True Hope

Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

13 Ὁ δὲ θεὸς τῆς ἐλπίδος πληρώσαι ὑμᾶς πάσης χαρᾶς καὶ εἰρήνης ἐν τῷ πιστεύειν, εἰς τὸ περισσεύειν ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἐλπίδι ἐν δυνάμει πνεύματος ἁγίου.

This is part of Paul's closing. I tend to gloss over verses like this because they don't seem to pack a whole lot in them. They are just part of how he ends his letters, so why bother reading them closely? But as I looked for a verse to write on this morning this one kind of stood out. There is no exegetical nuance to draw out as far as I can tell at first glance, but there is some great stuff in here for the Christian life.


The most important question we must ask is about the nature of God. Tozer says that what a man thinks of God is the most important thing about the man. What does Paul think of God? This verse does not encapsulate all of Paul's theology, but we can learn something here. Paul refers to God as "the God of hope." He also finishes this verse with a mention of hope that we can have through the power of the Holy Spirit.


I am not going to get into all of Paul's argument, though one could preach a sermon on this and get into soteriology. The point is that God is the God of hope. The Holy Spirit has the power to fill us with hope. What is this hope all about? It comes from Christ. Because of Christ we have hope in this age and in the age to come. We have the promise of His provision in our lives. That does not mean we will be healthy or wealthy, but it does mean that God will provide what we need.  We must accept that it is possible that we need to physically die as part of God's plan.


How do we come to grips with that? We have hope in the age to come. We know that because of Christ we will ultimately spend eternity in fellowship with God. Frankly, that is all the reward we need. 


What does the Holy Spirit have to do with this? The Holy Spirit is the one who transforms us from being dead in our sins to alive in Christ. He also sustains us as we live as followers of Christ. The Holy Spirit is vital in our pursuit of God.


So as I look at this "throwaway verse" I join Paul in this prayer for both myself and for anyone who may be reading this. May we have true hope that only comes from God.

Come, Lord Jesus!

Revelation 22:20 He who testifies to these things says, "Surely I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

20 Λέγει ὁ μαρτυρῶν ταῦτα· ναί, ἔρχομαι ταχύ. Ἀμήν, ἔρχου κύριε Ἰησοῦ.

I find it interesting that I read this chapter today. As most people have heard, there is a guy in California named Harold Camping who has predicted the rapture today. It seems that he has been able to discern something in the Bible that leads him to calculate today as the day of Christ's return for His people. It seems ironic to me that he could have scoured the Bible so thoroughly and missed Matthew 24:36, but apparently he did.


This verse actually gives the Preterist some weight to his argument. After all, Jesus says ναί, ἔρχομαι ταχύ. The particle ναί gives a sense of emphasis to the affirmative. The word ἔρχομαι is in the middle voice, so it is difficult to pin down exactly. You can't necessarily put it in the future tense. I think that the word ταχύ is the really interesting one. I learned the gloss "quickly" for it. I checked the NIV, NASB, and the KJV on this. The KJV is the only one that translates it "quickly" rather than "soon." 


I'm not sure that is incredibly significant, but understanding it as "quickly" indicates more a sense of manner than time. For what it's worth, Beale agrees with the idea of "quickly" as well. If we take it as "soon" then we have a strange case where Jesus' version of "soon" does not look anything like what we would consider "soon." But if we take it as "quickly" we understand that when He comes it will be sudden and decisive. That seems to make a lot more sense.


We need to remember that when it comes to eschatology there is a sense of already and not yet. Here in the present age there are some things that Christ inaugurated at the cross. However, we wait for the final consummation upon His return. That's what this verse points us to.


My prayer is the same as John's. I want to see Christ come. I'd love for Harold Camping to be right for myself, but it grieves me to consider all those who do not know Christ. We need to balance this hope with 2 Peter 3:9. Let's remember this as we hope for His return, but also as we share the gospel with those who do not know Him.

Back in the Fire

Revelation 20:10 and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.

10 καὶ ὁ διάβολος ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς ἐβλήθη εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρὸς καὶ θείου ὅπου καὶ τὸ θηρίον καὶ ὁ ψευδοπροφήτης, καὶ βασανισθήσονται ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων.

We saw yesterday that the beast and the false prophet were thrown into the lake of fire in Revelation 19. Here it appears that Satan joins them and this is a continuation of what was described in Revelation 19. However, the language in this verse is a bit ambiguous. The English translations have to add "were" to this phrase:  ὅπου καὶ τὸ θηρίον καὶ ὁ ψευδοπροφήτης because it lacks a verb. It is very literally "where also the beast and the false prophet." This means that the tense of the verb is an interpretive decision. It could just as easily be "are" or "will be." 


Beale gives the following explanation:

The devil is again highlighted as the one who deceived the nations to attack the saints. His deceiving activities are mentioned again to show that he will undergo judgment because of such deception. He will be “cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also the beast and false prophet [supply “are” or “will be cast”]” (see on 14:10 for the OT background of “fire and brimstone”). The devil is cast into the fire together with or immediately after his two fiendish allies. The probability that 20:7–10 is a recapitulation of 19:17–21 makes unlikely the supposition that he is cast into the fire ages after his Satanic cohorts have gone into the fire at the end of ch. 19. Some think that for 20:10 to recapitulate the events associated with the demise of the beast and false prophet we would need more explicit language, something like “After the battle of Gog and Magog, Satan was thrown into the lake of fire along with the beast and false prophet.” But this is not a necessary expectation, especially since the style of recapitulations in the OT prophetic literature is not characterized by such explicitness, nor are the recapitulations elsewhere in Revelation so characterized.

G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation : A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, Mich.; Carlisle, Cumbria: W.B. Eerdmans; Paternoster Press, 1999), 1028.


Of course, here he makes an assumption as well. He is assuming that this is a recapitulation of what was described in chapter 19. But I think that his last sentence is compelling. We've already seen how Revelation keeps recapitulating itself. Or, as I have heard it said, the book of Revelation is like getting different camera angles on a close play while watching a football game on television. The point is that it is perfectly plausible to see this as a recapitulation rather than as a continuation of the same vision described in Revelation 19. 


What this means is that if you see this as a recapitulation you are likely to end up amillenial like Calvin, Luther, and most of the historic church. If you see this as a continuation from chapter 19 you are likely to be premillenial like Piper, MacArthur, and much of the modern church. Salvation does not hinge on how you interpret this, but it is something to consider.