2012 or predicting the end of the age again

November 9, 3:21 PMReno Catholic ExaminerCharles Gill

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The end of this world or the start of the next one?

Mark 13:5-32: Jesus began to tell them, "See that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name saying, 'I am he,' and they will deceive many. When you hear of wars and reports of wars do not be alarmed; such things must happen, but it will not yet be the end. Motherland will rise against Motherland and King against King. There will be earthquakes from place to place and there will be famines. These are the beginnings of the labor pains. "Watch out for yourselves. They will hand you over to the courts. You will be beaten in Beth Knesset. You will be arraigned before governors and kings because of me, as a witness before them. But the Sweet Message of Hope must first be preached to all the Mother lands. When they lead you away and hand you over, do not worry about what you are to say. Say whatever will be given to you at that hour. It will not be you who are speaking but the Holy Spirit.

Brother will hand over brother to be killed, the father his child; children will rise up against parents and have them killed. You will be hated by all because of my name. The one who perseveres to the end will be saved. "When you see the desolating abomination standing where he should not, then those in Judea must flee to the mountains. A person on a housetop must not go down or enter to get anything out of his house; a person in a field must not return to get his cloak.

Woe to pregnant women and nursing mothers in those days. Pray that this does not happen in winter. Those times will have tribulation such as has not been since the beginning of God's creation until now, nor ever will be. If the Personal Name had not shortened those days, no one would be saved; but for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he did shorten the days. If anyone tells you, "Here is the Messiah! Look, there he is!' do not believe it. False messiahs and false prophets will arise and will perform signs and wonders in order to mislead, if that were possible, the elect. Be on your guard! I have told it all to you beforehand. Jesus told his disciples: "In those days after that problem the sun will be darkened, the moon will not give its light, the stars will be falling from the sky, the powers in the heavens will be shaken, & they will see ‘Ben Adam coming in the clouds' with great power and weight. He will send out the messengers to gather his elect from the 4winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

Learn a lesson from the fig tree. When its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near, at the gates. Amen, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the messengers in heaven, nor the Ben, but only Abba."

Many people look to Revelations to try and pinpoint the exact time of Jesus second coming. The locusts are apache helicopters, the fire from the sky is nuclear war, and the killing of a third of everything is nuclear fallout. The soldiers in battle dress are the Chinese legions. There is a problem with this. In Revelations 8:8 it says, "something like a large burning mountain was hurled into the sea." That burning mountain is Mount Vesuvius.  Mount Vesuvius blew its top in A.D. 79, about the time St. John was doing his writing at Patmos, Greece, 703 miles due east, in the direction of the trade winds. Being due east of the event, it is possible to imaging St. John thinking a third of everything was destroyed. The burning ash from Vesuvius would have seemed like falling stars. The bitter water it produced would have seemed to him like wormwood. Contrast this with the eruption of Mt. Thera, also in Greece and the damage it is thought to have done to Egypt, at the time of the Exodus. Some scholars think that the eruption of Mt. Thera could have caused the separate of the Red Sea some 550 miles due south, which is not in the direction of the trade winds. That means almost all the damage St. John reported could have come from the Mt. Vesuvius.

Revelations 9: 7-12 says, They had the appearance of locusts, was like that of horses ready for battle. On their heads they wore crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces. They had hair like women's hair. Their teeth were like lions' teeth, and they had chests like iron breastplates. The sound of their wings was like the sound of many horse-drawn chariots racing into battle. Their tails were like scorpions, with stingers; with their tails they had power to harm people for five months. Their king was the messenger of the abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon and in Greek Apollyon. The first woe has passed, but there are two more to come.

This sounds terrible. Now look at the picture at the far right in the article on the 15th Roman Legion whose leader was Apollinaris. It is an exact match. The article states this is the legion that sacked Jerusalem in 70 Anno Domino. The article also says they had a crossbow they called the scorpion which was the fear who all who faced it. St. John not only describes the Army that sacked Jerusalem in intimate detail, he even names the weapons of choice and the name of the commander. We do not need to look to the twentieth or the twenty-first century to find an army meeting these conditions.

This matching could go from Revelations 1:1 to the end of the book. Revelations is about the Roman armies as they marched through Judea and the Near East, not the present. So what of the second coming? When is it. After thorough research, I can say I found hard evidence for the date. The problem is that I found several of them. The proof texts are not found in Revelations, but in Genesis, Genesis 1 to be exact. If we closely read that chapter, several scholars throughout history have observed that Genesis says, "Evening and Morning day one, Day two, Day three…Day six. There is no evening and morning day seven. Psalm 90: 4 says, "A thousand years in your eyes are merely a yesterday." If a day is a thousand years, there are therefore 6,000 years of world history. The article Conquest, Empire and Class, Early Agriculture and Herding in Northern Africa reports that civilization as we know it started to appear about 4,0000 B.C. or 6,000 years ago. Around 2,000 B.C. we see the emergence of Abraham and the city states of Canaan. Around 1,000 B.C. we see King David. Jesus was born around the year 0.

This leaves the dating for 2,000 years after Jesus. If we look for the dating of the Star of Bethlehem as a way to fix the date of Jesus coming we look to 7 B.C. A full 2,000 years later fixes the date at 1993. The article on the story even shows what the star might have looked like in 7 B.C. Sorry, that date has passed. If we look for the dating in the Gospel of St. Luke who says Jesus was 30 when he started his ministry, we look to 2,000 as the year of Jesus coming. That date has already passed. We could look to Jesus’ Bar Mitzvah. That would be 12 years after his birth. In Matthew and Mark, that would be 2005, a date which has passed. In Luke it would be 2012, a date which is now being discussed as a possible apocryphal date from they Mayans. The only problem with this date is that none of the Gospels discuss Jesus Bar Mitzvah. Luke mentions Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem when he was 12, but does not mention it in any escatholocial or end times context.

That leaves the date of Jesus death. That was the year 33 fairly well fixed, by tradition and a lunar eclipse. We now have, not one, but 2 dates for the second coming; we are not finished yet. In the Jewish calendar this is the year 5770 not 6000. To get to 6000 we have to wait another 230 years. Therefore, we have not 1, but 3 possible dates for the second coming, assuming the 6,000 year history theory is true.

In our passage Jesus refers to the fig tree. In the article, Of bent over women fig trees mustard seeds yeast and life it points out that the fig tree pre-figures the coming of the Messiah in Jewish thought. Quoted is Midrash Rabbah II 13: 44 which states, "The rain is over and gone: this refers to the subjugation of Eretz Israel. The flowers appear on the earth. This refers to the 4 craftsmen, Elijah (John the Baptist) the Messiah (Messiah Ben David) Melchizedek, and Messiah Ben Joseph.) The time of the Zamir (song) has come: the time for Eretz Israel to be delivered." The voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Who is this? This is the voice of the Messiah proclaiming, "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger of good tidings (Isaiah 52: 7."

In Hebrew the word, "Zab" can refer to a turtle, to a soldier, to God’s people in general, or to a constellation in Heaven. This idea of Jesus being a military leader, although one who dies in battle appears again and again. The problem with applying it for today is the so called kiss principle. Keep it simple. It applies even better to that day. Even Gog and MaGog have their place at that time. Gog is the Hebrew word for a roof. The temple was one big roof. The reference to Gog and Magog could therefore apply, not to the Jewish people, or even the Pharisees or the Saducees, but to the Sanhedrin sitting at that time. Remember, Sanhedrin is a Greek word, not a Jewish One. Revelations 13 says, "Then I saw a beast come out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads; on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads blasphemous names...The dragon gave to it its own power and throne, along with great authority." This process belongs to a time long since gone. The beast is the Jewish High priesthood as it stood in the first century, with the Roman Emperor giving his authority to the local authorities, in this case the High Priest and his functionaries at Gog, the temple mount. That process no longer exists because Rome no longer exists. The 666 refers to Nero. The city with 7 hills is Rome. Before I go to far, it needs to be pointed out that without the help of studying a very cooperative and benevolent Jewish tradition, this could never have been discovered. The mark of the beast is the Jewish phylacteries prominent at that time, not today. It needs to be remembered that church and synagogue were in the middle of an ugly divorce when St. John wrote  and John reflects that animosity.  

The animosity of the divorce has had two millenia to die off. The contestants are long since dead and gone. The processes that gave rise to them are long since dead and gone. Instead of continuing the animosities, we need to return to our Jewish brothers and learn what it means to be Jewish. Then we will not be confused when we read works like St. John's Revelation.  

The quote in Midrash Rabbah goes on to describe the time of the coming of the Messiah in identical terms to the ways Jesus does in our passage in St. Mark. If Jesus is aware of this tradition as presented in Midrash Rabbah, when he refers to the fig tree, he refers to a tradition which has his coming in his time, not ours. He is thinking of the coming of Messiah Ben Joseph as the coming of his death on the cross. He is thinking of the coming of Messiah Ben David as the founding of his church at Pentecost. When he thinks of his coming as Messiah Melchizedek he thinks of the Eucharist and his role in it in his church. All of these things happened in the lifetime of his followers; this passage is fulfilled.

This brings us to the second coming and the 6,000 years. We can look to this with fear, or loathing, but not with certainty in our lifetimes. There are three dates that have yet to come. Two of these are in our lifetimes. One is not, and it is the most likely one. It is possible that we could be hit by an asteroid, not likely but possible. It is possible that The Mayan prediction of an alignment of constellations could cause Yellowstone to erupt along with Karakatoa. Global warming could get us all as could a polar shift. This all brings us to God and is nothing to fear. On the other hand, we could be hit by a bus careening down the street right now.

This all puts being afraid of a nut case hiding in the hills of Pakistan or Afghanistan in perspective. This all puts having to pay a few more dollars in taxes so the poor can have healthcare in perspective. This all puts having to pay a few more dollars in wages so our workers can feed their families in perspective. This all puts allowing a few more migrants to cross the border from Mexico in perspective, doesn’t it? When the second coming does come, does God want us looking out the window, trying to listen for the right car sound as he comes down the road, or does he want us working to put the house in order. Please make the right choice. He is coming.