Resolving End-Time Fear

BY COLLEEN TINKER

It happened again today. The phone rang, and a former Adventist who is firmly grounded in the finished work of Jesus asked, “What do you all believe about the last days?” As world events move in unprecedented ways in startling directions, former Adventists everywhere are having renewed “mark of the beast fears”. What will it actually be? Is the Time of Trouble about to be unleashed? Is the second coming near? Who will be the antichrist, and how will any of us make it through the cataclysm that is coming? 

Richard answered the caller with truth. As Adventists we believed we had to know the details of end time events, but as people who have trusted Jesus, the immovable truth we know is that Jesus fully atoned for our sin, and we are saved. 

As Adventists we had to know what the signs of the second coming would be: first there would be a national and then an international Sunday law. Sunday-keepers would then have permission to hunt and kill the Adventists who remained loyal to the seventh-day Sabbath. Former Adventists who had left the Sabbath would be the worst persecutors of all as they hunted the fleeing Adventists who carried their Sabbath loyalty to the hills, hiding in the rocks from their pursuers. 

Christians, though, differ on how the end of days will play out. In fact, Scripture does not tell us the details of God’s timing or outline events that we can specifically anticipate as we wait for His glorious appearing. What Christians know is that the gospel is clear: Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture; He was buried, and He rose from the dead on the third day according to Scripture. Then He was seen by eye witnesses, and 40 days later He ascended visibly from His disciples to the Father where He is now seated at the Father’s right hand. When we trust that Jesus fully propitiated for our sin, when we realize that we are spiritually dead and helpless to please God and repent before Him, when we trust His finished work and accept the fact that His blood paid the price for our sin, we are born again and sealed with His Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13–14). 

This fact of being saved by grace through faith in the completed blood atonement of the Lord Jesus is what Christians KNOW. We can hold eschatological details loosely, knowing that the Lord will clarify His many prophecies about the end as they happen. 

Adventism is the opposite of Christianity: Adventists are told they must KNOW the details of the end of time. In fact, the Sabbath is the key player in end time events, marking those who will be saved and functioning as a target for Sunday-keepers to shoot, those “daughters of Babylon” who will want the Sabbath-keepers dead. Salvation, on the other hand, is elusive. Adventists cannot articulate the gospel, and they have been told by their prophet that it is a sin to say they are saved. Only when Jesus returns and raises the dead will they learn whether or not they are saved. 

Powerful Word

As I have learned to believe that the words of Scripture are inspired by God (as opposed to the writers being inspired), as I have learned to trust that the words say what the words mean, I have become much more comfortable not knowing the specifics exactly. The gospel now shapes my life, not my eschatological belief about a day of worship and the Ten Commandments. 

At the same time, I see that both the Old and the New Testaments reveal that Adventist eschatology is utterly false. Even though Christians differ about the details, Adventism deviates from all Christian understandings. Perhaps the most paradigm-shifting discovery I had was that the millennium is not in heaven! Revelation 20 describes the beginning of the millennium after the beast and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 19:20). An angel then binds Satan in the abyss (which is NOT a vacant earth but a place to which the demons that came out of the demoniac begged Jesus not to send them (Lk. 8:31). Satan is thrown into the abyss for a thousand years so he will not deceive the nations, and then Jesus reigns for a thousand years over those nations—with those who are raised in the first resurrection and with those who have the right to rule with him (Rev. 20:4). 

A second realization that was nearly as shocking as the earthly millennium was that neither Adventists nor Christians are “spiritual Israel”. As an Adventist I learned that we had taken the place of Israel. After all, we had the true understanding of the perpetuity of the law and the Sabbath. We had replaced disobedient Israel who rejected Jesus. All the promises of the Old Testament were now transferred to the church, and Israel just got to keep the curses which belonged to them for their rejection. 

What arrogance. As I read Romans 9–11, I slowly realized that Paul was telling us that God’s choice and election stand. No matter what people or nations do, God’s purposes cannot be stopped. Even though Israel apostatized and rejected their Messiah, still God’s promises which pepper the Old Testament prophets and the Abrahamic covenant will still come to pass. 

Human disobedience cannot stop God’s unilateral, unconditional promises! In fact, I learned in Romans 11 that we gentile believers who are born again have been grafted into the olive tree of God’s purposes. We are what Paul called the unnatural branches. The Jews are the natural branches. Read how Paul explains this phenomenon:

But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Then you will say, “Branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in.” That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree (Romans 11:17–24).

Then Paul becomes even more detailed. He tells us that God is not yet done with Israel! Look what Romans 11:28–32 says:

As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For just as you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because of their disobedience, so they too have now been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all. (ESV)

God’s gifts and calling are IRREVOCABLE! Even though the Jews rejected Jesus when He was on earth, God will still keep His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He will still keep all His promises to Israel and Judah which appear throughout the major and minor prophets. God’s word cannot fail, and His promises will come to pass.

In fact, if God does not keep His promises to the Jews, how could we ever be sure He will keep His promises to the church? 

Details, Details

There are many details that are not stated as clearly as are Paul’s assurance that God will yet keep His promises to Israel, and many of these details Adventism attempts to mock. Scripture, however, tells us what we need to know, and it is unequivocal that the Lord Jesus will descend from heaven with a shout and with the trumpet of God. He will BRING WITH HIM those who have fallen asleep in Christ, the dead in Christ will rise first, and then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds and will be forever with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). 

We also know from both the Old Testament prophets and from 2 Thessalonians and Revelation that a time of trouble is coming. Christians differ about the timing of the “rapture”, or our being caught up with the Lord. Some understand Scripture to say the rapture of the church will occur before the great tribulation. Others believe the rapture will occur after the tribulation, or in the middle of it. Some even believe that the millennial kingdom is now, and the second coming will bring the end of earth as we know it and usher in the eternal state. I personally believe that this idea, sometimes called “amillennialism”, is lacking sound Scriptural support. Nevertheless, there are true men and women of God who hold this position, and even though I disagree with their eschatological conclusions, I can have true fellowship with them because they believe the central reality: Jesus died for our sins and broke death from the inside out; in Him we have eternal life and the assurance that we will be with Him forever!

In short, I appeal to my fellow former Adventists to take Scripture seriously. Read it as you would read any other book using normal rules of grammar and vocabulary. In fact, the more literally one reads the words of Scripture, reading it first to understand what the first audience would have understood it to mean and realizing that it cannot mean something different today even if the application is different, the more the details of these coming events hang together.

Finally, I leave you with some study materials that I pray will be as helpful to you as they have been to me. First I recommend the four talks Gary Inrig did at the 2016 FAF Conference. He taught from the book of Daniel, and I will never forget how stunned we formers were as Gary walked through Daniel’s prophecies and showed us from history how to understand this book that was used to bind us in fear and confusion. You can access these four talks here:

Next I offer you the weekly, verse-by-verse study through the book of Revelation that Gary Inrig taught at our Thursday evening Loma Linda Word Search Bible studies in 2014–2015. This entire collection of studies is available on the FAF YouTube channel under the playlist entitled Loma Linda Word Search. The Revelation studies begin with video #48 and end with video #113. Scattered among the Revelation studies are a few others for events such as Easter, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, but the Revelation studies are numbered in order and are easy to find.

I also recommend a book by John McArthur published by Moody Press. It is a chapter-by-chapter study of Revelation entitled Because The Time Is Near and is available online from a number of sources.

Finally, I commend the actual books of Scripture to you. Revelation is not a prediction of the works of Satan or a warning to avoid the mark of the beast. Rather, it is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”, and God promises a blessing to the one “who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near” (Rev. 1:3).  Ask the Lord to teach you as you read. Remember—Adventism taught us untruth and twisted this book into a tool of fear instead of a hopeful prophecy of our certainty of Christ’s victory and our eternal future! 

Read 1 and 2 Thessalonians and see how Paul talks about the coming of our Lord, of our certainty of being caught up with Him, and of the polarization that will occur in the world as the Lord prepares creation for His return. Also, read Romans 9 through 11. God’s faithfulness is not dependent upon us but upon His own unfailing word, and we can trust Him.

I have one last recommendation—one I am borrowing from my good friend Cheryl Granger. Years ago when our women’s Bible study went through the book of Daniel, Cheryl came to our small group discussion one evening with a startling announcement: she had been copying the book of Daniel into a notebook, word for word, as we studied through the book. Daniel had traditionally paralyzed Cheryl in end-time fear and year-for-a-day confusion. In fact, studying the book had been a bit terrifying for many of us formers in that study. 

That evening, however, Cheryl sat down and said to us, “I have been copying the book of Daniel—and I have found it to be strangely comforting.” 

I commend to you the same discipline Cheryl used: copy the books of Daniel and Revelation into a notebook, asking the Lord to teach you what He wants you to know. Watch Gary’s four teachings on Daniel and his series on Revelation, and allow God’s living word to reveal His sovereignty, His comfort, and His faithfulness to His entire creation to calm your mind and to ground you in His love as you walk through these unprecedented times. He is faithful. 

Colleen Tinker
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