It’s time to come out of the closet!

All my life I’ve heard about a terrible time that would take place on the earth. A time of great suffering and world wide war, when a man called the Anti-Christ would come to power and rule the world, persecute and kill christians and bring great judgement on all mankind. All of this being either preceded by or followed by the rapture of the church by Jesus himself. This is known as the Great Tribulation or the Apocalypse.

While popular in some christians circles others mostly ignored this teaching, it wasn’t something that would happen any time soon. For those engrossed it eschatology (study of last things) it is a favorite subject and some preachers have made it the focus of their ministry. Some have become wealthy by exploiting the subject but it wasn’t until the “Left Behind” book series and then movies that this became a nation wide matter of attention. There are now countless books on how to understand and interpret bible prophecy, especially The Revelation of Jesus Christ and other apocalyptic scriptures but most of them interpret the bible using current headlines.

There are those that are well intentioned, I put many, many hours of study into it myself but there are also the opportunists, taking advantage of fear to line their own pockets. With the emergence of ISIS, ebola and any number of outbreaks of violence, economic upheaval and unrest it is easy to weave all this together into a convincing package that judgment is about to fall on the world and especially America.

Here is the problem with all of that, we are projecting history into our future!

I have had doubts about the application of some “end times” scriptures for a long time because obviously, to me anyway, they speaking to the people that would experience what was being prophesied. As far as the book of Revelation, who can say? Who could wade through all of that and come up with a convincing interpretation? I gave people with more experience than me the benefit of doubt because I couldn’t convince myself!

Now, because of my own doubts and the challenge of others I respect, I no longer accept the teaching of a time of tribulation ruled by the anti-christ, followed by the judgment of God on all the earth. I discovered that my doubts were well placed and that what we have feared of our future is actually found in the history of Israel.

I won’t go into theology or eschatology here but an examination of both scripture and the events in Jerusalem, starting with Jesus’ ministry until the year 70 A.D., are a fulfillment of everything prophesied by Daniel and Jesus himself. I still don’t completely understand the Revelation but believe most of it was speaking of those same events.

I don’t believe God is mad at America or that judgment is coming. I haven’t believed that for several years because I came to understand what the New Covenant actually means. In fact, the whole “end times” or “last days” phraseology in the bible has to do with the ending of the Old Covenant and the transition into the New Covenant.

What we have to understand is, not only was the Old Covenant fulfilled and ended, it was destroyed! The Temple, where the sacrifices were made, and everything having to do with the Law of Moses were completely destroyed by the Roman General Titus in 70 AD. The Jews were either killed, taken captive or dispersed, the priesthood disappeared and every means of keeping the Old covenant were obliterated. The only thing left today is Rabbinical Judaism that is absolutely unable to carry out any of the requirements of the Old Covenant. There remains only one sacrifice for sin!

When I finally came to the understanding that I had been mislead for so many years by so many christian teachers it rocked my world! I felt betrayed because so much trust in people I respect was pulled out from under me. I understand that most are just teaching what they were taught and with good intentions but it made me think “If they were wrong about that, what else are they wrong about?”

I have come to the conclusion that this is actually a very good thing! Gone are the days that I just accept something because someone I respect said it! I was never really that way anyway but even more so now. This all came about because I was challenged a couple of years ago by a prompting from the Lord to read scripture without the filter of church tradition. What I mean is, very often we’ve known something for so long that when we read scripture we project what we think we know into what we are reading. I was taken aback by what is NOT in the bible that we hold as sacred!

All of that is for another time but my challenge to you is, take another look at the whole end times frenzy. Where did it come from? What did christians over the last 2000 years believe? You will find that a coming time of tribulation punctuated by the return of Jesus is a fairly new doctrine!

This will result in more questions than answers but they are questions that need to be asked! I truly feel that there is revolution coming to church as we know it! Revival is great for a while, The Reformation was a wonderful thing but it only slightly changed the way we do church. Revolution will alter our understanding of what church even means!

Blessings!
Jeff Martin