In this episode I explain how to interpret the apocalyptic passages of the New Testament from a nondual perspective.
In this episode I explain how to interpret the apocalyptic passages of the New Testament from a nondual perspective.
A listener asked me about the nondual interpretation of the eschatological and apocalyptic passages ascribed to Jesus. Eschatological refers to the eschaton, meaning the end. Apocalypse literally means unveiling, but it is regularly used to refer to the dramatic events associated with the end of history. He asked if I had done an episode on this subject. So I looked back to see. I know I have talked about it in passing while addressing other subjects, but I could not find an episode dedicated to it. If there is one, I could not find it. So it seems like it is time to address the topic.
Christians, especially conservative Christians, are really into the End Times. They are always examining current events for possible signs that the end is coming soon. The most recent example is the Israeli invasion of Gaza. So-called prophecy teachers dust off their end-times charts and look to see if the Bible has anything to say about these recent headlines.
This is nothing new. This type of doomsday prediction has been going on in Christianity for two thousand years, and yet the end has not come. At least not in the manner most Christians have been looking for it. I think it is because the church has fundamentally misunderstood Jesus’ use of apocalyptic language and imagery. In any case we cannot ignore what Jesus said about this topic. We cannot ignore the apocalyptic passages.
The question is: what do they mean? I think there are two possibilities. One is that Jesus really thought that history was going to dramatically end with a bang in that generation in the first century. After giving what is called by scholars the “little apocalypse” or the Olivet discourse near the end of his ministry, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” He also said, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
If he meant the type of cataclysmic event accompanied with visible signs that evangelicals today expect to happen – with the antichrist and the rapture and all that stuff - then that means Jesus got it wrong. It didn’t happen that way in that generation. But that is not acceptable to Christians because they cannot admit that Jesus might have been wrong about something like this. So the Church has gotten adept at coming up with clever ways to interpret Jesus’ words so that he didn’t really mean what he seemed to be saying. But that is dishonest hermeneutics in my opinion, twisting Jesus’ words to make Jesus agree with us.
The other option is that Jesus was not wrong, but that the Church has been wrong in interpreting these apocalyptic images literally. The church is wrong in believing that stars are literally going to fall from heaven and Jesus will visibly physically descend on the clouds, and Christians will fly into the sky to meet Jesus in the air. Think about it. What is more likely? That this is metaphorical language, or that it is to be taken literally.
Apocalyptic language and imagery are not to be taken literally but metaphorically and symbolically. If that is so, then Jesus was not a failed apocalyptic preacher or a false prophet. He did not get it wrong. He was just interpreted wrongly by the Church. Either of these are possible, and I am comfortable with either. It does not destroy my faith to think that Jesus was human enough to make a mistake. If Jesus was fully human then Jesus was fallible. It is a mistake to assume that Jesus was infallible. He admitted there were things he did not know.
Yet I think that Jesus was right in these apocalyptic passages, and the Church got it wrong. I think what Jesus said was true and that what he was talking about happened in that generation. But it is nothing like the fantastic scenarios promoted by evangelical Christians. The interesting thing is that my approach is similar to what a lot of Christian scholars who advocate, which is called realized eschatology.
So how do I interpret Jesus’ teachings about the end times? I interpret apocalyptic literature in its historical setting. Jesus was a man of his time. The period from the second BC through the first century AD was a time when the apocalyptic genre of literature was popular. This was when the second half of the Book of Daniel was written. It was when the Book of Revelation was written. And we have many other non-canonical apocalypses. They employed fantastic images of supernatural beasts and events and symbolic numbers and colors to communicate a message.
The best modern parallels to this type of literature is science fiction and fantasy, including graphic novels and comic books with their superheroes and supervillains. This is a very helpful comparison to seeing how to interpret apocalyptic literature. I like science fiction, but I don’t take it literally. Recently I have been reading a lot Australian writer Peter Cawdron’s books on First Contact. He has 26 of them. When I read his books I do not take them literally. But they still have truth in them. That is why I enjoy them.
I like dystopian fiction, but I do not believe they really predict the future. I like JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but I do not expect to bump into a hobbit when I take a walk in the mountains. My wife and I read all the Harry Potter books out loud to each other as they were published, but I do not believe in witchcraft or wizardry. But I loved the books.
In the same way I love biblical apocalypses, especially those spoken by Jesus. But I do not take them literally. As I like to say I take them literarily – as a type of literature. That is how I interpret Jesus’ apocalyptic and eschatological teachings. Let me get into specifics and examples now.
First let’s look at signs and wonders. Jesus speaks in his Olivet discourse about wars and rumors of wars. “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines.” When have there not been these things? Then he says, “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
These are special effects meant to capture our attention. Just like special effects in movies. They are not to be taken literally. Peter uses apocalyptic images in exactly this way on the Day of Pentecost. After the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, Peter gets up to preach to the crowd that had gathered. He quotes the prophet Joel, saying:
And I will show wonders in the heaven above
and signs on the earth beneath,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned into darkness
and the moon into blood,
before the day of the Lord comes,
the great and manifest day.
Peter says that this prophecy was being fulfilled in the present power of the Holy Spirit in their lives then and there. There was no blood and fire and smoke and the sun turning to darkness and the moon into blood on that day in Jerusalem. Not literally. Yet Peter said that this prophecy was fulfilled in the apostles experiencing the filling of the Holy Spirit and the speaking in other languages. I think even the tongues of fire and speaking in other languages which are described on Pentecost are apocalyptic signs to be taken symbolically as well.
This is the same way that we are to interpret Jesus’ words. You read his Olivet Discourse and it says that dramatic sings will accompany the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming of the Son of Man. But these signs did not happen literally with the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem by the Romans, in 70 AD.
In the context heavenly and earthly signs and wonders are just special effects, just like science fiction and fantasy movies have special effects. When we watch a movie, we do not believe that these fantastic events are literally happening. We know they are staged and choreographed and digitally created. My son-in-law actually creates motion graphics for a living. Jesus is doing this with word images, rather than digital computer images.
Let me talk about the Second Coming now since Jesus mentions this in connection with the destruction of the temple. He says, “But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.”
If you take it literally, then you have to say it did not happen. Jesus did not physically come in the clouds to earth in 70 AD in the way a lot of Christians at the time thought he would. It was not true physically. But spiritually it is true in a couple of ways. He was talking about the Jerusalem temple made of stone, saying not one stone would be left on another. The gospel says that the temple he was talking about was his body. So he was talking about the death of his body. The destruction of the Jerusalem temple symbolized the destruction of his body, and the destruction of our bodies. It is showing that we are not our bodies and Jesus was not his body. Also historically the destruction of the temple’s sacrificial religion opened the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gathering of people to his gospel from the ends of the earth.
In interpreting apocalyptic passages of Jesus in a nondual manner, the basic rule is to see how it applied historically in his time and also how it applies to here and now. That is the nondual approach. There is only the Now. The past is just a memory and the future is simply in our imagination. Time is an illusion. It is always only here and now.
So the general principle is to apply all apocalyptic language as describing the here and now. It is not about the end of the world in the future. When you read these passages imagine them describing reality now, the end of our dualistic world here and now, the end to the way we view the world. It is about the spiritual presence of the eternal Christ, not the physical return of the historical Jesus. Jesus is not coming again physically. He came in the flesh in the incarnation and in the Spirit on Pentecost and he comes spiritually here and now when we wake up to his presence here and now always.
Apocalyptic language is about the special effects that accompany spiritual awakening. We see this in the special effects at his baptism. We see this in the biblical descriptions of the death of Jesus. The story of the crucifixion says that the sun stopped shining for three hours. Most Christians take that literally, but there is no such thing as a three hour astronomical eclipse of the sun. And there is no mention of such an event in the history of that time. It is meant to be symbolic.
It also says there was an earthquake when Jesus died. This is special effects in telling the story. It is not to be taken literally. There is no record of any earthquake. It says that with the earthquake the tombs were opened and many people arose from their graves and walked about Jerusalem. That is not to be taken literally. There was no zombie apocalypse. It is special effects, included for emphasis. It is about victory over death.
Another important theme in Jesus’ teaching is the Last Judgement, accompanied often by resurrection of the dead, and heaven and hell. We find that in quite a few of Jesus’ parables. In interpreting this, remember the principle that we interpret these as describing here and now, not some imagined future. The Last Judgment is not an event in the future. It is here now. It is about morality and the judgment of our conscience. It is describing when we wake up and see that have been following the ego in it selfishness and thereby creating a hell for ourselves and those around us. We wake up from the self and see that the self is a living hell here and now. The ego is its own punishment.
Anyone who has been around a very egotistical person knows that they make life ad hell for people around them. And when such people get into positions of worldly power they can make nations into a hell and the whole world a living hell. Such a person is a beast, an antichrist, to use apocalyptic language. They make life on earth hell. To see the hellishness of the self is to wake up to the Kingdom of heaven here and now. This is salvation. This is the end of this dualistic world by seeing the one Reality. This is the kingdom of God, which Jesus said is always within us and always all around us. This is spiritual awakening. This is nondual apocalypse.