http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/rethinking-the-tradition/
This is sooo predictable… which I noted previously WOULD be the case. What is really humorous is you quoting A.T. Robertson BUT TYPICALLY NOT following through with any consistency — he of course was absolutely right… Paul’s language IS hyperbolic OF the Roman empire, JUST AS Jesus’ statement in Mt 24:14 above was!
LK 2:1 And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
world = Roman Empire i.e., the world as THEY knew it — just like Noah’s flood… it was regional.
You beat me up then post a post about the second coming but can’t verify the accuracy?
Well, Y2K did not happen.
But 70 AD DID.
Yeah, the way I roll. Don’t remember ‘beating you up’ though! I CAN verify the accuracy of the quote since I cut and pasted it; whether the quote is accurate as to the book, I dunno. If someone beats me up I’ll probably read the book.
Well yes he does… albeit of course from his degree of partial prêterism etc. You might find this interesting…
(underlined and bullet-point insertions mine)
??
As far as I can ascertain, “Babylon” means Babylon —an area in the vicinity of what is now modern Iraq. (Note: Peter does say that, “She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, sends you her greetings, and so does my son Mark.” “She” likely refers to the church there. Peter apparently was writing from the vicinity of Babylon, although some argue a figurative use in this one case, perhaps meaning worldly Rome …)
There is evidence that Babylon will be rebuilt. (Saddam Hussein made a serious attempt.)
Please Qaz/ all, consider the following brief examination of prophecies related to Babylon, in support of the idea that Babylon in Iraq will (possibly soon) be rebuilt by Antichrist.
-Isaiah 13 prophesied the defeat of Babylon by the Medes, and its destruction.
-About a hundred and fifty years later, Cyrus the Great, king of the Medo-Persian empire, conquered Babylon in 539 B.C. This event is often considered the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
However,
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Isaiah 13’s discussion of the destruction of Babylon is given in relation to “The Day of The Lord,” and so Isaiah’s prophecy about Babylon was not completely fulfilled by Cyrus. There must yet be a complete fulfillment.
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Indeed, long AFTER the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus, we read an as yet unfulfilled prophecy given by the later prophet ZECHARIAH, of Babylon’s future reestablishment, even as a commercial center (the ephah basket being a symbol of commerce):
Zechariah 5
5 Then the angel who talked with me came out and said to me, “Lift your eyes now, and see what this is that goes forth.”
6 So I asked, “What is it?” And he said, “It is a basket that is going forth.”
He also said, “This is their resemblance throughout the earth:
7 Here is a lead disc lifted up, and this is A WOMAN sitting inside the [ephah] basket”;
8 then he said, “This is WICKEDNESS!” And he thrust her down into the basket, and threw the lead cover over its mouth.
9 Then I raised my eyes and looked, and there were two women, coming with the wind in their wings; for they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven.
10 So I said to the angel who talked with me, “WHERE are they carrying the basket?”
11 And he said to me, “To build a house for it in the land of Shinar [BABYLON]; when it is ready, the basket will be set there on its base.”
Just who is this woman “Wickedness,” and what fulfillment will be seen for her coming commercial house in Babylon?:
Rev. 17:4, 5, 18
4 THE WOMAN was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.
5 The name written on her forehead was a mystery: BABYLON the great the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.18 The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.
Professor Arthur E. Bloomfield asserts:
Historically, this woman dates from the time mighty hunter (rebel) Nimrod built a city in defiance of God and called it Babel [with its famous tower]. It was the beginning of the first world empire (beast), and it was the beginning of idolatrous worship (the mother of harlots).
The woman known as Babylon the Great is Satan’s own ecclesiastical system. She is the mother of the “abominations of the earth.” All idolatrous systems are her harlot daughters.
…Babylon must be rebuilt. The prophecies concerning Babylon imply tremendous changes in that part of the world. Not the least of these changes involves religion. Today Babylon is part of the Arab world. The Arabs are Mohammedan. The new city will not be Mohammedan but the seat of a world-wide religion….Babylon was the place of origin of many idolatrous religions. It was there that Satan tried to unite all such worship into one world religion.
So, what is the complete fulfillment of Isaiah 13, regarding her destruction at the coming Day of the Lord?
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great.” Rev. 14:8, 18:2.
Hmmm…it’s been quite a while since I had any belief in the ‘Rapture’ as was popularized 30 years ago by, among others, Hal Lindsay. That was around the time I read Kik’s book on the eschatology of victory - a real turning point - I think you read it also.
Yep… Kik’s postmillennialism was responsible for steering me beyond amillennialism into the prêterist direction 
davo - is that paragraph a place where you would differ from NTW?
Yep for sure… Pantelism takes the approach of covenant eschatology where “the resurrection” of 1Cor 15 speaks to the covenant restoration of corporate Israel… not the typical reading of individual physical resurrection. I tend to read that Corinthian passage punctuated with a slight variance (not that there was too much punctuation of the Greek text anyway) much like The Passion Translation; thus I read it so…
1Cor 15:23 But each one in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.
The firstfruits in this passage being identified as “the church of the firstborn ones” of Heb 12:23.
Qaz, you ignored my convincing examination above of explicit unfulfilled prophecy in Zechariah which reveals the coming resurrection of Babylon in Iraq as a commercial center…because of this??
Revelation says NOWHERE that Babylon killed the prophets. The Bible implies nowhere that Jerusalem is Babylon. You provide no evidence, because there is none. Biblically, “Babylon” is a region in Mesopotamia-Shinar-Country between two rivers.
Actually, John said the SPIRIT of the antichrist is now here, not THE antichrist (1 John 4:3). He said that “THE” ANTICHRIST is coming, but that even now there are many “antichrists” (1 John 2:18).
There is a “spirit” of antichrist, and there have been little previews/prototypes of THE Antichrist in history, such as Nimrod and Hitler.
The world is moving back to unity centered at Babylon—a unity not based on God—just as it did after the flood, under Nimrod at the tower at Babylon. (“Nimrod = rebellion or the valiant. He was the son of Cush, grandson of Ham, and great grandson of Noah; a mighty hunter, he established an empire in the area of Babylon and Assyria.”)
Unity at the expense of truth reveals the “spirit" of antichrist. (I might add anti-Semitism, political correctness, and dominion theology.)
Consider this…
OOPS! I forgot about Rev. 18:24, and the guilt assigned to Babylon for worldwide bloodshed under the Antichrist—including the deaths of those bearing testimony to Jesus by the Spirit of prophecy (Rev. 19:10). We also read in Rev. 17:6, “I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.”
Nevertheless, Babylon is Babylon, and cannot be proven to be Jerusalem. Again, as argued above, we read about the forthcoming rebuilding of Babylon as a commercial center, represented by a wicked woman who will be carried there in an ephah basket, in Zechariah 5.
Futurists recognize prophecy in the Olivet Discourse pertaining to both 1) the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 70 AD, and 2) a later attack on a rebuilt Jerusalem by the forces of Antichrist, at which time Christ will come down from heaven to bring rescue—The Second Coming. E.g., Zech. 12:8-9, Rev 19:14-15. (Attack against Jerusalem being divided into “A” and “B” is akin to the “Part A” and “Part B” messianic prophecies, separated by a gulf of time, discussed above.)
As you know, my view about “the sword, famine, and plague” is that they come from the devil, who goes through the doors opened by the sinful rejection of God and His offer of divine favor and refuge. But that they (the sword, famine, and plague) are sometimes misattributed to God.
However, the unchanging God, perfectly represented by Jesus, is only about abundant life, in distinction to the devil (John 10:10), who wields the power of death (Heb. 2:14).
Satan loves no one. He is a murderer. Regarding the Ten Plagues, God wanted to warn the Egyptians to repent so they could be spared; but God’s messages through Moses and Aaron were embellished by them, and misrepresented as a series of threats of violence that God would carry out, instead of only warnings to repent in order to avoid the evil consequences (which we understand from NT light the devil would carry out).
The rebuilt Babylon of Revelation will again be in the area of southern Iraq, as the headquarters of what will be long-thriving world commerce under Antichrist (but which will be suddenly punctuated by the first, Pre-Trib Rapture).
God has had no covenant relation with Babylon, so the terrible rage of the devil against his eviction foretold in Revelation has nothing to do with the Jews being slaughtered by God. Hence, the demonic rage foretold in Revelation compares more with The Ten Plagues against the Egyptians, than with the threatened curses against Jews given in Deut. 28.
Qaz, as a futurist, I recognize, as per, for example, the unfulfilled prophecy of the resurrection of Babylon considered in my discussion of Zech. 5, that a literal city Babylon will indeed some day be rebuilt in Mesopotamia; and that we see great added detail of this coming fulfillment in the book of Revelation.
Yet, as you pointed out, Rev. 18:24 states that, “And in her [Babylon] was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.”
As you now further point out, in order to build your case that Babylon = Jerusalem, Jesus said in Luke 13:33,
“Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.”
But it sure sounds here like Jesus is satirically quoting a proverb about the murder of genuine prophets under the Old Testament (à la “You build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them”), an experience which would now include himself.
The question is, does this argument prove that the Babylon of Revelation is not a literal rebuilt Babylon, but rather a figurative Babylon, which is actually literal Jerusalem? Certainly not:
- Moses, the most famous Old Covenant prophet, certainly died outside Jerusalem; and Aaron, and Joshua.
- Samuel died in Ramah.
- Jeremiah died in Egypt.
- Ezekiel died in Babylon.
- Jonah’s tomb, Nahum’s tomb, Habakkuk’s tomb are all located outside Jerusalem.
And of course there were (and still are?) “prophets” under the New Covenant: Acts 11:27, 13:1, 15:32, 21:10, 1 Cor. 14:29, 32, 37, Ephesians 3:5, 4:11. And the apostle John, presumed author of Revelation, died on Patmos.
I should mention that the Jews will be in Israel, not Babylon, during the coming events of Revelation, because the Antichrist will be, like his prototype Adolf Hitler, a dangerous anti-Semite.
There is reason to believe that the Jews worldwide will be regathered to Israel through persecution, and come under the protection of the resurfaced Ark of the Covenant, at least until they make a seven year covenant with the Antichrist, which he will break.
(Regarding the future regathering of all Jews together, and the coming reappearance of the Ark/Ensign/Banner, see, for example, Ezek 20:34-38, Is. 18:3, 11:12, and a future retrospection about the Ark seen in Jer. 3:16,17 —in relation to its recent past reverence.)
Qaz, nobody’s disagreeing about the guilt and lack of repentance of Israel, which opened the door to its destruction in 70 AD (which the God of love did not cause to happen). Everything did happen as was foretold here…
Matthew 23:35-39 (NIV)
35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
36 Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.
38 Look, your house is left to you desolate.
39 For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
…Well, everything except that last part:
39 “For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
When Jesus comes again, (after the full number of gentiles has come in), the natural branches will be grafted back in; the Jewish people will finally recognize and welcome Jesus as the Messiah saying, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!“
And just as Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed (70 AD), but are incredibly coming back in modern times (1948 and following) in fulfillment of “Part B” prophecies concerning them, destroyed Babylon will be rebuilt—but then destroyed again—in fulfillment of “Part B” prophecies concerning it.
As to me wearing “Zionist blinders,” I am all for the reestablishment of Israel, and for its peace, safety, and prosperity. Salvation is from the Jews.
And I see that the Jews will one day hold the place of highest honor on earth, during the Millennial Age; but that place of honor is certainly not as high as the Bride of the Lamb.
You mean Israel 3,000 years ago?