On the Coming of the Kingdom
I recently started in on the David Bentley Hart translation of the New Testament, and I am enjoying it very much. He provides a highly literal translation, which is very helpful for people like me, who know no Greek, but care deeply about the original meaning of these texts. I wanted to share some of my thoughts here on specific passages that drew my interest, starting with Matthew 16:28. All New Testament quotations found here are from the Hart translation.
When you read through various portions of the New Testament, it becomes clear that many of the authors believed that the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to earth was imminent, as in, within their lifetimes or shortly after, and not some two millennia or more later. Even Yeshua appears to have believed this, as he seems to state in the last verse of the following quote from Matthew, chapter 16:
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone wishes to come along behind me, let him deny himself utterly and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; and whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it. For what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole cosmos but lose his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of Man is about to arrive in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will reward each according to his conduct.
“Amen, I tell you that among those standing here there are some who most certainly will not taste death until they see the Son of Man arriving in his Kingdom.”
I suppose many modern Christians will interpret this to mean that Yeshua ascended to Heaven after his death. This seems to be a dubious interpretation on many counts. If this was all he meant, that would be a pretty uninteresting thing to say. Who, then or now, would not believe that Yeshua was destined for Heaven after his death? And what would this claim have to do with the words preceding it? Yeshua is speaking not of his soul here, but of the souls of his listeners, and literally any other person. “For whoever wishes to save his soul will lose it; and whoever loses his soul for my sake will find it.”
Clearly, Yeshua is speaking here of more than just his own journey to Heaven after his death. His listeners probably believed he was speaking of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven to earth, which explains why there are so many references to Yeshua’s imminent return in the letters of the New Testament. But it does not appear that events unfolded this way!
I see four possibilities that might explain this somewhat awkward situation:
These words were not actually spoken by Yeshua, but the early Christians who wrote the New Testament erroneously believed that the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth was imminent. The words might have been back-filled by the authors of the gospels to reinforce this belief.
Yeshua himself, along with the early Christians who wrote the New Testament, erroneously believed that the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth was imminent.
The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth came within the allotted time frame, and somehow, most modern humans aren’t aware of it.
We, along with many of the authors of the New Testament, have somehow misconstrued Yeshua’s words.
I think the first option is highly unlikely, and that Yeshua did indeed speak these words. This verse has parallels in both of the other synoptic gospels (Mark 9:1 and Luke 9:27). Mark is the earliest gospel found in the New Testament to be written, and is generally considered to be a more reliable source for Yeshua’s teachings. That said, we can never be certain that the words put into Yeshua’s mouth in even a somewhat early sayings gospel like Mark, were actually Yeshua’s words.
I find the second option equally unlikely. How could Yeshua have been wrong about something like this? It would require stipulating a scenario where there was some sort of failure in Yeshua’s mission. This is not likely a pleasant thought for most Christians, including myself, and for this reason, we should probably consider it more carefully. We might wonder why it is that, according to Matthew, Yeshua’s last words were “My God, my God, why did you forsake me?” (Matthew 27:46; a quote from Psalm 22). The interpretation I was given in Sunday school was that, in order to accept the sacrifice of his only son for the sins of the world, God needed to look away for a bit at the moment of death. Another interpretation would be that something went wrong with Yeshua’s plan to save the world in these final moments.
There are some who believe that the rapture did actually occur in the time frame Yeshua specified. Perhaps this happened along with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It’s an interesting theory, but it’s not the one I am interested in exploring here.
I’m most interested in the fourth option: that we have somehow misinterpreted Yeshua’s words. The coming of the Kingdom of Heaven was, and is, generally considered to be a global event. Something that happens to all the world at once, and that would be pretty difficult to overlook if we lived through it. Let’s take another look:
“Amen, I tell you that among those standing here there are some who most certainly will not taste death until they see the Son of Man arriving in his Kingdom.”
The wording is a little different in Mark 9:1:
And he said to them, “Amen, I tell you that there are some of those standing here who most certainly shall not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of God come in power.”
Also in Luke 9:27:
“But I tell you truly, there are some of those standing in this place who most certainly would not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of God.”
What if these words are not a prediction of some global event that will happen before all his listeners have passed? What if what is being discussed is a deeply personal event, something akin to the Buddhist or Daoist idea of “attaining enlightenment”? It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me. “Seeing the Kingdom of God” seems like a fairly straightforward euphemism for connecting with the Heaven inside ourselves. And elsewhere, Yeshua seems to indicate that awaiting a global messianic event is the wrong idea. For instance, here in Luke 17:20-21:
And when he was asked by the Pharisees, “When is the Kingdom of God coming?” he answered them and said, “The Kingdom does not come as something one observes, nor will persons say, ‘Look: Here it is” or ‘There it is’ for look: The Kingdom of God is within you.”
Also here in saying 3 from the Gospel of Thomas (Marvin Meyer translation):
Yeshua said,
If your leaders tell you, “Look, the kingdom is in heaven,”
then the birds of heaven precede you.
If they say to you, “It’s in the sea,”
then the fish will precede you.
But the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you.
When you know yourselves, then you will be known,
and you will understand that you are children of the living father.
But if you do not know yourselves,
then you dwell in poverty and you are poverty.
So when Yeshua says “there are some of those standing here who most certainly shall not taste of death until they see the Kingdom of God come in power,” his intention may well be to say that some of his followers would “attain enlightenment,” or find the Kingdom of God within themselves, before their death. Of course, this also implies that some would not, which may lead us to ask ourselves, which of Yeshua’s followers found the Way?
Let me close with one final thought. Yeshua opens this passage in Matthew by saying, “If anyone wishes to come along behind me, let him deny himself utterly and take up his cross and follow me.” As all good Christians know, Yeshua asks us to follow his example as best we can, in all aspects of our lives. His words and deeds are a template for how we should behave. But many might overlook the fact that the reward for such righteous behavior comes not after death, but right here in our earthly lives.