This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Revelation” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, January 16, 1994.
About this sermon
What does apocalypse mean, and where does apocalyptic writing show up in Scripture? In Mark 13 Jesus himself speaks of the end. The liberal reading of apocalyptic amounts to a different religion from Christianity, and the biblical view stands against it.
Sermon transcript
Our reading tonight comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 13. We are beginning at verse 5. give your attention to the word of God. And Jesus began to say to them, See to it that no one mislead you. Many will come in my name, saying, I am he, and will mislead many. And when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be frightened. Those things must take place. That is not yet the end, for nation will arise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places. There will also be famines. These things are merely the beginning of birth pangs.
But be on your guard, for they will deliver you up to the courts. and you will be flogged in the synagogues, and you will stand before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. And when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not be anxious beforehand about what you are to say, but say whatever is given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak, but it is the Holy Spirit. And brother will deliver up brother to death, and a father his child. And children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death.
And you will be hated by all on account of my name, but it is the one who has endured to the end who will be saved.” And when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be, let the reader Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let him who is on the housetop not go down, nor enter in to get anything out of his house, and let him who is in the field not turn back to get his cloak.
But woe to those who are with child and those who nurse babes in those days, but pray that it may not happen in the winter, for those days will be a time of tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the creation which God created until now and never shall. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no life would have been saved, but for the sake of the elect whom He chose, He shortened the days. And then, if anyone says to you, behold, here is the Christ, or behold, he is there, do not believe him, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show signs and wonders in order, if possible, to lead the elect astray. But take heed, behold, I have told you everything in advance, but in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven.
And the powers that are in the heavens will be shaken, and then they shall see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send forth the angels and will gather together his elect from the four winds and from the furthest end of the earth to the furthest end of heaven. Now learn the parable from the fig tree. When its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, You know that summer is near. Even so, you too, when you see these things happening, recognize that He is near, right at the door.
Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But of that day or hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the son, but the father alone. Take heed, keep on the alert, for you do not know when the appointed time is. It is like a man away on a journey, who upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. Therefore, be on the alert, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, at cock crowing or in the morning, lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. And what I say to you, I say to all. Be on the alert.
Father, we may pass by the obvious and that which is at root in our confession, namely, our confidence in your word. And Father, may we not circumvent then the doctrine that we have come to embrace, that your word is infallible, that it is inspired. Therefore, knowing this, our God, may we present ourselves before that word, realizing that we receive in that word from you, your perfect instruction. Teach us, our God, yes, we who are young, for this time is precious, and also we who are older, that we might have all things in place in our lives, and that for your sake. We pray this in Jesus’ name, he himself being the living word. Amen.
Last week we had some fun with the outline of the book of Revelation, and I know how engaging and captivating that message was, and I believe through the course of it I had almost everybody’s attention. And believe me, we will be returning to captivating approaches like that where we are laying out for you nice, compact outlines that are easily grasped. However, tonight As we continue with our introduction to the book of Revelation, and as we prepare for our assault upon chapters 12 through 14, and the theme there laid out for us in the sermon titled, The Woman, the Child, and the Dragon, we want to give our attention to a rather deep and complicated subject.
That subject is what has been called the apocalyptic. You may have noticed when you were reading some versions of the Bible, or even some commentaries on the Bible, that when reference was made to the book of Revelation, it was identified as the Apocalypse. You may be a student of art. You may recall a very famous woodcutting by Albrecht that fellow whose name is hard to pronounce because of the umlaut.
The scene that Drewer depicts is out of Revelation 6, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, or the four horsemen out of the book of Revelation. Some of you have Greek New Testaments, and you will notice in those Greek New Testaments, when you look at the title given to the book of Revelation, that it bears the Greek word or title, Apocalypse.
And then if you look at the very first word in the book of Revelation, That first word is no other than that word. So we have here an introduction to this word, even through what appears to us in the title of the book of the Revelation. Apocalypse means revelation. That is the meaning of the word, and the opening words of this book are the revelation of Jesus Christ, or the Apocalypse of Jesus Christ. So then we have the book of Revelation called the Apocalypse, but we also have the fact that in so describing or naming this book. The book of Revelation is related to a broad body of literature, biblical and otherwise, called apocalyptic literature.
Now, what can we say about this apocalyptic literature? Generally, it centers upon visions, or revelations if you will, particularly revelations of the end of the world, usually employing rich, varied, and even, in the judgment of some, bizarre symbolism to describe the conclusive battles between God and Satan, for the salvaging of the good in the world to come, and for the condemnation of the wicked in the destruction of this present world. I’ll give that to you again, the general features of apocalyptic literature. This literature centers on visions or revelations of the end of the world, usually employing a rich, varied, and even bizarre symbolism to describe the conclusive battles between God and Satan for the salvaging of the good in the world to come, and for the condemnation of the wicked in the destruction of this present world. I think that you will recognize in this description of apocalyptic literature how a great deal of biblical material might be called apocalyptic.
For example, there is a beautiful, compelling, and powerful section of the prophecy of Isaiah. in which the end of the world is, in fact, superimposed upon the judgments that are coming upon God’s people. I have in mind chapters 24-27, a section of Isaiah’s prophecy which is called The Little Apocalypse. If you want some thrilling reading tonight, before you turn in, take up the prophecy of Isaiah and read those chapters. But not only Isaiah from the Old Testament, you also have, I think you recognize this, the book of Ezekiel. All the symbolism in that book, the depiction of the war between God and the powers of evil. In addition, you have Daniel, the prophecy of Daniel, and Zechariah.
All of these have been viewed as pervasively apocalyptic. But moving now into the New Testament, you may be wondering—probably the wondering is over now—why when preaching on Revelation I read to you from Mark’s Gospel, the thirteenth chapter. This chapter, although lacking in some of the features of apocalyptic literature, does in others conform to the pattern of the apocalyptic, and has been recognized as being apocalyptic in character. There is material from Paul’s writings For instance, 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 has been described as essentially apocalyptic in character. To this you might add Peter’s second epistle, and also the epistle of Jude. So pervasive is the apocalyptic that some see it running extensively through the New Testament in its entirety.
And having seen it then running through the New Testament in its entirety, we ask if the apocalyptic might be the basic, driving, even organizing force in the teaching of the New Testament underlying even those portions of the New Testament where it isn’t immediately evident.
To put it very simply, the question is asked, is the apocalyptic the key to interpreting, understanding the New Testament? Is the end of this world and the appearance of another world the basic driving, organizing force in the teaching of the New Testament, the common thread woven throughout the entirety of the document. Getting that right, you get everything else right. Starting at that point, are you able then to move through the rest of the New Testament, through the entirety of the New Testament, and get everything in place to understand as you never understood before. But further, insofar as the New Testament is read by the Church as the conclusion of the Old Testament, you see where I’m going? Can we say that this apocalyptic The end of this world and the appearance of another world is the basic driving, organizing force in the teaching even of the Old Testament. Is the apocalyptic then the only fitting conclusion to the Old Testament as well as the backbone to the New? Getting that right Do you understand not just the New Testament, but now do you understand the Old Testament as well? Many in this century would answer yes to these questions that I have just posed. However, some of those who do so would alarm you when giving you their reasons why they answer yes. You see, a number of liberals who would say yes to these questions.
View the prophets of the Old Testament and the New Testament writers, and I might add, even Jesus himself. as champions of, as infected by, the fantastical mad schemes of Jewish apocalypticism. You know what they have in mind? The kinds of people that stand out on the corners in the city of Pittsburgh and tell you that the end of the world is right around the corner. That’s the company into which, then, these liberals place the Old Testament prophets, the New Testament writers, and even Jesus himself. The biblical personalities, then, from this point of view, were doom and gloom, the end is near personalities, believing that God’s judgment upon this world was imminent, a judgment in which the reprobate would be separated from the elect, and a new world would come. In this scheme, then, according to the liberals, the book of Revelation is typical. It is a concentrated expression. of the spirit at work in biblical religion generally, a spirit akin to blind apocalyptic fanaticism, if not religious insanity.
Now, if you believe that I am stretching things at this point, I challenge you to read Albert Schweitzer’s analysis of Jesus’ mentality. According to Schweitzer, Jesus was a religious madman. Some of you have wondered at my antipathy towards Billy Graham, but I can still remember the night that I sat in front of my television set Watching Billy Dean telecast from St. Louis, Missouri, in which he told that St. Louis crowd that the greatest Christian in the 20th century was Albert Schweitzer. According to Schweitzer and others then, this religious madness said that there are two worlds, the present one and the future.
There is only good and evil, the elect and reprobate, and God is about to bring the present order to a cataclysmic, catastrophic close. This world may end, said the liberal. But not because it is evil, not because it is unworthy, it might end, but only by natural disaster or by human foolishness, ecological foolishness, or playing around with nuclear energy too much. Certainly not through divine intrusion. This world might end, says the liberal, but when it does, that ending will mean a completely indiscriminate ending.
There will be no separation between elect and reprobate. There are no elect. There are no reprobate. And whatever other world there may be, we all indiscriminately will share in it, to the degree that there will be any sharing in anything at all. No God exists who will bring anything else to pass.
Please understand the importance of the man who stands at the foundation of this church, Jerry Gresham Major. He is the one who declared that when we are fooling around with liberalism, we are not fooling around with a variation of Christianity, a variety of the species. We are dealing with a completely different religion altogether.
So yes, the apocalyptic So says the liberal, is the appropriate conclusion to the Old Testament and the backbone to the New. But it is precisely because this is the case, says the liberal, that we must subject our Bibles to a radical reinterpretation if they are to be of any use to us at all.
But there are others. who have also said yes to the questions that were posed earlier. Yes, biblical religion does center in the doctrine that this world shall end cataclysmically with the coming of God for the appearance of another world in which the elect will dwell with God eternally. But in saying this, these Bible-believing folk, these servants of the living Christ, distinguish themselves from the liberals just described. But I might add, they also distinguish themselves and their view of the biblical apocalyptic from that of the general Jewish apocalypticism. for which the doctrine of the end of the world became the only doctrine in their repertoire. You see, there is a biblical apocalyptic.
But please understand, this biblical apocalyptic has always been A corrective, a remedy to the wild, speculative, contrived, even invented fantasies of doomsayers. Those who know, so they say, because they have a secret knowledge given to them, even the calculations for the precise date of the end. of the world.
Does Mark 13.32 strike you as it does me in light of this? Yes, Mark 13 is apocalyptic in its nature, but it is also anti-apocalyptic. It is directed against the Jewish fanaticism which Jesus encountered in his own time. Not even the sun knows the hour or the time.
The world, as well as Judaism, has known those who were members of the apocalyptic cult, those who were certain about how things were going to conclude and when. Those who said there is no further revelation, there is no further message than that particular vision that they claimed. Who said there is no further involvement, in fact. Hear me at this point. For at this particular juncture, we are striking at the heart of the fanatical kind of apocalypticism that Jesus and the other New Testament writers reacted against.
Those members of the apocalyptic cult who say that there is no further involvement by God in this wicked world but as the agent of its destruction. There is no further involvement by God in this wicked world but as the agent of its destruction. Who say that there is no further opportunity for change, moral renovation, or spiritual rebirth, since the faith of all is sealed, irrevocable? Who say, mercy is past, Wrath is coming in keeping with divine, immutable justice. According to the apocalyptic cultists, the next act of God is the end. That is what they are saying. That’s what they are always saying.
Now, if you hear in this, The echoes of that religious aptitude that Jesus and his apostles constantly countered, the echoes of that religious aptitude that Jesus originally countered in his own disciples, if you hear the major chord of self-righteousness and of arrogant self-confidence that plagued not just the religious fanatics, but the Jewish establishment, then you have not misheard.
The biblical apocalyptic, which in fact is at the root of biblical revelation, preaches for all its worth the coming end of this world and the appearance of another, to be sure. but it preaches as well the direct and powerful intervention and intrusion by God himself to accomplish this. It preaches divine election and the biblical truth about the chosen and about the reprobate. And it often communicates these truths in the most extraordinary, symbolical language. All these features are in fact found, as you know, in the book of Revelation. But the biblical apocalyptic also prays God, as is heard in Revelation and throughout the biblical record, proclaims to us the message of the gospel, the good news. that the yet future world has already intruded upon the plane of this world, doomed to destruction.
And that such an intrusion is of grace for the reclamation of sinners, for their transformation and their rebirth. These who are utterly lost otherwise. And that this intrusion by God means transformation of those effectively called to the end, that they might offer useful service in this world. And that this obedient service is to the praise of God’s glorious grace, and offered in ways that make plain that the judgment, yes, is certain, it is even drawing near, And in some ways, its force and fury is being felt already.
I don’t believe that I have to draw out for you all of the details relating the biblical apocalyptic to the general message of the word of God, and even particularly to the book of Revelation. I am sure you are able to see Jesus Christ as central in all of this, and have come to understand that though the judgment draws near and even is seen in some measure to be close at hand, Yes, this in keeping with the message of the biblical apocalyptic and Revelation itself, you have been secured by the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, apocalyptic events in their own right. A fair and faithful hearing of the book of Revelation. puts the fair and radiant beams of gospel glory upon your faces. In the certainty of the grace of your Savior, you shall be preserved even to the end of the world.”
What we see, therefore, in the book of Revelation is a concluding Christianizing of the apocalyptic, bringing it all wonderfully to a fitting end, in which the message about the end of one world and the appearance of another is overtly and completely subordinated to the revelation of Jesus Christ in the gospel. And let me also say, in conclusion, this to be worked out in our study of the chapters before us, this to be kept in mind by us as we work through revelation. that the book of Revelation, in addition to providing us with a concluding Christianizing of the apocalyptic, gives us a profound, startling apocalypticizing of the history of the Church.
Do you realize that you are living in the time in which the seals are being broken? It’s happening right now. In which the trumpet blasts are sounding, it’s happening right now. In which the bowls of wrath are being poured out, and it is happening, you see, because of your presence. Your presence brings the apocalyptic dimensions to bear upon this world and in the history through which you are transversing. And the truth is, you see, As the book of Revelation would communicate it to you, you are being preserved in the midst of all of the horror that is going on around you. And even because of you.
Lord, we would hear from your word, your statements, that we need not be afraid. And Lord, as we would think on this, we would also remember our identity. that we as your people are being preserved in the midst of all of the horrors that spell out the apocalyptic end of this world and the appearance of another. We would live then, Lord, as those who have been blessed by that future world the benefits of which, and even the reality of which, is communicated to us presently, in and through your Son, by the work of the Spirit in our midst. But we would also, Lord, in keeping with the admonitions of your Son, keep watch beyond the alert. Please, Father, may we not be overcome with a fearfulness and a terror because of the horrors that we see and even go through. May it be obvious to heaven itself that we belong to you. and are preserved by your mighty hand. We pray this in the certain knowledge that we are united to your Son, and we shall not
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