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Coming in the clouds

Who is Coming in the clouds?

Sometimes it may require a fair amount of effort to analyze and to research the Bible. Let me give you what I consider to be a really good illustration. There are many references in the Old and New Testament about God and Jesus involving “clouds.”

For example, the Old Testament prophet Isaiah spoke of God

“riding on a swift cloud and is coming to Egypt” (Isaiah 19:1).

The audience knew it was about some form of judgment that was about to happen to Egypt. They knew that God wasn’t physically going to ride on a cloud like a person would ride a horse. They understood that Isaiah was speaking metaphorically.

Isaiah also said
‘How you have fallen from heaven, You star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who defeated the nations!‘ (Isa 14:12).

This scripture has been interpreted in several ways. One view is that it is talking about Satan being expelled from heaven because in later translations the phrase’ star of the morning’ was translated into Latin as ‘Lucifer’ from the Greek word Venus, which is the ‘morning star’. However, most scholars agree that it is referring to the fall of Nebuchadnezzar, who was the king of Babylon. The audience would not have been expecting a ‘star’ to fall from the sky! But would have viewed the scripture as metaphorically meaning that Nebuchadnezzar’s reign as king of Babylon was ended. He had once been a great and mighty ruler of a vast empire but now he was defeated and diminished in status.

In the New Testament (Mark 13:26) says

“the stars will fall from the sky and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.

Also in Matthew 26:63-54, Jesus told Caiaphas that he (Jesus)
“was the Son of Man who would come on the clouds of heaven”.

Caiaphas and the other priests would have been very familiar with the phrase “coming on the clouds” to understand that great judgment was about to come on them. Which it did in 70AD when the Roman army captured Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.

Josephus, a famous Jewish historian who witnessed these events wrote in his books “Antiquities of the Jews” and “The Jewish Wars” that approximately 1.1 million, mainly Jewish people were killed in the ongoing siege and fighting. He goes on to say that about 97,000 survivors were enslaved. The temple was completely destroyed as Jesus had predicted

“Do you see all these great buildings? Not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down to the ground.” (Mark 13:2).

This was an incredible judgment by God on Jerusalem and the population of Israel. God often used other country’s armies to enact his judgments. E.g. Nebuchadnezzar when Babylon captured Jerusalem around 597BC and the Romans in 67-70AD.

Today, many people who believe in a church-wide rapture and the events of the ‘end times’, will use certain scriptures as ‘proof’ that these events have not occurred yet and therefore they must occur sometime in the future. They often quote 1 Thessalonians 4:17

“Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Which they believe will happen during Jesus’ return to earth.

By now you will know that the use of words such as “clouds” and “air” to the early Jews were not meant to be taken literally. They were to be considered as metaphors or as symbolism. Proponents of the Millennium and associated End Times are looking for literal events; hence they are still waiting.

It’s interesting to note that these people who adhere to this type of dispensational theology have ‘fallen into the same trap’ that the early Jewish people did when they were looking for the ‘literal and physical’ return of the Messiah. The early Jews wanted the Messiah to come so that he would remove the Romans from Israel. They wanted the messiah to rule over them just like their earlier king David did in 990 BC. When Jesus appeared and was doing all manner of miracles; raising the dead, multiplying loaves and fishes, walking on water and healing the sick, they got all excited thinking that the Messiah was here and no doubt were anticipating the removal of their Roman oppressors.

But Jesus didn’t come to be the physical Messiah like David was. He came to set up a different kingdom, a spiritual one. He came to take away all of our sins and provide healing and restoration. He was the last sacrifice that God required to make mankind “right” with himself. Jesus said that he would leave us another comforter, the Holy Spirit, but to do that he would need to return to heaven to be with the Father.

“And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever” (John 14:16).

Jesus returning in the clouds?

I remember discussing with a work colleague who was a strong believer in the Rapture and who viewed current world events as ‘signs’ that it would happen soon. I asked him if Jesus would ‘suddenly’ appear above Jerusalem and then believers would ‘fly up” to meet him. He nodded his head in agreement. So, with a smile on my face, I asked him what would happen to believers who lived here in Australia. Because if we fly straight up into the sky we would be going in the wrong direction because Australia is on the opposite side of the world to Israel.! Also, it would be night here and how high would we go up into the sky as we would soon start getting very cold and running out of air!

I have heard other people jokingly comment that Jesus wasn’t coming today as it was very sunny outside, with no clouds in the sky. Of course, the point is that the ‘clouds’ are not literal and we are not going to ‘float up’ to meet Jesus. Even if one were to just look at this concept purely from a logical viewpoint., we can see that to do any of these things our bodies would need to be transformed before we could ‘fly up’. We would need to be able to overcome gravity, and not have to breathe air; we would need to be impervious to cold and the vacuum of space. Plus, we would need to be able to ‘fly’ around the world from where we lived to get to Jerusalem (assuming we didn’t live in Israel).

Proponents of this rapture view claim that our bodies would instantly be transformed into our new ‘resurrected’ bodies, thus allowing us to do the things I’ve described above. I see a major flaw with this line of thinking.
I believe that we get our ‘resurrected bodies’ when we get to heaven. Our current 3D bodies are made for an Earth environment. Even a ‘resurrected’ 3D body would not be able to be in heaven.

The ‘Old’ New Heaven and the New Earth

One final point I’d like to make about the terminologies and the phrases used in the Bible, that have a different meaning today, is related to some ‘end times people’s views about the phrase “The new heaven and the new earth”. To the Jewish people, the temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem was a sacred place and played a fundamental role in their religion. There had been several temples there in the past. The first was constructed by Solomon but was later destroyed by the Babylonians. It was later rebuilt by Zerubbabel but eventually taken control of by the invading Roman armies. Herod rebuilt the temple on a much grander scale around 20BC and it was this one that was totally destroyed in 70AD.

The Hebrew Temple

The temple building was oblong and had three major parts. The ‘Holy of Holies’, the ‘Main room’ and ‘the Porch’.

In the ‘heart’ of the temple was the Holy of Holies which was considered to be the place where the presence of God dwelt. Only the head high priest could enter once a year to offer sacrifices for the entire Jewish race. In Exodus 28:33 it says that the high priest had bells on the hem of his robe. Some people believe that their purpose was to allow the priests outside the holy of holies to know where the head priest was. Anecdotally it has been suggested that the high priest also had a rope tied to his leg so that if God was displeased with him and he dropped dead as a result, then the absence of any bells ‘sounding’ would signal this fact to those outside and they would use the rope to pull the high priest out of the Holy of Holies. However, there doesn’t appear to be any actual evidence of that happening.

Separating the Holy of Holies from the ‘Main room” was a thick curtain or veil, which has been estimated to be 30 feet high, 30 feet wide, and a man’s hand span thick. Its purpose was to cover the opening into the Holy of Holies. The Jewish people considered this part of the temple to be a ‘portal to heaven’ and it was where the spirit of God dwelt.

The ‘Main room’ was the place where the priests and Pharisees conducted their business and undertook religious services. The porch, usually called Solomon’s Porch, was a place outside of the main temple area where people, Jews, and non-Jews, could meet to listen to teachings, take part in debates, and have general discussions. Solomon’s Porch was where Jesus preached and taught to the people of Jerusalem. During this time of preaching and teaching, the Pharisees and priests, who were ’next door’ in the ‘Main Room’ of the temple, could also access the ‘porch’ and listen to Jesus’s teachings.

Essentially, the temple was the cornerstone and a fundamental part of the Jewish religion and was incorporated into their way of life. It was a generally accepted term of use that any reference to “heaven and earth” was referring to the temple and its associated system of sacrifice and prayer.
It was this veil that was “torn in half, from the top to the bottom” (Mark 15:37 when Jesus died on the cross. Before his death, Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 24:2

“Do you see all these buildings? I tell you the truth, not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down.”

Jesus was foretelling a day was coming when the temple would be completely destroyed. Not one of the huge stones would stay in place but would be ‘thrown down to the ground’. Now this did happen in 70AD when the Roman army led by Titus destroyed Jerusalem along with the temple.

So, what relevance does this history have to us today? The events of 70AD meant that the Jewish religious model was ended as this model depended upon a temple being available for sacrifices and for a ‘place’ where the spirit of God would live. Since 70AD there has been no new temple built in Jerusalem although some ‘end timers’ want to build a new temple on the Jerusalem Mount. They claim that it is needed for when Jesus returns and fights the antichrist. A significant problem with that idea is that the Muslims have two major mosques on the site already and their removal would probably spark a major regional war as most Muslim nations consider these mosques to be very holy and sacred.

The real new heaven and earth

When Jesus died, effectively a “new heaven and a new earth” came into existence and introduced a new dispensational model. The ‘new’ way meant that God would now live in believers via the Holy Spirit. There would no longer be a need for an intermediary between man and God. Now when a person wants to pray to God, they can do it directly, assured that Jesus’s death has cleansed them of all their sins.

“who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, would live unto righteousness by whose stripes we have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24)

All of our sins, past, current and future have been deleted, so the model now is different. The Old Testament dispensational model has ended and we now live in a new better Dispensation of Grace.

“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the LORD: I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them, Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” (Hebrews 10:16).


It is very important to note that this ‘new kingdom’ is a spiritual one. God’s spirit no longer lives in a building but his spirit lives in us. Jesus has made the universal sacrifice for all of our sins, so we are cleansed in our spirits. When we are ‘born again’, we get a new spirit, however, our physical 3D body is still here; along with our wrong way of thinking, selfish actions, greed, etc. Through time, the Holy Spirit will renew our minds.

“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” (Rom 12:2).

We will get a new resurrected body when we go to be with the Lord.
This is why those people, who are waiting for the physical return of the Lord and the preceding rapture, have misunderstood when Jesus said

“My kingdom is not of this world.” (John 18:36).


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