N.T. Wright, History and eschatology: Jesus and the promise of natural theology. 2019. London: SPCK.

Unless otherwise indicated, and other than in block quotes, inverted commas surround quotations from Wright.

Go back to notes on chapter three. Go forward to notes on chapter five.

Part 2: History, eschatology and apocalyptic

Ch 4: The end of the world: Eschatology and apocalyptic in historical perspective

Introduction

Wright’s argument “that Christian theology must be anchored in the historical situation and beliefs of Jesus and his first followers” potentially implies that Christians should expect that the world is about to end. Wright’s responds that “Jesus and his first followers were not expecting the imminent end of the space-time universe”. We need to find out what they really did believe, and to untangle the various ways that the words ‘eschatology’ and ‘apocalyptic’ have been used by theologians. This is the task of this chapter. (129)

Eschatology and apocalyptic

Eschatology

On ‘eschatology’ Wright follows Caird.¹ Its traditional meaning is “‘the last things’, namely death, judgment, heaven and hell.” The word was first used in Germany in the early 1800s and imported into English, with that meaning, later that century. Other meanings have been (131) (inverted commas below surround Wright’s words):

• a predictive historicist use, whereby history was going toward a goal (Hegel, Teilhard de Chardin);
• the imminent end of the world (Schweitzer), a sense it still bears for many users;
• ‘realised eschatology’: Jesus was announcing that the kingdom was already present (Dodd);² but even when Jesus was casting out demons (e.g. Luke 11:20) most of the signs of the kingdom (overthrow of wickedness, universal justice and peace) had not yet come;
• ‘existentialist’ eschatology, whereby the process takes place in the life of the believer in the form of a “vertical inbreaking hope” that comes close to Gnosticism.³

Caird identifies two meanings that can be confidently identified historically on which, Wright suggests, research should focus: (131-132)

• The quite widespread Jewish view of ’two ages’: the ‘present age’ and the ‘age to come’. This is not, as often assumed, an ‘apocalyptic’ worldview: it was widespread and continued in rabbinical writing well after the first century. It summarises the hope for a political ‘return from exile’ or ’new Exodus’. For some (not all) Jews this was associated with the idea of a godforsaken present and a God-filled future.⁴ The coming age was for many a new political and social order fulfilling the promises of Psalm 72. (132-133)
• The early Christian version of this Jewish hope, found in the Gospels and in Paul (Romans 8, 1Corinthians 15; cf Revelation 21-22), claiming that ’the age to come’ has already been inaugurated through the death of Jesus and his resurrection. “He had won the victory over the dark powers; he had dealt with sin and launched the new creation.” (132)

“Apocalyptic”

Wright discusses several usages of ‘apocalyptic’ (133-134):

• History has failed; we need a new Word. Galatians 1:4 speaks of being ‘delivered from the present evil age’ (J. Louis Martyn). This is twentieth-century polemic, unrelated to first-century use of the term.
• The imminent, actual end of the world: ‘the stars will fall from heaven’ (Isaiah 34:4) is taken literally (Weiss, Schweitzer).
• The cosmic battle, “the struggle in which non-human powers wage war against God and his people”, culminating in the second coming, Jesus’ parousia, the ultimate victory. The “earliest Christians lived on the the imminent hope of Jesus’ return. The next generation, disappointed, reframed everything differently.” (Käsemann) (133)
• The “existential challenge to every person at every moment” (Bultmann).
• In Caird’s usage, which Wright follows, the word denotes a genre where writer intend to denote this-wordly realities and to connote theological meaning. “Thus a ‘monster’ or ‘beast’ in Daniel 7 or Revelation 13 would denote a pagan empire or emperor and connote the dark anti-God forces that ‘come up out of the sea’ (the place of chaos and evil).”⁵ This genre is found in Jewish writing from Daniel to 4Ezra and in early Christian writing in Revelation, Paul⁶ and the Gospels. Mark 13 “is ostensibly about the fall of the Temple which symbolized and effected the joining of heaven and earth. Its destruction could hardly be described except—as Jeremiah already knew—in terms of cosmic collapse.”⁷

It is essential that we interpret words according to their historical usage. (133-134)

The historical hope

Wright reiterates that what matters is historical exegesis: “the constant effort to understand texts in their contexts.” (135)

Jesus’ proclamation was about “something that was happening and that would happen, as a result of which the world would be a different place.” In this sense it was eschatological. This was the hope of the Second Temple period expressed in scriptural, often apocalyptic, language, not least with echoes of Daniel. (135-136)

“‘Apocalyptic’ literature uses the language of cosmic catastrophe to refer to actual political events.” Thus (136)

• Isaiah spoke of sun and moon being darkened to refer to the fall of Babylon, and to give that event its cosmic significance (Isaiah 13:10, 24:23).
• Jeremiah, referring to the fall of Jerusalem, warned that the world was heading for its chaotic precreation state (Caird 1980:259; PFG 168-170). He worried for a long time that he might be a false prophet—not because the world had not ended, but because Jerusalem had not fallen.
• As for Daniel, Josephus regards him as politically subversive; no first century reader thought that Daniel’s four sea-monsters were real-life creatures.
• 4Ezra 12 reinterprets Daniel with the messianic lion attacking the Roman eagle. No reader imagined an actual lion attacking an actual (if unconventionally feathered) eagle.

So why assume that ‘the son of man coming on the clouds’ would refer simply to a human being flying around in mid-air?

The post-Enlightenment world, having never really engaged with ancient Jewish thought, inevitably understood divine action in the world within the prevailing Epicurean worldview, and so took such language to denote ‘intervention from outside’, resulting in the present world coming to an end. …

… it was deaf to the main themes of Jewish hope: for the ‘new age’ to arrive, with YHWH himself returning in visible glory, and Israel rescued at last from ongoing exile. This brings us at last to the actual texts at the heart of the debates. (136)

Hope reimagined: Jesus and his first followers

Wright introduces two related issues here. First, did early Christians believe in a cosmic catastrophe at the end of time? Second, what did they believe about the timing of such an event? (137–139)

To the first question, Wright answers ‘no’. In Romans 8:16-25 Paul asserts that the present creation will not be destroyed, but set free from its ‘decay’ (phthora). This is guaranteed by (a) the death and resurrection of the Messiah, and (b) the power of the spirit. That is, these past events cause a future event when the creation will be truly itself and God will be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Revelation 21 depicts the same event. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2 Paul mentions ‘the day of the Lord’: but someone has told his readers that it has already arrived, and this context tells us it cannot refer to an end-time catastrophe. (138) What follows in the chapter belongs to the same event: ‘the lawless one’ will be destroyed by the breath of Jesus’ nostrils’ and ‘the unveiling of his parousia’) (2.8, alluding to Isaiah 11.4)⁸. (138–139)

One passage can be read as expecting a cosmic catastrophe.⁹ First, 2 Peter 3:7-10 says that

the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly… the heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare”

Wright comments that ‘Peter’ is warning against what certain ‘deceivers’ may say, not reporting what the early church believed. (295, fn73) Nonetheless, the passage is odd, and unique in early Christian writing.

On the second question, those who think that Jesus and his followers believed in the imminent end of the world point to Mark 9:1 (‘Some people standing here won’t experience death before they see God’s kingdom come in power’)¹⁰ and its parallels and to Jesus’ answer to Caiaphas in Mark 14.62 (‘You will see “the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven”’). There are also passages that mention ‘the end’: 1 Corinthians 15:24 (‘then comes the end’)¹¹ or Matthew 28.20 (‘I am with you, every single day, to the very end of the age’), (136-137) (mdr:) but there is no reason to suppose that any of these relate to a catastrophic disappearance of the present creation.

Nowhere does Paul imply a date for the future event. Some scholars see a development over the period of Paul’s ministry, starting from an assumption that the expected event, including the general resurrection, would occur during his lifetime (1 Thessalonians 4.15; 1 Corinthians 15.51–52)¹² to a belief that it might not. Wright suggests that after his terrible time in Ephesus (2 Corinthians 1.8–10) Paul recognised that he might well die before ‘the day’ arrived, and was thinking about the consequences of this (2 Corinthians 5.1-5; Philippians 1.20–26).¹³ There is no anxiety here that ‘the end’ is being delayed, only a change in Paul’s assumptions about his own death. (137)

In 1 Corinthians 7:29 Paul says ‘the time is short’, but this is in the middle of a discussion of whether one should marry. In the light of 7:26, ‘the present difficult time’, Wright translates 7:29 as ‘the present situation won’t last long’, with perhaps a famine in mind.

So what did the earliest Christians believe about Jesus’ promise of an imminent kingdom?” A well-known answer is that they adopted a ’now-and-not-yet’ approach. They knew that something had happened (the crucifixion and resurrection) that birthed the expected kingdom, but something else was yet to happen bring it to its ultimate goal. For the last half-century many have taken this two-stage eschatology for granted, but there are those who attack it as a modern invention, or at least an invention after the first Christian generation had died out. In the next section Wright makes the case that ’now-and-not-yet’ was indeed the belief of the earliest Christians.

Early traditions outside the Gospels

In the opening verses of Romans Paul states that Jesus has already been marked out by the resurrection as God’s son in power (τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει). He is king, and the nations will become obedient to him. Wright thinks that this was already traditional Christian phraseology, dating perhaps to around AD 50 at the latest. (139-140)

… God’s good news, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the sacred writings – the good news about his son, who was descended from David’s seed in terms of flesh, and who was marked out powerfully as God’s son in terms of the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead: Jesus, the king, our Lord! Through him we have received grace and apostleship to bring about believing obedience among all the nations for the sake of his name. (Romans 1:1-5, Wright NTE))

This echoes Psalm 2:8,¹⁴ and answers the question implicit in Mark 9:1 above. But the fact that this has already happened does not prevent Paul from looking forward to the future kingdom (Romans 2:7ff, 8:18ff, 13:12ff). In Romans 5:12-21¹⁵ Paul makes explicit the fact that the reign of the Messiah is a present reality with future consequences. In Romans 15:7-13 he quotes Isaiah 11:1 and 10 to show that Jesus is already enthroned as Lord of the nations. This is now-and-not-yet theology right here in Paul’s gospel. (139-141)

But the most obvious expression of this piece of Paul’s theology is in 1Corinthians 15, replete with OT references. The italicised words in v4 ‘he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures’ introduce the passage’s Messianic meaning. This is spelled out in vv20–28. In Wright’s words,

The Messiah has been raised; he is already reigning; his reign will be complete only when all enemies, death included, are conquered. Paul distinguishes the present messianic reign from the clearly future time when God will be ‘all in all’. (Wright’s italics) (141)

The references to Adam (v22, v45) connect Jesus back to Genesis:

The Messiah is the new and generative model human, through whom other ‘new humans’ will be brought to life from their present mortal state (1Corinthians 15:48–49). (141)

At the same time, central to this passage, Paul speaks in vv25-28 of everything being put under Jesus’ feet, a clear reference to the royal figure in Psalm 8:6 in the middle of a passage that expresses the thought of Daniel 7:27, which says:

Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of all the kingdoms under heaven will be handed over to the holy people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.’

Paul has already alluded to the fact that the Messiah’s power is delegated to the people of his Kingdom in 1 Corinthians 4:19-21.¹⁶ Philippians 2:9-11 is a clear statement of Paul’s belief that Jesus is now the exalted king and that this will be universally recognised in the future. There is no question but that Paul believes the Kingdom of God has already come in power. (141-142)

The Gospels, the Kingdom and the Son of Man

“All four Gospels frame the story of Jesus in terms of the long-awaited return of Israel’s God.” (144) Matthew (3:1-12) and Mark (1:2-8) have him introduced by John the Baptist, referring to Isaiah (40:3–5) where the herald announced YHWH’s return. Mark adds Malachi (3:1) with an echo of Exodus (23:20).¹⁷ This is reinforced by Matthew when Jesus himself quotes Isaiah (35:4-6; 61:1) in Matthew 11:4 and Malachi (3:1) in Matthew 11: 5,¹⁸ Luke (19:44) has Jesus, prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, saying “They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you,” that is, because they did not recognise their Messiah when he came. (144)

Wright sees the Gospels as being in the apocalyptic genre. “That is to say,” he writes, “they are describing this-worldly events and doing so in such a way as to claim that in these events the ‘revelation’, the unveiling, the visible coming of God, took place.” (144)

So for the Gospel writers YHWH had returned to his people, albeit in a form that Jesus’ contemporaries had never envisioned: the Messiah who embodies Israel’s God. (144)

If we compare the responses of Jesus’ followers after the crucifixion with the responses of Bar-Kochba’s followers after his defeat about a century later, we see that Jesus’ followers were not people who lived in disappointment, whereas the survivors of the Bar-Kochba rebellion were. Jesus’ followers had the joy of the resurrection. Those who propose that Jesus’ early followers lived in disappointment that he had not returned are wrong. (145-146)

In this parables, Jesus redefined ‘kingdom of God’, although this is rarely recognised. “The hope of Israel is being fulfilled, but not in the way people had thought—a theme which permeates the texts.” (146) The messianic theme reaches its peak in the crucifixion, with the ‘King of the Jews’ titulus.

For Matthew, this is how ‘the Son of Man’ is humiliated in order then to be glorified…. For Mark, it encapsulates Jesus’ paradoxical redefinition of power itself (10.35–45). For Luke, the powers of darkness do their worst and Jesus defeats them (22.53). For John, ‘the ruler of the world’ is cast out so that Jesus, his being ‘lifted up’, will draw all people to himself (12.31–32). This is the real victory over the real enemy. (147)

Jesus “was redefining power and politics themselves.”

In the midst of this Jesus frequently warned that the Temple itself, the place where heaven and earth had overlapped, was under divine judgment, and the first two chapters of Acts see a new way of linking heaven and earth through Jesus and his spirit-filled people. The disciples, faced with persecution, invoke Psalm 2 (Acts 4: 24-26),¹⁹ which has Jesus already reigning in power, as God’s response confirms (Acts 4:30-31).²⁰ (147-148)

This brings us back to Mark 9:1 (“some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power”) and its parallels in Matthew 18:28 and Luke 9:27. This saying of Jesus is a composite of Daniel 7:13-14, 18, 22, 27. Matthew, at least, when he wrote his Gospel, was certain that Daniel 7 had already been fulfilled. He starts it with Jesus’ declaration that “the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified” (26:2) and ends it with the risen Jesus declaring, ““All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18). The echo of Daniel 7:14 is unmistakable.

Again, when Jesus is accused by the high priest of saying he can destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days, Caiaphas puts him on oath to declare whether he is the Messiah, God’s son (Matthew 26:63). Jesus’ reply —

‘You said the words’, replied Jesus. ‘But let me tell you this: from now on you will see “the son of man sitting at the right hand of the Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven”’. (Matthew 26.64)

— alludes to Psalm 110:1

The LORD says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand…

between the two clauses of Daniel 7.13:

there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven.

Jesus’ addition, from now on, says that Jesus’ reign is being inaugurated now. (148-149)

Luke agrees (22:67-70). In Acts 2:32-36 he also reports Peter preaching from Psalm 110 at Pentecost, asserting that the psalm is now true—of Jesus.

God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear. For David did not ascend to heaven, and yet he said, “ ‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” ’ Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”

So both Matthew and Luke declare a ’now-and-not-yet’ belief. (149)

In Mark’s account, Jesus quotes Psalm 110 when he is preaching in the Temple (Mark 12:35-37). This is followed in Mark 13:2 by Jesus’ prediction of the Temple’s destruction. This event would not just be a national catastrophe, but in Jewish thought the collapse of the place in which heaven and earth were supposed to overlap. But it is John (2:19-22) who makes explicit what Mark leaves as impicit:

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Mark continues in 13:24-27²¹ with Jesus’ words that many have seen as a reference to the end of the world, but Jesus says it will take place “within a generation” (13:30). It is thus the event of Mark 9:1, and, as Wright has shown earlier, this refers to Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension and to the Temple’s destruction.²² (150)

There is thus no doubt that the Gospel writers and Paul saw Jesus’ death and resurrection as the inauguration of Jesus as king. Everything had changed. The early Fathers agreed. But there is no indication that they were disappointed that an allegedly predicted end of the world had not yet happened.

The alleged predictions are apocalyptic pieces:

‘Apocalyptic’ was not a general principle about the way things happen in the world. It was biblical language to convey the meaning of a one-off, unique event, the meaning which belonged to its unique and disruptive role within the narrative of creation and covenant.

These were primarily events in the earthly world. (151)

Conclusion

Wright has argued in this chapter that Jesus and his first followers did not expect the world to end shortly after his earthly career. They knew he might return at any time, but their focus was on his enthronement as “the world’s rightful Lord”. The modern idea that early Christians lived in disappointment is wrong, a projection of modern disappointment with “progress” found in “writers from Kierkegaard to Nietzsche, from Barth to Walter Benjamin, and many besides.” Underlying this is the claim that the real climax of world history occurred in the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century is challenged by the NT assertion that it happened in the first century.

Wright says that three things set the agenda for the chapters to follow:

• we need a fresh understanding of Jesus as a first-century Jewish apocalyptic prophet;
• this requires taking seriously the Temple that heaven and earth are gloriously joined, not separated by the Epicurean gulf;
• exploring Jesus, and especially his resurrection, means talking about Jesus as the clue to questions that concern ‘natural theology’. (152)

Go back to notes on chapter three. Go forward to notes on chapter five.

Footnotes

1. C.B. Caird, The language and imagery of the Bible. London: Duckworth. 1980, ch. 14. ↩
2. C.H. Dodd, Parables of the kingdom., rev. edn. London: Nisbet, 1961 [1935]. ↩
3. Wright mentions a critique by Jürgen Moltmann, The coming of God (trans. Margaret Kohl, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996 [1995], 13-22), to the effect that Bultmann and Barth both lose the futurity of the eschaton as they seek ‘the eternal moment’ ↩
4. Wright refers to his own earlier work and to Richard Bauckham, ‘Dualism and soteriology in Johannine theology’ in B.W. Longenecker & M.C. Parsons eds, Beyond Bultmann: Reckoning a New Testament theology. (Waco TX: Baylor UP 2014), and to Bauckham ‘The Delay of the Parousia’. Tyndale Bulletin 31 (1980), 3–36. ↩
5. See C. C. Rowland, The Open Heaven: A Study of Apocalyptic in Judaism and Early Christianity (New York: Crossroad, 1982); J. J. Collins, The Apocalyptic Imagination (New York: Crossroad, 1987); B. E. Reynolds and L. T. Stuckenbruck, eds., The Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition and the Shaping of New Testament Thought (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017). ↩
6. See e.g. J. P. Davies, Paul among the Apocalypses? An evaluation of the apocalyptic Paul in the context of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature. LondonL T&T Clark 2007. ↩
7. See M. Eliade, ‘Sacred Space and Making the World Sacred’, in L. M. Morales ed., Cult and Cosmos: Tilting towards a Temple-Centered Theology, (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), 195–316, on the way in which heaven-and-earth symbols function cross-culturally. ↩
8. 2 Thess 2:8: And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. Isa 11:4: but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. ↩
9. (mdr:) Wright also refers here to John 21, presumably vv22-23, but this doesn’t presage catastrophe, and it isn’t clear to me why it is mentioned here. ↩
10. (mdr:) Further on Wright takes this to refer to Acts 2ff. ↩
11. 1 Cor 15:24: Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ↩
12. 1 Thess 4:15: According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,a will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 1 Cor 15:51-52: Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ↩
13. 2 Cor 5:1-2: For we know that if the earthly tentb we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan,a longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling … Phil 1:20-21: I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. Phil 1:21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. ↩
14. He said to me, “You are my son; today I have ecome your father. Ask me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession. …” ↩
15. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned …… Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. ↩
16. But I will come to you very soon, if the Lord is willing, and then I will find out not only how these arrogant people are talking, but what power they have. For the kingdom of God is not a matter ofa talk but of power. What do you prefer? Shall I come to you with a rod of discipline,a or shall I come in love and with a gentle spirit? ↩
17. cf R. B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2016), 22, 374f (notes 17 and 22). ↩
18. See also the parallel passage in Luke 7. ↩
19. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “ ‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed one? ↩
20. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. ↩
21. ‘The sun will be dark as night And the moon will not give its light; The stars will fall from heaven And the powers in heaven will shake. Then they will see “the son of man coming on clouds with great power and glory”. And then he will dispatch his messengers, and will gather in his chosen ones from the four winds, from the ends of earth to the ends of heaven’. ↩
22. Crucial are the allusions to Isaiah 13 and 34. A full discussion is found in Jesus and the victory of God, chapter 8. ↩