MATTHEW 16:27-28 -- A FALSE PROPHECY?

Matthew 16:27-28: Part 1 Isn't this a false prophecy since Jesus did not come “soon?”

According to Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, the verb mello can have several meanings, the most common of which are (1) about to do, or on the point of doing, (2) designed or fated to do, and (3) highly likely or certain to do. RSV, AB, NICNT and NEB adopt the second meaning, and most other translations lean toward a neutral word like “will” or “shall” or infer a strong meaning closer to (3) by employing “is to come.”

However, even if mello itself proves little in terms of timing, Jesus' statement in v. 28 is more definite and implies a future time in which some, but not all, of those in his audience will either be dead or will not experience the event in their lifetime. This seems to definitively rule out the Second Coming/Last Judgment since all of Jesus' audience are long dead by now (unless one feels that Jesus was mistaken about the date, which is unlikely in view of Matthew 24:36). The live possibilities still remaining, however, are (1) the Transfiguration, (2) the Resurrection/Ascension, (3) Day of Pentacost, and (4) the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

In favor of Interpretation 1 is the close association of that event in both Matthew and Mark's Gospels, and the fact that it seems to be Peter's own interpretation of Jesus' words (see II Peter 1:16-18). According to this interpretation, the Transfiguration was a foreshadowing of, or down payment on, Jesus' future glorified role in heaven.

Mark's earlier account of Jesus' speech adds the phrase “coming in power,” which would associate Jesus' words with either the resurrection (Rom. 1:4) or with the events on the Day of Pentacost (Acts 1:8). Christ's statement in Matthew 28:18 may be the fulfillment of Jesus' words in Chapter 16 according to Interpretation 2.

Interpretation 4 fits the rough time frame of the prophecy quite well and has the advantage of being the only one in which an act of judgment (Matthew 16:27a) figures in. However, the Destruction of Jerusalem could hardly be described as “repaying everyone for what has been done.” (see the question below for further discussion).

Finally, none of the suggestions above accounts for the absence of angels. However, as William Hendricksen notes, verse 27a does not say that anyone will see Jesus come with his angels, and 27b only says that some will see him “in his kingdom” or “in his royal dignity.”

The best explanation I was able to find came from R. T. France's commentary on Matthew. He notes that Matthew's passage harkens back to Daniel 7 and must be understood in light of that chapter. In Daniel 7, the Son of Man comes into the heavenly presence of God and his angels and is given an eternal dominion and glory and kingship (7:13-14) and presumably participates in the day-by-day judgment of earthly kingdoms even before the time of the Last Judgment (7:26-27). Thus, Matt. 16:27a can be translated “For the Son of Man will come into the presence of his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.” When some of the apostles see Jesus in his glory either at the Transfiguration or after His resurrection and ascension to the Father or through His powerful spirit at the Day of Pentacost, they are experiencing the beginning of the Son of Man's kingdom reign.

Matthew 16:27-28: Part 2 Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't this passage refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD? Here are three arguments I have read that favor that interpretation:

A. It depends on who the “everyone” is. Jesus said all the blood of all the martyrs would be avenged on the Jews of his generation in his generation (Matthew 23:29-36).

B. He didn’t say everyone on the planet, but only the Jews of his day (Matthew 24).

C. The judgment of Matthew 25:31-46 was a judgment on all the nations of Palestine, not the whole globe since Matthew 25 is based on Joel 3, just as Matthew 24 is based on Joel 2 (cf. Acts 2:16), and Joel links his two chapters together in 3:1, using “in that day,” and you can read the nations as Tyre, Sidon, Edom, Philistia, etc.

Argument A is not really true. That passage (and all of Chapter 23) is only directed to the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees who persecute the saints and has no obvious connection to the Matthew 16 passage. Also it states that doom will come upon those he is addressing (this generation of persecutors), but it does not state when it will come on them (i.e. at their death?).

That only leaves the supposed parallel passage of Matthew 24 to talk about. Let me see if I can reconstruct the logic here:

    1. “Everyone” in Matthew 16 refers only to the Jews of Jesus' time.

    2. Matthew 24 is a parallel passage referring to this same judgment.

    3. Matthew 24 is a judgment on the Jews of Jesus' time because it is based on Joel 2.

    4. Somehow Acts 2:16 proves this point, apparently because it quotes Joel 2:28-32 on the Day of Pentacost.

    5. Joel 2 predicts the same judgment on the Jews.

    6. Matthew 24 must be based on Joel 2 since Matthew 25 is based on Joel 3.

    7. Joel 2 and 3 are linked together by the prophet since the phrase “in that day” appears in Joel 3:1.

    8. Joel 3 is a judgment on the nations of Palestine.

    9. Presumably, (although not specifically stated by your source here) Matthew 25 and its supposed prediction of judgment on the Nations of Palestine also had its fulfillment in 70 AD, and this helps to justify the use of the word “everyone” in Matt. 16:27 (In direct contradiction to Statement 1 above).

Laying aside the non sequitur of #4 and the contradiction between #1 and #9, every one of the other points can be decisively rebutted without much trouble. Even presuming an 80% probability for each of the remaining seven steps above results in only a 21% probability that the total chain of reasoning is correct.

Now, let's look at some of these seven key points in turn (all of which need to be correct for this interpretation to work):

    1. While it is true that the NT sometimes uses words like “all” and “every” in a hyperbolic sense to refer to a more limited concept, one must look first and foremost as to how the author, Matthew, uses this term elsewhere in his Gospel. The Greek word hekastos only appears in this gospel in one other place, Matthew 25:15, on the lips of Jesus in a context of a Last Judgment parable. The master in this parable literally assembled every one of his servants before him. So unless definitively proved otherwise, “everyone” in Matthew 16 should be taken to mean everyone.

    2. If there were clear verbal or structural parallels between Matthew 16:27-28 and Matthew 24, I might be tempted to believe that the same event was being talked about. But there are no such obvious parallels. Also, as mentioned elsewhere it is notoriously hard to make sense out of every single verse of Matthew 24-25 and much depends on whether one views the two basic questions of the apostles to refer to one event or two separate events. To prove a closer relationship between Matthew 16:27-28 and ch. 24, one must rely on the further steps 3-8.

    3. Beale and Carson's Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament is the most exhaustive source on OT influences on NT texts. It lists even the most obscure allusions to the OT. For Matthew 24, this resource lists passages from several prophets (including Zechariah, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, and even Genesis and Deuteronomy), most notably from Daniel 7 and 12, on which they feel the Matthew chapter is most closely based, not the Book of Joel, despite the one possible allusion in Matthew 24:29 to Joel 2 or 3 (even though Isaiah 13:10 and Ezekiel 32:7 are the most probable sources of the quote). So again, this step of logic finds no obvious support, and needs to be further proved by the next few steps.

    4. Joel 2 (upon which Matthew 24 is supposedly based) is stated to describe the same judgment on the Jews referenced in Matthew 16:27-8 that occurred in AD 70. This is a really hard one to swallow. If you read Joel 2, it describes first a time of judgment on Israel caused by an invading army (so far so good). But then “afterward” God pours out his spirit on all flesh (Joel 2:28-29). This is the prophesied event that Peter quotes as being fulfilled on the Day of Pentacost, several decades before 70AD, not after it.

    5. Now we have a real leap of logic to contend with. In the first place, the author apparently feels there is something divine about the present chapter divisions that we have. That is a false assumption as seen by considering the structure of Joel (see my post on that subject). So by his reasoning, Joel 2 // Matthew 24; therefore Joel 3 // Matthew 25. Again, consulting Beale and Carson one can see that there are possible allusions in Matthew 25 to Daniel, Proverbs, Hosea, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Deuteronomy, but none whatsoever to the Book of Joel.

    6. But are Joel 2 and 3 completely linked together as describing the same historical event just because Joel 3:1a uses the phrase “in those days and at that time,” apparently referring backward to all the events of Joel 2? In the first place, the phrase does not necessarily point to the time just talked about. If it does, then that poses a real problem for your source's argument. It would mean that at about the same time of Jerusalem's downfall, God will restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem (3:1b).

    7. That certainly did not happen anywhere near AD 70. Even if you ignore that glaring problem verse, the judgment on the neighboring Palestinian nations depicted in Joel 3, and which somehow is supposed to have taken place when the Romans sacked Jerusalem (although there is no historical evidence for that), includes the following interesting details:

    8. Concerning the fate of Tyre and Sidon, etc., the prophet declares, “I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the people of Judah.” (Joel 3:8) At the same time, God will become a refuge for the people of Israel (Joel 3:16), the land of Israel will drip with wine and milk and endless streams of water (Joel 3:18) and Jerusalem will be inhabited forever (Joel 3:20). Hardly a description of the events of AD 70 by any stretch of the imagination.

Matthew 16:27-28: Part 3 Here is a fresh look at this problem passage from another perspective, that of context:

Context within Matthew's Gospel:

The immediately preceding verses talk about the ultimate judgment of all mankind for good or bad while the immediately following verses describe the Transfiguration. There is the tentative possibility, therefore, that Matt. 16:27 has some logical relationship to verses 24-26 while 16:28 has some logical relationship to 17:1-7.

Taking the larger section of the Gospel in mind, the following chiastic arrangement can be easily reconstructed:

A. “Evil and Adulterous Generation”; Failure of the Disciples (16:1-12)

    B. Question of Identity: Son of Man, Elijah, John the Baptist (16:13-19)

        C. “Tell No One” (16:20)

                D. Peter's Inappropriate Response (16:21-23)

                    E. Followers Need to Deny Themselves (16:24-26)

                        F. Jesus' Glory Predicted (16:27-28)

                        F'. The Transfiguration (17:1-3)

            D'. Peter's Inappropriate Response (17:4)

                E'. Disciples Need to Listen to Jesus (17:5-7)

        C'. “Tell No One” (17:9)

    B'. Question of Identity: Son of Man, Elijah, John the Baptist (17:10-13)

A'. “Faithless and Perverse Generation”; Failure of the Disciples (17:14-20)

So according to this literary perspective, the prediction of 16:27-28 is seen to be parallel in some important fashion to the event of the Transfiguration or, more likely, identical to it.

Context within the Synoptic Accounts:

There are a few important variations in the parallel Synoptic reports that may also help clarify Matthew's account:

    a. Mark's account is probably the original upon which Matthew relied heavily to write his Gospel. Both Mark and Luke conclude their parallels to Matthew 16:28b by saying that some will “see the kingdom of God (with power, according to Mark)” rather than Matthew's version which says that some will see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” If Mark and Luke are closer to Jesus' actual words, then Jesus could be referring to the coming of the kingdom at Pentacost in the power of the Holy Spirit, or to some event during Jesus' life since at one point He said “The kingdom is in your midst.”

    b. The other Synoptics agree with Matthew 16:27 in applying the word “glory” to Jesus' appearance, but Luke adds that same key word to the appearance of the three at the Mount of Transfiguration, strengthening the correspondence of the events in Matt. 17 to those that end Chapter 16.

Old Testament Context

16:27b. “and then he will repay everyone for what has been done” is a quote from Ps. 62:12 and Prov. 24:12. In both original contexts, it referred to God judging each person, for good or bad, by their actions.

16:27a. “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father” comes from Daniel 7:13: “I saw one like the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One (God) and was presented before him.” The Daniel context is a scene at the court of heaven with tens of thousands (of angels) present. Books of judgment are opened (Dan. 7:9-10). The Son of Man is then given an everlasting dominion, glory and kingship (Dan. 7:14).

17:2a. “His face shone like the sun” as did Moses' face when he was in the presence of God on Mt. Sinai.

17:2b. “his clothes became dazzling white” is another allusion to Daniel 7 (verse 9) describing God himself: “his clothing was white as snow.”

With these undoubted parallels to Daniel in the background of the Gospel account, it is quite easy to agree with R. T. France that the “coming” mentioned in 16:27 is not to earth, but to the Father and his angels in heaven where Jesus will be seated at His right hand and judge the nations.

Possible Conclusions

From the above data, the most likely potential conclusions to be reached are best explained through some possible rough paraphrases of Matthew 16:27-28:

Matthew 16:27: “At the Ascension, the Son of Man will come to heaven and receive the glory of God and his angels. There he will preside as judge to either excuse or accuse each person (which may take place immediately at each person's death, or perhaps be deferred until the Last Judgment).”

Matthew 16:28: “However, some of you disciples will not need to wait for your death in order to see me glorified (fulfilled for three of them at the Transfiguration).”

Alternatively, taking Mark's wording as more original: “However, some of you disciples will not need to wait for your death to see the coming of the kingdom in power since it will occur at the Day of Pentacost.”