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 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…
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 10069. Will a third temple be rebuilt in Jerusalem? I believe the answer is yes, and not because of anything in the newspapers. Several prophecies about the last days assume a functioning sanctuary standing on that site, with sacrifices being offered in it and a man of appalling arrogance eventually desecrating it. That said,…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10044. The tribulation period is a future span of seven years in which God pours out judgement on a rebellious world and resumes His unfinished dealings with the nation of Israel. It is the darkest stretch of history still to come, and Jesus Himself said there has never been anything like it and never…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10040. I am often asked whether tribulation salvation is possible, and the short answer I give is a glad and immediate yes. When the Church has been caught up and the door of this present age of grace seems to slam shut, Scripture does not describe an empty earth abandoned to judgement and left…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 10039. The time of Jacob’s trouble is a phrase from the prophet Jeremiah that describes the coming Tribulation as it falls upon the nation of Israel, and it is one of the clearest windows we have into the purpose of that terrible period. When I speak of Jacob’s trouble I mean the seven-year Tribulation…