"But immediately after the
tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give
its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens
will be shaken." - Matthew 24:29
The
final phrase of verse 29 says, " the powers of the heavens will be shaken." Is this phrase to be taken literally,
like the three previous phrases, or should one apply speculative exegesis to
say that it means something other than what it says? Do powers of the heavens refer to angelic entities or to the
physical universe?
Powers of The Heavens
The
same basic phrase is used in all three accounts of the Olivet Discourse (Matt.
244:29; Mark 13:25; Luke 21:26).
The phrase " powers of the heavens" most likely has the idea of " the sun,
moon, and stars, spoken of in summary fashion," as they have been specifically
mentioned earlier in the verse.
Leon Morris says, " The word for heaven is singular in the reference to
the stars, but plural where the powers are spoken of." [1] " Thus the Lord describes the
astronomical bodies being shaken as the earth is in an earthquake." [2] The specific phrase " powers of the
heavens" is never used of angelic beings in the Bible,[3]
nor does the context support such an understanding. Since the first three phrases relate to the entities that
fill the sky, this final expression is a summary of the collective. " Jesus is saying that, whatever the
powers of the heavens may be, they are subject to God, and that at this time,
that of the return of the Son of man to this earth, their power will be
disturbed." [4] These " powers of the heavens" also
appear to include God' s decree of stability by which these celestial objects
currently function with regularity.
John MacArthur explains:
All the forces of energy, here called powers of the heavens, which hold everything in space constant, will be
in dysfunction. The heavenly
bodies will careen helter-skelter through space, and all navigation, whether
stellar, solar, magnetic, gyroscopic, will be futile because all stable
reference points and uniform natural forces will have ceased to exist or else
become unreliable.[5]
A Heavenly Shaking
The
verb " shaken" is used about 15 times in the Greek New Testament. The verb is sometimes used as a
metaphor, as in 2 Thessalonians 2:2: " that you may not be quickly shaken from
your composure." However, most of
the time it refers to a physical shaking, as in Acts 16:26: " suddenly there
came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were
shaken." A physical shaking of the
heavens is what our Lord intends in this context.
Preterists,
like Ken Gentry, however, believe that this phrase does not reference a
physical shaking. Gentry says the
following:
Consequently,
we may legitimately apply Matthew 24:29 to the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70. Christ draws upon this imagery from Old Testament judgment
passages that sound as if they are world-ending events. And in a sense it is " the end of the
world" for those nations God judges.
So it is with Israel in a.d.
70.[6]
Most
commentators recognize that the shaking of the heavens in this passage is an
allusion from Haggai 2:6 which says, " For thus says the Lord of hosts,
' Once more in a little while, I am going to shake the heavens and the
earth, the sea also and the dry land.' "
What does this passage mean?
We have a divine New Testament commentary that we can look to in Hebrews
12 that tells us what it means.
And His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised,
saying, " Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the
heaven." And this expression, " Yet
once more," denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of
created things, in order that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom
which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an
acceptable service with reverence and awe (Heb. 12:26- 28).
In
this fifth warning passage, the writer of Hebrews contrasts the first shaking
of the earth, a physical one, at the Exodus with a future shaking, which will
include the heavens as well. He
too has in mind Haggai 2:6. The
future shaking will be much greater than the past shaking since it will include
the heavens as well. Since the
first shaking at the Exodus was physical then it follows that the second
shaking will also be a physical one, just as Christ describes in His prophetic
sermon of Matthew 24. " The
discourse is entirely plan," notes amillennial interpreter R. C. H. Lenski, who
understands this as a future physical event. " The whole sidereal world shall collapse. . . . This is made plain by the last ' the
powers of the heavens shall be shaken' or dislocated. All that hold the heavenly bodies in their orbits and enables
sun and moon to light the earth will give way." [7] " This convulsion in the heavens, previous to the Messiah' s descent therefrom, is not as yet to be regarded as the end
of the world, but only as a prelude to it,"
notes H. A. W. Meyer. " The earth
is not destroyed as yet by the celestial commotion." [8]
Signs in The Heavens
Matthew
and Mark do not record Christ' s statements about the human response to these
great events, but Luke does.
William Kelly says, " It is Luke only who mentions the moral signs of
men' s anguish spite of the deceits and pretensions of that day." [9] In what is clearly the same context
that we find in Matthew and Mark, Jesus says:
" And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon
the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the
waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are
coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken" (Luke
21:25- 26).
Luke is the only one to call the activity in the
sky involving the sun, moon and stars a sign. Robert Stein says, " the signs associated with the Son of
Man' s coming are cosmic, whereas those associated with Jerusalem' s fall are
terrestrial, so that Luke kept these two events distinct." [10]
One
of the purposes to which God gave in His creation of the sun, moon, and stars
would be for " them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years" (Gen.
1:14b). Who would these signs be
for? They will be signs to those
upon the earth. When one ponders
great events down through history, in no other event would signs in the heavens
be so appropriate than for the second coming of Christ from heaven to earth.
Luke' s
Account
Clearly,
Luke 21:20- 24 refers to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in a.d. 70. The second half of verse 24 says, " and Jerusalem will be
trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles be
fulfilled." Equally clear is that
the last half of verse 24 is descriptive of a period of time that commenced
after the Roman vanquishing of Jerusalem in the first century. That phrase has a beginning point,
which began after a.d. 70. It has a time interval described by the
expression, " Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles." That verse also provides an ending
point when it says, " until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." There is no way that this event has
already been fulfilled and it looks to a time when events that took place in a.d. 70 will be reversed.
Verse
24b provides a textual transition from a.d.
70 to events just before the second coming of Christ. Even a renowned preterist such as F. W. Farrar recognizes
the shift from a.d. 70 in verses
20- 24 to the second advent, or what he calls " the Last Coming" in verses 25- 28.[11] E. H. Plumptre tells us the following:
From this point onwards the prophecy takes a wider range, and
passes beyond the narrow limits of the destruction of Jerusalem to the final
coming of the Son of Man, and the one is represented in St. Matthew as
following " immediately" on the other, by St. Mark as " in those days." No other meaning could have been found
in the words when they were first heard or read.[12]
At
this point in Luke 21 we have an example of what Tim LaHaye and I call " The
Mountain Peaks of Prophecy" in our book Charting The End Times.[13] Plumptre has provided an excellent
explanation of this in the following statement:
As men gazing from a distance see the glittering heights of two
snow-crowned mountains apparently in close proximity, and take no account of
the vast tract, it may be of very many miles, which lies between them; so it
was that those whose thoughts must have been mainly moulded on this prediction,
the Apostles and their immediate disciples, though they were too conscious of
their ignorance of " the times and the seasons" to fix the day or year, lived
and died in the expectation that it was not far off, and that they might, by
prayer and acts, hasten its coming (2 Pet. iii. 12).[14]
Clearly, in Luke 21, Christ sees two different
events. One in the first century
(21:20- 24) and the other, still future to our time (21:25- 28). However, neither Matthew 24 nor Mark 13
relate in any way at all with the a.d.
70 event, since neither the destruction of the Temple or Jerusalem is mentioned
in them. Instead, the Matthew and
Mark account of the Olivet discourse clearly speak of the rescue of the Jewish
people, rather than their judgment as happened in a.d. 70. Most
preterists do not even deal with this issue, let alone provide a satisfactory
answer to that problem.
In
summary, we have seen that great supernatural events will accompany Christ' s
return to planet earth. Is that so
hard to imagine or believe?
Apparently for some it is.
Nevertheless, Scripture (both in the Old and New Testaments) speaks of
Israel being regathered in her land, in unbelief (her current status today), as
a national entity. She will go
through a time called the tribulation that will lead to the conversion of the
remnant to faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. This will then precipitate the second coming of Christ for
the purpose of rescuing a now converted nation, who calls for His protection
against the armies of all the nations that have gathered in Israel to wipe her
out. Instead, Christ destroys
Israel' s enemies and commences His reign in Jerusalem for a thousand
years. That is what the Bible
says. Since it teaches this, all
Bible-believing Christians should say " amen." Maranatha!
(To Be
Continued . . .)
