Understanding the End Times - Introduction

For 2,000 years, Christians have been expecting the “the last days,” “the end of days,” and “the end of the age.” Even Christ’s own disciples lingered on the Mount of Olives for awhile after his ascension, as if expecting him to turn around and come right back. Since that time, every new war, outbreak of disease, upheaval in the church, an unprecedented social trend, has brought with it a renewed flood of speculation about the end.

I grew up in the heyday of the imminent pretribulation rapture movement, when books like The Great Late Planet Earth and speakers like Jerry Falwell and Hal Lindsey had many believers thinking that the end of the world was right around the corner. I remember some pastors teaching that, at virtually any time, the United States would be taken over by a communist dictatorship and Christians would be herded off to concentration camps. I was an anxious kid, and my mind often turned to end-time scenarios as preachers and Bible teachers I heard commented on items in the news. I also struggled with assurance of salvation issues, and our church taught that if you weren’t taken in the rapture you had forfeited your chance for salvation. As you might imagine, these two elements made for an interesting mental mixture at times.

I remember an occasion when my parents went out and were several hours later coming back than they had said they would be (remember that this was the era before cell phones). Meanwhile, a terrible thunderstorm broke out, turning the sky an ugly yellow color. I was filled with a very real dread that the rapture may have happened and I had been left behind. Close to a state of panic, I called my pastor (who I was reasonably sure was a saved person, if anyone was), just to see whether he would answer the phone. He did, and my blood pressure slowly returned to normal. Meanwhile, I’m sure he was confused as to why a kid who had been attending the church longer than he had would suddenly call and ask to verify the Wednesday night service time…

It’s interesting now to look back on all of the failed rapture/second coming/end time predictions now (anyone remember 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988? – check out the reviews on Amazon for some interesting commentary). Prophecy teachers who thought they had everything figured out turned out to be totally wrong. For instance, none of them predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union. Undaunted by this miserable track record, however, more prophecy teachers have since arisen with brand new theories or tweaked variations on the old ones, and more embarrassments have resulted (the Harold Camping/Family Radio debacle in 2011 being a particularly prominent and unfortunate one).

The newest end-time theory I’ve seen relies on a teaching that was common in the early church, namely that the six creation days of Genesis represent six successive 1,000-year ages of human history, with the seventh day representing the Millennial Reign of Christ. According to this theory, 2032 will mark the end of the sixth age and the beginning of the seventh, as it is generally believed that Christ died in AD 32. Pretribulationists who hold to this theory are now speculating that the rapture will take place in the fall of 2025, likely coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. Further, they speculate that the near-earth asteroid Apophis (scheduled to make a close flyby of the earth in 2029) is the “Wormwood” object referenced in Revelation. This Wormwood connection is fueled, not only by the fact that 2029 is midway between 2025 and 2032, but also by the fact that Apophis is the Greek name for the Egyptian serpent demon Apep, who was seen as a god of chaos and destruction. Pretribulationists are not the only ones looking at these dates, however. I also know of one posttribulationist group that is also interested in this timeline, as they place a heavy emphasis on the teachings of the early church fathers.

So…what about it? What do we really know about the biblical End of Days?

This has been an area of interest and study for me for quite some time. I’ve written articles and made videos on various aspects of the subject, and used to frequently discuss and debate it online. My intention here is to write a series of posts touching on various aspects of the End Times question, with the goal of passing along what I’ve learned. I don’t pretend to have everything figured out, by any means, but I do believe I have a much clearer understanding of biblical eschatology (End Times studies) than I used to. Further, I have found that these understandings dovetail nicely with the broader tapestry of biblical teaching.

I pray that at least some of you will find these studies of use, and that the Lord will receive glory as I try to share what I believe he has taught me.

Who Were the Nicolaitans?

In the book of the Revelation, Jesus Christ commends the church at Ephesus for the fact that they “hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Revelation 2:6). Debate has taken place over the centuries in regard to just who the Nicolaitans were and what it was about them that Christ hated. Given that the word ‘Nicolaitanes’ itself is a compound Greek word meaning “victory (or conquest) over the people,” some have argued that the Nicolaitans represented a high-church type oligarchy that suppressed the laity or common people, yet this interpretation does not fit naturally with the text of Revelation.

Jesus himself seems to elaborate on the matter a bit further in his message to the church at Pergamos in Revelation 2:14-15:

“But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.”

Here, Christ equates the teaching of the Nicolaitans with that of Balaam, a renegade Old Testament prophet who led Israel into idolatry and immortality.

The early church father Irenaeus of Lyon may be the best authority we have on the Nicolaitans outside of scripture. Irenaeus was born sometime between AD 120-140 and died around the year 200. He was a disciple of a revered church father named Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John himself. Irenaeus was a prolific early Christian writer and apologist whose works were extremely influential in the early centuries of Christianity. He mentions the Nicolaitans twice in his writings.

In Book I, Chapter 26 of his best-known work Against Heresies, Irenaeus claims that the Nicolaitans were followers of Nicolas, a proselyte (convert to Judaism) from Antioch, who was one of the seven deacons appointed by the church in Acts 6:

 

The Nicolaitans are the followers of that Nicolas who one of the seven first ordained to the diaconate by the apostles. They lead lives of unrestrained indulgence. The character of these men is very plainly pointed out in the Apocalypse of John…as teaching that it is a matter of indifference to practice adultery, and to eat things sacrificed to idols.

In Book Three, Chapter Eleven of Against Heresies, Irenaeus lumps the Nicolaitans in with the Gnostics as “an offset of that ‘knowledge’ falsely so called” (‘Gnostic’ being derived from the Greek word gnosis, meaning “knowledge”). The Gnostics effectively layered Christianity over pagan teachings, and promoted a number of heresies related to the nature of God and the person of Jesus Christ. Gnostics denied the resurrection of the body and instead taught a form of spiritual ascension in which the body was cast off and left behind forever. Since the body was to be discarded in this way, Gnostics felt that what a person did in the flesh was unimportant, hence their uninhibited practice of sexual sins such as adultery.

Another church father, Clement of Alexandria, who lived c. AD 150 to 215, denied that Nicolas was the father of the Gnostic doctrine bearing his name, arguing instead that the Gnostics had perverted one of his sayings:

 

Such also are those who say they follow Nicolaus, quoting an adage of the man, which they pervert, “that the flesh must be abused.” But the worthy man showed that it was necessary to check pleasures and lusts, and by such training to waste away the impulses and propensities of the flesh. But they, abandoning themselves to pleasure like goats, as if insulting the body, lead a life of self-indulgence; not knowing that the body is wasted, being by nature subject to dissolution: while their soul is buried in the mire of vice (Stromata, Book Two, Chapter Twenty)

Whatever the truth about Nicolas himself may have been, Irenaeus and Clement clearly agreed that the Nicolaitans taught the sinful indulgence of fleshly desires, particularly where sexuality was concerned. No wonder Christ hated their doctrine and wanted it out of his churches.