Introduction The Book of Ezekiel almost did not survive. The Talmud tells us that some sages wanted to hide it. Its description of the temple seemed to disagree with the Torah. According to the story, a scholar named Hananiah ben Hezekiah saved it. He sat in an upper room with 300 jars of oil and … Read more
Introduction Few books of the Bible have shaped end times belief like Daniel. It is short. It has only twelve chapters. Yet it has been studied, argued over and treasured for more than two thousand years. Here is a striking fact. The book was written in two languages. Part of it is in Hebrew. A … Read more
The theological system that gave the world the Rapture, the Antichrist as a singular end-times world dictator, the seven-year Tribulation, the rebuilt Third Temple in Jerusalem as an eschatological countdown trigger, and the neat sequential prophetic timetable that ties them all together was developed in the 1830s by a small, theologically radical, deeply earnest group … Read more
Few passages in the entire Bible have generated as much sustained theological debate as the twentieth chapter of the Book of Revelation. In six verses, the text describes an angel binding Satan with a great chain and casting him into a bottomless pit for a thousand years, while the souls of martyrs and faithful believers … Read more
Few words in human history carry as much weight as Armageddon. The moment you say it, people know what you mean. The end. The final war. The last chapter of civilization. It shows up in news headlines, disaster movies, political speeches, and religious sermons all around the world. It is one of the most searched … Read more
No book in the Bible has been read more, argued over more, or misunderstood more than the Book of Revelation. It sits at the end of the Christian scriptures like a sealed door that everyone wants to open, and for two thousand years people have been trying to force that door with every tool available: … Read more
Imagine the scene that has been described in tens of millions of copies of the Left Behind novels. Planes falling from the sky because pilots have vanished mid-flight. Highways full of driverless cars. Hospitals where surgeons have disappeared from operating theatres. Every Christian in the world suddenly and silently removed from the earth, leaving behind … Read more
Here is a fact that surprises most people who hear it for the first time. The word antichrist appears exactly five times in the entire Bible. Every single one of those appearances is in two short letters written by the Apostle John. Not one of them appears in the Book of Revelation. Not one appears … Read more
Here is a number that tends to stop people cold when they hear it for the first time. In the Bible, references to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ outnumber references to his first coming by eight to one. Scholars who have counted them place the total at around 1,845 individual references spread across both … Read more
What Is Christian Eschatology? If you want to understand why large portions of the Western world have been fascinated, frightened, and occasionally paralyzed by questions about the end of history, you need to understand Christian eschatology. It is, by almost any measure, the most widely discussed, most culturally influential, and most hotly debated end-times tradition … Read more