Acts 1.11 and Hyper-Creedalism

The following is basically a response to Keith Mathison, exposing his elevation of tradition over Scripture and how that forces him to some conclusions on Acts 1.11 that are not necessary from the text, as well as a basic overview of the timing and nature of the second coming and how Acts 1.11 fits the pattern. Note: The audio (see below article) contains a few more comments not typed out, including a brief comment on John 14 at the end concerning how we are the ‘dwelling place’ of God.

Acts 1.11 and Hyper-Creedalism

If you’ve been involved in the Preterist debate for any length of time, then I think you’ll understand what I mean when I say that Acts 1.11 is a very important text.. If in your wrestling with Preterism, this verse was not thought about much, you probably have had it thrown in your face a number of times by those who oppose Preterism. It is probably the text that is brought up against Preterists more than any other. There are a few more, a number that varies depending on who you’re talking to, [more on this later] but this is the text.

“Gordon Clark and his followers treat the truth of the Scriptures as the axiom of their system. The axiom cannot be proven or disproven; rather, the worldview that results from the axiom may be tested for consistency and comprehensiveness. Testing for internal contradiction exemplifies Clark’s strict reliance on the laws of logic. Thus, in order to invalidate non-Christian worldviews, one must simply show how a different presupposition results in necessary logical contradictions.”

It goes on to say, “With regard to other schools of apologetics, Clark suggested that the cosmological argument was not just unpersuasive but also logically invalid (because it begged the question), and he similarly dismissed the other Thomistic arguments. As a staunch critic of empiricism, [empiricism, simply put, is the belief that all knowledge is obtained thru experience/senses] he did not tend to make much use of evidential arguments, which yield likelihoods and probabilities rather than logical certainties (that is, either coherence or incoherence).” Clark would argue that our senses are often unreliable.

“The doctrine of inspiration…tells us that God has put his words into the mouths, and caused them to be written in the writings, of men whose individuality, as men of their time, was in no way lessened by the fact of their inspiration, and who spoke and wrote to be understood by their contemporaries. Since God has effected an identity between their words and his, the way for us to get into his mind, if we may thus phrase it, it via theirs. Their thoughts and speech about God constitute God’s own self-testimony.” [2]

“…the main point of this hermeneutical principle is the studied comparison of all relevant biblical passages on any one topic under the methodological duty to avoid contradiction. It presupposes biblical coherence, canonical closure, and the organic character of biblical discourse.” [5]

“Almost every Christian who has wrestled with theological questions has encountered the problem of competing interpretations of Scripture. If one asks a dispensationalist pastor, for example, why he teaches premillennialism, the answer will be, “Because the Bible teaches premillennialism.” If one asks the conservative Presbyterian pastor across the street why he teaches amillennialism (or postmillennialism), the answer will likely be, “Because that is what the Bible teaches.” Each man will claim that the other is in error, but by what ultimate authority do they typically make such a judgment? Each man will claim that he bases his judgment on the authority of the Bible, but since each man’s interpretation is mutually exclusive of the other’s, both interpretations cannot be correct. How then do we discern which interpretation is correct?” [6]

“The discarding of the creeds is a common feature of the modern Evangelical notion of solo scriptura. It is so pervasive that one may find it even in the writings of prominent Reformed theologians. For example, in a recently published and well-received Reformed systematic theology text, Robert Reymond laments the fact that most Reformed Christians adhere to the Trinitarian orthodoxy expressed in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed.10 He openly calls for an abandonment of the Nicene Trinitarian concept in favor of a different Trinitarian concept. One cannot help but wonder how this is any different than the Unitarians rejection of creedal orthodoxy. They call for the rejection of one aspect of Nicene Trinitarianism while Reymond calls for the rejection of another. Why is one considered heretical and the other published by a major Evangelical publishing house?” [7]

“This recognition is helpful in distinguishing the prophecies of Christ’s coming that were near, in the first century (Matt. 10:23; 16:28; 24:30; 26:64; 1 Thess. 5:2; 2 Thess. 1:7; James 5:7-9; 1 Pet. 4:7; Rev. 1:3, 7; etc.) and thus fulfilled in a.d. 70, from those that were far (John 5:28-29; Acts 1:11; 17:31; 1 Cor. 15:23-24; 1 Thess. 4:16; 1 Jn. 3:2; etc.) and thus not yet fulfilled even in our day. It also helps to distinguish between a spiritual “coming” (invisible for temporal judgment, as in a.d. 70) and a physical coming (visible for eternal judgment).”

1. The majority of our opponents have an entirely different approach to the Bible. They assume futurism to be true and declare it non-negotiable, regardless of what the Bible says. And this will affect how they interpret the Bible, often forcing stress on a person to make sure he interprets things a certain way. As we’ll see Mathison doing with Acts 1.11 here in a second.
2. I have simply grown tired of being on the defensive all the time with Preterism. We’re being bullied around by a group of people who don’t even agree with one another half the time and even blatantly deny absolutes in the arenaa of eschatology by holding up three opposing systems and labeling them all ‘orthodox.’

Even Gary North couldn’t let that one slide,

“There are three main rival views of evangelical eschatology — four, considering dispensationalism. Either all are in error, or all but one is. It is always the task of Trinitarian theologians to discover what is biblically correct. When a theologian has concluded that a particular view is correct, he should seek to make his discovery a test of orthodoxy — if not in his own era, if that is premature, then someday. The goal of the Church should always be an increase in confessional precision. A large part of the Church’s confession deals with eschatology. Orthodoxy means straight speaking. One cannot speak straight with a four-way tongue.

It is time to stop believing in theological pluralism as anything more than a temporary stopgap. It is time to reject the idea of the equal ultimacy of incompatible theological positions. Premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism are theologically incompatible. God cannot be pleased with all three.” [9]

“In the middle of the first century of the Christian era, leaders in the church expected the Lord Jesus Christ to return within their lifetime. In his letters Paul tells his readers that the day of Christ is at hand. Of course, Paul’s two epistles to the church at Thessalonica deal primarily with the topic of Christ’s return. For Paul, the coming of Jesus was imminent…..James also mentions the doctrine of Christ’s return. In the fifth chapter of his epistle he addresses the rich who “have hoarded wealth in the last days” (v. 3). Especially in exhorting his readers to be patient, James notes that the coming of the Lord is near (vv. 7-8). Morever, he identifies the Lord with the Judge who is “standing at the door” (v.9). James anticipates that the return of the Lord will take place soon so that the wicked receive their just reward and the righteous be delivered from oppression.”

“When the verb mello is joined to the present infinitive which is what is found in Revelation 3:10 (tes mellouses erchesthai), it always expresses imminence. When Jesus says that the hour of trial is about to come, He means it will happen soon.4 To place the promise thousands of years away is a denial of the plain meaning of the Greek language.”

“It is often claimed that the apostle, like other New Testament writers, expected the advent of Christ within a short time and that this expectation was reproduced in his teaching in the form of affirmation to that effect (cf. 1 Cor 7:29-31). Would not the events then prove that the apostle was mistaken not simply in his expectation but also in his teaching?”

“The answer to this question would appear to reside in two considerations. (1) The New Testament does teach that the day of the Lord is at hand (cf. Phil 4:5; James 5:8; 1 Pet 4:7; Rev. 22:10-12,20). This is not to be interpreted, however, in the sense of imminence in our sense of that word, Paul himself who gives expression to this thought of nearness found occasion to warn against the supposition of imminence.”

“Say what you like,” we shall be told, “the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.”

It is certainly the most embarassing verse in the Bible. Yet how teasing, also, that within fourteen words of it should come the statement “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” The one exhibition of error and the one confession of ignorance grow side by side….

The facts, then, are these: that Jesus professed himself (in some sense) ignorant, and within a moment showed that he really was so. To believe in the Incarnation, to believe that he is God, makes it hard to understand how he could be ignorant; but also makes it certain that, if he said he could be ignorant, then ignorant he could really be. For a God who can be ignorant is less baffling than a God who falsely professes ignorance. The answer of theologians is that the God-Man was omniscient as God, and ignorant as Man. This, no doubt, is true, though it cannot be imagined.” (Essay “The World’s Last Night” (1960), found in The Essential C.S. Lewis, p. 385)

“We have seen that Christ’s discourse on the Mount of Olives, recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, deals with “the end”—not of the world, but of Jerusalem and the Temple; it has exclusive reference to the “last days” of the Old Covenant era. Jesus clearly spoke of His own contemporaries when He said that “this generation” would see “all these things.” The “Great Tribulation” took place during the terrible time of suffering, warfare, famine, and mass murder leading up to the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. What appears to pose a problem for this interpretation, however, is what Jesus says next:

But immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken, and then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and all of the tribes of the land will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the heaven to another (Matt. 24:29-31).

Jesus seems to be saying that the Second Coming will occur immediately after the Tribulation. Did the Second Coming occur in A.D. 70? Have we missed it? First, let us be clear about one thing at the outset: there is just no getting around that word immediately. It means immediately. Acknowledging that the tribulation took place during the then-living generation, we must also face the clear teaching of Scripture that whatever Jesus is talking about in these verses happened immediately afterward. In other words, these verses describe what is to take place at the end of the Tribulation—what forms its climax.

In order to understand the meaning of Jesus’ expressions in this passage, we need to understand the Old Testament much more than most people do today. Jesus was speaking to an audience that was intimately familiar with the most obscure details of Old Testament literature. They had heard the Old Testament read and expounded countless times throughout their lives, and had memorized lengthy passages. Biblical imagery and forms of expression had formed their culture, environment, and vocabulary from earliest infancy, and this had been true for generations. The difference between their outlook and ours can be illustrated by the fact that while much of the present book’s discussion of the Paradise theme was probably very new to you, it would have been old hat for the disciples.

The fact is that when Jesus spoke to His disciples about the fall of Jerusalem, He used prophetic vocabulary. There was a “language” of prophecy, instantly recognizable to those familiar with the Old Testament (some of which we have covered already in our study of the Garden). As Jesus foretold the complete end of the Old Covenant system—which was, in a sense, the end of a whole world—He spoke of it as any of the prophets would have, in the stirring language of covenantal judgment. We will consider each element in the prophecy, seeing how its previous use in the Old Testament prophets determined its meaning in the context of Jesus’ discourse on the fall of Jerusalem. Remember that our ultimate standard of truth is the Bible, and the Bible alone.

The Sun, Moon, and Stars

At the end of the Tribulation, Jesus said, the universe will collapse: the light of the sun and the moon will be extinguished, the stars will fall, the powers of the heavens will be shaken. The basis for this symbolism is in Genesis 1:14-16, where the sun, moon, and stars (“the powers of the heavens”) are spoken of as “signs” which “govern” the world. Later in Scripture, these heavenly lights are used to speak of earthly authorities and governors; and when God threatens to come against them in judgment, the same collapsing-universe terminology is used to describe it. Prophesying the fall of Babylon to the Medes in 539 B.C., Isaiah wrote:

Behold, the Day of the LORD is coming,

Cruel, with fury and burning anger,

To make the land a desolation;

And He will exterminate its sinners from it.

For the stars of heaven and their constellations

Will not flash forth with their light;

The sun will be dark when it rises,

And the moon will not shed its light. (Isa. 13:9-10)

Significantly, Isaiah later prophesied the fall of Edom in terms of de-creation:

And all the host of heaven will wear away,

And the sky will be rolled up like a scroll;

All their hosts will also wither away

As a leaf withers from the vine,

Or as one withers from the fig tree. (Isa. 34:4)

Isaiah’s contemporary, the prophet Amos, foretold the doom of Samaria (722 B.C.) in much the same way:

“And it will come about in that day,”

Declares the Lord GOD,

“That I shall make the sun go down at noon

And make the earth dark in broad daylight.” (Amos 8:9)

Another example is from the prophet Ezekiel, who predicted the destruction of Egypt. God said this through Ezekiel:

“And when I extinguish you,

I will cover the heavens, and darken their stars;

I will cover the sun with a cloud,

And the moon shall not give its light.

All the shining lights in the heavens

I will darken over you

And will set darkness on your land,”

Declares the Lord GOD. (Ezek. 32:7-8)

It must be stressed that none of these events literally took place. God did not intend anyone to place a literalist construction on these statements. Poetically, however, all these things did happen: as far as these wicked nations were concerned, “the lights went out.” This is simply figurative language, which would not surprise us at all if we were more familiar with the Bible and appreciative of its literary character.

What Jesus is saying in Matthew 24, therefore, in prophetic terminology immediately recognizable by his disciples, is that the light of Israel is going to be extinguished; the covenant nation will cease to exist. When the Tribulation is over, old Israel will be gone.”

Clouds are depicted as the”chariots of God” and indicative of his MAJESTY. In Job 22:12ff Job exalts Jehovah as the one who is in the height of heaven and covered with thick clouds. In Psalm 18 which is a highly apocalyptic description of David’s deliverance from Saul the former shepherd tells how Jehovah “bowed the heavens…and came down with darkness under his feet, he rode upon a cherub, and flew; He flew upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.” Now one can look but in vain to find a physical event matching these words. Jehovah had acted to deliver his servant and thus he had come. He had acted and his actions had vindicated his righteousness, thus he was depicted as coming in majesty in the clouds. Psalm 68:32-35 also speaks of God who “rides on the heaven of heavens” and “his strength is in the clouds.” Again the concept is his majesty and sovereignty. Psalms 104:3 tells us God “makes the clouds his chariots” and “walks on the wings of the wind.”

The idea of God’s coming in the clouds is also associated with the exercise of his sovereignty in JUDGING his enemies. In Isaiah 19 Jehovah “rides on a swift cloud and will come into Egypt.” We know from chapter 20 that it was the Assyrians who were God’s instrument of wrath on Egypt, see Isaiah 20:1-4; yet it is said that Jehovah was coming on a cloud. In Zephaniah 1:14-16 we are told the “great day of the Lord is near;” and that it would be a day of “wrath,” “distress,” and a “day of clouds,” when the Lord would come. We know this is a prediction of the impending judgment on Jerusalem, 1:4ff. This judgment came in 606-586 BC. Similar language is found in Nahum in the prediction of Nineveh’s fall. Jehovah “has his way in the whirlwind…and the clouds are the dust of his feet.” El Shaddai would come, the mountains would melt, the earth would be destroyed at his presence when he came on the clouds. We know that Nineveh was destroyed, not by a literal coming of Jehovah out of heaven on the clouds, but by the invading armies of the Chaldeans and Medes in approximately 612 BC. ..Yet another though related concept of the coming with the clouds is the Messianic motif of Daniel. In Daniel 7 one like the Son of man is depicted as coming in the clouds of heaven. This concept of Messiah on the clouds was certainly one well known in the first century. For John to say in Revelation 1:7 that Jesus would come with the clouds was nothing less than an assertion of his Messianic role as the ruler of the kingdom of God. In his coming in the clouds he was exercising the sovereignty and demonstrating the majesty of deity so well known in the Old Covenant. The idea is not a literal coming with the clouds so much as an identifying factor of the one under consideration. He is to be viewed not just as man but the One, who, like Jehovah, rides on the clouds. The association of Jesus coming in the clouds then was a way for the Biblical writers to IDENTIFY Jesus, in a manner well known to those conversant with Old Testament symbolism, as God’s Messiah, as the Judge, worthy of majesty and honor.”

This is precisely the thought Jesus was conveying to Caiaphas when he told him he would see him coming in the clouds. When Jesus said he was going to come in the clouds this was a claim to the Messianic office and divine nature; Caiaphas responded, “He has spoken blasphemy!” Caiaphas was not responding to a claim that Jesus would literally return on a physical cloud. He was responding to the IDENTITY which Jesus was claiming by associating himself as the one to come in the clouds of heaven!”

1. They saw Jesus ascend a certain distance and then disappear from their sight when he reached the cloud — ascension to a cloud.

2. They saw the cloud appear to actively lift Jesus upward a certain distance before he disappeared from their sight — ascension in or with a cloud.

3. They saw Jesus suddenly vanish into a cloud while he was standing before them without any visible upward motion of either Jesus or the cloud.

Answer 1 would be the implication of the connective use of kai. The explicative use of kai could imply either answer 2 or answer 3. The only way to determine which answer is the most likely meaning intended by Luke is to examine the context. The least likely answer to our question is number 3, namely that Luke intended to say that Jesus simply vanished while standing in front of the apostles. There are a number of reasons for this conclusion.

If option 3 is ruled out, the only exegetically possible answers are 1 and 2. The strongest contextual evidence for answer 1 is the fact that verse 11 clearly states that the apostles saw Jesus going. If answer 2 requires us to say that Jesus himself was not visible at all during the ascent of the cloud, then the clear statement in verse 11 would seem to rule out the possibility of answer 2. The strongest evidence in favor of answer 2 is the apparent meaning of the verb … used in Acts 1:9..  “to cause to ascend, take up.”83 This use of the verb would seem to imply that the cloud acted as “the vehicle of ascent.”84

The determining factor would appear to be the meaning of the words translated “out of their sight” in verse 9. 85 As we have already observed, a number of hyper-preterists understand these words to mean that Jesus departed invisibly in the glory cloud.

This can be understood in a couple of different ways. I have already noted the extreme exegetical problems with understanding it to mean that Jesus simply vanished while standing before the apostles. However, it can also be understood to mean that the apostles saw the cloud ascend but did not see Jesus himself ascend because the cloud hid him from their sight throughout the entire ascension. There are at least two problems with this interpretation. First, verse 11 specifically tells us that the apostles saw Jesus go. It does not say that they only saw the cloud go. In fact, verse 11 does not even mention the cloud. Secondly, verse 9 does not specify precisely when the cloud took him from their sight. Even if we understand the verse to be saying that Jesus was surrounded by a cloud while he was standing before them and then was lifted up with, in, or by the cloud, this does not mean that Jesus could not be seen by the apostles from the moment the cloud first surrounded him. When verse 9 says that Jesus was taken “out of their sight,” it simply means that at some point in the ascension he was no longer visible to them.

There does not appear to be enough evidence to say conclusively that kai is definitely connective or definitely explicative. There is some support for both views. What is important to note is that either interpretation is perfectly consistent with the traditional understanding of the visible ascension of Christ. If kai is connective, then the apostles saw Jesus ascend to a certain point (the cloud) at which he was no longer visible to them. If kai is explicative, then the apostles saw Jesus ascend with the cloud to a certain point after which he was no longer visible to them. Regardless of which interpretation is chosen, verse 9 cannot be used to say that the apostles did not see Jesus go when verse 11 explicitly says the apostles did see Jesus go.”

At the transfiguration God spoke out of a cloud to identify Jesus as “My Son, whom I have chosen”. Jesus, like God in the OT, rides on a cloud (Acts 1.9) One of the most pervasive images of Christ’s return is as one who rides his cloud chariot into battle.” p157

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