"How Long, O Lord?"

Dusting off an old apocalyptic argument

Photo by Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

(A seven-minute read)

Can I share a candid admission with you?

Over the last few months or so, the thing that has challenged my faith more than anything else is the apparent delay in the return of Jesus.

As a Christian in general, and especially a Seventh-day Adventist in particular, I, of course, affirm what is cited in the Nicene Creed (or, to be more historically accurate, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed), written in the fourth century—that not only was Jesus the “only Son of God” and that “on the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures” and “ascended into heaven,” but that “He will come again in glory . . . and His kingdom will have no end.”

This is just basic Christianity, which all Christians, at least in theory, affirm.

So then where is He? He “ascended into heaven” two thousand years ago, promising He’d return in the same manner (see Acts 1:11). But, notwithstanding the “signs of the times” that people like to cite with great frequency, despite the fact that these same signs have been happening with great regularity ever since the New Testament age (earthquakes, wars, famines, etc.), there has been nary a sign of Him.

My religious angst is all the more heightened by the constant emphasis within my own faith community—whose name itself includes the word “Adventist,” which by definition means we believe Jesus is returning soon—on the aforementioned “signs of the times.” We’ve been banging this drum since at least the 1830s, with certainty that could give any scientist a run for his or her money, that the return of Jesus will obviously be happening any moment now. Every world crisis, every time the Pope sneezes, every earthquake or financial crash or major war often raises the alarm of Christians in my faith community that it is surely a sign that Jesus could come any moment.

And yet here we are. Still.

If I put my historians hat on for a minute as well I could get a little more sober-minded. I could note that the period in which my faith community arose, when they first latched on to the idea that Christ was about to return, was a time of widespread “millennial” expectation. Some have labeled it “millennial fever,” when Christians in America, living in the nineteenth century, were all convinced that the thousand years that the book of Revelation predicted was about to begin.

To be sure, most American Christians believed that Christ would return at the end of the thousand years (they were therefore called “postmillennialists”), and Seventh-day Adventists were some of the only ones who believed He would return prior to the millennium (thus being called “premillennialists”). But by the end of the nineteenth century, most conservative Protestants in America started buying into this latter perspective on the millennium, embracing a premillennial perspective and concluding that the world was getting progressively worse (contrary to postmillennialists, which comprise much of liberal Christianity today, who maintain that the world is actually getting better).

In other words, one could arguably make the case that the belief in the imminent return of Christ, which my faith community was most noted for, had as much to do with its adherents’ historical context as it did with any “objective” reading of Scripture (though, of course, the wise person recognizes that they don’t need to necessarily choose between this potentially false dichotomy).

All this is to say that if one decides to build their whole faith on the premise that Jesus is returning soon, they might be building their house on shifting sand. And they thus may have to try to prop up their faith with frequent flights into apocalyptic hysteria, relying on all the frightening events around the world to reassure themselves that their faith is well-founded.

So last night, I was tossing and turning in bed, thinking about these things and praying to God to help me understand. It may sound dramatic, but that’s what I was doing.

And then it hit me—the old, dusty argument (at least in my mind) from the book of Daniel that I’ve heard a thousand times before; there, in Daniel 2, the great vision of King Nebuchadnezzar, who saw this strange statue comprised of various metals, which he asks Daniel to interpret for him.

For those reading who’ve been a Seventh-day Adventist for any length of time, you are, no doubt, familiar with this passage. It is sort of Adventism 101—an “ace in the hole” for all sorts of apologetic concerns.

For those who aren’t familiar with it, I’ll provide a very brief summary: the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, in vision, sees a statue made of four different metals: it has a head of gold, a chest of silver, thighs of bronze, and legs of iron. Then, its two feet are a mix of iron and clay. At the end of the vision, a stone gets cut out without human hands and smashes the whole statue in pieces, setting up an eternal kingdom that would have no end.

It’s all quite fascinating and mysterious, and Nebuchadnezzar is deeply confused and troubled by the dream. But then the Hebrew servant Daniel comes on the scene and, through the inspiration of God (according to the text), shares the interpretation of the vision with Nebuchadnezzar.

There are all sorts of scholarly questions about the book of Daniel, of course, with critical scholars shooting holes into traditional interpretations of the book.

Was Daniel a real person? Did he really write the book? When was it written? What is the book’s genre? Many Christians have historically placed the book within the prophetic corpus of the Old Testament, while it has always been among the “Writings” (or poetry) within the Hebrew Bible. Does that mean the book wasn’t meant to be interpreted in some apocalyptic sense—as some prediction of future events?

I admit that I don’t have completely satisfying answers to all these questions, and grant that conservative Christians have probably cut corners on a lot of these matters. I also grant that this particular narrative in Daniel 2 isn’t some apologetic “magic bullet” that we can use in trying to convince skeptics about the proof of Scripture’s inspiration. I’ve tried it before and results have varied.

But here’s what I realized last night as I was tossing and turning in bed: even agreeing to the lowest common denominator when it comes to the historical context of the book, Daniel 2 still impresses me a great deal as it relates to its grasp of the basic outline of human history.

Put another way, even if one grants the premise that Daniel was written in the second century BC, during the time of Greek rule, the book still displays an uncanny sense of what followed in world history.

Briefly: the four metals that Nebuchadnezzar is purported to have seen in his dream, according to the book of Daniel, represented four succeeding kingdoms. The first one, again, according to the text of Daniel, represented Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian kingdom (Daniel 2:38). Babylon would then be overthrown by another kingdom, which would be overthrown by another kingdom, which would then be overthrown by a fourth kingdom. This fourth kingdom, however, would not be conquered by another kingdom but would essentially dissolve, or divide, into smaller, lesser kingdoms—and, despite their best efforts, would never “adhere to one another” (v. 43)

Eventually, according to the vision, the stone would appear, cut without human hands, and smash the whole statue into pieces—a kingdom, according to Daniel’s interpretation, that represented God’s kingdom, “which shall never be destroyed” (v. 44).

Whatever one might think of all the details of this dream, and whether Nebuchadnezzar really had this dream and whether a real historical figure known as Daniel truly offered an interpretation of this dream, or whether it’s supposed to have any sort of apocalyptic significance, or how one should exactly interpret who the four kingdoms represent (Bible interpreters have most frequently interpreted the four kingdoms to be either Babylon, Media, Persia, and Greece—or Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome), one thing impresses me the most at this moment: whatever else one might conclude about the text of Daniel and its historicity, this whole incident, even if written in the second century during the time of Greek rule, seemingly predicted that there would never be a single kingdom that would rule that region again after the fourth kingdom. It furthermore proposed that this fourth kingdom would divide into smaller kingdoms that would never successfully unite, despite their best efforts—before culminating in God’s kingdom overtaking the whole world, which would “never be destroyed.”

Admittedly, maybe it’s just my apocalyptic programming, but all this impresses me. I have a hard time getting around it. And I find a subtle reassurance that this passage demonstrates a deep trustworthiness not only of Scripture’s inspiration, but the belief that says we are living, in the words of so many Adventist evangelists, in the “toes of human history.”

I’m not ready to participate in apocalyptic hysteria. And I’m not implying that I have an Enlightenment-style certainty that eliminates all possibility of doubt about the interpretation of Daniel 2. I’m just saying that, for me, I am impressed afresh with this passage of Scripture and its explanatory force.

To be sure, there is still a question about why it’s taking so long. And I join Daniel who, in other parts of the book, repeated the question, “How long, O Lord?”

But I do think Scripture, including especially the book of Daniel, do present compelling arguments about God’s timeline, and that we are living in the “time of the end,” in some broad sense. I still have no interest in seeing a sign behind every bush, but I feel roundly persuaded that there is a God in heaven, that He is returning again, and that He is returning again (relatively) soon.

Perhaps, if you’re reading this and you’re a part of my faith community, you find it troubling that I’m so wishy-washy on all this, and that I don’t display enough dogmatism about all the various traditional interpretations of the Bible in general and Daniel in particular that you’re used to.

On the other hand, perhaps you’re reading this and you have zero interest in biblical apocalypticism, and you furthermore find what I shared above to be very tenuous, intellectually ignorant, and/or maybe even troubling.

To either party I say: that’s OK. What I outlined above is good enough for me right now.

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Shawn is a pastor in Maine, whose life, ministry, and writing focus on incarnational expressions of faith. The author of four books and a columnist for Adventist Review, he is also a DPhil student at the University of Oxford (what they call a PhD), focusing on nineteenth-century American Christianity. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, and listen to his podcast Mission Lab.