I spent the first two years of my Christian life telling my non-Christian friends and family that Jesus was coming back “in the next few years”. That was forty-four years ago. Having been proven wrong at least in their eyes, fulfilling their conviction that I was a gullible idiot, I could have tossed my Bible long ago in sheer embarrassment, had I allowed myself to be defeated. Thank the Lord, my faith persisted and I was blessed with a little insight, so that here I am still in love with my God and with all the Bible has to offer. Additionally, certain central facts relating to end-times prophecy have maintained my hope in the soon – coming of Christ, but with more caution.
WHAT DO I REALLY WANT? Beyond caution and wisdom, I ask myself occasionally if I really want the events of Revelation to unfold around me. I certainly do want to see the Lord return, and I want to see the world wrested from the hands of the Godless. On a very personal level I long for a better world; a world of love, joy, goodness, acceptance and intimacy. However, I also want my sons to be able to live out their current lives without facing persecution and political and social unrest. I’m aware that I shouldn’t wish the events of Revelation onto anyone: what a time of testing that will be! I therefore find myself both wanting to see the return of Christ and not wanting to. If He does not return in my lifetime I will be going to Him anyway, so what’s the rush?
The rush is that I wish to see our world put straight and taken out of the influence and power of the wicked. I wish to see death die and to see my God reign in righteousness. Of course, men and women through millennia past have wished the very same thing, without seeing their wish come true – at least in their earthly lifetimes. Further, I should perhaps be hoping that God will wait for another two thousand years so that more and more people around the world can find salvation in Jesus Christ. However, the more time goes on to bring people to faith the more people will also suffer and die without faith. There doesn’t seem to us to be an ideal time for the Second Coming. However, God has all things in hand, and when He’s ready there will be no more delay.
UNCERTAINTY. I’m sometimes tempted to dismiss any hope in seeing the return of Christ in my lifetime, but I can’t, because there really are amazing correlations between today’s world and the conditions and events foretold in Scripture. Most people are unaware and disinterested, but isn’t that what Jesus predicted and warned about in His Olivet Discourse? Why be one of those in total denial? If I were waiting for a huge cheque to arrive from some benefactor, I’d be checking my mail every day as soon as the delivery was made. Isn’t the coming of our savior so much more exciting? If it isn’t, there’s something wrong with your faith.
I confess that I don’t feel such confidence all the time. On a good day I will be convinced that Jesus’ return is very near – perhaps within the next couple of decades – and I’m looking at news reports several times a day. On a bad day I’m wondering if I’ve been fooling myself all these years and feeling that any return of Christ to the earth could still be literally thousands of years in the future. It is, after all, already two thousand years since He left: what’s another two thousand?
ASKING BIG QUESTIONS. I’ve even wondered if perhaps we’ve misinterpreted Scripture and there is no “Second Coming” at all. Perhaps we all go to Him instead upon our departure from this world. In that circumstance this present world would continue on its same old corrupt course, and not all of Scripture is inspired after all. When I consider that possibility, I also wonder what kind of a God would leave the world He made to fester in death, evil and suffering endlessly. Jesus said he would come back, so he will, therefore we should, as he himself said, “watch” for his coming. Those among us who insist that all prophesied events were fulfilled in the first century are stretching credulity, given that some of those scripture verses speak of such things as the entire world shaking and being overtaken by cataclysms profound enough to give men heart attacks. No, some of those prophecies are not just allegory, and they are yet to be fulfilled.
INCREDIBLE COINCIDENCE. I’ve written entire articles on the modern state of Israel in relation to Biblical signs of end times and always conclude firmly that if all the similarities between the two are just an incredible coincidence, then at least some of the Bible isn’t the word of God at all. The history and predicament of the nation of Israel is one of those certainties which confirms the soon-coning of Christ in my own mind.
One alternative to this apparent fulfillment of Biblical prophecy is that the Jews will have their nation destroyed once more, and the survivors will be exiled again for hundreds of years – at least – with the land laid waste all that time as Ezekiel foretells. Then all the coincidences which have occurred over recent decades must occur again: regathering, opposition from neighboring countries and a global resistance to the Jewish nation. This does not make sense. Why would the whole of the Islamic world, now claiming that “Palestine” belongs to them, not move into and tenaciously defend that land were the Jews to vacate it? Considering such an eventuality is a denial of logic and reason, so why stick your head in the sand of faulty interpretation and presume it will all go away?
“Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:8).
THE CHURCH IS NOT ISRAEL. One other thing I am sure of: People who insist that the Church is Israel in every possible respect are ignoring many scriptures or turning them all into ridiculous allegories. The Jew remains: Paul called himself a Jew long after the crucifixion of Christ. He knew his race had not been rejected by God any more than any other. The nation remains as all of Scripture testifies. Israel has an almost two-thousand-year history of persecution throughout Europe to this very day.
The belief that Paul’s statement, “there is neither Jew nor Greek (Gentile)” means that Israel as a physical entity ceased to exist is totally illogical, because he also said that there is no such thing as a Gentile. There is no such thing as a slave according to this interpretation, when there certainly are still slaves in some parts of the world and have been slaves in every century as in America’s past. It means there is no such things as male or female in all the world (the Democrats would like that). No, Paul is not saying that the nation of Israel means nothing to God any longer. Instead, Paul is here speaking of our unity in Christ. Prophecies concerning the nation of Israel are still specific to them and to the land of Israel and not to all of us. That fact hasn’t been nullified.
“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 NIV).
DODGING THE BULLET? What do I think of current social and political conditions in our world? Are events taking us inexorably towards the days of tribulation as recorded in Revelation and elsewhere in Scripture? If there is no Second Coming our world is certainly a hopeless, aimless place, with the power-hungry, the super-rich, the expert liars and the wicked all vying for the seats of power, lording it over the gullible and easily led masses, with no real concern for the rest of us. There seems little doubt that we were until recently all being taken into a socialized and globalized world not unlike the one foretold in Scripture, courtesy of our elites including the bureaucrats of the European Union and the media-supported perverts and Marxists of the American Democratic Party. True, China and Russia were not and are not interested in sharing power with us or doing things our way, but the West – I’m convinced – is the embodiment of those feet and toes of clay as prophesied in Daniel’s book: a loose and less unified version of the Roman empire.
Along came Trump, and in the euphoria some of us felt following his successful election despite all that hatefully opposed him some of us (including myself) felt that our slide into world government and our loss of sovereignty and freedom was being halted. At the point of this writing, I see Trump and his administration bravely attempting to tackle this problem head-on. However, when I look at the ongoing, rabid opposition to him from all directions, and the media-promoted lies and hatred, I can’t help thinking that his election is just a brief pause on the road to Revelation. I would like to think my pessimism is wrong, but then again, I want Revelation to be fulfilled so that God can just get on with building a new world.
One large question in my mind is, “Can Trump succeed”? If he does succeed, will our sovereignty last once he’s gone in a few years or will it be given away again? European nations have for the most part already given theirs away. Democrats and others are hell-bent on dismantling the United States as it was founded and turning it into their idealised version of a Marxist, Islamised state in which borders, integrity and righteousness are the only enemies. This is why tradition has to go: it’s Marx’s own prescription for that perfect world. Forces within the Republican Party are similarly determined to hand us over to the enemies of Christ.
On the day of this writing, therefore, there’s no way of knowing for sure what the future of our world and particularly the Western world holds. If we are near the return of Christ Trump is going to fail despite all his valiant efforts, because Scripture must be fulfilled. If we are not near the return of Christ things could go either way for who knows how many centuries or millennia. It does appear that at least in Europe the movement is firmly towards a Jew-hating, Christ-hating populace unable to think objectively, and this too is in line with Biblical prophecy for end-times. The world is ripe for the deception of Antichrist.
The prescription for any true Bible-believing Christian is to keep reading, keep praying, keep trusting, and keep looking up.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 