The Lighter Side of the End of the World

My purpose for writing this book is to encourage and strengthen you to live a vital and powerful life for God. For too many people, talk of the events surrounding the return of Christ triggers fear. The conflicting theories of the experts add confusion to the fear. This is all so strange when you realize that fear and confusion are the exact opposite of what God intends for us when He talks with us about Christ’s return. The Bible doesn’t tell us about the Second Coming of Christ in order to confuse us, but to give clarity. It doesn’t teach us about the End Times in order to make us afraid, but to fill us with courage and determination to live life for all it’s worth. All through these pages, we will see again and again, that when God teaches us about Jesus’ return, He does it to make us hopeful and strong. The title of this book, The Lighter Side of the End of the World comes from 1 Thessalonians 5, where after explaining the events of Christ’s return and the end of the world in all their brightness and darkness, Paul says:

"But you, brothers, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness... since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5 and 8- 9

The Thessalonians were afraid about the End Times in the way many are today.

They were like children scared of the dark. The Thessalonians were afraid because, like us, they had their own “experts” pushing their ideas about The End. Paul cut through the theories with the truth and inspired the Thessalonians to a life that was the opposite of fear. Like those Thessalonians, if your faith is in Jesus Christ, you have been called out to live a life that is driven by faith, hope, and love. This is because: “… God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” We do not belong to the night anymore. We are children of the light. This means that we have a relationship with God that enables us to live powerfully in the faith, hope, and love of Jesus Christ every day.

We will be coming back to 1 Thessalonians 5 again. For now, let me point out that God’s main purpose in clearing up these people’s confusions about the End Times was to make them strong for their daily lives. As I read the prophecies in the Bible that deal with Christ’s Second Coming I am amazed at how relentless God is about bringing it all down to daily life. Virtually every teaching in the Bible on the End Times lands essentially on the question: “Now that you know what’s coming, how are you going to live life right now?” You don’t need to take my word on this. As we go on this journey we will be looking at many other prophetic places in the Bible that land on a challenge or an encouragement to live for God now. Whenever God tells us about the future, it is always to help us live stronger lives today.

As we travel through the Bible’s teaching on the End Times, a subject that theologians call eschatology, one of my goals will be to answer these two questions:

1. What did Jesus and his disciples teach about the End Times?

and…

2. Why is their teaching on the End Times important for us now?

If we reverse the order and look at question two, we already have a start on answering that question. A core reason for learning about the End Times is to find comfort, strength, and hope for the challenges in our lives today. There is much more to explore here. At this point, I just want to say that we are going to be tenacious about keeping this practical and grabbing every opportunity to see our lives changed for the better through what God has to teach us about the return of his Son.

On the first question, “What did Jesus and his disciples teach about the End Times,” we want to come to a sound understanding of what Jesus and the leaders of the New Testament era really said about Jesus’ return and the end of the world. It’s right here that we are faced with the temptation to go off our rails and get mired down in all the views, theories, and weird confusions that people have about the End Times. There are a lot of great books on the return of Christ that spend their first 20-50 pages defining multi-syllable words that aren’t even in the Bible and explaining theories that run the gamut from brilliant to wacko before they ever get to the Bible. There’s another group of books and web sources which use world events as their launch point. In this kind of teaching, the authors give us their commentary on global events and attempt to show us how today’s news is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy. Many of these writings promote theories on how soon the end will come. While there is good and bad to these different ways of talking about the End Times, we are going to take a different approach. Our aim is to stick very close to the Bible and let the scriptures set the direction, not world events or theories.

Too often, books, blogs, and other teaching materials on the End Times focus on the mechanics and timing of events in Jesus’ return and miss the heart of what the Bible is saying. The truck loads of books and other media on the End Times have probably done more to promote ignorance of the Bible than knowledge of it. This happens because many authors ignore the heart of Jesus’ teaching and focus only on those parts of the Bible that they can use to push their points of view. The end result is that many Christians don’t have a real knowledge of what the Bible says about the end. Instead, what they have is an assortment of opinions that they’ve heard repeated so many times that they believe them to be true. So much of what is out there on the End Times misses the point of Christ’s teaching so completely that I have to agree with Kim Riddlebarger when he says, “… those who speak about eschatology the most have the least to say about it.”

In this book, we will be going to places in the Bible that are seldom explored by most End Times teachers. It’s not that we are going to ignore the theories and controversies. We will address a range of the most current and relevant ideas about the return of Christ. We’ll do this by selectively salting these discussions in along the way as we explore the Bible. When the Bible comes to places where there are differences of opinion, we will deal with the most important issues and then move on. Always, our attention is going to be on exploring what the Bible says about the Second Coming of Christ. One advantage of this approach is that you don’t need to treat what I say as some kind of “expert opinion.” Wherever we are in the Bible, you can take your own Bible, read it, evaluate what I’m saying, and draw your own conclusion.

In Part 1, First Things, we are going to focus on the essentials of what Christ and his Apostles taught concerning Jesus’ return. We want to make sure that we have captured the heart of Jesus’ message about his Second Coming before we move forward to talk about signs and symbols of the End. Then, in Part 2, we’ll set out to explore Revelation.

Thanks for joining me on these travels. I hope the end of the trip finds you happier and more encouraged in Jesus Christ.