20 Jul Are You Living in the End Times?

When I was in ninth grade, a preacher in the Philippines had made the news predicting that the world was going to end the next day at around 11am. A bunch of my otherwise godless classmates were worried that it was all over. At the time (31 years ago – 1991) I was relaxed because I knew what Jesus had said… “nobody knows the day or the hour.” I successfully predicted to those around me that he was wrong.

However despite knowing that this particular man was wrong, I still believed the world was almost over and I was living in the last days.

As it turns out the phrase ‘last days’ has a very specific meaning… it means the latter days. In the Jewish mind there were two great epochs, the former days and the latter days. The former days were all the times before the Messiah, and the latter the times after the Messiah. Technically given that Christ our Messiah has come, we are living in the latter days. On the day of Pentecost Peter referenced this idea quoting the Lord’s voice from the prophet Joel …. “In the last days (that is the latter days) I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.”

Ok so we are living in some technical ‘latter days’, but are we living in the period just before the world will end?

Well… another biblical phrase is the “end of the age” which Christ himself used a number of times. The actual phrase “end of the world” isn’t found in scripture, so we have to determine what end of the age actually means.

The end of the age was actually the end of the Jewish age, or the end of the Old Covenant. Many prophets had predicted that God was done with Israel and was going to take a new wife for himself. The Church which was Jews and Gentiles together, replaced Israel which was just Jews only. There was a new covenant, and with it a new age. The period of time from Christ through to when Jerusalem was destroyed… are the last days of the old covenant. From the destruction of the temple, sacrifice was brought to an end and with it, the old covenant.

So the end of the age was a period of time in history. The 12 apostles lived in through the ends of the ages, but we do not. The ‘ends of the ages’ are the last of the first, and the beginning of the next which overlapped each other. We are living in the new age, the period of the new covenant, but the old covenant is long behind us.

So biblically, or at least once you get a few definitions sorted out, there isn’t much talk about “end times’ in the way we think about them now.

So are you living in the days just prior to Christ’s return? I suspect not, there are simply too many things in the Bible that God is going to do that have not happened yet. We don’t know when he will return, but your best preparation is to live a life full of love and service to Him. Our job is to get about seeing this world touched by the gospel and believe that things will improve as God’s love touches the hearts of people.

Let’s live with faith!!!

NOTE: This website has a number of wonderful sermons on the subject of eschatology – that is, end times related matters. Why don’t you check some of them out.

Photo by Fabian Heimann on Unsplash