“At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. . . Now learn this lesson from the fig tree. As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away” (Matthew 24:30, 32-35).
As a youth, I was a member of the church with a pastor who strongly believed in the imminent return of Jesus. Many a sermon was spent on the idea. At one point, he preached a sermon on the return of Christ, and he concluded his message with the firm belief that Jesus could very likely come before the year was out.
It so happened the message was delivered the day before my senior class was to order our class rings. I went up to the pastor and asked him if I should go ahead and order my ring in light of his message. He laughed and told me to go ahead and order my ring. I did.
That was over 40 years ago. Christ hasn’t returned and my ring was lost long ago. I never really thought about the Second Coming other than to acknowledge that it was a real promise from a real God and that Jesus would indeed return some day, a day at the Father’s bidding. I never had a sense of imminent return until just recently.
I am now prepared to join my former pastor in believing that the return of Christ will occur very soon, within the next 50 years or so. Here’s why I believe so.
- The World is Very, Very Different Today
“Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pangs” (Matthew 24:4-8).
The world in which I have lived has been a fairly stable place for most of my life. There was always the uneasy balance of the Cold War, with the Soviet bloc on one side and the NATO side on the other. Sure, there were always periphery wars, the most notable for America in Korea and Viet Nam, but there were no major wars coming even close to the wars fought in the first half of the 20th century. The collapse of the Soviet empire seemed to usher in a safer, even more stable world.
Yet, I look at the political world today, and everything seems to be coming unraveled. The rise of Putin, the Brexit vote, and the rise of other political leaders in various countries seem to bring more instability than ever before. The election of Donald Trump seems to underscore the divisions in America. The relatively peaceful coexistence of the United States with its immediate neighbors to the north and south seem to become frayed more than at any other time in my lifetime.
As I write this, our nation has been smashed hard by two hurricanes of greater strength than ever before, with another one veering off into the Atlantic, hopefully to dissipate out there. Mexico has undergone two earthquakes and a hurricane within a week’s time of each other. Forest fires of mammoth proportion in the Northwest United States has ruined thousands of acres of forestland, all a result of unprecedented famines throughout the region. Flooding worse than on the Texas coast have hammered eastern India and Bangladesh. Whether you believe the climate changes are man-made or not, there is no denying that the world’s climate is off-kilter.
Political unrest and climate extremes are coupled with the seemingly general unrest among the vast number of people in our world at the growing divide between the wealthy and the rest of society. The love of money, far from being condemned as the root of all evil, seems to be applauded as verification of the ability to be smart and innovative. When we consider the difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution, two events that took place within the same time period, one was relatively bloodless (as bloodless as a war can be), while the other was a brutal retaliation for perceived abuses of privilege and neglect. The difference between the two revolutions was that one was a fight between relative class equals (American) as opposed to a class warfare (France). These divisions are growing across the world.
Add to this the rise of religious fervor without an understanding of religious ethics or basic teachings. There are terrorists from the various major religions, extremists with their own brand of interpretation of their scripture. People seem to want to hear the right words instead of the true words, agreeable words instead of challenging words.
Then there is the dissemination of information that has spread so rapidly around the globe. We have 24-hour news and the internet. Social media allows us to get our message out quickly. Never mind that most of the information coming out is the product of someone’s imagination or warped interpretation of events. The things we see and hear are oftentimes presented without context, with objectivity, and because we live in a world where truth is rapidly becoming impossible to find, we are able to pick and choose the messages we want to believe. We are a long way from Walter Cronkite’s, “And that’s the way it is” declaration at the close of the CBS newscast.
We live in a world of increasing chaos and instability. We don’t know who to trust or why to trust them. The climate becomes more and more unstable, the people become more and more disenfranchised and we feel more isolated than ever before.
And Jesus said, “All these are the beginning of birth pangs” (Matthew 24:8).
- The Message of the Bible Is Very Clear
“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of Me. At that time, many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many will grow cold, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved. And this gospel will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24:9-14).
There are many passages in the Bible that speak to the Second Coming of Jesus. Some are more direct than others. I prefer the passage in Matthew 24 when Jesus is asked by His disciples about the destruction of Jerusalem and the sign of His coming again at the end of the age. I believe part of the passage deals with the former (vs. 15-25) and other parts deal with the latter.
Jesus tells us that the wars and rumors of wars, the famines and the earthquakes are just the beginning birth pangs, the opening act of His return. It’s the words in vs. 9-14 that let us know the signs of His imminent return.
With the rise of terrorism around the world and a renewed awakening of national religion, so has persecution of the minority religions. While no one would claim that Saddam Hussein was a benevolent dictator while he ruled Iraq, he did so as a secularist. As a result, Christians and other minority faiths and sects in Iraq enjoyed relative safety while they worshiped and sought to live out their faiths.
When Hussein was deposed, Iraq reaffirmed their religious fervor in Muslim faith, and soon the churches of Iraq were under fire, literally and figuratively. The Christian Church in Iraq has been persecuted mercilessly, and many of fled for the safety of Western lands.
The same is true in other regions of the world where national religion has become more important. Christians in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East are threatened in ways never before seen. Turkey, long a bastion of political stability in the Middle East, is slowly moving away from their secular society to one more aligned with a state religion, and state religions almost always mean an increase in persecution of those not affiliated with the official religion.
The fact that someone says, “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” or a court determines that manger scenes do not belong on public lands are not persecution. When people come to your church and burn it while members are worshiping, when Christians are jailed for no other reason than their faith, when Christians are dragged from their homes and murdered—that’s persecution.
More significant in the United States is the statements that come after the phrase, “you will be hated by all nations because of Me.” Looking at our society, polls show that increasing numbers of Americans are turning away from the faith of their parents and are looking to alternative ways to fill the spiritual void that has resulted. For the last few decades, we have seen a rise in Eastern influenced faith systems, a mixing of Eastern thought with Native American ideas and Christian teachings, as well as African and Caribbean influences. This New Age way of thinking has gained many adherents in our nation, while others are simply tuning out, frustrated by the messages coming from our pulpits that seem to have less and less of a relationship to Biblical faithfulness.
As for the betrayal and hate, we are living in an increasingly divided nation, perhaps as divided as we were in the 1850’s. We are ending decades-long friendships based on nothing more than political opinions, and the words we speak are angry and accusatory. Into the void has stepped false prophets, with messages blending politics with the Gospel, even though the messages are often contradictory in their aims. A society that once sought a Great Society has now turned its back on those in need, wanting to build walls, strip programs and look away from those most in need.
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them” (2 Timothy 3:1-5).
Paul’s words to his disciple Timothy reflect Christ’s words to His disciples in Matthew 24. Jesus says with the rise of evil, the love of many will grow cold. This cold love is reflected in the ways Paul says people will become in the last days. We are living in a society where Paul’s list of characteristics are not only becoming more apparent, but they are also becoming celebrated and encouraged as a way of truly living.
Contrast this with Paul’s words to the Colossians regarding how we should relate to the world: “There- fore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievance you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity” (Colossians 3:12-14).
“How can you say the love of many has grown cold? Didn’t you see the response to Hurricane Harvey? Didn’t you see how average men and women gave up their vacation times, drove at their own expense, towing their boats and trailers, to help the flood victims on the Texas coast?”
Yes, I did see it and I thank God for the compassion that was shown. I also remember how the nation rallied together after 9/11 and how we rallied to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I also remember how quickly we went back to being our normal selves after a short period of time. It’s sort of like a graph of a steadily downward slide in stocks. There may be a rally here or there, an uptick, but the overall picture of the graph is a company steadily losing more than it gains. We have our moments of love and compassion, but more often than not, we are willing to turn our backs on those in need, looking to our own interests over anyone else’s.
“For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).
A recent survey done by Baylor University in Waco, Texas, was taken with Trump supporters/voters who identify themselves as Christians. The survey indicated that most of these Christians were members of white Evangelical churches. It also showed that for the vast majority of these voters, they let their politics dictate the way they interpret Scripture, rather than the other way around. In other words, if the Bible contradicted the political belief of the person, they allowed their politics to take precedence over the Word of God. A summary of the survey and links to it may be found at the following link: http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=184962&_buref=1172-91940.
Turn on the television and see who the popular preachers are. They’re men and women who proclaim that God wants us to be prosperous, or that wants us to vote a certain way, claiming it to be God’s will to do so. There are many pastors and evangelists and Bible teachers who are either afraid to speak the entire truth of the Bible or no longer want to see that truth. There is a danger in reading into Scripture what we want it to say a danger of reading between the lines in regard to the Bible. Those who are called to proclaim the message of God are called to proclaim the whole message, not just the words their listeners want to hear.
And the congregants have a duty to expect to hear the entire message as well, to be challenged and confronted by the Word. We need to be forced to look beyond our comfort zones and be called to reach out to the lost, the needy, the seeking, with the same love and compassion that was demonstrated in Jesus.
But what is and what should be are often two very different things. Most of us know where we should be, and most of us realize where we really are. That’s why I constantly see someone on Facebook posting a need for revival, a need to return to God. Godly people on all sides of the political spectrum acknowledge this truth, but how many of us are truly seeking His direction and change in our world?
Jesus told His disciples to learn the lesson from the fig tree. I believe I see the signs and I believe Jesus is coming again soon.
(c) 2017 Glynn Beaty