What people believe about the End Times impacts how they function in their daily lives, according to eschatology experts.
Michael J. Svigel, professor of theology at Dallas Theological Seminary, and author and scholar Darrell Bock discussed the topic in a recent article. episode from the podcast “La Table”.
Svigel stressed the importance of understanding eschatology, warning that Christians must “know where we are in history” to “know how to live and what to believe.”
“We need to know where we stand,” he said. “There’s a feedback loop when you think about the details of the ending and how it’s going to happen, how it’s not going to happen, how do we get there? These are all questions answered by the details of eschatology.
“Is this something that we need to establish in our time before the return of Christ, when (do we) have another mission until the return of Christ? Or is it a bit of both? How you answer these questions will, if you are consistent with your eschatology, affect how you live this Monday morning.
Bock warned that by not wanting to know the details of the End Times, some Christians are “missing some of the things that need to be known, understood and appreciated to understand who we are supposed to be now.”
“In fact, not understanding where eschatology is leading us probably makes us more nervous during this time, and we are then more likely to make mistakes,” Bock pointed out.
The experts then discussed the three dominant ideas in Christianity about the End Times: premillennialism, which holds that Christ will return before his 1,000-year reign is established; postmillennialism, which views the second coming of Christ as occurring after 1,000 years of “a golden age or era of Christian prosperity and domination; and amillennialism, which holds that there will be no millennial reign and that the 1,000-year reign mentioned in Revelation is not literal.
“If you are a millennial and you believe that Jesus can return and form new heavens and a new earth, you are less likely to be concerned about Israel’s role and God’s plan, just by default,” explained Bock. .
“If you’re a pre-millennial, you’re going to be wondering, ‘OK, so when is Jesus coming back to put it all together?’ If you’re post-millennial, you’re going to work hard to make things right until we get there. And so, these fall into three very different general approaches, depending on the space I’m in.
Svigel briefly described how these different perspectives on the End Times have influenced the behaviors of Christians over the centuries, leading to different views of daily life.
“There has been what I would call a passive evangelical postmillennialism, where you just preach the Word and eventually, miraculously, there will be this outpouring of the spirit and the world will be converted,” Svigel said.
“But at the other extreme is militant postmillennialism, where our job is to pick up the pitchforks and spears, overthrow the king and the Church, and establish a perfect society.”
Svigel added that “the way you answer these questions simply by these examples has been very, very important in your daily life, as well as in the way you perceive the mission of the Christian.”
Bock spoke about how one’s views on the End Times shape how they might approach “involvement in public space,” referring to a “theocratic expectation” of things.
“A “theocratic expectation” is the idea of governments called to live by God’s values, no matter what. And you’re going to uphold those values by how you structure your government, as opposed to an approach that says, ‘Well, we should live by God’s standards, but we also understand that we live in the world.'” did he declare. explain.
“These are big policy questions. Most people go through their theological lives without even thinking about it, but they end up, depending on what they absorb, with a theological and eschatological worldview, whether they realize it or not. And so, it’s much better to be aware of what’s going on around you than not to be aware of what’s going on around you.
In June, popular podcaster Jeff Kinley released his latest book on the end times, titled God’s Grand Finale: Wrath, Grace, and Glory in Earth’s Last Days.
Kinley said The Christian Post in an interview in October, he believed that churches in the United States had, on the whole, not done a good job regarding the book of Revelation.
“I think people view Revelation as being sort of off-limits to Christians because of its apocalyptic language, because of some of its symbolism that is there,” Kinley said.
“But the very word “Revelation” means to discover, reveal or unveil, not to conceal. The irony is that people think this is a book of hidden knowledge when the very title of the book tells us that it is a book that tells us who God is and what is going to happen.
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