The narrative of the Bible can be logically divided into seven sections, corresponding to seven major covenants (relationships between God and men, with a system in place for properly worshipping and obeying Him). Learning the seven sections provides a framework into which you can fit the various names and events you read about in the Bible. The seven sections are:
The Era of Adam: From Adam to Noah
The Era of Noah: From Noah to Abraham
The Era of Abraham: From Abraham to Moses
Tabernacle Judaism: From Moses to David
First Temple Judaism: From David to Cyrus
Second Temple Judaism: From Cyrus to Jesus
The End Times: The Last Days and the Jewish-Roman Wars
There is an overlap between each section and the one that follows it, as there is a brief time where a new covenant has been initiated but the old covenant is still in place.
The first three eras are all recorded in the Book of Genesis. Adam, Noah, and Abraham are the three main patriarchs of humanity. In each of these sections, the chain of descendants from each patriarch is a major focus.
The second three eras are the three distinct eras of the nation of Israel from their leaving Egypt in about 1500 BC to settle in the Promised Land to the end of their national identity in the second century AD. Each of these three sections begin with a pair of men, the first of whom initiates a new covenant, and the second of whom completes the establishment of the new covenant.
The seventh section involves the establishment of the final, permanent New Covenant by Jesus. That covenant extends beyond the end of the Bible into eternity. The entire New Testament focuses on the setting up of the New Covenant and the wrapping up of Second Temple Judaism and the nation of Israel.
Fun fact: the seven sections of the Bible correspond to the seven days of the creation week of Genesis 1:1-2:3. See The Seven-Day Metanarrative for more information.
The Era of Adam
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, then spent a week lighting, forming, and filling them. After creating Adam and Eve on the sixth day (including blessing them and commanding them to be fruitful and multiply), God rested on the seventh.
While God was resting, the serpent (either a fallen angel named Satan taking the form of an animal or an animal acting under Satan’s influence) tempted Eve, who together with Adam committed the first “sin” (willful violation of God’s commandments) by eating the fruit of a tree that God specifically forbade them from eating.
As a result, God established a sacrificial system of worship to allow men who feared God to temporarily atone for their sins. He also promised the giving of a savior, whose ultimate sacrifice we now know would provide permanent atonement for the sins of God’s faithful followers.
Adam and Eve’s first son was Cain and second son was Abel. Cain murdered Abel out of jealousy. Adam and Eve’s third son was Seth.
Seth’s godly descendants intermarried with Cain’s wicked descendants, leading the whole earth to be full of wickedness and violence. God chose to wipe out the earth and all that lived in it to cleanse the wickedness, but He was pleased with one of Seth’s descendants, Noah, so He decided to spare Noah and his family.
The Era of Noah
Noah built a massive ark to save the lives of him, his wife, his three sons, and his three sons’ wives, as well as at least one pair of each animal that lived on dry land and breathed through its nostrils (Genesis 7:22 – bugs like spiders were not included but rather could survive the Flood on their own). Then God sent a massive flood to wipe out all other humans and nostril-breathing land animals.
After the Flood, God made a new covenant with Noah and his sons, not only blessing them and telling them to be fruitful and multiply but also authorizing the establishment of civil governments.
Later, Noah’s son Ham dishonored Noah, leading to Noah cursing Ham’s son Canaan.
Noah’s children multiplied and eventually populated the whole earth. Their descendants formed 70 nations (or 72, based on how they’re counted), which established the world system and kingdoms in place for the remainder of the Bible.
Several generations after the Flood, Noah’s descendants refused to disperse across the earth but instead tried to build a city and a tower to the heavens (the City and Tower of Babel). This caused God to confuse their language and scatter them across the face of the earth.
Because of their scattering and language confusion, the nations did not have a focused manner of connecting with God, so God called a man named Abram (whom He later renamed to Abraham) and his family to tabernacle (dwell in tents that they would move from place to place) in the Land of Canaan.
The Era of Abraham
When God called Abraham to the Land of Canaan, He told him that He would “bless those who bless you and curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). In other words, Abraham was the connection point between God and the scattered nations, witnessing to them about God’s commandments and nature and giving them a way to respond in faith (by blessing Abraham and his family).
God also promised that He would give the Land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants. When Abraham later lamented having no child, God promised to make his descendants as numerous as the stars. Abraham believed in God’s promise with powerful faith.
After Abraham fathered a son named Ishmael with his maid Hagar, whom his wife Sarai (later renamed Sarah) had given him as a concubine, Sarah miraculously birthed a son named Isaac when she was 90 and post-menopause.
The year before Isaac’s birth, God commanded that Abraham and all his male descendants be circumcised going forward.
Right before Sarah became pregnant, God sent angels to bring Abraham’s nephew Lot out of the wicked city of Sodom, which along with Gomorrah God destroyed with fire and brimstone from heaven.
In his old age, Abraham had a servant bring a wife for Isaac named Rebekah back from the land of his fathers. Rebekah bore Isaac twin sons, Esau and Jacob.
Jacob used cunning to take both Esau’s birthright (Esau having come out of the womb first) and Isaac’s blessing on Esau. When Esau plotted to murder Jacob in response, Jacob fled to the house of Laban, Rebekah’s brother.
Jacob married Laban’s daughters Rachel and Leah. Each of them gave her maid to Jacob as a concubine, and with these four wives Jacob fathered 12 sons, who became the patriarchs of the twelve tribes of “Israel,” the new name God gave Jacob after he wrestled Jesus (in the pre-incarnate form of a man). The blessing of Abraham and God’s promise to give the Land of Canaan to his descendants thus passed from Abraham down through Isaac and Jacob to these twelve tribes of Israel.
In his old age, Jacob favored his son Joseph more than his brothers. In response, his brothers sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt, where he eventually became the right-hand man of the Pharaoh (the Egyptian king). Joseph then brought Jacob and his entire family to live in Egypt during a massive famine. During the lifetime of Jacob’s sons, the Egyptians treated the people of Israel with great favor.
After the death of Jacob’s sons, a new Pharaoh first enslaved the rapidly multiplying people of Israel and then tried to murder their male children, which caused the Israelites to cry out for deliverance. In response, God sent an Israelite named Moses to deliver them.
Tabernacle Judaism
Moses survived the slaughter of Israelite boys and was raised in the Egyptian palace. At the age of 40, he attempted to lead the Israelites to freedom, but they rejected him, causing him to flee.
40 years later, God called to Moses from a burning bush and told him to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Land of Canaan, where they would kill all the Canaanites (who had descended into abject wickedness by this point) and take over the “Promised Land” for themselves.
Moses and his brother Aaron asked the Pharaoh then in power to release the Israelites from bondage. When he refused, Moses called down ten plagues on Egypt, culminating with the death of all the firstborn children in the land.
The Israelites were spared from the slaughter of the firstborn by performing the ritual of Passover, such that the killing angel “passed over” the houses of the Israelites.
After leading the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea, and Israel escaped from the pursuing Egyptian forces, who were drowned when the waters came back together.
God gave Israel the Ten Commandments, as well as a number of laws that would govern all aspects of their society going forward, especially once they settled in the Promised Land. These laws included things like how to handle murder and adultery, what the various holiday festivals would be, how to sacrifice properly to God, how to apportion rest (by giving everyone a day off work every week and letting the land lie fallow periodically), etc. The Israelites agreed to follow God’s laws, then immediately broke them by worshipping a golden calf.
God mandated the construction of a massive portable tabernacle (tent) and surrounding courtyard for His presence to dwell in as He traveled with Israel and where the Israelites could offer their sacrifices (primarily grain and specific animals). The sacrifices were administered by a priesthood that belonged exclusively to Aaron’s descendants, although other members of the tribe of Levi (“Levites”) could assist the priests.
Once the Tabernacle was constructed, God attempted to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land, but they rebelled. Therefore, God decreed that all but two faithful men of the ages of twenty and above would wander and die in the wilderness throughout the next 38 years, after which their children would enter Canaan.
Moses and Aaron later lost the privilege of entering themselves, so both died shortly before Israel went into the Promised Land. God had Moses commission his assistant Joshua to lead Israel into Canaan.
Under Joshua’s leadership, Israel entered the Promised Land, waged war against the Canaanites for seven years (starting with the city of Jericho), and then divided up the land amongst the tribes.
Unfortunately, the Israelites failed to properly wipe out the Canaanites, so after the death of Joshua, Israel followed the remaining Canaanites into worship of false gods.
Every time Israel did this, God allowed a foreign nation to conquer and oppress them. When Israel cried out for help, God sent one or more “judges” (although perhaps “governor” might be a better term) to deliver and govern Israel. When the judge died and was not replaced by another, Israel sinned again. This happened seven times. The two most well-known judges are Gideon and Samson.
Eventually the ark of the covenant (a box containing the Ten Commandments and some other key artifacts), on which God would sit while dwelling in the Tabernacle, was captured by Israel’s enemies, then returned to Israel but kept away from the Tabernacle. God’s plan to restore His presence and address the repeated failures of Israel during the time of the judges was to establish a faithful Israelite king named David and mandate the construction of a massive building called a temple to be the proper place of Israelite sacrifice going forward.
Note: Moses initiated the Tabernacle covenant, while Joshua established it.
First Temple Judaism
Samuel was a righteous judge of Israel. In his old age, Israel demanded a king to be set over them, which wasn’t in God’s timing. Nonetheless, despite God’s warnings, the people insisted, so God had Samuel anoint Saul to be king over all Israel. Note: if you look carefully at the timeline, Saul’s 40 years of rule coincided with Samson’s 40 years of life.
Saul reigned righteously for two years, then violated God’s commandments. As a result, God proclaimed that He would take away Saul’s throne and give it to a man after His own heart. Unfortunately, Saul was power-hungry and refused to yield to God’s will.
Years later, God sent Samuel to anoint a young boy named David to be king in Saul’s place. Shortly afterwards, David defeated a Philistine giant named Goliath and became a commander in Saul’s army. However, despite initially loving David, Saul became jealous and was so worried about losing his crown that he eventually drove David into hiding.
Saul and his son Jonathan, a close friend of David’s, were eventually killed by the Philistines, leading David to take over the kingdom (after a brief civil war with another of Saul’s sons) and make Jerusalem its capital. David was a mostly righteous king, except for when he slept with the wife (Bathsheba) of one of his best friends, accidentally got her pregnant, then murdered her husband to cover up his crime. God exposed David’s sin and sent judgment upon him in the form of one of his sons attempting a coup against him, but David’s response of trusting in God allowed him to keep his throne.
David wanted to build a glorious house for God’s presence, but because of the many wars he fought against God’s enemies, he was not allowed to build it himself. Instead, he planned its design and set aside resources so his son Solomon could build it. He also composed and/or compiled most of the songs in the Book of Psalms for use in being performed by Levites continuously around the planned temple.
After David’s death, Solomon built a massive temple for the worship system (to replace the Tabernacle) and a glorious palace for himself. God gifted him with great wisdom, and he wrote the Book of Proverbs, the tale of Job, the poetic Song of Songs, and his final reflections using his great wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Despite his great wisdom, Solomon still chose to make foolish decisions and ended up building shrines for false gods to please his foreign wives, leading God to split the Israelite kingdom after his death into ten tribes in the north (“Northern Israel”), under the control of whomever God decreed, and two tribes to remain in the south (“Southern Judah”), under the control of David’s lineage.
The kings of the north were almost universally wicked, eventually leading to Northern Israel being conquered and taken into captivity by the Assyrian empire.
The Davidic kings of the south were sometimes righteous, sometimes wicked. Judah lasted longer than Northern Israel did, but eventually Jerusalem was sacked, the nation was conquered, and the people of Judah were taken into captivity by the Babylonian empire.
During the time of the northern and southern kings, Elijah and Elisha set up a prophetic system, after which prophets began to write and warn Israel and Judah to repent. They warned about the looming judgments and promised the subsequent coming of the Messiah (Hebrew for “anointed one,” the title of the promised savior of Israel and of all mankind). Most of the minor prophets (authors of small prophetic Bible books) wrote during this time, although some wrote after the Babylonian Exile.
Of the major prophets (authors of long prophetic Bible books), Isaiah wrote well in advance of the Exile, while Jeremiah and Ezekiel wrote during the judgment on Judah. Daniel wrote before, during, and after the Exile. The Book of Lamentations is Jeremiah weeping over the destruction of Jerusalem, which saw the First Temple and the palace of Solomon burned to the ground. The various instruments of temple worship were taken into exile by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, along with the remnant of Judahites who were spared from the destruction.
Babylonian domination over Israel lasted for 70 years, after which the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon and was stirred up by God to release the Jews from captivity and send them back to Judah to rebuild the temple.
Note: David initiated the First Temple covenant, while Solomon established it.
Second Temple Judaism
In the first year of Persian rule over Israel, Cyrus the Great commanded that the Jews be released from exile, return to Judah with the instruments of temple worship, and rebuild the temple.
Cyrus the Great is called “Cyrus king of Persia,” “Cyrus king of Babylon,” “Cyrus the Persian,” and “Darius the Mede” in the Bible.
Daniel had been a chief advisor to Nebuchadnezzar before the Exile began, and Daniel’s friends and fellow advisors, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-Nego, were thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to an idol, but God saved them from being burned up. Just before Cyrus conquered Babylon, Daniel was restored to his position by Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, which allowed him to become one of Cyrus’ chief advisors in the first several years of his reign.
After their return from exile, the Jews began to rebuild the temple, but their enemies discouraged them and hired counselors (who most likely conspired with the prince of Persia, Cyrus’ son and co-regent Cambyses II) to interfere with their efforts.
After the death of Cambyses II and the brief reign of his younger brother Smerdis (or an impostor claiming to be his younger brother), Darius the Great took control of Persia.
Darius the Great is called “Darius king of Persia,” “Darius the Persian,” “Ahasuerus” (except in Daniel 9:1, where the name refers to Cyrus’ father), and “Artaxerxes king of Persia” in the Bible.
Darius permitted the Jews to resume and complete the construction of the Second Temple. He also sponsored the coming of Ezra to Jerusalem to restore the observance of Jewish law and proper sacrificial worship after the completion of the Second Temple.
Darius was also the king who married a Jewish woman named Esther. Darius’ wicked chief advisor Haman tried to wipe out the Jews, but when Esther revealed the plot to the king, he permitted the Jews to defend themselves. The spoils of those killed by the Jews was sent to adorn the temple, making it more glorious than the First Temple, and Esther’s uncle Mordecai was promoted to be Darius’s chief advisor in Haman’s place.
Darius further sponsored Nehemiah’s trip to Jerusalem to rebuild the city’s walls and to govern the land of Judah in righteousness, thereby completing the establishment of the Second Temple covenant.
Note: Modern evangelical commentators are confused in their attempts to tie each of the various names in the Bible for Cyrus and Darius to a different Persian king. Moreover, they also follow secular historians in believing that a number of Persian kings followed Darius the Great, when in fact Daniel 8 and Daniel 11:1-4 make clear that Alexander the Great conquered the same Darius who oversaw the completion of the Second Temple. The entire narrative of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, spanning from the beginning of the reign of Cyrus to near the end of the reign of Darius, lasted exactly 49 years, the “7 weeks” (7 weeks of 7 years each) of Daniel 9:25.
The narrative of the Old Testament ended in about 410 BC, about 400 years before Jesus’ birth. These 400 years are called the “intertestamental period” (i.e., between the Old and New Testaments). To know what happened during the intertestamental period, we have to rely on secular historical scholarship, extra-biblical Jewish writings, and the prophecies of Daniel.
Early in the intertestamental period, Alexander the Great, king of Greece, conquered Persia and put Israel under Greek control. However, Alexander died young, and his kingdom split primarily into four big pieces. Two of these pieces were the Ptolemaic Kingdom (just south of Israel) and the Seleucid Empire (just north of Israel) – these are the North and South of Daniel 11. Israel originally belonged to the Ptolemaic Kingdom but later came under the control of the Seleucids.
A Seleucid king named Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to try to stamp out Jewish worship and force the Jews to worship Greek gods and follow Greek religious customs. He stole articles from the Second Temple and defiled the altar by sacrificing a pig on it. This led to an uprising by the Jews called the “Maccabean Revolt.” The Maccabees fought off Antiochus’ forces, reclaimed Jerusalem, replaced the stolen articles and the defiled altar, and restored temple worship. The Jewish legend of one day’s worth of oil lasting the entire eight days of the re-dedication of the temple by the Maccabees is what is celebrated in the modern Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.
After the Maccabean Revolt, the Maccabees established an independent Jewish kingdom, ruled by their descendants (the Hasmonean Dynasty), that lasted until the Roman empire conquered them. Originally the Romans kept the Hasmoneans as subordinate rulers over Judea (the New Testament name for Judah) but eventually replaced them with Herod the Great.
Herod the Great commissioned a massive expansion of the Second Temple prior to the birth of Jesus.
In the wake of the Maccabean Revolt, the Jews largely lost sight of the original purpose of the Second Temple covenant: God had brought the nations around Israel (“Gentile” nations) under the control of four successive empires (Babylon, Persia-Media, Greece, and Rome) so the Jews could spread worship of the God of Israel throughout the Gentile world and prepare the Gentiles for the enthronement of Jesus as divine King of kings. The Jews also were to offer sacrifices at the Second Temple on behalf of the emperor and by extension for the entire Gentile world. By the time of Herod the Great, however, the Jews resented their Gentile overlords and had come to see Gentiles as unclean, desiring greatly to overthrow Rome and restore their independent rule with the promised Messiah as their national king.
As a result, to restore the hearts of the Jews to God and to His intended purposes, God sent His long-promised Messiah, the Son of God, to be born as the man Jesus of Nazareth.
Note: Cyrus initiated the Second Temple covenant, while Darius established it.
The End Times
The God of the Bible is “three in one,” consisting of God plus two divine aspects of God, His Word and His Holy Spirit, each of which is conscious and of divine nature. Collectively they form the Trinity that Christians worship and serve.
The Word of God was also the archangel (head angel) of God’s angelic army and would come like an angel in the appearance of human form to the earth from time to time during the narrative of the Old Testament (including any time you see the phrase “the Angel of the Lord”).
In 6 BC (or somewhere close to there), the Word came to earth in human form as the son of a Jewish virgin named Mary, who conceived Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Word thus became the Son of God, and God became “God the Father.”
Jesus was born in the town of Bethlehem. Mary and her husband Joseph were later visited by wise men from the East, who honored Jesus with gifts. When the wise men returned home, Mary and Joseph fled to Egypt with Jesus to escape Herod the Great’s attempt to have Him killed. After Herod’s death, they returned to Judea and lived in their hometown of Nazareth.
Jesus grew to be a carpenter and eventually became a Jewish rabbi (religious teacher). After about five years of His rabbinic ministry, His relative John the Baptist began preparing the way for His revelation to Israel by baptizing and encouraging the Jews to repent.
John baptized Jesus, who fasted for forty days and successfully overcame the temptations of the devil. Jesus then began preaching about the coming of the kingdom of God, telling parables, performing miracles (especially healings), and warning about a massive judgment looming over Jerusalem and Judea.
After about two years of miraculous ministry, Jesus entered Jerusalem at the time of the Passover feast and was subsequently arrested by Jewish authorities (whom Jesus had been persistently calling out for their sin), then handed over to the Roman authorities to be crucified.
Three days after His death on the cross, Jesus Christ (“Christ” being the Greek translation of “Messiah,” such that His full title is “Jesus the Anointed One”) rose from the dead. He appeared to His followers (including 11 of His original 12 appointed “apostles,” which means key witnesses to His resurrection and leaders of His Church) for 40 days on earth, then ascended into Heaven to sit at the right hand of God the Father.
The apostles, chief among them being Peter and John (not John the Baptist, who was executed during Jesus’ earthly ministry), led Jesus’ “Church,” i.e., the group of Jews who believed in their hearts that Jesus rose from the dead, repented of (i.e., apologized for and renounced) their sin, and pledged their lives to God’s service, with Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Later called Christians, these disciples had the Holy Spirit living within them and pursued lives of holiness and sanctification, witnessing to the rest of the Jewish world about Jesus as Messiah.
The Jewish Church initially experienced explosive growth, particularly by gaining a huge number of initial converts at the Feast of Pentecost, when Jews from across the Roman empire were gathered in Jerusalem. The Church grew and grew, despite persecution by Jewish religious leaders.
As the Church grew, the 12 apostles (with a new apostle replacing original apostle Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus to the religious leaders and then hung himself) appointed deacons to manage the feeding of poor widows in the Church. One of these deacons named Stephen was executed by non-believing Jews, and a particularly zealous anti-Christian Jew named Saul led a persecution against the Jewish Christians that resulted in most of them scattering throughout the Roman world (the apostles themselves remained in Jerusalem).
God struck Saul with blindness and called him to salvation, turning him from an enemy into a powerful champion of the faith.
Peter was called by God to witness to a Roman military officer named Cornelius about Jesus, thereby spreading the gospel (the “good news” of Jesus’ salvation) to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. Saul became the chief apostle to the Gentiles.
Saul (now generally going by his nickname “Paul”) began traveling with fellow evangelists throughout the Gentile world, preaching to both Jews and Gentiles about the need to repent of sin and embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior.
The first Church council, held in Jerusalem and run by the apostles, determined that converted Gentiles did not need to be circumcised or keep the Law of Moses.
Paul was eventually arrested and sent to Rome to be put on trial. While the trial is not recorded in the Bible, we know from Scripture that he would stand before Caesar Nero (the Roman king) and witness to him about the Christian faith.
During his missionary journeys and while awaiting trial, Paul wrote 14 epistles (letters) to various churches (or figures within the Church) with explanations of the nature of the gospel, instructions on how to live as a unified family of believers, warnings against sinful or divisive behavior, clarifications about doctrinal disputes, etc. Around the time Paul went to Rome, Peter and John and two of Jesus’ brothers wrote 7 similar letters to the scattered Jewish believers.
We know from secular history that Nero rejected Paul’s witness and blamed a massive fire in Rome on Christians, beginning a violent persecution that ultimately claimed the lives of Peter and Paul (among many others) and resulted in John being imprisoned.
Moving into events prophesied about in the New Testament but not explicitly recorded, the Jews began a rebellion against Rome shortly after Paul’s death and stopped offering sacrifices on behalf of the emperor, leading to the Romans sending their army to suppress the uprising. In early 67 AD, a Roman general named Vespasian took control of the Roman army, while the Jews established an independent government with its capital in Jerusalem.
In late 69 AD, Vespasian became emperor of Rome, and his son Titus took over the Roman war effort. In spring of 70 AD, Titus besieged Jerusalem, leading to a brutal 5-month siege that ended when the Roman army sacked Jerusalem, burned the Second Temple to the ground, and carried off the surviving instruments of the worship system. This ended Second Temple Judaism and the offering of animal sacrifices, with Jesus’ own perfect sacrifice now being the only legitimate one to use for atonement for sins.
A little over 60 years later, the Jews again rebelled against Rome, with a prominent rabbi named Akiva proclaiming Simon bar Kokhba to be the messiah. Bar Kokhba persecuted Christian Jews who rejected his messianic claims and set up another independent Jewish government. However, this time the Roman emperor Hadrian responded with a truly massive military suppression force, eventually killing Bar Kokhba, devasting Judea, and slaughtering the Jews on a near genocidal level. The Jews were subsequently banned from Jerusalem and ceased to have a national presence until Israel was re-founded in 1948.
The Church Age and the Future
In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus told His disciples to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” This mission seems to have had three phases:
The Church was at first exclusively Jewish, so the apostles initially understood it to mean they should preach the gospel to the Jews who were scattered amongst the nations (see Acts 2:5-11).
After the conversion of Cornelius, the gospel was spread to the Gentiles. However, this was originally understood to mean the Gentile nations within the boundaries of the Roman empire. In Colossians 1:5-6, Paul indicated that the gospel had indeed spread throughout the entire “world system” of the nations under Roman control.
Since the end of Second Temple Judaism, and especially after the Bar Kokhba rebellion ended any significant presence of Jewish Christianity, the gospel has been spreading throughout the globe to every Gentile nation on the planet. Romans 11:25-27 indicates that after this most significant phase of the Great Commission is complete, the Jews in Israel will be saved.
There are four dominant schools of thought concerning “eschatology,” the branch of Christian theology concerning “the end of the world” and the “last things”:
Premillennialism: Jesus will return in our future, which will begin the millennium of Revelation 20. There are two branches of this view:
Historic Premillennialism: The Church will go through a period of great tribulation before Christ returns to establish His earthly kingdom.
Dispensational Premillennialism: Believers will be raptured (snatched up to heaven) before a literal 1000-year reign of Christ on Earth, centered in Jerusalem.
Amillennialism: The millennium symbolically represents the Church Age, which will end with Christ’s return and the immediate institution of the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Postmillennialism: The world is being increasingly Christianized, which will result in a “millennium” that is in fact a long period of peace and righteousness, after which Christ will return to rule the converted world.
Preterism: The idea that some or all of the events of Revelation already happened. This has two branches:
Partial Preterism: Most of Revelation and the associated end-time prophecies were fulfilled in the first Jewish war with Rome, but the return of Christ and the final judgment are still in our future.
Full Preterism: All the prophecies in the Bible were fulfilled by 70 AD.
My view:
I believe the Book of Revelation was entirely about the events of the Jewish-Roman wars that destroyed the nation of Israel, except for the millennium, which began with the first Purim in the Book of Esther and ended with the birth of Muhammed in 570 AD (the destruction of Jerusalem occurring exactly halfway through the millennium). Jesus’ “return” concerned His return to judge the Jewish nation that rejected Him and had nothing to do with the “end of the world.”
On the contrary, I believe the Book of Isaiah shows the end state of humanity: namely, the New Heaven and the New Earth (described in Revelation 21-22) were given in 70 AD, with the heavenly Jerusalem being where the resurrected saints currently reside, but the New Earth is slowly maturing through the spread of the gospel to resemble the New Heaven.
When the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, the nation of Israel will be converted, which means there will be a restored earthly Jerusalem at the heart of restored Israel. This will lead to the blessed state of humanity of Isaiah 65:17-25, where suffering and death have been rendered largely powerless. Most likely there will be a millennium of peace and prosperity (from the biblical year 6000 to year 7000), then possibly a spread of Christianized humanity throughout the universe after that.
Leave a Reply