We’re used to Peter speaking before he thinks. “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” (Matt 16:22), he said, earning a stern rebuke from the Lord.
Of course, that was before his encounter with the Lord after His resurrection. When we hear him preaching a few days after Pentecost, can we take him seriously? Or is he again allowing his enthusiasm to cloud his judgment?
Here is his claim: “All the prophets, from Samuel and those who follow, as many as have spoken, have also foretold these days” (Acts 3:24). All of them? Really? They all spoke of the days in which Peter was living?1
I suggest we test this claim by searching through the prophets to see if they all spoke of Peter’s time. Peter’s words imply a chronological order, beginning with Samuel, one of the earliest prophets. Examining all the prophets from that point forward will require many posts, especially if we want to keep them to an easy-to-read length.
Let me make two suggestions as we begin. First, please consider becoming familiar with the view of prophecy I call inmillennialism. You can read a summary version here or tackle the full book-length version here. The title of the book—Inmillennialism: Redefining the Last Days—may hint at the reason for this suggestion. According to this model, the “last days” are identical to Peter’s “these days.” This perspective will shed light on the prophets as we work through them.
My second suggestion is that you consider watching the sermons related to this subject. I preached the material in this post and the one for next week at Hopewell Primitive Baptist Church in Opelika, AL, on April 30, 2023. You can watch it here.
Inmillennialism defines the “last days” as the end of the Mosaic age, not the windup of planet Earth, the cosmos, or history. This term refers to the last generation before the temple fell in AD 70—Peter’s generation and his “these days.”
But Peter was not alone; the other apostles knew they lived in a unique time. They, too, believed the prophets had all spoken about the period in which they lived and ministered. This awareness gave them the context, content, and consequences for their preaching. We will consider the context in this post.
The Apostles’ Context for Preaching
The period Peter called “these days” provided the context for the apostles’ preaching. They believed the prophets had foretold this period, and we can see this by considering the terms they used for their generation.
The Apostle Paul makes an interesting statement. He says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom 8:18). What draws our attention to Paul’s era and makes us think of it as unique?
We can find clues in this letter to the Romans. The Apostle’s original Greek words tell us he expected the glory of which he spoke to come soon. Young’s Literal translation clarifies this: Paul meant “the glory about to be revealed in us.” A revelation of glory has not immediately followed the sufferings of all generations, but it did in Paul’s day and in Peter’s “these days.”
Paul elaborates further in this letter: “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:11–12). What night was almost over, and what day was at hand? According to inmillennialism, it was the night of the Mosaic age types and shadows and the day of the messianic-age glory. (I knew you’d want to read about inmillennialism.)
Even later in the Roman letter, Paul says, “The God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly” (Rom 16:20). This statement makes sense when we realize God was about to judge apostate Israel and that the Lord had said to their leaders, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do” (John 8:44). God would crush the head of the Jewish serpent in “these days”—the days of Jesus, Peter, and Paul.
Paul also writes to the Corinthians from this perspective. Speaking about Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, he says, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor 10:11). Peter’s “these days” were, for Paul, “the end of the ages.” Something big was about to happen; the prophets had all spoken about it.
One last example. The writer of Hebrews says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” (Heb 1:1–2). He follows up with several statements about something big that was about to happen in this unique “last-days” period.
John Gill gives a good way for us to think about such words: “It is best to understand this of the last days of the Mosaic economy, or Jewish dispensation; for the Messiah was to come before the Jewish civil and church states were dissolved; before the sceptre departed from Judah, and before the second temple was destroyed.”2 An inmillennialist could not have said it better!
Of course, the prophets had used similar terms to describe the period in which the Messiah would come to establish His kingdom. Jacob had said the true Scepter would come to Israel in “the last days” (Gen 49:1, 10). Isaiah said,
Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. (Isa 2:2–3)
Jesus had further defined this period in His Olivet Discourse. He said the end of the Mosaic age, the abomination of desolation, the “great tribulation,” His parousia, and the sign of the Son of Man in heaven would occur in His generation (Matt 24:3, 15, 21, 27, 30, 34).
Conclusion
Peter claimed all the prophets spoke about the days in which he lived. We will examine this claim in the coming weeks. We now know that the prophets had provided the context for the apostles’ ministry—it would occur in the “last days” of the Mosaic age. They wrote about this period, and the apostles saw themselves as living in it.
Lord willing, next week, we will see that the prophets also provided the content for the apostles’ preaching and described the consequences of it.
Footnotes
- The image in this file is The Denial of Saint Peter by (1610) by Caravaggio (1571–1610). It is in the public domain per {{PD-1996}}.
- John Gill, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, 9 vols. (1809–10; repr., Paris, AR: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1989), 9:374.
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