End Times

Many Christians believe the people of Israel are important to the Bible’s story. But not all of them know why, other than to correctly declare “Israel is special” or “they’re God’s chosen people.” These are incomplete answers.

Matthew 24 is the longest discussion we have from Jesus about how “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4) will transition to the next. It’s important. It’s also difficult to follow. This article is my best attempt to simply explain what Jesus is saying.

In the last article, we examined the strange vision from Daniel 7. Here, we look at what this vision means.

Daniel is worried about the fourth beast because it’s horrifying. It has iron teeth, bronze claws, and it “crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left” (Dan 7:19). He’s curious “about the ten horns on its head and about the other horn that came up, before which three of them fell—the horn that looked more imposing than the others and that had eyes and a mouth that spoke boastfully” (Dan 7:20).

What is Jesus saying at John 14:2-3? What is “my Father’s house?” Where is it? When will Jesus take believers there? In the last article, we examined the theory that it refers to being “up there” in heaven, and that Jesus takes believers there at an event called the pre-tribulational rapture. We concluded this idea isn’t supported by the text and gave it a “D” rating for probability. That doesn’t mean the pre-tribulation rapture is false—it just means to “see” it in John 14:2-3 you must smuggle it in from elsewhere.

In Part 2 of this series, we presented four options for understanding what Jesus meant at John 14:1-3:

We also suggested a grading scale for evaluating these options:

See the rest of the series.

In the first article, we set out to study what Jesus meant at John 14:1-3. Some Christians believe this passage speaks about the pre-tribulational rapture of the church to heaven, clearing the way for the tribulation here on earth. Is that right?