A primary way Satan keeps people deluded about life and the world is by his contortion and confusion of either origin or end time truth.  God reveals with pristine clarity the beginning and ending of everything.  Both of these revelations are vital for faith and practice.  Satan wants people deceived on how they got here and what will happen to them in the future.

Naturalism breeds more lust.  I like to say, it means we got here by accident.  No one’s your boss, so you’re your own boss.  That sounds great to most people, doing what they want to do.  Since they just happened, no design, they aren’t accountable to anyone or anything.  They live like they want, which, based on the nature of man, means following lust.

Origins

Even if someone contemplates a possibility of God, that isn’t strong enough to replace the dominion of lust in a life.  All the truths about God transmit from Him as origination of everything.  Other truths about God diminish when He didn’t create us.  The elimination of God creating man for HIs glory greatly decreases the power and importance of everything else scripture says.

The perversion of beginnings relates most to its compatibility with the theory of evolution.  Modernists of the nineteenth century began rethinking the meaning of Genesis to fit with Darwinism.  An allegorical interpretation of the first three chapters of the Bible allows to read evolution and an old earth into Genesis.

With people unsure about the beginning, it’s no wonder they doubt the ending.  Even theologians turn eschatology into a non-essential now.  They relegate prophecy to ambiguity.  Many churches have removed most of their eschatology from their doctrinal statements.  You don’t need a position to fit into a church.  It’s too uncertain to require for even professing Christians.

Endings

On a recent prophecy post I wrote here, an anonymous commenter (whom I did not publish) called crazy (he used “nutjobs”) churches that talk about or preach prophecy.  Opinions and speculation abounds on end time events.

The doctrines of Christ, salvation, man, and angels dovetail with prophecy.  When Jesus arrived in the first century, very few were ready or awaited His coming, because they had detached from prophetic reality.  The promises of God become of no effect as people falsify what He says will happen in the future.  This then deadens their anticipation and smothers their hope.

History functions in a chiliastic manner.  You could call it “going full circle.”  Paradise lost and paradise regained.  The destruction of the first necessitates the destruction of the last.  This renders meaningless everything in between.  Why believe anything if you can’t know how it starts and how it ends?

Many theologians and church leaders have capitulated to the attack on the origin and the ending.  This relegates most everything to what people call, living in the present or living in the moment.  I understand that concept in a positive way to a certain degree.  Living in the moment requires mindfulness and focus on the task at hand and perhaps gratefulness for what you’re experiencing in the present.  However, God wants futuristic living for the saints, an outlook of expectation.

A Forward Look

Scripture requires a forward look.  Paul in Philippians said, “reaching forth unto those things which are before” (3:13) and “we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3:20).  Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God” (Matthew 6:33).  If we can’t know our beginning or ending, we lose the basis for living like scripture says.  An ultimate motivation for Paul was “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).

‘Putting on the helmet of salvation’ (Ephesians 6:17) relates closely to last days events.  Salvation is complete in the future.  If people can’t be sure about most of the details, what can and do they mean?  How would we be sure that these uncertain things could be true?  This is where it stands in most ways today in eschatology.

Spiritualizing

The fastest growing view of the future is to spiritualize or allegorize the future.  People allegorize almost all of the prophetic passages and they take on numerous different possible meanings.  This has become not just possible but the preferred take in many places.

Now men spiritualize and allegorize the first few chapters of the Bible and the last book of the Bible.  People can make it mean what they want.  It’s no wonder people won’t take God’s Word seriously and churches are apathetic.  If people can’t really know the beginning and the ending, why care about everything in between?