Christianity in the End Times

INTRODUCTION

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Our entire end-times discussion series will not be about timetables, or who the antichrist might be, or a secret tool that makes us feel we are the enlightened special few. That is a false safety, trusting in our own knowledge and preparation, when these times will require something different from us. Instead, we will look closer to home and hold a mirror up to ourselves, to face the state of our own hearts, so that we are pliable in God's hands should He seek to shape us.

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Let’s state our purpose plainly as we begin: We are here to bring the comfort God offers us in these times. Not a pretended comfort, not a story the Bible does not tell to make ourselves feel safe, not the comfort of knowing all the answers — but the truer comfort of drawing closer to God and hearing His message and promises to us. Because He will never fail He is our sure and strong tower of safety. This discussion will challenge us, but if we allow the message to do its work, it will also draw us closer to Him than we have ever allowed ourselves to go. Our whole aim is to root you so far down under His wing that you can look at hard things without flinching — not because the things are not hard, but because He is so near, and so strong, and so good, that in Him you can face all things. 

Let's open our discussion here, by simply setting the Bible’s own portrait of the last-days church beside the picture we have of ourselves today — to look honestly, at where we currently stand.

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Section One:

The Nature of Deception

 

Sit a moment longer with where Jesus began His warning of the last days. He opened by naming the one thing that, by its very nature, those caught in it cannot see.

 

Think about what deception is. If a lie announced itself it would not deceive anyone; the whole power of a deception is that, from the inside, it does not feel like deception at all — it feels exactly like clarity, like a truth discovered. The person who is least aware of the deception is the one under its power, the one who is sure he is completely safe. And that is precisely why the Lord’s first sign is such a sobering one. So if He warned that this age would be marked, before all else, by deception — and we feel confident, untroubled, sure that we see clearly — should His warning alone not be reason enough for us to stop, look closer and allow Him to search our hearts?

 

This is a heavy question we must ask ourselves: Is our untroubled confidence truly safety, or is it a symptom of the very thing He warned us against. And how would we find the answer? Simply by searching deeper into what the Scriptures say, because:

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"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" — 2 Timothy 3:16

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If Jesus put deception as the first sign and underlined it two more times, giving it more emphasis than any other warning, then He means to protect us by His words, not to make us anxious; but watchful instead. 

 

So let us take the time now, and the courage, to look at three traits of the church of our day, and how it relates to the Bible.

 

Section Two:

Is Progressive Revelation a Sign of Progress?

 

All around us the church of our times says that we are moving into fresh revelation — new truth, new wineskins, deeper light, a progressive unveiling that the old saints either never had, or lost somewhere along the way. And because of this, the old understandings can be quietly set down: we have outgrown them; something fuller has come. It sounds like advance. It sounds like a people pressing further up and further in. It sounds exciting.

 

But now lay it beside what the Scriptures actually say will mark the church as the end draws near — and the difference becomes hard to miss. The Bible speaks of the last-days church as having little tolerance for sound doctrine.

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“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” — 2 Timothy 4:3-4

 

Even worse, the end will be marked as a time when some will depart from the faith:

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“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith…” — 1 Timothy 4:1

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“…the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and… our gathering together unto Him… shall not come, except there come a falling away first…” — 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3​

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What do these verses reveal about the church in the end? That it will seek a more convenient doctrine, that it will gather around those teachers who will say the soothing thing at the cost of the truth. And that there will be a departing from the true faith. Do we tolerate a difficult message? Will we allow God's word to cut or challenge us if that is for our good? Is it even unsettling to read this short piece?

 

The Bible's warning is that in the end there will be those who are susceptible to deception precisely:

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“…because they received not the love of the truth…” — 2 Thessalonians 2:10

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Not that they could not find the truth, but that they chose not to love it; that when the truth was costly or uncomfortable, they had no appetite for it, and reached instead for something easier to swallow. And here is the quiet danger in our “new revelation” language: it hands us permission. It lets us set down whatever old, plain word has grown inconvenient, to take up whatever is fresher and lighter and asks less of us — and call the whole exchange progress. 

 

Section Three:

The Church's Destiny in Times of Trouble

 

So, to set a concrete example of these fresher and lighter doctrines in view, let's take the church's expectations of the end-times. Today most teachings on the subject will centre around one of two alternatives:

• One says the church will be triumphant: she will rise, take the culture and the high ground, sweep the nations into a great end-time revival, and present a world all but won before the King returns.

• The other says not to worry about the dark days ahead; we shall be lifted clean out of it before any real trouble lands.

Triumph on the one hand, a safe rescue on the other.

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We have already said this discussion will not be focused on timelines or interpretations, so we need to take one obstacle out of the way here. We are not debating who holds the right interpretation, we aim here to face the scriptures and our own hearts honestly. We can hold a theological view about the rapture because we believe it is God's truth, and we can hold the same position for a very different reason — because we prefer to believe God will spare us from every suffering. The first is a reading of Scripture in good conscience. The second is not a doctrine at all, but a posture of the heart. The question underneath it all is very simple: not whether the church is to endure or to escape, but are we willing to go whichever way​ the Lord should choose to take us — the gentle road, if He grants it, or the one laden with trouble, if He does not — trusting that the way He leads is good because He is good. That is the question we must face. Would we still follow Him if He was leading us into the fire? Or has our faith become the kind that seeks only to follow a Lord who offers comforts?

 

While these two popular teachings of the day seem to be opposites, if you look more closely they are saying the same thing. Both quietly remove the troubles from the Christian’s future. The one expects to be too victorious to be tried; the other expects to be gone before the trial; and both arrive at a church that never has to be refined.

 

Is that the picture the Scriptures consistently paint? ​

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“…we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” — Acts 14:22

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“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you.” — 1 Peter 4:12

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“…that the trial of your faith… though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory…” — 1 Peter 1:7

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The same fire that destroys chaff purifies gold, and God means His church to come out shining, without spot or wrinkle. How is she to be made so pure if she is never refined? 

 

Of course we would rather hear that we will triumph than that we will be tried; of course we would rather hear that we will escape than that we will need to endure. The exemption from the fire is always the more pleasant option. But are we so concerned with hearing the word we prefer that we will not listen to the word God gives? Will we quietly close our Bibles and instead seek out those teachers who soothe us with the more comfortable thing, and tell ourselves that we are still so busy with God that we have not strayed at all?

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A heart that fully trusts Him says, before it ever knows the road it will need to walk, Thy will be done. But if the bare thought of the hard road makes us recoil — if we find we could be at peace only in a future that spares us — then the trouble was never really with the doctrine. It is that our trust could not reach beyond our comfort. The recoil is the revealing thing: it shows whether we have come to trust Him completely, or merely the hope that we shall be spared. And even if we are to be spared the trial, the hard truth that our trust is not complete is worth knowing about ourselves now, so we may set it right.

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Let us take this discussion one step deeper still.

 

Section Four:

Rich or Wretched?

 

Take a look now at the Lord's words to the church of Laodicea in the book of Revelation:

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“…thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” — Revelation 3:17

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The tragedy of Laodicea is that it is so completely blind to its own condition. It believes it has everything. It is a confident, successful, thriving church. And yet the Lord says: 

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“…thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.” — Revelation 3:16

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Lukewarmness is what happens when a thing stops being different, stops keeping its own temperature and quietly settles to match its surroundings. A lukewarm church has come to room temperature with the world. It has taken the world’s measures of success — the shepherd becomes the CEO; the size of the auditorium, the numbers and the influence, are the gauge of its progress. The polish of the show says it has reached a higher standard. It orders itself by the world’s models, runs on the world’s wisdom, prizes what the world prizes, until you could scarcely tell, except for the name of things, where the world ends and the church begins. And that, not gross wickedness, is the condition of the church in Laodicea. The danger in lukewarmness is not that the church becomes monstrous. It is that it becomes comfortable — indistinguishable, agreeable, room-temperature, and entirely sure it needs nothing.

 

Set that beside the first church — poor, often hunted, owning little, burning hot, faithful unto death and unmistakably other than the world around it — and you feel the force of our opening question. Would they know us? Would the believers who sang in prisons and went gladly to lions recognise, as the same faith, a Christianity so at home in the world that it can no longer hold its own temperature?

 

Section Five:

The Thread That Ties Them

 

Stand back and notice how these three pictures are one:

• The new revelation that lets us set down the costly old word

• The expected triumph or escape that lets us skip the fire

• The rich, need-nothing church at home in the world

These are not three unrelated faults. They are three faces of a single thing. Each one is the more comfortable belief. Each one quietly removes a hardness: the hardness of an uncomfortable truth, the hardness of a refining fire, the hardness of being unlike the world.

 

And a church that has, on every front, exchanged the costly thing for the comfortable thing, while remaining wholly untroubled and sure it sees clearly — that is not some far-off danger. That is the very portrait Jesus sketched when He said, before all other signs, take heed that no man deceive you. The deception He warned of was never going to feel like deception. It was going to feel like being rich, and increased with goods, and in need of nothing.

 

From Knowing About to Entering In:

The Fourth in the Fire

 

And now we come to where all of this has been quietly heading — not to dread, and not to a superior shudder at how far others have fallen, but to a door, and a fire, and a hope large enough to walk into the worst of it singing.

 

Notice how the Lord speaks to that lukewarm, self-satisfied church. After all His words — wretched, poor, blind, naked — He says this tenderest of sentences:

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“As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten… Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.” — Revelation 3:19-20

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Take in the wonder of that for a moment. The church that said it needed nothing — He has not walked away from it. He is standing at its door, knocking, waiting to be let back into the very house that has grown so comfortable without Him. He rebukes because He loves; the hard word is the kindness of a Bridegroom who will not leave His bride asleep. He knocks, and He waits, and He will come in and sup with any heart in any church in any age that simply hears His voice and opens.​

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We need not fear the fire when He is near.

 

There is a beautiful picture of this in the Bible. Long ago in Babylon, a king named Nebuchadnezzar set up a great golden image and commanded everyone to bow down before it. Three young Israelites would not betray their God to worship the idol, whatever it might cost them. It enraged the king, and he ordered the furnace heated seven times hotter than before, had the three of them bound, and thrown into the flames.

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Three went into the fire — yet the king leapt to his feet astonished, for he saw four men walking loose in the flames, unharmed, and the fourth was "like the Son of God" (Daniel 3:25). He had come into the furnace and met them there. And when they stepped out, there was not so much as the smell of smoke on them; the only thing the fire had burned was the ropes that had bound them. That is our glorious hope in a single picture — His presence, no matter where the road may lead.

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“When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee… when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.” — Isaiah 43:2

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“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” — John 16:33

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He means to draw us close and carry us through whatever the days ahead may hold, to something infinitely greater than we can imagine. And every moment on the way there:​

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 “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust” — Psalm 91:4

 

He is still knocking. Let's open the door, and our hearts, and take this conversation further still.

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So we have come only far enough in this discussion to hopefully be willing to let the Lord peer more deeply into our hearts and reveal where our faith and our trust can be made stronger in Him. Let’s continue to Part 2, where we will look more closely at what has changed within the church over the last few decades — and how a faith can be transformed without anyone noticing.

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