The Prophetic Hope

In retrospect the Jerusalem Conference on Biblical Prophecy, held in June, seems in several ways a remarkable event. Not only did it attest a pervasive rank-and-file interest in biblical prophecy, but it also indicated that many churchgoers, though in basic agreement about last things, welcome a frank debating of secondary differences more than a mere rubber-stamping of traditions. Jerusalem 1971 was a call to churches everywhere to search and to research the Scriptures for God’s authentic word about the future.

The mood of the prophecy conference was far different from expectations of unsympathetic critics, who envisioned either a gathering of fanatics assembling in Armageddon to glimpse the worst of an imminent Doomsday, or a counter-ecumenical conclave bent on expounding religio-political theses. The conference avoided both oracular politicizing and religious fanaticism; its confident expectation of the Lord’s return and of God’s impending judgment of men and nations was correlated with a summons to greater evangelistic engagement as well as to social and cultural involvement.

From the outset two notes were struck: “If this is God’s world, as we believe it is, we dare not forsake it to the despoilers, but recall our generation we must to the righteous and just purposes for which God has made man and the cosmos.… God desires a new race of men, even a new heaven and earth. But God’s new man is one on whom the Divine King will inscribe His laws, and it is to the holy image of Jesus Christ that he will be conformed.”

In short, prophecy in the Jerusalem conference context embraced both foretelling and forthtelling, and it was seen as an incentive rather than an alternative to socio-cultural responsibility and evangelistic engagement.

Conference speakers were unanimously agreed on evangelical core-commitments, such as: the inspired prophetic-apostolic Scriptures convey God’s authoritative Word about the future; Jesus of Nazareth is God’s decisive messianic revelation; the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the hinge of human history and hope; in connection with the soon-approaching return of Christ, the Living God will consummate history in a final and irrevocable judgment of men and nations. Debated issues concerned the prophetic significance of the regathering of Jewry, the Israeli reoccupation of Jerusalem, the millennial question, reconstruction of the temple, and so on.

That echoes of the conference are now being heard in thirty-two lands from which the 1,500 participants came promises a renewal of prophetic interest in many churches. Interestingly enough, the prophetic conference was no conclave of bearded patriarchs; many young and middle-aged persons took part.

From the very first the conference had been projected—perhaps wrongly—not as a study congress for the systematic investigation of biblical teaching about eschatology but as a high-level expository program for tourists who could correlate four days of Holy Land sightseeing with more than three days of inspirational teaching and preaching. The travelers, as might be expected, were mainly Americans, and the speakers mostly from the United States and England, though there were noteworthy exceptions. Any future prophetic conference, if seriously ventured, must recognize that Christianity is an Asian religion, and must therefore reflect Asian leadership more fully. Program content would also need to be correlated for systematic and comprehensive Bible exposition.

Perhaps such hopes cannot be fully achieved on the edge of tour parties, and must be augmented by the churches at home. The possibilities of serious evangelical dialogue with modern Jewry on prophetic themes also remain to be pursued; Israelis invited to participate in panel discussions at the Jerusalem conference were indisposed to accept. Evangelicals must learn not to seek all ends from every means, and it is probable that Holy Land travel ought to be correlated only with popular and dramatic programs. If that be the case, the 1971 conference, while attaining less than would a study congress, nonetheless achieved much more than any similar future Jerusalem conference is likely to do.

The serious follow-up of prophetic interest must depend world-wide upon the local churches. The sad possibility always exists, of course, that such local prophetic interest will deteriorate into hairsplitting. Evangelicals have much in common to offer the world; it would be tragic were they to erode their energies in further subdividing themselves. Obviously there is a time and place to explore and emphasize differences, but only by keeping in the forefront the great eschatological affirmations of the apostolic kerygma and the historic creeds of Christendom will we prevent a distorted impression of the evangelical faith.

All the modern gods have failed contemporary man. Neither secular science nor Communist ideology nor revolutionary anarchy has produced its promised millennium. Even in affluent America the soaring seventies have soured into widespread unemployment and runaway inflation; faith in democracy suffers under an enlarging credibility gap. In his history of World War II Winston Churchill wrote of “the awful unfolding scene of the future”; in our more recent day even the most trusted world leaders find it increasingly difficult to predict what is to come.

No generation heretofore has been so besieged by end-time talk of the imminent destruction of mankind, be it by thermonuclear explosion, environmental pollution, or global famine. “Preserve more lives” and “Prevent more births” are battle cries of our age. The pervasive assumption seems to be that if ingenious modern man tries hard enough he can forestall any crisis that threatens human destiny.

Absent from this secular apocalyptic concern is any real understanding of God’s end-time. After all, the final chapter of human history is solely God’s decision, and even now he is everywhere active in grace or judgment. Never in all history have men spoken so much of end-time, yet been so shrouded in ignorance of God’s impending doomsday.

For the evangelical Christian, discussion of the end is neither a matter of entertainment (as it is for the apocalyptic movie-makers of Hollywood) nor a matter of dread (as for the doomsday secularists). It is, rather, a joyous expectation of the regathering of Christ’s disciples into the presence of the Coming King.

There is only One, namely God, who can confidently declare the future; there is only One, namely the Risen Jesus, who can speak authoritatively from the other side of the grave.

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