Question #1
April 14th, 2008 by Dan Waugh
This Sunday night, after a message where I finally came out and explained my understanding of the book of Revelation and the how the future of history will unfold, we had a time of q&a. Sunday night produced a flurry of great questions about the book of Revelation. I’ll try to answer as many as my time and competency allow for!
Question #1: “if you believe in amillennialism, do you think people can have visions of the end times and that it’s near?”
Answer: My answer isn’t really unique to or tied to my amillennialism. I think there are those who are premillennial and postmillennial that would agree with my answer, and I’m sure there are also those from the premill and the postmill camps who would disagree with me.
I do think people can have visions of the end times - John, the seer, who wrote the book of Revelation did. Beyond that, I’m very skeptical of people who claim to have some insider knowledge of end times stuff - like who the ‘antichrist’ is, etc. Historically, those visions have never panned out so well, and they seem to undermine the sufficiency of Scripture (if God had wanted us to know more, he would’ve told us more in his word).
Do I believe the ‘end times’ are near. The answer is definitely yes; in fact, I would say we’re living in them. However, I believe the same thing could be said of the 1st century Christians as well. In other words, I believe, the ‘end times’ is a phrase that covers the whole period from Christ’s ascension into heaven to his return to earth in glory. The New Testament repeatedly refers to this age as ‘the last days’ or the ‘last times’. Acts 2, quoting from the Old Test. prophet Joel, says that in the last days God will pour out his Spirit on people - which happened in Acts 2! Hebrews 1 says that ‘in these last days’ God has spoken to us through his Son.
If the question was meant to ask, and I think it was, do I think Christ is coming back soon, the answer is I don’t know. Christians in every century have thought that maybe it would be in their lifetime, but I really don’t know. Here’s what I do know, we’re closer to Christ’s return now than we were 100 years ago (or 10 seconds ago). I do think that we are approaching the end of the churches missions endeavor (defined narrowly as taking the gospel to unreached peoples). Some experts estimate that within 25-50 years the gospel will have penetrated all unreached people groups. Thats amazing, and certainly seems to be an indicator that Christ’s return could be on the horizon, but I am unwilling to be any more dogmatic about it than that.
