📚 3 Misconceptions Many Christians Have About Bible Prophecy & the End Times:

❌ These are fringe topics emphasized by snake oil salesmen & rapture prognosticators. They are not relevant in the everyday life of the Church.

✅ The Bible is roughly 27% prophecy, & many of these relate to the future. It’s impossible to be a biblical church without any emphasis on eschatology (I.e., study of the end times) & future prophetic events.

❌ Even if end-times prophecy matters, the main thing we are supposed to gather from the prophetic texts is a general message concerning hope, God’s final victory, the resurrection, & the defeat of evil. Delving into minutiae on the Rapture, the Antichrist, future events in Israel etc. is a distraction and biblically unjustifiable.

✅ While the big picture is important, there is a lot of detail in the prophetic corpus as well. These details are there because they validate the extent to which God can predict the future, & understanding the details will lead to the salvation of many souls in the last days. We need a both/and approach here: always coming back to the larger macro-redemptive & messianic themes, while simultaneously  respecting God’s propensity for detail & specificity.

❌ Bible prophecy & the end times are only relevant for the final generation. Since Jesus may not come in my lifetime, I don’t need to worry about it.

✅ Peter tells us that every Christian should fix their hope “completely” on the Second Coming of Christ (1:13), regardless of timing. The return of Jesus is supposed to be the driver of biblical discipleship. Furthermore, even if we do not live through the end of the end, it is still the responsibility of every generation to disciple the next in the truth of God’s word. What we teach about prophecy & the end times today will impact the final generation in a positive way, & bc we do not know the “times or the seasons” or the “day or the hour,” we should all be prepared as if we are the final generation.

👍 Many people have shunned prophecy because of the abuses and sensational madness associated with this field of study. Others are put off by the alleged complexities. But “abuse does not take away use,” as the saying goes, & complexity does not excuse total neglect. To be a biblical Christian is to take an interest in prophecy & the end times.

🔥 As the Apostle John says, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” (Rev. 19:10) 

-Travis M. Snow