November 2025 (End Times Charity)

FBC Gallatin,

One of the important lessons I have been reminded of in my study and preparation in preaching through the Olivet Discourse is the great variety of different positions that good and faithful Christians take on the end times. I think it bears repeating here what I shared from my college pastor in a recent sermon about the non-negotiables when it comes to the end times, to ensure that we are able to separate the very clear convictions that all believers share, and the less clear end times nuances that we can respectfully agree to disagree about.

Here's the list again of the 7 essential end times doctrines that all evangelical views hold together: 1. Christ is coming back to this earth literally, visibly, and personally. 2. Eventually all the dead bodies of all departed souls will be resurrected. 3. The Christians alive at the Second Coming will be translated without tasting death. 4. All the non-Christians will stand before Christ on the Day of Judgment. 5. All Christians will one day stand before Christ for Judgment. 6. This present world will be destroyed by fire and a new earth and new heavens will be created/renewed. 7. The righteous will go into eternal conscious blessedness and the wicked into eternal conscious torment.

I think this list from my college pastor illustrates what we should preach strongly with conviction and confidence, and how we should handle less clear distinctions of our end times systems that should be held with an open hand of charity and grace towards other interpretations than our own. If we are honest, there are some very difficult passages of Scripture to put together, and once you get comparing and contrasting the different evangelical end times options, I would hope that we could all see where each view is coming from, and appropriately and humbly see the potential of the other views, and also better understand and respect where from Scripture they are arguing their position, and also respect and learn why they hold to the conclusions they get to.

This approach will create maturity and a healthy environment distinguishing between what many have called “theological triage.” This model works by separating the first tier doctrines that all who are saved must agree on (like a triage center elevating the more urgent health emergencies from the commonplace and less severe cases), and second tier doctrines that are not unimportant, but do not separate or divide Christians from one another, even if they might not be able to be members of the same church (like on issues of differences over baptism for instance), they can still affirm that they are together for the first tier Gospel centric issues (like the atonement, the Trinity, Salvation by grace through faith etc.) that unite brothers and sisters in Christ.

And then as it relates to our current sermon series; we can even go a step further with end times nuances, to have awareness of the third-tier issues like the finer points of eschatology we have been considering in our Olivet Discourse series, to ensure that we would never fathom treating those less clear conclusions as if they were the 7 essential end times convictions that all evangelical believers must hold together. May we all grow in maturity to be able to make these distinctions, and offer charity to one another on these matters that we can definitely care a lot about passionately, but should also be careful to ensure that we are wisely differentiating between the more clear and less clear theological conclusions along the way.

Lastly, please pray for me as I continue to study through and seek to preach one of the hardest sections of Scripture I have come across in my ministry. Pray that I would have the wisdom of not only what to share, but also how to share it in a way that is helpful to our church body! And pray that we would all be edified by Jesus’ final discourse or sermon that he shared with his disciples just days before he was crucified on the cross and then resurrected from the grave!

Sincerely,

Pastor Daniel Pelichowski