End Times
You can't really understand what the Scriptures say about end times without understanding a little about the history presented within them of the Abrahamic people, and their contract with God. You need to understand the debate that went on amongst early Christians between obedience to the Law vs grace for salvation, and probably rethink what salvation (to them at least) actually meant.
First, a little history. What is most important to understand is the Covenant they entered into. Around Exodus chapter 24 is the story where they entered into the Covenant to obey God’s law, completely, and bound themselves to it. Everything in NT Scripture is about this. Everything. They bound themselves to a contract they could not possibly abide by. The Law was perfect, the people were not.
The Law required sacrifice for the removal of sin. Ultimately, the promise of redemption from the curse of the Law would come from the perfect sacrifice. The story of the Christ. When you get into the time following the sacrifice, and the acceptance (by God) of the sacrifice, you have the writings of the New Testament. This is where understanding how obedience to the Law vs grace for salvation is crucial to understanding the times. They were still living in a time where the Law was the law of the land, but sacrifices were no longer accepted by God even though they were still being offered. Hence Paul, while among the gentiles lived as if not under the Law, but when visiting Jerusalem would submit to the Law. The other Apostles ALL were still in submission to the Law.
James clearly taught justification in works. Paul using the same Scripture of Abrahams justification taught justification apart from works.
James argued he would show his faith by his works. Paul argued that if he gives everything but has no love, he gains nothing.
Jesus told Martha that while she does all the work, Mary has chosen better things. Throughout the New Testament writings not done by Paul, we see
a more legalistic approach to righteousness, yet Jesus taught them recognition of righteousness by fruits...being defined (by Scripture) as part of a person's character. The apostles lived under the Law. Paul, who was emphatic about the Law before his conversion and subsequent enlightenment, moved beyond the Law into the freedom of a relationship unencumbered by guilt. A relationship with God (or himself, it matters not what you think, the principles here still apply) was possible through the fulfillment of the Law, accomplished by the blood sacrifice, and accepted at the resurrection. At this point, the Law and the Temple became obsolete in the relationship between them, and there would be no further sacrifice that would be accepted. Judgment was beginning, and would culminate at the end of the generation with the destruction of the Temple.
Understanding the times they lived in, and who their audiences were is necessary to understanding how these views converge. Righteousness to them was an understanding of how they were viewed in the eyes of a perfect God. No one could match God's righteousness (what Job was all about) so their relationship was through intermediaries...priests. It wasn't always that way, as the early pre-Moses relationships were directly with God or his angels. How it became that way, AND ENDED, is what the End Times is all about. Any prophecy about the end times should be viewed in this light.
Next is to understand what salvation meant to them. Our understanding of heaven and hell must be rethought. In Scripture, there is Heaven and Earth. Above and below. When Moses encountered the burning bush, he was experiencing a meeting between the two. So what of hell? Only one place in Scripture is hell actually translated from a word that is referring to a permanent place of judgment, and it is referring to a place reserved for angels not men. (Angels being messengers, there is no place for them if they are deceivers, I guess). The word is tartarus, and was used in 2nd Peter 2:4. The OT word translated to hell is Hades, which was a destination for those who transgressed the Law, but the only ones subject to the Law were Abraham's people...and Hades gates were to be opened at the return when the Law would be finished with. (If you need a literal event to correspond to this, 5 non-Christian historians of the time may well have recorded it.)
In the NT, the word is Gehenna. There is a lot of literature explaining about this valley, how it was a dump outside Jerusalem. In fact, it was at that dump that most of the bodies were burned after the fall of Jerusalem.
The teaching of hell as a place of eternal torment was already being perverted by the time Jesus arrived. Pharisees taught it, but it wasn't taught that way until a couple centuries before. When reading the OT, it is better understood as heaven and earth. The Temple represented the meeting place between these two worlds. "I am from above, you are from below," "I am not of this world," is a reference to the difference between Heaven and Earth, not Heaven and Hell. Heaven is/was an existence within the Spirit of God, which Jesus claimed while within His existence on Earth. That was not a concept that was accepted, because for them, to approach God they had to go to the Temple and use intermediaries. Even the priests were not allowed to stand in the presence of God, only the High Priest was allowed to be in the same room.
The actual word hell comes from the German language, meaning "to cover." But the concept in Scripture has more to do with the Law than with Egyptian and other ancient concepts of eternal torment. Hades was where those under the Law went when they passed on. It was hardly described as a place of torment, however. There are several examples in Scripture which give a glimpse at Hades. Saul woke Samuel from his sleep. Jesus referred to Lazarus as being asleep. People Jesus (and others in the OT like Elijah) brought back from the dead didn't return from a place of torment, or at least there was no description to that effect.
Our understanding of hell as a place of eternal torment for our afterlife is a leftover taught by the church and used by the church & politicians to control the masses down through the centuries. There can be no question that this was the understanding that was present for the original translators of Scriptures for mass production. Prior to the 16th century, all Scripture translations were controlled strictly by the Catholic church. The church controlled all interpretation, correct or not, rather strictly.
Anyway, it's Hades and Gehenna that are relevant to the end times. Hades being relevant because all those who died while under the Law resided there, awaiting the Messiah to open the gates. Gehenna because of what it represents to the people of Jerusalem, and the history behind it. Their salvation was from the curse of the Law.
Jesus was considered an apocryphal prophet in His time. Prophets used descriptive language to describe events they were seeing in future times. Whether they actually saw them, or just knew the inevitable I will leave to others. Jesus certainly understood the language of the prophets and impressed it upon his disciples. Word phrases like "coming in the clouds" were used referring to coming judgments, almost always by foreign armies. You can use a concordance and study this for yourself. So when Jesus told Ciaphus that he would see the Son of Man coming on the clouds he was referring to a coming judgment on the Temple (Ciaphus being the High Priest at the time.)
The "abomination that causes desolation" was referring to an abomination of the Temple. During the seige of Jerusalem, the Levitical priesthood was expelled from the Temple, and the insurrectionists set themselves up as the priests.
Fundamentalists will teach that Scripture is to be taken literally. Many of them believe the entire universe is actually in the range of 6000 years old. Yet they also teach that soon, swiftly, near, & the time “is at hand” all mean 2000 years later.
Let's look at that. Jesus, speaking to the priests, said that on them "should be coming all the just blood shed on earth, from the blood of Abel until the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the Temple and the altar. Verily, I am saying to you: All these thing will be arriving on this generation."
As a fundamentalist, you’re taught to read that “you” as you, personally. Or us, now. But he was talking to them…then.
When Moses led the Jews out of bondage in Egypt and into the promised land, there was an entire generation that passed between the two events. (It doesn't matter whether you believe the story actually happened.) That was an archetype of what was to happen when Jesus would lead the Jews out of their bondage (to the Law and to the Temple) and into the Land of Milk and Honey. 40 years would pass (a generation) between Jesus leaving in the clouds, and the return on the clouds (judgment...the destruction of the Temple.)
Revelation opens with, "The unveiling of Jesus Christ, which God gives to Him, to show His slaves (literal translation) what must occur swiftly..." Some translations say "...what must shortly come to pass," or "soon take place." John wrote to seven actual churches, churches that he had a hand in their growth and who knew him. They took his words to heart when he quoted Jesus as saying, "I am coming soon." He used that phrase four times. In fact, every writer in the NT uses some form of those phrases. The time is near became more urgent the later the book was written. They wrote right up to the siege of Jerusalem, at which point they didn't need to any more for the time was upon them.
All the so called prophesies that sound like they apply to our day and age, also sounded like they applied to every generation before us. But history teaches everything was fulfilled in the generation of Jesus. The end times were the end of the Temple being the point of contact between God and His people. In 72 AD the Temple was destroyed by a fire, ironically started by the very abomination that had set themselves up in it. The people became the New Temple, the Land of Milk and Honey, communion with God. Those days, the days of the NT writers, the days of that generation passing away, were the end days. The world was their world, not the Earth, and not all of humanity.
