When you look at the world today, if you look at it as it really is, to be honest, if you put everything together, there really is no hope that we’re going to get it right.
I do a lot of research on this subject. I write a column every month in the Prophecy News about these signs of the time.
I get reports from all over the world and, all over the world, they’re telling me the same thing: that the Bible prophecies are being fulfilled and that Jesus is coming.
They don’t tell me how long we’ve got because only He knows that. But there’s a certain thing which has been set in motion today, which is pushing us towards the Second Coming of Jesus. And, if you face up to what’s happening in the world, either you get into despair because you see no hope or you have a hope for a better world coming which involves believing in Jesus.
You can say that the human race, as I put it here, is not in a good place. We’ve all suffered through the COVID pandemic. On the second page of this ‘Hope for the Future’ leaflet, we see more problems coming on the world: money problems, social breakdown, environmental problems, disease, poverty, violence, drugs, family breakdown, conflict.
- Ten Signs of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
- Sign 1: Increase in wars and violence.
- Sign 2: Earthquakes, Famines and pestilence.
- Sign 3: Natural disasters and the environment
- Sign 4: Immorality and lawless behaviour.
- Sign 5: The rebirth of Israel and the battle for Jerusalem.
- Sign 6: Globalisation
- Sign 7: Increase in technology
- Sign 8: False Prophets and Messiahs
- Sign 9: The attack on the faith
- Sign 10: The spread of the Gospel
All these are causing people to ask the question, be fearful of the future, ask ‘Where is it all going?’
And people are recognizing – a lot of people who are not yet Christians – are recognizing that the world is going in the wrong direction and that there is really a crisis coming.
The Bible is the only thing which gives you the answer to this.
When we read the Bible, we find that these things happening are a sign of the last days’ prophecies coming to pass. They’re not just accidental things happening, they’re things which the Bible says will happen before Jesus returns.
When He comes again, He will come as the ruling King Messiah with all the power of God to put the world to rights. And the Bible is very clear, it says that before Jesus comes to the earth, there will be a time of unique trouble on the face of the earth known as the Great Tribulation.
This time of trouble will be so great that if God didn’t cut it short then, no flesh would be saved.
Jesus said:
21 For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. 22 And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
Matthew 24.21-22
In other words, He is saying, that if God didn’t interfere then no flesh would be saved, which means no human life would be saved. It would be the end of life on earth.
So, if God didn’t interfere with this situation, it would bring life to an end. Can you see things happening in our world today which could potentially bring life to an end if God didn’t interfere to stop them?
I think there are many of them. It’s not just one or two things which point to this. If you read through the whole of the Bible, you find it’s all over the place, it’s in Isaiah, in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in Daniel, in Zephaniah, and Zechariah right through the Old Testament prophets.
There are three chapters in the Gospels: in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21 and about the whole of Revelation from chapter 6 through to chapter 19 is about the time of the Great Tribulation.
So, it’s not something which is just incidental. It’s something which the Bible has a very large amount of information on and therefore, it’s something which we should take notice of.
Jesus said these things will happen at ‘the end of the age’, not at ‘the end of the world’ because these things happening will not actually be the end of the world. God has a future in which Jesus is going to come back and, according to the prophetic scriptures, Jesus is going to reign on the earth in person, from Jerusalem.
During that time, He will have all the power of God to put things right. He will cause nations to beat their swords into ploughshares and not study war anymore. There will be no more wars, they won’t study war, they won’t go to training for war, there’ll be peace and justice on the earth. The earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
Satan, who is responsible for all the trouble, is going to be bound in a pit, unable to influence the nations. And Jesus is going to reign as King of kings.
Revelation says:
Then the seventh angel sounded: And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!”
Revelation 11.15
Sadly, much of the church has actually deleted this from the program altogether. They don’t teach it in Bible colleges, and they don’t teach it, for the most part, in churches. But it’s there in the Bible.
This was the belief of the early church, that Jesus would return, that there would be a Messianic Kingdom.
It’s my belief now that Jesus will return and there will be a Messianic Kingdom.
After this, it says in the Bible that the present earth and the heavens, the universe, will be burned up and God will create new heavens and a new earth for believers. Revelation 21, 2 Peter chapter 3.
So, the Millennium is just the beginning of the eternal state in which we’ll be with the Lord forever, in His presence. This is what the Bible says.
The Bible also says that there are certain things happening now which are going to happen in the last days. I’ve listed a few of them here in the leaflet, on this, by no means exhaustive list.
There’ll be a crisis in the environment. Isaiah 24 speaks of the earth being defiled or polluted under its inhabitants. In Revelation 8 we read about trees being burned up, fish dying in the sea, waters becoming polluted and undrinkable. It says there’ll be a breakdown of moral and social values as in the days of Noah and Lot at the time of the great flood, of Sodom and Gomorrah. These were days of great violence and sexual immorality.
Also, you can see implied, though not specifically worked out, because they didn’t know about computers then and all that kind of stuff, but it is implied there’s going to be a development of technology with knowledge increasing, new inventions changing our lives, and this will be used in some ways for good to build up society, but it will be used ultimately for evil, to bring in a new economic and political system out of which the last world government of the beast or the Antichrist will emerge. Daniel 7-12, Revelation chapter 13.
The prophecies also say there’s going to be confusion in the area of religion, that many false prophets, false Messiahs will be leading people astray. We can see that happening now, with people being pushed to unite faiths in the cause of world peace. Revelation 17 – Babylon mystery Babylon the great.
And this religious system which emerges in the last days will not be based on the truth of God’s Word but will be based upon the idea that we can unite all religions in the name of some kind of new world order which will make the world a better place and bring an end to war and bring peace and justice to the world, deal with the environment problem, and all that kind of thing.
In fact, it won’t. It will bring about a system which is based on the opposition of God’s word and the persecution of God’s people.
Despite all this though, the message of the true Gospel is going to go out into all the world and then, the most visible sign is the restoration of Israel as the Jewish people return to the land of Israel.
There’s going to be hostility to Israel from the surrounding nations, but Israel will survive with God’s help. Jerusalem is going to be a source of international tension leading to the last battle over Jerusalem. Zechariah says Jerusalem is going to be a burdensome stone burdening all nations and, at the end of the day, Messiah/Jesus is going to return to set up his Messianic Kingdom reigning from Jerusalem in a rebuilt Temple.
Now, some people say: ‘Well, they’ve always been saying this. There have always been wars, famines, plagues, etc. It’s nothing new.’
I would say there is something new. What is new today is that all these things are coming together and there are many more things which are written in the Bible thousands of years ago by people from different times and with different ideas but all focusing on this event and all agreeing on the substance of what’s going to happen.
That’s never happened before, never at this intensity, never with all these things happening at the same time.
You have the Middle East situation with Israel back in the land. That’s never happened before. Only in our generation, from 1948 onwards, have we seen a Jewish State in the Middle East.
It is one of the clearest signs of the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah.
We have the development technology that never happened before. You know, 200 years ago, the fastest you could go in the world was at the speed of a horse. If you wanted to send a message anywhere in the world, you would write it down and give it to somebody to carry at the speed of a horse around the world. That was all over the world, that was the situation then.
Now, you can travel right across the world in a moment, you can send a message instantly by computer, by all kinds of devices which are connecting the world together into this globalized system.
It’s never happened before. Only in our time are you seeing these things taking place and the potential for the one world political system the Bible speaks about in Revelation 13 has only come about in our time with the advent of new technology and the ways in which nations are being globalized and brought together.
15 He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13.15-17
It’s only happened in this time. That’s why I believe we are living in the last days.
One has to say also that Christians have said these things were going to happen in the past and they haven’t.
The Jehovah’s witnesses have given many dates for the Second Coming of Jesus, and they haven’t happened so people say, ‘that’s all baloney, it doesn’t make any difference.’
People got very excited about the year 2000, that it would be the date of the Second Coming and then nothing happened.
But these guesses are not based upon the Word of God, they are based upon human speculation and human speculation most often gets it wrong.
I’m not giving you the date of the Second Coming but I’m telling you that everything which Jesus said would happen, everything the Bible said would happen is happening now.
Therefore, it’s logical to me that we are heading towards the Second Coming of Jesus.
The date I’ll leave to Him to work out because none of us know, but it’s going to happen, and the process has been set in motion which can’t be reversed until it happens.
One of the phrases Jesus used about the end times was the birth pangs or the beginnings of sorrows.
5 And Jesus, answering them, began to say: “Take heed that no one deceives you. 6 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many. 7 But when you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. 8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.
Mark 13.5-8
The birth pangs of a woman in labour, when a woman goes into labour, a certain process begins which can’t be reversed until the birth of the child. The shocks or contractions become more intense the nearer you get to the birth of the child.
So, when you see certain things happening, Jesus is saying, they’re going to continue until the event which will be the parallel to the birth of the child – the Second Coming of Jesus when you see it beginning is not going to stop until Jesus returns.
I will say to you that the process has begun. We’re in the time of the beginning of sorrows which Jesus referred to and it’s going to lead up to His Second Coming.
Some people say that teaching this is discouraging and stops people from taking action to save the world.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t use our lives to try and do good for humanity. Certainly, we should, as Christians we want to do good for all people, we want to try to do good for ourselves, for our families, for our communities and, ultimately, for the world.
I am saying that human efforts in this particular situation we’re going to be facing now will fail. We will not manage to sort out the problems because these problems are actually prophesied in the Bible and Jesus said that when you see these things begin to happen, they’re going to reach to their conclusion.
He referred to something called the distress of nations with perplexity in Luke 21. And I’ve said this before but the word for with perplexity in Greek is aporia.
Aporia means ‘with no way out’. So, it’s saying: when you see a crisis coming on the world which has no way out of it, that’s going to lead to the Second Coming of Jesus.
I would say that we are living in a time when we see a crisis coming on the world with no way out which is going to lead to the Second Coming of Jesus.