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The church in which I grew up talked a lot about the imminence of the Second Coming and the Day of Judgment. We focused on being personally prepared—confessing our sins and our faith in Jesus, and cultivating our particular forms of piety. Our drive was to convert souls for heaven.

In preparing so assiduously for the last days, we missed something important: our responsibility to address the real needs of desperate people. If the world and its ills will soon pass away, these needs will feel less urgent. I have come to believe, however, that the Bible's vision of eschatology discourages such forgetfulness. Living in the last days means relieving the needs of particular people, and confronting the ills of all humanity.

The Bible frames help for the needy as a sign that God's kingdom has invaded this present age. In this light, acts of justice and compassion are a form of gospel proclamation. What follows are six big ideas that connect biblical eschatology, biblical justice, and gospel proclamation.

It is impossible to believe that a good God would ignore injustices committed against the people and the planet he loves. The psalmist frets over the fact that the wicked prosper. "[A]lways free of care, they go on amassing wealth," laments Psalm 73. "Surely in vain have I kept my heart pure …."

It is all so unfair! The evil amass wealth by grinding the face of the poor, but I have kept myself pure—and look what my life is like! Yet the psalmist finds comfort in a passionate belief that somehow God will set things right: "Surely you place them on slippery ground; you cast them down to ruin."

Only later in biblical history, in the shadow of Babylonian captivity, would such intuitions ripen into detailed pictures of justice. The prophet Micah, for instance, anticipated the eventual restoration of his homeland after assaults by the Assyrians and the Babylonians. In his description of the "last days" (his term), nations experience the rule of law—God's law—rather than the rule of tyrants. People turn swords, a symbol of war and bloodshed, into plowshares, a symbol of peaceful cultivation of the land.

Micah offers a wonderful picture of tranquility and prosperity: "Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid" (4:4). This is not a picture of God's people sipping lemonade in the shade; vines and fig trees are the foundation of economic prosperity, enabling everyone to provide for themselves and their families.

In the next chapter, Micah predicts the birth of the Messiah, intimating a nexus between the last days, the reign of peace and prosperity, and the Savior's coming. So too, in Isaiah's eschatological vision, do the promises of peace, justice, and messianic deliverance intersect. Isaiah describes God's servant, whom we understand to be the Messiah, as bringing justice to all the nations, Gentiles included. Through his ministrations, "[t]hey will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isa. 11:9).

Daniel gives us the earliest portrait of the Last Judgment and the resurrection of the dead, "some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2). He presents a graphic vision of God's people oppressed by evil powers, and then pictures God, One like a Son of Man, and the archangel Michael making everything right on a global scale. But here's the genuinely new element: Justice does not extend just spatially to the whole world, as in Micah and Isaiah. It also extends back through time, rewarding the righteous dead with everlasting life and punishing the wicked with everlasting contempt.

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Signs of the End Times, August 2011, Vol. 55, No. 8, Page 46

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