​Christians have struggled for centuries to explain why Jesus hasn’t returned to earth. That frustration has led many Bible readers to search for answers. 
 
Although Jesus told his followers they couldn’t figure out the exact day or hour, that hasn’t stopped the search for clues about the general timeframe. In the last hundred years, people have latched on to Jesus’ prediction of “the end” in Matthew 24:14, “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.”

Do Jesus' words mean systematically sharing the gospel around the globe can speed up "the end"?

What Many Christians Think

When the context of this statement is disregarded or misunderstood, Christians assume Jesus’ words explain why we are still waiting for him to return and set up his kingdom on earth. Theologian George Eldon Ladd summarized how a growing number of Christians interpret Jesus’ explanation in his 1959 book The Gospel of the Kingdom and The Gospel Coalition (whose council members include John Piper, D.A. Carson, Tim Keller and Al Mohler) promote his logic to this day:

This conviction has led to hashtag hype to #CountforZero and to finish the #MissiontoZero. The “zero” means zero groups of people are unreached. Ministries like Finishing the Task have formed to track spreadsheets of unreached people groups until no group is left on the list. Donors have created the Finishing Fund to pay ministries to reach those people groups so Jesus can be freed up to return to earth. All these initiatives are driven by the same conviction that led editor Rick Wood of the Mission Frontiers to publish the article "Bring Back The King?" and claim, “Matt. 24:14 clearly indicates that world evangelization is a prerequisite to the Lord's coming.”
 
But what if we have misunderstood the message of Matthew 24:14 and pinned our hopes on a false promise? We must dissect the language and context of Jesus’ statement to determine what he meant and to clearly identify what exactly would end once the nations heard about the kingdom’s arrival.

Isn't it obvious what we can do through Christ who strengthens us? "All Things." Philippians 4:13 says so. That's why sports figures love the verse. It's why they tattoo it on their chest. Who cares if it makes no sense for players on opposing teams to believe Christ will help them both win the same game (think about it). It pumps you up with a sense that you have divine power to pummel your opponents.

But that's not why Tim Tebow wrote Philippians 4:13 on his black eye stickers when he played football. During an interview at the end of his college career, he told the Baptist Press:

​Thomas Aquinas sent Christianity down a disastrous road. What started out as an attempt to translate biblical faith into contemporary philosophical discussions became an irreversible distortion of doctrine. His intrigue with a philosophical fad re-directed how theology was done for the last 700 years.

In the 13th Century when Aquinas wrote, it had become cool again to reason like Greek philosophers. 1,000 years earlier, the Platonic ideas about the Divine essence, logos, and demiurge had already shaped the language of 4th-century church creeds about Jesus’ divine nature and the Trinity. Now, the Greek categories were returning with the Renaissance to reconstruct the Christian faith. Aquinas embraced Aristotle and Plato in a historic act of unintentional syncretism. The systematic Greek logic behind his Summa Theologiae became the standard for structuring the Christian faith. The theological enterprise turned into a “sacred science” (in Aquinas’s words) with its “propositions” and “principles” similar to other philosophical sciences.

The long-term impact of Summa Theologiae on how theology is done was unintentional. Most theologians and historians frame Aquinas as an intellectual missionary. He was trying to express genuinely biblical faith in the language and concepts of contemporary thought leaders, just as the 4th and 5th century creeds were doing. In the most generous reading, Aquinas and the creeds are not examples of the Hellenization of the Gospel but of the evangelization of Hellenism (thank you Van Hoozer for this succinct framework!).

Unfortunately, the context of such contextual theology often gets forgotten in future forms that imitate it. Aquinas was no exception. Aquinas's theological science hopefully affected scientific philosophers in his day, but his Aristotelian assumptions likewise infected future Christian theology. Going forward, doctrine became synonymous with categorizing answers to topical theology questions (Yeah, I'm looking at you Dispensational and Reformed theologians ;) .

By the time Protestant reformers had their heyday in the 16th Century, the rules of the theological game had been established. The Christian faith did not find itself in a trail of divine action left through human history. It was more philosophically astute and well-ordered than that. Christian theologians were now expected to run past epistemological humility in grandiose efforts to restructure biblical content into answers for any doctrinal question (think Grudem’s Systematic Theology). Systematizing theologians of the Protestant tradition have long since employed a dangerous formula: Words from the Bible + culturally and linguistically determined logic = answers to every theological or ontological question. The diversity of biblical genres that embodied truth and the diachronic developments from Genesis to Revelation gave way to uniform answers delivered in synchronic slices that did not reflect a dominant form of delivering truth anywhere in Scripture.

Now what could be wrong with breaking up the Bible into properly categorized propositions? In short, everything. If your theology doesn't look like or act like the Bible itself, then it cannot represent its contents faithfully. It distorts not distillate it’s substance.

Mental associations direct the way we interpret what people mean with their words. If the first place your mind goes is to the same meaning someone intends, communication works. But if you associate the words with the wrong meaning, you will misrepresent what someone means to say. That's a big deal when it's the Word of God.

A question that should push us all to study more carefully is: Are we mistaking the echo of our own assumptions for the meaning of God's Word?

If you haven't read it yet, Reenacting the Way (of Jesus) unwraps the commonly misunderstood messages of the Gospels. Jesus' healing miracles, turning water into wine, feeding the 5,000 and calming a storm all lose their meaning when we reduce them to miraculous moments that revealed Jesus' divinity. They had very specific meanings for their original audience not just some generic meaning for everyone.

​The same miscommunication happens when we chase the futuristic relevance of the book of Revelation rather than the reason John recorded it for his ancient audience. We miss Jesus' personalized message for his first century audience in Asia Minor. Let’s stop doing this. Flattening the Bible's first meaning loosens the anchor that holds it from floating down the river of your imagination.

So let's talk about a specific example: being lukewarm. In the popular passage of Revelation 3:15-16, Jesus says, “I wish you were cold or hot, but because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” Why does Jesus want people made of extreme temperatures, like hot or cold, or else he will discard them?

The Son of Man Coming on the Clouds

Right before Jesus was arrested, he issued a bold prediction from the same location the “Egyptian” rallied his prophetic movement: the Mount of Olives (Matthew 24:3). He told his disciples, as they admired the grandeur of the Temple, that trouble was coming. They would suffer great persecution because of their allegiance to him. Armies would invade Jerusalem. The magnificent Temple would crumble (Matthew 24:2; Luke 21:20-24). And in the midst of chaos as people fled for their lives in Judea, prophetic hopes would be fulfilled.

Jesus’ words didn’t fill empty space in first-century Israel. The place was crowded with competing ideas. Power-hungry men appealed to Rome for political position. Spiritual leaders wandered the streets rallying the impoverished masses to their definition of “righteousness.” Every vocal leader was trying to carve out his piece of the pie.

First-century Israel had a line of would-be Messiahs making predictions. The Jewish historian Josephus recalls how “Impostors and demagogues, under the guise of divine inspiration, provoked revolutionary actions and drove the masses to act like madmen. They led them out into the wilderness so that God would show them signs of imminent liberation” (Jewish Wars 2.259).  Their plans didn’t always work so well.

Theudas the magician called himself “a prophet” and led a group of followers to the Jordan River. He promised to divide the river as a sign of Israel’s restoration to greatness (based on Isaiah 51:10-11). It didn’t go as planned. He only succeeded in getting his head cut off by the Romans (Josephus, Antiquities 20.97-98).

A man nicknamed “the Egyptian” led a Jewish mob up the Mount of Olives with a promise to fulfill Zechariah 14. But instead of an earthquake splitting the city and God’s army defeating foreign invaders, the Romans cut the mob down.

Roman swords often cut short the hopes of long-awaited redemption. Theudas couldn’t kickstart Isaiah’s prophecy nor could “the Egyptian” fulfill Zechariah’s vision.

Why does it matter? Because Jesus spoke into that world. His predictions of coming redemption were equally rooted in Jewish prophecy and tied to contemporary political affairs. We must listen to him in that context.

Can Christians excuse themselves from obeying the Law of Moses? Jesus plainly said, “Until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law” (Matthew 5:18). Surely that would mean all 613 commandments in the Pentateuch must be followed until some cataclysmic events take place. Or does it?

If we were still waiting for some cataclysmic event to happen before we were set free from obedience to the Mosaic Law, what would that practically mean for Christians today? It would have huge implications. If “heaven and earth” haven't passed away, we would have a backlog of Jubilee years to celebrate, “cities of refuge” to resurrect (which is a law requiring certain cities to protect sinners from people trying to vengefully hurt them), and bleeding lambs to burn on an altar. Forget Sunday. We would need to go back to the Sabbath rest on Saturday. And we would have to throw out our clothes that mix linen and cotton and kill our rebellious children. If you weren’t aware, the Law of Moses has some serious instructions.

So why don't Christians obey every letter of the Law if Jesus said it all applies “until heaven and earth pass away”?

It’s an important question to answer, and very few Christians have taken the time to address it. But before we start in forcing the law of Moses again, let’s make sure we understand what Jesus meant. The historical background is going to blow your mind. It will require you to put down your apocalyptic imaginations of meteors hitting earth and start seeing the world Jesus talked about.

Ridley Scott's Gladiator-style production of the Exodus is meant to be epic. And it should be. The Semitic exit from Egypt is the Hebrew Bible's greatest story of divine redemption. It is epic on paper so it should challenge our best CGI techniques to create overpowering plagues and plot twists. It should require extra dialogue, drama, and punishing death scenes to capture this monumental birth of a middle eastern people still fighting for their existence today.

Although the grandeur of gods and kings in conflict will push the possibilities of our production technology, the EXODUS movie script has unfortunately exaggerated the human size of this biblical epic. That's right, not everything should be pushed to extreme proportions.

Does the Exodus story report disastrous numbers of flies, frogs, and locusts? Yes. Does the story have bloody rivers, a solar eclipse, and first-born Egyptians dying everywhere? Absolutely. Does the Exodus recount 400,000 slaves exiting Egypt into the Arabian Peninsula? Absolutely Not. Those numbers make no sense, and every Hebrew scholar knows it.

Would Jesus promote personal Bible reading? You probably never thought to ask yourself that question.

Protestant Christians assume getting a Bible into everyone’s hand is a good thing. Christian donors pump hundreds of millions into Bible translation and distribution every year. With that money Biblica, Wycliffe, and The Seed Company crank out translations in new languages. Scripture Union promotes Bible reading plans. Faith Comes By Hearing and YouVersion build out robust apps with audio Bibles. GoTandem even texts daily Bible verses selected for your season in life.

I wonder: Is all this cash and energy well spent? History says “no.”

I do have an axe to grind. I have been disillusioned. I have gone behind the curtain of Christian publishing. What I found explains why reading popular Christian books rarely helps you learn how to study the Bible correctly or understand Jesus.

I submitted my book proposal for Reenacting the Way (of Jesus) to multiple Christian publishers. I had been told the prowess of your publishing company determined your status as an author. If you wanted to get your message out, find a big publisher to market it well.

I knew my chances of landing a book contract were slim. Most Christian publishers are profit-seeking companies just like non-Christian publishing companies. They want authors who will sell thousands of books, preferably on pre-order. Since I don't speak to 100,000+ people annually via conference tours, church web broadcasts or radio programs, I don't have a big audience ready to buy books. So publishing my book runs a high risk for any company's bottom line. That's business. It makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the rejection letter I received from Moody Publishers.

I often open lectures in front of new audiences with the question: what is the most dangerous religious holiday on the Calendar? After a few misguided guesses about burning yourself with fireworks on Independence Day, I give a hint. It's in October. Without fail, someone reluctantly whispers "Halloween." They fold their arms, lean back in their seat and wait for some rant about the gouls and goblins. But that's not my point.

Now I'm no fan of Halloween. Personally I start listening to Christmas music in September and wish all the costume shops would stop taking over perfectly vacant storefronts every autumn. I find no redemptive value in giving my neighbors opportunity to dress up as witches and zombies to scare my young and impressionable children into a month of nightmares. That said, Halloween is nowhere near as dangerous as the Protestant holiday on October 31, Reformation Day.

The Church Divided and Always Dividing

The very term "reformation" in Reformation Day can be misleading. How? Martin Luther and other reformers may have intended to reform the church. But they failed. They ended up dividing it.