Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10155. The role of angels in the end times is far larger than most Christians realise, and Revelation is where it becomes impossible to miss. The role of angels is visible on almost every page of that book, sounding trumpets, pouring bowls, restraining winds, announcing judgements and gathering the harvest. They are not decorative….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10154. Practical eschatology is not a phrase you will find in Scripture, but it describes something the New Testament does constantly: it tells us about the future and then immediately tells us how to behave on Monday. Prophecy in the Bible almost never arrives without an application attached. That is worth saying, because end-times…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10153. The blessed hope is one of those expressions that has been said so often in Christian circles that it can slide past the ear without registering. Paul used it once, with great precision, and he attached it to a very specific event rather than to a general optimism about things working out. What…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10152. Maranatha appears once in the New Testament, tucked into the closing lines of a long and often difficult letter, and it is one of the oldest Christian prayers we possess. Paul writes: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!” (1 Corinthians 16:22). That last phrase…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10151. Every human being who has ever lived will be raised from the dead, the just and unjust alike, and that is one of the least disputed teachings in the New Testament and one of the least discussed. Death is not the end of anyone’s story, whichever side of the line they are on….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10150. The final judgement in Revelation 20 is described with a terrible economy of words. A great white throne, earth and sky fleeing away, the dead standing before it, and books being opened. Then a second and separate book, the book of life, is opened as well. The plural and the singular are doing…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10149. The book of life appears from the Pentateuch to the final chapters of Revelation, and it stands for something of enormous comfort and enormous seriousness at the same time. It is God’s register of those who belong to Him, and at the last judgement it is the book that decides everything. People often…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10148. The seven churches of Revelation 2 and 3 are among the most searching pages in the New Testament, and also among the most misused. Some readers treat them as a coded map of church history. Others skip them entirely in their hurry to reach the trumpets and bowls. Both approaches miss what the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10147. Who wrote the book of Revelation is not a question for specialists only, because the authority of the last book in our Bible is bound up with the answer. If the apostle John wrote it, then we are reading the final word of the last surviving member of the Twelve. If somebody else…
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…