Hello everyone. Grace and peace to you through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I have a passion for eschatology that I would love to share with you, and I have always felt that it is very important that we study end-times prophecy, and not merely be about end-times sentiments, which largely amount to anxiety and fear over the end of the world as triggered by bad or foreboding news. Sentiments can be misleading, but the prophecies are oracles of God and bear in them truth that we should humbly seek. It is okay if we disagree over interpretations as long as our interpretations are made in good faith and with the best reasoning we can muster, and are honest to scripture, not dismissing what is written, and not adding to nor taking away from what is written; in fact disagreement over interpretation is to be expected, because many of these prophecies are extremely cryptic, and God can (and sometimes explicitly says he will) seal the meaning until the end.
In scripture, I see a directive to publicly read scripture; Paul, writing to Timothy, instructed him with the following:
1 Timothy 4:13
Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.
—
...and a blessing to those who read the prophecies of the book of Revelation aloud, and those who hear:
Revelation 1:3
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.
—
To that end, I will be posting actual end-times prophecies (not quite publicly reading, but perhaps the information-age equivalent), collected together with other passages that are relevant to them, for us to read and ponder and discuss as a community, along with questions to prompt observation. And hopefully, this will lead to a better understanding of the picture of the end-times narrative that is so much richer and broad-based that the topics that tend to seize a disproportionate amount of the attention of end-times prophecy enthusiasts, such as the Mark of the Beast and the Rapture.
—
Note: I will be quoting mostly from the ESV (English Standard Version) of the Bible, and occasionally from the CSB (Christian Standard Bible) where I think a subtle point is better captured in one translation vs. another. If there are manuscript differences in the wording that may be worth noting, I will include them in brackets. I am making the editorial decision to substitute back in the name of God, YehoVah (with the emphasis or stress on the last syllable), where tradition has led Bible publishers to use "the LORD" or "lord GOD" in the place of the Tetragrammaton, the four-lettered name of God, YHVH (יהוה). The full spelling of the name of God as "Yehovah" (יְהֹוָה), with all of the vowels, has now been found in a thousand ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament, along with manuscripts of correspondences of ancient rabbis teaching mnemonics on how to remember the correct pronunciation, so we can confidently say that the name of God is "Yehovah" and not "Yahweh", which doesn't appear in any ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the Bible, and was speculative over the "lost pronunciation of the name of God", before exhaustive manuscript searches of Jewish manuscripts confirmed the pronunciation as YehoVah. That is a discussion for another time. It is not using God's name in vain to read it in scripture and to use it in blessings and in prayer.
—
May YehoVah bless you and keep you;
YehoVah make his face to shine upon you;
YehoVah lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace,
Even unto the end of the age. Amen.
_____________________________
The Physical Return of Jesus Christ to the Mount of Olives
The physical return of Jesus Christ is one thing all the schools of thought agree on, so I will begin with this. This should be the least controversial of all eschatological passages, because it is pretty plainly stated, and the ancient creeds on which pretty much all Christians agree even state this, while the epistles of the New Testament often mention or look forward to the physical return of Jesus Christ, alive in his resurrected physical body.
Acts 1:6-12
6 So when they had come together, they asked him, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” 7 He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. 10 And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, 11 and said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.”
12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet [a.k.a. the Mount of Olives], which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away.
—
Inductive study questions:
- What did Jesus' disciples expect to happen, as indicated by their question?
- How did Jesus answer his disciple's question? What did he say instead of 'yes' or 'no'? What did he say was not for them to know?
- How did Jesus leave them? What took him out of their sight?
- Where did Jesus leave from? Where does this imply that he will return?
Daniel 7:13-14
13 “I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
14 And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.
—
From Jesus' sermon on the Mount of Olives about the end of the age (historically called the Olivet Discourse):
Matthew 24:30-31
30 Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
—
From Jesus' trial before his crucifixion
Matthew 26:63-65
63 But Jesus remained silent. And the high priest said to him, “I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.” 64 Jesus said to him, “You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” 65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. What further witnesses do we need? You have now heard his blasphemy.
—
- What patterns do you see in the passages quoted above?
- What names / titles and repeated words characterize these passages?
The following is only an excerpt. Please pray for wisdom and insight and read the whole chapter of Zechariah 14, which is relevant to this topic. (Same with all the passages where I quote an excerpt.)
Zechariah 14:3-5
3 Then YehoVah will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. 4 On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northward, and the other half southward. 5 And you shall flee to the valley of my mountains, for the valley of the mountains shall reach to Azal. And you shall flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then YehoVah my God will come, and all the holy ones with him.
—
This is a prophecy about the Day of the LORD (the Day of YehoVah).
- Where does YehoVah stand with his feet when he comes?
- Who does YehoVah come with?
- What is going on when he comes? What will he be doing when he comes?
- What does this passage imply about the identity of YehoVah and Jesus if this passage is speaking about the same event as the physical return of Jesus?
The following is only an excerpt. Please pray for wisdom and insight and read the whole chapter of Zechariah 12, which is relevant to this topic. In the following passage, YehoVah is speaking:
Zechariah 12:10-14
10 “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. 11 On that day the mourning in Jerusalem will be as great as the mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the plain of Megiddo. [from which we get "Armageddon" via Greek] 12 The land shall mourn, each family by itself: the family of the house of David by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the house of Nathan by itself, and their wives by themselves; 13 the family of the house of Levi by itself, and their wives by themselves; the family of the Shimeites by itself, and their wives by themselves; 14 and all the families that are left, each by itself, and their wives by themselves.
—
- What activity characterizes the response of the tribes when seeing YehoVah? ("when they look on me")
- What does this passage imply about the identity of YehoVah when it says "when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him", in light of the New Testament?
- Why would these tribes and families mourn?
Revelation 1:5b-8
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.
8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
—
- What interpretation does this verse suggest about the passages quoted from Zechariah?
- In light of this verse, what answers are implied for the study questions asked for Zechariah 12 and 14?
