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Apocalypse Now?

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of End Times in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library


How will the world end? That question would not have received a great deal of serious thought among common people of an atheistic persuasion a bare 40 years ago. Nowadays, with nuclear holocaust a distinct possibility, it at least pricks up some ears. How will the world end?

Some think, of course, that the sun will simply gradually die out. In several billions of years, then, eventually the entire system will just freeze over and then the world will end, at least so far as all human habitation is concerned. If we’re fortunate, maybe we’ll be on some other planets by then. If we’re not, well, we’ll just go. We just trickle out. In the words of T.S. Eliot …

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Others think that the more likely scenario is nuclear holocaust. End in a few seconds, except for those who are unfortunate enough to survive. They might manage to make it for a few months, possibly even a few years, but eventually the entire ecosystem will be so badly damaged that nobody can live.

At least nobody is snickering quite so much about all of those visions in the Apocalypse that speak of a third of humanity being wiped out here and a quarter of humanity being wiped out there. Doesn’t seem so strange or far-fetched anymore. Others adopt systems of religion or philosophy that hold that we are locked into some kind of perpetual cycle. Even modern science, in some of its theories, has tried to give some intellectual or theoretical credence to this sort of view, with a perpetually expanding and contracting universe.

It may be, but of course for most of us, that’s not going to be too much of a problem. We’re not going to see many of those cycles individually, I suspect. Therefore, it seems a bit remote at best. It becomes a theoretical question. Therefore, perhaps the only thing that the individual can do is follow the advice of Dylan Thomas and “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

You may say quite frankly, “It doesn’t matter how the world ends. What matters is how I end. So long as it doesn’t end before I end, I don’t really care too much. If it ends after I end, that’s somebody else’s problem.” Now that sort of approach is at least consistent. It has a certain sense to it. It tends to breed one of two stances.

It tends to breed either a kind of amorality, not necessarily immorality, but a kind of amorality. We’ve come from nothing. We rose from the primordial ooze. We have no more significance than a piece of dirt or muck, a dying dog, and when we die we go back to the dirt from which we sprang. Morality cannot be based on any kind of transcendent theory, and from that kind of amoral perspective, I choose my existence as best I can and enjoy it as long as I can. When I die, that’s the end of it. As for the rest of the world … well, we’ll see.

Alternatively, it can breed a kind of grim despair, for there seems to be so much in life that seeks significance beyond that. I first began to understand that, I think, when I was a student at McGill University reading chemistry and mathematics 20 years ago. Next door to me in Molson Hall, where I had my room, was a chap by the name of Jim who was an atheist. We became quite good friends.

One memorable evening, I received a phone call from home and discovered that my grandmother, with whom our family was very closely tied, had just died rather suddenly. I passed the door; he saw me scurrying off, trying to catch a train, and he said, “Where are you heading?” I said, “Well, I’ve just heard that my grandmother has died, and I’m heading home.”

He said, “Oh, I am so sorry. Last year my grandmother died. She had lived with us for many years, and we were close to her. Why, I can still scarcely believe that she’s gone. It took me months to get over that grief.” Then he brightened up and he said, “But it’s different with you, isn’t it? You expect to see her again.” Of course, he was right, and in that framework, I couldn’t help remembering the words of the apostle Paul who said, “We grieve, we sorrow, but not as those who have no hope.”

For you see, Jim, for all his atheism, felt that there was something innocuous, something wrong, about a situation in which close family ties, personal relationships, tight connections, and significance in human dealings should then just sputter out in a piece of clay in a box. That recognition can breed a kind of despair, a kind of profound discouragement. It was Bertrand Russell who insisted that the only thing we do have to hold on to is what he called “grim, unyielding despair.” People of less stern minds drop out the “unyielding” and commit suicide.

Now Christians offer an answer to this question as well. They offer it with some fairly clear, but sometimes unpopular, components. I don’t have time to give a full scenario of the kinds of things Christians hold that the Bible teaches in this respect. Let me at least mention some things that are common. Then a little farther on, what I’ll do is take you through one New Testament passage just so that you can see just how the apostle Paul’s mind works when he talks about these sorts of subjects.

Based in part upon the teaching of Jesus (who rose from the dead and claims, therefore, to have already beaten the final trap) and based in part on the teachings of some of the men he taught (apostles, disciples, and others), these are at least some of the components Christians insist upon,

1. The authority of Jesus.

This one might be summed up in a bumper sticker. Now I’m not very keen on bumper stickers, but I’ve been in the United States for several years, and I’ve seen now literally thousands of them: religious, irreligious, political, economic, moral, and immoral. Americans go in for bumper stickers.

I could probably keep you for a two-hour discourse on the philosophy of bumper stickers, but I shall spare you. You get this sort of brash thing: “Honk if you love Jesus.” There’s no way you could use that in France; everybody loves Jesus there. In some countries of the world, nobody loves Jesus if you go by that kind of criteria. They’re far too discreet, well-mannered behind the wheel.

However, one bumper sticker that did catch my eye.… If I were to put a bumper sticker on my car (and I’m not likely to, but if I were), this one would be one of the possibilities. It’s a very simple white bumper sticker with just a cross in one corner and then the words “Every knee shall bow.” That is certainly one of the staples of New Testament apocalypse. Every knee shall bow.

That is to say, the authority of Jesus may be contested now, but if he is who he claims to be, if he is the sovereign God in the flesh, if he is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, every knee shall bow. Either we voluntarily, enthusiastically bow to him by his grace now and are transformed by him; or one day, either when we die or at the end of the age (about which I’ll say more later), we will bow. Only we won’t like it. “But every knee will bow and every tongue confess Jesus is Lord.” That is elementary Christianity. Another component is what might be called …

2. Universal, worldwide accountability.

Now this accountability is portrayed in all kinds of wonderful and sometimes strange ways in the New Testament. Let me read you a few verses from the teaching of Jesus himself, for these verses put our accountability in some very startling terms.

Matthew records, in Matthew, chapter 11, that “Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent.” Now, you must understand that this is referring to Jewish villages around Lake Galilee in the first century, perhaps between AD 27 and AD 30.

This is an historical setting where Jesus had, according to the eyewitnesses, raised the dead, healed the sick, preached, performed all kinds of marvelous works, helped the poor, and insisted on righteousness. He begins now to denounce these same towns, because although they came to him by the thousands and followed him in huge crowds, yet they did not repent. They did not find that kind of cost suitable, and these are his words then.

“Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon …” Two pagan cities up the coast, where Jesus hadn’t traveled. “… they would have repented long ago in dust and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.

And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the skies?” That is, will you be exalted and praised? “No, you will go down to the depths. If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom …” Proverbial for wickedness. “… it would have remained to this day. But I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of judgment than for you.”

Now there are three immediate lessons to be drawn from a passage like that, three things that Jesus simply presupposes to be able to say that sort of thing.

A. God doesn’t owe salvation, he doesn’t owe forgiveness, to anybody.

Because you see, if he can say, “If the miracles that had been performed in Sodom had been performed there and they would have repented (but, in fact, they weren’t performed there and they didn’t repent), then you must either charge God with gross iniquity, with gross unfairness, or you must conclude, as the Scriptures everywhere do, that God doesn’t owe anything to anybody.

From a biblical framework, we shake our puny fists in God’s face, and it is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed now. God could, with perfect justice, obliterate us now. That’s the biblical expectation, the biblical assumption. It’s not that we’re basically good people who slip now and then.

It’s rather that we have a certain track of independence that denies who he is from the very beginning, makes ourselves the center of the universe, and relegates him to second, third, fourth, or umpteenth place. That is just not the way we were made in the first place, so God could, with perfect justice, simply discount us now, and no one could gainsay him. It is argued in Scripture that when he is confronted face-to-face, that will be recognized.

B. There are degrees of felicity to be gained and degrees of punishment to be shunned.

That is to say, some people think that the Bible teaches that there’s a heaven, there’s a hell, and that’s it. In fact, the Bible’s doctrine is a little more nuanced than that.

Even in the courts of heaven, there are degrees of felicity. You don’t have to read more than the parables to understand that. Some are rewarded with more things. Likewise, there are degrees of punishment to be shunned. Otherwise, Jesus couldn’t speak of “beaten with more stripes or with fewer stripes,” or he couldn’t speak of “it will be better in the day of judgment for this person than for that person.” He couldn’t speak in those categories.

C. In the final day of accountability, God has contingent knowledge.

That is to say, he has knowledge not only of what has been, what is, and what will be, but also of what might have been under different circumstances. He has knowledge of the contingent. Now that is both immensely reassuring and very troubling.

Here I’m standing in front of you attempting to explain what the gospel is about. Now let me tell you quite frankly that I was reared in a Christian home. I was reared in a pastor’s home. I had books around me from the earliest times. My earliest memory is sitting in the bathtub being told stories from the Old Testament. When my mother did me, she was efficient. When my father did me, I got Bible stories. Some Bible stories are very interesting in the bathtub. Naaman, for example, who gets dunked seven times.

My earliest memories are full of Bible stories and Bible games. I was reared in that kind of home. I was reared in a pious home. I can remember my father preaching to many people and then going and getting down on his knees and praying for them with tears. You see, he wasn’t a phony. I wasn’t reared in a phony home, and those things have helped to shape me. I acknowledge it.

Supposing instead I had born, let’s say, on the South Side of Chicago, where with about 90 percent of the children who are born the mother doesn’t even know who the father is. The fathers aren’t anywhere to be seen. At the age of six, children don’t know anything about reading or school. They know more about shivs and drugs. By the age of 10, they’re duly incorporated into a street gang. The likelihood is at the age of 14, they’ll still be illiterate, perpetually jobless, probably with at least one prison bout.

Where would I be today? Would I be here standing and talking about the Lord? Well, the truth of the matter is, it’s a slightly ridiculous kind of illustration because if I had been somebody else, I wouldn’t be me. I mean, how can I make that kind of judgment? It gets a bit silly. However, on the one hand there’s a point to it.

I know that the grace of God can intervene in anybody’s life. He can take anybody from any background and turn them around. He doesn’t just take people from the kind of background that I had, although I’m grateful for it. He takes people from the most astonishing backgrounds, yet the truth of the matter is that apart from such intervention of the grace of God, some people have more advantages than others.

We don’t start off fair, but this passage says that God knows it, and he takes all that into account on the day of judgment too, so that on the day of judgment he remembers that Sodom and Gomorrah, though condemnable, though wicked, though still to be punished, are not to be punished quite as badly as Capernaum and Korazin because they didn’t have nearly the opportunities or the advantages.

To use modern cities, it is as if Jesus were saying, “Woe to you, Cambridge! Woe to you, Washington! For if the heritage of Christian gospel that you have known, the availability of Christian churches and books, the prevalence of gospel witness and the obvious availability of transformed lives had been available in Kabul, Moscow, or Beijing, they would have repented long ago. Therefore, on the day of judgment, it will be much better for them than for you.”

You see, God has knowledge not only of what has been, of what is, of what will be, but also of what might have been under different circumstances. He has contingent knowledge, and what that guarantees is that God’s judgment on the final day will be absolutely and utterly fair. Totally, utterly fair.

We sometimes think, “I can hardly wait to get there and tell God.… Give him a piece of my mind. He just hasn’t been fair with me.” However, not only will there be justice done then, there will be justice seen to be done. The Scriptures insist that every mouth will be stopped, and men will hide from the wrath of the Lord. That’s part of the Christian scenario, what happens finally at the end. It’s not a popular one, but it is explicitly taught in Scripture. Then there’s another pattern that is very clear is Scripture.

3. Jesus is coming again.

He’s already been once. He came as a man born in a stable, not a well-known man as far as the courts of Rome were concerned, brought up in rather humble circumstances, but a good man. In fact, the Son of God made flesh, the Son of God in human form, revealing God in the personal, human categories that we understand best.

Nevertheless, the Bible insists that at the end of the age, he’s coming back again, this time as unabashed, resplendent King. When he comes again, according to the Scriptures, he will not come to ask for volunteers. He will come then to wind things up, to all everyone to account. Then he will finally introduce what the Scriptures variously call a new heaven and a new earth or a new order in which there will be no more death, no more decay, no more tears, no more injustice, no more penury, and no more suffering.

You see, the Bible’s ultimate hope is not of a kind of ethereal heaven where people in flimsy nightshirts sit comfortably, straddle-legged on clouds and pluck at harps, with some kind of neon halo at various angles of rakishness tilted over their heads. The Bible’s ultimate hope is of a spiritual, physical complex, a new heaven and a new earth, with resurrection bodies no less. Not simply immaterial continuation, but a transformed order where death, discontinuity, destruction, and selfishness are completely and totally gone.

The only alternative to that in the Scripture is hell. That, too, is part of the biblical pattern, and the biblical pattern does not suggest that the good guys get the one, and the bad guys get the other. The Bible insists rather that we are all by nature children of wrath, but those who come to place their confidence in Jesus and his sacrifice for them, who confess him as Lord, gain the one not because they are better but because they are forgiven.

That is why, ideally, Christians who share their faith with others cannot possibly speak out of an arrogant heart as if they are one up, as if they are morally superior, or anything like that. Christians that know their own hearts don’t talk like that. Rather, Christians speak as poor beggars telling other poor beggars where there’s bread.

So that when I stand before the King of Kings, there’s no way I’m going to stand before him and say, “Well, quite frankly, I deserve the new heaven and the new earth. I mean, have you seen my pedigree? Do you know that my father prayed for me for years and years and years? I’ve preached; I’ve preached all over the place, even in Cambridge!” I will sing the songs that I sing here.

Nothing in my hands I bring,

Only to thy cross I cling;

Naked, come to thee for dress;

Helpless, look to thee for grace;

Yes, I to the fountain fly;

Wash me, Savior, or I die.

I will plead the only thing I can plead, the sufficiency of Christ and his love for me, his death on my behalf. That’s the way it’s going to end up, with everyone giving an account of what he’s said and done. And with God himself having such perfect knowledge, even contingent knowledge, that there will be no possibility of mistake and no redress to a higher court.

Then even death itself, before the end, is pictured in Scripture as something that may, in some measure, be terrifying. Christians don’t like death. Death is the result of sin. It’s nothing to be sought. Christians shouldn’t be hungry for martyrdom, but on the other hand, it isn’t something quite to be feared either.

So Paul, for example, after he’s been battered enough, shipwrecked two or three times, whipped five times, beaten with rods three times, often gone hungry, and feeling his age and his warts, he writes to the Philippians, and he confesses quite frankly, “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.” He says, “I don’t know which one to choose. If I had to choose, to be present with the Lord is for me far better, but probably for you it’s better if I stay, so I’m content with that.”

You see, from that perspective, death can’t be feared finally. That is why John the apostle, an old man, can write in his first epistle, in the third chapter, “When we see Jesus, we shall be like him.” That is, we shall so be transformed that the vestiges of sin and corruption that now hold us down, they’ll be gone. We’ll be like him, and we’ll see him as he is. Peter talks of loving him whom we have not seen. That is why Christians sing things like …

Face to face with Christ, my Savior,

Face to face—what will it be,

When with rapture I behold

Jesus Christ who died for me?

Only dimly now I see Him,

With the darkling veil between,

But a better day is coming,

When His glory shall be seen.

Let me tell you, if you don’t love Jesus Christ, you’re not going to enjoy heaven. He holds the chief limelight there. If you don’t enjoy singing his praises now, you won’t enjoy it up there. You wouldn’t be happy there, quite frankly. But Christians who live already with one foot in eternity and with a citizenship that belongs as much to the other side as this side, they can look at death with a certain equanimity. Not as something to be enjoyed, something that is still a carryover of this fallen world order, but it’s not to be feared ultimately.

Now those are some of the staples of New Testament teaching about the end, but let me frankly admit that the interpretation of some of the texts in the New Testament about these matters is rather difficult and disputed, sometimes even amongst Christians. I’ve told you some of the basic things. There are all kinds of things that Christians fight over as to what they mean.

I heard not long ago of a zealous New Testament CU type who was passing out New Testaments and gave one to somebody who had no Christian background at all. He said, “Here, read this, and I’ll ask you how you enjoyed it in a few weeks.” It was a modern English paperback New Testament that he had given away.

A few weeks went by, and he bumped into this chap sometime later and said, “How did you enjoy that book I gave you?” The chap had no religious background at all. He didn’t know anything about anything. If he’d mentioned Moses and Jesus in the same breath he would have assumed that they were contemporaries. Do some of you think so? Yes, well you see some of those things have now passed from common knowledge as we move into a post-Christian age in the West.

The chap said, “Well, I read it with quite some interest. The first four sections.… Matthew, Mark, and whatever the other two were … they were a bit repetitious. They went over the same turf, you know, but after that it got a little more interesting. Then there were some things that looked like letters in the middle of them. Some of them were a bit hard to understand, but boy, I sure liked that science fiction at the end!

Now what’s going on here? You see, the person has come to the Apocalypse, the last book of the Bible, and he finds out about horns, eyes, a third of humanity being wiped out, beasts descending, dragons rising, and a great harlot sitting on seven hills. What other literary category does he have to explain this stuff except sci-fi?

However, in truth, in the New Testament period there was a genre of literature which later academics call apocalyptic literature. If I were to teach an ideal course on the book of Revelation, I would begin by forcing all students to read at least 500 pages of other apocalyptic literature at the same time. For then you discover that there are certain patterns that recur in this literature. It doesn’t make it all easy to understand, but it makes some of it a lot easier to understand.

For example, horns, in that kind of literature, always symbolize either kings, kingdoms, kingly rule or authority, or something. So when you see a beast with seven horns it means a beast which, in this drama, has the perfection of kingly authority or something like that. Sometimes there are difficulties in the New Testament that Christians do fight over over some of these matters. It has to be acknowledged.

Moreover, sometimes Christians can be charged with a kind of pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die kind of mentality. Theirs is a kind of escapist faith, isn’t it? They don’t face the hard challenges of moral and social responsibility down here. “When I die, I go to be with the Lord. Sorry about you.”

Yet you can never criticize a position for its worst exponents, not in any rigorous argument. You must always criticize a position at its best. At its best, I suggest to you, that in the history of this country alone, some of the most remarkable steps in social reform have come precisely from those who have lived in eternity in their faith.

For example, the founding of the prison society, the rise of trade unions after Whitefield and Wesley, the reformation of prisons so that you no longer forced people to bring their own food or they died there and rotted, the introduction of child labor laws at a time when children 6 and 8 years old children were spending 14 hours a day in the coal mines, and the abolition of slavery.

All of those things were introduced by Christians converted under the Whitefield/Wesley movement in this country, and they have had worldwide impact. My impression is that amongst genuine Christians there is very little danger of being so heavenly-minded that you’re no earthly good. I think there’s much more danger being so earthly-minded that you’re good for neither heaven nor earth.

Christians who live with eternity’s values in view are not pie-in-the-sky types. No, no, they tend to be those, rather, who precisely because they live with eternities values in view, in fact, want to do good while God gives them strength, because they recognize themselves to be debtors to God’s grace.

Now my point in all of this is that biblical Christianity is not finally a cheap slogan or an escapist “out.” You come forward at a Billy Graham meeting and say a little prayer, and then everything’s happy thereafter. Everything is wonderful and peaceful, and that’s the end of Christianity. It’s the beginning and the end. Christianity is, in certain senses, simple. One person described the gospel of John as a pool in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim.

Christianity is a bit like that. You can shape it in very simple terms so that the person who knows nothing about Christianity can see its elementary structures and delight to hear about sins forgiven and a person who has died for them. However, Christianity also has enough in it that it taxes the best possible minds. In fact, it involves an entire way of looking at all of reality: where we came from, where we are, and where we’re going.

Tonight we’re dealing with the “where we’re going” part. In that sense, you cannot remain a Christian long, you cannot truly be a Christian principally committed to the lordship of Christ, without ultimately adopting ways of looking at things, including ways of looking at where the world is going, where the whole thing ends up.

For those of you who are asking yourself, “Shall I become a Christian or not?” it is important that you understand what the whole package is. Now there are some of you that might be ready, even now, to bow the knee to Jesus Christ. Fine, but there are some of you who say, “I want to know what the entailments are. I want to know what I’m supposed to believe about some of these things. Can I really swallow that? What does it mean?”

Now there’s no way in the few minutes that are left to me that I am able to fill in all of these gaps. So then, what I propose to do with the rest of my time is take you through one New Testament passage and show you how it works, show you the kinds of things that are said, the kinds of things that concerned the apostle Paul in the first century.

He is writing here to a church in Corinth. It’s a church that’s been recently founded, and it is a church that is full of rich Plutocrats who have been severely affected by a philosophy that we call today stoicism. In this view of reality, they found it very hard to believe, amongst other things, that there really was a resurrection from the dead at the end of the age that affected everybody, the resurrection of some to life and the resurrection of others to eternal death.

They found it very difficult to believe that because they had been influenced by various streams of philosophy that taught, rather, that matter is intrinsically bad, so when you die it just degenerates. It’s not important. What’s important is your spirit. The only kind of resurrection that is conceivable in that kind of philosophy is a spiritual resurrection.

It’s not resurrection from the dead at all; it’s continued life. It’s what might traditionally be called immortality. Call it resurrection if you like, but it’s not really resurrection from the dead at all; it’s continued life. So these people who had made a preliminary profession of faith were, in fact, in danger of denying something that Paul thought to be absolutely integral to the gospel itself.

Therefore, we’re listening in, as it were, to one side of a conversation. We can’t hear the other side. We can only deduce it from the shape of his argument, but as we listen to Paul’s response, we see some of the things that he says about the end of the age, some of the things that he says about the end, and also how he ties some of those things into the gospel itself. If we do that for just a few minutes through one short passage, then we will begin to glimpse at least how some of these things are integrated in the New Testament.

What I intend to do now is to read you this section, paragraph by paragraph, and offer a few comments to elucidate the flow of thought. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow expansion of this, but just to give you enough comments to enable you to catch the flow of thought. This letter was written about 23 or 24 years after Christ rose from the dead. By this time the gospel had spread over much of the Roman Empire. As we shall see, many of the eyewitnesses who had actually seen Jesus after death were still alive, and this is what he writes.

Paul writes, “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel …” That is, the good news, the heart of the Christian faith. “… that I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.”

In other words, he is recognizing that apparently, by what they are trying to deny, they are in danger of slipping away from their profession of faith. Therefore, he reviews. He says, “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures …” That’s foundational.

Now he doesn’t deal with the death of Christ in great length here, because their problem was not in denying the death of Christ but in denying the resurrection of Christ. Therefore, I shan’t deal greatly with his death here, partly because I gather a speaker is going to touch on that subject in a couple of weeks in any case. However, note that Paul puts it first. It’s the matter of first importance.

One cannot understand Christianity if one looks at Christ simply as a notable figure in history, a kind of fine model, an example to follow. He is all of those things, but he is more. He is a sacrifice. He died, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. If we bow the knee to him, it is because we are acknowledging that his death on our behalf is what cancels our sin before God. Nothing else will do. That’s what Paul says. “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s what I’ve passed on to you. It’s of first importance.”

He says, “… that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” This “falling asleep” is metaphorical language for dying. “Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”

The word for “one abnormally born” here is, quite literally, an abortion or a fetus. The argument seems to  reveal himself to one who was an ugly, bloody thing without proper fullness of life, something like that. Paul puts himself down a little bit in this, but he does say that he was the last one who saw Christ.

Now notice, he is saying also to the Corinthians, “Five hundred people saw him. Many of them are still alive. If you return SAE’s (stamped, addressed envelopes) to me, I’ll give you their names and addresses so that you can go and check it out yourself. You are denying the possibility of resurrection, but the entire Christian structure of thought is predicated on Christ’s resurrection which, in fact, was seen by witnesses, witnesses who are willing to die for it. Not in mass hallucinations but in encounter after encounter after encounter after encounter.

Then Paul makes some brief remarks about his apostleship that we’ll skip. Then he comes to the heart of their problem when he says, “But if it is preached …” That is, amongst you people. “… that Christ has been raised from the dead …” A commonplace in Christianity. That’s part of the gospel; that Christ was raised from the dead. “… how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

That is, no resurrection principally and in particular, no resurrection at the end of the age. “How can some of you say that there is no resurrection at the end and no resurrection principally when the very heart of Christian confession is that Christ did rise from the dead?” “If there is no resurrection of the dead …” That is, principally. “… then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”

Now that’s an extremely important way of looking at things, for this insists that faith in the Scriptures is not a kind of blind trust in what may or may not be true. Faith, over against knowledge. Rather, it is an apprehension of and a trust in that which is true and has, in certain measures, been attested by historical witnesses.

In the New Testament, Christian faith, although it involves personal trust, is not ever something that is cast over against knowledge. That is the way it is regularly paraded in the press today. On the one hand, we do science. We read the natural sciences, and we’re dealing with knowledge. Then you go to church. Now you’re dealing with faith.

Well, yes, in one sense that’s true. There are elements of faith in one that are somewhat different than the elements of faith that are also in the other. I mean, have you ever seen an electron or a quark? On the other hand, the elements that are there in the church are somewhat different, yet the church has always insisted that the apprehension of the biblical truths is not simply blind trust in what may or may not be true but a God-given ability to trust, to apprehend, certain facts of history and him who is at their center, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, Paul is not very patient with those who want a faith that is no more than a leap in the dark. He insists that if the central truths of Christianity are false then “our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Paul says, “More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God …” That is, all these people insistent they did see Jesus rise from the dead (including the apostles) were all liars.

“… for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise Christ from the dead if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile; and you are still in your sins.”

Now here Paul says, in effect, “Not only is your faith futile, but because the dilemma of the human race still stands whether Christ rose from the dead or not, you are still in your sins. You are still under God’s curse. You still have no way of overcoming your sins and no way of being forgiven by this Holy God.” So suddenly there are implications to this denial of a possibility of resurrection at the end.

Moreover, it also follows that “… those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.” Those that you thought were Christians and died (have already gone), you can’t say, “Oh, they’re with the Lord, and they will be raised on the last day,” because there is no resurrection on the last day, our faith is vain, Christ hasn’t risen from the dead, and they’re damned. That’s what Paul says. “No, if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”

In other words, if Christianity is no more than an encouragement to believe in Jesus during our threescore years and ten, or whatever it is, and then you die and discover the whole thing is a joke or a farce, and you’re really lost.… Or worse yet, you just die, and you’re entombed or you’re cremated, and that’s the end of the thing, then you cannot commend Christianity on making good people today, even if it’s not real tomorrow.

Paul says, “No, we’re to be pitied above all men because we’re dupes, we’re fools, we’re liars, and we’re frauds.” For the heart of Christianity insists that all of present reality be looked at from eternity’s perspective; otherwise, it’s no more Christianity. So then Paul gives an alternative. He says, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, and he is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

Now in the harvests of the Middle East and many other hot countries, there is often an early harvest and a late harvest. I’m a Canadian. You don’t get early harvests and late harvests. You’re lucky if you get one before the winter sets in. With temperatures at 40 below you don’t expect another harvest. However, in parts of the earth with a more Mediterranean climate, you can get an early harvest and a late harvest.

That’s the kind of imagine that is being used here. You get an early harvest and late harvest. Indeed, you can almost do continuous planting so that the harvest can extend over a long period of time. The part that you have cultivated first, that comes in with the firstfruits. Then the part that you have done a little later, it’s coming in with later fruit, you see.

In this perspective, Jesus is looked upon as the firstfruits of the resurrection. That is, he’s the beginning of it, but there’s the rest of the harvest to come. Now that’s the argument that Paul uses. “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man …” That is, death in the human race has come, biblically speaking, from the fallenness and the rebellion of our first parents. It came from humankind. Its immergence was out of human rebellion.

“… so also the resurrection of the dead comes through a man.” That is, the God-man; the man, Christ Jesus. A man died for us, the God-man himself. Our death, our curse, came from human rebellion. Our hope lies in one who, as a human, obeyed his Father perfectly. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

That is to say, there are two humanities that are set up. One humanity coming from Adam which is characterized by a kind of rebellion, a kind of self-centeredness. Not every human being is as evil or as wicked as he or she might be, but all of us are characterized by a self-centeredness that excludes God or relegates him to a far-distant authority.

However, under Christ there is another humanity that is set up. Those in him, those under this humanity, they live, they are transformed, they have new life, they are given his forgiveness and his spirit, they are changed already, and they become part of a new humanity which is heading to his kind of resurrection.

He says, “But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; and then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”

Now, I was speaking at the Round this morning and used an illustration I would like to turn in a slightly different direction, if I may. It came out of World War II. Oscar Cullmann used the terminology first, so far as I know. He pointed out that when the troops landed on the beaches of Normandy (called D-Day), within three weeks they had landed about a million men, a great deal of war materiel, and endless numbers of backup troops. The ships were still offshore. They had secured their bases, and at that point, the war was principally over.

The Russians were making great progress on the Eastern front at that point. After a loss of close to 20 million people, they were now advancing steadily against the Nazis. The soft underbelly of Europe was gradually being attacked. North Africa had been cleared out, and now with the landing of the Americans with all of their wealth, their tanks, and the troops from the Commonwealth (or what became the Commonwealth), there was no way that Germany was going to win. The war was over.

However, that didn’t mean that the war was over. The war was over in principle, but in fact, there was a great deal of work to be done and much suffering and loss until V-E Day. Now that’s something of the way the New Testament pictures the period that we’re in. When Jesus came, he died on the cross; then he rose, and he said, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.”

That is to say, all of God’s sovereignty is mediated through this Christ who died for our sins. His will, his sovereignty, his reign, and his kingdom is still contested; but one day it won’t be. Between his first coming and his second coming, we stand, as it were, between D-Day and V-E Day. There’s a lot of suffering for the Christian troops yet. Do you realize that there have been more martyrs in our generation than in the entire history of the church up to this point?

David Barrett is probably the world’s foremost demographer of the Christian church. You might call him that. He says that there are now something like 350,000 martyrs a year. That’s mind-blowing. We have it so easy in the West. Oh, but there will be suffering yet. There will be witness. There will be struggle. There will be challenge. There will be debate. Some will rise; some will fall. Jesus himself said that there would continue to be wars and rumors of wars, and the end is not yet.

We live in an age of struggle, and that will continue. It doesn’t mean that we don’t struggle for peace, that we don’t work hard at evangelism, or that we don’t seek to do what is right and good, but these things will continue because we still live between D-Day and V-E Day. The struggle isn’t over yet. However, V-E Day is coming, and it’s sure. It’s inevitable, for D-Day has already happened, and the crucial battle has been fought.

Because the crucial battle has been fought, V-E Day is assured. It’s only a matter of time. That’s what Paul here presupposes. “He must reign. He is reigning now, and he must reign until he has put all of his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be put under his feet is death.” Then death will be over.

We pass on. He says a little farther on, “Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead?” Now some of Mormon persuasion understand that to mean that what you can do as a Mormon believer is be baptized for somebody who has already been dead, and somehow they get saved (as it were) after the fact because you’ve been baptized for the dead.

Well, there have been about 40 different interpretations of this verse in the history of the church, because it’s the only place in the whole Bible where the expression “baptism for the dead” crops up. However, what I suspect it means is something very simple. The particular preposition for here could easily mean in exchange for, or instead of, the dead.

Baptism in the New Testament is associated with conversion. When you got converted, you got baptized. What he’s saying is, “What shall happen to those people who are being baptized in exchange for the dead, instead of the dead? That is, there are Christians that are dying; those are the dead. There are still others being converted and getting baptized, so the cycle goes on.”

“If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?” In other words, “Some die, some are getting baptized to replace them (instead of them), and the cycle goes on, but what’s the point of the whole game if people are getting converted but it doesn’t mean a thing? At the end of the day, there’s no resurrection and no accountability, and we just die like dogs. What’s the point of the whole thing? Why are we still involved in this game?”

“And as for us …” That is, we apostles. “… why do we endanger ourselves every day?” Paul says, “I die every day—I mean that brothers—just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus …” It may be that Paul was in the arena there, fighting wild beasts literally, or it may have been a metaphor for some of the terrible struggles he faced in that city. “… what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ ”

I love the apostle Paul. At least he’s honest. None of this double-think religious stuff. He says, “If Christianity doesn’t hold up in its rudiments, then let’s be hedonists. It makes a lot more sense. Do not be misled. Bad company corrupts good character.” In other words, he is charging the Christians in Corinth with having let pagan elements into the church who have corrupted the entire teaching and background of biblical thought.

“Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God …” That is, some are claiming to be Christians who aren’t at all, even in the church. “I say this to your shame,” he says. “But someone may ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?’ ”

We’re inclined to say, “Hmm … good question!” Paul says, “How foolish!” Maybe it wasn’t such a good question. What does he mean by saying it was foolish? Well, he explains. He says the reason why it’s foolish is because there are at least paradigms in nature to give you at least some inkling of what is going on.

Listen to the paradigms he uses. “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body.” In other words, if you want to grow an oak tree, you don’t plant an oak tree; you plant a seed. If you want to grow a tulip, you don’t plant a tulip; you plant a tulip bulb, and what comes up is not a tulip bulb, it’s a tulip.

He says there are already in nature at least some kinds of paradigms where you plant something; and in fact, many of these seeds actually, in some sense, die. That is, their outer shell decays. It provides the nutrients for the new life that springs up, and what is left at the end of the day is not a seed down there at all. What comes up is something different.

Paul says the resurrection is something like that. Therefore, you die. Yes, that’s true. You die, and what comes back is not quite like what was. What comes back has some kind of continuity with what was, but it’s much better. The chrysanthemum is much better than the chrysanthemum seed. The oak is much better than the acorn. In that sense, what comes up is related to what has gone down and what has died, but it’s much better. It transcends it.

He says that’s something like what our bodies will be like. Now of course what he’s thinking about here is the Lord Jesus himself. For the Scriptures insist that when Jesus walked on this planet as a man, he was hungry, thirsty, tired, and had to wash his feet. He was an ordinary human being so far as his physical prowess and physical circumstances were concerned, but when he rose from the dead, there were some strange things about that body. You only get glimpses of them, but there are some strange things.

It was physical enough, all right. He could say, “Touch me; handle me. See, I’m not just a ghost.” It is recorded of him that he took honeycomb and fish, and he ate. On the other hand, when the room was locked, and the apostles were still scared, he suddenly appeared in a closed room. What shall we say? Shall we use the language of modern science fiction? I don’t know any better language. He materialized in front of them.

Moreover, this was not some kind of visionary experience that had no connection with the body that had hung from the cross, because after all, he could say, “Look at my hands and my side.” Moreover, the tomb was empty. It’s not as if the body was still there, “a-moldering in the grave” like John Brown’s, and the spirit was going on, because there was no body in the tomb anymore.

What could be handled, touched, seen, and could eat was a body that was connected with the old one in some sense. Now of course, I don’t have all the explanations for that. I don’t know how Christ will introduce a new heaven and a new earth. I don’t know. I don’t know how the terrifying visions of the Apocalypse will come to pass. I don’t know.

On the other hand, once one has gotten by the preliminary step of Christian faith, the incarnation (the Son of God made flesh, the eternal Son of God dying for our sins) and Christ’s resurrection, then a few little details like a resurrection and a new universe at the end don’t seem very difficult to swallow. Paul insists that they’re bound up with the same person, the same witness. So Christians think, move, and confess Christ out of that broader context.

Now then what shall we say about the rest of this passage? I’m not going to press on to the end. Rather, I want to simply read one last part. Paul says, “I declare to you that flesh and blood …” That is, ordinary humanity. That’s a Jewish expression. Ordinary humanity, humanity as we know it. “… cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery …” Now, mystery does not mean, in Paul’s language, that which is mysterious, that which is weird. What it means rather is something that has been hinted at in the past in God’s revelation, but rather hidden and muffled, and is now open and to be declared.

This is it. He says, “We shall not all sleep …” There’s that euphemism for death again. “We shall not all sleep [we shall not all die] …” That is, Christians will not all die, but we will all be changed. Of course many people put up that sign in church crËches. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.” However, that’s not quite what Paul has in mind either. Rather, he means we shall not all die, but we shall all be transformed. That is, we shall get the resurrection body whether we die or not.

He says, “… in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal must put on immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?’ ”

Now that is the framework in which Christians think of apocalypse, of the final denouement at the end of the age. I suggest to you that it’s so bound up with who Jesus is that is very difficult to assess it without coming to firm grips with who Jesus is. When you do come to grips with who he is, his claims, the eyewitnesses to the resurrection, and the transformed lives of those first witnesses and of the millions who have followed in his train, then it’s a very small thing to swallow the rest of what the Scriptures say in this respect, because ultimately, those are the kinds of things that Jesus taught and Jesus’ disciples taught.

They provide a framework for looking at all of reality that makes sense of it. It makes coherent framework, a sense in which human beings are accountable and God is just. He will wrap things up at the end of the age. History is linear; it is going somewhere. The world does not end neither with a bang nor a whimper. It ends with the return of Jesus Christ, who calls each one of us to give an account and who will be entirely impartial in that final accounting. Our only plea then, as it is now, will be the death of Jesus Christ on our behalf.

I’m going to lead now in prayer. I’m going to pray for all of us, that we might understand these things more clearly and learn to think in biblical array in order that our minds might be increasingly conformed to Christ’s mind, that we may learn to think his thoughts after him. I’m also going to pray, in a few moments, a simple prayer for those who may not know Christ as their own Savior.

If where you sit, as you pray with me, as you think the words through in your own mind, you make this prayer your own.… If you hunger to know this Christ personally and to adopt this framework as your own (this principal submission to the lordship of Christ that is grounded on his death but whose hope is grounded on his return), then pray these things with me as I pray.

Then afterwards, if you would, come and talk with me. I’ll be here for a little while. Come and talk with me. I’ll give you some literature, I’ll introduce you to some other Christians who could lead you into Bible studies that would prove helpful, and you can be put in touch with those who try to think through some of these things ahead of you. Let us bow together in prayer.

We marvel at your goodness, Heavenly Father, in sending your own dear Son to be our Savior. It is astonishing that he who has made us should also stoop to become one with us and then die for us. We thank you that he did not remain in the tomb. We thank you that he rose again and that all of your sovereignty is mediated through him, so that he can say, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth.”

We thank you that he reigns even now, and he must reign until he has put every enemy under his feet. We look forward, Lord God, to that day when his reign is no longer contested, when he returns openly as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, when every knee shall bow. And so with the church in every generation, especially the suffering church in every generation, we too cry, as they cry in the Apocalypse, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

We hunger even now for a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness, where there will be no more injustice, no more death, no more tears, no more hate, no more selfishness, and no more lust, but generosity, praise, gratitude, and glory to the Lamb who was slain. We too cry, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

Grant that we who have come to know you by faith in Christ Jesus might live increasingly with eternity’s values in view, not squeezed into the world’s mold by the pressures of materialism, the pressures of popular conformity, but living already with the desire to bank, as it were, in heaven, living our lives in the light of what we will say when we stand before the throne of your Son’s majesty. Father, we also pray for some who have come tonight who do not know you. Work in their hearts and lives, we pray.

My words don’t convert anybody. It is your Spirit working in the hearts and lives of men and women who changes them from the inside. Change them from the inside and open their eyes so that they can see the realities that are there. Grant transforming belief to some tonight, not belief that casts off the care of knowledge and reason but belief, rather, in things that have happened and in him whose word is true and who will call each one of us to give an account. We ask this in Jesus’ name.

Now if you are not a Christian and you would like to pray these things after me, then pray them in the quietness of your own heart.

Merciful God, I confess I do not understand all of these things. Some of them seem a bit strange, but I have come to see that Jesus Christ is none less than your dear Son and that he died for sinners like me. Forgive me, not because I deserve it but precisely because he came to love and forgive sinners. Work in my own heart so that I might have the kind of faith I ought to have. Take away my blindness and let me see clearly who Jesus is and live for him under his lordship, in anticipation of his return, with Christians who themselves are hungry for that return.

Please give me your Spirit. Change me so that one day I, too, may be transformed and enjoy the kind of resurrection body that Jesus himself has and participate in this new heaven and new earth, the home of righteousness. Grant me, too, the desire now to live faithfully in submission to the lordship of Christ, acknowledging that forgiveness of my sins depends on him, as long as you give me life and breath. This I ask in Jesus’ name, amen.