The Old World

Peter spoke of the last-days in Acts 2:17. He referred to Joel’s prophecy about the last-days, when God would pour out His Spirit. Peter said “this is that”, meaning that the events of Acts 2 were those that were to occur in Joel’s last-days.

Peter referred to Joel’s prophecy about the sun and moon turning red and said it was fulfilled in his time then. These were not the last-days before the Second Coming of Christ, but the last-days of the law and the prophets and the last-days of the nation of Israel as a nation under the Old Covenant.

The prophecies about the sun and moon are again symbolic. We can see this in many Old Testament texts. They refer to earthly kingdoms, rulers and princes. The symbolic language means that one kingdom, era, order, rule, dynasty or nation is about to come down and a new order arise in its place.

This is the time when the Old Covenant was ended by Christ and the New Covenant established. A whole new order had been brought in.

Sun, Moon and Stars

Take Babylon for example. When Isaiah prophesied of its destruction this is the language that he used:

For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth and the moon shall not cause her light to shine…Therefore I will shake the heavens and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the Lord and in the day of His fierce anger. (Is 13:10, 13).

If we read the whole chapter in Isaiah we will see that Isaiah was speaking about the coming judgement on Babylon. Isaiah used symbols to show that the destruction would be complete. All the leaders fell and the empire was overturned. A whole new order in terms of earthly dominion was established.

God said that the stars, sun and moon would be darkened and the earth would be removed. The heavens also would shake. We read this and know that it is symbolic. The earth was not literally removed out of its place. The stars, sun and the moon still gave out their light.

If it is clear that this did not literally happen in Babylon’s time and that it was symbolic, then why would we interpret New Testament verses like this literally? Why would we go to the same statements that Jesus made in Matthew 24 and say that these must be literal? Why the distinction?