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We live in a world where our news reports almost exclusively BAD NEWS. This plays on our fears and insecurities and makes the herd mentality pessimistic while it simultaneously makes our government, certain corporations, and our military machine richer and stronger. By selling us scarcity and evil all day, we remain anesthetized, dependent, and distracted from the true abundant and generative trajectory of the world.

Religion and modern evangelical Christianity has also capitalized on bad news. The message of most churches is: “If you think that is bad, just wait for the tribulation right around the corner.” Fear is the lowest form of motivation but it is highly effective in people who are anesthetized, dependent, or distracted.

Fear will get us to sign up for religion. In fact, most in today’s religions don’t have a faith so much as they have fire insurance policy. For roughly the last 150 years, the Church has threatened us with the immanent Great Tribulation. Since childhood, I’ve heard countless sermons claiming we are entering the tribulation and that Jesus is returning any moment. Their proof however, was not in the bible, but the evening news, and the tribulation has eluded us for centuries.

This great pessimism is a result of believing a Pre-tribulation, Pre-Millenial eschatology (end times). While most Americans will say they are confused by eschatology, most are not aware of an alternative.

There is an alternative perspective on how this all ends! 

• There’s a happy ending.
• The trajectory of the world is toward the restoration of all things.
• Scripture, like Ken Wilber, calls us to: Wake Up, Clean Up, Grow Up, and Show up.

The eschatology I’m sharing in this series is called POST-MILLENNIALISM.

The Great Tribulation is NOT going to happen, because it already happened in A.D. 70 with the Fall of Jerusalem. Those who know their bible will want proof of this, so I have provided a detailed introduction and explanation HERE of the Book of Revelations, so you can check it all out for yourself. Put on your floaties, I take you to the deep end.

For those who prefer the cliff notes, here’s two considerations from the bible:

The book of Revelations is a “Revealing.” It’s not a cryptic message for 2000 years into the future, it was a quasi-cryptic message written to the churches on the mail route (Revelations 1:11) in the Roman Empire. Scholars now date the book around A.D. 60 not A.D 90, and the Greek texts clearly reveal my first point: that the context was not a global tribulation, but a local tribulation.

This is proven by the term “Oiko-mene” (Revelations 3:10) which is commonly mis-translated as “Earth” or “whole world“, but actually means “Roman Empire.“ The Greek word, which is NOT used, for whole world is “cosmos” or “Gea” (land, earth). Jesus even uses the same term “oiko-mene” when talking about the same events in Matthew 24:13. Another proof it was a local event is that Jesus warns those in Judea to flee to the mountains (Matthew 24: 16), this is not possible if it is a global event.

My second point is that Revelations clearly states at it’s onset that it’s revealing things that will “soon take place” (v.1) and that the “time is near” (v.3). Jesus, when he is talking about “End Times” in Matthew ch.24, clearly says to his disciples that “this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt 24:34). And just in case you were’t convinced, Revelation ends by reminding us that all the things in the book were to soon take place (Revelations 22:6).

In these two basic areas, Scripture clearly says the tribulation was local and approximate to the time of its writing.  So what about the Beast, the anti-Christ, the seals, the trumpets, the dragon, the scroll and all the imagery in the rest of the book? What do we do with the big magical, science fiction, paranormal things?

This is where the post-millennial perspective gets really interesting. I will highlight a few of these in the coming weeks, but if you want a deep dive right away, then click HERE to get my details on the Happy Ending.

I know what I’m presenting may seem incredible if this is your first hearing. You may wonder; “How have I never heard anything about this?” You may feel like I’m deconstructing the heart of your deepest beliefs. Please keep an open mind. I would not deconstruct this if I did not have something much, much bigger to put in its place.

Reframing our eschatology requires an overhaul on our other beliefs. Don’t be afraid to do this. We’ll have to give up our prejudices, our separatism, and our power plays, but what we gain is totally worth it.

Revelations turns out to be TRUE.