Dr Paul Allen

When Christians are asked which millennial view they hold, some of the more cynical among them will sometimes answer: “I’m a pan-millennialist. I believe it will all pan out in the end.” Much of this cynicism is due to frustration over the seemingly never-ending debates about the last things. It may also be due in some cases to exasperation with the endless train of falsified predictions of the rapture and/or second coming of Christ.  For centuries, misguided teachers have repeatedly promised or strongly suggested to their contemporaries that they are the generation that will finally witness the end. I mean, isn’t it as plain as day that Napoleon Bonaparte was the Antichrist and that his exile was a sign that the end of the world was imminent?  Some Christians who lived in that generation thought so. Their generation was not the first to fall into the trap of date-setting, and it certainly wasn’t the last. For centuries, numerous Christians have compared the headlines of their day with

In the book of Revelation, John mentions an earthquake at the end of the seal, trumpet, and bowl judgments. Is this a prophecy of a real earthquake that signals that the end has come? Do these prophecies predict suffering through earthquakes that believers have to endure? For John, the earthquake is an image of the end. The relevance of the Old Testament and Jewish tradition of the eschatological earthquake makes this a powerful symbol of God revealing himself in power and glory, in judgment and vindication. John expects that God, whose voice shook Mount Sinai, will at the end once again shake heaven and the earth. The eschatological earthquake is not a sign of the approaching end: it is the end. Will this earthquake be a literal event? Since the earthquake of Mount Sinai was a physical phenomenon, and since John’s readers in Asia Minor were all too familiar with real earthquakes, wreaking havoc on their cities, it is very plausible that the end will begin with a violent earthquak