Endings

Introduction/overview
One of the most popular subjects among Christians today, and even unbelievers, is that of the "end times" (also called the "last days"). The topic is called "eschatology" (study of the end). Many books, sermons, movies, songs, and videos have been made about this. The movies especially focus on the book of Revelation. As with all things in Hollywood, the movies tend to only very loosely follow what is actually written. The books, sermons, etc. are often only marginally better, following a particular theory and ignoring anything that doesn't fit that view. My purpose here isn't to provide my own theories, but to provide some context and address some of the popular topics that have come up in regard to the end times.

Why is this topic important? Besides the mass attention given to it, it is found in the pages of scripture. If God felt it was important enough to include the topic in the Bible, we ought to pay attention to it. However, this doesn't mean that He intended to answer all our questions, or to titillate us, or to provide a detailed timeline of the future. Nor is it something we should obsess over. Not recognizing this is why some people have gone off on tangents.

So why did God tell us about it? I believe there are two main reasons: 1) To let us know when hard days come, that He is still in control - nothing takes Him by surprise - everything that happens occurs only because He allows it. So, don't lose faith when things look dark. 2) He has prepared us so that we are not taken by surprise when the predicted events come to pass. We should expect them. We should be alert and watching for them. Besides these, I believe there are numerous other reasons, including keeping us holy. If we expect that He will return at any time, we will keep ourselves from sin and dissipation. In fact, Paul says that having the hope of His return purifies us.¹ It also serves as a warning to unbelievers - many of whom have heard about these warnings. God loves us and wants people to repent and be reconciled with Him. With the major judgments listed in the book of Revelation, there is the comment that "men did not repent" - the implication being that the point of the judgments is to get people to turn to God. It is better to turn to Him before these judgments, but late is better than never. I think that some people will indeed repent. But most will not. Nevertheless, God will use the judgments to bring the last few members of humanity destined for salvation to Him. With each disaster, a few more souls will turn to Him for eternal life.

Therefore, it is pointless to try to figure out who the Antichrist is ahead of time. When he is revealed, it will be clear. Nor is there any point in trying to determine if the United States can be identified in any of the verses. Nor should we try to determine an exact date, or year, in which the end will come. These are distractions which don't lead us to being holy or spreading the gospel.

The focus of so many people interested in this topic is the Book of Revelation (and sometimes also the end of the book of Daniel). This is known as "apocalyptic" literature. The fact is, the subject is dealt with throughout the Bible. Nearly everything in Revelation has an earlier reference, whether by Paul, Jesus, or in the Old Testament. As a result, understanding the rest of the Bible will provide understanding of what is in Revelation. This is one of the important points of proper interpretation of any scripture: the Bible is the best commentary on the Bible. Take things in context with the whole of scripture.

Some other important points to revisit from past articles: 1) fulfillment of prophecy is usually only obvious with hindsight. We know that what God says will happen will, in fact, happen. But how it comes about is usually known only afterwards. It is when people can't imagine how something will come about - when it seems unlikely that a prophecy can be literally fulfilled according to limited human understanding - that they try to turn it into some sort of metaphor. But all prophecy, including Revelation, should be taken literally unless we are told that something is symbolic. In both Daniel and Revelation, there are symbols that are identified as such. But we should take everything else literally. A great many learned men over the centuries have come up with some odd viewpoints by making everything into a metaphor.

2) Most of the Bible is Hebrew literature and must be understood as such. Thus, there is parallelism, an implicit rounding of numbers, and a significance to certain numbers such as 3, 7, and 12. If an unrounded number is provided, it is exact. Otherwise, a number such as 144,000 might be rounded from 143,200 or 145,346, for example.

3) Prophecy is typically given as a series of individual prophetic visions or revelations. The only temporal connection between them is the order in which they were given or written down. The actual time of fulfillment may vary from that, or they may overlap. In fact, depending on how one determines where one revelation ends and another begins, the number of different prophetic visions in Revelation can be from seven to eighteen: seven if we stick with "I saw a sign...", and eighteen if we go with each change of "scene". And some of these are obviously not in linear order in history, although others are clearly in order of fulfillment. It would be a mistake to take the entire book as a linear history of what is yet to happen. This too is a source of poor speculation among some.

4) God operates on a different timescale than we do. We are concerned with days, months, and years. God deals with things in centuries and millennia. Unless He gives a specific time period (and sometimes He does), fulfillment of prophecy can be spread out over multiple lifetimes. The "Day of the Lord" in terms of Revelation is the final judgment. In other cases, its use seems to be equivalent to the seven year tribulation. In other cases, it seems to refer solely to the global judgments of God. Context is important, and sometimes it isn't clear about exactly what timescale is being encompassed (because it isn't always important). In any case, just because two events are mentioned in close proximity in the Bible text doesn't mean that they have a close proximity in the time when they are fulfilled.

What does the Bible say that we can say for sure? There will be persecution of the people of God, but sin and death do not go on forever. There are terrible judgments on unredeemed mankind. There will be a judgment day where the Devil and his followers will be dealt with in finality. There will be a new heaven and earth without sin or death. Those who belong to God get to live with Him without tears. These things are clear. Other details are less clear (probably so we don't fixate on less important details).

When
I'm not going to provide a detailed eschatological timetable or try to identify the Antichrist. But I will address a few specific issues that often come up. The most common one is: when will this all happen? The first and most important answer to this question comes from Jesus, Who said "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father."² So no one can predict the day correctly. In fact, the word "day" is often used to mean "year" in this kind of usage, so I'd say that no one can even predict the year correctly. If anyone predicts it and is correct, it would be coincidence akin to a broken clock being correct twice a day - not because it was revealed to them. However, Jesus also said "Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door."³

What did He mean by "all these things"? Matthew chapter 24 contains the most detailed description of the end times by Jesus. Even so, it seems to cover a period from AD 70 to the end. This has caused some people to consider that the prophecy in this chapter was entirely about the destruction of the temple in AD 70. But not all of the chapter fits that event. To be fair, the disciples made an assumption that the destruction of the temple that Jesus had predicted would be in conjunction with the end times and asked him about both, thinking they were contemporaneous, so He responded to both questions. Again, in retrospect, we realize that only the prophecy about the temple was fulfilled in the lifetime of the apostles. But the rest of the chapter contains many other prophecies, and the end will not come until all of those are fulfilled. Once we see all of them, we know that the time is very close, though we still cannot claim to know exactly when. But here is the exciting thing: since that prophecy was given, everything in it has been fulfilled up to the return of Christ except one. "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."⁴

Some might say, "but hasn't the gospel reached every nation in the world already"? Yes and no. When we say "nation", we mean "country". The Greek word used in the aforementioned verse is "ethnos", which is where we get the term "ethnic". Up until the late Roman empire, most countries were run by a single ethnic group, whether Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian, etc. Thus, at that time, nation and ethnic group were largely interchangeable. Things are different now and we must understand that Jesus was talking about the gospel being preached to every "people group" (to use a modern equivalent term). The problem for those wanting to predict the time of the coming, it is unclear exactly what constitutes a people group. How narrowly can this be defined? There are many opinions on this. For instance, could Americans be considered a people group? Or is it only English-speaking Americans? Or English-speaking Americans of European descent? And so on. When one considers that there are hundreds of languages spoken in India alone, with many groups who consider themselves homogeneous and separate from other groups (despite speaking the same native tongue), we can begin to recognize the difficulty in determining exactly when we could consider that this goal has been reached. Even if we could determine that, does it mean that the gospel has merely been preached to every group or does it mean that there are believers in the group? And how many? As the book of Revelation puts it, the saved consists of people from "every nation, tribe, and tongue". So we know that there are people saved from every people group. I personally don't think God will be satisfied with only one or two people from any given people group. Therefore, though this is the only prophecy remaining unfulfilled, we won't know when it is accomplished. Fortunately, there are groups (such as the US Center for World Mission) who are working to identify and target every unreached people group.

Another point to consider is that the apostles, filled with the Spirit on the day of Pentecost referred to that time as the "last days."⁵ That means that we have been in the "last days" for two thousand years. If we consider that the earth was only about 4,000 years old at that point, it would seem that we are very close to the end of the last day now. "Last days" implies something less than what has gone on before. For instance, you wouldn't consider Wednesday to be one of the last days of the week. So, the last days aren't likely to last anywhere near 4,000 years (minus the 2,000 years since they started). Some people use Peter's comment "But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day"⁶ as a proof that every reference to a "day" in scripture is actually 1,000 years. Peter's point is that God works on a much larger timescale than man and we shouldn't lose heart because He seems to be taking a long time to return. So we can't take that as having any meaning beyond that. Or can we?

There is an ancient Jewish tradition that human history is divided into three main periods: the first 2,000 years are characterized by chaos, the next 2,000 years are defined by the giving of the Torah and the development of the law, and the final 2,000 years are expected to lead to the Messianic Age. Or put more succinctly by some: there are 2,000 years of chaos, 2,000 years of law, and 2,000 years of the Messiah. This tradition precedes the incarnation of Jesus. It is certainly likely that Peter was aware of this tradition and, therefore, it is possible that he was referencing it.

As it turns out, there were about 2,000 years between the fall of man and the giving of the law through Moses. There were 2,000 years between the giving of the law and the birth of Jesus. Since then, there have been 2,000 years of the church - the body of Messiah. When we add in the 1,000 years (the millennia) mentioned in Revelation, we have a total of 7,000 years of human history, which corresponds to a seven-day week of 1,000-year days. Is this the correct interpretation? It sure seems to fit nicely with the rest of the prophecy. Even so, we cannot use this as a way to figure out the day or hour of His coming. First, as mentioned before, Hebrew custom is to round numbers. So, 2,000 is probably not an exact number - just close. Second, there is some "wiggle room" in determining the exact year of Jesus' birth due to the incomplete historical record and changes to our calendar over the centuries. Third, we don't know when the "years of the Messiah" started. At His birth? At His death? At His resurrection? At His ascension? At Pentecost? So, even if this is a correct interpretation, we still can only say that we are very near His return. It truly could happen at any time.

As exciting as the return of Jesus is (and it is!) we should all have a tension within us between wanting the fulfillment of all the promises of Scripture on one hand, and the fact of the lostness of many of our friends and family on the other. I'm certainly glad Jesus didn't return before I was nineteen, because I wasn't saved until then. I know far too many who have yet to put their trust in Jesus and I hope that He delays until they are saved. Nonetheless, I leave it all in His hands. Besides, it is quite possible that anyone can die and pass into eternity at any point before the return of Jesus. If you want to speed His coming, do all that you can to make sure that the gospel reaches everyone possible, as soon as possible. Support missionaries with prayer and money, or become one yourself. Focus on the unreached people groups.

The Antichrist and the Mark of the Beast
Another favorite pastime of some people is identifying who the Antichrist is. I've heard some people mention that the word "Antichrist" doesn't occur in the book of Revelation. This is true, but it is a point without significance. John says "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour."⁷ Anyone who opposes Christ is, by definition, an antichrist. So, to call the biggest antichrist of all time "the Antichrist" (as is the false prophet of the book of Revelation), is perfectly valid.

The primary way people try to determine his identity is via the "mark of the beast" - the number 666. Any number of interpretations of this number have been given over the centuries with the interpretation being anything from the Catholic church to various world leaders. When speaking of 666, John says "Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six."⁸ This leads people to think that if they can only be smart enough, they can figure it out ahead of time, but I believe that the correct "figuring out" will happen after the fact.

In terms of the mark itself, most people think that it will be a physical mark on the body. The mark is a counterfeit of the Enemy corresponding to the seal that God places on the foreheads of His people.⁹ As noted by Paul¹⁰, all Christians have God's seal on them, but this is not physical - which indicates the possibility that the mark of the beast may not be physical either. On the other hand, the specificity of the mark being on the forehead or the hand seems to argue for a physical mark. Even if not physical, it indicates a wholehearted selling-out of people to the Antichrist. Either way, whether the seal of God or the mark of the beast, whether physical or symbolic, the idea of writing your name or mark on something is a way of telling others that that thing is owned by you. In the end, you are either owned by God or by the Enemy and you will be marked accordingly. It may be a literal marking of "666", or some other physical mark, or it may be a matter of swearing allegiance to the Antichrist, or some combination thereof. Again, it will be clear after the fact, but trying to be dogmatic about it ahead of time is a pointless distraction.

Likewise, I don't think that the Antichrist will be identifiable until after he assumes the world-wide role that Revelation talks about. Closely identified with the Antichrist is "the beast". The nature of the beast is unclear. Whatever it is, it is the entity whose identifier (name or number) is the mark that the Antichrist requires people to receive. Typically, beasts are used to represent nations (ethnos) when used in Revelation and Daniel. So the beast could be a nation or an ethnic group. But this is also one case where the beast is not identified as being symbolic of a nation. It might be a religious system or a philosophy. The Antichrist sets up an image of the beast for people to worship. The usage of "image" implies that it is not a person, but it may be embodied in a person, or maybe an artificial intelligence. AI could be the image of man that is the Enemy's counterpart to the image of God that is in man. Satan does not create - he counterfeits what God creates, and uses it to kill and destroy. It is required that people accept the mark in order to buy or sell things, which indicates to me that some sort of digital currency is used to enforce this. Certainly, we have the ability to implement this now so, again, the time is close at hand. Most, if not all, of the necessary pieces are in place for what Revelation describes. The rise of the Antichrist is also closely tied to the rapture in the minds of some people.

The Rapture
Some people comment that the word "rapture" isn't in the Bible and the idea should be discarded. This is a ridiculous point. Of course "rapture" isn't in the Bible - "rapture" is an English word and the Bible is in ancient Greek and Hebrew. The term comes from chapter 4 of 1 Thessalonians where Paul says "we who are left, shall be taken up together with them in the clouds to meet Christ, into the air." In the Vulgate (the original Latin translation of the Bible), the word translated from the Greek is "rapiemur", from which we get "rapture" in the English. The term means "to be carried off", which is what Paul describes as happening to believers. So, let's leave these silly arguments behind and consider what the Bible has to say about the event that we call the "rapture".

The idea with the rapture is that believers are "carried off", from the Earth, to meet Jesus in the air when He comes a second time. Both the dead and the living are included. But we'll leave the discussion to that of living persons that are taken to heaven without dying. In fact, raptures have already happened. Enoch was taken by God, as recorded in Genesis. Later, we have the example of Elijah being taken up to heaven without dying. But when we talk about "The Rapture", we are referring to an event in which all believers are taken to heaven, bypassing death and being transformed into the likeness of Jesus. This event is mentioned in multiple places, including the words of Jesus and the apostles. All references indicate a sudden event that affects some people but leaves others behind. It it assumed by most that this is a single event, but it is possible that there may be more than one yet to happen, besides the ones in the past. For instance, it appears that the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation are raptured in a separate event from the "general" rapture. They are first raised to life, and then raptured. So, even though there is a "main event", there are raptures occurring at other times. It is even possible that other people have been raptured and simply not recorded in scripture.

There are several references to the event(s) in the Bible, so it is hard to understand how a believer could doubt that it will happen, but I occasionally run into them. Besides the previously-mentioned passage in 1 Thessalonians, Jesus talks about it four times in the gospels, Paul also mentions it in his letter to the Corinthians, and John records it in Revelation.¹². Among those who believe that there will be a rapture, there is a question about when the rapture will happen, relative to the other events of Revelation. I'm not convinced that we can know when it will happen for sure, but I'll present a couple of the arguments.

Argument 1: Speaking of the "man of lawlessness" (identified as the Antichrist), Paul says "...but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way."¹¹ The context indicates that the "one who now holds it back" is the Holy Spirit. Because the Spirit permanently dwells in believers, the only way for the Spirit to be removed is to remove believers from the Earth. Thus, the rapture must happen before the Antichrist is revealed. The question here is what "revealed" means in relation to the Antichrist. When he is born? When he rises to power? When he comes to the notice of the media? When he starts implementing policies that are antichristian? When he declares himself God? Answering this question is required before we could say at which point the rapture would happen, and yet I don't think the question is answerable prior to the rapture happening. Note: just because you choose the point that you think it happens doesn't mean that God is obligated to meet your expectations in this area. I've met some believers that think that the Spirit will be removed by the Antichrist killing all Christians. However, as Paul states in the 1 Thessalonians passage mentioned previously, it is clear that the rapture will include both the dead and living.

Argument 2: It is a Biblical theme that the righteous are spared the judgments of God visited upon the wicked. They are not spared from the evil of wicked men however. So, tribulation brought on by the Antichrist is to be expected even if there are Christians still around. However, the judgments from God listed in Revelation are something which believers will be spared. These global disasters seem to happen in the second-half of the rule of the Antichrist. Thus, the rapture could happen no later than 3 1/2 years into his seven-year rule.

It is also possible that some people may become Christians after the rapture. The point of God's judgments seems to be to get people to repent. I think it will be a relatively small number of people, but it cannot be completely ruled out. Thus, it is possible that there are additional general raptures that occur after the "main event". There is no point in being dogmatic about things that weren't important enough for God to clarify for us. But neither should we be lazy and assume that things aren't clear because we simply didn't look deeply enough into it.

So, depending on how you look at things, there are three different views of a single rapture event: Pre-tribulation, Post-tribulation, and Mid-tribulation. I think they are all misnomers, because they refer to the reign of the Antichrist and it is unclear at which point the tribulation (related to the mark of the beast) will happen. The assumption is that the tribulation and the reign of the Antichrist are synonymous. They may be, but it is unclear. In any case, Pre-tribuation means that the rapture happens before the Antichrist rises to power. Mid-tribulation means that the rapture occurs in the middle of the seven-year tribulation. Post-tribulation means that the rapture occurs at the end of the tribulation. As mentioned above, it is possible that all three are true.

Some people seem to think that they can hold off on giving their lives over to Jesus until after the rapture happens, which will finally prove to them that the Bible is true. The fact is, they won't. If they won't trust God when things are going relatively well, they won't trust Him when the going gets rough. Besides, with the Holy Spirit removed, there is nothing holding back the lies of the Enemy and those remaining will be far more subject to deception. And there will be a lot of deception. Let me tell you how I think things will happen, based on what I've observed of humankind. First, there will be denial by the government. My suspicion is that there won't be many elected politicians who are raptured. Those who disagree (due to their own loved ones having gone missing) will be labeled as conspiracy nuts - or worse. The news people will point out the number of missing persons over the years (over 25,000 in the USA alone in any given year) and they will say that the situation is normal. There will be people who say that they are Christians, and since they are still here, therefore the missing people cannot have been raptured. Others will say that the people who were supposedly raptured have gathered together in some secret place to fool people into thinking the rapture happened. Still others will say that the missing people are truly missing, but it wasn't the return of Jesus - it was aliens. Jesus said "For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."¹³ If this is a literal description of His return, the flash of light will be compared to the flashes of light from UFOs. Paul says "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God".¹⁴ Interestingly, I've seen multiple alien movies where the appearance of alien craft are accompanied with horn-like sounds. It is like people are being prepared even now to interpret the rapture as being due to aliens. Whether the government eventually settles on an alternate explanation for missing people or persists in denying it even happened is hard to say. But the point is, there will be plenty of alternate viewpoints used to explain away the rapture and I don't think many people will turn to God as a consequence. Anyone waiting for the rapture before they get saved will probably not get saved after it happens.

Armageddon
Armageddon is the name for a valley in Israel. It is the location specified in the book of Revelation for a great battle. Despite all the Hollywood movies about it, and the common usage of the word, it isn't necessarily a synonym for World War III. At this point in history, it may very well be. But any number of World Wars could happen prior to the events of most of Revelation. One cannot make assumptions. It happens between the sixth and seventh "bowl judgments", which means it happens near the end of end - years after the rise of the Antichrist, the mark of the beast, and most of the global judgments of God. By the time it happens, it will be clear to everyone that the end times have come. It is not the beginning of those times and any given war before the rise of the Antichrist is not it. So those who are watching for any sign of a big war as an indication of the return of Jesus, at this point, are sadly mistaken. In fact, one of the points made about the rise of the Antichrist is that he runs around making peace throughout the world. That would be a better indication of the imminent return of Jesus than any war - although, as noted, this might be after the rapture and thus be a moot point.

A greater point here is that if you rely on others to tell you about the end times - especially Hollywood - you are going to be misled. Read the Bible first, then possibly consult commentaries, and draw your own conclusions. And realize that the timeline of the end days is not the point of the Bible - it will all be clear after the fact. The point of the verses about the end times is to prepare believers for what will happen and serve as a sign to unbelievers so they cannot say that they weren't warned ahead of time. It is to encourage us that God will have His way in the end, despite what we experience in the present.

The Millennium
The Millennium refers to a 1,000 year rule of Jesus after He returns to earth, prior to the final battle and final judgment. Some people consider this to be symbolic, although I find absolutely no support for this idea. This is referred to as the "amillenial view". Another view is that Jesus doesn't return until after the millennium, where righteous humans rule the earth for 1,000 years. This idea (postmillenialism) was more popular in the past when people thought there would eventually be so many Christians that they would form a peaceful earthly empire. Both World Wars pretty much put an end to the theory that Christianity would eventually end up ruling the world. I can see how one would arrive at this conclusion from some of what is in Revelation, but I don't think a holistic view of scripture supports it. The other major eschatological viewpoint is premillenialism, which is a literal reading of the 1,000-year rule of Christ on Earth, with which I agree.

I won't try to construct a detailed timeline of the events in Revelation. But it seems clear enough that a general order of events can be gleaned that looks like this:
1. The gospel is preached to all peoples.
2. Rapture?
3. Rise of the Antichrist.
4. Rapture?
5. Judgments of God and Armageddon.
6. Rapture?
7. Jesus returns to Earth and rules from Jerusalem for 1,000 years.
8. Final battle between Jesus and the wicked.
9. Final judgment.
10. A new heaven and earth created.

This isn't to say that most of the events in Revelation aren't clear - it is that the timing isn't made clear for most of it, and not all of the events are presented in the order they will transpire. Finally, I must note that although the above timeline seems clear to me, I could still be wrong on the order of some of them. You may note the rapture is listed in several places indicating that it could happen at any of those points - or it may even happen at all of those points. It also seems likely that items 2 through 6 in the road-map will happen within a seven year period.

Apart from trying to derive ordering of events from where it is not specified, and speculating as to the identity of the Antichrist, beast, and the mark of the beast, most of the disagreement about the end times comes from one's approach to interpreting scripture. If you take God literally at His word, the number of possible interpretations is small, and usually differ insignificantly. Be careful what you listen to - it may not match the Bible. Find out what it says for yourself.

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