Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10146. Whenever a new invention arrives, some part of the Christian world immediately maps it onto prophecy, and modern technology has been identified as the fulfilment of end-times passages more times than I can count. Barcodes were the mark of the beast. Then credit cards were. Then microchips, then smartphones, then digital currency, then…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10139. The idealist view treats Revelation not as a description of particular events, past or future, but as a symbolic portrayal of the ongoing conflict between good and evil that runs through the whole of history. Sometimes called the spiritual or symbolic approach, it is probably the most widely held reading in academic circles…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10138. The historicist view reads Revelation as a continuous panorama of church history, unrolling from the apostle’s own day through to the return of Jesus, with each seal, trumpet and bowl corresponding to a particular event or era along the way. For several centuries it was the standard Protestant reading, and today it has…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10137. The futurist view holds that the visions of Revelation from chapter 4 onwards describe events still to come, and that the great bulk of unfulfilled biblical prophecy will be fulfilled literally in a future period. It is the position I hold and the position I believe the text requires. It is one of…
Reading Time: 10 minutesQuestion 10136. The preterist view holds that most or all of biblical prophecy was fulfilled in the first century, chiefly in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans in AD 70. The name comes from the Latin praeter, meaning past, and that single word tells you everything about the direction of the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10083. A restraining force is at work in the world right now, holding back the emergence of the most evil man who will ever live. That is the claim Paul makes in 2 Thessalonians 2, and it raises the obvious question: what, or who, is doing the holding? The identity of this restraining force…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10108. When Paul writes that all Israel will be saved at Romans 11:26, I understand him to mean the ethnic descendants of Jacob who are physically alive at the Second Coming of Jesus, turning to their Messiah in a national conversion at the end of the Tribulation. It does not mean every Jew who…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10098. If the first resurrection is the raising of the blessed, the second resurrection is its opposite number. It is the raising of everyone who has died without saving faith in Jesus, and it takes place at the end of the thousand year reign, for one purpose. They stand before the Great White Throne…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10097. The first resurrection is named only once in Scripture, in Revelation 20, and yet it carries an enormous weight of meaning. John sees those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, says they came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years, and then adds, “This is the first…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10096. Gog and Magog appear in two very different places in Scripture, and a great deal of confusion comes from assuming they must be the same event. Ezekiel devotes two long chapters to an invasion of the land of Israel by a coalition led by Gog of the land of Magog. Revelation 20 uses…