Being that it is 2012, someone may wonder if this post is about the whole December 21, 2012 doomsday prophecy. I assure you that is not the case. That is based on pagan prophecies that have no basis in Scripture, so I don't buy it. Then again, maybe Christ will return that day. But as the Bible is silent on the issue, we shouldn't buy into sensationalistic prophecies. However, I will say this post is a bit of a ramble and rant. You have been warned.
Anyway, I've been thinking and studying a bit on the end times (which Sarrah once corrected me by saying "It's not the end, it's the beginning). Mainly, I've been looking into the differing viewpoints on how it will happen. I've come to the realization that how you look at eschatology (the study of the end) affects how you interpret the Bible as a whole, so I feel like its important, if for no other reason than to see the rest of Scripture correctly.
I think most people know of the most popular view: the church will be raptured off the earth, the world will undergo a seven-year tribulation period, then Jesus will return and establish his kingdom on earth. I'm not entirely certain how this became the most popular view, because it's fairly recent compared to other views.
Similar to that one is the view that the rapture will occur after the seven-year tribulation, or perhaps in the middle of it.
A different view, one that I've found to be pretty convincing, is a view called preterism. Preterists believe that most of the prophecies of Revelation have already taken place. Rather than taking place thousands of years after they were written, they happened soon after. In this view, these visions aren't about a seven-year tribulation that ushers in the end of our world and the beginning of a new one. They are about the judgment that came with the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and, later, the fall of the Roman Empire. This view hinges on the belief that Revelation, rather than being written in the late 90s as is the popular belief, was written shortly before AD 70.
Someone who holds that point of view could have one of two different ideas of what the millennium of Revelation represents. Some people believe it to be a symbol of the time between Jesus' first and second comings. Others see it as a future era of peace after the church has successfully spread the gospel through the world and, essentially, made it a Christian world.
But this post isn't about arguing for or against a particular viewpoint. It's really just me thinking about them.
I don't know how often I read people saying "The end is nigh" on the Internet because of bad things happening around the world. Now, if the seven-year tribulation idea is true, I could see this as being possible given the current state of the world. The only problem with that, however, is that bad things have always happened around the world.
In that general vein, I hear the main argument against preterism being that the world doesn't seem to be getting any better. If anything, it looks worse and worse for the Christian cause every day. But does it have to be that our generation has to get better? Couldn't a few more generations go by while the world changes before it starts to get better? Doesn't the world change all the time? In my opinion, in order for the preterist view with the future era of peace to be true, a long time would have to pass between now and then. Why isn't that possible? Does our generation have to be the last one?
I guess that's the problem. Every generation since Jesus' ascension has thought the end was coming in its lifetime. So far, every generation has either been wrong or unproved yet. Who's to say it will be ours? It could be our children's. Or our grandchildren's. It could be several centuries from now. On the other hand, we don't know when Jesus will return. He very well could return tomorrow.
I guess my opinion is this: just because the world seems bad now doesn't mean the end is happening. Since Jesus' ascension, humanity has survived the Roman Empire, the dark ages, the corruption of the Roman Catholic church, the Crusades, two World Wars, political upheavals, and the fall of kingdoms and empires, and we're still here. Every generation in those times thought theirs was the last generation due to bad things happening. They were wrong. Nowadays, it seems like the main "evidence" most people present is that we have a socialist president, our economy sucks, our country is at war, we give abortions, and Islam is spreading. Three are purely focused on America (which, contrary to popular belief, is not the whole world). The other two have been going on for centuries. Times have been worse. Right now, the world is nowhere close to how bad it would have to be to honestly be called the worst tribulation in history.
Then there are the people who seem to think that if America ends, the world is coming to an end and Jesus will return any second. But in reality, if America ends, it does not necessarily mean the end is nigh. America is not the world. It is one country with a finite lifespan like every other great nation that has ever existed before now. That lifespan could be millennia. It could be a few years. Unless Jesus does return first, America will eventually fall. I hate to say that, but it's the natural course of life for human governments.
I don't know. I guess I've just been somewhat annoyed by a lot of weird end times "prophecies" and people being so sure that our generation will be the end. The point is that we don't know. We can't really know for sure when it will happen. Anything we can know about the end must be based on true, Biblical information and real, historical context.
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