“‘But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: “And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams;”‘”
Acts 2:16-17

In my four-and-a-half years walking with the Lord, I’ve come across many situations in which my understanding of Scripture has shifted. Sometimes it’s in small ways (“Oh I thought this verse meant this…”), sometimes it’s larger. The greatest shift in thinking came in the spring of 2005 in which I abandoned Arminian theology and embraced Calvinism. Now I’m undergoing what I consider to be another huge paradigm shift (awesome word, huh?!). This new shift comes in the realm of eschatology, the study of the end times. As if its hot, I’m dropping my former adherence of dispensationalist eschatology.

I first heard of the rapture in my old youth group back in high school when we watched the first Left Behind movie. Once all the people started disappearing, I asked around to find out what the heck was happening. “It’s the rapture,” one girl replied. Not wanting to look like an idiot, I said “Ohhhh…”, feigning a sudden light in the mind. Thus began my understanding of what was going to happen in the future. I let those like Tim LaHaye and Hal Lindsey be my guides to understanding the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. I followed them because I didn’t know any other alternative.

This is huge to me now, but I remember one time looking up the Bible verses LaHaye used in support of his prophetic interpretation and thinking “I would NEVER have gotten that from this verse.” But he knew a lot more than I did, so I’m the idiot, not him. But now all this stuff about the Jewish temple being rebuilt, and a Rapture prior to a seven-year tribulation in which a brutal dictator called Antichrist rules the world…it’s all lost on me. I’ve come to believe that LaHaye and his Left Behind followers have GROSSLY misinterpreted Scripture. There’s a ton to say on the subject, and I won’t get into it now. Further entries on this subject will likely follow, but for now Acts 2:16-17 serves as a good example. In the Left Behind series, LaHaye interprets this to mean that in the last days, prophecies shall increase among the young and visions among the elderly. The character Tsion Ben-Judah at one point has a very vivid vision of what’s going down in Heaven. When trying to understand what just happened, he remembered this prophecy by Joel. There’s a problem with this though: Peter says that Joel’s prophecy has been fulfilled.

Peter said this on Pentecost, when people started speaking in tongues. Some who heard this just assumed that they were drunk and thus dismissed them. But Peter got up and said “Dude, it’s 9 A.M. They’re sober. This is fulfilling what Joel said would happen” (New Scott Translation: 21st Century Edition, Revised). This isn’t a yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy. It’s already happened. Look at when Joel says this will happen: “In the last days it shall be…” People talk a lot today about “the last days.” The last days were already being lived during Pentecost. So do the last days refer to the last two thousand years? I don’t believe so. I believe the last days refered to is the approximately 40 years between Christ’s ascension and the destruction of Jersusalem in 70 A.D. Moreover, in light of internal consistency of Scripture and of the history of the time as provided by Josephus, I believe that much of what fuels the Left Behind script and end-times charts are prophecies of events that were fulfilled in this monumental event.

Again, there’s tons to say on the subject, but for now I’ll end by saying that the prophecies of Matthew 24:1-35 were fulfilled in and before Jerusalem’s destruction (yes, including verse 14), with Matthew 24:36-51 being the return of Christ, the end of the world and the beginning of the new. Christ told his apostles to be mindful of the warning signs, knowing that when they see them, the time for fulfillment was near. Yet of the time of his return he says that no one knows, not the angels of heaven, not even Jesus himself. Rest assured, EVERY generation believes its the one that will see the end. Don’t believe those who throw a newspaper in your face and say that the end is coming. Only one generation will be correct in its assumption that they will see the end of the world, and that will only be because every generation does it and someone’s got to be the last. We do not know when the end will come. We do not have warning signs for that, and for that reason we must be ready at all times. If Jesus himself doesn’t know when he’s coming back, then I assure you that Tim LaHaye doesn’t.

“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place…”
Revelation 1:1