However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows. (Matthew 24:36)The other day, a preacher predicted the end of the world. He has done so four or five times in the past. The time before the last, a lot of people were scared. This time, it passed with just a brief mention.
There are those who will tell you that they know the end from codes in the Bible. There are those who tell you that they know the end by the things that are happening in the world right now. There are those who will tell you that they know the end because of some divine revelation or some way they have figured out or something else.
But the truth of the matter is no one knows when it will happen. Not only that but the Bible is not all that specific as to what will happen at the end, and there are 10,000 different ideas, from the sublime to the absurd.
We cannot know when Jesus is coming back. The Bible says that God didn’t even tell Jesus. And if he didn’t tell his own Son, repository of the fulness of deity in bodily form, why would he tell anyone else?
People say they can tell by the condition of society, that the Bible says in the last days bad things will happen. But bad things have always happened, from the time of Jesus’ death until now.
As bad as our society is at times, the Roman empire of the first century had open homosexuality, open immorality, public nudity, government corruption and slavery. It is hard to get much worse than that.
Someone once said that the American churches were fine with their theology until bad things started happening to them. Then it was the Apocalypse.
Things have happened all over the world for the past 2000 years and suddenly they start happening to us, the favored people of God, the US church, so the end has to be near.
Jesus said, in Matthew 24:5-7: For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world.
In other words, bad things will happen but that is not the sign. What is the sign? There is none. The apostle Paul said that he would come unexpectedly, like a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2).
He is not going to tell you when no matter how badly you want to know. And he isn’t going to tell some preacher. He didn’t even tell Jesus. Why should he tell somebody else?
Worrying about it never did any good. Just live your life like the second coming will be tomorrow and you will be fine.
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