And Then Shall the End Come

By James Pittman

When the Bible says things like, "there is coming a time of troubles like never has been before and never will be again" (Matthew 24:21), or "A time when men's hearts will fail them because of what they see coming on the earth" (Luke 21:26), or "a time that if someone was to tell you about it you would not believe it" (Habakkuk 1:5), these are not just some things written in some old religious book. These were men of God who knew what they were talking about. We need to know that when our world starts to crumble around us, God is in charge and all will be okay soon.

Will the world end on December 21, 2012 as some are saying? This author thinks not.

This book was written to promote Bible study. It covers prophecy and history and seeks to lead the reader into a stronger faith and knowledge of the Bible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449731052

James Pittman

James M. Pittman was born in Reader, West Virginia. He is retired from a natural gas distribution company. He has been a longtime student of the Scriptures and served as a lay pastor of a small Church of God in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He and his wife Eva are the parents of two children.

Book preview

Contents

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS

Post Log

REFERENCE BIBLIOGRAPHY

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to God (Yahweh) who created mankind and to my parents and all of my grandparents without whom I would not have existed to write this book.

A very special thanks to a good friend, Teresa Haught and her family for all of the hard work and patients with me as she transferred my typing to the computer.

Cover design by the author:

Acts 3:19 Repent ye therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the TIMES OF REFRESHING shall come from the presence of the Lord; 20 And He shall send Jesus Christ, which was before preached unto you: 21 Whom heaven must receive until THE TIMES OF RESTITUTION OF ALL THINGS, which God hath spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets since the world began.

INTRODUCTION

I have chosen the title for this book from the last six words of verse 14 of Matthew 24. And Then Shall the End Come. The texts quoted herein are from the King James Version unless otherwise stated.

When I was just a small boy around five years old, World War II was in its early stages, I can remember so vividly how my grandmother was anxious and fearful of THE GREAT TRIBULATION. She was just sure what was happening in the world was about to make it begin. Of course I had no idea of what she was talking about. But, I could tell from her conversation that it had something to do with a book known as the Bible.

We lived probably about 3 miles from the nearest church, so we rarely went. We either had to walk or on a rare occasion, someone might be visiting with a car. I remember riding a horse and wagon to the store but do not remember riding it to church. I was 7 years old when grandma became ill. We had to move to town and there we could attend church more often. In a small town in the 1940s, there was not much to do except go to church. It was the center of social life where you could be with your friends and neighbors.

In my Junior year of high school the most wonderful girl in the world conned*[1]me into going to her church with her. She amazed me with her ability to answer questions in the Sunday School class. I asked, How do you know all this? She said, I read the Bible. Well this triggered an interest in me to start reading the Bible and find out just what it was all about once and for all for myself. This girl eventually became my wife and as they say, the rest is history.

As I read I learned that the phrase, THE GREAT TRIBULATION, did not appear in Scripture, but the expression time of great tribulation did.

Needless to say, this book is far from exhaustive, covering everything that could be covered, in every way it could be covered, because it would take volumes to do this, even if it could be done.

My goal here is to provide you, the reader, with a starting place for further study. One thing that I have noticed and I believe you will agree is that when you study the Bible, one subject leads to another and as we ask questions the answers lead to more questions. I believe this is just a fact of life and is true in almost everything.

This study is going to mainly focus o the 24th chapter of the gospel of Matthew or as it is sometimes referred to as The Olivet Discourse. I will attempt to place the events in order so we can see where we are today in Bible prophecy.

The Author

CHAPTER 1

Laying Some Groundwork

I am sitting here on a cold February day in 2006, pondering the best way to begin this book. We were told in speech class that you had the first 6 seconds to get the audience’s attention. So, similarly I know I must get your attention early as I write. I momentarily glance up from the typewriter and through the double doors of my sunroom I can see smoke drifting up from my neighbor’s chimney. Fluffy white snow is slowly falling to the ground. A line from a poem we learned in high school pops into my mind. I get up and pull a poetry book from the bookshelf to refresh my memory. Ah! Here it is. Ode to a West Wind by Shelly. Winter comes can spring be far behind? I return to my work.

I do not want this to be yet another End of Time book in a long procession of End of Time books. So, I want us to pause right here for a moment and ask you a question. What do you visualize for yourself and the world 10, 100, 1,000 years from this moment? Pause right here… . think about this… . Maybe you have never considered this and maybe you have. Do you believe that things will keep going along as they always have, as Shelly says winter after winter followed by spring after spring forever and ever? It is my opinion that this would be the majority’s answer. Perhaps some of you answered, Oh! I just live one day at a time or I won’t be here so it doesn’t matter or Who cares, who knows? or maybe I’ll be in heaven. Each of us must surely have some kind of opinion on this when you stop to think about it.

Let me rephrase the question. Do you believe things will get better and better or worse and worse in the world as time goes on? . . . . We have been programmed over the years to think positively… . we have a dream, we have a great future, nothing bad can happen to us. Folks, it’s time to face reality. Will life as we know it come to an end at some point in history? . . . . Is death the end with our bodies just decaying away in some cemetery with a fancy name like Mount something or other, some Memorial Garden or with Lawn or Green attached to lend some dignity to it? . . . . These are questions that each of us must answer for ourselves.

Science tells us that the universe is running down. They say in about 4.5 billion years the sun will burn out and life as we know it will cease to exist. They also tell us of many natural disasters exist with the potential to destroy the earth at any time.

However, in this book we are going to consider the end not from a scientific viewpoint but from the viewpoint of a scheduled plan of Yahweh (God), as outlined in the Bible. I would suggest to you that nothing happens in this world outside of His master plan. I will use this name occasionally throughout the book. It is pronounced Ya-way. The Hebrew people at one point were so afraid of taking His name in vain that they stopped pronouncing it. It appears as YHWH in the Hebrew Scriptures and is called the Tetragrammation. This is the consonants with the vowels left out. Scholars have added the a and e to make it the most scholarly way we know to pronounce it. I use it to distinguish the name and person of the True and Living Almighty One of Israel who created all that exists and is revealed to us in Scripture from all other gods who are False and Dead with no power. One of the network news channels had a story around the third week of March 2009 about two nationally used text books who put down Yahweh