Biblical prophecy and the last days—the rapture, tribulation, second coming, millennium, and final judgment.
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 60071. Christian Zionism has become a term of abuse in a good deal of Christian writing, used to describe a caricature that almost nobody actually holds. Before I defend anything I want to say clearly what I do and do not mean by it. What I hold is that God made unconditional promises to…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 09038. Ask most Christians how the church relates to the kingdom of God and you will get a puzzled pause. The two terms are used almost interchangeably in ordinary conversation. People speak of kingdom work when they mean church work, and of building the kingdom when they mean growing a congregation. The New Testament…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08124. The future of Satan is one of the few subjects on which Scripture is entirely unambiguous. There is no mystery about the outcome, no suspense, and no possibility of a different result, which is more than can be said for many things people are curious about. What the Bible gives is a sequence,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08140. Paul tells the Corinthians that we are to judge angels, and from that single clause a whole industry has grown up teaching that believers hold authority over angels here and now, with instructions on how to exercise it. I want to take the verse seriously and the industry rather less so, because Paul’s…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08082 The great chain of Revelation 20 is one of those details that decides far more than it appears to. How you read it determines whether you place the millennium in the future or in the present, and that in turn shapes your entire understanding of prophecy. So this is not a question about…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08081 The False Prophet is the least discussed of the three figures who dominate Revelation 13, and that is a pity, because his role explains a great deal about how the tribulation actually functions. He is the religious arm of a political system, and he is the one who makes the whole thing work….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08080 Satan and Antichrist are not the same being, and confusing them is one of the commonest mistakes in popular prophecy teaching. One is a fallen angelic creature with a history stretching back before the human story. The other is a man, yet to appear, who will hold political power for a limited period….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08085 Demonic judgement is a subject Scripture treats with more restraint than most of us would like. We are told plainly that fallen angels face a reckoning, and we are told a good deal about Satan’s end, but the fine detail of how the two relate is sketched rather than spelled out. That should…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 08083 Satan’s release at the end of the thousand years is one of the strangest turns in the whole prophetic landscape, and I understand why people stumble over it. God has bound the enemy. Jesus reigns in person from Jerusalem. The earth has known a thousand years of justice, peace and visible righteousness. And…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 8018. The four angels bound at the great river Euphrates appear in Revelation 9:14 and 15, and the detail that stops most readers is not the binding but the timing. They are released for the hour, the day, the month, and the year. That is a strange way to describe a moment. It is…