Intro to the End Times is a series walking through some of the key themes of the story of Jesus’ return from a historic premillennial perspective, with special focus on knowing the heart of Jesus as we partner with God through the most dramatic chapter of human history.
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The end times aren’t a wild disaster of history going off the rails; they are a story playing out exactly as God intends to bring about His ultimate purposes. As any writer knows, the end of a story is for tying up loose ends and bringing things to conclusion–while also teasing a sequel yet to come!
So what are God’s purposes in the end of the story?
1. He Will Prepare a Mature Bride
When Jesus comes, the church will be fully mature, pure and spotless. Revelation 19:7-8 says “His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure.” Ephesians 4:13 says that the church must continue to grow “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” In the next chapter, Paul writes that Jesus will “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.” (Ephesians 5:27)
You and I both know that this is not what the Body of Christ looks like right now. It’s going to take some doing and no doubt some refining through fire (including a lot of persecution), but we can be confident that when Jesus comes, all of the compromise that plagues the church will have been stripped away, and we’ll be full of the Holy Spirit, desperately lovesick for Jesus, and fully in agreement with the plan of God. Jesus is worthy of a fully mature, equally yoked bride, and the Holy Spirit is going to see that He gets one.
2. He Will Send a Great Revival
Joel 2:8-32 promises a great outpouring of the Spirit on all flesh. In that same context, Joel describes “blood, fire, and columns of smoke” before the Day of the Lord. Peter borrowed from this passage to explain the Pentecost outpouring in Acts 2, but clearly, it wasn’t fully fulfilled on that day. Today, the indwelling Spirit is available to everyone, and God certainly pours out heavier anointing here and there, but it would be pretty anticlimactic to imagine that what the church is currently experiencing is the dramatic outpouring Joel prophesied.
Before Jesus comes back, the Church will experience a greater outpouring of anointing and power than we have ever experienced before, surpassing even the book of Acts, and the world will be filled with bold, zealous, anointed witnesses for Jesus. Signs and wonders at the hands of average believers will become commonplace, and we will be like “burning and shining lamps” like John the Baptist (John 5:35) proclaiming the gospel of the soon-coming Kingdom. As a result, millions worldwide will be saved in a great end-time harvest.
3. He Will Raise Up a Global Worship Movement
In many passages, the Bible promises a global prayer and worship movement that rises to full strength in the last generation, ushering in the return of Jesus. Malachi 1:11 is one of my favorites: “For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense will be offered to my name, and a pure offering.”
We’re seeing this happen RIGHT NOW under our noses! The proliferation of prayer and worship, even specifically 24/7 prayer and worship, around the globe in this generation has been nothing short of miraculous. God is raising up a mature, anointed, lovesick Bride who will “sing back the King” until His return.
4. He Will Judge Wickedness
Like the blood of Abel crying out from the ground (Genesis 4:10), the sins of humanity have been heaping up for judgment throughout the generations. In His mercy, God has mostly restrained Himself to give us time to repent, but He won’t be silent forever (Psalm 50:21, Isaiah 42:14). In the days right before Jesus returns, the brakes will have been taken off, so to speak, and human wickedness will have been allowed to reach its full potential (2 Timothy 3:2-5, Revelation 9:20-21). It will reach a breaking point where God will finally respond.
God’s judgment is always mixed with mercy, because His goal is really repentance, not destruction (Isaiah 55:6-7). God is using the least severe means to reach the greatest number at the deepest level of love without violating anyone’s free will. Everything He does is meticulously calculated with as much mercy as possible. However, justice demands that He won’t just “let it slide” forever. There will be a day of recompense.
5. He Will Rescue His People
A large part of this judgment is in direct response to the oppression of His people by the antichrist and his kingdom. In that time frame, the anger of the antichrist will be vehemently directed against both the church and the people of Israel (Revelation 12). It’s not difficult to imagine him following Hitler’s example in setting up concentration camps. We’re going to desperately need Jesus to break in and rescue us. When He returns, He will literally “proclaim liberty to the captives” as Isaiah 61 says.
In prophesying about Israel in the end times, Zechariah 2:8 says, “he who touches you touches the apple of His eye.” In the same spirit, I really like Proverbs 6:34 in the NKJV: “For jealousy is a husband’s fury; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance.” Like any good husband, Jesus is not going to sit back and let the antichrist get away with tormenting His people. His judgment is out of fierce, protective, jealous love for His bride. (Yes, the church is His bride, but Israel was the nation He originally chose as His bride, and He is still faithful to His promises to her and is wooing her back.)
6. He Will Marry His Bride
“For the marriage of the Lamb has come…” (Revelation 19:7) After rescuing us, Jesus is going to marry us! This is the great climax of the story. This has been the great desire of His heart from eternity past. Right now, we could say that we are betrothed to Jesus, but there will be an actual wedding day when our union will be made complete.
Our union with Jesus as His bride is the pinnacle of the story because there’s a level of intimacy and partnership in marriage that is not present in any other kind of relationship– not master/servant, teacher/disciple, friend/friend, or father/child, although those are all also true. At the end of the story, the church is primarily identified as the bride (Revelation 22:17), in full and unhindered intimacy and partnership with Jesus for eternity.
7. He Will Rule on Earth Forever
Jesus is going to rule and reign as the actual king on planet Earth forever. He is spiritually king of the universe right now, but He doesn’t currently have the kind of tangible, governmental leadership He is destined to have. Revelation 11:15 describes this transition moment: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
My favorite verses are the ones that zero in on Jerusalem and the temple, which is the literal, physical place on earth from which He will rule as King. God told Ezekiel about the temple, “this is the place of my throne and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the people of Israel forever.” (Ezekiel 43:7) Jesus and the psalmist both called Jerusalem “the city of the great king” (Matthew 5:45, Psalm 48:2). Can you imagine the day when JESUS is actually king on the earth?
8. He Will Fulfill All His Promises to Israel
The story of the Bible is Israel-centric. Ever since Abraham, God has been telling a story to and about the Jewish people; we as Gentile believers in a Jewish Messiah are graciously given a role to play and are no less full children of God, but there are still unique promises to Israel that God has yet to fulfill. The Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12 promised Abraham 1) land, 2) descendants, and 3) blessing. These promises won’t come to full fruition until Jesus comes back and sets up what we call the Millennial Kingdom, which Jews anticipate as the Messianic Age.
Jeremiah 31 promises that God will never cast off His covenant with Israel (like Romans 11:29 says, “the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable”), and also promises that He will bring a new covenant in which He will make them all righteous. Jesus’ first coming was the inauguration of that new covenant, but God’s promise of salvation to all Israel (Romans 11:26) has yet to be fulfilled. When Jesus comes, they will recognize Him and mourn, realizing their mistake for so long (Zechariah 12:10). On that day, God will finally begin to fulfill all of His promises to Israel and they will finally dwell in safety in the land as a righteous nation before Him.
My favorite book about this is One King by Samuel Whitefield.
9. He Will Restore All Things
At the moment, creation is broken. Romans 8:19-20 says that the earth itself is groaning for redemption. Acts 2:31 says, “that He may send Jesus Christ…whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things.” (NKJV) God loves His original plan of creation, and plans to restore earth to that original “very good” state that He spoke over the universe before the fall (Genesis 1:31)–and because the increase of His kingdom will never end (Isaiah 9:7), it will keep getting better forever!
In the restoration, we will be given resurrected bodies that will be flawless, immortal, shining like stars, and much like Jesus’ own resurrected body (1 Corinthians 15). We will live on a restored earth, in restored bodies, interacting with God in restored relationship, forever. Every injustice and loss will be restored, and very tear will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4). No matter how broken it is now, this is the destiny of creation.
My favorite book about this is All Things New by John Eldredge.
10. He Will Unite Heaven and Earth
After #6 (He will marry His bride), this is probably the most deep and mysterious reality of all. One of the things that God will restore is the full union of heaven and earth, as He has intended since the garden of Eden. Ephesians 1:9-10 says, “making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” There may be a lot of spiritual overlap in the present age, but this will fully happen when the New Jerusalem comes to earth (Revelation 21).
Then, the plan of God will finally, fully be complete. Jesus will reign with justice and righteousness over the whole earth. He will have His full inheritance in the nations and His glorious bride at His side. The Father will have His family restored and all of creation will celebrate.
