We need to do honour to the fact that as we’ve been looking at these things throughout our series on the Doctrine of the Last Things, we’ve constantly drawn ourselves back to the cross of Christ and how—if we are trusting in him—he has already suffered our judgment day for us…
The occurrence of the cross of Christ is not insignificant when it comes to the way the Bible speaks about these signs. And that is certainly what Peter is doing on the day of Pentecost when he tells the people about what is happening in this apocalyptic language. He quotes from Joel about the sun being darkened, the moon turned to blood, these kinds of end-of-the-world statements, and he speaks of them as either things that are happening as he speaks or things that have already happened.
Joel and Peter seem to be referring to the cross, when the earth literally turned dark. And beyond that, it was the most cataclysmic cosmic event in all of history when the Father turned his face away from his Son in order for his people to be rescued and to be welcomed.
So, straight off, none of us can say, “Right, the Lord Jesus isn’t going to come back anytime soon because we will be warned of his coming when we see the sun being darkened, the moon not giving its light, the stars falling from the sky, heavenly bodies being shaken. That is when we will know that the Lord Jesus is going to come back.” Well, no, the cross could rightly be described as fulfilling all those prophecies already.
And so, the fact that from one perspective, these cataclysmic signs in the heavens signs have already taken place, in a very real sense, if you are trusting in the Lord Jesus, you can say that that was your judgment day, and you are safe from the future judgement day.
