Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10089. The wrath of God during the Tribulation is the most sobering subject in prophetic Scripture, and it is the one modern Christians are least comfortable discussing. We would rather speak of love, and rightly, until we notice that the Bible sees no contradiction between the two. Revelation describes a period in which the…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10088. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are among the most recognisable images in Scripture, borrowed by artists and novelists who have never opened Revelation. They appear as the Lamb opens the first four of seven seals, and each opening sends out a rider whose colour and equipment tell you what he brings. Conquest,…
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 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 10054. The Great White Throne is the final judgment of the unsaved dead, described in Revelation 20, when they stand before God at the end of the millennium to be judged by their works and consigned to the lake of fire. It is the most solemn scene in all of Scripture, and I never…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10047. The mark of the beast is a coming token of allegiance to the Antichrist, imposed during the tribulation so that no one may buy or sell without it. I want to handle this subject carefully, because few themes in prophecy have attracted more wild speculation and more needless fear than the mark of…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10038. The image of the beast is one of the strangest and most sinister objects in the whole book of Revelation, an idol set up in honour of the Antichrist that is given a kind of life and demands the worship of the entire world. When I speak of the image of the beast…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 10037. The false prophet is the third figure in the unholy trinity of the Tribulation, alongside Satan and the Antichrist, and he is the great religious deceiver of the end times. When I speak of the false prophet I mean the second beast of Revelation 13, who rises to promote the worship of the…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 10035. Babylon in Revelation is one of the richest and most debated images in the whole book, a figure that appears as a gorgeously dressed prostitute in one chapter and a doomed merchant city in the next. When I speak of Babylon in Revelation I mean the great world system of rebellion against God,…