Bible translation is not the way to speed up the second coming of Jesus

 

This may appear to be a very odd topic for this blog, and indeed it is, any way you slice it. But it has been reported to me that much of the current motivation to speed up Bible translation stems from the earnest desire of some Christians in North America (and possibly elsewhere) to do their utmost to put in place what they think to be the conditions for Jesus' second coming. I have to admit upfront that I don't have any documentary evidence for this, so I would be very happy to hear from the readers that I am barking up the wrong tree with this blog post. Feel free to disavow me of this idea in the comments below, and as soon as you convince me, I'll gladly remove this post from my blog. If on the other hand you have clear evidence that what I say here is based on facts, please let me know. Depending on how public this evidence is, we might link to it here.

So what is the basic idea here? Because I write this blog to a Christian audience, I don't need to explain the concept of the second coming of Christ – it should be a central idea in everybody's theology. But it is also clear that there are many and widely differing ideas as to how this second coming of Christ influences and motivates what we do with our lives. There is probably a lot of common ground for most Christians, but also some theologies that are not widely shared, or even contested by the majority of our fellow believers. One such view is that Christians all over the world should act in ways that would speed up the second coming of Christ. If we therefore can identify a condition that needs to be met before Jesus' return can happen, we should do our best to make sure it is met as soon as possible.

One such condition that is frequently brought up in this context is the perceived need that all peoples of the world have heard the Good News of Jesus. This is based on Jesus' own words in Matthew 24:14: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come."

In our times, this prophecy is frequently understood to mean that a Bible translation needs to be available for every language. If correct, this would indeed imply that speeding up the work of translating the Bible into all languages can hasten the long-awaited return of Christ. If we therefore can control some variables, such as the number of project start-ups and time needed for project completion, we have it in the hand to present Jesus with a world which is ready for him to come back to much earlier than if we did not pay attention to these things.

I think there are a number of objections that can be brought forward against this idea, which I hope will convince you that we should not let ourselves be driven by a wrong sense of urgency into doing a worse job of Bible translation than necessary.

Before I do this, though, I want to point out clearly that the Bible leaves no doubt about the fact that Jesus will come back at the end of times – it is not my intention at all to question this here or even ridicule those who believe it. I am one of them, and I take the passages that talk about this future event very seriously. Differences arise though about how we as Christians are to lead our lives with respect to the second coming of Christ.

Together with many other Christians I may be tempted to be actually not that keen on being there when it happens, but rather die peacefully before that event – there are just too many indications that it won't be a very pleasant time, not only for non-believers, but also for Christians. But let me join in with John at the very end of the Bible in Rev. 22: "Come Lord Jesus!"  Whatever that may mean for me personally, I'd rather see this sooner than later.

But can we read from the Bible any obligation for us to actually do things to make it happen faster? No matter how much I look for it, I can't find it anywhere. There is basically one clear command with regard to Jesus' return: "Be ready for it!" We are called to live our lives in ways that make us not to appear embarrassed when the time of the return finally comes. If we look at the parable of the ten virgins in Matt. 25, the five wise ones do not recommend themselves by going to the homestead of the bridegroom and drag him by his hairs to the wedding, so that it can finally get started; they just stay prepared for his arrival for however long it takes. There is of course the Great Commission that exhorts Christians to spread the Good News until the end of the world, but once more, in doing it, there is no obligation whatsoever to second-guess God's strategy by doing X, Y or Z because it needs to be done before Jesus can come back.

Now how do we know that each language needs to have a Bible translation before the big event can happen? In fact, we don't, at least not from the Bible. Admittedly, there is a correlation between having a Bible translation and having a better chance of reaching an ethnic group with the good news, but to draw the conclusion that Matt 24:14 can only take place when Bible translations are ready for all languages gets us into the area of conjecture. To be sure, the concept of Bible translation isn't even mentioned once in the New Testament, and we know from Acts 2 that God isn't in the least bit limited by the absence of a Bible translation when it comes to reaching people from many nations. More importantly, the writers of the New Testament were all of the opinion that Jesus might come back any minute, even in their days, so they must have had ideas on how Matt 24:14 might be fulfilled that apparently did not involve Bible translation. Paul writes to the Thessalonians who were rather distraught by the fact that Christians started dying of old age before Jesus returned, and it appears as if that came as a somewhat unexpected delay even for Paul. The writer of Hebrews also expects in 10:25 that Jesus' return is just around the corner, much closer than it was in the early days of the church 20 or 30 years earlier – again, he did not feel that something was critically missing in the world that could possibly prevent that.

So, almost 2000 years later, we find ourselves in exactly the same situation: Jesus could come back any moment, and we should not assume for a minute that the conditions are not yet ready for this – this is exclusively for Jesus to decide. Our job is to be ready ourselves (that would be a totally different blog to talk about that), and not to speed up any mission milestone that our eschatological thinking tells us needs to be reached first.

All this is not to say that Bible translation shouldn't happen, or that it is not a good idea to look for ways to speed the work up by acceptable measures. There are some intrinsically good reasons why the world would be a better one when everybody could read the Bible in a well-understood language. This is the case ten minutes or ten thousand years before the return of Jesus. If we accept that, then we will also be ready to invest what it takes to make each Bible translation a good one that truly communicates God's good news even to the smallest ethnic group. Botching the job because we feel we must hurriedly push a timeline does not further God's Kingdom, but in effect will delay the day when all nations are finally reached.