What Are We Waiting For?
Don K. Preston D. Div.
On a recent blog, a critic of Covenant Eschatology was asked what Christians are waiting for. His response was, “We are waiting for the end of the Christian age.” Here, encapsulated in a single Q and A, is revealed a fatal error of all futurist eschatologies.
Fact: According to Scripture, only one age was supposed to end and that was the Old Covenant age of Israel.
Fact: All Biblical eschatology is inextricably linked to the end of Israel and her covenant age. It has nothing to do with the end of the Christian age. And yet, unbelievably, some make the pre-eminently illogical “argument” that “since the term AD 70 is not in the Bible, that it therefore cannot be a Biblical doctrine” or, “since the term “the second coming” is not found in the Bible, that AD 70 could not have been Christ’s appearing “a second time.”
Have these critics– all of whom believe in the end of time and the end of the Christian age– not stopped to consider that the term “the end of the Christian age” does not appear in the Bible? Have they not stopped to consider that the term “end of time” is no where to be found in scripture? Do they not, for one moment, even consider the NT writers invariably posit the “end of the age” as imminent, in the first century?
Fact: The end of the age was directly connected to the destruction of the Jerusalem temple (Matthew 24:2-3). Now, of course, 99% of all modern commentators say that the disciples were mistaken or confused to link the end of the age with the judgment on Jerusalem, but in fact, it is the modern theological world that is confused, not the disciples. See my article in which I prove this beyond dispute: .
Fact: The term “the last days” has nothing to do with the end of time or the end of the Christian age, or even as a definition of the entire Christian age. In my book, The Last Days Identified, I examine every major text that mentions the last days, and I show that not one of them refers to the Christian age.
Fact: The kingdom of Christ, constituted by the gospel, has no end (Luke 1:32-32; Ephesians 3:20-21).
Fact: Christ said his word, the gospel, will never pass away (Matthew 24:35). Now, if the gospel ceases to function as the message of salvation proclaimed to sinful man, then his word ceases to be the gospel! Just as Torah passed when it ceased to function as ordained, if the gospel ceases to function as ordained by God, then it would likewise pass away, and that is precisely what Jesus said will never happen!
In light of these indisputable facts, how in the name of reason can anyone say that we are waiting on the end of that which the Bible affirms, repeatedly and emphatically, will never end? That is a false hope, and needs to be rejected.