End times what will happen

Waco, Tex. Blackstone, W. Jesus is Coming. Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, Robertson Nicoll, ed. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, n. Abridged by Ralph Earle. Kansas City, Mo. Cooper, David L.

Future Events Revealed. Los Angeles: Privately printed, Anderson, ed. Earle, Ralph. Know Your New Testament. Behold, I Come. Fenton, Horace.

Myths About Missions. London: Inter-Varsity Press, Filson, Floyd. London: Adam and Charles Black, Gaebelein, Arno C. The Annotated Bible. New York: Our Hope Publications, Glasser, Arthur F. Donald McGavran, ed.

Chicago: Moody Press, Guthrie, Donald New Testament Introduction. London: The Tyndale Press. Halley, Henry. Bible Handbook. Grand Rapids, Mich.

Harvey, A. Oxford: University Press, Kent, Homer. Kittel, Gerhard and Gerhard Friedrich. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. New York: Charles Scribners, Lindsell, Harold Missionary Principles and Practice. Westwood, N. McCumber, William E. McDonald, H. Living Doctrines of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, Nielson, John B. Plummer, A.

Richardson, Alan. An Introduction to the Theology of the New Testament. Robertson, Archibald Thomas. Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. I Nashville: Broadman Press, Scherer, James.

Missionary, Go Home! Englewood Cliffs, N. Smith, Wilbur M. The Second Advent of Christ. Washington: D. Snyder, Howard. The Community of the King. Downers Grove, Ill. Swank, J. Moments to Go. Swete, Henry Barclay. The Apocalypse of St. Teng, Philip. David M. Howard, ed. Terry, Milton S. Biblical Hermeneutics. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, n. Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament.

London: Epworth Press, Weust, Kenneth S. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, What do Jesus' words about End Times toward the end of Luke 21 mean for us today? On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. I'm not old enough to remember Hitler or Mussolini or Stalin being labeled as the prophesied Antichrist. But I'm told it was done by a lot of sincere evangelical Christians.

Years have gone by and history has proved those speculations wrong. The three men have long since died. That should teach us something. There is danger in attempting to equate with certainty specific current events and the biblical signs of the Second Coming such as Jesus gives us in Luke Dogmatic interpretations of prophecy which later prove erroneous can destroy our credibility with others.

Such mistaken dogmatism can even eventually dull the keen edge of our own expectancy of Christ's return. Attempting to foretell the future by interpreting current events is not, of course, a disease peculiar to the Church. In his library, my father-in-law had a book titled How to Prepare for the Coming Crash. Published in , that book insisted that a worldwide conspiracy of bankers was going to force us into a chaotic economic depression in and no later than What happened?

Well, the author read the signs wrong. That people who try to foretell the future make such bad guesses need not prevent us from thinking about the end times. We are certain that Christ is coming again. And His coming is imminent, although we cannot necessarily be certain that it is immediate. While we were on our first home assignment during missionary service in Italy, a couple of people asked me: "Since you live in the Mediterranean area, aren't you able to see quite clearly the fulfillment of many end-time prophecies?

I must confess that I do not spend a lot of time trying to match news reports with prophetic passages in the Bible. But I did not share their apparent confidence that they could exactly match up newspaper headlines with biblical prophecies. Really, I'm not even capable of arguing a definitive position in the pre- and post-millennialist controversy that was so strongly contested by some early leaders of the Church of the Nazarene. What then should be our attitude toward the end times and the Second Coming of Christ?

Well, first of all, Jesus is coming again. That is definite. And I anticipate it with hope and joy. Then Jesus seems to be saying in the account in Luke 21 that we should not let the worsening of world conditions get us down.

Jesus said things would get bad, but that's the time to "stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. The most important effect the biblical teaching on the Second Coming has on me is not the ability it gives some people to spin elaborate theories and construct timetables. Rather, it is in the incentive it gives me for holy living.

In fact, in Luke 21, Jesus tells us that we should so live as to be, as the King James Version puts it, "accounted worthy The author wrote these devotional thoughts while serving as a missionary in Italy.

They were published in Standard, a weekly take-home curriculum piece for adult Sunday school classes produced by what is now The Foundry. Although premillennialism is sometimes said to be only years old, it's more like years old; early Christians held very similar beliefs about the Second Coming. They believe that the important thing for Christians to do is to prepare themselves for the end-time and to convert as many people as possible into righteous believers ready for the day of judgement.

They don't see much point in Christians trying to improve the world, since God is about to clean the world of its faults by destroying much of it and then remaking it.

In practical terms premillennialists are in favour of evangelism and missionary work to convert people to belief in Christ, and less enthusiastic about church involvement in politics and social reform. What do we do now? We go out and win people to Jesus. We get people ready for the second coming. We do everything we can to make sure that our churches talk about this. You need to preach about the second coming. You need to preach about heaven.

You need to preach about hell. Some premillennialists take very reactionary positions on social and political issues. They argue that any attempt by Christians to reform society is religiously wrong, as it would get in the way of God's plan to end the world. Millions of Christians believe that the tribulation is a period immediately before the Millennium when God's judgement is carried out on the world and humanity endures great suffering.

Most mainstream Christians think the doctrine of the tribulation should be regarded as a poetic or symbolic way of describing the eternal conflict between good and evil. However there are many millions who believe the doctrine of the tribulation is a literal and truthful description of what will happen sometime in the future.

During the tribulation the antichrist Satan's emissary will torture humanity, and God will go to war against the antichrist. The tribulation ends after seven years when God defeats the antichrist.

The tribulation has provided the background to many novels and a great deal of prophetic writing. Most premillennialists believe that the Church will escape the Tribulation altogether, through the doctrine of the Rapture. One group of premillennialists called 'posttribulationists' believe that the righteous believers have to remain on earth throughout the tribulation, but that God keeps them safe.

Dispensationalism is a theological belief system devised by J. Darby founder of the Exclusive Brethren that divides human time into different ages, called dispensations. It aims to show how God's plans and purposes have changed throughout history not gradually but in large steps. Each dispensation is a period during which God works in a specific way. There is a change of dispensation when God gives humanity a different revelation of his will to follow.

Another way of looking at it is to consider a dispensation as a period of government. Different governments bring different ways of running a country - in different dispensations the same God runs the world in a different way. Scofield, editor of the Scofield Reference Bible, devised the most commonly used dispensational breakdown of human history.

He listed seven dispensations:. As a dispensation, grace begins with the death and resurrection of Christ The point of testing is no longer legal obedience as the condition of salvation, but acceptance or rejection of Christ, with good works as a fruit of salvation. So in the present dispensation God tests us by seeing if we reject or accept Christ.

In the previous dispensation God tested us by seeing if we obeyed the law. For those who accept it, dispensationalism provides a way of interpreting the Bible literally and consistently without contradictions. Dispensationalists say that in each dispensation God is using different revelations and so the Bible only has to be consistent within a particular dispensation.

So contradictions in the Bible are only contradictions on the surface. If studied properly they turn out not to be contradictions at all, because different rules operate within each dispensation. Critics say that the idea of dispensationalism is something that Darby made up himself "concocted in complete contradiction to all main Christian traditions", said James Barr , but Darby believed that the idea had been given to him by God.

Dispensationalism wasn't a brand new doctrine anyway; Joachim of Fiore had put a similar idea forward in the 12th century CE. In this version of dispensationalism the dispensations are not rigidly separated at an instant in time but gradually progress from one to another. In each dispensation it's possible to find early signs of the dispensation to come. Progressive dispensationalists interpret the Bible in a less literal way than other dispensationalists. Postmillennialists believe that the Second Coming of Christ will come at the end of the Millennium and mark the full achievement of the kingdom of God on earth.

They believe that we are already in the Millennium, which began with Christ's resurrection , and that the world is gradually moving towards the promised time of peace and righteousness.

Christ is ruling earth from heaven, through his church and through believers, and his kingdom and rule are steadily growing. Amillennialists don't believe in the Millennium as a specific period of years, and regard Biblical reference to it as symbolic.

They believe that the millennium began when Christ was born on earth and will end with the second coming. Download preview PDF. Skip to main content. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Advertisement Hide. Authors Authors and affiliations Stanley J. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. The material in this chapter is adapted from Stanley J. Google Scholar. CrossRef Google Scholar. Ernest W. Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology , 3 vols. Philadelphia: Griffith and Rowland, , Robert G.

Clouse Downers Grove, Ill. Benjamin B.