LAST THINGS REVEALED
LAST THINGS PT 1
DR. JIM DIXON
JANUARY 16, 2011
I THESALLONIANS 5:1-11
What we’re going to do today is take a look at some of the signs of the times—not setting the day or the hour, but looking at the signs of the times. We’re going to do this with caution and humility because this is a subject that has been abused by Christians through history. There are many Christian generations that have jumped the gun—who have misinterpreted the signs, misinterpreted the seasons—and who thought that they were in the time of Christ’s coming.
So, in the first century in the Christian era, many of the Christians of Thessalonica, having been instructed by the Apostle Paul regarding the signs of the seasons, thought that they were in the season of Christ’s coming. Many of them quit their jobs. And the Apostle Paul had to tell them to go back to work. In the second century, Montanus led a group of Christians into Phrygia in Asia Minor. He did this with two prophetesses, Maxima and Priscilla. He took all these Christians to Phrygia to await the second coming of Christ, and he had set the day in the hour. And the day came, the hour came, but Christ did not. It was embarrassing, as the whole Christian world was focusing on Phrygia and the prophecy of Montanus.
Early in the fifth century, gothic hordes surrounded the city of Rome, the eternal city. And Pelagius, the famous theologian, announced the end of the world, the consummation of the age, the return of Christ, and the coming of the millennium. It didn’t happen.
Near the end of the 10th century, in the year 991, Vesuvius erupted, and as the millennium was approaching, the Pope announced to the world the end of the age and the return of Christ. It did not happen.
In the year 1191, Joachim of Fiore told Richard the Lion Hearted that he had a prophecy from God and God revealed to him that if Richard the Lion Hearted would lead a crusade and head to war for the holy land and come against the Muslim nations and fight against the Muslim powers, it would hasten Armageddon and usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ. So Richard the Lion Hearted went to war, and he entered the third crusade, and he fought against the Muslim nations. But Christ did not come.
Towards the end of the 15th century, around the time Christopher Columbus was arriving in the new world, Savonarola, the famous Italian priest, announced the second coming of Christ, the end of the world. He set the day in the hour, and again, the day and the hour came, but Christ did not.
Strangely enough, in that same season, Christopher Columbus (this is a little-known fact of history, but true) in addition to being explorer was a kind of a wannabe theologian. He wrote a number of books on the end times, and he predicted the return of Christ in the 17th century. He even set the day and the hour. And he was wrong.
In the 19th century, William Miller, an upstate New York preacher, predicted the second coming of Christ. He said it would be on October 22nd, 1844. William Miller really founded not simply the Millerites but also the Seventh Day Adventist movement. Many of his followers, as October 22nd, 1844, drew near, quit their jobs. Some of them went to mountaintops to await the second coming of Christ. Some perched in trees. October 22nd, 1844, arrived, and Jesus Christ did not. On October 23rd, many Millerites returned to their homes in embarrassment.
So Christian history is filled with that kind of stuff, and we don’t want to be part of that. And yet we are not in darkness. We want to recognize the season of Christ’s return. We don’t want to set the day or the hour, but we want to know the season. I would submit to you that there are many signs that the season of His return is approaching. We’re going to go over some of those this morning.
Now, I don’t know whether Christ is going to come in my lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Christ came in my children’s lifetime. I’d be stunned if He didn’t come in my grandchildren’s lifetime, because I feel like the signs are significant that we’re looking at today. So let’s begin by looking at some of the signs that the Bible reveals about His returning and the consummation of the age.
One sign is tribulation. It’s the first sign we’re going to be looking at. Now, Jesus told his followers that they would have tribulation. This is really the word of Christ to all Christians. In every generation, in every part of the world, you will have tribulation. So Jesus said, in this world, you will have “thlipsis,” a Greek word meaning tribulation. In this world, you will have tribulation. It doesn’t matter where you live in the world, what generation you live in, or what century you live in. Christians will have tribulation. Indeed, in some sense, everyone who lives has tribulation. But Jesus tells us in the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24 that at the end of the age there will come the great tribulation, such as the world has never seen. We read this in the Bible in Daniel chapter 12, Mark 13, and Matthew 24. And depending on your view of Revelation, some people view Revelation with a futurist perspective. I have no doubt in my mind that there are many futurist elements in the Book of Revelation. I would view Revelation chapter six through 18 as kind of a summary of this time of tribulation. But the Bible clearly teaches the time of tribulation is coming.
Now, if you look in the book of Revelation, chapters six through 18, you see seven seals, you see seven trumpets, and you see seven bulls. Bible scholars vary in how they interpret this. Some say they all have to do with calamity. Some view these as consecutive and sequential. Some view them as simultaneous. There are many different views. What I would like to do this morning, by way of summary, is just look at some of the chief characteristics of the tribulation.
Now, you might be thinking, well, wait a minute. I’m not going to be here. You might be thinking that when the tribulation comes, you’ll already be raptured. And we all hope you’re right. We all hope that we’re raptured prior to the final time of tribulation. We want to get out of Dodge before the guns start going off and before the fireworks start. On the other hand, there are many Christians all over the world and many scholars who believe that we will not be raptured prior to the tribulation and that we’re going to have to go through the tribulation. You can find Bible passages that support a variety of views on this subject. So I want to suggest to you that it’s a real possibility that as Christians we may have to live through all or part of the tribulation.
So let’s take a look at some of the characteristics of the tribulation. The first is peace. This might seem counterintuitive and it might be something you’ve never heard of before, but I believe the evidence is that the tribulation will begin with peace. It really begins with the rise of Antichrist. And Antichrist will usher in an apparent peace. The Antichrist will offer global solutions to the world’s problems. He would deceive even the elect, if it were possible, and he will perform signs and wonders. And he will, it appears in Daniel chapter nine, enter into some kind of a treaty or agreement with Israel. So there’ll be this peace. And the world longs for peace. In the Christian world, throughout the history of Christianity, there has always been the Christian greeting where we greet each other with, “Grace to you and peace.”
But the peace that we have in Christ is not the world’s peace. It’s an inward peace. It’s a peace that comes from a relationship with Jesus and is really transcends the events of this world. Of course, in this world people still long for peace, and Jew and Arab greet each other traditionally with the word peace—”shalom.”
The problem is there is no peace. There’s not peace in the Jewish and Arab world. There’s not peace in the world in general. And really, a sustained peace will not come until Jesus Christ returns. He is Sar Shalom. He is the prince of peace. But there’ll be a temporary peace and apparent peace, a false peace that will kind of start with the beginning of the tribulation. Then when people say peace and security, sudden destruction shall come upon them as travail comes upon a woman with child, and there shall be no escape.
And so the first sign characteristic of the tribulation is peace. The second is cosmic chaos, signs in the heavens. And we see this in many places in the Bible. I think most of you have probably heard of the KT boundary event. The KT boundary event is the Cretaceous Tertiary boundary event. It’s really kind of mislabeled in a sense, because Cretaceous is a word that doesn’t begin with a K, but a C. But still, the KT boundary event refers to the Cretaceous tertiary mass extinction. Many scientists believe that there was, 65 million years ago, an asteroid that hit in the Yucatan Peninsula, and this asteroid was six miles wide. This asteroid hit the earth with a force of 10,000 of atomic bombs, and that it literally sent trillions of gallons of dust and rock and debris into the atmosphere of the earth.
This dust enveloped the earth for years. It blocked the light of the sun. It stopped the process of photosynthesis. Therefore, herbivores, plant eating animals, began to die. They had no plants to eat as the plants died. Then ultimately carnivores died and you had the extinction of the dinosaurs. Just within the last two years, astronomers and scientists have said, hey, in that same timeframe, a bigger asteroid hit the earth, so that the earth received kind of a double whammy. And this asteroid hit off the coast of India, and they sometimes refer to it as Shiva or Kali, referring to Hindu deities of destruction. It’s considered to be bigger than the one that hit the Yucatan Peninsula.
What’s being said in terms of looking at the tribulation and signs of the times is that there’s going be some kind of cosmic chaos, and perhaps an asteroid is going to hit the earth. You can go through certain passages of the Bible and it sounds a little bit like that, that the Earth might receive some kind of significant asteroid hit, although surely nothing of the magnitude of what took place in the KT boundary event or off the coast of India, because there’s not going to be the removal of humankind on the earth. But there will be some kind of cosmic chaos.
Then the third sign of the tribulation is earthly eruptions—not just cosmic chaos, but earthly destruction. That source is not from the heavens, but from the earth itself: volcanic eruption, earthquakes, tsunamis, et cetera.
Hollywood loves this kind of stuff. It is true that we live in a world where there are a lot of dangerous volcanoes. Whether there are increased earthquakes and increased volcanic activity is debatable. We have more sensitive measuring instruments today, but I think there is some evidence that earthquakes are increasing in number and frequency. But certainly there are many dangerous volcanoes in the world, and some of them are right here in North America and in the United States of America. One of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world is a part of the United States right now that people aren’t even aware is a volcano. In fact, people go there on vacation and it’s Yellowstone National Park. Were you aware of the fact that Yellowstone is actually one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world?
It last erupted about 60,000 years ago, according to volcanists. 2 million years ago it had a massive eruption that reconfigured North America. Here’s the deal: many volcanists actually believe that it’s overdue for another eruption. It could be kind of cataclysmic. This is the kind of thing that may portend the end of the world. So we have these descriptions of earthly eruptions, volcanoes, earthquakes et cetera. All these relate to signs of the end times.
The fourth characteristic of the tribulation is famine. We live in a time of significant famine, and you may have noticed in the news just recently what’s happening in Tunisia. In Tunisia, there are riots. And what are the riots all about? The riots are all about famine—the fact that people do not have enough food, and food costs too much money. In fact, this last year on planet Earth, food prices have risen by 25%. For two thirds of the Earth’s population, they have to use 50% to 75% of their income on food. Here in the United States, 9% is the average percentage of income used on food. So we are a very blessed nation, but there is a lot of famine in the world. There are people literally rioting about it. The Bible prophesies that, in the last days, a day’s wage for a loaf of bread will characterize much of the world.
The fifth sign of the tribulation is pestilence. Pestilence refers to disease—viral disease and bacteriological disease. Scientists and those who are involved in the study of disease have great concern today because there is the development of super forms of bacteria that are heavily resistant to antibiotics. We also are experiencing mutation in terms of all kinds of diseases, whether they’re viral or bacteriological. Diseases can mutate and become airborne contagions. And to complicate problems, disease could become epidemic or pandemic on the earth at any time.
To complicate problems, because of the evil nature of fallen humanity and biological warfare, we actually are crafting pestilence for destruction of people groups in this world. And so we live in a dangerous world where more and more nations are actually developing biological weapons and the use of pestilence that could literally devastate the earth. So the Bible prophesies that pestilence will be characteristic of the tribulation.
Then the sixth is war. We know that war will culminate in Armageddon. Were Christ not to return, Armageddon would destroy the world.
Then the seventh characteristic is persecution and martyrdom. I hope you understand Christians are being persecuted in the world today. In fact, there is a significant outbreak of global persecution with regard to Christians today, and it’s a very, very scary world for Christians. You may have just recently looked at what’s going on in Pakistan. The media’s been all over this just this week. A Christian woman in Pakistan has been apprehended for blasphemy because of her Christian faith in a Muslim nation. She’s accused of blasphemy, and she was incarcerated, tried, and convicted to death because of her Christian faith. Now, a governor who believed that the Muslim world needs to be more tolerant sought to deliver her from the death penalty. That governor was murdered by an assassin. And you might have noticed that 1,000 lawyers in Pakistan have now stepped forward from the radical fringes of Islam to defend the assassin.
This is a world where throughout the Muslim world and the Muslim nations are growing civil rights abuses, and in some cases there are almost the absence of civil liberties and tremendous persecution of Christians. Some of these have been documented over time by Freedom House, Amnesty International, and highly respected groups that watchdog these things. But the persecution of Christians is existing not only throughout the Muslim world, but in some of the nations of the former Soviet Union and some of the residual communists nations such as North Korea and in some provinces of China. But there are significant persecution of Christians.
Even here in America and in the West there’s a more subtle persecution of Christians that takes place. I think in the citadels of power within our culture, those are Hollywood and the entertainment industry and academia and the world of colleges and university. I think in many of the citadels of power within our country, including the media, there is some significant hostility that’s growing towards Christians.
So these are all signs and symptoms of tribulation. Now, the Bible tells us that before the return of Christ, there will also come a time of great apostasy. So in Luke chapter 18, verse eight, Jesus poses a question. “When the Son of Man comes again, will there be faith on the earth?” And the answer is yes, but that faith will be a persecuted faith, and that faith will be perhaps a diminishing faith, and that faith will be under trial. In 1 Timothy chapter four and in 2 Timothy chapter four and there are passages that describe the absence of faith as we approach the end of the age. It says that in the last days many will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. It says that the day will come when people will no longer endure sound teaching, but having itching ears will accumulate teachers to suit their own liking, turn away from listening to the truth, and wander into myth. So there’s going to be this crisis in the whole realm of faith.
I got an email Friday, a wonderful email from a young woman who’s a member of Cherry Hills Community Church. She’s a student at Colorado State University. Apparently on Barb and I actually stopped by Tattered Cover bookstore and we were just killing some time before coming over here to the church for an event. And this young lady was there. She had come down from Colorado State University and she was at Tattered Cover. In her email the next day, she said she had meant to come up and talk to me, but the time she recognized me, I was out the door. So she sends me this email and she says, I wish I could have come up and talked to you, because I just wanted to say thank you for the “isms” series. You’ll never know what it meant to me in my walk with Christ, because I feel like my faith is being so challenged up at Colorado State University, particularly by a sociology professor who’s an atheist and who just attacks Christianity.
I wonder if you know how hard it is for a lot of 18-, 19-, 20-, and 21-year-olds. We send them off to college and many of them go to secular universities and colleges where that faith is attacked by professors receiving income from our tax dollars. So I’m telling you, it’s kind of a scary culture and time. I feel indignant that this is going on at colleges and universities, but it is, and it’s all part of apostasy. It’s all part of people leaving the faith. And atheism itself is kind of a sign of the times as we’re approaching the consummation of the age. So it’s no coincidence that you’re seeing Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and all the different books on atheistic perspectives at Borders and Barnes and Noble. It’s all there because of the signs of the times in which we live, and the reason for which we as a church have felt so passionate about establishing the Institute at Cherry Hills as an Institute of Evangelism and Apologetics with Mark Middleburg and Lee Strobel. With the support off Blake in our evangelism department and Gene in our outreach department, we’re doing this because we feel like this is appropriate to the times. We feel it’s appropriate in every generation, but particularly in the times in which we live, in which the Christian faith is under so much attack.
Steve Martin, the actor and comedian, has composed a song for atheist. He’s doing this tongue in cheek, and I think he’s kind of making fun of atheism. By everything I’ve seen, he’s seeking to make kind of fun of atheism. And yet, if you watch a clip of him singing the song before an audience, as the audience responds there’s kind of an enthusiastic response to the atheistic side of the song. So, “We have rock and roll, we have Sundays free!” And then later on the song, “We can watch football in our underpants!” Not that Christians can’t watch football in their underpants, but the kind of deal is, “We’re atheists!” You know? And it’s amazing to me how the culture is changing and how you see this growing segment of society that is vocal and open and willing to go public about being atheist. I promise you, it is a sign of the times in which we live.
Now, there’s not just tribulation and apostasy, but moral erosion. The Bible makes it very clear that, as we approach the consummation, there will be moral erosion. In Isaiah five, verse 20, the Bible talks about confusing good and evil and those who will call evil good and good evil. And we’re actually experiencing that in our culture—certainly in terms of sexual mores, but in many other areas of morality. The erosion of Judeo-Christian morals is, I believe, accelerating. So you look at Proverbs 17, Matthew six, and Luke 11, and there’s this continuation of that theme of good and evil being confused in the end times. And you look at Antichrist, and he has many titles in the Bible, but one of them is the man of lawlessness—“anomia” in the Greek, “without law.” And it’s without God’s laws.
The Antichrist doesn’t simply seek to destroy faith and theology, but morality. He seeks to bring in a new morality. When you look at a passage like 2 Thessalonians two… and I don’t know how many of you actually have studied 2 Thessalonians two, but it really is focusing on the Antichrist. I’ll share a section of it concern the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet Him, which is the rapture concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. “I beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be excited or shaken in mind—either by spirit or word or by letter purporting to be from us—to the effect that the Day of the Lord has already come. Let no one deceive you in any way. That day will not come unless the apostasy, the rebellion, the “apostasia,” comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called God or object of worship, taking his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
“Do you not remember that when I was with you I told you these things? And you know what is restraining him now, so that he may be revealed in his time. For the mystery of lawlessness, the spirit of lawlessness, is already at work. Only He who restrains it will continue to do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed. But the Lord Jesus Christ will slay him with the breath of His mouth and destroy him by His appearing and coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.”
Understand that at the end there’ll be a crisis in the realm of truth. And in this world of postmodernity, there is a crisis in the realm of truth. Whereas older generations had their highest value in truth, in this new generation the highest value is tolerance. If your highest value is tolerance, you start to view truth as the enemy, because truth inevitably views certain things as wrong and that can produce intolerance. So there’s this new kind of worldview that’s developing, and truth is almost the enemy. But there are spiritual powers behind this, principalities and powers. This involves spiritual warfare, because you can’t reject the truth of God. You can’t reject the doctrinal theological truth of God, and you can’t reject the morality of God without consequence. So, in the last days many will no longer love the truth. People will not be lovers of the truth.
So we have this kind of scenario that’s presented, and this spiritual warfare is so serious. Jesus tells us that the devil is the archon, the ruler, the prince of this world. He’s a usurper. This world does not belong to him. But he has abused what stewardship was once given to him. He is the prince of the world, and he is the prince of darkness. He’s infusing his philosophy and thought into the cultures of the world. So as you approach the end, this spirit of lawlessness grows. So we see more and more moral erosion, and we see more and more theological confusion. But all this represents the hand of Satan.
Now, Bard and I were traveling on United Airlines a week ago. You’re sitting there wondering, what do you want to do to pass your time? You usually take one of the flight magazines out, and in the flight magazines you can browse through usually there’s stuff you can buy. One of the things we noticed was a Star Wars toaster. You could buy a Star Wars toaster. You put your toast in this Star Wars toaster, and you pull it out and you have Darth Vader on your toast. Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse. But here’s the deal for me: literally, do you realize how grave and serious spiritual warfare is? That there is a battle going on for the very souls of mankind—the souls of men, women, and children?
I think for a lot of people, spiritual warfare, the whole good and evil thing, the whole light and darkness thing, has just become a joke. It’s just kind of become a joke. All this kind of just plays into that. It’s tragic, but it’s part of what’s happening at the end. It’s like he frog in the. People just gradually, incrementally, slip into a denial of truth. I think it’s affected Christians and so many studies, some Barna studies and some major research studies, show that evangelical Christians don’t live any differently than the world. Now, many Christians have just cratered to the culture, living exactly the same way as unbelievers live. And we really don’t honor biblical teaching and biblical values. It’s really kind of a scary thing.
One of my favorite passages is Micah chapter six, verses six through eight. A question is posed: “With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, or with calves a year old? Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgressions, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? No. But the Lord has shown you, oh human, what is right. For what does the Lord require of you, but to seek justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” I think that’s kind of the summum bonum of the Old Covenant. At least many would view it that way. I would view the summum bonum, the highest good of the Old Covenant, as the Shema of Deuteronomy six. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.” I think everything’s based on that. But this Micah six passage is a really powerful passage, and certainly at the heart of the ethical teachings of holy scripture.
Now, here’s the thing. As I look at a lot of Christians and they look at passage like this, it’s like they just zero in on the phrase “love kindness.” Then you see this kind of perspective in the evangelical world that if I just love kindness, I’m okay. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to love kindness. But God never meant for kindness to be a trump card that could just kind of make everything else okay. So you see a lot of Christian kids accept Christ and then they just go out and they get drunk. They watch pornography. But if they love kindness, it’s all okay.
It’s not just kids. It’s adults in the evangelical community. In addition to everything the kids do, they add to it the pursuit of all the materialism that characterizes our culture. And they just think, if I love kindness, I can just live as the world lives. It’s a tremendous misunderstanding of the Word of God, and it grieves our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So if you had walk humbly with your God, as it says in Micah 6:6-8, that refers to obedience. Did you know that to walk humbly with your God is to walk in obedience? If you seek justice, it doesn’t just mean you want the world to be a fairer place and that you want fairness for humankind. This word, “mishpat,” is the Hebrew word that refers to righteousness. You must seek righteousness. You must hunger and thirst for righteousness. As we approach the consummation, are you ready?
Now, there are many signs, and Israel’s a big sign, and we just don’t have time to deal with all the signs. But you have tribulation, you have the apostasy deal, you have the moral erosion deal. The Israel deal is huge. Our generation has seen astounding things prior generations never thought possible. In my lifetime, I’ve seen amazing things with regard to the rebirth of Israel. Now, I just learned this last week that I’m not part of the boomers. I thought I was part of that boomer generation deal. I just found out that the boomer generation started January 1st, 1946. I was born a month before that. I’m not a boomer, but it’s so funny. I have seen so much in my life. In ‘48, I was only two and a half, but Israel became a nation. Nobody thought it possible. The Jews gathered from the corners of the Earth and returned to their promised land by the hand of God. Whatever abuses took place, it doesn’t deny the fact that they came back to the holy land in fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
In 1967, the Jews reoccupied the holy city of Jerusalem in the six-day war. What an amazing reality. Nobody thought it possible. You look at the prophecies of the Bible, how the nation of Israel would be reborn. Not only that, but it says the Jewish people would be surrounded by hostility. We look at the etymology of many of the labels given to the nations around Israel, and we know that they have Muslim and what certainly were Arab links. So much of the Arab world at the end of the world will be hostile to Israel. Of course, that wouldn’t be possible if Israel hadn’t been reborn, which happened in ‘48 and ‘67. But this is all being fulfilled and it’s going to drive the world to Armageddon.