1 Peter 4:7

But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer:

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM

Such a verse as this, along with many others similar to it, is a problem to some people. "The night is far spent, the day is at hand" (Romans 13:12), "The Lord is at hand" (Philippians 4:5), "The coming of the Lord is at hand" (James 5:8), "It is the last hour" (1 John 2:18), "The time is near" (Revelation 1:3). What is actually meant by all such expressions in the New Testament? Throughout this series, it has been repeatedly pointed out that neither Christ nor any of the holy apostles believed that the time of the Second Advent of Christ was a thing of their lifetime. See article, "Speedy Return of Christ," in my Commentary on 1,2Thessalonians, 1,2Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, pp. 18ff. The entire New Testament was written as a spiritual guide for the redeemed, and it is most likely that every one of such expressions noted above was for the purpose of inspiring watchfulness and preparedness on their part. Christ plainly said that not even he himself knew the "day or the hour" of the events of final judgment (Matthew 24:36); and it is irresponsible for anyone to affirm that the apostles decided, in spite of this, that they knew when the Second Advent would be. It is fundamentalist modernist scholars who insist on taking these words of the apostles literally. The church of all ages has had no difficulty at all in construing them spiritually. There is a simple, glorious truth in such expressions for everyone on earth. As Barclay said:

For every one of us the time is near. The one thing that can be said of every man is that he will die. For every one of us the Lord is at hand; and we cannot tell the day nor the hour when we shall go to meet him ... all life is lived in the shadow of eternity.[15]

Is it not exceedingly likely, therefore, that this is what the apostles intended as the meaning of these passages? That this is true is further implied by a fact, that being the ability of the first generations to have dropped these expressions from the New Testament; but they were not dropped; they were still believed late in the second century at the time of the formation of the New Testament canon; and thus it is obvious that they believed them in exactly the sense of Barclay's quotation above. It is not therefore the true meaning of the apostles that troubles people; it is the false meaning imported into such texts by the grossly literal fundamentalist modernists who, like the Pharisees of old, pervert every spiritual statement in the New Testament to support their evil insinuations. Their purpose in perverting the meaning of these is to support their false claim that Christ and the apostles were ignorant in thinking that the end of time (with Christ's coming) was an event to be expected speedily. When Jesus said of Jairus' daughter, "The child is not dead but sleepeth" (Mark 5:39), the blind Pharisees in their fundamentalism took it literally. When Jesus said, "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you" (John 6:53), the fundamentalist multitude forsook him. When Jesus said, "I go away and whither I go ye cannot come" (John 8:21), the fundamentalist Pharisees took it literally, saying, "Will he kill himself?." It is merely an example of the pot calling the kettle black when the modernist fundamentalists of our own times decry what they call "fundamentalism" in others, while they themselves are guilty of literalizing half of the New Testament in order to suit their own intentions. There is no excuse for taking the expressions at the head of this paragraph in the grossly literal, restricted meaning. The saints of all ages have understood them, as they were intended, to be warning inducements to readiness for the appearing of the Lord whenever he may come, his coming for every one of us, in the personal sense, being indeed imminent and speedy for us, and therefore fully justifying the texts as they stand.

But the end of all things is at hand ... Although, as pointed out above, it is the sobriety and prayerful watchfulness of the Christians which Peter sought to inspire by these words, it is most likely that this has no reference whatever to the Second Coming of Christ. The time of Peter's writing was about 65 A.D.; and what took place within the next five or six years explains this verse perfectly as a true prophecy of what happened:

The Neronian persecution broke against the Christians, sending countless thousands of them to their flaming death as torches to light the orgies in Nero's gardens, or feed the wild beasts in the Coliseum, or to be crucified, tortured, burned alive, beheaded, or suffer any other horrible death that the pagan mind could invent. All earthly possessions of Christians perished in that holocaust.

The Jews made an insurrection against Rome; and, following the death of Nero, the pagan empire organized a war of extermination against them. Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, some 1,100,000 of its populations including Jews throughout the area being butchered by the Romans. Thirty thousand young Jewish males were crucified upon the walls of the ruined city, the lumber stores being exhausted to supply crosses.

The nation of Israel perished from the earth, never to rise again until nearly two millenniums had passed.

The sacred temple, so dear to the heart of Jews everywhere, was burned with fire, demolished stone by stone, and completely ruined never to be rebuilt.

The whole religious system of Israel with its marvelous typical prefigurations of Christianity perished. The daily sacrifice ended forever; the high priesthood came to an end; and the judgment of God was vindicated against that nation which had officially rejected the Christ. The Sanhedrin never met again; and there began another Dispersion that salted the earth with the once "chosen people."

Those events, and many others, justify fully Peter's blunt prophecy. Peter himself was a Jew; and, in view of the above events, which he accurately understood as having been prophesied by Jesus, and which he accurately foresaw as being so soon to be fulfilled and executed upon that generation, it was quite proper and accurate for him to refer to them prophetically as "the end of all things." The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, only five years after our epistle, was the greatest single event of a thousand years, and religiously significant beyond anything else that ever occurred in human history. "End of all things?" It was indeed that to anyone who contemplated the significance of it, and especially to a Jew like Peter.

But the end of all things ... But, it is alleged by the critics that Peter believed the Second Coming of Christ would happen simultaneously with the fall of Jerusalem; and it may be freely admitted that Peter might indeed have thought so. It would have been very understandable if he had; for Jesus himself in giving answers to questions (Matthew 24) discussed both events at the same time, perhaps intending his answers to be enigmatical. But what is really significant is that whereas Peter might indeed have supposed that the Second Coming would occur at the time of the fall of the Holy City, he never said so. This verse we are studying does not say so, and none of the apostles ever said so. Soon after the fall of Jerusalem, however, the whole church soon understood that the first event was a precursor and prophecy of the Second Advent, and that Jesus had so given his teaching as to make his meaning understandable in the light of future events.