Introduction
Any study of the End Times can create a variety of questions, concerns, and even confusion in our minds. Sometimes it is difficult to see how obscure passages, distant places, and unfamiliar symbols can have any significance for our lives.
After all, if we can’t understand what the Bible is teaching, how in the world can it have any relevance to what we are experiencing today?
I don’t want you to miss the rich truth God has provided for us in the Bible.
To help you understand and appreciate this topic, I have compiled a list of questions and answers to the most frequently asked questions about biblical prophecy. I hope these answers about current events, the Rapture, the Tribulation, the Second Coming, and the new heaven and the new earth will help you live with confidence and hope in a time that is filled with all kinds of uncertainty and trouble.
We must remember that prophecy is important to God and He desires us to understand His plan for the future. There are more than nine hundred prophecies in the Bible concerning the second coming of Jesus Christ—nearly three times as many compared to His first coming! In the Bible, God has taken great care to communicate this to us in a way we can understand.
Jesus tells us to keep our eyes open so we are not fooled by the signs indicating that the End Times are near. As we get closer to the End Times, many people are going to claim to be the Messiah and claim to have the answers for a troubled world. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us to expect a period of ceaseless, unending, terrible war. It appears that we are already preparing for this time as fifty percent of all research scientists today are involved in arms development and there is at least one military weapon and four thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman, and child on earth.
Finally, there will be more and more disease and devastation. Today, as you read this, millions of people in the world are being afflicted by insufficient food, the spread of new diseases, and the devastating effects of natural disasters. As we get closer to the End Times, there will be more and more famine. There will also be an increase in earthquakes and natural disasters. Christ also spoke of pestilence: the spread of new diseases. Our world will experience a spate of tragic new diseases that we will be unable to control.
Seeing these signs played out in the newspaper and on television, over the Internet and even in our own lives, can cause despair, anxiety, and confusion. When Jesus tells us to open our eyes, He does so in order to encourage us to gaze upon Him—not because this will cause all of the world’s problems (and ours) to disappear but because He is the Prince of Peace. In the pages that follow, I encourage you to study God’s plan for the future with me as I open the Scriptures. I am confident you will find, as I have, that studying and understanding the events of tomorrow will help you live with confidence and hope today.