Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10100. The lake of fire is the final and permanent place of judgement for Satan, for the beast and the false prophet, and for every person whose name is not written in the book of life. I want to say that plainly at the start, because this is one of those subjects where people…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10086. What happens to children at the rapture is one of the questions I am asked most often by parents, and it is almost never asked out of curiosity. It is asked with a catch in the voice, usually late in a conversation, by a mother or father who has just realised what the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10079. Can we know when Jesus will return? The short answer is no, and it comes from His own lips rather than from any caution of mine. “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only” (Matthew 24:36). That ought to…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10078. The Olivet Discourse is the sermon Jesus preached on the Mount of Olives during the last week of His earthly ministry, recorded in Matthew 24 and 25, Mark 13 and Luke 21. It is the longest block of teaching about the future that we have from His own lips, and everything else in…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10077. The birth pains Jesus mentions in Matthew 24 are the opening troubles of the end times: false messiahs, wars and rumours of wars, famines and earthquakes in various places. Having listed them He says, “All these are but the beginning of the birth pains” (Matthew 24:8). The image is deliberately chosen and it…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10076. The role of Israel during the tribulation is central rather than incidental. That seven-year period is not primarily about the nations, the beast or even the judgements. Jeremiah calls it “a time of distress for Jacob,” and Daniel says the seventy sevens were decreed about “your people and your holy city.” Once the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10075. Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy is, to my mind, the single most remarkable predictive passage in the Old Testament. In four verses Gabriel gives Daniel a measured period of 490 years for the nation of Israel, sets out what it will accomplish, divides it into three unequal portions, and pins its starting point to…
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…