A Tale of Two Cities, Part 4: Apocalypse Now—and Again

There is a prototype and an antitype when it comes to “the end of the age.” This will be clear by now for anyone who has been following the logic of the realist view in proper order. It becomes plain why the preterist, historicist, futurist, and Gnostic versions of the idealist frameworks are fractional, and cannot account for the bulk of biblical passages.

A Christ-Exalting Realism

What we have seen is that all created things and events are the ectypal expressions of an archetypal realm—divine ideas, themselves resting back in divine attributes—which comprise the divine decree for the left-to-right drama of history. 

This implies a unity and diversity to the types in the creation, since, in order for them to be types at all, there must be some greater, eternal being to which they conform (so there is unity); but for creation, redemption, and restoration to come to their God-glorifying, Christ-centered end requires not only a bland diversity between these types, but an intensification in their use.

Now I will maintain that Christ is more glorified in this eschatological intensification because His power, wisdom, justice, and mercy are all seen to be more magnified in each overcoming more final and far-reaching versions of demonic power, worldly-wisdom, injustice, and saving even more of the most lost cases. Why should “End of the Age(s)” be utterly different in these respects? It is true that the end of the Jewish age was unique in redemptive history, but what we will see is that there are also common threads which are seen to be common in light of the essence of certain features.

Things that Various Judgments on an Age Have in Common

There is, first of all, always an apostasy of “the outer shell,” as I have referred to it as a few times. I mentioned about Jerusalem, marching through history, and “shedding its old world skin,” so to speak. This is the whole lesson of the removal of the lampstand in Revelation 2 and 3.

Secondly, Christ is the Judge of judgments within time. 1 Peter 4:12-19 speaks of a constant application for the house of God. So that all judgment has been given to the Son (Jn. 5:27) refers to that Final Judgment, Jesus Himself has destroyed people out of the house of Israel who did not believe (Jude 5).

Third, there is a ‘transfer’ of the kingdom in space-time. The modern church has bought into a Gnostic conception of the kingdom as entirely other worldly—either only in heaven now, or only on earth in the eternal state. The idea of some center or seat of the kingdom “moving” through history violates modern religion’s secularist sensibilities. It seems to many to suggest a false equation of the kingdom of heaven to some kingdom (or several kingdoms) of this world. But it would be better to speak of an animating transcendence of the kingdom of God. On the one hand, it always transcends the things of this world—“My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36)—but on the other hand, in moving through the souls of those in the church, it becomes, as Bavinck called it, “the soul of the world,” meaning the conscience and prophet to it.

Think of Jeremiah being told, “See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant” (Jer. 1:10). That has always had an effect on the map of history. When the church no longer functions as salt and light, Jesus is clear that the church in that time and place becomes good for nothing but to be trampled upon. The living church moves elsewhere on the map.

There is a Day of the Lord on Jerusalem and coming upon the whole world. Recall that the Day of the Lord was just one more of these archetypes, which “visits” in perfectly real, yet typological form, here and there, through history. After noting the two questions of the disciples that Jesus was responding to, Bavinck says,

“And in this connection Jesus links his parousia immediately with the destruction of Jerusalem. In the fall of this city he sees the announcement and preparation of the consummation of the world.”1

So AD 70 was both the immediate subject matter and a type of a final version.

Recapitulation—Kingdom Transfer and Warning to Flee

To prepare the mind for this next common ectype, let me remind you of the lesson of Paul’s use of typoi to the Corinthians in that tenth chapter. That these things are examples to us means that the main features are what repeat. Here, the main features happen to be (1) kingdom transference, and (2) the warning to flee or “come out.”

I repeat: the kingdom is moved through history.

The Parable of the Tenants (Matthew 21:33-46). On the one hand, this is clearly unique to the final judgment against Israel—“When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them” (v. 45). On the other hand, the application to people groups who finally stumble over Christ is to any and all of the same kind:

“Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him (vv. 43-44).

Again, the imagery of the lampstand in Revelation 2-3. These were not Jewish nations in the first century. These were historical churches in Asia Minor. Neither the preterist who wants to confine those events to AD 70 in Judea, nor many futurists, who do not view these as figurative for epochs in the church (and, as another reminder, the idea of recapitulation in no way depends on such a figurative reading)—none of these views can contain the application from leaping off the page into the situation of every local and regional church in a given age. And why exactly would anyone want to?

To “flee” means to live unto God in spite of the apostasy.

It does not mean (1) monastic escapism; (2) a rebel spirit; (3) to lack love for those who will not come out; or (4) the same specifics for each Christian.

Here is how it played out in that Judean context.

“So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains” (Mat. 24:15-16).

He had already told the disciples,

“When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (10:23).

We can see that it is not morally wrong—i.e. “gospel-compromising”—to flee in a certain time or place.

So as things come to a head in each era, it is a present group of Christians who are told about Babylon, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues” (Rev. 18:4). Subsequent lessons will have to draw out more of what that means.

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1. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, IV:673.