A (2:40)

That's very good. That's very good. Yeah, it's a while since I've been to Germany and even longer since I've been to New Zealand, but Dhanidi and I have. Happy memor. Did you go and see the penguins and all the marine life, the whales and so on. Did you do any of that?

B (3:00)

No, I didn't do that. But I did have a problem trying to convince the New Zealand police I wasn't a hobbit who had escaped from Hobbiton. I'm not a man known for his great physical stature. And every now and again I do get mistaken for being a hobbit.

A (3:16)

And they know about hobbits in New Zealand because that's where they filmed the work, wasn't it?

B (3:22)

It is, is. I mean, in my mind I see myself as more of an Aragon figure, but it turns out the way other people see me, it's more of a hobbit. It's a little bit disconcerting. But what quickens my soul, Tom, is the great questions we've received. And this week we've received some fantastic questions about the end of the age, faith and works and what happens to the world at the end of the world. So let's get into them. Let's get into our first question. We've got someone writing into the show who says this. Hello, Dr. Wright. I am a big fan of the show and your thoughtful approach to scripture. My question today revolves around the end of the age. Mark 13 and Luke 21 share titles marking the sections of scripture as signs of the end of the age. Matthew 24 similarly speaks of the end of the age, but is directly asked by the disciples in verse 3. I know that you do not view those texts as end times texts. Matthew 13 also uses end of the age verbiage. However, it does speak to the end of the age in a way that seems to be about the end of time. Could you please explain what the end of the age is now, Tom? I think what our listener is getting at is you and I both agree that Jesus Olivet discourse. You know, Matthew 13 in parallels.

A (4:50)

Mark 13 in parallels.

B (4:52)

Yeah. Mark 13 in parallels is focused on the destruction of the temple as God's judgment, particularly against the priestly establishment. But some people really do want it to be more than that. They want to see a second coming prophecy here. They want it to have a more grand and cosmic array.

A (5:10)

And.

B (5:10)

And is Matthew the exception to the rule? Are Luke and mark focused on 70 AD but does Matthew want to have a bit of a sneak peek beyond that? Does he think the end of the age is more than the end of the age of Second Temple Judaism? What are your thoughts here, Tom?

A (5:28)

That's a great question and I think the way that you phrase it at the end There is an option that I have increasingly wanted to hold open, even though I'm not absolutely convinced of it. But I think the starting point must be to recognize that Western readings of the Gospels have tended to screen out the Temple from their understanding of Jesus and his mission. And the Temple seems to be, oh well, it's just that religious building in Jerusalem. And so Jesus does something funny in there, but we don't need to worry too much about it. And then when you get to mark 13 or the equivalents in Matthew and Luke, people are then shocked that Jesus is actually talking about one stone not being left on another, et cetera. Why is he going on about the Temple? And the answer is actually so much of the Gospel is all implicitly or explicitly about the Temple. Cause the Temple was the place where God had promised to put his name forever and ever. And Jesus is implicitly and explicitly declaring God's judgment on the Temple and the whole system that it represents for its failure to understand who God is and what he wants. And so we shouldn't be surprised that at the beginning of Mark 13 when the disciples do say, hey look, these amazing stones. And Jesus says, well, it's all gonna come down. And they wanna know just what's going on here. What's this about? This is extraordinary. This is burning the flag. This is bombing the capital city. This is getting rid of everything that has been the center of our faith and hope and life as the Judean people. And so we have tended to scre the Jerusalem focus in the Gospels so we miss what's really going on. And we've tended to misread the so called apocalyptic language later on in the chapter about the sun and the moon being darkened and the stars not giving their light and so on. And I am fond of quoting my old friend Professor John Barton from Oxford, who used to say that when we read a biblical text saying the sun will be darkened and the moon won't give its light and the stars will be falling from heaven, we should know as a matter of literary understanding that the next line is not going to be that the rest of the country will have scattered showers and sunny intervals. In other words, this is not a primitive weather forecast. And then we have to say, well, where does this come from? And the answer is it comes from the Old Testament from passages like Isaiah 13 and 14 and passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel and then particularly the book of Daniel, where the imagery of sun, moon and stars collapsing is a way of saying what we mean when we say it was an earth shattering event. You know, some great general election victory going unexpectedly one way rather than the other. People say it was an earth shattering event. They don't mean that there was an earthquake. You know, there might have been, but in a sense that would be a, oh no, no, that's not what we're talking about moment. And so we need to learn to understand how their metaphorical language, soaked as it was in the Old Testament, referred to what we would call geopolitical realities. And so the crunch comes in the middle of that chapter when Jesus says that this generation will not pass away till all these things have occurred. Because people have then said, oh my. Well, the end of the world has not happened. The world has gone on. And there's a whole school of thought which has made this the cornerstone of its understanding. In fact, there's two. There's the liberal school of thought which says Jesus got it wrong about the end of the world, therefore we can discount other things he says. And then there's the dispensationalists who say, well, the end of the world didn't happen then. Cause it was postponed because the Judeans didn't respond in faith to Jesus. So now it's been. The eschatological timetable has been restarted in 1948 and so all these things are now going to take place. Both of those are radically misleading and radically wrong in terms of simply reading what the text says. So it's important to work this through. I spent a whole chapter in my book, Jesus and the Victory of God. I think it's chapter eight working through mark 13 and parallels inch by inch. So if anyone wanted to follow it up, it is all there. But also in various of my other books, as Mike in yours as well. But then when we get to Matthew, there is a moment at the end of Matthew 24 when Jesus says, but of that day and that hour nobody knows. In other words, here are the signs for when the destruction of Jerusalem is gonna happen. But then there is maybe, and some have taken it this way, maybe there is another day for which there will be no signs. That's Matthew 24:36. And then people have linked that with the reference in Matthew 13 where Jesus talks about the end of the age in a kind of a wider sense. And I think this is something that happens again and again in prophecy. We see it in the Old Testament. What is the day of the Lord in the Old Testament? Is it the destruction of the temple by the Babylonians? Is it some earlier judgment, for instance, by the Assyrians? Is it something out beyond Both of those. And I think the prophets would say it's all of the above and much more. It's when God acts to do something dramatic, whether in judgment or in mercy or both. And you shouldn't try to be too modernist, literalist about it. And so I think it may well be modern that in Matthew's version, which is a more kind of studied, laid out version of what we find in Mark, that there is a sort of sense that there is an ultimate horizon, if you want to use that rather trendy language. Whereas with Luke particularly, it's very specific, as with much of Luke's Gospel, the warnings are very clear. This is about Jerusalem. And so when we get in Mark 13 and Matthew 24, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel, standing where it ought not to stand, and they say, let the reader understand. Luke knows that his reader won't understand, so he cashes it out and he says, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, that's what Luke thinks Jesus was referring to. It's clear that for Luke, this is all about the destruction of the temple as the sort of sign of this is the great turning point in the Creator God's work with and through Israel, the nation and the temple that have rejected the Son of God. The only word now is judgment, which goes exactly with what Jesus did in the temple. And then the parable that he told about that, the parable about the wicked tenants who, when the owner of the vineyard sends servants and the owner finally sends his son, there's no one left for him to send. Once he's sent the Son and they've rejected him, the owner has nobody else left to send. This must be the last warning. So Jesus sees his own arrival as precipitating this moment of crisis. And tragically, of course, his contemporaries refuse him. And we see how that then plays out. So that's how I would read it. And I think part of the trouble is that, as I say, for many generations, people in the Western churches have pushed off all the whole question of the end of the age. Or they've talked about eschatology in terms simply of death, judgment, heaven and hell, and haven't seen God involved in world history, as we would say. And then when you've done that, oh, there is this odd chapter at the end of the Gospels which seems to be about the end of the age. How do we read that? And it's out of that whole mess that people have then got very confused and come up with wildly different interpretations.

B (13:29)

I Think that's exactly right, Tom. You know, Mark 13, Luke 21, they're talking about the destruction of Jerusalem, which is a big focus of Jesus ministry. Although Matthew does leave a window open that perhaps Jesus words can in some sense also apply to some other future events. The same way the Old Testament prophets talked about the day of the Lord.

A (13:49)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. And I mean, when I go Back to Matthew 25, which follows immediately afterwards the so called parable of the sheep and the goats, I'm not sure it really is a parable, but the illustration of the sheep and the goats does seem to have a kind of cosmic reach to it. And all the nations will be gathered before him. Now, you can interpret that in terms of when Jesus sends out his apostles into the world. This is the cosmic moment for the whole world. But it seems to me Matthew doesn't force us to take that reading.

B (14:23)

Okay, that sounds great, Tom. Let's move on then to our next question. This is from Stephanie Liver from Orlando, Florida in the usa. She says hello first, thank you for this podcast. It has been incredibly helpful in developing a personal relationship with God among other theologians. You have inspired me to begin my formal studies in theology, and I am grateful and we're grateful for helping you. She says the more I read the Gospels, including Jesus parables, the Sermon on the Mount Plain, and other New Testament authors, the more I realize that faith and works are inseparable. My question is one that you've probably addressed many times. Why does the Protestant church seem so focused on isolating salvation from deeds? It appears that there is an emphasis on being declared saved. While the Declaration itself does not seem to be the main focus of the New Testament. What is your perspective on justification by faith alone compared to Faith plus works? Well, Tom, I think we have here a very important question. It's the quintessential Protestant question. Are we saved by what we believe or by what we do? But if we focus on doing too much, do we end up becoming legal? But if we don't have enough doing, are we really disciples of Jesus? And you know, one of the things I miss my students with, I mess with them over this. I say, look, the only place where the words faith alone appear in the New Testament are in the Epistle of James where James says, faith alone does not actually save enough. Yeah, I mean, how do you. How do you do solar fide like that when James says faith alone does not save. But there's a lot more going on here, Tom, and I bet Stephanie and a lot of other Listeners would love to hear your thoughts on that.

A (16:18)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I take a deep breath and kind of sigh deeply because you and I, Mike, have both written books on this and articles on this and been at conferences on this again and again and again. And, of course, faith alone. That was Martin Luther's insertion, was it not, into Romans, chapter three when he was translating the key verse there, he added the word alone. And actually, part of the problem here is that people have assumed that the questions being asked in the early 16th century were the ultimate questions that should be asked. And in the early 16th century in Western Europe, there was a dominance of what we now call Roman Catholic thinking and life. And the whole Protestant movement was generated by people who had been bruised and hurt under that older Catholic system, which was insisting on penances and fasting and obedience to all sorts of rules and regulations and rituals and so on. And there was a sort of breath of fresh air with the Renaissance that swept through Europe. And in a sense, Luther was representative of this in his way, and so were the other Reformers, though there were also huge political things going on at the same time which made people want to say, hang on, there must be a better way of reading the Bible than this. And so they went back, particularly to Romans and Galatians with that question in mind. Do we have to do all these things? Do we have to obey all these laws in order to be sure that we are the people of God and that, as they would say, we are on the way to heaven? The other big question there was that most people in the late Middle Ages believed in purgatory, that most people would have to spend time in a very uncomfortable place, being purged of their remaining sin before they would be allowed to go to heaven. And this is to build one misunderstanding on top of another. And I and others have written about that in several different places. But in the middle of all of that, it's all a question of what you mean by works and what you mean by faith. Because Luther particularly took Paul's writing about the law of Israel, the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic Law. They took that as meaning, law in general, and then applied that to the system of church regulations about which days you should fast, about how you should genuflect when you come to receive communion, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And Luther saw all of that as law. And at one point, outrageously, in his commentary on Galatians, he says, moses knows nothing of Christ. In other words, law, the system of doing things, of rules and regulations, that's all swept away in the Gospel, which just says God loves you, except that you are accepted, as Paul Tillich put it in the last century. And I want to say that's fine. If you've lived under a system of that kind of legalism, then to be told that God loves you and that that's fine because of what Jesus has done, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, you can be a happy child of God and enjoy the knowledge of God's presence with you and his life, flooding your life here and now. You don't have to go through 99 different systems in order to get there, in order to get that ticket. But I then want to say particularly that's not what Paul is basically talking about in Romans or Galatians. He's talking about lots and lots of other things there, and particularly about how God the Creator, has worked through his people, Israel, to bring about the moment when finally He, God, can come in person, in the person of His Son, to transform the world, to take all the evil and sin and pain and shame in the world, to deal with it, and to create a new world and then to invite people. And this is absolutely, as Paul says, by grace, as a pure free gift. God wants to come and dwell with us not only in the person of Jesus, but in the person of the Spirit. And to have then a community of the people of God who are marked out by not who their parents were, not their moral background, not their cultural or ethnic background, but marked out simply by the fact that they believe. Paul says at one point, if you confess with your lips, Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You will be saved. And it isn't that these are things we have to do in order to say to God, please, we can tick these boxes. Is that enough? These are the signs of life that when God has worked through the gospel, through the Spirit, in somebody's life, they are in fact members of God's people. And for Paul, that meant not, therefore I go to heaven for free. Because Paul believes in new creation, not in escaping this world and going to heaven, but in new heavens and new earth and all of that. But it means particularly that non Jews, people who are not from the Judean family, in other words, Gentiles, who the Judeans had regarded as idolaters and so sinners and so completely unsavable. No, says Paul, anyone who believes in Jesus, who hails him as Lord and believes that he's been raised from the dead, this is their badge of membership. And so Paul is advocating for the existence of a single new family of Judeans and Gentiles together. And justification by faith is really all about the fact that the one defining mark of the people of God is indeed faith. Faith as the faithfulness of Jesus to God. And then because we are in Christ, we share that faithfulness as our badge, as the badge which says we are members of this family. Now, I could go on about this all day as Mike, could you? But that for me is pretty much the center of it.

B (22:40)

Yeah, I think that's right, Tom. You know, Luther and the reformers, God bless them, I think they were responding to problems in the medieval Catholic Church, but there was the danger that they did kind of treat the New Testament as an allegory for, you know, 14th, 15th century questions. And we're still with a bit of those that legacy. And I guess it's, you know, what they're guarding against at one level is a good thing, but their articulation of faith and works had a little bit of a paranoia that we've got to keep these things far more separate. I mean, we don't conflate them, but, you know, a life of faith issues in faithfulness. I mean, I like what Leon Morris led. Leon Morris said good works demonstrate the integrity of the faith that we profess. And I guess he's riffing on of Calvin. We're not saved by works, but neither are we saved without them.

A (23:35)

Yeah, yeah, that's fair enough. But, you know, one of the key texts Here is Ephesians 2, 9, and 10. Paul says, by grace, you are saved through faith in that, not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. And he's thinking particularly there of the Judeans, the Jews of his day, who had the works, that is circumcision, the food laws, and keeping the Sabbath, which said we are the chosen people of God and anyone else is just outsiders. That's the sort of works that Paul was talking about. Not performance of moral virtue, not the keeping of shalt, not murder, shalt not commit adultery, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, Paul would say, as he does more than once, that those commandments are all going to be 10 of that chapter. Yeah, yeah. If you're in Christ, you will be keeping those commandments. But then when he goes on in Ephesians 2 to say, we are created in Messiah Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, I'm pretty sure he's not talking about, therefore you can go and obey the moral law. In all its bits and pieces. If you'd asked Paul that, he would say, well, of course you will do that. But the good works are the things that Christians are called to do as outward facing signs to the world that God the Creator is creating a new community. And this is a community that does good in the world. A community at which people should should look and say, oh my goodness, something is happening here. What's caused it? And how can we join? So I think we have been deceived by the language of works into imagining that it always means moralism when I think it really, really doesn't.

B (25:17)

Well, that's probably a good note for us to take a break. When we come back, we'll be looking at what happens to the earth at the very end of the age. Back in a moment.

A (25:29)

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B (26:50)

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A (26:56)

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B (27:16)

Get started@LinkedIn.com campaign. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome back, Tom. We've got one final question for this week from Stephen Krausen from Auckland. Stephen, I don't know whether I saw you in Auckland. I hope I did. I loved my time in Auckland. Beautiful city. Here's what Stephen from Aucklander asks. What ultimately happens to planet Earth? We read in Revelation 21:1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. This text suggests the current earth is superseded, so this one is phased out. However, in Ecclesiastes 1:4 it says, A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. And in Psalm 104:4 he established the earth and its foundations. It will never be shaken. So I guess Stephen's question is a real one. Is the earth dissolved or does it endure forever? Now, I have to note that that passage from Revelation 21:1, it's a very traumatic passage in Australia because the surfing community does not want to be in heaven or the new creation if there is no sea to go surfing. So, you know, I mean, some of us in Australia are worried there will be no surfing in heaven. So, Tom, I guess we've got two questions here. Is the earth dissolved? Does it continue? Does it transformed? And will there be surfing in the new creation?

A (28:56)

Yeah, I'm glad you just shifted from heaven to new creation there, because most people's vision of heaven is a Platonic space, if that's the right word, which wouldn't have sea or mountains or anything else in, because it would be a purely spiritual thing. So of course there wouldn't be a sea there. But the worry about the absence of sea, I think is again, simply a failure to read biblical metaphor for what it is in the Jewish traditions. As we see in the flood story, as we see in various passages in the Psalms and so on. The sea is the source of evil. It's the place where. Where chaos happens. And the sea is a place of waves being stirred up, which seem to be uncontrollable by humans, as opposed to the land which we can cultivate and so on. So as with so much of revelation, please don't take this literally. Like the picture of the lion who is also the lamb, et cetera. It's kind of a do not try this at home moment. And certainly from where I'm sitting, just round the corner here, out of the window, there are wonderful, wonderful vistas of the sea rolling in and so on. And I certainly, in the new creation, I think I often say to people, I'm not sure exactly what the new creation will look like. But the present creation is beautiful and powerful and vivid and full of color and drama and life. And if the God who made this has this just as the pilot project, then imagine what the ultimate new creation is gonna be. It's not gonna be less than this. It's gonna be like this, only much, much more. So full of beauty and power and drama and so on. That's where I would start. I would then say that the new heavens and new earth. And let's be quite clear, it is about heaven and earth coming together. It's not we're leaving earth and going to heaven. It's heaven and earth coming together. What has passed away in the new world is corruption and decay and all that goes with turning away from the life of God and turning towards what we might call sin or death or whatever. The thing that has passed away is that insidious corruption which gets into everything and corrodes and destroys and distorts. And that is so cataclysmic that it's worth putting it in this dramatic way that the first heaven and the first earth, which, you know, I'm looking out of the window at a beautiful scenario, but actually, one day I think this too, could corrupt and decay and so on. But that will have passed away because the new world will be incorruptible and undecaying. Now, the passages to Put alongside Revelation 21 are 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8, which are both so important, but behind them, again, is the story of Jesus resurrection. Because when we ask the question, what do we know about new creation? Ultimately, the thing we know is that God will do for the whole creation in the end what he did for Jesus on the first Easter Day. Now, when Jesus came out of the tomb, we don't have an identical picture. We don't have photographs. We don't have this. We don't have that. But we do have accounts in which Jesus is what we would call a physical human being. He can be touched. He can eat with people. He can cook breakfast by the shore. He can take Peter for a walk. He can do this and that. He's a real vivid. I was gonna say flesh and blood human being, but the phrase flesh and blood, Paul uses in the rather different sense of corruptible humanity when he says flesh and blood can't inherit the kingdom. We must be changed. And what Paul means when he talks about we must be changed in 1 Corinthians 15 is clear from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 20 to 28. When he talks about God becoming all in all. God is going to flood the whole creation with his own life and love. God will do for the whole creation what he does in miniature for us when we believe and we have the Holy Spirit given to us. So if you put 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 8 together, Romans 8, particularly, because that's where Paul uses the language of birth. He says the whole creation is groaning in travail and waiting to give birth. And when you give birth, the thing that you give birth to is not a being which is totally unlike you, but is your own progeny. This is what God always intended, that out of this present space, time, matter universe, there would be a new space, time and matter universe that would now be incorruptible, undefilable. It will be there forever, and it will be full of potential and possibility and love and laughter and joy and justice and so on. So what we're talking about is the supercession of that which is corruptible and decaying by that which is incorruptible and full of God's life. Now, of course, there's much, much more that could be said, but that, at least I hope, is a start.

B (34:26)

Well, Stephen, I hope that's answered your question, that there will be a marriage of heaven and earth together. That's all we have time for today. But remember, we have another episode coming out next week where we're going to look at stuff like the truth and authority of scripture now, dead people coming out of their tombs the moment Jesus died, and the importance of professions of faith.

A (34:53)

So, Mike, we've been recording a lot more episodes for our premium subscribers, haven't we?

B (34:58)

Oh, we certainly have, Tom. We've been doing a deep dive into topics about Jesus and the law, what makes a good priest or pastor, the topic of the apocrypha, and of course, continuing our survey of the Book of Acts. So much so that we have one bonus episode coming out every week.

A (35:18)

So how do our many listeners access these bonus episodes?

B (35:23)

Well, it's very easy, Tom. They go to askntright.com and they click on bonus content. And then for the price of a bad coffee, and for me, all coffee is bad, they can join our community of friends and get an extra premium episode every week and share in the hefty topics we're discussing. And they also can support premier at the same time.

A (35:48)

Well, there you go. Good Bible teaching for the price of a bad coffee. I've got some cold coffee in front of me and I'm hoping to go and replenish it in a minute with some good stuff. But anyway, even if it was bad, it's cheap and now you get good Bible teaching for that same price. Sounds too good to miss.

B (36:05)

Yep and you can join the hundreds and hundreds of people who are subscribing to our bonus episodes. Hopefully you'll be one of them. Otherwise that is goodbye from me Mike.

A (36:15)

Bird and goodbye from me Tom Wright.

B (36:18)

And we'll see you for another episode of Ask NT Wright. Anything until then. God bless you and take care.

A (36:29)

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four litre jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping. Oh come on. They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever. You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.