MCLEODS, New Brunswick, April 20, 2024 – Christian eschatology, or the study of end-times prophecies from a Christian perspective, is big business. Along with televangelists and internet prophets, an endless stream of movies, books, videos, conferences, workshops, etc., is spreading breathless predictions about when Jesus is or is not coming back, what he will or will not do when he gets here, and what the world may or may not be like when he arrives. All of this is being channeled (in the darkest sense) 24/7 into the psyches of those weak in faith and knowledge. Inundated with the propaganda, many have become obsessed with end-times prophecies to the point where it consumes their entire witness. They eat, sleep, and dream the end times, and then rush to YouTube to post a video about what they’ve dreamed.

But it wasn’t always like this. Relative to his other teachings, Jesus spent very little time on the end times, and for good reason: He knew the end times had an allure that would draw people away from learning sound doctrine and entice them instead into believing religious fairy tales, to the detriment of their soul.

The early Church likely wouldn’t recognize today’s end-times-obsessed believers as one of their own. Jesus’ first followers were consumed not with play-acting and spit-balling visions of the end but with surviving day by day: They were already living the nightmare of a world where their very existence made them targets of roaming death squads. Jesus’ warning that his followers would be outlaws wasn’t meant for a time two or three thousand years in the future but for the years and decades following his ascension. There was no need for the self-inflicted emotional distress that die-hard rapture-believers subject themselves to today; early Church members needed only to self-identify as followers of Jesus to experience the beast system up close and personal.

Yet even under constant threat of apprehension, torture, and execution, Jesus’ first followers still focused on spreading the Good News of the Kingdom of God. Had they not done so, we wouldn’t be here. The world would have long since ended like Sodom and Gomorrah, which is how it’s going to end after Jesus takes the last of his Holy Spirit-filled followers Home.

Certainly, the early Church eagerly awaited Jesus’ return, but they also took to heart Jesus’ teachings about putting their shoulder to the wheel so that when Jesus did come back, he’d find them labouring as he’d laboured, not pining away and play-acting end-times scenarios based on dubious interpretations of the book of Revelation.

In short, the end-times-obsessed movement is a cult that shares some elements with Christianity but has splintered into an entirely separate belief system that has nothing to do with God’s Church. Knowing this, we born-again believers need to avoid the temptation and allure of the end-times cult and instead labour as Jesus laboured – and as his genuine Church has likewise laboured – focusing on supporting and guiding each other with sound doctrine and bearing ever-joyful and truthful witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ.