Ten Reasons to Study Eschatology (and Five Reasons Not To)

Few biblical subjects will put people on edge and bring out their argumentative side more quickly than the subject of eschatology. Eschatology is the study of last things. It's historically been considered one of the eight major subsets (loci) of Christian theology: 

1. Bibliology (the doctrine of Scripture)
2. Theology proper (the doctrine of God)
3. Anthropology (the doctrine of man)
4. Christology (the doctrine of the person and work of Jesus Christ)
5. Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation)
6. Pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit)
7. Ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church)
8. Eschatology (the doctrine of last things)

Most people in the church don’t know these terms, and that's ok. Not everyone needs to understand all the technical jargon of theology. But every Christian does need to know something about what all those terms are talking about! Every Christian needs to know (1) that the Bible is God’s Word, breathed out by him and the final authority in all things; (2) that God is three persons in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; (3) that God created man and all things; (4) that Jesus Christ is God the Son incarnate who came to obey God perfectly and die and rise again to save sinful people; (5) that sin separated us from God and we are incapable of reconciling ourselves to him, which is why we need Jesus; (6) that as Christians, we have the Holy Spirit within us to empower us to live the Christian life; (7) that we live as Christians within the context of the body of the church; and (8) that Jesus Christ will one day come again to finally and completely defeat sin and death and bring his church to live with him forever. Hopefully you can see how those basics of Christianity line up with those eight categories.

The last subset, eschatology, is often treated in one of two ways by many Christians today: it's either given a place of prominence and obsessed over and made a shibboleth in a way that it was never intended to function, or it's downplayed, minimized, and even completely ignored. Neither approach is good or appropriate. Eschatology comes last in that list for several reasons: it comes last chronologically, it has (probably) the widest room for disagreement, and it flows logically out of the cohesion of the other seven subjects (or at least it ought to!). When we treat it like the first thing, we get other things wrong; but we also run that same danger when we treat it like nothing. 

Here are five commonly given reasons not to study eschatology:

1. It's hard. It's true, eschatology is not the simplest of subjects. It's not easily summarized in a paragraph or a page. It's not easily explained to children. It takes time and effort to tackle such a big subject, and for many people, it just doesn’t seem worth it.
2. It's confusing. It's true, eschatology often involves lots of strange and even bizarre imagery. Dragons and beasts and locusts, plagues and prophets and predictions. How in the world is anybody supposed to figure all this out?
3. It's intimidating. It's true, people tend to associate eschatology with the more sensational prophecies and vivid imagery surrounding the end of the world, and because it involves understanding several different parts and genres of Scripture, many people would simply rather focus their time and energy on something more accessible.
4. It's controversial. It's true, there are different views of the Bible’s teaching on the end times. Some people believe that the world is going to get better and more Christianized before Christ returns, while others believe that Christianity’s influence is going to decrease until the church is almost snuffed out. Some people believe that part of biblical prophecy has already been fulfilled, while others think that everything is still in the future. Some people think that the Bible teaches that our nation, the United States, must unequivocally support the nation of Israel in order for Christ to return. And all these groups of people seem to be always at each other’s throats about it. Which leads to…
5. It doesn’t matter. It's true, you don’t need to be an expert in eschatology to go to heaven when you die. You don’t have to be an expert on the seven seals and trumpets from Revelation or the seventy weeks from Daniel. You don’t have to know the names of the eight loci of theology. All you have to do is believe in Jesus, and prove it by living a life of faithful, loving obedience to God. Eschatology isn’t necessary for salvation.​

So why bother with eschatology at all?

You can find many good articles like this on the internet, including this short one from Ligonier Ministries. Here are ten reasons to study eschatology:

1. Because it's in God’s Word. The Bible isn’t just a “how to go to heaven” manual. If all we needed was one of the Gospels and maybe the book of Romans, that's all God would have given us. But he gave us so much more than that! He gave us 66 books, comprising two testaments, written over the span of about 1500 years, by over 40 different people, from shepherds to doctors, from peasants to kings, but all with the same ultimate divine author: God himself. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17). It's true that you don’t “need” eschatology in order to go to heaven. The thief on the cross in Luke 23:39-43 certainly didn’t have his eschatology settled. I’m grateful to God that we don’t have to pass a systematic theology exam in order to get into heaven! But the thief on the cross is not given to us as a paradigm for the Christian life. He wasn’t baptized, and yet the normal expectation is that under normal circumstances, all Christians will be baptized. The thief on the cross is a testimony to God’s mercy and grace, but not a prescription for living the Christian life. Christians shouldn’t be minimalists. The Christian life isn’t about asking, “What’s the bare minimum I can do and still go to heaven?” The Christian life is about asking, “Since God loved me enough to send Christ to save me even when I was a sinner who hated him, now that I’m saved, how can I love and glorify God as much as possible?” The Christian life should be maximalist! And as the children’s catechism says, where do we learn how to love and glorify God? In the Bible alone. Everything in the Bible is there for a reason—yes, even the boring parts like the genealogies, and even the difficult parts like end times prophecies. When we dismiss or ignore parts of God’s Word, we dismiss or ignore something that God has given us for our own benefit. Yes, there are limits to what God has allowed us to know. He is God and we are not. But at the same time, he has given us the privilege of searching his Word in order to know and worship him better. “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deut 29:29). 
2. To help us understand other parts of the Bible. In his farewell address to the Ephesian elders, the apostle Paul declared, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). If we ignore things related to eschatology, we end up ignoring large portions of Scripture, including parts of the psalms, the prophets, the Torah, the New Testament epistles, the book of Revelation, and even parts of the four Gospels. The great Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper said that eschatology “is the capstone and crown of systematic theology. It sheds light on every other doctrine and answers questions that every other theological subject raises.” Louis Berkhof, in his classic Systematic Theology, explained the role of eschatology and its relation to other subjects this way: “In theology proper it is the question, how God is finally perfectly glorified in the work of His hands, and how the counsel of God is fully realized; in anthropology, the question, how the disrupting influence of sin is completely overcome; in Christology, the question, how the work of Christ is crowned with perfect victory; in soteriology, the question, how the work of the Holy Spirit at last issues in the complete redemption and glorification of the people of God; and in ecclesiology, the question of the final apotheosis of the church [God bringing his people to live with him forever].” Without eschatology, every other area of our theology and doctrine will have massive holes.
3. To remind us that Christ is coming back. There’s a minority position in church history that's making a comeback today, called full preterism. Full preterism holds that everything in eschatology, including the second coming of Christ and the inauguration of the new heavens and new earth, has already happened. But this not only denies the reality of life in a fallen world, it twists much of Scripture, and it denies Christians the certain and future hope of the expectation of Christ’s return that has been the hope of Christians ever since he ascended back into heaven. If Christ has already returned, then what hope do we have for the future? A proper biblical eschatology will remind us that Christ is coming back.
4. To remind us that God does have a plan for all of history. In the same way, the events between now and then are not random. God is the sovereign ruler of all things, including history itself. Even if we don’t understand every single detail about biblical prophecy, reading and studying the Bible’s prophecies for the future should lead us to a greater understanding of God’s sovereignty and a greater rest and reliance upon him as the Lord of history.
5. To grow in spiritual maturity. The New Testament has a lot to say about the importance of every believer pursuing spiritual maturity, and the role of the church officers in helping them do just that (1 Cor 13:11; 14:20; Eph 4:11-15; Heb 5:12-6:3; 2 Pet 3:18). Ignoring parts of God’s Word not only keeps us spiritually immature, it keeps the rest of the church body immature as well, and that's the opposite of God’s design and intent for his church. Your pastors, elders, and teachers can help you, but they can’t do it for you; every believer has to take his own spiritual maturity seriously. Their job is “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:12-14a). The spiritually mature believer is not susceptible to fads or changing opinions, and is able to help other believers get to that point as well. And speaking of fads and opinions…
6. To recognize and oppose false teaching. While there is a lot of room for differences of opinion and interpretation in a subject like eschatology, there is still a limit. There are still boundaries. Full preterism, for example, is outside the boundaries of historic orthodox Christianity. But eschatology’s “big tent” nature has a downside: it means that false teachers and wolves will often use eschatology to get a foothold in the church. And because eschatology is linked to every other doctrine in the Bible, if we as the church allow false teaching a foothold, it's inevitably going to affect the doctrines of man, sin, salvation, and even the doctrine of God himself. It's like the old analogy of the camel sticking its nose under the corner of the tent: eventually, the whole camel will be inside the tent, so if you don’t want a camel in your tent, it's much easier to push his nose out than to try and remove the entire camel. That same passage from Ephesians 4 goes on to say, “...so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Eph 4:14). And back in Acts chapter 20, after stating his faithfulness in declaring the whole counsel of God, Paul lamented that “after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert” (Acts 20:29-30). We don’t necessarily need to be “heresy hunters,” but we do need to be mature and stable enough to recognize false teaching, and to protect ourselves and others from it. And speaking of stability…
7. To cultivate peace and stability in ourselves. Much of the bombastic approach to eschatology over the last few decades has resulted in anxiety and even panic for many people. “What if I missed something? What if I did something wrong? What if I have the wrong interpretation? What if I missed Jesus’ return? What if I missed the rapture? What if I accidentally took the mark of the beast without realizing it?” And on and on it goes. But that's not why God put those things in the Bible! Instead, like we said earlier, those difficult and confusing things aren’t ends in themselves, but rather means to draw our eyes to God and his sovereignty in all things, to Christ and his finished work of redemption on our behalf, to the glorious future that awaits us and all believers when he returns. Taking the time and making the effort to study eschatology ought to help us dispel the confusion, calm our fears, and learn to trust God more, so that we can indeed cast our cares upon him and live in his peace (1 Pet 5:7; John 14:27; 16:33; 2 Thess 3:16; Phil 4:6; Ps 4:8).
8. To sharpen ourselves and other believers. “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Prov 27:17). Some of the best conversations I’ve had with other believers have been on subjects on which we disagreed, despite our common faith. Why? Two primary reasons: first, because it forced me to articulate my beliefs; and second, because it forced me (and the other person!) back into the pages of sacred Scripture. Eschatology is a great opportunity for believers to challenge each other and to help each other grow in spiritual maturity and knowledge of God’s Word. Those conversations might not result in anyone changing their positions—in fact, it almost certainly won’t. But what it will result in is a deeper desire to know God more through his Word, a respect for other viewpoints (within the appropriate bounds), and a deeper bond of unity between believers who are united to Christ by grace through faith, and so inseparably united to one another as members of his universal church.
9. To share the gospel with unbelievers. Because eschatology is so vivid and almost theatrical in nature, it's often co-opted by unbelievers for entertainment. Movies, TV shows, plays, music, and more often employ biblical eschatological language and imagery in order to give the product a veneer of religiosity or give viewers a thrill of the supernatural. Those distortions can be a good entry point for sharing the true gospel, the true hope that Christians have for the future, with unbelievers who don’t know the difference between true Christianity and the Hollywood distortions of it. And finally…
10. To know, love, worship, and serve God better. Worship is not just something we do for an hour on Sunday mornings; for the Christian, all of life is worship! Everything we do, we do to the best of our ability, for the glory of God. Eschatology isn’t just about deciphering prophecies about beasts and dragons; eschatology is about worshiping God for who he is. He is the one who will resurrect our bodies to their glorious redeemed state. He will throw Satan into the abyss and eliminate sin forever. He will redeem all of creation and purify it as the new heavens and new earth. He will live with his people and be their God, and he will do all of this because of what he already has done: he sent his Son Jesus into the world, to obey God perfectly, to lay down his life on the cross, to rise again from the dead, so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). The more we learn about God’s mighty deeds—past, present, and future—the more we get to know him as he is, as he has revealed himself in all of Scripture. And the more we get to know him, the more we grow to love him, through the power of the Holy Spirit indwelling us as believers. And the more we love him, the more we worship him as we ought, as we were created to do, according to his original very good design for us as his image bearers. The more we love and worship God, the more we love and serve others. 

​At the end of the book that's at the end of the book, the end of the book of Revelation, Jesus declared to the apostle John, “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches.” As difficult and challenging as it can be, all of the Bible was breathed out by God--for us! So don’t be scared of, intimidated by, or dismissive of eschatology, Christian. Instead, joyfully embrace the privilege that God has given us of striving to know him better through all of his perfect Word, “that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:17).

​“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Prov 25:2).