Tipping Point: The End Is Here

Warning: This review is going to hit like a blog post. I'm going to be personal and extremely honest here.

I was terrified of the book of Revelations. For the 14 years I've been a Christian, there have been only two ways I've witnessed other Christians treat the Second Coming of Jesus Christ: complete fear and avoidance of the topic and fluffing it off with an “I just pray I'm not here for that”, or absolute nutcases who are so amped up and excited about it that THEY scare you. There is no in-between. Am I right? I know you probably know what I'm referring to. As a result of these two conflictions, I turned into one of the former Christians; complete fear and just praying, begging, that I'm not here for that because I don't understand it and everything about it sounds terrifying.

But this year has been different. With our world experiencing these huge changes that no one alive has ever seen (global pandemic, country lockdowns, social distancing, etc) there have been SO many people coming out of the woodworks saying this or that about the end times. I had a hunger for the Truth because everyone made great cases but rarely did even two agree. I watched one video that called for the return of Christ to happen in 2021! What?! But then there have been so many people who have set dates in the past and they didn't happen, so what does the Bible REALLY say? Well here's the thing, I know what the Bible says, I've read most of those verses, the problem is, I didn't understand it and I was too scared to try.

But I trust my Pastor. And he recommended this book to our congregation, so my husband and I bought a copy and started reading it aloud together. We read 174 pages of this book in a single night because WE COULDN'T STOP. We couldn't stop talking about it, we couldn't stop asking questions and going back to the Bible for answers, we couldn't stop reading it because the mystery and fear shrouding one of the most prevalent topics in the Bible was finally falling from our eyes and we finally understood for the first time in our 10+ years of being Christians.

So let me tell you what Tipping Point: The End is Here is NOT (or, put another way, “what I was afraid it was going to be”).

1. It is NOT a book claiming to know when Christ will return. Pastor Jimmy Evans is very adamant about not setting a date and encourages you to NOT try to set a date. That is not for us to know. But there IS a reason that Jesus shared so much about His return and why his Second Coming is such a widely discussed topic in the Bible.

2. It is NOT a book that wants you to jump off the deep end and abandon everything to watch for the Second Coming. Jimmy Evans says multiple times, “Plan like Jesus isn't returning for 100 years, but live like He's returning today!” Keep living your life and don't become a “prepper”!

3. And it is NOT a book that will leave you more terrified than when you started it. I mentioned that my husband and I read it almost entirely in a single day, but I didn't mention that it took us nearly two weeks to even open it because we were so afraid of what was in it. I wish we would have started it as soon as we brought it home!

What it IS:

1. It IS a clear picture of the parallel connection between human history and the Bible. For me, I've always understood that Israel is significant to God's plan, especially in light of all of the prophecies from Ezekial, Daniel, and the other prophetic books of the Bible, but I've had a hard time keeping up with the actual historical events of Isreal and the Bible's prophecies. This book helped me understand SO much more by both explaining biblical prophecies and the correlation of the actual events that happened in or to Israel in history (and present-day). Pastor Jimmy Evans is a well-educated historian of world events in addition to being well-educated on the Bible, so to finally see the parallels between our history and the Bible events was ground-breaking to me and that alone made this book worth reading. (Another book worth reading on this topic is The Church in Babylon by Erwin W. Lutzer)

2. It IS simple and easy to understand. If prophecy is something that confuses you, and questions like, “The world has always been bad, how do we recognize fulfilled Biblical prophecy in reference to the Return?” or “Why does it matter that prophecy is fulfilled?” or even “Why should I actually care about looking for the Times?” Pastor Jimmy Evans lays things out in a way that doesn't require 8 years in seminary school to understand. It's a straightforward explanation and answers many of those questions that I, myself, had asked.

3. It WILL deepen your faith in Jesus! I do want to say, one of my biggest peeves about Christians is the idea that if you scare people enough, they'll come to Christ. It doesn't matter that they don't really have a relationship with Jesus that will set them free from fear, but as long as they believe in Him to avoid hell, then we did our job as Christians. This just bothers me. Yes, there should be the holy fear of God, and yes hell is very real place, but is that the only reason we should follow Christ? No, He wants to have a relationship with us and while that relationship should carry reverence and acknowledgment of His power and divinity, fear should not be the focal point of our relationship with Him. I say all of that to say that this book won't deepen your faith out of fear. It will deepen your faith in believing that God really is in control of EVERYTHING. It freed my thinking and reliance on politics and the upcoming election because it is a bigger picture, and I think sometimes, as Christians, we forget to look at the big picture. We forget that God is in control of the overall story and though terrible things may happen on the minuscule scale of our lives, if we keep our eyes on Him and His big picture, it makes those things look much smaller and insignificant.

So in complete review, Tipping Point by Jimmy Evans is an EXCELLENT book that I encourage everyone to read. If you're overwhelmed with the circumstances happening in our world or overwhelmed with what's happening in YOUR world, I urge you to read Tipping Point!