Doctrine Of The Final Things (A 23-Lesson Series)
Over the years, the Sunday Auditorium Bible Study series have covered all of the fields of Bible study (Theology or the Godhead, Christology or Jesus Christ, Pneaumatology or the Holy Spirit, Bibliology or the Bible, Hamartiology & Soteriology or Sin & Salvation and Ecclesiology or the church) except one. The field that logically completes the major doctrines of God’s word is Eschatology or the Final Things, which will be taught beginning from January to June 2025.
A study of eschatology has two parts: (1) a look at matters related to an individual’s afterlife (“personal eschatology”) beyond fleshly death and in the intermediate state between earthly life and our Lord’s coming again and the world’s end, and (2) what happens leading to, at and after the Lord’s return and until God’s final judgment, the world’s end, eternal reward in heaven or eternal punishment in Hell (being matters of “general eschatology”)
Sadly, the field of eschatology is most often encountered by the Christian not in what the Bible actually says but in the form of erroneous teachings of the denominations and other religions. We are surrounded by speculation which distract from scriipture (Acts 17:11). Christians hear about the afterlife as reincarnation taught by Eastern religions or the denial of any afterlife (annihilationism) by atheists long before they get to see the scriptural description of human afterlife in a disembodied state in the Hadean realm of either Paradise or Tartarus (Luke 16:19-31). Most often encountered are Bible-believers who believe people proceed straight to Heaven (or Hell) upon their earthly or fleshly death.
Then, among brethren a segment are persuaded that Jesus’ coming again (promised in Acts 1:9-11) had already occurred in the 70 AD destruction of Jerusalem by Roman armies. Sizable numbers of brethren also reject eternal punishment of the impenitent sinner, as they consider total destruction of impenitent sinners (i.e. annihilationism) “more merciful” on God’s part than eternal punishment in hell. And aspects of dispensational premillennialism ,- especially the separate plan of God for the physical nation of modern-day Israel,- are used to convince unbelievers of the Bible’s Divine inspiration by popularizers of fanciful misinterpretations of scripture applied to current events in international politics.
At the heart of the misinterpretation of scriptures regarding the final things is a neglect of all that the scriptures have to say about the Final Things (Psalm 119:160) properly handled (2 Timothy 2:15). Very intricate charts and diagrams saturated with misused scripture are the stock-in-trade of modern-day “seers” who claim to know the exact day and date of our Lord’s coming again despite the Lord Himself insisting that even He does not know when that will happen (Mark 13:32-36).
Of the many teachings Divinely-revealed, those concerning the final things appear to be the most difficult to understand. However, we are taught by 2 Peter 3:16 that only “the untaught and unstable” twist scriptures to their own destruction.
2 Peter 3:16 as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.