End Times
Recently in our Sunday services we have been looking at the topic of End Times and what the Bible teaches about these events. For some of us, the thought of End Times comes with a sense of fear, dread or panic. As a result, we can tend to avoid the topic by putting it in the “too hard” basket, or worse, we give it too much attention and dive down rabbit holes of speculation and doomsday narratives.
With a healthy framework for Biblical interpretation, we need not live in fear or speculation. The Bible is filled with truth that offers us hopeful optimism for the future, the key is learning how to understand it correctly .
Whether its studying End Times, the life of Jesus or any other passage, giving thought to the following questions when reading the Bible will give you a greater grasp on the meaning of the text and how it impacts your life.
Who was this passage written to originally and what did it mean to them?
Is this idea consistent throughout the Bible and what do other passages say about it?
What has the Church generally believed about this through history?
What is the genre of the book I’m reading? This will help you understand literary style and context.
Is the passage prescriptive (prescribing a course of action) or descriptive (describing events that have taken place)
Is this passage literal or figurative?
When we use these questions in our study of the Bible we will find ourselves having a much richer experience and understanding of God, His word and its application to our lives.
So, for example, when we use the questions above to help us better understand the events surrounding End Times, we discover that the book of Revelation is primarily symbolic in nature. Therefore, we ought to put more emphasis on understanding what the symbols represent rather than getting caught up on the symbols themselves. We also discover that contemporary speculations around End Times events would not be understood by the original recipients of the letter purely due the fact that things like, barcodes, microchips and vaccines hadn’t been invented at the time of its authorship. Scripture cannot mean something different to one generation than it does to the next.
As we get a clearer understanding we discover that much of the ideas around Dispensationalism (a popular modern view on the End Times) have only emerged in the past hundred years or so and largely conflict with what the Church has fundamentally believed and taught for the past 2,000 years.
In Matthew 24, Jesus sheds some light on his second coming and boils it down to this in v.44, “therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Jesus is essentially saying, live prepared, be ready for his return by keeping the main thing the main thing. His call is for us to stay focussed and remain loyal and faithful to God and in doing so we prepare ourselves for Christ’s imminent yet unexpected return.
We can either spend our energy speculating about things that Jesus himself said very little about, or we can follow Jesus’ explicit instructions to live prepared.
The above questions should help you build a healthy framework for interpreting Scripture which, for the topic of End Times, should lead you away from fear and speculation and into a place of hopeful optimism for the future.
Remember, Jesus is the Prince of Peace, so his return should bring his people peace and not panic.