Jesus describes His future return to earth as the renaissance or re-birth125, Luke as the universal restoration126 and the liberation127, John as the millennium of Christ’s rule with His saints128 and Paul as the restoration of the physical creation129. Whilst Christ has already been raised far above all earthly and celestial authority, at His coming the world will be shown whose authority they are really under. Christ has defeated the devil and will one day subdue all earthly authority. But that cannot occur until He comes with His angels and saints. In the meantime, the darnel grows alongside the wheat. The earthly authorities will never universally take a lead from the Church in the current age: historical religious and cultural formation has seen to that.
A united witness to the world
“And this gospel of the Kingdom shall be proclaimed in all the world for a witness to all nations and then the end shall come”130
The focus of such a proclamation would be the Kingdom to be realized at Christ’s coming and how to be prepared for it. It is to be noted that whenever the disciples were sent out by Jesus to preach “the gospel of the kingdom” during His earthly lifetime, they could not have made reference to their Lord’s impending death, not least because they were not expecting it nor had they any understanding of its purpose. That of course is not the case for the Church, yet it should be noted that in terms of Jesus’ own preaching, the only passage of substance in which He refers to His Passion and its purpose is in John chapter six. Here the Lord bemuses His Jewish hearers by speaking of Himself as the “bread that came down from heaven”, telling them that His flesh is in some sense food that is to be given for the life of the world (v51) and that only those who eat His flesh and drink His blood can experience spiritual life (v53), know His interior presence (v56) or attain to the first resurrection (v54).
In other words, the entire focus of Christ’s teaching regarding His death, as was the case at the last supper with His disciples, was in the context of the Eucharist. So must a 124 Heb7:25-26
125 Mt19:28
126 Acts3:21
127 Lk21:28
128 Rev20:4-5
129 Rom8:21
130 Mt24:14
21
unified gospel witness to the world affirm the Eucharist to be central to the life of the Church and vital to the lives of Christ’s would-be disciples if they are “to be accounted worthy of that age”131, being the realization of the Kingdom of Christ within a restored heaven and earth.
The “Elijah” to come
“Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”132
What has already been disclosed impacts upon prophesies concerning the “Elijah”
who was to prepare the people of God for final judgement as Malachi affirms above. Many today are confused about the matter, as were Jesus’ first disciples:
“And the disciples put this question to (Jesus), “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first? He replied: “Elijah is indeed coming, and he will set everything
right again. However, I tell you that Elijah has come already and they did not recognize
him but treated him as they pleased, and the Son of Man will suffer similarly at their hands. Then the disciples understood He was referring to John the Baptist”133
Old Testament prophecy had envisaged a prophet coming with the authority of Elijah to restore everything so that Israel might be ready to receive their promised Christ, who would exercise judgement, eradicate wickedness from the world and initiate the Kingdom of God within it. Through the prophetically unexpected turn of events, various aspects of these prophecies have been deferred. Although Jesus has already done everything necessary to accomplish it, creation will not be restored until the conclusion of the current age134. The same terminology ( apokatastasis panta) is utilized to describe Jesus’ universal mission and Elijah’s ecclesiological mission. Jesus affirms that “Elijah” will restore all things ( apokatastesai -future verb) and Luke affirms that Jesus will appear at the time of the restoration of all things ( apokatastaseos - genitive noun). Clearly their respective tasks differ vastly in scope and majesty: the one is to prepare a people, the other has provided in Himself the means for the salvation of all true humanity. Both missions were expected to be fully restorative within their respective spheres of operation.
But in what sense could John the Baptist be said to have sorted everything out or set everything right again? Jesus’ assurances concerning restoration through a coming Elijah was made after John had been beheaded. In responding to the query from His disciples He had said “Elijah is indeed coming to restore everything but if you are willing to receive, then (John) is the ‘Elijah to come’”135. But the Jewish nation was not willing to receive either
‘Elijah’ or Jesus; the bride was not ready for her Husband. The friend of the Bridegroom was unable to prepare the way of the Lord and a make a path straight for Him. The Lord’s path proved to be anything but straight, more especially in His dealings with the religious 131 Lk20:35
132 Mal4:5-6
133 Mt17:10-13 [The two phrases I have highlighted can only mean that Jesus expected another
“Elijah” to come to “set things right” and that it was NOT John the Baptist, who like Himself, would be rejected by his generation].
134 Acts3:21; Rom8:21-22
135 Mt11:14
22
establishment. Through no fault of the prophet who received the greatest commendation from the One he heralded, John had been unable to get very far with the comprehensive commission that had been outlined for him in the subsidiary annunciation; for even the messenger was intended to be a cause of joy to many136. The Jewish religious authorities who humanly speaking were the nub of the problem wouldn’t accept John’s baptism; the Temple establishment rejected his teaching; then he was decapitated by order of the king of the Jews. Would anyone seriously believe Jesus’ assessment to be that the Jewish race and its state of religion had been “restored” and “put to rights” through the truncated ministry of John the Baptist? If the answer is in the negative, then according to Matthew chapter seventeen and verse eleven, an “Elijah” had yet to come; particularly as world judgement, the restoration of creation and full realization of God’s Kingdom has still to be implemented.
In terms of how the prophet himself regarded the matter:
“They asked (John): “Then are you Elijah?” He replied, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered “No”.137
But whether he had regarded himself as an “Elijah” or not, John had come with his authority because Jesus had affirmed as much, although he never got around to invoking Elijah’s awesome powers. Part of such a mission was to prepare God’s people for judgement but that didn’t prove to be necessary in any literal or final sense in John’s day. Yet in Matthew 11:10, Jesus quoted from Malachi confirming that John was sent with the intention of clearing the path for the One who was coming to sit as a refiner’s fire and a fuller’s soap to purge the sons of Levi138. By now it should be evident why such prophecies have been subverted. Referring back to the testimonies of the very earliest Fathers, Clement (AD30-100) who had been personally acquainted with Paul139 understood the Malachi prophecy to be relating to Christ’s second advent140; likewise, Justin Martyr confirmed that he envisaged another “Elijah” would herald it141.