The Time is Even Closer Today

Yesterday, I hope you began to take the End Times seriously.

Regardless of what else is going on in the world, this is the most important subject in the world. Nothing that happens in the United States, no political scandal or policy they could possibly enact could do to or for you what the Scriptures tell us will happen when the End Times arrive - and what I'm going to share with you today is a portion of the reasoning many of us who study these things have that makes us absolutely certain that we are no more than a few years at most from the End of Days.

I understand how melodramatic that sounds, and if it makes you more comfortable, the Lord Himself told us that it would sound foolish, as I talked about just a few days ago. If you read this blog regularly, you probably already take the Bible at its Word, but as I mentioned yesterday in the prologue to this piece, it's almost impossible for a rational person to realize how many of the Bible's prophecies came true to the letter - i.e., ALL of them! - and not think that maybe there's something deep and truthful about the Scriptures. 

• Daniel 11's first manifestation of truth (verse 2-35) matches the conquest and postscript of Alexander The Great to the dot and tittle. (Always loved that expression!)
• Jesus' predictions about the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD ("Not one stone will remain atop another"; the Olivet discourses in three of the four gospels).
• Isaiah and Jeremiah's forecasts of the exile of the people of Israel for exactly seventy years (by the way, the choice of 70 years was to match the missed Sabbaths of 490 years of disobedience. The More You Know...)
• Daniel 9:24-27, which lays out the End Times general form, has already predicted the 49 year gap between the first re-settlement of Jerusalem by those exiles and the reconstruction of the Temple AND the precisely 434 years (to the DAY) until the Triumphal Entry of the Anointed King into Jerusalem (where He would be "cut off").
• Throughout the Old Testament, there are by some counts (meaning, I haven't personally done the counting) close to one hundred specific prophecies about the Messiah, including the specific generation in which He would be born (from six hundred years BC) and the insignificant town of His birth (Bethlehem Ephathah, so tiny that it needed the 'Ephathah' to distinguish it from two larger towns of the same name in Israel). The odds of any dozen of those details being exactly correct are in the quadrillions - and yet every single one of them was fulfilled to the letter. (Tittles and dots, oh my...)

There are many, many more, but the point is made. Either you believe the Bible or you don't. From here on out, I've got to assume you believe it, and move on to the rest of the argument.

Why now? Most generations, including the very first one after Christ's death, thought that they might be the one which saw His Second Coming, which He promised during His forty days on earth following His resurrection, in case you thought that might have been the Second Coming. Nope. Each generation of Christians has prayed to see the Rapture, but many of the details required in the Scriptures for the End Times to begin were not possible. Let's look at some of those, and show you why this generation is the privileged one...

• The Christian gospel must have reached all corners of the Earth. (Mt 24:14) Only in the era of the Internet and the ability of the missionary community to reach those figurative corners of the planet can this have been fulfilled - and it has.
• False prophets bring heresies to the world in the name of Christ, smooth talkers whose goal is accruing money. (2Ptr 2:1) While false prophets have always existed, only in the era of televangelists and the prosperity gospel has this manifested at an epidemic level.
• In Revelation 11, the entire world watches the death and resurrection of the Two Witnesses. Only in the era of global telecommunication could this happen - when John wrote down Revelation, the fastest mode of communication was horseback.
• At what previous time in history could all humanity be destroyed at once? Yet in Mt 24:22, Christ says "if those days (of tribulation) had not been cut short, no human being would be saved." The End Times require exactly today's technology.
• Specifically, Zechariah prophesied about something he himself couldn't imagine: nuclear devastation. "Their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet. Their eyes shall dissolve in their sockets. And their tongues shall dissolve in their mouths." (Zech 14:12) Nothing before 1945 would do that.
• When the AntiChrist begins his rule (after the Rapture of the Believers), there will very quickly exist a global government and a global economy with a global banking system. The latter exists today; the former could be created through the UN in a matter of weeks.
• The increasing ethnic conflicts (Mark 13:8, for ex) and terrorism (the word Jesus used for what is usually translated "fearful sights" in Luke 21:11 is also translated 'terror') is indicative of the End Times.
• Daniel 12:4 describes our world today: The final prophecy (of Daniel 11) will be shut and sealed "until the time of the end. Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase." In the information age, intercontinental transportation has never been more prevalent.
• In Revelation 9, two hundred million mounted troops are released to storm towards Israel. When John wrote out Revelation, there weren't that many people on Earth! Today, China has a standing army of three hundred million.

But all that these prove is that the End Times couldn't have happened until now. Why do we think that there's a reason to expect the Rapture and Great Tribulation in the immediate future?

Here's why: Israel.

"Before she was in labor she gave birth;
before her pain came upon her she delivered a son.
Who has heard such a thing?
Who has seen such things?
Shall a land be born in one day?
Shall a nation be brought forth in one moment?
For as soon as Zion was in labor she brought forth her children"   - Isaiah 66:7-8

Who would predict 2600 years ago that Zion - Israel - would be born in a day? How can such a thing happen, especially since Israel existed at the time of the prophecy! But Israel, modern Israel, WAS born in a day: May 14th, 1948. Jews regathered in Israel (Isaiah 11:12; moreso Ezekiel 37 and 38) then but even more so recently. Israel would be a wasteland (Ezekiel 36) - and was for 1800+ years! - and would at the very end become not only a nation but "Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots
and fill the whole world with fruit." (Isaiah 27:6). (It now is a net exporter of produce.)

Even the outlandish prediction of Zephaniah 3:9 -
“For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples
to a pure speech,
that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord
and serve him with one accord." -

has come true. In the decades preceding 1948, even before the Holocaust, there was a Zionist movement to revive the dead Hebrew language. When Israel became a nation in 1948, Hebrew was declared the national language and recreated from whole cloth. (A ton of new words had to be invented, for things like "airplane" and "computer" and so forth!) For the first and only time in world history, a dead language was resurrected and re-established. Only God could make that happen. (By the way, there are no swear words in modern Hebrew. A "pure language", indeed!)

But the kicker is this paragraph from the Olivet Discourse, Christ's description of the coming of the End Times. Unusual for the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke - the gospels which go about telling Jesus' story in a similar manner, because John's came later and had a completely different format), maybe even unique among the three, the description of Christ's words here is virtually identical:

 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Mark 13:28-31.

He's just finished the description of the "abomination that causes desolation", the AntiChrist, and the Rapture ("And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven." v. 26-27). The "fig tree" represents Israel - as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, as it has now - and when you see these things taking place, it's time. But this generation that sees the branches become tender will not pass away until all these things take place. That means that the generation that saw Israel become a nation - born in 1948 - will not pass away until the Rapture comes (described in v 26-27). 

What's a generation? You cannot pin a date on God. (The very next verse tells us so, in each gospel. Mark 13:32-33 says, "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come.") But we can make an educated guess based on Scriptural evidence, and the Man of God himself tells us in Psalm 90, verse 10: "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty."

Seventy years from 1948 is 2018. Next year.

Moses gave us a ten-year window, but as we'll see in tomorrow's installment, events are moving awfully quickly already, and it's hard to imagine them extending much farther than next year in any circumstance.