Pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Dallas recently shared how Christians can prepare for the End Times, its misconceptions, and the next event on the biblical prophetic timeline.
Jeffress, who released his latest book, Are We Living in the End Times?: Biblical Answers to 7 Questions about the Future, told The Christian Post that though “we are not technically living in the End Times, according to the Bible, we are in what the Bible calls the last days.”
“We've been in the last days for 2,000 years, and I think you can make a case that we're in the last days of the last days before the rapture of the Church,” he said. “The most important thing is not trying to guess when Jesus is coming back again, but realize He is coming back again, and it makes sure we're prepared.”
Instead of making predictions, Jeffress focused more on several ways Christians can prepare for the End Times, such as wearing the “right spiritual clothes,” referring to the righteousness of Christ.
“There are two different garments we can choose to put on to meet the Lord,” he said. “We can use the garment of our own righteousness, our own good works, and the Bible says that's nothing but a filthy rag in God's sight, or we can choose to be dressed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that's what becoming a Christian is.”
"God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God,” he added, citing 2 Corinthians 5. Jeffries contended that this righteousness is the essence of the Christian faith because believers are made faultless before God through Christ, not their own deeds.
“That’s the first thing we do to make sure that we're Christians that were saved, that we'll be welcomed into God's presence,” he said.
During the interview with The Christian Post, Jeffress identified three End Times misconceptions prevalent amongst Christians, such as fanaticism, fatalism and cynicism.
“Fanaticism is trying to set the date for the rapture or for the Second Coming of Christ, trying to read a prophetic significance into every headline in the paper,” the pastor explained. “Jesus was very clear in Matthew 24 and 25. Nobody knows the hour, the day, of the Lord's return, which is why we need to be ready at all times.”
Regarding fatalism, Jeffress said it's the the “most dangerous place” for Christians to land because it is the belief that “Jesus is coming back whenever He's going to come back, and I don't need to do anything different in my life.”
“As much as the Bible talks about prophecy, the Bible never separates biblical prophecy from everyday life,” he said. “In 2 Peter 3, the apostle said, ‘Since all these things are to be burned up in this way since the world is going to end, what sort of people are we to be? In holy conduct and godliness.’”
The third view, cynicism, is the view that “People have been saying for thousands of years, ‘Jesus is coming back and He hasn't come back yet,” Jeffress said.
“Peter said scoffers will come with that message, and 2 Peter 3 says, ‘They will come saying, where's the promise of this coming?’ We need to realize the theme of Scripture is consistent: Jesus is coming back again, and we need to be ready," he said.
Jeffress also noted that the rapture of the Church is the next prophetic event on the biblical timeline as pointed out in 1 Thessalonians 4, when Christians "shall be caught up together... to meet the Lord in the air."
He distinguished the event from the Second Coming of Christ, which will take place 7 years later as detailed in Revelation 19.
“The interesting thing about the Rapture is there are no prophecies that have to be fulfilled for the rapture to occur. It could happen before we finish this interview, which is, again, why we need to be ready,” he said.
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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.