Eschatology: the study of end-time events. I have heard numerous Christians say they want nothing to do with any of it. “It’s confusing. It isn’t important. Loving Jesus is all that matters.” The truth, though, is that it matters to Jesus — a lot. It is part of His story, and He wants us to pay attention to what He says about the end times in the Bible.
Jesus spoke extensively on the time of the end in the gospels. It was a major emphasis of the apostles in their letters to the early Church. They consistently reminded believers to be ready and looking for Jesus to come for them at any moment. The Old Testament prophets also spoke at length on the last days. Clearly, end-time events are important to the Lord, and He wants us to be informed about what is to come. We won’t get it all down pat, but we can all understand way more than we do.
I grew up in a liturgical church where we rarely heard anything about Jesus’ return. Once a year, we sat through a frightening sermon, taken from 2 Peter 3:10. Basically, the message was, “The earth is going to be cinderfied by God. Any of us who are still alive then will be burnt to a crisp, so get your act together now.” That one little snippet was all we were ever given. Good for us!
The after-church discussion at our dinner table amounted to my parents expressing their terror of becoming black toast. As an eight- or nine–year-old child, I simply thought, “It will probably only hurt for a second or two, and then I’ll be with Jesus.”
I married a Jesus People kind of guy. He had a different story of how it was all going down. He and all his buddies had inhaled Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late, Great Planet Earth. I never read it, but I think all the cinderfied earth was still somewhere in there. But there was also a “great catching away” (Rapture), a “Great Tribulation,” and a thousand-year reign of Jesus on earth coming first. It was a whole new weird theology to me.
I was skeptical and stubborn. I guess I wanted to cling to getting burnt to charcoal for some reason. But, I did what has been a faithful standby for me all these years. I said, “I am not swallowing this unless You show it to me in the Bible, God.” And He did. Not Hal Lindsey’s 1970s version. Just Bible verses which began to pop out here and there, much to my awe and illumination. I became one of those (gasp!) pre-Trib Pentecostal people who now looked forward to Jesus coming for His bride.
Twenty-five years later, a new take on the end times was introduced into my horrified brain by the apostolic/prophetic community. Now I was being barraged with “Jesus isn’t coming back any time soon” stuff. “He can’t, because if He does, your children’s children’s children won’t have the chance to fulfill their prophetic destiny.” (???) “Rapture-smapture! We are going to turn the earth around in its tracks, solve all mankind’s problems by supernatural revelation, and then hand our perfected planet on a platter to Jesus. He won’t come back until we do it all!” That’s a tad bit exaggerated, but you can tell the smidgen of humor is to get my point across, right?
So, what did I do? I began asking the Lord again to show me truth in His Word. I set aside a Bible just for my new eschatology adventure, and every time I ran across a verse that had any whisper of the end times in it, I underlined it in red. Doing that kept me standing strong through the latest barrage of uncomfortable teaching.
The project took a couple of years, but it was worth it. Along the way, I noticed that the early apostles were hugely focused on Jesus coming back for His people. They mentioned it all the time! And they believed it could happen at any moment. They heeded all Jesus had told them on the subject, like Jesus’ exhortation to continually watch and be ready for Him, because “the Son of man will come at an hour when you don’t think He will” (Luke 12:40).
Am I trying to convince you to join my pre-Trib camp? Nope! I have often said that I don’t think any of us have the whole picture exactly right. Some of the puzzle pieces don’t fit for me yet, either. We will understand it all much better after it happens.
But do realize that studying the end times in your Bible is exceedingly important, even if it is confusing sometimes. It’s precious to the Lord when we search the Scriptures to learn as much as we can about what comes next on God’s timeline — because it is a subject dear to His heart. He loves it when we converse about it with Him. He wants to put a deep longing in our hearts to be fully united with Him, in our glorified bodies, seeing and knowing Him as He is, face to face. We are meant to desire Jesus’ literal rule and reign on earth — yes, because of the restoration and justice He will bring — but even more, because He will receive all the glory He deserves.
And there’s still more after that: the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, as described in Revelation 21 and 22. So much good stuff ahead! Sheer blessing for us, but ultimately, it is all for Him.
“Love His appearing” as 2 Timothy 4:8 says. Be on tiptoe for that catching away of all the saints “in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:52), so that we will forever be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:17). Look forward to Jesus setting all things right on earth at His physical return, and the heavenly Jerusalem we will enjoy with God through all eternity.
And get as informed as you can now about it all by studying what He has said in the Bible. Eschatology is meant to bring hope, joy, and peace into our hearts. It helps us to know God’s heart better. Let it do that for you.
Related post:
Is There Still Going to Be a Rapture?
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Out of the Fire 