PART 1
This is all about why in Matthew 24 Jesus said to His
disciples, “For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered
together.” What did He mean when He said this? The same sentence is found in
Luke 17:37 as well.
This question has been haunting my mind since long and only
recently I came a bit nearer to understanding what Jesus actually meant when He
made this statement. Much of the confusion arose in my mind from my efforts to
put it in context of what immediately preceded it.
In Matthew 24, replying to His disciples questions regarding
the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, the sign of His coming, and the end
of the age, Jesus gave them the whole timeline of future events which concluded
with His coming. The verse quoted above has to do with one of the signs
regarding His coming. The following verses provide us with the immediate
context for it:“Therefore if they say to you, ‘Look, He is in the desert!’ do
not go out; or ‘Look, He is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the
lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming
of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be
gathered together.”
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t relate the emboldened
text to what preceded it, which had to do with the manner in which He would
appear. I thought His coming was the same event that I considered to be the
Rapture. The above quoted passage meant to say that His coming was as swift as
lightning because wherever the carcass was, there the eagles would be gathered
together. What did it mean? That Jesus wanted to come to take His church before
the vultures would have the chance to swoop down on the carcass wherever it
was?
I also happened to remember Matthew 11:12 in this connection,
which said,
“And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom
of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”
From the days of John nothing of greater significance ever
happened in human history than the violent taking the kingdom of heaven by
force. This was made possible because of Jesus who inaugurated the dispensation
of grace that replaced the Mosaic dispensation which shut doors on all the
violent people. These violent people were the undeserving who did not have the
strength to become righteous by the Law. When the Law worked, they died.
When Jesus came, He made it possible for them to attain to
the level of righteousness that God demanded of them in order to enter the
kingdom of heaven. It was the righteousness that came by faith and not deeds
because the latter were very weak. It was the faith that was strong. To be more
specific, it was violent.
This faith alone had the force against which the doors of
heaven could not prevail. That was the faith in Jesus – the faith that led to
His acceptance. And accepting/receiving Jesus meant entering heaven; because
Jesus was the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven was embodied in Him.
Therefore, all who accepted Him, entered the Kingdom of Heaven.
Thinking along this line led me to the question: Could the
eagles swooping down on the carcass be interpreted as the believers, whose
deeds weren’t perfect, who possessed the kingdom of heaven by dint of the force
of their faith? But it was difficult for me to thrust it down my throat to
compare the Kingdom of Heaven with a carcass and the believers as the vultures.
The whole scene is so gruesome to imagine! Both the vultures and the carcass
are considered unholy in the Old Testament.
So, this sentence remained an enigma to me for a long, long
time. I got the breakthrough when recently I happened to read a blog that was
suggested to me by a lady I came across on twitter. This blog was about the
same sentence but the view it offered on it was based on Luke 17:37, where the
verses immediately preceded were spoken by Jesus and read thus: “I tell you, in
that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the
other will be left. Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken
and the other left. Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the
other left.”
Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “Where, Lord?”
Jesus’ answer was: “Wherever the body is, there the eagles
will be gathered together.”
The authoress of this blog made a very interesting point.
According to her, Jesus’ reply had nothing to do with the Rapture. She found
the key to understand it in the days of Noah. People were eating, drinking,
marrying and being given in marriage, up until the day Noah entered the ark. In
Luke 17, “the Flood came and destroyed them all.” In Matthew 24, “the Flood
came and took them all away.”
According to her, Jesus was talking about the same people in
both passages – the wicked people who died in the Flood. In other words, in the
given context the meaning of ‘taken’ was ‘destroyed’. The point she was making
was that at Jesus’ coming, the wicked people would die and vultures would eat
their bodies. The word ‘taken’ did not indicate taken to heaven in Rapture. She
also evoked Revelation 19 and Ezekiel 39 in this context.
Revelation 19:17-18 reads thus:
“Then I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with
a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven, “Come
and gather together for the supper of the great God, that you may eat the flesh
of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses
and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, both
small and great.”
Ezekiel 39:4 speaks about the fate of the armies which will gather together against Israel: “You shall fall upon the mountains of Israel, you and all your troops and the peoples who are with you; I will give you to birds of prey of every sort and to the beasts of the field to be devoured.”
BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
https://www.amazon.in/Bertrand-Hatia/e/B00W7E3BEO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0