Biblical Eschatology

When I was about eleven years old, I attended Word of Life camp, which was located on an island on Schroon Lake in New York. Each week they had a guest speaker and Bible teacher. That week the speaker was Dr. Jimmy DeYoung, who taught on the book of Revelation. He created a contest between each cabin to see which cabin could read the book of Revelation the most that week. I was the middle child of seven, and our family was highly competitive. Needless to say, being the middle child, I was the most competitive sibling.

I compelled everyone in my cabin to start reading, even our camp counselor. We didn't end up winning, but I read the book about seventeen times that week. This experience sparked my interest in eschatology. I turned my Bible into an eschatology Bible and marked up all the end times passages with a highlighter.

When I was a teenager, I attended an independent Baptist Church in Pennsylvania. Probably the most common verse used to teach the rapture back then was Matthew 24:41-42, "Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming" (ESV). For this reason, I believed, based on my own study and the context, that Matthew 24:30 described the rapture. I just thought it was pre-trib. Obviously, I was somehow blinded to the previous verse, which states, "Immediately after the tribulation."

I'm sorry to say, that at that time, I took my theology from sincere Christians who I had a lot of respect for, and took what they said as gospel truth. This wasn't just on eschatology but other theologies as well.

By the age of twenty-one, I thought I had all the eschatology answers, and I was a staunch proponent of pre-trib. This had stemmed from the previous ten years of study, which in my young mind, thought was very comprehensive.

When I was around twenty-one, my mom mailed me a sermon on cassette tape. At the close of the sermon, the pastor stated that next week they would start a new series on eschatology. I told my mom to mail me that series. The pastor of her Church was pre-trib, and he did a pretty good job of outlining the differing eschatological positions. In his sermon, he dealt with Matthew 24:30 and stated that this passage referred to the second coming and was not describing the rapture. It was this statement that God used to convict me to rethink my position.

During this same period, I was challenged by others on some of my minor theological views and was shown that other beliefs I had were not Biblical. I decided to lay aside what I thought I knew, and like the reformers before me, I changed my theology to sola scriptura. I vowed from that point forward to only form my views based on what the Bible says.

So I read through the Bible from start to finish, asking myself as I went, what does the Bible actually teach. I then repeated that process over and over again, often using a different translation.

I believe that unless you do what I did, and lay aside all of you preconceived doctrines and beliefs and read the Bible starting from scratch, you won't arrive at the right solution. We have so many preconceived doctrines that we hold as certain facts, that it's hard for us to think these could be wrong.

Around this time of intense study, I became a volunteer youth pastor. I then moved and started attending a Baptist Church in Four Corners, Florida. I took over a youth group that was meeting in a member's house. We made it an official youth group of the Church. The first meeting at the Church, we had about four teenagers, and God grew it from there to around sixty. Wednesday night turnouts averaged around forty to fifty. I got married during this time and got a job in DeLand, Florida. This made for a long drive on Wednesday night, about an hour and a half to two hours, through four counties.

I created my own youth lessons for Wednesday night and Sunday morning. I found that most youth lessons that were available online or sold in book stores were somewhat shallow. From my rigorous study, God gave me an almost photographic memory of scripture. My thorn in the flesh, however, was remembering names and numbers. For this reason, I would always use Bible Gateway to perform keyword searches to find verse references for specific passages. What I found, though, is that their search function was archaic and not very good. Since I am also a computer programmer, I decided to make a search program for personal use. After reading various blogs, I found other similar complaints. Even those who purchased expensive software had these complaints. Since others were having the same problems I had finding passages, due to archaic search features, it prompted me to make my own public Bible search engine called Smart Bible Search. It has all the features found on Google, but for searching the Bible.

In my quest for the truth, I also studied Hebrew and Greek to understand the Bible in the original languages better. About twenty years ago, I attended a Greek basics, mini class, at Church. That class encouraged me to continue in the study of Greek, and about five years ago, this study accelerated.

Fascinated with Granville Sharp's First Rule of Greek Grammar, I started a research project to ascertain if that rule could also be applied to non-personal substantives (i.e., nouns). While researching, I found a different Greek structure interesting. This structure was when an anarthrous personal noun is followed by an articular noun, and the three (including the article) match in case, gender, and number. This research led me to the conclusion that Luke's genealogy of Jesus is being mistranslated as many as three times. To prove this, I sifted through about 150 Greek writings, both secular and Christian. I posted the data from this research project on the web-site Koine Apposition. I am currently writing a journal article to be published in a scholarly journal that will prove this thesis.

I currently attend a non-denominational church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. They have similar beliefs to a Baptist church. The Church holds to a pre-trib view, although they allow differing views. I have been asked by others why I attend a church in which I don't hold the same views. Well, actually I would probably agree with about 95% of what is taught at the Church I attend. Primarily I would disagree on eschatology. I find it more important for a Church to hold to a solid Biblical foundation on core doctrines. Additionally, there are very few churches that hold to a classic post-trib position.

My first change of view on eschatology was from pre-trib to mid-trib, mainly based on Revelation 7:9, which I believed was a description of the rapture. I still believe that the verse describes the rapture. However, I believe that Revelation is not chronological, and therefore that scene occurs at the end of the tribulation.

In my early twenties, I was convicted by God that I should write a book on eschatology. Which admittedly, writing is not my cup of tea. Over the past twenty years, I have been forming my views by taking the entire Bible in context. All along, I have been writing those views down in book form and editing as my views change. Since I believe I have now arrived at the correct views, I have started publishing articles on this web-site, with books to follow.

You may be surprised to hear that my goal in writing these articles on eschatology is not to convert you to my viewpoint. That is between you and God. Only the Holy Spirit can convict you and change your beliefs. My goal is to encourage Bible study and for you to develop your own views based on what is found in the Bible. At the same time, I find it is my job to ask the challenging questions that will make you think about what you believe.

I don't want anyone to just blindly follow what I teach. That is never my goal. What I write is not my own teachings. My purpose is to illuminate what God teaches in the Word. It's not about me.

I hope you will sincerely attempt to find the truth and that you would ask God for the Holy Spirit to convict you of what is right. I believe if you really study the Bible, pray, and desire to find the truth, God will direct you. But you have to want to know the truth.

This is not a business for me. I will never profit off of anything I write on eschatology. Any profits I do happen to receive will be donated to missions work.

In Christ,