Satan’s Arguments Regarding the Translation of Moses’ Body
In our discussion of Jude 9 in the last two issues of the News, we concluded that the contention between the archangel Michael and the devil concerned the (physical) body of Moses being taken up into heaven after his death and burial. Now, in light of biblical principles, we will reconstruct the gist of Satan’s arguments.
“First, this is unprecedented. Nothing like this has happened before!” We ought to recall that before the resurrections that God performed through Elijah and Elisha (I Kings 17:17-24; II Kings 4:18-37; 13:20-21; Heb. 11:35), no one had ever been raised from the dead. Moreover, Jehovah was taking Moses’ resurrected body, reunited with its soul, into heaven and not merely restoring him to earthly life!
“Second, this contradicts all justice. What right does the Almighty have to do this? Surely, the body of sinful Moses ought to abide under the power of death and remain buried in that sepulchre!” Remember, reader, that the Messiah had not yet come. He had not yet made satisfaction for His people’s sins (including those of Moses), He had not yet been raised bodily from His tomb and He had not yet ascended into heaven.
This second (and main) argument is very similar to what we find in Revelation 12, another passage that deals with Michael the archangel (7). Here the devil is called “the accuser of [the] brethren” (10). Though there are still many parties, including Satan, who seek to condemn New Testament believers (Rom. 8:33-34), the devil had more grist for his mill in Old Testament days. Before Christ’s atoning cross, mighty resurrection, glorious ascension and session at God’s right hand, the devil could argue, “Look at all the iniquities of Thy people, O God! How canst Thou righteously forgive and receive them? They are all terrible transgressors, and their sins have not been satisfied and their debts have not been paid!”
But then the Son of God became incarnate, entering into our flesh. Our Redeemer ransomed us, paying the price for our forgiveness with His own precious blood (I Pet. 1:19), and God rewarded Him by exalting Him to the throne of the universe!
In Revelation 12, we read of the birth and ascension of Christ (5). Next, “there was war in heaven,” with the combatants being “Michael and his angels” on one side, and “the dragon” and “his angels” on the other (7). Upon Christ’s provision of full atonement and His glorification, “the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (9). This victory was celebrated by “a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night” (10)!
Thus the issue in both Jude 9 and Revelation 12 is legal, the divine justice in bringing the body of Moses from its earthly sepulchre “in a valley in the land of Moab” (Deut. 34:6) to heaven, and the divine justice in expelling the devil and his minions from heaven to earth. The legal basis for both is the cross of our Saviour! Rev. Stewart
“This Generation Shall Not Pass …”
In the last issue of the News, I answered a reader’s question regarding the postmillennial preterist misreading of the book of Revelation, namely, that it deals chiefly with the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.
While on the subject of theological preterism, that is, putting the fulfilment of key New Testament predictions into the (distant) past, I thought that I would also address Matthew 24:34, a key passage for preterists, who believe that the prophecies of Matthew 24, like most of the book of Revelation, were fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, and are not still to be fulfilled in future events and at the end of the world. The signs in creation and in society (6-14), the abomination of desolation (15-20), the great tribulation (21-22), and the darkening of sun and moon (29), and the coming of the Son of Man (30-31) are all past events and not future, they claim. Matthew 24:34 seems to preterists to support this view, since Jesus says there, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.”
The preterists understand correctly that “this generation” was the generation to which Jesus and the apostles belonged. Wrongly, they reckon the word “fulfilled” to mean finished and done with, such that the things spoken of in Matthew 24 would all be finished and completely fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, while that generation was still living. That is, however, reading something into the passage that Christ does not say.
The English word “fulfilled” might leave the impression that Jesus means “finished and done with,” but if so that impression is wrong. The Greek word here rendered “fulfilled” is simply “become” or “come to pass.” The word by no means indicates that this prophecy was completely fulfilled in the days of the generation of which Jesus speaks. “Fulfilled” does not preclude the possibility that the prophecy would have a further fulfilment in the generations following, including our own.
Matthew 24:34 tells us that the destruction of Jerusalem was a fulfilment of Matthew 24. Matthew 24:2 is clear. Jesus’ words in Matthew 24:2 have reference to the destruction of the temple and Matthew 24:16 mentions “Judaea.” The destruction of Jerusalem, however, was not the exhaustive fulfilment, nor the only fulfilment, of Matthew 24.
Many, if not all, of the things foretold in Matthew 24 have a repeated fulfilment in the last days between Christ’s first and second comings: deceivers, wars, famines, earthquakes, pestilence, persecution, false prophets and abounding iniquity. We have no right to say that these predictions in Matthew 24 are only fulfilled when these things happened at the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. One of the signs, the preaching of the gospel to the nations, is something that very clearly continues to the end of this age (24:14; 28:19-20).
Commenting on Matthew 24:14, John Calvin states, “And then will the end come. This is improperly restricted by some to the destruction of the temple, and the abolition of the service of the Law; for it ought to be understood as referring to the end and renovation of the world. Those two things having been blended by the disciples, as if the temple could not be overthrown without the destruction of the whole world, Christ, in replying to the whole question which had been put to him, reminded them that a long and melancholy succession of calamities was at hand, and that they must not hasten to seize the prize, before they had passed through many contests and dangers. In this manner, therefore, we ought to explain this latter clause: ‘The end of the world will not come before I have tried my Church, for a long period, by severe and painful temptations.’”
What Jesus says about these things is in answer to the question: “Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (3). The disciples could not imagine the destruction of the temple except as part of Christ’s coming and the end of the world, and Jesus’ does not tell them they were wrong. He speaks both of the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and of His coming and the end in verses 2, 6, 14, 16, 27, 30, 38, 42 and 44. Thus Matthew Henry writes, “Christ, in his answer … instructs his church, not only concerning the great events of that age, the destruction of Jerusalem, but concerning his second coming at the end of time.”
Many of the things that Christ describes are associated throughout Scripture with the end of the world: the darkening of the sun and moon, the sound of a trumpet and the gathering together of all the elect. It is senseless, therefore, to limit what Jesus says to a few years in the early history of the New Testament era.
All this brings us to the main point of the article. The view of prophecy that finds only a single fulfilment of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24 is sadly lacking. Most, if not all, prophecy has on-going and multiple fulfilments. We have already seen that this is true in the references in Matthew 24 to wars, deceivers, false Christs, earthquakes and apostasy. Surely these things, things which Jesus describes as signs of His coming and of the end of the world, do not have a single reference to events that took place when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
The “abomination of desolation” in Matthew 24:15 is a case in point. It was, as Jesus points out, the prophet Daniel who first spoke of this abomination (Dan. 8:11-13; 9:26-27; 11:31; 12:11). Daniel referred not just to something that would happen in the days of Jesus and the apostles, but to something that happened already in the Old Testament age. The abomination of desolation was the image, the abomination, which the Syrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes IV, set up in the temple in Jerusalem in 167 BC, thus desecrating it and making it desolate. Daniel 7-12 show that what Daniel prophesied belonged first to the closing history of the Old Testament era.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 24 that Daniel’s prophecy would be fulfilled again. It happened when the temple was desecrated and destroyed by Titus and the Romans in AD 70, but that was not the final fulfilment of his prophecy. In speaking of this abomination, Daniel made it clear that this abomination was connected with the worship of a man in the place of God.
Antiochus Epiphanes IV claimed divine honour and demanded that he be worshipped (Dan. 11:31-37). His claims of divinity were mirrored in AD 70 when the standard of the Roman legions was planted in the temple, a standard that represented the power of the Roman emperor, who also claimed divinity and demanded worship of himself. Thus the coming of Antichrist at the end of the age must also be part of the fulfilment of Daniel’s words, for he too will claim divine honour and worship, establishing his seat of authority in the holy place, the church (II Thess. 2:3-4).
It is not at all difficult in that light to see that all attempts to set a man in the place of God are part of Daniel’s prophecy and its fulfilment. All false doctrines that exalt man over God, all the pretence of the popes to infallibility and their efforts to establish themselves as vicars of Christ, Mariolatry, the claims of some ecclesiastical leaders to be the fountains of truth and their demands that the people whom they ought to be serving must unquestioningly submit to their authority, all claims of politicians to have religious authority and to be saviours of their people—all are part of this setting up of the abomination of desolation.
Just as Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation has on-going and multiple fulfilments, so do the prophecies of Matthew 24 and so also do the prophecies of Revelation. The letters to the seven churches are not only for seven congregations in Asia Minor but also for the church in every generation. What John saw in his visions was not only for those congregations but also for us, upon whom the goal of the (Old Testament) ages is come (I Cor. 10:11).
Prophecy is not even mere predication of the future, as so many think. Rather it is God’s light shed on all events—past, present and future—and shed on those events so that His people may be able to see all things, not as they appear in the deepening darkness that surrounds us or as they are made to appear by the propaganda of politicians or the twistings of newscasters, but as they truly are, all part of God’s great design, all belonging to the coming of Christ and all for the good of His own beloved people.
Prophecy almost always has not a single fulfilment but an on-going fulfilment. If this were not the case, most prophecy would have no relevance for us and could as well be discarded, except as a matter of idle curiosity. That prophecy has an on-going fulfilment means that it always has application to us no matter when or where we live, and this is only to say that prophecy is the Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, and not the word of man (II Pet. 1:21). It is always “a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts” (19)! Rev. Ron Hanko
