In 2020, one of the emphases of the Spirit will be eschatological events, because God wants His betrothed, the genuine Church He is building, to understand that Jesus’ return is imminent–HE IS COMING BACK SOON! Eschatology is the knowledge and study of endtimes.
The Book of Revelation coupled with the Book of Daniel hold the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the endtimes. The Spirit-inspired words with which the Book of Revelation begins explicitly reveals the reason God revealed it to His Son, who revealed it via an angel to the Apostle John, who was commanded to convey it to the Church: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to Him to show to His bondservants the things which must shortly take place….” Eschatology consists of “the things which must shortly (soon) take place….” Revelation means the unveiling or uncovering of that which has been heretofore concealed, or a “mystery.” God instructed John to memorialize these things in a book in order that the events of the endtimes be revealed in an understandable fashion to the Body of Christ, particularly believers “upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11); i.e., believers actually living in the endtimes.
The Book of Revelation is comprised of THREE divisions:
1) What John was shown (SAW) in the Revelation of Christ [Chapter 1];
2) the things that ARE (i.e., present: the current matters relating to the seven churches of Asia Minor over which John was the overseer, which also was a type of the entire church age) [Chapters 2,3];
3) the things that SHALL BE (future) or shall occur following the church age [Chapters 4-22].
The third and final division (Chapters 4-22) consists of ELEVEN future occurrences that can be described thusly:
1) The Rapture (the appearance of Christ in the clouds in the air to catch-up the Bride of Christ, the church);
2) the revelation of Christ seated upon His Throne of Sovereignty in Heaven;
3) the revelation and rise of the antichrist;
4) the seven-year tribulation
5) the 21 judgments of God upon the unbelieving/unsaved world;
6) the Battle of Armageddon;
7) the Return of Christ to establish His Kingdom upon earth (a.k.a., the Second Coming);
8) the utter defeat and destruction of the antichrist and all God’s enemies on the earth;
9) the binding of the devil for a thousand years;
10) the Great White Throne Judgment and final disposition of the devil, his fallen angels, and unsaved humans;
11) the future Eternity; i.e., The New Heaven and Earth.
There is no plausible reason to believe that the God of Order did not show John these events and tell him to write them down in anything but chronological order.
There are no references in Scripture indicating the timing any of these occurrence will occur, but rather, Jesus declared it is not for humans “to know the times and epochs which the father has fixed by His own authority” (Acts 1:7) and that not even the Son (Jesus) Himself knows the timing of the occurrences revealed in the Revelation, including the “trigger-event” in terms of timing–The Rapture–and Jesus stated categorically,”But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone” (Mat. 24:36), and we should, “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming” (Mat. 24:42)! Moreover, the Apostle Paul said “that the day of the Lord (which is not the Rapture, but the day of the Lord’s judgments upon the unsaved) will come just like a thief in the night” (1 Thes. 5:2).
The only event mentioned in the Revelation that has time associated with it is The Seven Year Tribulation that will occur over a literal seven-year period, which coincides with the third or final time period of Daniel’s Seventy Weeks (Dan. 9:24-27), which delineates 70 “sevens” or 490 years of God’s dealing with Israel, the first two periods consisting of 483 years collectively that concluded with Christ’s crucifixion, pausing God’s prophetic time clock, which starts ticking again at the commencement of the Seven Year Tribulation. From the Cross to the Rapture God has not been dealing with the Jewish people as a nation, or as a whole, but the same way He deals with non-Jewish people: as “whosoevers will,” meaning as individuals, that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, Jesus, shall be saved (Acts 2:21, Rom. 10:13)!
Why does God want us to know about these endtimes occurrences revealed to believers in His Word? Paul revealed the answer: “Therefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thes. 4:18). For the true believer, the knowledge of these future events are comforting!
