The End of the World as You Know It (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

Mushroom clouds. Nuclear winter. Mass death. Cosmic destruction. Worldwide famine. These are some of the images that come to mind when people hear the words “the end times.” In popular culture, there is a fascination with the end. For many, the agents of demise are climate change, the rise of political extremism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction—to name but a few candidates.

But a fascination with the end of the world is found not just in popular culture. In Christianity, the interest may be even more intense. Christians throughout history have had an attraction to the end times, mainly because one core hope of Christianity is the belief that one day God will deal with the problem of sin and evil. And this is something that happens at the end of time.

Theology that deals with the end times is known as eschatology, a term that comes from two Greek words: eschatos (“end”) and logos (“word” or “study”). Together, they mean “the study of the last things.” Eschatology isn’t always a source of hope for Christians, though; it has a tendency to stir up a cocktail of fear and angst. After all, disaster and judgment do not exactly invite mushy feelings for many people.

But I suspect this fear and angst also come from the strangeness of the topic. Many passages in the Bible that are classified as eschatological are often filled with puzzling language, mythical characters, and hard-to-grasp symbols. Take Revelation, for instance. This mysterious book documents the visions of a man named John, who witnesses a host of strange things. He tells of gargoyle-like, multiwinged creatures that stand before a throne, perpetually praising God (Rev 4:6–8). He describes a slain lamb with seven horns and seven eyes (Rev 5:6). He speaks even of a pregnant woman who wears the sun like a dress, as well as a seven-headed dragon that stands ready to eat her baby as soon as she gives birth (Rev 12:4).

John’s descriptions can seem rather nightmarish. The dragon, for example, aims to destroy Christians by waging a merciless war against them (Rev 12:17). To do so, he empowers two beasts—one that rises out of the sea and one that comes from the earth (Rev 13). The first demands worship from people, while the second promotes this by erecting an image of the first. People are then forced to either worship the image or face the death penalty (13:12–15). Those who devote themselves to the Beast are marked with the Beast’s name, which is depicted in the number 666—the infamous “mark of the beast” (13:16–18).

In light of this, it is understandable that many Christians find Revelation—and eschatology in general—to be confusing, frightening, and interesting all at the same time.

A FEARFUL MISUNDERSTANDING

I suspect much of the fear around the end times is not due to the strangeness of these passages or even the prospect of judgment as much as it is due to misunderstandings about their purpose and context. When it comes to the end times, many Christians tend to focus on things such as the mysterious figure known as the Antichrist. Who is he? When will he show up? Is he already in power? The mark of the Beast also gets a lot of attention. Is it a microchip? Social Security cards? Vaccines? These questions give rise to a lot of speculative theories, and these theories leave many Christians living in fear. Especially if they believe they are living as the final generation in the end times, Christians spread these (and other) speculative theories to their friends, which in turn spreads fear even more.

But if people are reading end-times texts and walking away with worry and dread, something is wrong. In fact, I would say that they are most likely misreading these texts. Revelation was not meant to produce fear but rather joy, peace, and hope. The same can be said about other end-times texts. The focus is never doom and gloom but faith and confidence. So while the motivations behind people’s speculations are almost always sincere, this is not enough. If sincerity is not coupled with knowledge and discernment, it can lead people to act irresponsibly. It can even be dangerous.

Through the years, I have for the most part stayed silent instead of speaking against some of the speculations being made by many Christians and by my fellow evangelicals in particular. I simply didn’t want to upset anybody or create division. But I have come to realize that much harm is done to the body of Christ when believers believe and share speculative ideas without evidence to back them up. This is especially true given that many church leaders—pastors, elders, deacons—are themselves guilty of spreading unhelpful views about the end times. When this happens, the gospel’s image is affected—even when this spreading of ideas is done sincerely. The church (and above all her leaders) should know better.

Sadly, some speculative preachers have a large audience, allowing them to do a lot of damage when they turn out to be wrong. One well-known American televangelist, for example, claimed that God revealed to him that Donald Trump would win his reelection bid in 2020. He further stated that Trump’s second term would be in connection with various end-time prophecies about Israel in particular and the world in general. He even went so far as to speculate how these events would lead to an asteroid smashing into the earth.1 Yet, none of this ended up happening. Claims such as this illustrate something peculiar about modern prophetic speculation, namely, that it’s fairly self-centered. We live in a special time; we are the last generation; we are the ones who will see the end of the world. Perhaps it’s not too much to say that modern prophecy appears self-absorbed.

But this sort of speculation is not unique to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Christopher Columbus, for example, was motivated to sail across the Atlantic to the New World by his own me-centered speculations about the end times. Columbus was convinced that God had called him to help usher in “the imminent new heaven and earth prophesied in Scripture.”2 Some in the Reformation era had similarly self-absorbed views about the end:

Melchior Hoffman courageously returned to Strassburg, accepting his arrest, because he expected it to become the new Jerusalem; he died there ten years later. An extremist then announced that Münster would become the new Jerusalem, crowned himself David, and reestablished polygamy, leading to the rapid slaughter of everyone in the city by Lutherans. Thomas Müntzer took part in the Peasant’s Revolt of 1524, expecting this to be the final judgment; but after six thousand peasants died he was captured and executed. In those days end-time miscalculations often died hard, unfortunately quite literally.3

Others such as Hanserd Knollys, a seventeenth-century English Baptist, thought that “the street of the great city” cited in Revelation 11:8 was a reference to London.4 Benjamin Keach was another Baptist who lived during the ascendancy of William of Orange to the English throne. With William as king, Catholicism took a big hit in England, pushing Rome’s authority to the periphery. Keach subsequently thought William’s reign was connected to the outpouring of God’s wrath mentioned in Revelation 16. He thus believed God had used William in his own time to punish the Antichrist, which he took to be Roman Catholicism.5

Today’s speculative misapplications continue in the same vein. Sadly, the consequences have been dire—not to mention embarrassing. As Christians, we are called to be ambassadors of the King (2 Cor 5:20).6 But this calling is seriously undermined when we propagate false interpretations in front of an unbelieving world. When we buy into (and spread) the teachings of popular prophecy teachers whose predictions fail to pan out, the watching world takes note of our folly. When we share baseless end-times speculations to our friends on social media, unbelievers may very well wonder whether they should listen to the other things we say. Why should they believe our good news when we in the same breath spread fake news?

TO THEM, BUT FOR US

Why do we find such end-times speculation so tempting? The heart of the problem is that many modern Christians think the Bible was written to them. But such thinking isn’t correct. The Bible was not written to modern, twenty-first-century people. It was written to people in the ancient world. Of course, it was written for everyone’s encouragement and growth in the faith, but that is different. Ephesians, for example, was not written to you and me; it was written to the first-century church at Ephesus. Colossians was not written to us, either; it was written to the first-century church at Colossae. Yet, it is still true that Ephesians and Colossians contain very important truths for us today.

This “to them, but for us” distinction may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s actually important to consider. If we fail to make it, our reading of the Bible will be skewed—and seriously so. Since the Bible was written to ancient people, we modern readers must respect the text’s original context. We need to become familiar with the text’s original audience—with their times, their situations, their assumptions. Otherwise, we rob the text of its context. Yet this is the very thing we do when we believe the Bible was written...