Jeremy McGarity
·
August 6, 2020

It’s The End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine)

The great theologians, REM, penned the line which I borrowed for today's blog (you're singing it in your head now aren't you?). This weekend at Skyline Church we're beginning a brand-new teaching series. We're talking about a very relevant subject. Many people are wondering what the Bible says about the End of the World.  

Questions abound when times get confusing like the times we are currently experiencing. Lock-downs and lock-outs, businesses suffering, people suffering, and new Marshal law-like draconian measures being forced on people without any real evidence for their necessity. 

It is always in times of distress and confusion that most people wonder … IS THIS THE END. Or, at least for many Christians, we wonder if these are the signs the Bible talks about when it comes to the End Times.  

Over the next several weeks, we'll be looking at what the Bible says about the End of the World. Throughout history,  there have been wars, atrocities, earthquakes, famines, plagues, hurricanes and other disasters that have shaken the foundations of the earth and caused people to think about their own mortality.  

As the world engaged in the first World War people thought the world was ending. Then there was World War II. Again, people were sure this was it. Remember September 11? Everybody thought that was the beginning of the end. Since then, there have been more wars, terrorist attacks, natural disasters, plagues, and on and on … Whenever bad things happen, we tend think … is this it?

And this is certainly no different in our current state of affairs with a pandemic or plan-demic; however you want to view it. Riots, wars, division, and hatred are at a seemingly all time high. These certainly are ingredients that would cause any thinking person to wonder, IS THIS IT? 

We’re going to be looking at various Scriptures that speak directly to the fact that God wants His children to know about the End of the World. Maybe that’s a question that you need answered today. Is the world, as we know it, going to end some day. The answer is a resounding YES. The next obvious question is … WHEN?  

On Sunday, we're going to start off our series in Matthew,  Chapter 24. In the evening service at 7:00PM on Sunday night, we'll talk about Matthew 25.  I’ll help you see with clarity what the Bible says is going to happen. Not what might happen, but what IS going to happen according to Jesus Himself.  

I’m not going to give you speculation, but I'll give you direct information from the Bible about THE END. You'll learn overall as a big picture what that looks like, then you'll learn the timing of the events that will eventually take place. There's an order to what is happening, a process. I believe over the course of this series, lots of mysteries will be solved for you if you get the message each week. Each message builds on the other.  

I also want to encourage you to invite your friends, family, neighbors, etc.; those in your relational world the Bible calls your Oikos. You might simply tell them that "We are talking about what the Bible says about the End Times. I’d love to get your thoughts on it …"  A simple invite can change a life. 

Knowledge is POWER and when you get the knowledge of THE END, just like last week when I shared knowledge about the statistics of the Covid-19 virus … you can BE confident and LIVE confidently. Over the course of this series, we'll talk about subjects like: THE TRIBULATION, ARMAGEDDON, THE RAPTURE, THE JUDGMENT, HEAVEN, We’ll talk about HELL, we’ll talk about God’s Will, and a lot of other key themes and Scriptures. 

The study of the End Times is known Theologically as ESCHATOLOGY. This word comes from the original Greek word: Eskhatos, which means “Last Things.” From time to time you’ll hear Pastors and Bible-teachers talk about Eschatology … it simply means the study of "Last Things." 

There is a lot of speculation on what the End will look like and how it will come about. The reality is you can be confident of how it will end because the Bible has told us. It has given us instructions …

REMEMBER THIS: God didn’t speak about The End Times to SCARE us, He did it to PREPARE us. 
The first thing we need to look at is our Instruction book. If our instruction book spends time on it, we should spend time on it. If our instruction book spends a lot of time on it, it’s probably pretty important. So let’s look at …

I. HOW OFTEN THE BIBLE SPEAKS ABOUT THE END 
To give you an idea of how much God’s Word talks about this truth:  

  • 1 out of every 30 verses in the Bible mentions the subject of THE END
  • The Bible talks about End Times specifically over 329 times             
  • 23 of the 27 New Testament books mention THE END of the World.
    Some may see that and say, well it’s just a New Testament thing … NO!
  • There were 16 Old Testament Prophets and 10 of those 16 talk about this subject of THE END of the World. 

Did you know there are over 300 prophecies concerning Jesus’  first coming to earth and they were 100% accurate. Listen to the odds of this happening. Something predicted hundreds and even thousands of years before it happens and then it comes true: The odds of one person fulfilling just 8 of the more than 300 prophecies is:

  • 1 person fulfilling 8 prophecies: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000
  • 1 person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 chance in 10 to the 157th power 
  • 1 person fulfilling 300+ prophecies: Only Jesus! 
    However, there are 8x more prophecies concerning His second coming. You can bet they will be 100% accurate as well. Jesus Christ is coming again. We as Christians, look forward to it.

So this is obviously one of the most often taught truths in Scripture. If God’s Word talks about it so much, why is it so misunderstood? I think if you’re going to understand this, the best place to start is with what Jesus had to say about THE END OF THE WORLD.  Jesus said the End of the World is coming, but as I'll show you in this series, it's not yet. But it may be really close.

3 comments

3 thoughts on “It’s The End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine)”

  1. Looking forward to the(New post)It’s The End of the World as We Know It

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  2. Jason S. said:

    I remember before becoming a Christian, the end of the world was such a scary and ominous topic. But since becoming a Christian (and since I peeked ahead and read Revelation, Ezekiel, and several other books that are heavy on this topic) I now know it’s an exciting time. But we have a lot of cleaning up to do to prepare ourselves. This series is going to help us with that. Very very important!

  3. Pam Shippam said:

    Clear; thank you.

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