The Mystery Of The End Times

Segments of Christians since the time of Christ have believed that Jesus would surely return during their generation. Every generation of Christians has interpreted Scripture to align it with their present circumstances and political climate. Every "biblical" trick imagined has been contrived to set the date for Christ's return and to define precisely how the end times will unfold. This trend has become increasingly more embarrassing since the development of the printing press, which aided in widely spreading foolish, false predictions.

How many books claiming to know the when and how of the End Times need to be proven wrong before we stop buying them, or better yet, writing them? Books with titles like "Jesus 1994," or my personal favorites: "88 Reasons Jesus Is Coming Back In 1988" and "89 Reasons Jesus is Coming Back in 1989" (yup, when the first one proved to be wrong the SAME author added one reason and resold it under the latter title the following year!).

A plethora of reasons exist for all the crazy predictions: some honestly believed the current state of the world aligned with scripture and wanted to warn people, others probably got caught up in an faulty end times movement, and some others probably wanted to make a quick buck. Whatever the reason, I, for one, wish to see more caution from believers when proclaiming to have all the answers concerning end times....because nobody knows the specifics. We see "in part," as Paul would say, we know the gist of it, that Jesus is indeed going to return, that there will be an Antichrist, etc. etc.

When I was a teenager, I started reading The Left Behind series by Tim Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. They are intriguing fiction novels that speculate how the end times will unfold. Recently, I was unsettled while watching an interview with the two authors of the Christian mega-hits. Apparently, while the characters and their roles in the stories are meant to be purely fictional, how the specific circumstances of the rapture, Antichrist, tribulation, and second coming unfold in the books are all suppose to be completely accurate. Now, I believe in Scripture, I believe in the end times, and I believe that these authors are godly and sincere. However, whenever ANYONE claims to have answered the “who, what, when, where, and how” of the end times, a red flag goes up.

While the date-setters win the most annoying award, they are not the ones that really concern me. It’s the teachers who map out EXACTLY and PRECISELY the events, circumstances, countries, leaders, and appearances of the End Times. It's rather alarming because I’m pretty sure they are wrong (not because I think I have the right interpretation of the End Times, but because I have no clue how it will all unfold). I believe the end times will be completely conducive with Scripture, but I don’t think it’s going to play out the way any of us think it will, and it definitely is not going to LOOK how any of us think it will. God has the habit of giving us prophesy that foretells or warns of future events, then we humans have a tendency of fusing our own interpretations and theories to those prophesies, unable to separate our possible analysis from absolute Scriptural truth.

Take Christ's first coming, for example. God’s chosen people, the Jews, were given hundreds of prophesies concerning the coming of the Messiah, hundreds of years in advance. What happened? They analyzed and interpreted Scripture, concocting and sealing the image of a grandiose powerful political reformer that would physically lead a revolt against the governing powers that oppressed God's chosen people. To them, this was conducive with scriptural prophesies and the times they lived in. It was the most likely and sensible scenario for the Messiah. But when the Messiah emerged as a poor carpenter’s son, from parents with a questionable background, growing up in the slums of Nazareth, preaching about peace, loving our enemies, and the hypocrisy of the religious, whose friends were tax collectors, prostitutes, and uneducated fishermen, whose throne would be a criminal’s Cross, the Jews could NOT reconcile this Jesus with their preconceived notions of the Messiah! They could not reconcile Christ with their own interpretations of the Scriptures.

Now, I’ve heard some scoff, “oh it’s so clear, how could they have missed it?” But we shouldn't be too cocky, because we are doing the same thing with end times prophecy. We speculate, analyze, interpret, and flat out guess how it will be and then present it as fact. Over the years, we have drawn up and espoused pretty specific lay outs of what the end times will look like and how it will unfold. It’s all very sensible, mind you; it lines up just right with our current events and our view of Scripture. But we shouldn't be so hasty in carving those sensible interpretations into stone.

For anyone who has read the The Silver Chair in the Chronicles of Narnia series, there is a very telling scene between Aslan (the Jesus figure) and Jill Poll, right before He sends her down to Narnia on a quest.

“Remember the signs. Say them to yourself when you wake in the morning and when you lie down at night, and when you wake in the middle of night. And whatever strange things happen to you, let nothing turn your mind from following the signs. Secondly, I give you a warning. Here on the mountain I have spoken to you clearly: I will not often do so down in Narnia. Here on the mountain, the air is clear and your mind is clear; as you drop down into Narnia, the air will thicken. Take great care that it does not confuse your mind. The signs which you have learned will not look at all as you expect them to look, when you meet them there. That is why it is so important to know them by heart and pay no attention to appearances” –Aslan (Silver Chair, 25-26).

I think this passage is very relevant to our dealings with eschatology (the study of end times). Are we clinging to the signs in scripture that we, by definition, do not fully understand? Or are we clinging to the interpretations that make the most sense to us now? Do we have enough faith to still follow if the end-times unfold differently then we expect? Will we be taken in by anyone coming in Jesus' name because we've already carved out the image of the Antichrist?

I am not denying that some current events are indeed the "birth pangs" of the end times, but none of us know how long the intervals between such birth pangs will be, or how the "baby" will look when it is born. Speculations are fine and interesting, but we should take care, lest we paint ourselves a false end times picture and fall prey to "the great falling away" or "the many believers that will be deceived" in the last days. I have heard some Christians proclaim the Antichrist will be a raging secular-humanistic atheist. Does that fit with scripture's description of the Antichrist(s) that will come in Jesus' name and be able to perform signs and wonders. Does that sound like any secular humanist that denies the existence of the miraculous that you know of? Is it possible the Antichrist will come in sheep's clothing, infiltrating the church? I have no idea, but I know we need to keep our eyes open to all possibilities, so we are not deceived.

Jesus warns believers to be careful and not to be deceived in the last days (Luke 21:7-9) . We should read the signs of the time, but let’s not inflame them, stretch them, and sometimes flat out make them up. The end times may not unfold how many of us imagine. If we hold onto specific speculations more than the mysterious scripture, we may not recognize the true beginning of it all. We may be in danger of deception. We could be setting massive amounts of people up for disappointment and despair.