Scripture Symbolism, the End Times for Example

by Rev. Michael Gladish


There is a passage of Scripture that is part of a lengthy section of teaching Jesus offered in response to the following question – which the disciples asked after He predicted the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem: – they said, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

Significantly, the first thing Jesus did was to warn against false prophets whom He said would certainly rise up to deceive many. Then He spoke about “the abomination of desolation” referred to in the book of Daniel, and said that there would be “great tribulation,” including wars, famine, pestilence and earthquakes in various places. Then He said,

“Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, 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.” (Matthew 24:29-30).

And that’s what we’re going to focus on now: the sun being darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling and the Son of Man appearing in the clouds of heaven.

You know, Christians have been waiting for these events to happen for thousands of years now, and many still say, as they have for centuries, that they are just around the corner. Paul himself, in his epistles, makes clear that he thought it was going to happen in his lifetime, so he said it would be foolish to take on new commitments – like marriage, for instance (I Cor. 7:29-32). But in this church we believe that all these things are symbolic, and were never meant to be taken literally to signify worldly events. They are, of course, vitally important prophecies, but they relate to our spiritual and not to our natural lives. Here’s what we mean: –

The sun in Scripture always represents the Lord – God – particularly as to His love. This is why it is said in Matthew that our Heavenly Father “makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good” (5:45); He simply loves everyone, and there is nothing we can do to keep Him from doing so. But when the sun is darkened, whether it be by night, clouds, locusts or the shadow of buildings, then we don’t see it or feel its warmth, and this corresponds to a state in our lives when we do not feel His love. This situation can exist even in churches, when they become pre-occupied with rules or rituals or judgments, or when they don’t have a clear idea of how the Lord shows us His love.

Moonlight in Scripture represents the impression we have of the Lord through faith. In fact, it is reflected light, but it testifies in the darkness of night to the fact that the sun is still there. So it is with our faith: when things seem dark in our spiritual lives, when we don’t really FEEL God’s love, we can still SEE that it is there when we think about it, and reflect on it. We can also find our way by moonlight, if necessary, but when the moon no longer gives its light we have a situation that represents our lack of faith. Now if you look around just about any north American or European city today, you will certainly notice a lack of faith. And despite all the churches you may see it is a fact that only a small percentage of people go to church on Sundays. Why? Maybe not because they don’t believe in God, but because they don’t have any faith in the churches to teach them what they need to know, or do them any good. This being the case it is a sign of the end of an age, or an era, for the churches, and of the need for some new light, some new understanding, some renewal of faith that is meaningful to these people.

Now the stars: what do they represent? Navigators for centuries have found their way through the night by identifying and following the stars. The “wise men” followed one especially bright star to find the baby Jesus. John in Revelation speaks repeatedly of stars, even falling stars.

Based on the evidence in Scripture itself we see that stars correspond to the guiding insights we get from the knowledge that we learn and store in our memories, or, in general, to the points of knowledge themselves. Notice that for the most part one star alone will not guide you on your way, but a constellation of stars will, if you know what you’re looking for. So the knowledge of Divine Revelation, especially, can guide us on our path to a truly spiritual life. But if the stars fall, that is, if that knowledge fails, then we are truly in the dark, not knowing which way to turn.

And that, again, does seem to be the case within the Christian world today. Some say the Bible is literally true, some say it is all myth and was never true; some say it has a lot of good ideas but is couched in the culture of the times and so cannot be applied to our times; even high ranking ministers within the same denominations disagree on what in Scripture can be considered reliable and useful to us. It’s as if all the stars are falling, like meteorites – interesting but useless for finding your way. In the context the one thing that is clear is that we need new insight, new knowledge, some new revelation to clear up all the confusion.

And so this is exactly what is promised: “the sign of the Son of Man appearing in heaven,” indeed, “the Son of Man (Himself) coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory,” that is, with authority and LIGHT. Clouds here represent the obscurity of the literal sense of the Scriptures through which Christ can and does appear in the spiritual sense, that is, in the spiritual meaning we have just been discussing.

Remember in the Gospel of John where Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when the Spirit of truth has come, He (or rather it) will guide you into all truth... and He (or it) will tell you things to come...”? This Spirit of truth is not some third “person” of the Divine Trinity, but, simply, the meaning itself of the Scripture which is revealed with great power and glory when we see it with the eyes of our understanding. Think of an example. When you have struggled for a long time to understand something and then finally got it, did you not think or even say, “Oh! I SEE!” So it is with the Sacred Scriptures: when we finally “get” that it is all symbolic, all representative of spiritual states and situations within our own lives, then we begin to see the great Teacher, the Son of Man, speaking to us directly out of what are otherwise just obscure stories from another time and culture.

This is what the New Christianity is all about. And once we “get” this, then we can see more and more, not only in the Scriptures but in the business of life, how spiritual things relate to natural things, how actions represent intentions, and how God works to preserve our spiritual freedom even though He permits awful things to happen in the world. The spiritual causes of natural things become clear: for example why men and women are created different – different but equal – and how the process of human regeneration (spiritual growth and development) really takes place.

Above all, the understanding of the spiritual sense of the Scriptures clarifies our vision, our idea of God so that we can see Him as the one perfect source of all things good and true, all things loving and wise, all things blessed and orderly and right. True, God Himself, the Infinite and Almighty, is beyond our finite comprehension. All we can see are glimpses, sort of like Moses catching a fleeting glance as Jehovah passed by him on Mt. Sinai. But when we note how the terms and phrases used in the Scriptures all describe different aspects or qualities of the one God then we can really enter into a relationship with Him – not with God for Jesus’ sake, or with the Holy Spirit as if this were another person mystically operating in us, but with our Heavenly Father as He presents HIMSELF in human form, the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ.

Remember the prophecy in Isaiah: – “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given” ? Right there in the same verse it says “His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6). In fact, the terms “mighty” and “God” are both nouns in the Hebrew, and should be translated, “God, the Mighty One.” This is Jesus Christ, “in whom dwells,” as Paul wrote, “the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9).

You see, the term “Father” really refers to God as the source of all life, not to mention a loving and caring creator. So it conveys the idea of love itself, Divine love, influencing all human life. The term “Son” refers to what proceeds from God’s love and gives it form so that it may be known in a way that is not possible when we try to contemplate the Infinite itself. This, in a nutshell, is the “body” of teaching, the Divine truth or wisdom that Jesus came to declare as the living, human form of God, the Word of God representing and explaining His love. And finally the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, is the spirit or meaning of that truth as it works in our lives, in our minds and in our hearts, actually guiding us through an understanding of what we must do to receive His blessing.

So the Son of God does not sacrifice Himself to appease an angry Father-God. In fact He sacrifices nothing at all, but rather overcomes all that the world can throw at Him and glorifies His Humanity so that we may come to appreciate what it is all about: pure Divine love and infinite wisdom reaching down to teach and inspire every one of us. This vision can inspire us with an unreserved and genuinely heart warming love for God, a new sun to replace the sun that has been darkened by confusion over the Trinity, the vicarious atonement and other misconceptions.

As for the moon, our faith in God, the understanding of the spiritual sense of the Word provides a whole new platform for appreciating how God works in our lives! It shows us how the human mind works: what it is made of and how it develops, as the stories of the Bible actually are the stories of our progressive growth and change. It also shows us how the spiritual world influences and affects our natural lives so that we can be alert to those influences and make good choices according to a well informed conscience. For example, take the story of David and Goliath: this is not just a story of great moral courage. David actually represents on a deeper, personal level, the spiritual truth that we know and understand fighting against the giant of our own arrogance, especially the concept that there is nothing we can do to contribute to our salvation (Jesus did it all by dying on the cross, and we just have to believe in Him). With all due respect to Martin Luther and others, this really is a man-made concept, entirely out of line with the main thrust of the Scriptures and providing nothing so much as excuses for not living as we should. So the truth does fight against this. And if we give it permission it will win the fight within our own hearts and minds, taking the responsibility that God intends us to have.

But what about our faith in things to come? What about our faith in the life after death? What are we working for? What is heaven really going to be like? And if there is a hell, how can we reconcile that with the infinite and eternal love of God?

These are questions the traditional Christian Church has trouble answering; indeed, some simply say they are mysteries to be revealed only when we cross to the other side. But when we “get” the symbolic, spiritual meaning of the Scriptures a whole world of information becomes available to us: about the nature of heaven and hell, about the judgment after death, about reward and punishment, about free will and the leading of providence and much more. For example, there are references in the New Testament to the fires of hell and to the gnawing worms there. These are images of the sulphurous, burning garbage pits below Jerusalem, full of rotting animal and vegetable matter, and they are used to describe and illustrate the spiritual destiny of those who live selfish, evil lives. But they are not, nor were they ever meant to be taken literally! The fire of hell is simply the fire of passion, anger, resentment, or the burning lust of selfish, worldly living. And the gnawing of the worm suggests the way our own miserable cravings eat away at us and consume our spiritual lives.

In contrast the rewards of heaven are pictured as great wealth and power amidst awesome beauty and a blissful, peaceful environment. But again, what is spiritual wealth but knowledge and understanding? And what is spiritual power but the ability to serve a use, and to feel the joy and fulfilment that comes from that service. As for beauty, it is true, at least to a large extent, that it is in the eye of the beholder. The spiritual world is the world within each of us, and if we have no peace of mind and heart we cannot enter into a peaceful “place” after death.

We could go on and on about this. But in the end, you see, the spiritual world is the world of YOUR spirit – yours and others co-operating together, or perhaps arguing and in a contest for control, in which case that world is hell.

The point is, every aspect of Christian life and doctrine is illuminated by the understanding of the spiritual sense of Scripture, and this is what we teach. This is what we believe in, and this is what we have to offer, to share, with the world – not that it is ours or in any way comes from us, for it is the Lord’s own amazing revelation and we are simply fortunate beyond measure to have been given a small part in it.

 

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