Luke 17:22-37 Jesus talks to His
disciples about His second coming. There are four lengthy passages in which
Jesus talks about the end times: Matthew 24:3-25:46; Mark 13:4-37; Luke
17:22-37; and Luke 21:7-36. These passages have many common points, which are
often overlooked in discussions that focus on the book of Revelation. Jesus'
words are very clear and not veiled with symbolism or mysterious descriptions
of heavenly or spiritual events. Unfortunately, most contemporary eschatology
seems to focus on predicting the Second Coming based on world events, such as
the existence of Israel as a nation, the persecution of Christians around the
world, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, imminent economic collapse of the
world system, etc. However, Jesus was fairly specific. Not all of the
conditions are contained in this passage so we will revisit this topic in Luke
21. However, in this section He identifies the following.
• When He returns it will be visible to all so don't be
misled by people claiming private visitations.
• People will be busy with the affairs of daily life, but
completely oblivious to the things of God, except for those who, like Noah,
paid attention.
• When that day comes don't look back, like Lot's wife, for
the things of this world.
• If we seek to preserve our soul-life, our life in this
world, we will lose out on eternal life; but if we give up our lives in this we
world, we will preserve our eternal life.
• We cannot judge the condition of peoples' hearts; two
people will be living and working and sleeping side by side, yet in that day He
will separate them and take one based on their readiness to be with Him.
Luke 17:37 is enigmatic. The ones who
are taken - the disciples ask where they are taken to. Jesus' response is that
where the body is, there also the vultures will be gathered. Obviously, in the
natural, vultures gather to pick the carcass of a body, wherever it lies. But
Jesus is answering a question about where people are taken to in the previous
few verses. Verse 31 indicates that it is the righteous that are called away,
and verses 34-36 simply amplify that they are taken from their daily pursuits.
So the disciples question is where they are taken to? Why would He use a figure
of speech relating to death, a body, a carcass? What is the significance of the
vultures? There is an alternative reading to the greek word "aetoi" which could also be
translated eagles. However, this does not necessarily help. Why would eagles
gather around a body? In this case, the word "soma" for body does not seem to imply a corpse or carcass,
which would be appropriate if Jesus were referring to vultures. So if Jesus is
referring to a living body, then figuratively He would be saying that body of
the church, is where the eagles will be gathered. (Vultures don't normally
gather around living people). One of the faces of the cherub described in
Ezekiel 10:14 and Revelation 4:7 is an eagle.
There does not appear to be any other place in Scripture (other than
here) where believers are symbolized as eagles, so we could only take it from
the context, that Jesus was answering the disciples' question. This
interpretation would suggest that Jesus is saying that the people who are taken
by God, to be taken out of the world because of their faith, are taken to be
with the body of believers, presumably in heaven. But this is largely
speculative. Other possibilities: The eagle was the standard of the Roman
legions, so there could potentially be a link here to the legions of Rome, but
this seems incongruous with the clear symbolism in Daniel that suggests that
the antichrist himself will arise from the Roman Empire. In Rev 12:14 an eagle
carries the woman symbolizing Israel into the wilderness to be protected from
the savagery of the antichrist. Perhaps this indicates divided loyalties in the
forces of the antichrist's coalition.
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