The Time of the End
A Bible Study by Bryan E. Canter
Version 1.0 Published 7 MAY
1998
Version 1.1 Updated 13 MAY 1998
Version 2.0 Updated 10 APR 1999
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ABSTRACT:
The Signs of the Times and fulfilled
Biblical prophecies tell us that we are living in the very last days. And
yet there is one significant problem. The most definitive sign that Jesus
will return is when the Gospel has first gone to all the earth. The organizations
that track the progress of world evangelism show huge population centers throughout
the world that are categorized as "World A Populations". World ‘A’ Populations
are those that have virtually no significant Christian presence. These studies
show that there are literally billions of people throughout the world that
have not heard the Gospel message.
So the Signs of the Times indicate that Jesus' Second Coming is imminent, but the rate of the progress of the Gospel tells us that Jesus' return could be centuries away. Well, which one is it? I believe the Bible tells us how God will intervene to accomplish in a period of months what the collective Christian Church has been unable to accomplish in just under 2000 years.
A period of months? Yes. Actually, a period of just under 4-1/2 years. The book of Revelation has an incredible number of references back to both New Testament and Old Testament scripture passages. Revelation will often allude to an Old Testament prophecy with just a few symbolic words or lines of text. The Old Testament prophecy itself may contain entire passages or chapters of description that give greater detail about that scene or image. If we allow Revelation to point us back to those Old and New Testament prophecies, we can get a much more complete picture of what Jesus was communicating to us through the visions He gave to John. By allowing Revelation to unlock and contextualize the ancient Biblical prophecies, we can get a clear picture of the sequence of end time events. We can also get a general idea of how long the last day events will last, from the Latter Rain of the Holy Spirit to Jesus Second Coming. We don't know exactly when the last day events will begin, but we can know approximately how long they will last and the order in which they will occur.
Acknowledgement
Many of the ideas that I have
shared here were sparked by a paper and a book by Marvin Moore. The paper
is unpublished and is entitled, "The Seven Trumpets of Revelation - A
crisis about to happen?" The book is entitled, The Coming Great
Calamity. Although my ideas are not identical to his, they share
many points in common. I have also read a number of other papers on the subject
and have talked to many other people. My conclusions include a number of
ideas from these other people, even though I have not referenced them directly.
Many of the ideas that I have shared here were sparked by a paper and a book by Marvin Moore. The paper is unpublished and is entitled, "The Seven Trumpets of Revelation - A crisis about to happen?" The book is entitled, The Coming Great Calamity . Although my ideas are not identical to his, they share many points in common.
Information on the structure of the book of Revelation was gleaned from C. Mervyn Maxwell’s book, God Cares Volume 2.