Last days

[cwb01]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

 

[Gregory Thompson]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

Anything after when it was written in the bible "we are in the last days."

So at least after the Nicene Creed, and probably way earlier.

 

[Marilyn C]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

God has 3 Prophetic Days. Here is a diagram.

 

[cwb01]

God has 3 Prophetic Days. Here is a diagram.

View attachment 311601

So are you saying that the "last days" consists of all three prophetic days".

 

[Amittai]

The trumpets come before the statement (in shortened grammar) "Christ for His Body". We don't know about anything after that. I am glad it shows Ascension because that is when the present eschaton, of our ministry fuelled by the Comforter, began. Last days is everything between. It is characterised thus, "the love of many shall grow cold".

 

[Maria Billingsley]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

Welcome to CF! It depends on your eschatology persuasion. I myself belive the last days at that time was within their generation. The end of the age being the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Temple Judaism. There is also " The Last Day" which will come in a twinkle of an eye. Blessings

 

[parousia70]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

It means the Last days of the Old Covenant Age, which began with the incarnation of Jesus Christ and ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

Those were the Biblical "Last Days".

 

[Spiritual Jew]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

The time between the death and resurrection of Christ and His future second coming.

The following, where Peter quoted Joel 2:28-32, refers to the events that happened on the day of Pentecost as being part of the last days and includes a time period during which people call on the name of the Lord to be saved. We're still in that time period of the last days now.

Acts 2:16 But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; 17 And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: 18 And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: 19 And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: 20 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: 21 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Peter taught that the last days lead up to the future second coming of Christ. I say that because he talked about people scoffing at the idea of the second coming in the last days leading up to His second coming:

2 Peter 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

He went on to describe the wrath of God coming down on people like those scoffers when Christ comes. The wrath will be so complete that it will even burn up the heavens and the earth (2 Peter 3:7,10-12). According to Paul in 1 Thess 5:2-3 those scoffers and other unbelievers "shall not escape" that "sudden destruction" that will come down upon them.

 

[Marilyn C]

So are you saying that the "last days" consists of all three prophetic days".

Yes.

Chronological Sequence of Prophetic Events.

I believe the Bible quite clearly presents an obvious & unmistakable sequence. I see that it unfolds naturally & logically as an outworking of the Divine purpose for the three classes of people recognized by God.

A. THE DAY OF CHRIST. (for the Body of Christ)

There is a time for events that relate to the Body of Christ culminating in the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus.


B. THE DAY OF THE LORD. (for the Nations & Israel)

There is a time for world events, affecting the nations, leading up to the supreme dictator who will gather all people to the great battle of Armageddon.



C. THE DAY OF GOD. (for the Eternal Purposes)

Finally with the ultimate restitution of all things time will be absorbed into the eternal purposes.



I see that it is vital to distinguish to which time-zone prophecies are scheduled. Also, I believe God`s word shows a significant grouping of all related prophetical predictions under specific `Days.` These prophecies are put in their respective categories & the resultant calendar reveals events shortly to affect the entire world.

 

[Spiritual Jew]

Yes.

Chronological Sequence of Prophetic Events.

I believe the Bible quite clearly presents an obvious & unmistakable sequence. I see that it unfolds naturally & logically as an outworking of the Divine purpose for the three classes of people recognized by God.

A. THE DAY OF CHRIST. (for the Body of Christ)

There is a time for events that relate to the Body of Christ culminating in the glorious appearing of our Lord Jesus.


B. THE DAY OF THE LORD. (for the Nations & Israel)

There is a time for world events, affecting the nations, leading up to the supreme dictator who will gather all people to the great battle of Armageddon.



C. THE DAY OF GOD. (for the Eternal Purposes)

Finally with the ultimate restitution of all things time will be absorbed into the eternal purposes.



I see that it is vital to distinguish to which time-zone prophecies are scheduled. Also, I believe God`s word shows a significant grouping of all related prophetical predictions under specific `Days.` These prophecies are put in their respective categories & the resultant calendar reveals events shortly to affect the entire world.

Peter indicated that the last days began already by the time the day of Pentecost occurred (see Acts 2:16-21) and would continue until the second coming of Christ.

2 Peter 3:3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

How does what you're saying line up with what Peter taught about the last days? I don't believe it does.

 

[Marilyn C]

Peter indicated that the last days began already by the time the day of Pentecost occurred (see Acts 2:16-21) and would continue until the second coming of Christ.

2 Peter 3:3 Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.”

How does what you're saying line up with what Peter taught about the last days? I don't believe it does.

Peter was just indicating that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit referenced by Joel was what was happening. As to the `notable day of the Lord,` that specific day relates to the Lord coming to deliver Israel and render vengeance upon the rebellious.

Day - a time period and a specific day.

2 Peter 3: 3 gives the time frame for the Day of the Lord (time period).

First - The Day comes as a thief... (1 Thess. 5: 2) and is not for the Body of Christ.
End - the elements burning up leading to - the Day of God.

And this is what my diagram showed.

 

[Original Happy Camper]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

Hebrews 1:1-3 King James Version

1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

3 Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:

 

[Zao is life]

When the bible talks about the last days, what does it mean?

Both Jesus and Peter compared the last days with the days of Noah (Matthew 24:37-39; 2 Peter 3:6-7).

The last days before the flood began when God said the following:

Genesis 6:13-14a
"And God said to Noah, The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them. And, behold, I will destroy them with the earth. Make an ark of Cyprus timbers. You shall make rooms in the ark..."

The above was spoken by God 120 years before the flood came upon the earth. (Genesis 6:3; Genesis 6:5-7; Genesis 6:13-14a).

The last days of our time began when Jesus declared the following:

John 12:31-32
"Now is the judgement of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself."

Revelation 12:9-11
"And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent called Devil, and Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a great voice saying in Heaven,

Now has come the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ. For the accuser of our brothers is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night. And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony. And they did not love their soul to the death."

John 3:17-18
"For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes on Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God."

Jesus is our "Ark".

So if we believe the words of Jesus in John 3:17-18, then we will understand that just as the generations that lived during the final 120 years before the flood came were living in the last days of their time, so ever since Jesus came we are living in the last days, because God’s judgement has already come, but the decreed sentence is yet to be carried out.

A time is coming when God will once again shut the door of the ark Himself, and in that day it will be too late for those who refused to hearken to the pleading and warning of Noah (read: Jesus) as he prophesied regarding the coming global destruction:

Hebrews 1:1-3 "God, who at many times and in many ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made the worlds, who being the shining splendor of His glory, and the express image of His essence, and upholding all things by the word of His power, having made purification of our sins, He sat down on the right of the Majesty on high."

 

[Spiritual Jew]

Peter was just indicating that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit referenced by Joel was what was happening. As to the `notable day of the Lord,` that specific day relates to the Lord coming to deliver Israel and render vengeance upon the rebellious.

Day - a time period and a specific day.

2 Peter 3: 3 gives the time frame for the Day of the Lord (time period).

First - The Day comes as a thief... (1 Thess. 5: 2) and is not for the Body of Christ.
End - the elements burning up leading to - the Day of God.

It looks like you didn't read my post very carefully since you didn't address what I said about "the last days", so I'll try one more time. In the following passage Peter indicates that the last days would occur up until the second coming of Christ.

2 Peter 3:3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.

Can you see that Peter talked about scoffers in the last days who mockingly ask "Where is the promise of his coming"? That shows that "the last days" refers to "the last days" before Christ's return. That is the context of "the last days". Do you understand my point here?

Surely, Peter was not talking about scoffers who scoff after the return of Christ, but to scoffers who scoff before the return of Christ. So, the last days occur before His return. Yet, you somehow seem to be claiming that the last days extend beyond His return. That completely contradicts what Peter taught about the last days.

 

[Berean Tim]

It means the Last days of the Old Covenant Age, which began with the incarnation of Jesus Christ and ended with the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

Those were the Biblical "Last Days".

ECF's were still looking for the AntiChrist & last days, seems they missed your theory

 

[Benjamin Müller]

The last days, in the broadest sense, would be the days from when Christ preached/was taken into Heaven until his return.

A thousand years is as a day and day as a thousand years (2 Peter 3:8). So days, plural, could be the last two thousand years.

God doesn't view time the same way we do.

 

[parousia70]

ECF's were still looking for the AntiChrist & last days, seems they missed your theory

Not really.
Maybe no individual ECF held that ALL Eschatology was fulfilled in 70AD However, when we accumulate all the individual prophesies that any given ECF on their own DID believe to be fulfilled in 70AD, and put them together, we arrive very near a consistent preterist position, even if they were personally inconsistent on their application thereof.

For certain, the greatest number of the earliest Christians believed that a number of, if not all, prophecies of the Olivet Discourse were fulfilled in the first century destruction of Jerusalem. The challenge, in fact, is to find even one early Christian that didn't teach the Preterist interpretation of Matthew 24. The earliest and most significant writers were in unanimous agreement, proclaiming the fulfillment of these prophecies in the time of the AD70 destruction of the Jewish city, temple and nation.

Here's a snippet:

Origen - Against Celsus | John | Matthew "I challenge anyone to prove my statement untrue if I say that the entire Jewish nation was destroyed less than one whole generation later on account of these sufferings which they inflicted on Jesus. For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem."

Chrysostom - Homilies on Matthew 24 "Was their house left desolate? Did all the vengeance come upon that generation? It is quite plain that it was so, and no man gainsays it."

Chrysostom - St. Chrysostom's Liturgy "Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious Coming"

The ECFs recognized:

(1) that the great tribulation is past, transpiring at AD 66-70
(2) that AD 70 involved a coming of Jesus Christ in judgment

So, while they did not establish a biblically consistent preterism, they were far more preteristic in their understanding of eschatology than most modern futurists. The fact is that the ECFs had their hands full with formulating a consistent Christology (the nature of Christ and the Trinity), and didn't spend as much time formulating an orthodox, systematic eschatology. We know that the ECFs had mostly assigned Matthew 24 to the past, and the Protestant Reformers had a majority view that all Matthew 24 was fulfilled in the first century.

Classical preterism (i.e. The Catholic Preterism of the likes of James Aiken, Scott Hahn, St Cryssostom, St Thomas Aquinas, Eusebius, etc...) sees AD 70 as a temporal judgment of God/Christ.

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Eusebius all understood this basic principle of bible eschatology, and we really ought to take their words to heart.

As St. Thomas Aquinas taught:
The signs of which we read in the gospels, as Augustine says, writing to Hesychius about the end of the world, refer not only to Christ's [future] coming to judgment, but also to the time of the sack of Jerusalem, and to the coming of Christ in ceaselessly visiting His Church. So that, perhaps, if we consider them carefully, we shall find that none of them refers to the coming advent, as he remarks: because these signs that are mentioned in the gospels, such as wars, fears, and so forth, have been from the beginning of the human race (Thomas Aquinas; Summa Theologica, Supplement Question 73, Article 1)

And even St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (AD 336-395)
"Do we romance about three Resurrections? Do we promise the gluttony of the Millennium? Do we declare that the Jewish animal-sacrifices shall be restored? Do we lower men's hopes again to the Jerusalem below, imagining its rebuilding with stones of a more brilliant material? What charge like these can be brought against us, that our company should be reckoned a thing to be avoided?"

Regardless, it's the views of the ECF from AD30-70 who's views we ought to prefer when they are shown to contradict the views of the Later ECF.

 

[Spiritual Jew]

Not really.
Maybe no individual ECF held that ALL Eschatology was fulfilled in 70AD However, when we accumulate all the individual prophesies that any given ECF on their own DID believe to be fulfilled in 70AD, and put them together, we arrive very near a consistent preterist position, even if they were personally inconsistent on their application thereof.

For certain, the greatest number of the earliest Christians believed that a number of, if not all, prophecies of the Olivet Discourse were fulfilled in the first century destruction of Jerusalem. The challenge, in fact, is to find even one early Christian that didn't teach the Preterist interpretation of Matthew 24. The earliest and most significant writers were in unanimous agreement, proclaiming the fulfillment of these prophecies in the time of the AD70 destruction of the Jewish city, temple and nation.

Here's a snippet:

Origen - Against Celsus | John | Matthew "I challenge anyone to prove my statement untrue if I say that the entire Jewish nation was destroyed less than one whole generation later on account of these sufferings which they inflicted on Jesus. For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem."

Chrysostom - Homilies on Matthew 24 "Was their house left desolate? Did all the vengeance come upon that generation? It is quite plain that it was so, and no man gainsays it."

Chrysostom - St. Chrysostom's Liturgy "Having in remembrance, therefore, this saving commandment and all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Grave, the Resurrection on the third day, the Ascension into heaven, the Sitting at the right hand, and the second and glorious Coming"

The ECFs recognized:

(1) that the great tribulation is past, transpiring at AD 66-70
(2) that AD 70 involved a coming of Jesus Christ in judgment

So, while they did not establish a biblically consistent preterism, they were far more preteristic in their understanding of eschatology than most modern futurists. The fact is that the ECFs had their hands full with formulating a consistent Christology (the nature of Christ and the Trinity), and didn't spend as much time formulating an orthodox, systematic eschatology. We know that the ECFs had mostly assigned Matthew 24 to the past, and the Protestant Reformers had a majority view that all Matthew 24 was fulfilled in the first century.

Classical preterism (i.e. The Catholic Preterism of the likes of James Aiken, Scott Hahn, St Cryssostom, St Thomas Aquinas, Eusebius, etc...) sees AD 70 as a temporal judgment of God/Christ.

St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Eusebius all understood this basic principle of bible eschatology, and we really ought to take their words to heart.

As St. Thomas Aquinas taught:
The signs of which we read in the gospels, as Augustine says, writing to Hesychius about the end of the world, refer not only to Christ's [future] coming to judgment, but also to the time of the sack of Jerusalem, and to the coming of Christ in ceaselessly visiting His Church. So that, perhaps, if we consider them carefully, we shall find that none of them refers to the coming advent, as he remarks: because these signs that are mentioned in the gospels, such as wars, fears, and so forth, have been from the beginning of the human race (Thomas Aquinas; Summa Theologica, Supplement Question 73, Article 1)

And even St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (AD 336-395)
"Do we romance about three Resurrections? Do we promise the gluttony of the Millennium? Do we declare that the Jewish animal-sacrifices shall be restored? Do we lower men's hopes again to the Jerusalem below, imagining its rebuilding with stones of a more brilliant material? What charge like these can be brought against us, that our company should be reckoned a thing to be avoided?"

We don't need to take to heart the words of false teachers. You put too much trust in man's fallible opinions.

 

[jgr]

We don't need to take to heart the words of false teachers. You put too much trust in man's fallible opinions.

Given the choice between the words of the earlier ECFs, and the fantasies of modern dispensational futurism; I'll take the former, every time.

 

[Spiritual Jew]

Given the choice between the words of the earlier ECFs, and the fantasies of modern dispensational futurism; I'll take the former, every time.

Of course, there's nothing which says those are the only choices you have. You have the choice of ignoring both. That's the choice I have made. In each case the commentators are/were heavily influenced by doctrinal bias, in my opinion. And, let's not pretend that there was some kind of consensus among ECF writers when it comes to eschatology. There definitely was not.