It seems as though a lot of people are talking about the end of the world lately. I posted this in February, but I’m refreshing it for all to see again. Likely many readers have not seen nor heard this. Churches can’t seem to agree on the order of events that will transpire, and entire TV shows are devoted to interpreting modern day headlines into end times prophetic fulfillments. David Jeremiah is even coming out with a new book on the end times that will likely rival Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth from the 70’s. It seems a majority of evangelicals are in the camp which teaches a premillennial rapture and a thousand year reign of Christ on earth. I myself do not subscribe to this notion, in fact, I feel that only teaching this notion may be dangerous. It will all get sorted out when Jesus comes back, so I’m not too concerned, but I felt that a little bit of a different perspective might be in order.
Does Jesus say anything about an earthly kingdom?
Consider these passages concerning the kingdom of heaven: “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it” (Matthew 11:12). The book of Matthew is FULL of Jesus teaching in parables concerning the kingdom of heaven. He continually demonstrated that people needed to act now – and not look for another kingdom to come, such as the man who buried his talent, awaiting the master’s return. Remember, that passage had nothing to do with money or talents, but with the kingdom of heaven! We must interpret Scripture in its proper context. Jesus, when teaching on divorce and marriage, said “Some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it” (Matthew 19:12). Jesus continually taught people to “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2; 4:17). I believe that the Bible teaches that when Christ came to earth He ushered us into the kingdom of heaven and through faith in Him we are brought into that same kingdom today. I will expand more on this in a moment. Colossians 1:13 says that He has “brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” Revelation 12:9-11 says that “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” I believe that this authority and power is already here. Jesus said that “If I drive out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matthew 12:27-28). If we truly believe that Jesus drove out demons by the Spirit of God (which is the clear implication of this text), then we must believe that the kingdom of God is already upon us!
However, one of the clearest Scriptures regarding the kingdom of God is found in Luke 17:20-21: “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.’” The kingdom of God is within us! In the Greek, this literally translates to “in our midst.”
What does church history have to say about the end times?
Let me offer you a concise church history lesson regarding end times teachings in the church. One of my main sources is David B. Currie, in his book entitled “Rapture: The End Times Error That Leaves The Bible Behind.” I highly recommend that anyone who holds the rapture position reads it and Scripturally addresses his claims. Many are surprised to discover that our modern fascination with the end times is NOT unique to our day and age! In fact, it is very unmodern (if that’s even a real word).
In 156 A.D., a charismatic leader named Montanis convinced many Christians that through a private revelation he had predicted that Christ’s return would come at any moment. He and his followers sought to return the Church to its “original simplicity,” being directly guided by the Holy Spirit (much like many Pentecostal/Charismatic denominations today). Montanis’ followers began to believe that they were the spiritual elite (much like many churches today) of the millennial kingdom that Christ would set up at His return. They taught that Christ would reign on earth for 1,000 years, with Papuza, Turkey as His seat of government. Montanis taught that the ecstatic utterances of their prophets (private revelations thought to be “in tongues”) were more authoritative than the teachings of Scripture. This led to the Montanists’ splitting from the Church. This movement became increasingly heretical before it died out by the sixth century, and it became the blueprint for all future denominations that would break away from the church and teach a Millennial reign of Christ on earth.
Almost all people who teach the rapture quote Irenaeus as the evidence of the rapture being taught in the early church. In 177 A.D., he became a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church, and his life work was to defeat the Gnostics. While doing this, he began teaching that immediately after the second coming there would be a 1,000 year earthly Kingdom of Christ. The early church rejected this as heretical and labeled it “chiliasm.” The title evolved into “millenarianism” and finally into “premillenialism.” The part about Irenaeus that Rapture scholars ignore is that he predicted the world would end 6,000 years after it had begun, based off of 2 Peter 3:8. He taught that the end of the world would occur around 1000 A.D., although some now claim that he meant 2000 A.D. Either way, it is obvious that he was wrong. You are going to begin to see a pattern – that people who teach the rapture tend to predict the end of the world, a practice discouraged and rejected by Christ (Matthew 24:36; 25:13; Mark 13:32).
A student of Irenaeus, Hippolytus, also made this mistake. Around the end of the second century, he predicted that the world would end soon, and he set a specific date. He determined the date to be 500 A.D., based off the size of Noah’s ark. Around the same time, Julius Africanus wrote that the end would come 6,000 years after creation and made his prediction in agreement with Hippolytus, that the end would come by 500 A.D.
Around 200 A.D., Tertullian had an interesting theory about the end times, incorporating nations of his day into his vision that reminds me a lot of the famous book series called Left Behind. St. Martin of Tours (316-397) believed that he was living in the end times and as such he wrote that the antichrist was already alive.
The next six centuries of church history contain very little speculation about end times events, presumably due to the influence of St. Augustine, who clearly explained prophetic texts in understandable and indisputable language.
Toward the e
nd of the tenth century, a bunch of people were saying that end would occur before the year 1000 (much like our Y2K craze). Most of this was based off of Irenaeus’ teaching that a thousand years was literally “as a day” to the Lord. Most churches were anticipating the end by 992 A.D. Many held worship every day in preparation for the Lord’s coming. When Jesus did not come back, however, a new pattern began which has been dubbed the “rolling end of the world” technique. Whenever a false prediction was made, they would simply recalculate the figures and set a new date, “rolling back” the end of the world.
The thirteenth century was a rough time to be a Christian. The Muslim soldier Saladin had conquered Jerusalem and taken it away from Christians. A man named Joachim Fiore arose and popularized what some call the historicist view of the book of Revelation. He was the first to say that the letters to the seven churches were prophetic in nature and are a chronological time map of the end times Church. He was also the first “dispensationalist.” When he discovered the mention of 1,260 days in Revelation 12:6, he simply modified Irenaeus’ theory and said that the end would come no later than 1260 A.D. Fiore died in 1201 so he never lived to witness his error, but his faulty exegesis caused a crisis of faith for many. This began a new pattern, that eventual loss of faith frequently accompanies end times frenzy.
In 1501, Christopher Columbus predicted the end of the world, saying that it would occur by 1656. Shortly after this, the Protestant Reformation broke out in the Church, initially led by Martin Luther and his followers.
The Anabaptists, some of the more radical Protestants, took over Munster, Germany in 1534 and proclaimed that it would be the center of the millennial kingdom. They taught that anyone who was not in Munster when Christ returned would be condemned, claiming that they were the only true church – another common trend held in several Pentecostal churches today. The situation in Munster was far from stable, however. The people began practicing polygamy, and one of the wives of a prominent Protestant leader was publicly executed for resisting the teaching that all property must be shared – including wives! Even Martin Luther bought into the end times frenzy to an extent, predicting that the end of the world would come within 300 years, by the mid 1800’s.
The Protestants quickly picked up from where Fiore left off and decided that 1260 A.D. marked the beginning of the Great Tribulation, not the Second Advent. Thus they reasoned that the antichrist had to be alive, and they finally decided that it had to be the Pope. Unfortunately, much of the Roman Catholic Church’s activities during this period gave credibility to this theory by resembling those of a “beast” and a “harlot.” But the Pope was only one candidate. Many other Protestants felt that Luther was the antichrist. A little later, the Puritans felt that King George III was the antichrist. The list could go on and on. . . .
Entering the 1800’s, we have Joseph Smith predicting the end of the world and forming The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, who we know today as Mormons. In the early nineteenth century, William Miller predicted that Christ would return before March 21, 1844. When that didn’t happen he rolled it back to October 22, 1844. Most Millerites lost their faith after this and the few who did not went on to form what is today called the Seventh Day Adventists. The Jehovah’s Witnesses took “rolling the end of the world” to a whole new level. On different occasions, they have set the end of the world for 1874, 1914, 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994. The funny part is, they refuse to admit that they were ever mistaken. They simply say that Christ DID return on those days, we just missed it!
Finally enters a man who changed the entire scene of the Protestant movement in America. John Darby was a former Anglican priest who began the Plymouth Brethren movement, and his end times teachings appealed to the young generation just coming out of the wake of the Civil War. Around 1830, Darby met 15-year-old Margaret MacDonald, who claimed to have a private revelation of a secret rapture that would occur shortly. Not all believers would be included in this rapture, however. Only certain especially faithful believers would be rescued. THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE TEACHING SAYING THAT THERE WILL BE A SECRET RAPTURE FOR TRUE BELIEVERS AND THAT THIS IS A SEPARATE EVENT FROM THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST WHICH IS THE VIEW HELD BY THE MOST PREMILLENIALISTS TODAY. Most premillenial argue that they have never heard the term “secret” associated with rapture but I will explain this more later.
Now why did Darby’s idea spread so widely in America? Edward Irving introduced these ideas to the Pentecostal churches in the early nineteenth century. In 1883, the Niagara Bible Conference movement aggressively spread his teachings. W.E. Blackstone, Charles Erdman, C.I. Scofield, and J. Hudson Taylor were all involved, and any knowledgeable rapturist will recognize their names. Moody Bible Institute, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Talbot Seminary all trained new pastors and supplied Bible study materials that promoted the belief that this imminent rapture was at the very core of the gospel message. Also during this time, the Scofield Reference Bible was becoming the most influential study Bible in America, which always explained passages from a rapturist perspective. Scofield claimed World War I was the beginning of the Armageddon, Oswald J. Smith predicted that the battle of Armageddon would occur before 1933, and Blackstone predicted that the rapture could likely be in 1934 or 1935. Despite these false predictions, their rapturist teachings spread like wildfire in America and today are found in almost every major Protestant denomination.
The 1940’s brought about many end times predictions during World War II. Even Billy Graham predicted in 1950 that the end was only two years away (U.S. News and World Report). In 1970, Hal Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth broke out in America. The entire premise of the book was that the rapture would occur before the end of the 1980’s. Many churches jumped on this bandwagon. Chuck Smith, the founder of Calvary Chapel, wrote that “The Lord is coming for His church before the end of 1981” (Smith, Chuck; 1978. Future Survival).
In a 1978 edition of Christianity Today, Gary Wilburn wrote that “The world must end within one generation from the birth of the state of Israel. Any opinion that does not dovetail with this prophecy is dismissed.” Rapturists began to claim that the rapture would occur within forty years of the founding of Israel in 1948. 1988 came and went. Edgar C. Whisenant published and distributed his pamphlet 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. The pamphlet sold almost 4.5 million copies! Guess what? When the rapture didn’t happen in 1988, He wrote 89 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1989 (although he sold considerably fewer copies).
In 1989, Jerry Falwell sent out a mass mailing requesting financial support from the generation living in the final decade before Christ’s return. In 1993, David Koresh formed his Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. He taught that the final worldwide battle would take place at their compound in Waco which they called “Ranch Apocalypse.” A battle DID occur: 76 people were killed on April 10, 1993 in a fire that suddenly engulfed their buildings during a federal raid.
Televangelists such as Paul Crouch, Pat Robertson, and Jack Van Impe have made plenty of false predictions, followed by recommendations for viewers to send in money to support their ministries in these last days.
Then the Left Behind book series came on scene, written by Tim LaHaye, claiming that we are the last generation on earth before Christ comes. John Hagee has written that we are the last generation before the return of Christ. Michael Drosmin, who wrote The Bible Code, predicted Armageddon to occur in the year 2000. Now he has revised that statement to say that a comet will wipe out the earth in 2012. Need I give any more examples?
Today people have found new ways to “roll the end of the world.” Some say the start of the last generation was 1967 when Israel was reunified, which would have made the end sometime last year in 2007. Undoubtedly the end was not this year, so another theory will emerge, as has occurred since the beginning of the New Testament Church.
This concludes the concise history – trust me that was a short history. I could have made it twice as long! John Walvoord was the long-standing president of the Dallas Theological Seminary. In the first edition of his 1957 book, The Rapture Question, he wrote, “The rapture question is determined more by ecclesiology [theology of the Church] than eschatology [theology of end times]. Neither posttribulationalism nor pretribulationism is an explicit teaching of Scripture. The Bible does not in so many words state it.” Remember this guy was a leading theologian and a former president of a major U.S. Seminary! This admission was so controversial that it was deleted from all future editions of the book.
What does Scripture teach?
Thanks to Rev. Dr. Mark Press for this amillenial perspective (he wrote this in a personal letter to me on May 9, 2007; in response to some materials I had sent him advocating premillenialism):
“No one in the church (that I know of) denies the Second Coming of Jesus. (It would be hard to do that without eliminating the New Testament from consideration.) Where differences arise, it usually revolves around the issues of the teaching about the millennium and the events surrounding that concept. The teaching of the rapture is perhaps the point at greatest issue. So let’s start there.
As I read it, every place in the New Testament where the Second Coming is addressed, it is spoken of as a single event, not two (or more) distant and separate occurrences, as is suggested in the pre- or post-millennial teaching. Now that is not to say we know everything about it, any more than the apostles and their peers knew everything there was to know about Jesus’ two comings. For example, John the Baptizer seemed to be telescoping the two comings into one when he asked about whether Jesus really was the Messiah. He seemed to be anticipating the “power/judgment coming” (or Second Coming) and identifying it with the “grace/humility coming” that Jesus was demonstrating during His earthly life and ministry. But everything that we read seems again to point to two comings of Christ, not more than that. The first is complete; the second is “coming.”
The . . . material you sent speaks of the rapture as the “first phase of the Second Coming.” We come to 1 Thess. 4, which seems to be the most quoted passage relative to the rapture. However, this quotation is true only with regard to part of the passage, that which speaks of being “caught up together” with all the saints to meet the Lord in the air. The other parts of the passage are often forgotten and surely not quoted by rapture enthusiasts, for these parts clearly identify this event (and I take 4:13-17 to be speaking of one event, not more than one) with the Second Coming of Christ. There is a “loud command,” the “voice of the archangel,” and the “trumpet call of God,” as well as the resurrection. There is nothing silent or subdued or secret about this coming, it seems to me. To suggest that Christ silently and secretly removes the believers from the earth at this point seems necessarily to leave out key portions of the text.
[This] interpretation also mentions 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, which speaks clearly of the final assize, when we are changed “in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound. . .” There is that crazy trumpet again, hardly a sign identified with the secretive rapture removal that seems to be implied by bringing in this reference. Clearly, here in the resurrection chapter, Paul is speaking about the resurrection that takes place at Christ’s Second Coming – but to find some sort of rapture crammed in here seems to be pretty tortuous.
Given this understanding, it naturally flows that [my] understanding of the end-times is rather simple (and hermeneutics generally suggests that the simpler the solution, the better). . . . Theologians have said that we are living (ever since the Pentecost event) in the last days. These are the end-times. We believe that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent (not from a time perspective, but theologically), and thus anything that smacks of delaying that return or suggesting a return that is “off in the distance” is not consonant with the New Testament. “Today is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). “I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20). “This generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened” (Matt. 24:34).
Thus while it seems that the whole New Testament perspective is that Christ could come today, the premillennial advocate must insist that His coming is at least seven years out. Granted, the rapture could be today, but the Second (Third?) Coming is at least seven years away, since there needs to be time allowed for the tribulation. Again, in my simplistic Lutheran way I would suggest that the tribulation is equivalent to the experience of the Church throughout the end-times (equally fulfilled in and for every generation).
This last point raises another issue, namely the application of Scripture. If certain of these signs of the end are intended for only the final seven years, that section of the Word has no application to the lives of the original hearers (or of any other readers, at least until the rapture takes place, or just shortly before). But if the “final signs” spoken of by Jesus (the sun being darkened, stars falling from the skies and heavenly bodies being shaken, as well as the sign of the Son of Man appearing in the sky) are seen only at the Last Day, then we have remarkable harmony in the end-times predictions.
It is true, of course, that some of Jesus’ words in the end-times prophecies seem to apply more aptly to the people who faced the destruction of Jerusalem. In that sense, it is sometimes difficult to sort out which words (e.g., in Matt. 24, Mark 13 & Luke 21) Jesus intended to apply to the Last Day and which were speaking in a shorter term, namely about the destruction of the Holy City. However, there seems to be no third category of those which apply to some rapture experience. (The one “exception” which seems to be lifted out of context again seems to be the “one is taken, the other left” language which appears in the gospels. This is easily and simply understood in the context to be speaking of the judgment on the Last Day, when one will be “taken” into heaven’s glory and the other will be “left” to continue to taste of earth’s corruption forever.)
It was interesting to me (to say the least) that the only verses quoted in the [premillenialists'] materials for the Second Coming were from the book of Revelation. Out of all the passages in the gospels and the epistles, why none were quoted seems strange (except from the fear of relating the Second Coming to the rapture, as seems to happen in most places).
In my mind, the whole idea of a seven-year period of tribulation, followed by a thousand-year period of relative peace and harmony, at the end of which Satan is “loosed” for a little while, seems to make the entire end-times teaching unnecessa
rily (and unbiblically) complex and difficult.”
I hope this has expanded your mind a little bit and given you a different perspective to consider. My point is not to create more controversy about an already contentious issue, but simply to provide alternative viewpoints for open-minded and light-hearted discussion. God bless!
