Why is eschatology so hard to understand?

For many years I embraced that rather common eschatological position known as panmillennialism, the view that amounts to “I don’t know how things will go, but it will all pan out in the end.” Part of the reason I embraced this view was because my interest lay elsewhere. But part of the reason my interest lay elsewhere was because eschatology was so hard for me to understand. Here are three reasons why that is so.

First, God has determined to not lay out a clear, detailed framework about how He plans to end history. He has played His cards so close to the vest on the issue that Jesus told us, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven but My Father only” (Matthew 24:36). His reasons for not revealing more He has not revealed to us either.

Second, what He has determined to reveal He has chosen to reveal principally in apocalyptic literature. A sound theory of interpretation calls us to read different portions of the Bible in the genre that they come to us. We are not reading well when we take a metaphor and turn it into history, nor when we take history and turn it into metaphor. One of the central disagreements within the evangelical church about eschatology flows out of this problem. One school of thought not only reads apocalyptic literature as if it were designed to be read like a newspaper account, but often accuses those of us who won’t join them of “spiritualizing” the text, implying that such is one slippery step away from embracing theological liberalism. Few of us in our day are quite used to handling any apocalyptic texts, let alone apocalyptic texts from the very Word of God.

Third, what we are told about the end of the world is spoken about in the Bible in at least two different ways. That is, the Bible speaks about the end times as both something yet to come, and that something that has already arrived. It describes both the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem, both of which happened in 70 AD. The Bible is not always clear which “last days” it is talking about. It is easy to get them confused.

All that said, however, I left behind my panmillennialism when I realized that however difficult it may be to understand what God has revealed, He did reveal what He revealed. It is never healthy to take even a small portion of the Word of God, get confused, and then decide not to bother about it. When He speaks we are called to listen. When we are confused we are called to work through that confusion.

When we do so, however, we should not be surprised that others in working through the confusion have come to different conclusions than our own. My favorite theologian has wrestled and come to one conclusion, only to wrestle some more and come to another, only to wrestle some more and come to a third. Which should encourage us to seek peace among the brethren, and to rest in the assurance that it will indeed all pan out. Whatever eschatology we embrace, we all agree that Jesus wins in the end. Because Jesus always wins.