Are We in the End Times?

Vice President JD Vance spends a lot of time thinking about the end of the world.

During a recent appearance on Christian podcaster Bryce Crawford's show, the vice president recalled receiving John Hagee's Prophecy Study Bible when he was around 10 or 11 and absolutely poring over it. This edition is packed with notes and charts explaining how biblical predictions about the end of the world might unfold.

Asked whether that process might already be underway, Vance was less certain.

"Do I think that we're in the end times? I don't know," he said. But he added that he "wouldn't be shocked" if the Antichrist were already alive, and described some developments in artificial intelligence as carrying a disturbing spiritual darkness.

Vance is hardly alone in wondering. In a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 39% of American adults said humanity is already "living in the end times." Among evangelical Protestants, that number reached 63%. About one in ten Americans thought Jesus would "probably or definitely return" within their own lifetime.

So, let's suppose they're right.

You wake up tomorrow morning and discover that the Christian end times have actually begun. What happens next? What would you see on the news? Would your Christian neighbors disappear? Where does the Antichrist come in? When do the Four Horsemen show up? And exactly how much time do you have left?

The answer depends heavily on which Christian you ask.

Before We Start, There Is No Official Timeline

The Bible never provides one neat chronological list labeled Instructions for the End of the World.

Instead, Christians build their end times expectations by combining passages scattered across the Bible: Jesus' warnings in the Gospels, Paul's letters to early Christian communities, imagery borrowed from Old Testament prophets such as Daniel and Ezekiel, and, most famously, the Book of Revelation.

Those competing interpretations belong to a field of theology called eschatology, the study of the “last things.”

For this thought experiment, we'll mostly follow premillennial dispensationalism, the framework behind Left Behind, the hugely popular apocalyptic novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins that fictionalize the end times. It also happens to be the framework taught by John Hagee, whose prophecy Bible first introduced Vance to the subject. Under this model, Christians are taken from Earth in the Rapture, the world enters a catastrophic Tribulation dominated by the Antichrist, Christ returns at Armageddon, and then reigns on Earth for 1,000 years.

Catholics, Orthodox Christians and many Protestants reject substantial portions of that timeline. We'll get to those disagreements when they make a real difference.

First, though: How would anyone know the end was approaching?

The Warning Signs

"And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars ... but the end is not yet."
Matthew 24:6

If you've watched the news recently, Jesus' description of the last days can sound unsettlingly familiar.

He predicts wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, false messiahs and spreading lawlessness. Elsewhere the Gospels add pestilence and frightening signs in the heavens.

If these are the diagnostic criteria, humanity has been checking some of the boxes for a very long time.

Take war. One frequently cited estimate, popularized by journalist Chris Hedges, holds that humans have been completely at peace for only 268 of the last 3,400 years, about 8% of recorded history. That statistic shouldn't be mistaken for a precise scientific accounting of every ancient conflict, but the larger point is difficult to dispute. Pretty much since human civilization started, we've been at war. Earthquakes, epidemics, famine, charismatic religious pretenders, and badly behaved people aren't exactly rare either.

Jesus even seems to realize that he was spooking his audience. Immediately after his warning, he adds: “...the end is not yet.”

But those signs don't actually start the clock on the particular timeline we're following. In pre-Tribulation theology, the next decisive event is the Rapture, when Christ suddenly gathers living believers and resurrected Christians to himself while everyone else remains on Earth.

And importantly, believers in this tradition consider the Rapture “imminent.” No final war, earthquake or blood-red moon has to happen first.

Perhaps it will even happen before you finish reading this sentence.

The Rapture: Everyone Disappears

"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds."
1 Thessalonians 4:17

Still here? If the popular Left Behind timeline is right, the first event you absolutely cannot mistake for ordinary history may happen in seconds.

Millions, perhaps billions, of people will simply disappear.

HBO's The Leftovers offered a terrifying visualization of what something like that might actually look like. In its opening scene, a frazzled mother straps her crying baby into a car seat. Moments later, the baby is gone. Nearby, a child screams for his missing father. A car crashes because its driver has vanished. All in a blink of an eye.

Then the scale becomes clear: in the television show, 2% of humanity (~140 million people) disappeared simultaneously. Importantly, The Leftovers is not actually depicting a Christian Rapture; its missing people include believers and nonbelievers seemingly at random. But the mechanics are about right.

The scale, though, is way off. A Christian Rapture could be considerably larger.

Pew counts about 2.27 billion Christians worldwide, or 28.8% of humanity. If every one of them vanished, about 5.62 billion people would remain. Nearly two-thirds of Americans would disappear, while most people in countries like China and India would still be here.

Of course, Rapture theology holds that God is only interested in genuine believers, not everyone who checks “Christian” on a census form. Everyone else stays behind; Scripture never clearly addresses what happens to infants and young children.

One Very Strange Book

Before we go any further, we need to meet the book responsible for most of what's about to happen.

The Greek text of Revelation begins with the word apokalypsis, meaning an unveiling, disclosure or revelation. That's why the book was historically also called the Apocalypse of John. Our modern use of “apocalypse” for a world-ending catastrophe came later, largely because writings like Revelation disclose the future through spectacular images of cosmic destruction.

Its author identifies himself simply as John, a Christian on the island of Patmos describing a series of visions he says he had. He never claims to be John the Apostle, one of Jesus' twelve disciples. Some early Christians believed they were the same man; many modern scholars call the author John of Patmos precisely because his identity is uncertain.

Revelation was probably written in the 90s CE, though an earlier date has defenders. Its place in the Bible was unusually contentious: Christians debated its authorship and authority for centuries, and it gained broad acceptance much later in parts of Eastern Christianity than in the West.

And yes, it is extraordinarily weird.

One colorful online theory claims Patmos was covered in psychedelic mushrooms and John was simply tripping. Fun story, but there's no historical evidence for it.

No, John apparently didn't need mushrooms to see dragons, monsters and cosmic destruction. Earlier Jewish apocalyptic literature was already rife with disturbing symbols. Revelation repeatedly repurposes those older images and turns the Roman world around John into a cosmic struggle between God and evil.

John's audience lived under Roman rule in Asia Minor, where emperor cults honored Rome's rulers while Christians insisted that ultimate worship belonged to Christ. Revelation practically invites readers to see Rome behind its monsters: its decadent enemy “Babylon” famously sits on seven hills, just like Rome. On this reading, John transforms the world's dominant empire into a satanic monster destined for destruction.

With that disclosure, we can proceed.

Enter the Antichrist

"Little children, it is the last time: and as ye have heard that antichrist shall come..."
1 John 2:18

The word actually appears in First John, an anonymous Christian letter traditionally attributed to John the Apostle (who, again, most scholars do not believe is the John who wrote "Revelation"). The Greek word specifically used is ἀντίχριστος, or, antichristos. It combines anti, which can carry the sense of "against" or "in place of," with Christos, Christ or Messiah. "Antichrist" is therefore more transliteration than translation. Some modern Bibles render the idea more transparently as "the Enemy of Christ" or "Anti-Messiah."

And the biblical author who uses the word makes things more confusing. John says that believers have heard "the antichrist" is coming, but then immediately says that many antichrists already exist.

Over the centuries, Christians have nominated plenty of suspects:

• Nero: The Roman emperor notorious for persecuting Christians became one of the earliest suspects. We'll come back to him.
• The pope: Martin Luther and other Protestant Reformers identified the papacy with the Antichrist, while Catholics returned plenty of apocalyptic accusations of their own.
• Napoleon: His military conquests and apparent hunger for continental domination made him an obvious candidate to prophecy-minded Europeans.
• Hitler and Mussolini: Both dictators were predictably cast as possible Antichrists during the upheavals of the 20th century.
• Ronald Reagan: Prophecy enthusiasts noticed that Ronald Wilson Reagan contains three six-letter names. His former street address also included 666. That was apparently enough.
• Mikhail Gorbachev: His distinctive forehead birthmark inspired comparisons to the biblical "Mark of the Beast".
• Saddam Hussein: His effort to rebuild parts of ancient Babylon proved irresistible to end times watchers.
• Modern U.S. presidents: Franklin Roosevelt, Barack Obama, and even Donald Trump have all taken turns in Guess Who?: Antichrist Edition.

In the popular interpretation, the Antichrist emerges amid global disorder as a charismatic political leader, creates or exploits a system of enormous international power, demands allegiance, and eventually claims a status belonging to God.

At this point, it helps to separate Revelation's villains. Its Dragon is explicitly Satan, who gives his authority to a first Beast; a second Beast, later called the False Prophet, directs humanity to worship the first. Revelation never calls either one “the Antichrist.” Christians later combined this satan-backed Beast with Paul's “man of lawlessness” and First John's antichrist into the familiar single end times supervillain.

And then comes 666.

What Does 666 Actually Mean?

"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six."
Revelation 13:18

Okay, real quick let's get into why some folks were so scared of Ronald Reagan's street address.

Revelation says that in the end times nobody may buy or sell without the Beast's mark, placed on the right hand or forehead, and then gives readers a puzzle: "the number of the beast" is 666.

The puzzle uses gematria, in which letters also carry numerical values. Imagine A=1, B=2, C=3 and adding up the letters in someone's name.

When 'Nero Caesar' is spelled in Hebrew and the numerical values of those letters are added together, the result is 666. That is one reason many scholars think Revelation's Beast originally pointed toward Nero or Roman imperial power.

It also explains why 666 theories multiply so easily. Start with a desired suspect, choose a language and spelling, assign numerical values creatively enough, and an alarming amount of humanity can eventually be made to equal 666.

Curious if you might bear the Mark of the Beast yourself? You can check your own name here.

Does Someone Have to Rebuild the Temple First?

"He as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."
2 Thessalonians 2:4

There is one major complication for Christians expecting a future Antichrist.

Paul says the "man of lawlessness" will enter the "temple of God" and proclaim himself divine. Many prophecy-minded Christians interpret that as a reference to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Here's the big catch: that temple no longer exists. Rome destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, and it was never rebuilt.

For Christians who read Paul's prophecy literally, that means a Third Temple must eventually be constructed.

That expectation helps explain the intense interest some Christians take in efforts to prepare for renewed Temple worship. The Jewish Temple Institute has spent years creating ritual objects and studying the requirements for a future Temple, including the need for ashes from a biblically qualified red heifer.

That's proven to be a major impediment: even a few non-red hairs can disqualify an otherwise promising animal, despite years of effort, no heifer has yet been publicly confirmed as fully qualified (though another candidate was born earlier this summer).

Some evangelical Christians have taken an active interest in these efforts, even conducting a rehearsal red heifer ceremony last year in Israel.

But even if the right cow does come along, actually rebuilding the Temple would be tremendously difficult... not least of all because its traditional site is Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which today is home to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque, two of the holiest sites in all of Islam.

Some end times believers openly welcome developments they believe are moving biblical prophecy forward, though many Christian Zionists reject the idea that humans can force God's timetable. If a Third Temple ever is built, prophecy watchers will certainly be interested in who walks through the door.

Then Revelation Gets Weird

"Behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."
Revelation 6:8

Once "the Tribulation" gets underway, Revelation quickly stops resembling an ordinary geopolitical crisis.

John sees God seated on his heavenly throne, holding a mysterious scroll sealed shut in seven places. Then a Lamb appears, looking as though it has been slaughtered. The Lamb represents Jesus, and he alone is deemed worthy to take the scroll from God's hand and begin breaking its seals, kickstarting the apocalypse.

The first four seals he breaks unleash the famous Four Horsemen...

The white horse carries the conqueror, armed with a bow and crown. The red horse brings war and takes peace from the Earth. The black horse brings scarcity and crushing food prices. The pale horse carries Death himself.

The fifth seal reveals Christian martyrs beneath God's altar demanding to know when they will finally be avenged. The sixth brings an earthquake, a blackened sun, blood-red moon and falling stars.

Before the final seal is broken, 144,000 servants of God are marked for protection, 12,000 from each tribe of Israel.

Then Jesus breaks the seventh seal, and heaven goes completely silent for half an hour.

After that quick break, seven angels pick up seven trumpets, and things get much, much worse.

One trumpet blast brings storms of hail and fire mixed with blood. Another sends something resembling a flaming mountain crashing into the sea. A great burning star called Wormwood falls from heaven and poisons the waters. As yet another trumpet is blown, a giant abyss opens.

And from that abyss, smoke pours out, followed by a plague of monstrous "locusts". Revelation describes them with humanlike faces, long hair, lions' teeth, iron breastplates and scorpion tails.

The locusts are followed by an army of two hundred million mounted troops.

Finally come seven bowls of divine wrath: painful sores, seas and rivers turning to blood, scorching heat, darkness and, eventually, demonic spirits resembling frogs that gather the world's kings for war.

And those are just the highlights! In sum... doesn't sound like the best time.

Whether it was meant to be literal truth or political allegory, John certainly knew how to hold an audience.

And he isn't done yet! Back to those frogs...

Armageddon

"And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon."
Revelation 16:16

Armageddon is generally understood as being derived from Har Megiddo, “Mount Megiddo,” after the ancient settlement in northern Israel where major battles were fought. You can still visit Megiddo today; it's an Israeli national park.

Revelation's frog-demons gather the world's kings there. Then, a few chapters later, Jesus finally returns.

Revelation 19 presents him not as the infant of the Christmas story, or the suffering Jesus of the Crucifixion, or a slaughtered lamb, but as a terrifying victorious rider on a white horse. His eyes will shine like fire and he will be wearing multiple crowns. His robe will be dipped in blood, and he will pull a sharp sword from his mouth.

The Beast and False Prophet are captured and thrown alive into a lake of fire.

For all the buildup, Revelation spends surprisingly little time describing the actual final battle. The forces opposing Christ assemble, he appears, and apparently wipes them all out pretty quickly.

But the world isn't over yet.

The Millennium

"And they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
Revelation 20:4

An angel descends carrying a key and a great chain.

He seizes the dragon (Satan) and throws him into the abyss, locking the door behind him.

For the next 1,000 years, the imprisoned Satan is unable to deceive the nations and Jesus himself will personally rule over a restored Earth with his resurrected followers.

Other biblical prophecies supply the imagery for this peaceful kingdom: weapons become farming tools, and predators live beside their former prey.

In one common premillennial interpretation, the resurrected and raptured Christians now possess glorified bodies and return to Earth. Meanwhile, any who manage to physically survive the Tribulation will enter the Millennium as ordinary mortal people. They will marry, have children and repopulate the world.

Then comes the thousandth year, when Satan will be released from his cell. Despite a millennium of Christ personally ruling the Earth, the dark figure will apparently find an enormous number of people willing to join him in one last rebellion. Revelation says their number is "as the sand of the sea." Once again, Jesus destroys the uprising almost immediately, and Satan finally joins the Beast and False Prophet in the lake of fire.

And then, the unavoidable appointment...

Judgment Day

"And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it..."
Revelation 20:11

After Satan's final defeat, the dead stand before God, where the Book of Life determines their fate.

For the lucky and faithful whose names appear in the book, John sees a "New Jerusalem" descending from heaven. God comes to dwell with humanity. Death disappears, as do crying and pain.

The Christian apocalypse ultimately ends where Genesis began: with God and humanity together in a creation remade.

Which brings us back to Vance.

During his podcast conversation, he remembered a friend who became convinced that the end would arrive in 2007 and responded by running up enormous credit card debt.

2008 did end up happening.

So, after a lifetime of fascination with prophecy, the VP said he now tries to focus less on decoding the end and more on the responsibilities already in front of him: his wife, his children, and the country he's responsible for vice-managing.

And maybe he's right to stop fretting so much. Jesus repeatedly says nobody knows when the end will arrive. His instruction isn't to panic, crack the prophetic code or max out your Visa. It's just to live well and faithfully while you wait.

If you became convinced that the end of days really would occur within your lifetime, what would you change about the way you're living now?