How soon will God act?
Unless you lot are a deist (even mayhap a moral therapeutic deist) and so belief in the orthodox agreement of the Trinity implies an expectation that God, by his Spirit, is at work in the earth and in the life of the laic. In one Corinthians, Paul describes the agile work of the Spirit in the congregation at Corinth; in Romans 8 he particularly focusses on the work of the Spirit in the individual believer; Luke in Acts recounts how the work of the Spirit among the apostles and others in the early church connected the piece of work and ministry of Jesus amongst them and in public ministry building. The merits of the New Attestation is that, fifty-fifty though nosotros live in different times in history, we inhabit the same theological time: the season of the post-Pentecost outpouring of the Spirit, and then (in some way or other) nosotros should have the same expectations.
But whatsoever sense of expectation will, as anyone in pastoral ministry building knows, too bring with it the inevitable frustration, disappointment and even heartbreak when information technology seems every bit though God fails to act. This ranges from the fiddling, when something in everyday life doesn't happy the way we wanted or hoped after praying most it, to the tragic when we witness the decease of a friend or relative, and are left request 'Why?'
Part of the issue relates to the language that the New Attestation uses virtually God coming 'soon' or acting 'soon', and in fact this language extends the claiming beyond the pastoral to the eschatological: did the showtime followers of Jesus expect the kingdom of God and that end of the world to come 'soon'?
There are two pocket-size but important words in NT Greek here. The showtime is the adverb tachus, which comes 13 times in the NT, and consistently means 'quickly', in the sense of something happening without delay. (Meet Matt 5.25, 28.7–8, Mark 9.39, Luke 15.22, John 11.29, James ane.19 for examples.) But at that place is also the phrase en tachei, which makes utilize of the substantive tachos 'quickness' or 'suddenness'. This is less frequent, merely coming eight times (Luke xviii.eight, Acts 12.7, 22.xviii and 25.4, Romans 16.20, i Tim iii.14, and Rev 1.one and 22.6). Ben Witherington points out that, whilst this phrase can hateful something like to the adverb tachus in describing the timing of an consequence ('quickly', 'immediately'), as in the examples in Acts, on other occasions it refers to the style of the activeness—suddenly and unexpectedly, rather than without any temporal delay.
In Luke 18.8, for case, the point of the story of the unjust approximate is precisely that there volition be a delay before prayer is answered—just when the answer comes, it will be swift and decisive. Similarly, in Romans 16.20, Paul's point is about likely not that Satan'due south defeat will come up in a short while, but that information technology will exist sudden and decisive. This meaning is as well confirmed by examples of the phrase in the LXX (Septuagint), the Greek translation/paraphrase of the OT, in Josh eight.18–19, Psalm 2.12 and Ezek. 29.5, too as Sirach 27.iii.
This use of linguistic communication connects very powerfully with our own experience of how time feels before and after we are waiting for something to happen. As the saying goes, how long a minute lasts depends on which side of the bath door you are standing. When we are waiting for something to happen, time seems to drag and be fatigued out—yet when the longed-for action accept place, there is a sense in which nosotros forget the waiting in the relief that now comes. If this is true for the trivial, it is certainly true in the tragic. I was struck yesterday by the linguistic communication of the parents of Becky Godden, who was tragically murdered, but whose case was delayed by five years because of police error. Her mother talked of the 'eternity' of waiting, and you could see the suddenness of the relief when the verdict finally came.
Possibly it is not surprising, then, that both One-time and New Testaments draw on the language of painful human being waiting when talking about the nature of God'due south intervention in history. In Is 66.vii–11 (and in Micah 4 and 6), the distress of God's people waiting for his intervention is likened to a woman in labour pains waiting to be delivered. (The double use of 'deliverance' in relation both to given birth and to God'southward salvation works in Hebrew and Greek equally well as English, since it depends not on language but on experience.) This is the thought picked up in Rev 12: the woman 'clothed with the lord's day' is not whatever private, but the people of God pending the promised messiah. Jesus uses similar language in Matt 24.eight: 'these are but the beginning of nascency pangs…'
It is still unremarkably claimed that Jesus (and his followers) expected The End to come before long, and that the failure of the kingdom of God to fully materialise acquired a crunch which led to a reconfiguration of Christian theology. But this is largely based on a misreading of Matt 24 and its parallels, which in turned is based on a failure to understand Jesus' and the gospel writers' employ of the Old Testament.
Information technology is quite mutual to read the whole of Matthew 24 as if it was all nigh Jesus' second coming at the end of the historic period. Just in fact the chapter is in two sections, corresponding to the two-fold question of the disciples at the offset of the department: 'When volition all this happen, and when will be your coming and the end of the historic period?' The first master section Matt 24.ane–35 is about the immediate time to come and the destruction of the temple, but the 2d main section Matt 24.36–51 concerns a more than afar expectation of Jesus' 2nd coming at the end of the age. We can see that in the switch from Jesus' linguistic communication near 'this day' and 'these things' in the first half, to a focus on 'but almostthat twenty-four hour period…' in 24.36. And this is underlined by Jesus' solemn announcement about the end of the first section:
Amen I say to you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things accept happened. (Matt 24.34)
Jesus' saying here is quite emphatic in form, including the emphatic grade of the negative, mentioning 'all' these things clearly, and opening with the 'Amen' formula, characteristic of Matthew'south record of Jesus' instruction, and suggesting recollection of Jesus' actual words in Aramaic. This is very hard to evade; Jesus draws here a striking contrast between the firsthand events relating to the destruction of the temple, well-nigh which we are to 'discern the times', and the distant events of 'the terminate of the historic period' which will come subsequently a long delay, but which might therefore take us past surprise. (For an exploration of all the issues in this reading, see my more detailed blog post on Matthew 24.)
This kind of dynamic is also present in the Book of Revelation. Correct from the very beginning, it uses the language of 'soon' and 'the fourth dimension is brusk' (1.i and ane.3). This appears to set up an expectation of God's immediate intervention in the situation facing the fragile Christian communities. Simply closer inspection suggests something more than nuanced. The word translated 'shortly' in 1.i isnot the adverbtachus (with the sense 'immediately') but the phraseen tachei with the sense 'with suddenness'. And the 'fourth dimension' that is 'near' is notchronos, meaning days and hours (from which we go 'chronology') merelykairos—the moment of opportunity. In fact, the phrase 'the time is near',kairos engus, is strongly reminiscent of Jesus' own proclamation in Mark 1.15: 'The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand.'
The wordkairos occurs 7 times in Revelation, and and so appears to be of some importance. Three of these come in the phrase in 'time, times and half a time', which is equivalent to both the 1,260 days and 42 months (yous can do the sums to check, taking 'fourth dimension' every bit a year, and a month as being an ideal religious calendar month of 30 days) signifying the interim time from Jesus' death and resurrection until his coming again. John is hear stealing a phrase from Daniel, of intense only limited 'tribulation', and using that to depict the feel of Christians as we expect for Jesus' return. Significantly, John also uses thiskairos language in relation to the piece of work of the devil: 'he knows his time [kairos] is short' (Rev 12.12). This is focussing not on the length of time, and so much as the limited opportunity the devil now has, given that he has been overturned past the death of Jesus ('the claret of the lamb') and past the faithful witness of Jesus' followers ('the discussion of their testimony').
All this has direct relevance to the pastoral issue that we started with. Final weekend I was pedagogy on Revelation at a Community Church which is office of the Common salt and Light network (i of the 'new' churches). I had answered a question at the finish of the session, explaining the divergence betweenkairos andchronos and Revelation's use of the terms. At the finish someone came up to me in tears; this person was suffering from a quite debilitating illness, and believed that God had promised to bring healing 'soon'. Understanding the perspective of Revelation (and the rest of the NT) enabled her to motion from anxiety and frustration at the fact this hadn't yet happened, and instead take a sense of promise that Godwill act, and patience to expect until that moment came. This is surely what John means by being our 'brother in kingdom, tribulation, and patience endurance' (Rev 1.nine).
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