I. The Last Days and the Christian Era
Even a cursory examination of the New Testament usage of the phrase, the last days, gives us to understand that this is another way of referring to the era from the first coming until the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. (1) This era, which includes both the lifetimes of the apostles as well as our own, is called by this phrase for several reasons. First, the last days are the time following the Old Testament era. One of the clearest references in this regard is Hebrews 1:1, 2:
God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, (2) has in these last days (3) spoken to us by his Son . . . ..
The Old Testament authors foresaw a time of fulfillment during which the grace, power and presence of God would continually be manifested in his people in an unprecedented way. The Old Testament writers understood that they walked under the grace of God and appreciated the many blessings of the Old Covenant such as full forgiveness of sins, physical healing, material prosperity, and the presence and joy of the Holy Spirit, (4) but they understood that there was much that was beyond their experience. So much greater would be the regular manifestation of the power and presence of the Spirit of God among all of God's people, as over against a few, that the Old Testament era could be contrasted with the New almost as if there were no grace, life, power or presence of the Lord there. One has but to read Paul's contrasts in 2 Corinthians 3:3-11 to see how the apostles understood that they lived in the time of wonderful fulfillment. (5) The Apostle John put it succinctly: "For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." (6)
It was the universality of the power of the Spirit which Joel had in mind when he foretold the great outpouring during the last days. (7) The manifestation of the presence of the Spirit would so characterize the life and worship of the New Covenant community that those Jews who refused to trust in Jesus as their Messiah would be provoked to jealousy. Anyone would be able to walk into a gathering of believers who had received the Holy Spirit and note the difference between it and the gatherings of the Jews in their synagogues. Paul saw this jealousy as eventually working to bring the mass of Jews to faith in Jesus as the Messiah before the end of the age. (8) The fact that most people of Jewish descent are still outside the Church underscores how important it is that the Twentieth Century Church manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit in the same way that the First Century Church did. Ours is, no less than theirs, the age of fulfillment.
II. The Last Days and the Return of Christ
Very often the phrase the last days is used in connection with the nearness of the second coming of Christ. But Twentieth Century believers often fail to realize that all of these passages about the Lord's return being at hand were just as relevant to those living during the First Century as they are to us. Our Lord himself told us that he did not know when he would return, that this was known only by the Father. (9) His teaching led even the apostles themselves to believe that Jesus would return before some of them died. In this regard John 21:22, 23 is instructive:
Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me."
Then this saying went out among the brethren that this disciple (10) would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him (11) that he would not die, but, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?"
While our Lord hints at the possibility that his second coming might be further off than some of his followers thought, (12) and Peter warns us not to be troubled by the delay because "with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day," (13) the uniform teaching of the New Testament is that the return of Christ could have occurred during the lifetime of the apostles. Indeed, one might almost say that the New Testament implied that the second coming should have occurred then.
III. A Post-Apostolic Age
There is no teaching regarding a post-apostolic era, even in the pastoral epistles. This is not to say that one should believe that the office of apostle continues on until the second coming, but it is to say that such a question is beyond the parameters of eschatological concern for the writers of the New Testament and would have mitigated against the expectation by which they lived. Even though Paul anticipated his own death before the second coming, he never abandoned the hope that Jesus would return during his lifetime. (14) The very concept that there was going to be definable age between the time of the apostles and the second coming of Christ would have destroyed the sense of urgency which so characterized New Testament life and preaching.
IV. The Christian Life and Apostolic Experience
Our whole understanding of the nature of Christian life and experience is that it is fundamentally identical to that of the First Century Christians. Joel's prophecy of the out- poured Spirit is for the whole "last days" era. There is no hint in Peter's Pentecost Day sermon that what had now come to be available for everyone who called on the name of the Lord would ever cease to be fully available for all God's people until "the great and notable day of the Lord." (15)
While the present era is an imperfect one, it is none the less the time of fulfillment. Though now we still see through a glass darkly, as over against the face to face experience at the second coming, (16) yet we have received the down-payment of our inheritance, the Holy Spirit. (17) We continually experience a foretaste of the powers of the world to come whenever we truly worship our risen Lord in the power of his Holy Spirit. (18) Even though we do not yet see all things under Jesus' regal feet, (19) yet we still possess authority to tread over all the power of the Enemy: physical and mental illness, demonic strongholds, and everything whereby Satan torments the sons of this age. (20)
The picture of the Church as the Body of Christ, which Paul employs in his argument for the proper use of the gift of tongues, (21) is universal in space and time. He no more meant that the First Century Church was the Body Christ, distinct from us, than that each congregation was a distinct body of Christ. We, too, are the Body of Christ, the same Body of which Paul and the believers at Corinth are a part. We partake, with them, of the same gift and gifts of the Holy Spirit, who has baptized every believer into the Body of Christ and who declares through his holy apostle, "The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance." (22) The gifts of the Holy Spirit will cease when the Body of Christ reaches full maturity, but that will not occur until after the second coming of Christ. Even a casual reading of 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 makes it clear that the gifts of the Holy Spirit such as tongues, prophecy, and words of knowledge will only be done away with when we see the Lord Jesus Christ face to face at his second coming. Paul teaches us that these special gifts will come to an end:
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. (23)
The time for this to occur is when perfection comes:
For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. (24)
This perfection does not refer to the completion of the New Testament canon, but to the maturation of man in Christ:
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. (25)
The maturation in view in verse eleven is not that of the individual, (26) it is the maturation of the whole Church in the consummation at the second coming:
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (27)
The thought of verse twelve is parallel to Paul's thought in such passages as Romans 8:16-25 and Ephesians 4:11-16. It is the same as that of the 1 John 3:2:
Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
1. Hebrews 1:1, 2; Acts 2:16, 17; 1 Peter 1:20; 2 Timothy 3:1, 6, 8, 12, 13; 2 Peter 3:2, 3, 5; Jude 18, 19; 1 John 2:18 ff.
2. We should understand this as a label for all of the messengers of God's Word in the Old Testament.
3. Literally, "upon the end of these days." This is a reference to the completion of Old Testament era.
4. Psalms 103:2-5; 51:11, 12.
5. One should compare Paul's references to the Old Covenant as "the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone" and "the ministry that condemns men" with his descriptions of the New Covenant as the ministry "written . . . with the Holy Spirit . . . on tablets of human hearts" and "the ministry that brings righteousness." As glorious as the Old Testament was, says Paul, "it has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory (of the New Testament)."
6. John 1:17.
7. Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:1-21.
8. Romans 11:11-32.
9. Matthew 24:36.
10. The Apostle John, who died at the end of the First Century, is the person in view.
11. It is obvious that while Jesus did not promise John that he would live to see the Second Coming, he wanted him to think that he would.
12. Matthew 24:48; 25:5, 14, 19.
13. 2 Peter 3:8.
14. 2 Timothy 4:6, 8.
15. Acts 2:20, 39.
16. 1 Corinthians 13:12; 1 John 3:2.
17. Romans 8:16; Ephesians 1:13, 14.
18. Hebrews 6:4, 5; 12:22-24; 1 Corinthians 14:24, 25; Galatians 3:5.
19. Hebrews 2:8.
20. Romans 16:20; Matthew 8:16-17; 12:28-30; Luke 13:16; Hebrews 2:14, 15; James 5:14 ff.
21. 1 Corinthians 12:1-14:40.
22. Romans 11:29.
23. 1 Corinthians 13:8.
24. 1 Corinthians 13:9, 10.
25. 1 Corinthians 13:11.
26. Even though there are implications for the individual: for example, the Corinthians demonstrated profound immaturity in how they exalted certain gifts, such as tongues, above others.
27. 1 Corinthians 13:12.