In every era since the church began, there have been those who have been convinced that the signs were right for Jesus’ return. It is a natural instinct for Christians to watch for the signs of His second coming, for Jesus’ return for us is one of the great hopes the Bible teaches.
Jesus taught in His parable of the fig tree that as His reappearance nears, that generation will see the signs but not know the moment:
Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you, also, when you see all these things, know that it is near, at the very doors. Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will be no means pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, no not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only (Matthew 24:32-36).
We learn from Jesus’ parable that as Christians we will be aware as the time approaches, because we will see the signs, but that no one but God the Father will know the exact day and moment of Christ’s reappearance.
In the passage preceding the parable of the fig tree, Jesus identifies some of the signs. Well, you may think, all we need to do is study His list and we will know when the time is ripe. It’s not quite that easy, because many of the signs Jesus identifies in Matthew 24:4-31 have been present in every generation. This is part of the mystery, I believe, which the Holy Spirit intentionally left for us to ponder. That is because God wants us to be always vigilant and always ready to come face-to-face with Jesus, and always faithful as if that might happen today, rather than to grow complacent because of some assurance that the time isn’t right for Jesus’ return. As we discussed in our study last week, that is the important message of Matthew 24: Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. . . . Therefore you also be ready . . . (Matthew 24:42,44). He wants us to remain faithful, to be prepared to meet Him when He comes!
Jesus describes many signs of His imminent return in Matthew 24:4-31, in response to the question from His followers asking when He would return and what would be the sign of His coming and the end of the age:
And Jesus answered and said to them: Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, I am the Christ, and will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.
Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. But he who endures to the end shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand), Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the Sabbath. 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. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.
Then if anyone says to you, Look, here is the Christ! or There! do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand.
Therefore if they say to you, Look, He is in the desert! do not go out; or Look, He is in the inner rooms! do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For wherever the carcass is, there the eagles will be gathered together.
Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.
So we see there will be what we might call natural events that will signal the time is near, including wars, international strife, earthquakes, famines, disease, and so forth. In addition, even then Jesus seems to be warning us not to be preoccupied with the exact day and hour, because those who will say they have seen the Christ will have seen false christs. The signal of His return is shown to us in verse 31: Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. In other words, we will know He is coming when we see His angels and see Jesus Himself returning on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and not a moment before!
Yet, Jesus in this passage does indicate there can be an awareness that His reappearance is very near. Taken just by itself, this passage gives us what we might call a general outline. But God gave us a complete Scripture, and when we look elsewhere in the Bible we can find quite a bit of corroborating information and more clues for what many Christian writers call the terminal generation of Christians—that is, the Christians who live in the era when His second coming is close. Before we look at a few of those, however, I want to remind all of us that these are general signs of the age of His return, and we by no means should attempt to identify a day or time from the clues we find in Scripture. In addition, we do not want to look at our Scriptural references with such a narrow focus that we begin to see all the events around us as definite signs of His reappearance. Christians throughout the ages have tended to do that and lost sight of the fact that our awareness of His imminent return is not an intellectual exercise, but a reason for a holy walk with Him so that we are at all times ready to meet Him.
Signs of the Times from the Prophets
When we think of Old Testament prophecies about the day of the Lord’s return, the prophet Daniel is one of the first who comes to mind. Daniel gives us interpretations of his own visions, which accurately predicted the course of human governments in the ages to come. Reading the entire book of Daniel can be awe-inspiring as we compare the accuracy of what he had to say 2,500 years ago to the events which subsequently took place in history.
Today, we will focus on just one short passage from the book of Daniel, Daniel 12:4: But you, Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.
This short passage is profound and tells us three facts. First, some details about the delivery of God’s people into Jesus’ presence at His reappearance are not yet revealed. This is consistent with Jesus’ teaching that we will not know the day or the hour until He actually reappears. Second, the passage teaches us that in that era people will be searching for His appearance (running to and fro, a picture of earnest or even frantic searching).
Third—and this is what I want to focus on for a moment—the time of His reappearance will be a time when there has been a marked increase in knowledge. The Hebrew text of this section indicates either a marked increase in knowledge or perhaps could be regarded as an explosion of knowledge, understanding, and learning. (The translation knowledge shall increase is precise to the Hebrew text, as opposed to the NIV rendering Many will go here & there to increase knowledge, which is interpretive rather than literal.)
So God has given Daniel two signs that will occur when the time is near: (1) an explosion of knowledge and (2) a marked increase in learning and seeking knowledge. The emphasis of the text is that the increase in learning and knowledge is very or unusually great in its scope. Nothing in the text limits this increase in knowledge to spiritual knowledge, although that certainly would be included. Remember that Daniel’s prophecies and interpretations of visions focused not just on the people of God, but also on world governments and events that were to come.
So the picture Daniel 12:4 gives us of the generation that will see Christ’s return is one of a generation of people during a time of vastly increased knowledge. It may be that he is describing our age, an age in which human knowledge doubles every few years. We should note that there was a slow progress of increase of knowledge in the science, industry, transportation, and so forth from the time of Daniel until about the middle of the 19th century. Do you realize people have lived not too much differently throughout history up to the mid-19th century from the way people had always lived—with basic homes heated by fire, general lack of medical knowledge and treatments, transportation by foot and animal, and so forth? In just the last century, however, mankind has experienced an explosion of knowledge and technological development. I have read medical knowledge alone is doubling every 3-5 years now.
So what we can apply from Daniel 12:4, in light of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24 is that we, indeed, may be that generation that will not pass before Jesus returns. But there is more . . .
Most of the Old Testament prophets dwell on the rebirth of Israel as a nation, the regathering of the dispersed Jewish people to the land of Israel, and Israel regaining control of the city of Jerusalem from the gentiles. I want to focus on two of those prophecies, from the prophets Jeremiah and Zechariah.
Jeremiah 23:7-8--Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, that they shall no longer say, As the Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, but, As the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel from the north country and from all the countries where I had driven them. And they shall dwell in their own land.
Zechariah 14:11—The people shall dwell in it (Jerusalem); And no longer shall there be utter destruction, But Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited.
The rebirth of the nation of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital under control of the Jews who have returned to their land is a key characteristic of the age in which Jesus will return. The Jewish people lost their homeland in A.D. 70 when the Romans destroyed the temple and drove most of the Jews out of Palestine. (The letter to the Hebrews was written to the converted Jews that were dispersed around the world.) Then in 1948, for the first time since A.D. 70, the nation of Israel came back into existence. This may or may not be the nation that is prophesied, because modern Israel is a secular nation, but it is interesting to note that in the midst of the number of other characteristics of the end times we see around us, this is the era when a key characteristic—the rebirth of Israel—has taken place.
Another prophetic passage also addresses this issue . . .
Luke 21:24—And they will fall by the edge of the sword, and be led away captive into all nations. And Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
This passage in Luke 24 (verses 20-24) refers to the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel by the Romans, which was to take place about 40 years after Jesus spoke these words recorded by Luke. The last part of verse 24 is an interesting prophecy because it singles out Jerusalem. The times of the Gentiles is fulfilled (that is, comes to an end) when Jesus reappears. This prophecy of verse 24 indicates Jerusalem will be back under Jewish control at the time of Jesus’ reappearance. Even after Israel came back into existence in 1948, Jerusalem remained under Muslim (the term gentile means non-Jewish) control. But Israel did regain control of Jerusalem in the 6-day war in 1967 and vowed never to relinquish it. Those of us who lived through that time period will remember Moshe Dyan marching to the Western Wall of the temple when the battle for Jerusalem was over and proclaiming Jerusalem would never again be lost. Today, political control of Jerusalem is perhaps the most important issue between the Israelies and the Palestinians, with the nation of Israel determined never to give it up again.
Another prophecy from Zechariah seems to predict some weapon or force of mass destruction, also a characteristic of the present age:
Zechariah 14:12-15—And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the people who fought against Jerusalem: 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.
Zechariah describes this event as a plague, which may be the only way he could think to describe what he saw. We notice, however, that the physical description of destruction of the body is consistent with modern weapons of mass destruction and reminds us of the effects of a nuclear holocaust. Understand that we should not be legalistic or didactic about the similarity, because Zechariah does describe it as a plague. But the suddenness of the physical destruction (their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet) is more consistent with a catastrophic event such as an attack than of a plague of disease. Since the development of nuclear weapons in the 1940s, mankind has had the capability of causing this effect.
Finally, many writers turn to Revelation 11:3, 7-10 and find another condition exists that seems to indicate an event of prophecy can take place in the present era when it could not have taken place in prior eras. In that passage, which depicts an event that will take place during the great tribulation, the two witnesses empowered by God are killed and lay for 3-1/2 days on the street in Jerusalem, during which time those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three and a half days . . . and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them, make merry, and send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth (Revelation 11:9,10).
It seems from this description that all parts of the world will have visual access to the Jerusalem and will watch the bodies of the two witnesses, a fact which is possible in our age of satellite television which can give us live video coverage of events practically anywhere on the planet. In fact, even via the Internet, thousands of web cameras bring continuous live photos of locations around the globe, including several web cameras in Jerusalem. (A good example is the Western Wall web cam image at www.aish.com/wallcam/.)
It is biblical to observe these things and speculate about the era in which the return of Christ is near. Jesus said the generation will be able to recognize the signs that the time is near. Practically every generation since the time of Christ has speculated that His return is imminent. But if we look at the prophesies and compare them to our era, we must always be aware the time of Jesus’ reappearing will remain somewhat of a mystery until we actually see Him.
Let me conclude with the reminder again that the Holy Spirit left this a mystery for a very good reason. Jesus tells us the reason in Matthew 24:42-44 that we have two assignments with regard to His next appearance—(1) watch, because we do not know what hour He will come, and (2) be ready. We must live lives consistent with our relationship with our Savior, so that when He comes for us, he will find us faithful.
