An Outline of End Times

The technical term for a study of the biblical teaching on end times is called eschatology. On Wednesday night, January 16, we began a study of eschatology in the adult Bible study that takes place during the AWANA, JOLT, and Chi Alpha ministries. In this post, I'd like to share a summary of what we focused on to introduce the topic.

We began by taking a closer look at Genesis 12:1-3, which is known as "the Abrahamic Covenant." Let me encourage you to open your Bible to these verses as you continue reading this post.

In the Abrahamic Covenant, God made a number of unconditional promises to Abraham, which can be organized into three categories: land, seed, and blessing. The promises made regarding land are repeated and refined (in other words, the specific boundaries of the land are identified more precisely) throughout the rest of the Pentateuch. For example, in Genesis 15:18-21, the Lord points to the Euphrates River on one side and "the river of Egypt" on the other as the outer boundaries of the land He had in mind. All of the promises regarding the land are grouped together in what theologians call the Palestinian Covenant. The word Palestinian is used because the land is the Land of Palestine.

The promises made regarding a seed or descendants for Abraham involve the Lord's provision of Isaac, and from Isaac, Jacob and his descendants in the form of Israel as a nation. These promises also have a very specific focus on God's provision of the Messiah, who would be a descendant of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob through King David. The Lord spells out some of these specifics in 2 Samuel 7:11-16 in what theologians call the Davidic Covenant. Yet another aspect of the Lord's promises regarding offspring for Abraham has to do with people like us, who have become believers in Christ (the Messiah) and thus "children" of Abraham through faith, rather than through physical lineage. Romans 4 and Galatians 3-4 are two key passages which make reference to this.

Finally, the promises made regarding blessing on Abraham and upon "all peoples of the earth" through Abraham focus our attention specifically on the new birth that comes through faith in what is called the New Covenant. Jeremiah 31:31-34 and Ezekiel 36:24-32 are key passages wherein significant elements of the New Covenant (namely; new birth, a new heart, spiritual cleansing, the indwelling Spirit of God, new obedience, and new possession of the land for Israel).

Now then, with this background in mind, there are several observations to make about a study of end times:

1. The rest of human history, from the giving of the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12:1-3 on to the very end of the end times is the story of God's activity among men to fulfill his promises.
2. We believe God's promises will be literally fulfilled. There is no reason to believe otherwise. Furthermore, the promises would have been meaningless to Abraham personally, if God had some mysterious or spiritual fulfillment in mind, but not a literal fulfillment. Obviously, we know now a lot more about what God in mind than Abraham knew then, but that doesn't take away from the literalness of God's promises to Abraham. Furthermore, Jesus referred to the necessity of resurrecting Abraham because he died before all of the promises could be fulfilled (see Matthew 22:23-32). Hebrews 11:8-19 also lays this out very clearly.
3. The promises themselves are quite simple. The working out of them in human history is not. It is complex and involves both the individual histories of men and the mega-histories of nations. Nevertheless, God is working in both, weaving together all things to bring out fulfillment of his promises in the end.
4. The promises contain both conditional and unconditional elements. For example, the promise to provide land permanently is unconditional and therefore permanent possession of the land is the certain future of Abraham and his descendants someday. The promise to provide land is also conditional in that the people of Israel was required by God to live before in obedience in order to possess the land and guarantee their security in it. Consequently, there are numerous examples in the Bible of Israel being dispossessed of the land due to disobedience. So, at any particular time in human history, in reference to any particular generation of Israel as a nation, there was/is an obligation to live in faithful obedience to God in order to experience the blessings of living in the land. The unconditional nature of the promises will come into play at the very end of the age, when God causes his people to experience a national regeneration involving faith in the Messiah and all of the blessings of the New Covenant. At that moment, due to God's provisions in the New Covenant, that generation will indeed be qualified to permanently possess the land along with others from previous generations who lived in faithful obedience in anticipation of resurrection.
5. We know now that one of the threads of fulfillment is the calling out of Gentiles into a Church, which we refer to as The New Testament Church, The Body of Christ, The Universal Church, et Al.
6. The study of the end times is a study of what God has already done to fulfill the promises he made, along with what he says he will do in the future (including what he will do with the Church and Israel), coupled with other things he says will happen or conditions he says will exist at the time.