And they are RIGHT!
Chuck Pierce’s son was concerned, like a lot of other people looking out on a world of ransacked grocery stores and canceled sports seasons and eerie lines of people standing six feet apart from one another. So he asked his dad: “Is this the end of the world?”
It sure might feel apocalyptic. But not if you ask Christian writers and pastors who have spent years focusing their message on the Book of Revelation — the New Testament’s final book. It lays out a lurid, poetic vision of the End Times, in which many evangelical leaders interpret it to mean that Jesus will return to Earth, believers will be raptured to heaven and those left behind will suffer seven dreadful years of calamities. Most of these Revelation-focused prophesiers don’t see coronavirus as heralding the Second Coming and the end of life on Earth as we know it.
“If a person were just completely ignorant about what the Bible says about the End Times, they may think this right now: This is it,” said Jeff Kinley, a writer of books on biblical prophecy who lives in Harrison, Ark.
Kinley said he understands why Americans might see this time of fast-encroaching disease, isolation from loved ones and crashing stock markets as apocalyptic. Americans are primed to believe the end of the world might arrive any day now. In 2010, 41 percent told Pew Research Center that they expected Jesus to return by 2050.
Kinley pointed to Revelation 6:8, which forecasts deaths all over the globe “by sword, famine and plague,” and Jesus’ words about the events before the end times in Luke 21:11: “There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.”
“I think he’s referring to a future time,” Kinley said. “I don’t think this is an actual fulfillment of that.”
The Bible is very specific about what will happen before the End Times, Kinley says, and those events haven’t all unfolded yet. For one major thing, the ancient temple in Jerusalem is supposed to be rebuilt first.
Gary Ray, a writer for the prophecy website Unsealed, agreed: He and his fellow evangelical End-Times writers are focused on what is happening with holy sites in Israel, not disease. “The key focus that we have in our minds is Israel. That’s God’s prophetic clock. As things progress in that country, we get closer to when the rapture of the church will occur, and then the tribulation,” he said.