Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10074. What happens to those who take the mark of the beast? Revelation gives an answer of terrible clarity, and it is the most severe warning in the book. Those who receive it drink the wine of God’s wrath and are tormented in the presence of the Lamb, with no rest day or night….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10073. What signs precede Christ’s return? The answer depends entirely on which return you mean, and that is not a piece of clever footwork. Scripture describes the Lord coming for His people and coming with His people, and the two events are given very different treatment. For the Second Coming in glory, Scripture supplies…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10072. The Day of the Lord is the Bible’s name for that extended period when God steps out of the shadows and deals directly with human sin, rescues His people, and establishes His King. It appears more than twenty times in the Old Testament and several more in the New, and it is one…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10071. The battle of Armageddon is the gathering of the armies of the world against Jerusalem at the end of the tribulation period, and its abrupt conclusion when Jesus returns in glory. The word has entered ordinary English as a byword for nuclear catastrophe, which is a pity, because the Bible’s picture is rather…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10070. Who are the 144,000 in Revelation? John tells us plainly enough: they are sealed servants of God drawn from the twelve tribes of Israel, twelve thousand from each, protected through the judgements of the tribulation period for a purpose God has assigned them. The reason the question generates so much heat is that…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10069. Will a third temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem? I believe the answer is yes, and not because of anything in the newspapers. Several prophecies about the last days assume a functioning sanctuary standing on that site, with sacrifices being offered in it and a man of appalling arrogance eventually desecrating it. That said,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10068. The covenants with Israel are the backbone of biblical prophecy, and if you get them right a great deal else falls into place. There are five of them, and four are unconditional promises that God binds Himself to keep regardless of the nation’s behaviour. A covenant in Scripture is not a contract between…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10067. Does God still have a plan for Israel? Yes, and I hold that with more confidence than almost anything else I teach about prophecy, because Paul devotes three chapters of Romans to the question and answers it in terms that leave very little room for manoeuvre. The plan for Israel is not a…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10066. Replacement theology is the view that the Church has taken Israel’s place in the purposes of God, so that the promises made to the nation now belong to believers in Jesus and nothing distinctive remains for the physical descendants of Abraham. It is also called supersessionism, because on this reading the Church supersedes…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10065. Is modern Israel prophetically significant? My answer is a carefully qualified yes. I believe the return of Jewish people to the land, and the existence of a Jewish state there since 1948, sits squarely within the pattern of what the prophets said would happen before God finishes His programme with that nation. The…