If you happen to enjoy contemporary praise music, you more than likely have heard These Are The Days of Elijah. (It happens to be one of my favorites. It is very singable and I can really get into it.) But how many of the performers and the singers know what that was all about? What exactly are The Days of Elijah and why are we singing about them?

Elijah, for those who don’t know, was the archetype of all prophets. He wasn’t the first, he wasn’t the only, but he was major.

The song begins, These are the days of Elijah, declaring the word of the Lord and these are the days of your servant Moses, righteousness being restored, and though these are days of great trial of famine and darkness and sword. Still, we are the voice in the desert, crying, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Now what does all this mean? Why Elijah? Why Moses? It is clear to me that the person who composed this song was driving at something important, but what exactly? Well, the place to start is naturally, the days of Elijah. He may be not only the archetype of all prophets, but also the most blunt.

Did Jesus die of a broken heart, or was he brutally and violently killed? Now, you have to understand something about us preacher-types. Sometimes we get carried away with our own rhetoric; and so, in the process of giving a sermon and talking about how disappointed God is in us for our sins, and how Jesus’ heart was broken because of the sins of mankind, it is easy to say that Jesus, on the stake, just died of a broken heart because of us and our mistakes. But all that is only rhetoric, because the facts which are written in the pages of your Bible are somewhat different than that. He didn’t die of a broken heart, he was killed—murdered—violently, painfully.

Not very long before Jesus actually died, he lifted up his voice and said, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? The crowd standing around thought he was calling for Elijah, but he wasn’t. What he said was, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? At that moment, God left him entirely alone—something (you almost get the impression) that Jesus did not expect.

And straightway one of them ran, and took a sponge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it on a reed, and gave him to drink. The rest said, Let be, let us see whether Elias will come to save him. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.

And into our language passes the expression giving up the ghost, meaning he died. Perhaps. One of the other gospel accounts mentions that a soldier pierced his side with a spear, and blood and water came out. This suggests that Jesus had passed out, and it was actually the piercing of the spear—allowing his heart to pump the rest of his blood out of his body—which actually took his life. So he was pierced, cut to bleed to death—just like the lambs, at about the same time in the Temple, were being cut and allowed to bleed to death. Let’s look at the rest of this singular event, beginning in Matthew, chapter 27.

I know that Jesus had to die for my sins. But why did he have to die the way he did? Why the pain, why the shame? Why the spitting, why the humiliation? Why couldn’t they just have taken him out and killed him quickly. If you’ve gone to church very much, you already understand about the blood of Jesus, and how it was shed for the sins of all mankind. There are probably many hymns in your hymnbook about it. And we all know that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Okay, but why the suffering? Why not a quick death?

It may be that the answer lies in our—what shall we say—our theology of sin: the way we understand sin, the reason for sin, and even what sin is. There’s a common belief, I think, that sin is wrong for no other reason than that God said so. Growing up, when our parents say Do this or Do that, we ask, Why? Because I said so, is often the answer. We’re used to that, and I guess God saying so ought to be enough. But the assumption goes on that if we commit a sin, nothing bad will happen to us unless God found out about it and punished us for it. That’s the way it works at home, doesn’t it? You break one of Dad’s rules, nothing bad happens to you unless Dad finds out (but then…big trouble). So if it were not for God’s punishment, we assume, we would get away with it. And the logical corollary to that assumption is that God could just have easily made the Law another way…or he can do away with it, at will. But the problem with that is, that any law that God could do away with is a law he never needed to give us in the first place, isn’t it? Why, if we don’t need it now, did anybody ever need it?

But suppose our theology of sin is the other way around. Suppose that rather than sin being wrong because God said so, that God said so because sin is wrong. What this would suggest is that, in creating the world and placing man in it, there were things that would work and other things that would hurt. In giving the Law, God graciously informed man of what would work well and what would cause harm to himself and others. This question has tremendous implications. How can we approach it? Well, one way is to take a look at the consequences of sin as they are manifested in the sacrifice of Christ. Let’s begin in Matthew, chapter 26.

It is hard to imagine why anyone would want to kill a man. I suppose, in some cases, people kill out of fear. A burglar, for example, might kill someone because he is afraid of being identified; or a stick-up man might kill a clerk because he thought the clerk had a gun under the counter. In some cases, people kill out of greed. $100,000 worth of life insurance—well, it would be enough to tempt a wife to kill her husband, in some strange circumstances. I suppose, also, that some people kill out of jealousy or anger. More than one jealous husband has come home to find his wife with another man and blown them both away.

But, you know, it’s still hard for ordinary people to understand the motives for murder. It just not a part of out lives; it’s not something we think about. And if that’s hard to understand, how much harder is it to understand why anyone would want to kill a man like Jesus. He was a man of the highest integrity—a man of high moral and ethical character. He posed a physical threat to no one. His manner was kind; he was a gentle man. He loved little children; he cared about sick people. He was a very forgiving man. He fed multitudes and healed sick people in the hundreds. He wasn’t a wealthy man—he didn’t carry around a lot of money to make it worth killing him.

In spite of all of this, two days before Jesus’ last Passover, the chief priests and the elders in Jerusalem held a meeting. And at that meeting they proposed to have Jesus taken by deceitful methods…and have him killed. They wanted to be as subtle as possible—to avoid killing him on the Feast day, lest there be an uproar among the people—but kill him all the same. What kind of men were these who would murder an innocent man and plot his murder in cold blood? What were their motives? What could they possibly have been thinking about?

Everyone wants to know about the end of the world. Just bring up the subject and everyone’s ears perk up. When Jesus’ disciples asked him about the end of the world, he gave them a fairly detailed answer. The answer can be found in chapters 24 and 25 of the Book of Matthew, and can be summarized in two short statements. One: it is not for you to know the time of my return. And two: whatever the time of my return is, you had better be ready.

The entirety of his explanation is called the Olivet Prophecy (because it was given on the Mount of Olives). It’s odd, but a lot of people seem to assume that the answer to the disciples’ questions was basically chapter 24—and that 24 is the Olivet Prophecy. But they’re wrong. In chapter 24, Jesus gave the disciples an overview of end-time events, and told them they have to be ready all the time because no man will know the hour or the day of his return.

Well, then comes the natural question: What do you mean, be ready all the time? What constitutes being ready? How on earth does one get ready? Well, chapter 25 of Matthew—which is still a part of the Olivet Prophecy—deals with this question in three parts. He does it with three parables. And as it happens they are kingdom parables—the kingdom of heaven is like… With such an important question at hand, let’s examine them a little closer.

What did the First Christians believe about Jesus? He was the Messiah, of course, but more than that. Jesus himself laid out the question before the Pharisees one day.

While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, Saying, What think you of Christ? whose son is he? […]

Now, I think everyone knows that the term Christ basically means the Messiah—the Anointed One. This question is really loaded in this environment, at this time, because messianic expectations had been running fever-high for some time now. There was a clear belief that the Messiah was coming soon.

[…] They said unto him, The son of David. He said unto them, How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool? If David then called him Lord, how is he his son? And no man was able to answer him a word, neither dared any man from that day forth ask him any more questions.

Matthew tells us of this encounter in the midst of quite a series of challenges that had been presented by the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and sages. They were popping Jesus with what they thought was a zinger every time he turned around. This one was a show stopper, because the Jewish theologians understood this psalm of David to be messianic—which is also the way the First Christians, all of them Jewish, understood it. But while the Pharisees and Sadducees expected the Messiah, they expected him to be merely a man—born normally of the union of a man and a woman—and who, as a descendant of David, would be lower in the chain of expectations than David himself. It is hard to imagine that none of the men who questioned Jesus on this day had never struggled with this Psalm. Of course they had. So let's take a closer look at the Psalm in question: number 110.

If the world was going to blow up at noon tomorrow, would you want to know? I don’t just mean having an asteroid hit us, spread some dust and dirt around, and create a new ice age. I mean blow up—it’s just gone. One moment we are here, and the next we are scattered throughout the solar system like so much debris. Would you want to know? Why? What would you do about it? Would you visit your family one last time, read your Bible one last time, or maybe pray—hard—trying to get right with god one last time. Or maybe you’d like to get your affairs in order, but why? Surely tonight is one night you don’t even need to brush your teeth. You can forget about all the mess you left on your desk. If fact, if you are in the mood for it, you can start a bonfire with your tax records. You don’t have to worry about it any more. You’re going to die owing the IRS money—which is a good way to go.

Jesus’ disciples wanted to know when Jesus was coming back and what would be the signs of the end of the world. And from that time until this, men have studied the Bible consumed with these questions. They don’t just study the Bible, they look into Nostradamus and all sorts of prophets and seers and psychics, because everybody wants to know what and they want to know when.

But why should God tell us anything about the future, at all? The truth is that merely knowing what is coming is of no value at all unless there is something you can do about it. In that short statement lies what may be the most important truth of all about Biblical prophecy. So when Jesus’ disciples asked him, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the world? Jesus gave them knowledge they could use. You may find it of some value yourself. One of the most important things he said was:

And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall grow cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

Now, on the principal that there is no value in knowing the future unless there is something to do about it, what are we to make of this passage?

If you could ask Jesus, Lord, what are the signs of your second coming and of the end of the world? would you want to know the answer? It’s a teasing question, isn’t it? And yet, I think, most people do. And all your life, if you’ve paid attention to the world of religion at all, this idea of the end of the world has hung around in the background of your consciousness somewhere. I heard that expression when I was just a boy—maybe six or seven. Everyone in my family began to look at the Bible with the start of World War II. It didn’t look good at all in those early days, and we started thinking about the end of the world. I can remember sitting out on the little concrete porch in the summertime, listening to the adults talk about the signs of the end of the world. I was just a young boy with my dog and a countryside to explore, and I didn’t like the sound of this end of the world stuff even a little bit.

Well, I had to grow up a bit before I came to understand what it was all about and what Jesus really meant by the end of the world. This arose out of a discussion with Jesus on a day when were visiting the Temple. And as they were coming down, the disciples (like the country boys they were) were gawking and pointing—admiring the impressive buildings of the Temple. And Jesus said: Do you see all these things? Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.

That had to be like a dash of cold water in the face of the disciples, and it’s hard to over-estimate the importance of the Temple to a Jew of any generation—it was the center of their religious life, it was the place of the presence of God, it was a massive structure built with great stones and infinite care. Jesus’ disciples (like every other Jew of their day) were smitten with the temple—its beauty, its massiveness, and, mainly, its permanence. Nothing could ever happen to God’s temple, could it? And yet Jesus said that it was all coming down. And the idea wasn’t entirely new. Let’s begin by looking at a passage in Jeremiah 7, from the age of the First Temple…