Finding the historical center
This passage causes me much difficulty when I try to find its historical center. By that I mean, Jesus referring to something future from Him, but is it past, present or future to us?
If it is describing something in the past, then there are lessons to learn from this, but only if we are the sort of people who will listen to the lessons that the past teaches us.
If it is present, then we sure better be paying attention to what it says.
If it is future, then is it in a future that I need to be concerned about or one that is too far distant to really affect my life.
The idea that this may be describing the present or very near future is what the Tim LaHaye “Left Behind” books are banking on. This way of viewing the Bible is something that I am quite familiar with since I came to the Christian faith in the midst of a group of people who were very apocalyptic minded. This was at the height of the Jesus people movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The group I was a part of read the Bible as if it were a newpaper. The events of the day were clearly fulfillment of the Bible, for us. For the early days of my life as a Christian, there was a great concern about passages like these ones. We saw them describing us and our generation.
When we read this passage, we saw ourselves as being like the five virgins that were prepared for the bridegroom to come. We were in eager anticipation that Jesus would be coming shortly. We saw the reat of the church as slumbering while we saw ourselves as ready.
We had been taught that if the Bible was true, Jesus would return in 1981. When Jesus did not come in 1981, many of us fell away from the faith. This way of viewing passages like this was deadly to the faith of many.
For others, like myself, we dug deeper into the faith in the years before 1981 and we were not unprepared for a long wait. If anything this passage is saying that the time will seem so long that everyone will fall asleep.
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