Tim LaHaye - Are We Living in the End Times?

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Are We Living in the End Times?

Copyright 1999 by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. All rights reserved. Updated material copyright 2011 by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

Cover photo copyright by distudio/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

Author photo copyright 2004 by Brian MacDonald. All rights reserved.

Designed by Stephen Vosloo

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920, www.alivecommunications.com.

Permission is granted to Bible teachers and pastors to reproduce the charts in this book for use as a teaching aid only, not for resale. In addition, beautiful transparencies for use with an overhead projector are available from Visualize-It Productions, 4263 Alta Mira Dr., La Mesa, CA 91941.

Charts adapted from Rapture Under Attack , 1992, 1998 by Tim LaHaye. Used by permission of Multnomah Publishers, Inc.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the Holy Bible , King James Version.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version , NIV . Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

LaHaye, Tim F.

Are we living in the end times? / Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8423-0098-8 (hc)

ISBN 978-0-8423-3644-4 (sc)

1. Rapture (Christian eschatology) 2. Tribulation (Christian eschatology) I. Jenkins, Jerry B.

II. Title.

BT887.L28 1999 99-41424

236.9dc21

Repackage first published in 2011 under ISBN 978-1-4143-4793-6.

Build: 2016-10-12 08:42:25

To the millions of readers of the Left Behind series, with the prayer that this book will help them gain a clearer understanding of end-time Bible prophecy

Introduction

How Close Are We?

These are easily the most exciting days to be alive, not just because of the breathtaking advances in technology and science, but because we twenty-first century Christians have more reason than any generation before us to believe that Christ will return to take us to His Fathers house. In fact, there are more than three hundred prophecies in the Bible detailing His second coming. That is three times the number of prophecies that foretold His first coming. And His first appearance on the earth is a certified fact of history. Therefore we can be three times more confident that Jesus is coming back to this earth a second time. Just hours before His crucifixion, Jesus Himself left us with this promise:

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (JOHN 14:1-3)

We are not the first generation to think like this, of course, for history reveals that many interpreted the events of their day as fulfillments of end-time prophecies. In some cases their date setting and speculation turned off more people than it inspired, but at least they were studying the Scriptures in an attempt to properly discern the times. Many of them sincerely longed for Christ to end the moral corruption and deterioration of their age by ushering in His kingdom of righteousness. All Christians consider such a possibility an infinite improvement on this war-weary and sin-cursed world.

We should not be surprised that those of past generations were confused about end-time events, for even Daniel, one of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets, was commanded to shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end (Daniel 12:4; the time of the end refers to the days just before the beginning of the Tribulation, up to and including the second coming of Christ).

One reason for their confusion is that the sealing of end-time events made it more difficult to understand the signs of the times. The unsealing or ability to understand end-time prophecy, according to Daniel, would wait until many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased (Daniel 12:4, KJV ). Hardly anyone doubts that ours is a day when people are running to and fro and knowledge has increased. Both secular knowledge and the knowledge of prophetic truth have increased tremendously in this century alone. We believe we are on the verge of obtaining even greater prophetic insights than at any other time in the last two millennia.

When God rebuked the children of Israel for falling into paganism and idol worship like the nations that surrounded them, He used fulfilled prophecy to prove His identity and unique deity. The revered Hebrew prophet Isaiah was inspired to record these words of God talking about Himself:

Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure. (ISAIAH 46:9-10)

To prove to the Israelites that He alone was God, He used His ability to declare the end from the beginning or prophecy to credential Himself. The end refers to the last days, which we believe are rapidly approaching. Prophecy, which is popularly identified as history written in advance, can only come from God. For He alone knows the beginning and the end. For example, how do we know for certain that the beginning was really created by God the way it is described in the early chapters of Genesis? There were no eyewitnesses to these events. Since only God can know exactly what the future holds, He can use His divine ability to predict the future, inspire His prophets to write it down in the Bible, and then allow history to fulfill these predictions. In this manner, He is validating His Word as recorded in the Bible so that other events that have no eyewitnesses, such as Creation, can likewise be validated.