Scott Hahn (44:06)
Page 1756, you'll see that there were some standing there who didn't taste death before they saw the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. Because three of the twelve are selected in the very next verse at the beginning of Matthew 17, to accompany him up to the top of Mount Tabor to witness the transfiguration. So you have a kind of pre deification of his own humanity. He's already divine, but I mean more than Moses who came back with his face aglow. You hear the voice of the Father. This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. And they're all in the cloud, which is not cumulus. It's the Shekinah glory of the Holy Spirit. So Moses and Elijah appear, the Law and the prophets, and they're testifying to him. Peter, James and John are seeing the Son of Man riding the clouds of glory. The Ancient of days from Daniel 7, verse 13 and 14 is identifying the Son of Man as his only beloved Son. The kingdom is not some futuristic utopia. The kingdom of heaven is life in the Holy Trinity. And so when the Father identifies his beloved Son in the power and the glory of this Spirit, this cloud, the Shekinah, three of them didn't taste death before they were enveloped in the everlasting kingdom. Is that all it is? No, it's not just a futuristic utopia. So it's not just the Mount of Transfiguration. But ultimately we're not going to get to Heaven in order to catch a glimpse of the Trinity. We're going to get to heaven in Revelation 21:22 and discover that heaven is the Trinity. Revelation 21, verse 22 says something really stunning. Here is the New Jerusalem, and there is no temple in it. Well, that would be shocking. That would be bad news. The New Jerusalem has no temple, no outer court, no holy place, no holy of holies, no why, for the Lord God Almighty is the temple, and then the Lamb who sits upon the throne. And the first verse of Revelation 22:1 shows the living water that flows from the throne of the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb. And the living water is the Holy Spirit. And so the New Jerusalem doesn't have a temple. The New Jerusalem is a temple, but not a created temple made by human hands, but the uncreated temple. So the triadic architecture of the temple was actually a foreshadowing of the triadic mystery of the Holy Trinity. So for now, when we live in a state of grace, our bodies are temples of the Holy Trinity. But in heaven, when we move into a state of glory, the eternal Trinity will be the temple for every believer. And so if there are some standing here who don't taste death and they enter into the mystery of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. But even more, I'm just going to say part two is in Matthew 23, 24, and 25. This is again, what most fundamentalists would say refers to the end of the world period, the last day, the parousia, which they basically translate as second coming. Although the real meaning of parousia back in the first century, the Greek term in any lexicon means presence, a person's presence, a real presence, as in the Son of man, who comes looking like bread and wine, but is truly the divinized Son of man. So what we do with Matthew 23, 24 and 25, it's the Sermon on the Mount of Olives, also known as the Olivet Discourse. And we have a topical essay on page 1770, 1770, called End of the world question mark. And what we do is connect the dots. We show how Jesus discourse is drawing extensively from the Old Testament prophets, Joel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Amos, and others, where the prophets would announce the judgment of God that would be coming down upon a kingdom that was opposing God's purpose and plan for his people. So it might be Egypt, Babylon, Idumea, depending upon the Old Testament prophet. And the sun will be darkened, the moon won't give its light, you know, and then the stars fall from heaven, you know, in the ancient world, you didn't have clocks or watches. So what did you have? Well, you had the sun. And that tells you what a year is, the moon, that tells you what a month Or a moonth is. And then the stars tell you what age you might be in. And so if you're announcing to rulers of a enemy kingdom intent upon opposing God's people, then, you know, if the Prime Minister of England flew me over and said, you know, what would you give me as a prognosis for the future of the uk? Well, if I were a prophet, I might not use words. I might just do a symbolic action, put a miniature version of Big Ben on the table, take out a mallet and smash Big Ben. What am I saying? Your time is up. So Jerusalem and the Temple are under judgment. He says, basically, this generation will not pass away until my words take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. So that's the climax. That's the midpoint of what he's saying in the Olivet discourse. So what he's talking about concerns the destruction of Jerusalem in the Temple, but it also relates to the end of the world, heaven and earth passing away. You read Josephus, you read and you read the footnotes of the Ignatius Study Bible. They'll make these connections because every Jew would look at the Jerusalem Temple and see that as a microcosmos, that when God made the cosmos, he made it like a temple in six days to consecrate on the seventh day of the Sabbath. Was that clock time? It really reveals the purpose. Primarily so that when Solomon builds the first Jerusalem Temple, he just crushes all the construction records by building it in seven years to dedicate it in the seventh month, in the seventh feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, which lasted seven days. So 1 Kings tells us that Solomon consecrated the temple on the seventh day of the seventh feast of the seventh month of the seventh year. Why? Because he's imitating his father. He's the first Israelite to ever be referred to as the Son of God. I will be his Father and he will be my son. So the idea is that the Jerusalem Temple is an architectural sacrament of the cosmos. The cosmos is a cosmic temple. In Genesis 1, the Garden of Eden is a sanctuary. In Genesis 2, Adam is not just the first Father, he's the high Priest of humanity. He doesn't just disobey, he desecrates the sanctuary when he's driven out and the two cherubim are posted there to keep him out or to prevent him from returning to the garden. Sanctuary. Every Israelite would read that and say, where are two cherubim in the Holy of holies? Overshadowing the Ark of the Covenant that forms the mercy seat, that's off limits for everyone. Even the high priest can only go in one day out of the year. So only when Messiah comes will that be transformed. So the destruction, the judgment on the Jerusalem Temple is at once a judgment on the cosmos that has been desecrated. And so it's also a sign. So Ratzinger points this out, a number of other Catholic scholars do, that the fulfillment of the prophecy is initial. The initial fulfillment is in 70 A.D. this generation didn't pass away before all these things took place. But why would he add, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words won't pass away? Except that his words also apply to the passing away of heaven and earth, because Jews understood the heavens and the earth form a cosmic temple. I mean, I don't want to use a voodoo analogy, but if you pricked a voodoo doll, you know, on the other side of the ocean, the guy might say, ouch. So if you bring judgment upon the old Covenant temple in the Old Jerusalem, you're setting into motion what will eventually. And this is like, this is an Augustine, this is an Aquinas. Okay. You know, and so we have citations there and to other sources, too. And so, I mean, the one objection that really kind of stumps CS Lewis and many others, Protestants generally say, well, it refers to the end of the world if they're fundamentalists, or it refers to the destruction of Jerusalem. But what if it's both? And if you don't just say, well, it's A and B, because I can't figure out which one. Yeah, what if A is the Jerusalem Temple, which is an architectural sacrament of the cosmos? So what happened to that in the first century is already foreshadowing what will happen to the cosmic temple at the end of time. And again, I would say that in the. In the writings of the doctors and the fathers of the Church, this sort of thing was the air that they breathed. And it became, you know, it can become the air that others breathe today as well. I remember thinking about doing my doctoral dissertation on this topic. Jesus seems to have expected to return in the lifetime of his own disciples. But what he's talking about is destruction, the judgment of Jerusalem. So I asked my sponsor, who was going to, you know, help me enter the Church, you know, he was professor of political science. How do you interpret the Olivet discourse? You know, is Jesus talking about Jerusalem or is he talking about the end of the world? He said, you know, I think it's both. I think there's a connection between the Temple and the Whole cosmos. And I'm like, you're a professor of political science. That's taken me like six years to discover. Where'd you get that? And he said, well, funny it asked, because here in my pocket, New Testament. And he opened it up and he showed me the footnote that read that it pertains to both. And sure enough, Augustine and then Asuma Aquinas both indicate that it applies to both. That in fact, Aquinas calls this the rule of Jerome. That is, Jerome sees that if there's a partial fulfillment that is only partial, then there's a partial non fulfillment. So there will be a perfect fulfillment at the end of time. And so, yes, Jesus words apply to his own generation. And he does come on the clouds of heaven in judgment, as he told Caiaphas he would. But then what was invisible will become visible in the end. And, you know, this is just the way that the church reads the Bible. The first week of Advent, when you look at the readings from the breviary, you have Cyril of Jerusalem quoted, there's a first coming and a second coming, and they're inseparably linked. And then Bernard of Clairvaux speaks of a middle coming, that, yeah, there's a first coming in the first century, there's a final coming, but Christ comes again in the sacraments and by other means. And if you look at the word parousi, which fundamentalists have translated as second coming, you actually realize the word meant presence. In Philippians 2, Paul says, as in my presence, so now in my absence, work at your salvation with fear and trembling. The word for presence is parousia. So when we profess our belief in the real presence of the resurrected Lord of glory, wherever the king is, there is the kingdom. But wherever the Eucharist is, guess what? There's the kingdom. So it was in the lifetime of his own disciples. It's also in our lifetime. You don't have to die to go to heaven. Go to mass. The kingdom of heaven is what envelops us. And at the end of time, the curtain is pulled back and it will all be apocalypse, literally unveiled.
