Fulfilled eschatology

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Comment by Grace Believer on July 7, 2009 at 8:49pm

These are VERY good points. I've never seen any answer to them either. I've asked for a long time now, just where was Jesus going when he ascended up into the clouds? I've NEVER received an answer. Now that we know that nothing but the void and vacuum of outer space is beyond our atmosphere, the ascension looks ludicrous. I say that as a believer who has yet to receive a sensible explanation!

Comment by Edward T. Babinski on July 4, 2009 at 12:34pm

Heaven isn't really in the sky? Seems like the ancients believed it was, everyone in the ANE in fact, and plenty of verses in the Bible state it was. “The heavens are (therefore) the heavens of the Lord; But the earth He has given to the sons of men” (Ps . 115: 16) At creation there was a great watery deep upon whose flat surface the spirit of God hovered, and God called forth a space in those cosmic waters, splitting them, creating the heavens above and then called forth the earth out of the waters below. Thus the land and sky were created. This is very much like other ANE flat earth creation stories with the gods existing in heaven above. And that was the Hebraic cosmos in a nutshell, with a book filled with plenty of examples of God and his judgments and blessings, from manna to lightning, stones and fire, coming down from heaven or divine beings ascending or descending from the sky above the land/earth. Such a view continued to be believed throughout the intertestamental period, in the Apocrypha, including in the Book of Enoch, and also in the N.T. as in Paul's declaration that "the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout," right through the apocryphal Gospels and Acts written by early Christians which depict a real heaven lying above and divine beings coming and going from it. It wasn't until Calvin's day and the invention of the telescope that such a view was challenged due to the discovery that the stars and planets were of various sizes and lay at such different distances from the earth.

He bowed the heavens and came down.
- 2nd Samuel 22:10

The Lord came down [from heaven].
- Genesis 11:5

Elijah was lifted up by a whirlwind to heaven.
- 2 Kings 2:11

Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?
- Proverbs 30:4

Angels “ascended and descended” on a “ladder” reaching to “heaven.”
- Gen. 28:12

Ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
- John 1:51

The ancient Babylonians, Assyrians and Hebrews, pictured angels (seraphim, etc.) with bird-like wings flying through the earth’s atmosphere to a “heaven” lying directly above the earth.

“Manna,” the food supplied to the Hebrews in the wilderness, falls from heaven.
- Exodus 16, Numbers 11 & Deuteronomy 8

Angels who told of Jesus’s birth “went away from [the shepherds] into heaven.”
- Luke 2:15

A “star [of heaven]... went on before the [wise men], until it came and stood over where the child [Jesus] was”
- Mat. 2:9

The heavens were opened unto him [Jesus at his baptism], and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven...
- Mathew 3:16-17

At “the Ascension,” “[the resurrected Jesus] was lifted up... and a cloud received him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9), whereupon Jesus took his seat “in the heavens... in the true tabernacle [tent], which the Lord pitched.”
- Heb. 8:1,2

And Jesus will return in the sky “seated at the right hand of Power” with the “clouds of heaven.”
- Mat. 26:64

The Lord will descend from heaven... and we shall be caught up... in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17

Heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him [Peter], as it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth.
- Acts 10:11

...a door standing open in heaven, and the... voice... said, Come up here.
- Revelation 4:1

And there was a great earthquake... and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart... and [men] hid themselves in caves... and said to the mountains... hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne.
- Revelation 6:12-16

I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.
- Acts 7:56

The “heavenly city,” the “New Jerusalem” “comes down out of heaven” to earth.
- Revelation 3:12, 21:2

God is in heaven, and you are on the earth.
- Ecclesiastes 5:2

The heavens are the heavens of the Lord; But the earth He has given to the sons of men.
- Psalm 115:16

Moreover, the Hebrews had to be warned, many times, not to worship what lay “above” them, i.e., “the sun, moon, and stars, all the host of heaven.” (Deut. 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kings 17:16; 21:5; 23:5; Jer. 7:18; 19:13; 44:17,19,25) They never suspected that the earth was just as much a “heavenly object” as all the stars they “looked up to.” They never suspected that the earth was an integral part of them, sailing among the other “heavenly bodies.” If they had, then they would never have been tempted to “worship” objects that lay “above” their heads--because the earth lay equally “above” all those other heavenly objects depending on one’s perspective.

For thousands of years (until the Protestant Reformation), pagans, Jews and Christians agreed that the stars lay “above” man and “nearer” to God, while Christians added that the earth was a “sink of impurity” with hell lying at the earth’s center. Such a view was inspired by Biblical passages that spoke of the heavens above the earth as the holy abode of God and angels (Ps. 115:16; Eccles. 5:2; Gen. 11:5,7; 28:12; Isa. 40:22; Heb. 8:1,2; 2 Kings 2:11; 2 Sam. 22:10; Luke 2:15; Mat. 23:22; 26:64; Acts 1:9), with sheol, hades, the land of the dead, hell, lying beneath the earth (Job 11:8; Ps. 71:20; 88:3,6; 1 Sam. 28:8,13,15; Amos 9:2,3; Philip.2:10; Rev. 5:13).

Today, of course, we know that the sun, planets and stars lying “above the earth” are not “nearer to God” nor “nearer to a heavenly/spiritual realm” than we are on the earth’s surface. And some people even dare to believe that perhaps God has given man not just the “earth” but also the “heavens” too, to explore.

So the Bible has been radically reinterpreted since it was first written, in order for someone like you to say today that "heaven does not lay above the earth."

As for the story of the bodily ascension of Jesus, such a bodily ascension is only found in the Gospel of Luke, and it says if you carefully read Luke-Acts that only the apostles were present. You may believe it is historic. But it sounds fishy to me especially with the story only found in Luke that the bodily raised Jesus appeared in Jerusalem to the remaining apostles (the previous two Gospels both agree "He has gone before you to Galilee, THERE ye shall him" not in Jerusalem, and so Luke even has to edit out that message at the empty tomb in order to change the story to an initial sighting in Jerusalem).

Secondly, Luke-Acts has this Jerusalem Jesus eat fish and say he has flesh and bones and informs them that he is "NOT a spirit" at all, while the earlier story in 1 Cor. by Paul says "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God," (and the stomach will also be gone per another verse of Paul's in Romans) and Jesus was raised in a "spiritual body," whatever that means, but it seems contrary to Jesus declaring he was flesh and bone and a stomach to eat fish and adding that he was "NOT a spirit."

Lastly, Luke-Acts has this flesh and bone, fishy-eating non-spirit Jesus "lead them to Bethany," just outside Jersualem. Imagine if you will walking through the streets with a flesh and bone Jesus with fish in his belly, and nobody notices, not a Hosanna, no palm leaves being strewn in front of him, no knocking on Pilate's door or the high priests, no shouting by the apostles themselves, just a quiet little group meanders out of the huge city of Jerusalem off to a tinier city on the outskirts, and then Luke-Acts says Jesus' body ascends up above the clouds out of sight while they looked. That has got to be one of the quietest, least obtrusive "victory laps" ever recorded. And seen by only a few, none of whom mention actually seeing such a thing in any of their letters in the Bible. And as I said, it contradicts the plain statements in the two earlier Gospels that "He has gone before you to Galilee, for THERE ye shall see him."

So I'm saying something more radical still, that I doubt the late story of Jesus' bodily ascension as found only in Luke-Acts.

We know that anyone who wants to go to God and the precincts of the Blessed is taking a needless detour if he thinks this means he has to soar into the upper levels of the air. Surely Jesus would not have taken such a superfluous journey, nor would God have made him take it. Thus, one would have to assume something like a divine accommodation to the world-picture people had back then, and say: In order to convince the disciples of Jesus’s return to the higher world, even though in fact that world was by no means to be sought in the upper atmosphere, God nevertheless staged the spectacle of Jesus’s elevation. But this would be turning God into a sleight-of-hand artist.
David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, 1837
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It was the common belief among the Jews that the Messiah would transcend the greatest of the patriarchs and prophets; and if Enoch was translated, and Elijah went up in a fiery chariot, it was only natural that the Messiah should ascend to heaven.
G. W. Foote, Bible Romances, No. 14, The Resurrection, 1880
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The ascension of Jesus into cloudy concealment seems to have been modeled directly upon Josephus’ [first century] telling of the story of the ascension of Moses before the forlorn eyes of his disciples.
Robert M. Price, “Of Myth and Men: A Closer Look At the Originators of the Major Religions--What Did They Really Say and Do?” Free Inquiry, Winter 1999/2000
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There were ascents into heaven made long before and quite apart from Jesus. The Roman historian Livy, described the ascension of Romulus, the founder of the city of Rome, who came to be venerated as a god: One day Romulus held an assembly of the people before the city walls to review the army. Suddenly a thunderstorm broke out, wrapping the king in a thick cloud. When the cloud lifted, Romulus was no longer on earth. He had gone up into heaven. Stories of ascensions were told in antiquity about other famous men, for example, Heracles, Empedocles, Alexander the Great, and Apollonius of Tyana. Characteristically the scene is set with spectators and witnesses, before whose eyes the person in question disappears. Often he is borne aloft by a cloud or shrouded in darkness that takes him from the eyes of the people. Not infrequently the whole business takes place on a mountain or hill. (Gerhard Lohfink, Die Himmelfahrt Jesu) From this standpoint, Jesus’s Ascension was nothing out of the ordinary. Jesus too, disembarked from a mountain, the Mount of Olives, for heaven. The point is that from a mountain it’s not quite as far to heaven.
Uta Ranke-Heinemann, Putting Away Childish Things
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Hundreds of millions of Muslims believe Mohammed “ascended into the sky” riding a horse.

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The founding of Christianity was not only accompanied by miracles, but even today it cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one.
David Hume

Comment by Wesley "Dr Ley" Rose on April 25, 2009 at 4:37am

Think of me as a sponge. I'm here to learn and add a word sometimes.

Comment by Stephen Douglas on June 8, 2008 at 3:29pm

Ed(ward?),

Preterists have a lot to explain just as they blame dispensationalists of having a lot to explain. For instance, though dispensationlists depict horrendous worldwide future events directly ahead, preterists depict an invisible local return of Jesus in the past (with far fewer verses left that speak about Jesus's return someday, a THIRD return).

First of all, there is no THIRD coming; you're talking about partial preterists, and I agree, there's no evidence for anything yet to be accomplished. Second, the Second Coming was not any more local than was Christ's crucifixion and Resurrection: in other words, because it happened at a specific location is not a denial of its universal significance.

You seem scandalized by the preterist insistence on an invisible return of Christ. This betrays the effects of being outside the original Hebraic context: Hebrew prophetic/apocalyptic diction was quite hyperbolic and made copious use of such metaphorical imagery. Most of your critiques assume rigid literalism and presuppose the invalidity of metaphor.

For instance, Isaiah 19.1 reads, "An oracle concerning Egypt: See, the Lord rides on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt tremble before him, and the hearts of the Egyptians melt within them." The Hebrews did not expect YHWH to literally and visibly cloud surf His way into Egypt. It's frankly more fantastic to expect NT prophetic diction to be completely independent of this tradition.

Lack of regard for the Hebrew prophetic tradition also explains the common misinterpretation of the ascension promise. The "cloud coming" was what was referred to, telling them that it was a coming of glory and judgment that they were to expect. Because heaven isn't really in the sky, the only reason He ascended into the clouds was as a physical sign of the spiritual reality that would have called to mind the Isaiah 19 expression: the phrase hon tropon "in like manner" is the same phrase used when Jesus said, “O 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, but you were not willing," in Matthew 23.37.

If you insist on taking prophetic language literally in blatant violation of generic context, yeah, the apocalyptic stuff seems out there and strange. I'm not an inerrantist by any stretch of the imagination, but I also don't assume the worst about every text of Scripture, which is what most non-Christians do, although they don't apply that same hypercritical methodology with other ancient texts.

Comment by Edward T. Babinski on June 6, 2008 at 7:03pm

Views of the Bible that attempt to defend it as an inerrant book include both preterism and dispensationalism.

Preterists have a lot to explain just as they blame dispensationalists of having a lot to explain. For instance, though dispensationlists depict horrendous worldwide future events directly ahead, preterists depict an invisible local return of Jesus in the past (with far fewer verses left that speak about Jesus's return someday, a THIRD return). And they have to twist a host of verses from "the angels shall gather together His elect," to "the coming of the Son of Man," and many "return of the Lord" verses in Paul's letters, as well as the ascension promise (in Acts) to return just as visibly as he left, as well as twisting Revelation's date and the meaning of "Babylon" -- all to make their inerrant system even appear to work.

I prefer the views of non-inerrantists, Christians (like James D.G. Dunn) who have studied the context of history prior to the rise of Christianity (i.e., the intertestamental period) and who explain how O.T. prophecy developed into first-century apocalyptic.

One excellent work along those lines is by Craig C. Hill and titled IN GOD'S TIME. The author has a website of the same name, and a video offered as part of http://www.wesleyministrynetwork.com/
That network also offers videos by folks like Polkinghorne and Wright.

A chapter in Hill's book even speaks about his fundamentalist past.

Also see the new work by theologian Edward Adams, Stars Will Fall from Heaven: Cosmic Catastrophe in the New Testament and Its World (Library of New Testament Studies). Amazon.com allows a lot of that book's pages to be viewed!