Musing about the Last Days

In Acts 2, Peter quotes Daniel's prophecy of the last days:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams:
and on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood and fire and vapor and smoke:
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

“The last days,” Peter goes on to explain in his famous Pentecost sermon, have arrived. The surprising things that people had been hearing and seeing among the Jesus people in Jerusalem were in fact a fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy. The last days, a phrase so loaded with hope and long-deferred expectations, had begun.

But you might notice that not all of Daniel's prophecy had been fulfilled on Pentecost. The latter part (“the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes”) was yet to come. You may also have noticed that all this recalls Jesus' prophecy of “the coming of the Son of Man” in Matthew 24:

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. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

All this is of course part of a larger prophetic teaching of Jesus in answer to the questions put by his disciples: what will be the sign of the closing of “this age.” So you see Jesus hearkening back to Daniel's prophecy and saying, there will be these phenomenal signs in the heavens. You see Peter hearkening back to Daniel in his Pentecost sermon to explain the pentecostal signs, but clearly the celestial phenomenon mentioned by Daniel have not yet taken place. It is only a partial fulfillment.

And all this is of course reminiscent of another New Testament prophecy, given to John near the close of the apostolic era and recorded in Revelation 6, where John is vouchsafed an elaborate vision of the last days:

When [the Lamb] opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth when the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.

What is clear through all this is that some of the celestial “signs” prophesied by Daniel, and then repeated by Jesus, by Peter at Pentecost, and finally by John, which will be associated with “the last days,” have not yet taken place. These aspects of Daniel's "last days" prophecy are yet to be fulfilled. They are still to come.

So from all this I am going to surmise a few simple truths concerning “the last days.”

1. The last days have begun. Peter said so, and I believe it.
2. The last days shall culminate in certain dramatic celestial occurrences, just prior to the return of Jesus to establish his everlasting kingdom.
3. The period of time between the beginning of the fulfillment of Daniel's prophecy at Pentecost, and the culmination of that fulfillment (“the great and glorious day of the Lord”), is called “the last days” by Daniel. In other words, the period of prophetic fulfillment inaugurated at Pentecost and culminating in the return of Jesus is called “the last days.”
4. Thus, it is safe to say, we are in the last days.

I mention all this, because I have heard much talk by Christians lately as to whether or not we are in the last days. I want to say, well of course we are, but I think what these people really mean is, are we at the very end (or perhaps at the beginning of the end) of the last days? Is the return of Jesus, the end of this age, imminent?

This question seems to distract people endlessly, and otherwise quite sane people get a little crazy. It does no good to remind them that Jesus said “the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” They just say, well, yes, maybe we don't know the hour, but what about the day and the month and the year? [No, I'm not kidding.]

Which leads me to ask the question, why might it be that Jesus chose to deflect such questions about the precise timing of “the day of the Lord”? Why didn't he want his disciples thinking in terms of exact timetables, or focused on the when as opposed to the why? Any ideas out there?

Hint: Martin Luther said that we should live like the resurrection happened yesterday and the second-coming will happen tomorrow.