Last Things Revealed

Hope for Life and the Everafter

Jim Dixon

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780830859139
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

With all the doomsday fanatics and psychics predicting the end times, different interpretations of the Bible creating wild speculation, and pop culture spinning a story full of dark drama and fear what do we do and where do we go? In Last Things Revealed Dr. Jim Dixon addresses these issues thoughtfully and carefully from his years of experience teaching on these subjects. As a passionate teacher and historian, he weaves in history, historical terms, and current events to back up each lesson from Scripture. While other books tend to focus only on what the end times will look like, Dr. Dixon goes back and looks at relations between important people groups that he feels will have a significant story in the times to come—such as Islam and Israel. He looks at what we can learn from events and people in the Bible that are like stories out of the headlines of today's news, leaving us with a both a deep understanding and hope as we live forward with confidence.

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INTRODUCTION:

AN ANTIDOTE TO ANXIETY

The world did not end last year, but you’d never know it from viewing some of the popular end-of-the-world movies playing in theaters. The Road, based on the acclaimed Cormac McCarthy novel, follows an unnamed father and son on their desperate search of food and signs of civilization—in the barren wasteland of the United States, which, as the rest of the world, had been destroyed by an unknown catastrophe.

The film 2012, released on a Friday the 13th in late 2009, portrays what would happen if ancient Mayan “prophecies” of the world ending on December 21, 2012, finally came true. According to The Washington Post, the movie’s promotional campaign inadvertently scared many people: “Sony has set up a fake website for something called the Institute for Human Continuity—http://www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org—that uses scientific-sounding language to detail the upcoming shredding, torching, and obliterating of the world from so many directions it makes your head spin.”

And, The Book of Eli features Denzel Washington as a loner whose mission is to preserve the last remaining Bible in the world, nearly destroyed decades earlier by war.

Cultural critics struggled to explain these movies. One writer explored “cinema’s apocalyptic obsession.” Another wrote an article entitled “An End without End: Catastrophe Cinema in the Age of Crisis.”

Throughout history, people have wondered how the world will end. These concerns have perhaps been amplified in recent years by the worldwide economic collapse, the rise of global terrorism, and the rapid cultural changes brought about by advances in technology, medicine, and the Internet.

But fears of the world’s end are not new. In 1947, a group of atomic scientists created “the Doomsday Clock.” On this symbolic clock, the closer the hands were to midnight, the closer we were to being blown to smithereens by an atomic bomb, so these scientists predicted. The clock was created during the Cold War, which pitted the United States against the then-Soviet Union. In 1947, the clock hands were set to seven minutes before midnight, which meant the scientists believed our world was on the verge of self-destruction. In 2010, the clock’s hands were moved ahead to six minutes before midnight.

Everyday Apocalypse

My wife, Barb, and I came of age during the 1960s, a tumultuous decade that made many people feel the end was near. Those of us who lived in the ’60s saw a president, other government officials, and social reformers such as Martin Luther King Jr. shot dead in their prime. We saw the growth of a large, youth countercultural movement that called into question many things the establishment assumed made life worth living.

As did many others, Barb attended lectures Hal Lindsey held at the University of California, Los Angeles. Lindsey’s book The Late Great Planet Earth (1970) sold 30 million copies. It tapped into people’s anxieties and even intensified them by asserting that the second coming of Christ would happen soon, probably no later than 1988.

More recently, the Left Behind novels, which altogether sold more than 50 million copies, fascinated many people. The Left Behind books do a good job showing us how one particular view of the end times might work out. But these books present only one view. That’s important to remember. We shouldn’t choose our position on any important issue based only on a series of novels.

Apocalyptic themes are explored not only in Christian books but also in mainstream novels. Jean Hegland’s Into the Forest tells what happened when two girls try to grow up on their own after society had fallen apart around them. For some people, reading books or seeing movies about these issues is little more than entertainment. But for others, these only add to their worries about the future.

Questions about the End

How and when the world will end troubles all people, no matter what they believe or don’t believe about God and his Word. For Christians, questions and arguments about the end times revolve around a long list of variously interpreted Bible passages. These controversial passages discuss events that will happen to the human race and our planet in the future.

So, it was only natural that members of Cherry Hills Community Church—the Denver-area church where I’ve served as pastor for more than twenty-five years—raised questions about the end times following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Those events caused many Americans anxiety about a small but committed group of Muslims who were determined to bring our nation to its knees. The congregation wanted to understand what God had to say about the end of the world—and what they should do about it. In talking to people in our church, I made a shocking discovery: in all my years as pastor of Cherry Hills, I had never preached on these topics.

You may find that surprising, since some churches frequently focus on the end times. In fact, some preachers concentrate on these topics to the exclusion of other biblical matters. I think that’s taking things too far. But we had the opposite problem; we had discussed it too little. I had not given these matters the attention they deserved. So, I determined to change that. After all, a significant number of Bible texts address these issues.

We scheduled far in advance a sermon series on the end times. I reviewed all the relevant passages and studied what leading biblical scholars have concluded. I also looked at some of the bestselling books on the subject. Then I preached a series of eight sermons called “The Last Things.”

The response to this sermon series was more powerful than I could have anticipated. Many long-time members found new insights into their faith. Others who had never been to our church attended the series. Many of those came to faith in Christ when they learned more of what the Bible says about the end times.

The reaction was so strong we even scheduled a series of question-and-answer sessions, which allowed people to ask about some of the issues we did not have time to address in my sermons. The rarely discussed uncertainties and concerns of people had a chance to surface and be addressed. It was a wonderful time of spiritual growth and even healing for some who had grown fearful of the future.

When the series concluded, I was quite content to move on to the next sermon series on our schedule. But church members and leaders had another idea. They urged me not to pack up my notes and file them away. Instead, they wanted me to write a book that could help people outside the walls of our church make sense of these issues. With some 200,000 books published in the United States every year, I had to ask why we needed another one!

But they persuaded me that the way this topic had been handled in our church was unique and provided something Christians elsewhere needed to hear. Instead of promoting only one approach to controversial passages and ignoring the views held by other Christians, we gave all valid interpretations a fair hearing. And, instead of focusing on things that are marginal or merely frightening, we emphasized things at the core of Christian teaching about our hope for the future.

Now, years after people encouraged me to start this process, you hold that book in your hands. My prayer is that it will help you separate the wheat from the chaff in all the speculation about the end times.

God’s Word: Our Antidote

Many people experience anxiety about the future. Some worry about the threats of terrorists and nuclear weapons. They wonder whether this battle or that weapon will bring about the end of the world. Will human beings blow themselves up, or will other forces end millennia of life on this blue-green planet? In a sense, questions such as these are at the heart of the Bible.

And, many people are confused about the end times. They may have an idea of what Hal Lindsey wrote in 1970 or what Nostradamus predicted centuries ago. But they are confused about what the Bible says. That’s not surprising. Many Bible passages address these issues, but it’s a challenge to interpret and harmonize them all.

In this book, I share with you some of what I’ve learned in my decades of studying, discussing, and teaching what the Bible says about “the Last Things.” My primary goal is to reduce your confusion and anxiety by helping you unlock the teachings of God’s Word. To achieve that goal takes an uncommon approach: we will look at the key arguments of a variety of interpretations to find those most in line with biblical teaching. In doing so, we’ll emphasize our hope for the future.

I pray you’ll learn several things.

First, I want you to grow in your understanding of the issues involved and in the Bible’s core teachings on these matters.

Second, I want you to transcend any fear you may feel regarding end times and grow in your sense of peace about your relationship to God and his redemptive work in our world.

And third, I want you to grow confident in your faith and in your commitment to reach out to others with the love of God in the time we have left.

Agree to Disagree

Robert Gundry is a respected Bible scholar who taught at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, for more than forty years. He recently told me that publishers could not distribute his latest book on eschatology (study of the Last Things) to Christian bookstores in the United States because the book came to conclusions that some people reject. In his book, Robert did not promote anything out of the theological mainstream; he merely offered views on the end times that differed from the current majority views.

Episodes such as this worry me, because I think such theological censorship fails to serve the needs of thinking Christians who want to investigate differing interpretations of the Bible. A rigid approach results in the animosity that sometimes erupts among Christians who disagree. Even the most knowledgeable and committed Christians may hold opposing views on these complex issues. I believe we should treat differing opinions on these matters with respect. Christianity is about truth; it is also about love. In John 17, Jesus prayed that his disciples would be one.

I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:11–23 TNIV)

So far, that prayer has not been answered.

I hope that my teachings and writings focus on the important things and allow debate on the peripheral things. The fact that Christ will return to Earth to judge the world is an important doctrinal truth. The precise timing of his return is something on which we can disagree—without having to declare each other enemies of the faith.

In our world, I see many challenges that Christians could help solve. There are social problems and health issues that require all of us to hold hands and march into battle together. There are spiritual battles brought against us by Satan and his demonic forces. But if believers constantly bicker with one another, we will be too weak and too divided to stand together and do what we need to do as the hands and feet of Jesus in our day. If we start by shooting each other, the battle is lost before we begin.

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