Essentials: The End Times May 30, 2021 If you google “end times news,” your search will come back with an astonishing and overwhelming 1 billion 850 million results. It seems that people everywhere, of every faith or no faith at all, are, at some level, intrigued with the unknown and interested in what “the end” will look like. Countless people have dedicated their careers, if not their lives, to predicting the return of Jesus and the ensuing chaos and calamity that will result in the end of life on earth as we know it.

Author and journalist Dina Niyeri writes, “For believers, “the end” has always been imminent. In the Christian world, every century seems to bring a new wave of calculations. On January 1, in the year 1000, Pope Sylvester II predicted a millennial apocalypse. Two centuries later, Pope Innocent III predicted that the end would arrive 666 years after the birth of Islam. The Black Death brought rapture fever, as did every comet. Cotton Mather, the influential American preacher, had three guesses between 1697 and 1736. As for this century, a 2010 Pew Research Center study found that nearly half of American Christians – not just evangelicals – believe Christ will return in their lifetime.”

What is this fascination with the end times all about? What is it that drives our desire to know what’s coming? And what do we as followers of Jesus really believe about the end times?

We’re wrapping up our sermon series Essentials: Live Like You Believe this weekend. And we’ll be taking a look at what God’s Word has to teach us about the end times. There is much that we can know for sure; truths that give us firm ground to stand on, even as we navigate increasingly challenging and uncertain times.