Answering "End Times" Anxiety

How people's questions about prophecy can help us deal with more immediate questions

In my experience, few Bible topics elicit as many questions or as much anxiety as the prophecies about the “end times.”

I teach a Bible class of middle school boys twice a week, and they begged me back in January to study Revelation. Knowing the troubling descriptions found in Revelation, I started with an overview. I laid out three major themes that demonstrate that Revelation was written to prepare us—not scare us.

1. Jesus will return.

2. Jesus will reign.

3. Jesus will reward.

When they express fears over the future in light of Revelation, I draw their attention back to those themes. Whether or not one believes in a pre-tribulation rapture (as I do), Revelation shows us that the future is firmly under our Savior’s control and that our future joy with Him far outweighs any struggles that come before.

These concerns are not limited just to kids; recently, a church member contacted me because the subject of the end times keeps coming up in her presence. She encounters believers and non-believers alike who see the turmoil in our world and conclude that “we must be living in the end times.” This is a source of anxiety for them, and she asked how she ought to respond. Since this is something that many of us may deal with, I thought I’d answer it for a wider audience.

Are we in the end times?

If you’re anything like me, you’re filled with questions when people make bold pronouncements about the end time. When people say things like, “We’re clearly living in the end times,” or when they ask if I think we’re in the end times, I always want to know what they mean by the “end times.”

• If they mean that our world is crazy, and Jesus could come back at any moment, then I’m in full agreement. Jesus said He would come quickly,¹ and He told us He would come at an unexpected moment like a thief in the night.² The imminent return of Jesus has been a core doctrine of Christianity from the beginning,³ and we could reasonably call these the end times in the sense that the church age is the last major period before the culmination of history.

• If they mean that our world is so crazy that we know Jesus will return in our lifetimes/the next generation/any similarly arbitrary period, then I don’t think we have sufficient information to say that with certainty. Jesus famously said that no man knows the day or hour of His return.⁴ The Scriptures teach that we can be aware of the times and seasons⁵—in the sense that we can recognize the hand of God at work—but even that passage teaches that we will be surprised by the timing of the Lord’s return.⁶ Ultimately, we are terrible at predicting God’s timeline. The church at Thessalonica got the timeline wrong during the time of the apostles,⁷ and church history is littered with false predictions. We need to be careful about not adding to that list.

• If they mean that we’re actually living in the Tribulation, then no. Just no.

There may be times when we need to dig deeper and understand what they mean by the statement they just made. Clarifying our terms can help us to avoid misunderstandings with others or enable us to correct misunderstandings that others may have about God’s Word.

However, many of these conversations call for a different approach. I’m obviously not saying it’s wrong to correct theological errors (like “We’re currently living in the Tribulation!!”). But I am saying that an imprecise understanding of the end times is not as urgent as lacking faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. If we have just a moment with someone, and one open door, which should we address?

A question may reveal a more immediate issue than confusion: fear, anxiety, or hopelessness. And that is a reason to point the conversation to Jesus Christ.

What is our ultimate goal in the discussion?

Often, people don’t bring up the end times because they are eager to learn about eschatology; they discuss it because they’re anxious about the world we live in and fearful about the future.

In other words, their immediate need is not precision, but hope.

In those cases, the best thing we can do is to zoom out, away from the finer details—the seals, trumpets, bowls, battles, and devastation—and look at the broad themes of end-times prophecy. I outlined those themes already: Jesus will return, Jesus will reign, and Jesus will reward. When someone is anxious, we draw their attention to those themes. If they don’t know Jesus as Savior already, these can build a natural bridge to a conversation about the Gospel.

How might that conversation go?

• Them: Did you hear about ____? This world is so crazy! Sometimes I feel like we’re living in the end times or something.

• Us: Maybe we are getting close. The Bible says that some pretty unusual things would happen toward the end. It would be pretty stressful if He hadn’t warned us what would happen so we’d know not to worry about it.

• Them: How can you not worry about it?

• Us: No matter how crazy the world gets or what I face in the mean time, Jesus has promised that He’s coming back, He is going to bring order and right all the wrongs, and then He’s going to spend forever with those who belong to Him.

And suddenly, we’ve arrived at the Gospel.

Now, that’s just an example. Frequently, these are brief conversations, so we want to get to the point quickly without adhering to a canned script or getting sidetracked with details. (At least in these cases—I’m usually up for getting sidetracked with details.) We’re not directly engaging about whether or not these are the end times. We’re not dealing with the presence or absence of the rapture. Likewise, we’re not dealing with the sequence of the millennium. Instead, we’re looking at broad themes of prophecy that point to Jesus so we can present the Gospel as the answer to their end-times anxiety.

This is the kind of thing Jesus and His apostles did. The woman at the well wanted to ask Jesus about the Temple, and He pointed her to Himself for salvation.⁸ The Athenians wanted to show off their statues, and Paul pointed them to the God they missed.⁹ When people worry about the end times, we should focus on the opportunity to point them to the Savior Who can hold them secure despite the end times!

At OBU’s GenWhy apologetics conference a few weeks ago, my son and I attended a presentation on using everyday conversations as bridges to the Gospel. The presented made it seem so easy. This is even easier because it doesn’t require any kind of leap to get from anxiety over the end times to the hope that Jesus promises those who trust in Him.

The next time someone around you randomly brings up the end times as a source of anxiety, treat it as a divine appointment and use it as a bridge to the Gospel. The problems that make us anxious about the end times have already been solved, and the solution’s name is Jesus.

1. e.g., Revelation 22:12, 20.

2. Matthew 24:42-44.

3. See The Apostles’ Creed and The Nicene Creed.

4. Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32.

5. I Thessalonians 5:1.

6. I Thessalonians 5:2.

7. See II Thessalonians.

8. John 4:19-26.

9. Acts 17:22-34.