Knowing the Things That Make For Peace

 

Posted on 4.27.2015

Last week I wrote about preterism and the work of N.T. Wright.

Specifically, we discussed how when Jesus speaks about a coming judgment, especially in his Olivet Discourse (Mark 13, Matthew 24, Luke 21), he wasn't talking about an otherworldly hell but about the destruction of Jerusalem. As N.T. Wright has observed, "in those famous passages in the Gospels, Jesus is talking not about the end of the world but about the fall of Jerusalem."

In a comment to that post a reader asked the following question:

"If Jesus was simply telling people not to rebel against Rome, how is that relevant to us today? Or should we not try to find personal relevance in the words of Jesus?"

That's a great question, one I wrote about last year:

Again, as scholars like N.T. Wright have pointed out Jesus seemed acutely aware that his people were on a lethal collision course with Rome. If Israel did not repent, if Israel did not listen, she was going to revisit the catastrophe when the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple. It was all going to happen again, Jesus prophesied. History was repeating itself.

Only this time it would be Rome dropping the hammer.

Read more at http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2015/04/knowing-things-that-make-for-peace.html?utm_content=buffera036e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer