When Does “The End” Begin?
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GORDIAN KNOT ESCHATOLOGY
As we begin this study on the end times, I would like to address you from the junkyard of eschatological insanity that we find ourselves in today. To my left lies a cardboard cutout of the late Harold Camping, a stack of books titled “88 Reasons Why The Rapture Will Occur In 1988”, and a few posters of various blood moons, pale horses, and tracks about being left behind. To my right, an ever-growing pile of Antichrist candidates and mark of the beast hopefuls heaped on top of one another and most are now well rusted.
All around us is the odious stench of eschatological failure. From end times views assuming future failure, to failed past and present predictions, to wild speculations about Gog, Magog, and Vladamir Putin. Is it any wonder that the church is confused, frustrated, and lacking the joy and hope that a Biblical view will bring?
In this series on the end times, my hope is to bring the joy, clarity, and hope back into eschatology. And to do that, we need to flush everything we have heard about the end times, clean down the eschatological toilet, and wave goodbye as it goes back to where it belongs. I say this so strongly because the Bible was never meant to be a Gordian knot to confuse, frustrate, and paralyze you. It was always meant to be a clear revelation to encourage, strengthen you, and give you a living hope as you face the days ahead. When we return to what the Bible says and examine it in Biblical ways, I believe eschatology can be one of the most encouraging topics you will ever study.
So, in the weeks ahead, I want us to look at what the Bible says about the end times, and today I want to focus on the consideration of time. When do the end times begin? Are they getting ready to happen in the 21st century? Are they still long into the future? Or did they begin sometime in the past? Let us look at a few passages in Scripture to gain a Biblical perspective.
END TIME INCARNATION
By far, one of the clearest passages in all of Scripture, that teaches us when the end times will begin, is Hebrews 1:1-2, which says:
God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.- Hebrews 1:1-2
The author of Hebrews is appealing to two very different sets of times in the history of redemption. There is the old covenant era of temples, feasts, priests, and sacrifices, where God once spoke to His people through the fathers and the prophets. This era is known as the Old Testament. But, now we are told a new era of human history has dawned (in fact it is the final era of human history), that began when Christ came as the incarnate Son of God.
What Hebrews is saying, is that when Jesus came He not only secured salvation for His people, but He also fulfilled all of the Old Covenant expectations, types, shadows, and norms, in Himself. For instance, He is our true King (Hebrews 1:8), that serves as true priest (Hebrews 2:17), making Himself to be our true and perfect sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27), offering Himself in God’s true heavenly temple (Hebrews 9:11), to secure a perfect unvarnished redemption. The point this book is making is that when Jesus uttered “It is finished”, He perfectly drew all of the Old Covenant types and shadows to a glorious end, fulfilling every jot and tittle of the Law, leaving no temple stone unturned, so that He could become the cornerstone of a new end time era. In Him, the old has been finished, and the new has come.
The importance of this cannot be understated. Jesus Christ put an end to the old era of redemption and began a new redemptive era called “these last days” at His coming nearly 2000 years ago. That is why the author of Hebrews says that God has spoken to us during the ends of time because he assumes we would understand that these end times began in Jesus’ first glorious coming! And since that much is true, it is clear to say that you and I have been living in the end times our entire lives. It is also clear to say that the Church has existed entirely during the period called the “last days”. That fact has been true for two successive millennia and will continue until the Royal Son returns a final time!
Unlike what many have wrongly said, the Church is not an asterisk period, the Gentile Church was not plan B, and we are sandwiched awkwardly between the Old Testament and a future millennial kingdom. The Church was, is, and will continue to be God’s plan A, for these last days. We are His end-time bride on His end-time mission until the final sands in God’s end-time glass have fallen.
Whatever thoughts we may have about this topic, at a minimum needed to be ground by the firm exegetical understanding that the “last days” have already come and that we are currently living in them. To that end we continue we a few more proofs.
END TIME DISSOLUTION
As mentioned above, one of the reasons we can be so confident that the end times have already begun is that Jesus so carefully and methodically brought an end to all the old-timey stuff. He brought a new priesthood, new temple, new mountain, new sacrifice, a new bride, and is bringing about a new covenant city. In the weeks ahead we will examine some of these things in greater detail, but for now, how about a summary? And how about we begin with the old and new bride?
In the Old Testament, there is very specific wedding language that must be understood before we will have any hope of understanding the eschataological bride that is given to Christ in the New Testament. Take for example, Israel. In the Old Testament, Israel was called to be God’s faithful and covenantal bride (Ezekiel 16:8-18). She is the one He lovingly drew out of the land of Egypt, clothed in His love, and brought to a mountain marriage ceremony at Sinai (Jeremiah 31:32; Ezekiel 16:59-60).
If this were not clear enough, God explicitly calls Himself the husband of Israel in Isaiah 54:5 and identifies their relationship as a marriage betrothal in Jeremiah 2:2. It was these people that God set His affections upon (Deuteronomy 7:6-9) and it was this nation who provoked His holy husbanding jealousy (Exodus 20:5; Ezekiel 16:38). It is to this matrimonial status that God appeals to Israel to repent (Jeremiah 3:14), when she burned in belligerent and raunchy affections, playing the whore with the other pagan nations and pagan gods (Ezekial 16:27-48).
Instead of purity and fidelity to her covenant Husband Lord, she acted shamefully in debauched spiritual adulteries (Hosea 2:3-7) until she provoked the righteous fury of her God. For a time, God graciously pursued His faithless bride, beckoning her to leave her lurid pleasures behind and to be reconciled to Him (Hosea 2:7; Joel 1:8). But, alas, it was to no avail and they exhausted His mercy.
In the end, God’s first bride became so polluted in her perversions, that God, Himself, issued those ten faithless tribes a formal certificate of divorce (Hosea 2:2; Isaiah 50:1) and wrote them out of the annals of history through a devastating Assyrian invasion. Along with that, God also warned the southern nation of Judah, that if she continued to play the harlot, like Israel, her fate would be the same as her twin harlot sister (Jeremiah 3:6-10). That imagery is the operative backdrop that is in play, as soon as we turn the page over and into the New Testament.
When we arrive in Matthew we must remember two important truths. 1) God is still married to Judah (although barely). And 2) God is not a polygamist.
That second point is especially poignant because when we see God taking for Himself a new bride (The Church), we ought to remember that the only way this could be possible, is if Judah is also issued a formal divorce from God. And while we will explore this topic more fully in the weeks ahead, that is one of the major themes of the book of Revelation, how the whore of Babylon, who I take to be the unrepentant, paganized, and Rome-loving Judah, will be put away (Revelation 17:1-18) so that God can claim for Himself a new and spotless, blood-bought, bride (Revelation 21:2).
Without getting into the weeds, we can rightly assume that if God marries the Church, then He must put away the harlot Judah. We know that this divorce from God must be executed in lawful ways because He is righteous and is never the unfaithful party in His marriage. Knowing that the New Testament records how the Jews piled their adulteries up to the heavens, even making Israel blush in shame. It was Judah who got in bed with Rome and turned their back on God. It was Judah who became so blinded in her defilements that she killed God’s one and only Son. And it was feckless Judah, that God brought down the full fury of His righteous, just, and divorcing wrath.
We can know that we are living in the end times, not just because the author of Hebrews has said so, but also because God has put away His old unfaithful brides (both Israel and Judah) and has taken for His Son, a new end time wife (The Church). A bride that was blood-bought on a better mountain called Calvary, married to Him in His resurrection from the dead and is waiting for the final consummation when He returns and calls her into His arms forever. That is the mystery of the Gospel (Ephesians 5:32) and a sure clue that we, the church, His bride, is already living in the end times.
Again, we will revisit this theme when we get to the book of Revelation, but for now, let us proceed along.
END TIME DEMOLITION
Along with putting away His old wives, part of Jesus’ work to usher in the new end time Kingdom was to put away the old faithless city of Jerusalem. As you are aware, Jerusalem was the old covenant city of God where He would meet with His people. It was in that city He promised to dwell within the temple, live within their midst, to be their God, and for them to be His unique chosen people. It was in this city that the epicenter of Old Covenant religion and eschatological hope collided, with every song, every feast, and every sacrifice. Yet, in the end, this city was put away just as decisively as the faithless prostitute of old.
In some of the final moments of Jesus’ life, the city of Jerusalem collectively turned against the Son of God, and sided with Caesar as their one and only king (John 19:15). Since God alone was supposed to be King of Israel, the irony, idolatry, and infidelity were palpable. Is it any wonder that Jesus pronounced covenantal curses on this city, for all of her longstanding rebellion against God, in Matthew 23:34-36? The text says:
34 “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, 35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous bloodshed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. - Matthew 23:34-36
Jesus is making a straightforward claim here. Jerusalem was entirely at fault as the covenant breaker! She had systematically cut down God’s prophets of old, killing them every time God sent them. It was this Babylonesque, city of sin, that would also slaughter the disciples of Christ in cold-blooded murder, after turning on God’s beloved Son, like a rabid dog, slaying Him and crucifying Him.
For these atrocious and inexcusable war crimes against their God, the Kingdom would not only be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles (Matthew 21:43) but all of God’s longsuffering wrath, the manifold collection of all of His fury - from Abel to their present-day - would be poured out on them! And just in case we are wondering what an episode like that would look like, (when a unique, one-time, dispensation of God’s fury was poured out on Judah), we need to look no further than Matthew 24, Mark 11, and Luke 21, which describes the total covenantal cursing of Jerusalem. It would go from a thriving religious paragon to a pathetic pile of rubble, all in a span of 40 years, which is the exact length of a Biblical generation.
In the weeks ahead, we will look at the downfall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and how that event is a perfect fulfillment of Jesus’ end-time prophecy in Matthew 24. But for today, all I want you to notice is that God is putting away the Old Testament norms and institutions, like the sacrificial system, the temple system, the priesthood, the prophets, the kings, His two unfaithful wives, and His unfaithful city, so that in these last days, He could communicate to His New Jerusalem bound people, entirely through His Son.
It is no coincidence Those last days have certainly and already dawned for the people of God! And as we will continue to see, the evidence for this case is overwhelming once you begin looking.
END TIME MISSION
Among the many things that Jesus was preparing His disciples for, one of the most overlooked and misunderstood was that He was getting them ready for His second coming. Now, take a deep breath. I understand if you have been involved in any end times circles for more than a millisecond, I may have just lost you. I totally appreciate that when you hear the phrase “Second coming” you are automatically thinking about an end-time event. But, stay with me for just a moment. I think you will be intrigued by what you find.
For instance, Jesus tells His disciples in Mathew 10:23:
“But whenever they persecute you in one city, flee to the next; for truly I say to you, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel until the Son of Man comes. - Matthew 10:23
Now, as long as we remember that Jesus is speaking to His original 12 disciples, who were living in the first century AD, who were being commissioned to go out and reach ancient Jewish peoples living in first-century Israel, then it is painfully obvious that some sort of coming has already occurred. He told them flat out, you 12 men, won’t finish the job I have given you, before I come again. Crazy, right?
Here is some context. By the time that the true Light of the world showed up on our darkened planet, Israel and the Jews had become a dim people. They had long before this failed in their mission to be a spotlight of God’s love and light to the Gentiles (Isaiah 49:6). And because the 12 tribes of Israel had failed in that calling, Jesus raised up 12 disciples who would become his new Spirit-lit lamps, sent into this dreary world to illuminate it with the Gospel (Matthew 5:14-16).
As lights, He would send them out on mission to all of the darkened cities and towns in Israel, before eventually sending them out into all the world. This Jewish mission began in the Gospels and continued along in the book of Acts, even as the earliest Christians were met with tremendous persecution. Some time before they had made it through all of the Jewish towns, in fulfillment of Matthew 10:23, Jesus returned. The question is, what kind of return was it?
With that, let me attempt to relieve some pressure. When Jesus was talking about returning in Matthew 10:23, I do not believe He is speaking about His final coming, where He separates the sheep and the goats, the wheat and the tares, casting some into the eternal fires of hell while welcoming His people into eternity with Him. That is what Jesus will do in the future, but that is not the coming that He is preparing His disciples for in Matthew 10. That coming, was a judgment coming against the city of Jerusalem that happened within the lifetime of those 1st-century saints.
This point is so clear in the New Testament, you have to work against reason to believe otherwise. For instance, Jesus tells that same group of 12 disciples in Matthew 16:28:
“Truly I say to you, there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” - Matthew 16:28
This verse teaches us that the second coming, while not the final end time coming at the end of human and redemptive history, was a real coming of judgment that would happen in the first century that Jesus expected His disciples would live to see. He tells them, some of you standing here will not taste death until that happens. We will either believe Jesus, or keep labeling this as future, calling Him a liar.
This is said similarly in Luke 9:27, where Jesus says:
But I say to you truthfully, there are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.” - Luke 9:27
Luke helps us understand the Jewish nuance of Jesus’ teaching. Unlike Matthew, his Gospel was written for a Gentile audience, who may not understand what Jesus meant, when He said that the disciples would see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom. To aid our interpretation, He shows us that “the coming of the Son of Man” means the exact same thing as “the kingdom of God”. Quite simply, when God’s Kingdom comes, the Son of Man has come, in the Matthew 10 kind of way.
To untangle that knot a bit further, we need to understand two things. First, Jerusalem made herself a direct opponent of God and His new Kingdom (Matthew 22:1-14). Because of her rebellion, she would be put away, like the people of old, after a single 40-year generation (See Matthew 24). Furthermore, as the first enemy in the way of Christ and His expanding Kingdom, Judah would be crushed under the Lord’s feet (See Psalm 110; Acts 2:34-36; Hebrews 1:18; 10:12-14).
The second thing we must understand is when does God’s Kingdom come? And thankfully for us, that question is not all that difficult to answer. According to Daniel, God’s end-time Kingdom would be set up by Jesus during the Roman Empire (Daniel 2:44-45) after He has ascended to the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7). Jesus tells us that this end-time Kingdom was already present in seed form during His ministry (Luke 17:20-21). He tells them its total coming was looming imminently upon the horizon (Matthew 4:17). And, He proved to those watching that it had already come, as He was casting out demons by the power of the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28). Paul clarifies this by teaching us that the coming of the Spirit of God, was one of the unmistakable evidence that we are living in the end-time Kingdom of God (Joel 2:28-32; Romans 14:7).
So when Jesus tells His 12 disciples, “some of those standing here will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God” He is letting them know, that in their lifetime God’s long-awaited Kingdom would arrive, ushered in by the judgment coming of His Son upon Jerusalem. It would arrive when Jesus was crowned King and Lord with all authority to rule through His resurrection (Matthew 28:18). It would come when Jesus returned to heaven to sit on His end-time throne to rule over His end-time people (1 Peter 3:22). It would come when He sent His Spirit to indwell, regenerate, and create a nation of new citizens for Himself to dwell in that Kingdom (John 3:5; Philippians 3:20). That Kingdom would begin as a mission to reach the city of Jerusalem (Matthew 28:19-20; Acts 1:8) before it was too late. And like the Angels who were sent to rescue Lot, that ministry to Jerusalem would occur just long enough for the righteous remnant to flee, before the Roman armies would execute Christ’s fiery judgmet on the city (Luke 21:20-24).
For this, we can see very clearly that there was a 40-year overlap between the Old and New Kingdoms. During those 40 years, God sent witnesses to the Jews for them to repent. When that 40 years was finished, like rebellious Israel before, an entire generation of bodies would become food for the vultures, as Jerusalem became a barren wasteland of God’s judgment (Luke 17:20-37).
END TIME REVELATION
Before calling it quits for today, I want to show you how even the book of Revelation assumes a near term fulfillment. This book we’ve been told is entirely talking about the future, peculiarly intends to speak largely about the past. Notice how the book begins in verse 1:
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him (Jesus) to show to His bond-servants (His disciples), the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, - Revelation 1:1
John reports to us that this revelation of Jesus concerns events that must soon take place. This book is not the imaginative musings of a burnt out Apostle, describing speculative future-oriented events that would have no relevance at all to the people he was writing to. This book is talking about near-time events that would happen in their lifetime! Look at Revelation 1:3.
Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near. - Revelation 1:3
Put yourself in John’s shoes. He was not told, “Blessed is the 21st-century future American millennial who reads this book and figures out the clues concerning the rapture based on modern current events”. That would be so absurd it’s laughable! Jesus tells the apostle John that the time is near for him and his audience! The time was near, when John received the message. The time was near when the churches received His letter. And that generation would be blessed if they read the prophecy, because it applied to them! Look at Revelation 1:7, which says:
Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen. - Revelation 1:7
This verse seals the deal for several reasons! First, Jesus tells us that He will come again with the clouds, which is a common Old Testament allusion of God’s Judgment against His wayward people (Jeremiah 4:13-14; Joel 2:2). And, if we assume that verses 1 and 3 purport the timing of His coming, which they do, then the “second coming” is not an event at the very end of human history, but an end-time event that happened in the first century. Excited yet?
Second, He tells us that this judgment coming will be seen by the very ones who pierced Him, which has to be the first century Jews in Jerusalem, because they are the only group of people who did that! They were the ones who pierced Him. And since Christ was crucified and pierced once for all time, there will never be another generation that pierces Him. It is upon this generation Jesus’ furious judgment coming would come.
Third, He tells us all the tribes would see it, which is a peculiarly Jewish thing to say! Why? Because the word “tribes“ was a specific word used to describe Israel, a nation of 12 tribes, who would see the Lord they crucified coming back in judgment against them. Not every nation had tribes, but Israel was famous for it.
Fourth and finally, the word used for “earth” is not the common word used for the 3rd spherical planet in line from the sun. That word is “Cosmos”. The word used here (gey) is the Greek word for land, earth, or ground. Think about it this way, you live on the planet that is called earth (cosmos). When you bend over, placing your hands in the earth, and grabbing a hand full of earth (gey), you are interacting with a specific plot of land. That is the word used in Revelation 1:7.
So, When Jesus says that he is “coming on the clouds” and that “those who pierced Him” wll see Him, and “all the tribes of the earth will mourn”, the better translation would be “those who pierced Him will see Him and all the tribes of that land will mourn…”. Knowing that it seems overwhelmingly clear that this book is being put forward as a first-century prophecy, to first-century people, concerning first-century events.
This theme is not isolated to the first statements of the book, however, but continues throughout the book as well. For instance, Jesus tells one of the churches to repent because He is coming back quickly and will make war against all of His enemies (Revelation 2:16). Why would Jesus tell them to make haste in their repentance, if He intended on delaying a couple of thousand years? That would make no sense.
He tells another church in Revelation 3:11, to hold fast to what they have, and to continue faithfully during their times of persecution. Why? Because He would be returning quickly - at a moment that was relevant to them - in order to put an end to the faithless Jewish state who was killing them, which would have encouraged them to stay the course and not give up. This has nothing to do with a 21st-century modern world, but everything to do with a specific threat to the church in the first century.
This theme plays itself out across the entirety of this book. From the first words spoken in verse 1, to the final statements Jesus says in Chapter 22. Look at how the book ends:
And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place. - Revelation 22:6
As Jesus did in chapter 1, He reminds all of those first-century Christians who would be reading this message, that this book is faithful and true, and it concerned events that would take place soon after John’s writing. Jesus also repeats this time frame reference in verse 7 of chapter 22, telling them that His judgment would come against the Jews quickly, as in it would not take a span of 2000 years to unfold.
Jesus ends the book by saying that the time was so close upon the horizon (Revelation 22:10), that the scroll John was writing on needed to remain open and unsealed, which is a peculiar thing. Typically, a scroll of prophecy would be sealed up and saved for later only if its events did not apply to the people living during the day it was written. Sealing it up would protect the scroll from weathering over the years and would preserve its message for the future generation that it applied to (see Daniel 8:26 for an example). But, that is not the case here. The scroll was not sealed up, because it was not written specifically to a far off future generation. It applied to that generation and was left open so everyone could read it.
From the start to finish, from the alpha and omega of this great book, the time frame references consistently appeal to a past fulfillment. To overlook these clues, and to assume that everything in the book of Revelation is meant to be decoded in the future is to miss the meaning of the book and to apply a false hermeneutic. In the weeks ahead, I will labor to make all of these things more clear. We will dive in to specific prophecies, explore specific sections of the Olivet discourse, and will even walk through the book of Revelation. So, hang tight, Rome was not built in a day and Jerusalem did not fall in an hour.
But for today, my only hope is that you see the time frame references the New Testament is speaking about, and realize that much of what we consider “end of history events” are actually “end-time events” that have already occured in the past. I also hope that when you see a phrase like “last days” in Hebrews, that you will understand where we are in redemptive history. We are not waiting on the last days, we are living in them.
Those last days were kicked off by the first coming of Christ. They were demonstrated to the crowds by His miracles. They were sealed by His ressurection and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They were enacted by the election of His new bride, the church. They were initiated by God putting away his enemies, like the harlot Judah and the old Babylon-like Jerusalem. And they continue on into the future, as God’s New Jerusalem people continue to expand His Kingdom, until our King returns. These are the last days!
A FINAL WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT
I know this is a tough topic, but I am praying that you do not get discouraged. It may take a few weeks for you to shed all of the bad End Times theology you were taught, but I guarantee if you listen to this series well, take notes, chase down the Scripture references I am quoting, read them in context, and stick with the study, then you will see the bright hope that the Bible is talking about and you will no longer approach the future with uncertainty or fear, but as an opportunity to live in and build this glorious Kingdom that Christ has made us partakers in.
My promise to you is that I will always prove my points with lots of Scripture and will do my best to present a compelling case. My hope for you is that you will be Bereans and search the Scriptures for yourself to ensure the things I am saying are true.
Until next time, It may be the end times, and they may have began 2000 years ago, but I feel fine!
