“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand …”
(Mark 1:15, NKJV)
The last teaching had some very important implications, especially about how we should approach, read and interpret the Bible. We will first focus on the so-called prophetic matters concerning Israel, and then apply it wider in order to determine the underlying hermeneutic principle.
The teaching about the role of Israel during the end times is 99% based on Old Testament prophecies. It was popularised and became nestled in the collective consciousness through especially Hal Lyndsey’s Late Great Planet Earth, which since its publication in 1970 has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Later his other two books, Satan is alive and well on Planet Earth and There’s a new world coming also made a huge mark on the bestsellers list of those days. On Lyndsey’s heels we find Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind-series, the books a runaway success and thus any publisher’s dream. Since the publication of the first book in 1995 there have been more than forty million copies sold, in more than twenty languages, and consequently a constant stream fictionalised end time predictions have been published. (We’re not even including the major sales of the forty special child-friendly versions of the books, CD’s, cassettes, DVD’s, a radio play, a film, wallpaper, postcards, and a page-a-day Left Behind year planner and calendar. Pay now. Fly later.)
In LaHaye’s preparatory study for the Left Behind-series, which was published in 1992, No fear of the storm: Why Christians will escape the tribulation, the attempt later to explaining his theology in Are we living in the end times? and in his Prophetic Study Bible (of which he was the main editor) he constantly makes it clear that all Christians must be removed during the Rapture in order for God to specifically deal only with Israel. Israel forms the centre of gravity in almost all their arguments concerning the end of times.
As the independence of Israel in 1948 is, according to this theory, such an important prophetic pointer to the Rapture, many authors (such as LaHaye, and locally, Johan Malan) have, on account of Matt 24:34, ventured to say that this would all happen within one generation. But forty years after 1948 none of the predicted events have alas taken place, and thus the scenarios of the rapture were ruptured in subsequent prints of the books.
We have shown that it is not Israel’s fig tree which is prophetically blossoming here. Luke 21:28-32, which is concerned with this very event, states that “when you see things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near”, thus equalling the second coming to the kingdom of God. John the Baptist (Matt 3:2) had also, with the build-up to the instating of the new covenant, made it clear. Jesus goes on to say exactly that (Matt 4:17), and in Mark 1:15 He then already linked it to the fullness of time – “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” The Greek word which is here used for time is not chronos, as in the time of watches or calendars, but kairos, which means, “the appointed time, the decisive epoch waited for”. The word fulfil is also used, the Greek pleroo, which means “to fill to the full … to fill to the top … to make complete in every particular, to render perfect … to carry through to the end, to accomplish … to carry into effect, bring to realisation … of prophecies, to bring to pass, accomplish … to fulfil, i.e. to cause God’s promises (given through the prophets) to receive fulfilment” (Thayer). Please understand this important fact: the kingdom of God will not only arrive at the end of time; it started at the first coming of Jesus, and it has nothing to do with Israel.
Sela: Ponder the last paragraph.
- Read: Gen 1-3
- Examine the way this has been fulfilled: Gen 3:15
