I thought the end times were about to come upon us and slowly came to believe the thing I forbid myself from thinking, that the end times have already happened.
I’ve often heard about how we need to be prepared because we are living in the last days. The increase of earthquakes, the blood moons, Israel becoming their own state, chips being put in the hand. In the near future the world governments will unite into a new Rome and the Jewish temple will be rebuilt. Then the end will come. There will be horrible things happen to us, although perhaps we will be raptured before it all happens.
I realized it wasn’t healthy for me to keep being apprehensive about the end times. At first I was against going to college. What was the point of studying if Jesus was about to return and we were all going to heaven?
Revelation was a fantastic book and I wondered what it would all look like. It gave me the clues to how the world was going to end. The rest of the world would be caught off guard but I would know what was happening. I wouldn’t be like the pharisees. When Jesus came the first time, they weren’t expecting him not to come the way he did so they rejected him.
But when Jesus comes again, I knew I would be prepared.
Soon means a thousand years
These beliefs weren’t without their problems, there were several questions in the Bible my church couldn’t answer, and frankly didn’t take the time to worry about. I was encouraged to have faith that God was coming soon even if I couldn’t answer every verse.
Of course, we saw the many verses stating the end times were going to happen soon. My youth leaders let me know in God’s eyes soon could mean a 1000 years. So we really have no idea when it will happen.
“Why bother predicting the end times at all then?” I wondered. I stopped worrying so much about the end of the world and decided it was better to go to college. If soon meant thousands of years, why would I think it was about to happen to us. Of course the idea of the end times excited me, and I prayed for it, but I felt it was better to live a normal life and wish that he would appear in my lifetime.
The questions I couldn’t answer
However, when doing an honest Bible reading one can’t help but wonder what Jesus meant when he said:
Matthew 16:27-28 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
When I asked my mom about it she said it may be talking about the transfiguration that would happen a few days later (Matthew 17). That didn’t explain the part, “and then he shall reward every man according to his works.” My mom politely admitted she didn’t know. That was the last time I questioned it. Sometimes we are supposed to have faith in things we don’t understand.
A few years later, we were in a young men’s bible study when we encountered this verse.
John 21:22-23 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.” Because of this, the rumor spread among the believers that this disciple would not die. But Jesus did not say that he would not die; he only said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you?”
When I asked my youth pastor about it, he said, “I have no idea, maybe John is still alive today.”
That was an inspiring thought, “Could John still be roaming the earth today?” But I couldn’t accept it.
I decided there were some things about the scriptures I would never understand and gave up studying the end times.
How I learned some of revelation had already happened
Right before my 20s, one elder of our church, Jared Black, a man of high respect, gave a bible study on revelations. For several weeks, we meet in an unfinished office with a comfortable group of people ready to absorb his knowledge. He showed how many of the events seemed to have been fulfilled around the 1st centry. I was intrigued by this theory. The beast with 7 heads and 10 horns represented Rome on the 7 hills with 7 caesars, or 10 if you count the 3 in the civil war. The mark of the beast was gematria, an art form in Hebrew and Greek of that time for converting a name into a number. The 666 mapped out to Nero Ceasar.
The evidence was convincing, I realized the significance the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD in Jesus’s prophecy.
Luke 21:5-6 Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
In 70AD, when Roman army invaded Jerusalem, they wanted the gold that was layered between each brick of the temple, so they took down every stone and collected the gold inbetween by melting them. Each stone was huge so this took great effort.
This lead to other questions, and eventually made me a partial preterist (someone who believes part of the book of revelation has already happened).
In a famous passage, Jesus describes the fall of the temple, great signs in the heavens, his return on the clouds and finishes the whole section with “this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”
Luke 21:7, 31-33 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
… 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near. “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
These were events I had traditionally ascribed to the end times and revelation. Then, I began to wonder if Jesus had come symbolically in 70AD when these things happened (see Are the living in the end times? Part 1 for how I learned Jesus literally came, not symbolically). I started listening to youtube sermons about partial preterism and learned that Jesus was talking about two separate events. One describing events leading up to the temple’s destruction, and another at the end of time. Or at least Jesus would have 2 second comings. One in 70AD, and another at the end of time.
I was also introduced to full preterism at this time but rejected it. The full preterists argued we were already living in the new heavens and new earth, God had already judged the dead, and the resurrection had already happened. I considered that blasphemous. I was willing to admit that in some way Jesus had come when he destroyed the temple, but was afraid to believe that all the other stuff had happened. What if he actually did come later and I wasn’t prepared and missed it? Wouldn’t it be disappointing if sin and pain existed in the new heavens and new earth?
I wasn’t sure at what point we were in timewise in the book of revelation. I was looking for a transition point that would explain a 2000 year gap. I was afraid to believe anything definitively, but by my best estimation we were somewhere in the 1000 year reign. The numbers in revelation can be symbolic so I figured the 1000 years were symbolic. At least, this meant God would still judge the world, the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth hadn’t happened yet. However it would mean Satan was bound, a point that gave me some relief when I could believe it.
I remained a partial preterist for 8-9 years and was still left in a state of confusion.
The questions I still couldn’t answer
I came up with a simple methodology for understanding the two different end times. If the event said it would happen soon it was talking about 70AD, if it didn’t give a time period it meant at the end of time.
I was able to maintain this idea simply because I did not study the scriptures further.
Matthew 16:27-28 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
Did Jesus reward every man according to his work in 70AD? If so was this talking about the same great judgment of the dead in revelation?
The other problem I faced is that the Bible closely associates Christ’s second coming with the resurrection and final judgement and said they all were about to happen. It became increasingly hard to separate those events.
2 Timothy 4:1 “I do fully testify, then, before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is about to judge living and dead at his manifestation and his reign”
It seemed Jesus was about to reward “every man” living or dead.
1 Corinthians 15:22-24 “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. 24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God”
Christ intended to raise the saints when he came again. Jesus never describes a 2nd second coming, he simply said when he next appears and soon, he would reward and raise the dead.
And the kicker:
Acts 24:15 “There is about to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.”
This verse gave me serious pause. I wondered why I had never considered this verse. Then I went to Biblehub and found out nearly every translation didn’t use the phrase “about to be.” So I checked the greek, sure enough it was in the greek, “mellein” or “μέλλειν”. I later discovered this greek word is used in many other places that translations have left out, but funny enough only for end time verses, not for natural sentences.
Acts 11:28 (Good News Translation) One of them, named Agabus, stood up and by the power of the Spirit predicted that a severe famine was about to come over all the earth. (It came when Claudius was emperor.)
Acts 28:6 But they were expecting that he was about to swell up or suddenly fall down dead. But after they had waited a long time and had seen nothing unusual happen to him, they changed their minds and began to say that he was a god.
In both these verses the same greek word is used, only they chose to translate these as about to but ignore translating them for end time verses.
I did some research on this word and found out that some people think it means “certanily.”
(New American Standard Bible) that there shall certainly be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.
However, whenever mello (the greek word for about) in the present active indicative is combined with an infinitive, it is consistently translated “about to.”
That certainly was jaw-dropping news, but I’m not a greek scholar and didn’t know if they had other good reasons for not translating this word.
Undeniable proof
I was looking for something less open-ended. If the resurrection was truly about to happen, were there other, less ambiguoius greek words that meant it would happen soon?
1 Peter 4:5-7 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit. The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.
The greek word “is near” is very strong. It can only mean extreme closeness, immediate imminence. It cannot mean “certainly.”
This put me in a pickle. This verse said without a hint of wavering that the end, which included the judgement of the living and the dead, which also included Jesus’s second coming, which included the resurrection was very near. Afterall, how could you say Jesus was about to judge the dead and yet say the resurrection wouldn’t happen till thousands of years later? This also gave proof to the idea that “mello”, in Acts 24:15 that I read earlier did in fact mean “about to.”
If the resurrection was about to happen why wouldn’t everything else have happened to? It left me one path, I had to understand how the resurrection had already happened.
We will look at how I did this in part 2.