Acts 1:7

Context

After his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples over a period of forty days and spoke to them of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. During this time the disciples asked, "Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6), and this verse is his answer: "It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power." It is immediately followed by the promise that the disciples would receive power when the Holy Ghost came upon them and would be witnesses unto the uttermost part of the earth (1:8), and then by the account of the ascension (1:9). The Greek text pairs "times" (chronos) with "seasons" (kairos), encompassing both duration of time and appointed moments. The New Korean Revised Version renders the second term as sigi ("periods") rather than gihan ("appointed times").

Interpretation

• The reading that forbids date-setting: This reading is widely accepted across many denominations. It takes the verse to mean that the time of the end is set by God and cannot be known by human beings, and it reads the verse alongside "But of that day and that hour knoweth no man" (Mark 13:32).
• The dispensationalist reading: This view holds that Jesus did not deny the substance of the question about the restoration of the kingdom to Israel but only withheld its timing, and it treats the verse as support for a future restoration of national Israel.
• The covenant theology and Reformed reading: This view holds that the disciples understood the kingdom of God as a political and national restoration, and that Jesus corrected this expectation by pointing them to the coming of the Holy Spirit and the witness of the gospel.
• The missional reading: This view treats verses 7 and 8 as a pair and emphasizes that the disciples were entrusted not with knowing the times but with being witnesses.

Points of Debate

The principal difference concerns how the question in verse 6 is to be understood. Dispensationalists regard the premise of the question as legitimate, while covenant theologians regard it as a question colored by misunderstanding. This difference is tied to broader disagreements over the millennium and the place of Israel. The verse is also sometimes cited as discouraging interest in eschatology altogether; others point out, however, that in context what is forbidden is the attempt to know the timing, not belief in the Second Coming or the study of prophecy as a whole.

In the Korean Church

During the 1992 date-setting controversy, in which the Dami Mission and other groups proclaimed that the rapture would occur on October 28, many churches and media outlets cited this verse together with Mark 13:32 in criticizing date-setting eschatology. In preaching, the verse is often treated together with verse 8, which emphasizes mission.

Related Passages

• Mark 13:32-33
• 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
• Acts 1:4-5
• Mark 13:10
• Matthew 24:30-31