Quotes from Kim Riddlebarger

Instead of trying to connect the signs of the end to current events, the church is to be about its divinely commissioned task of preaching the gospel. Jesus has not called us to speculate about his coming. Instead, he has called us to persevere to the end during the calamity of nations, the groaning of the earth, the rise of false teachers, and in the face of persecution. He has called us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

When people are uncertain about the future and afraid of what might come to pass, dispensationalists assure them that when things go from bad to worse, the church will be raptured from the earth and Christians will not be around to experience the great tribulation or the wrath of the Antichrist. In this way, dispensationalists offer comforting answers to painful questions.

The one sign of the end Jesus gave, however, that falls into the realm of the church's responsibility is that the gospel will be proclaimed to the nations before the Lord returns. If we truly desire the return of our Lord, then our energies should be devoted to missions and evangelism, not to undue speculation and date-setting, striving to discern the identity of the Antichrist, or claiming that specific natural disasters and wars were foretold by Jesus and the apostles.

Why did Paul warn us about heresy and false teaching if he saw a golden age ahead for the church in which the peril of false teaching is eliminated until a brief period of apostasy? He gave us this warning because he expected heresy and false teaching to plague Christ's church until the end of the age. We must be on our guard until the day of Christ Jesus.

The story of redemption is nothing less than the story of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, which is manifest in the covenant of works, the covenant of grace,[4] and finally the new creation. God's kingdom is the consummate manifestation of his covenant with his elect, originally made with Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world.

the debate between amillenarians and postmillenarians is a more carefully nuanced difference of opinion about the essential character of the millennial age, the precise nature of the victory of the kingdom of God, and the way in which "this present evil age" comes to an end.

There is no proper way to discuss what God will do in the future unless we have our feet firmly planted in biblical teaching about what God has done in the past.

Because of God's saving work, which culminates in the resurrection, sinners will inherit the very kingdom that flesh and blood cannot.

Jesus linked the consummation of the kingdom with the parousia and the resurrection, for this age ends on the day of God's wrath.

Indeed, the binding of Satan is a continuous activity through the preaching of the gospel in which Christ's followers make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19). It

Christ's return is not the inauguration of a halfway step on the road to consummation called a millennium. Christ's return is the consummation.