Are we living in the last days?
In the church age, we Christians have no definite unfulfilled list of events which must transpire before his return. What the Bible promises will happen at the end is already happening, in significant measure, around the world today — and has been happening, in some sense, since the earliest days of the church. As long as Jesus tarries, we do indeed have the concrete directives of the church age to continue pursuing, like the evangelization of the nations ( Matthew 28:19 ) and the hastening of his coming through holy living ( 2 Peter 3:11–12 ). And yet we have no firm, certain list of unfulfilled conditions about which Jesus could not surprise us. His coming is the next big thing and could happen at any moment. That’s what the New Testament means when it says his return is near. The End Is at Hand Four particular texts in the New Testament, from four different human authors, say that the end is “at hand,” or literally, “has drawn near.” Paul writes in Romans 13:12 , “The night is