The world is on fire once again. The Middle East is in conflict once again. False teachers are using the crisis to promote wildly unbiblical conspiracies about the coming end-times.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
I don’t mean to come off as flippant. Israel being at war with Palestinians has been a thing for over a hundred years, and in that time thousands of lives have been lost. It would be nice if peace could happen between them, but due to the nature of their conflict being a philosophical one, it’s not likely to end until one side is either driven away from the area or altogether exterminated.
Other than that, I have nothing else to say regarding the news. My point is how stories like this—which pop up once every decade or so—are used, co-opted, and exploited by false teachers of the so-called Christian persuasion, to tell their audiences that war in Israel is a “sign of the times of the Lord’s imminent return.” You’ll hear them talk in vague terms about things Daniel, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah wrote, as well as things Jesus supposedly said, and they will jump up and down on stage, declaring “when these signs come to pass, we’ll be nearing the end at last! It will come very fast; trumpets will sound!”
All of it is false teaching.
There are no “end times” signals. There are no clues to look for, signs to decipher, and prophesies to interpret that relate to a 21st-century conflict, pointing to a 21st-century return of Jesus. Shoot, I’ve been hearing these false teachers spout their nonsense for so long that, back in my day, they were talking about 20th-century conflicts pointed to a 20th-century return of Jesus. It was in the 1970s that the false teacher Hal Lindsey published “The Late Great Planet Earth” in which he read the Biblical tea leaves and determined that the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 meant we were in the end-times and that Jesus would return within one generation. 1948 was 75 years ago. Lindsey thought the 1980s would be the last years of human history and that Christ would return in that decade.
The 1980s were over 40 years ago!
People keep being wrong about it and yet they keep going back to the well, pretending like their predictions were just a little off and if they can just find that one missing piece of the puzzle, buried somewhere in the Book of Daniel, they can find the 1 they need to carry in order to land on a prediction that is, conveniently, just far enough into the future to be relevant (for fear-mongering), but also just far enough away that they can milk it for $$$$$ in the meantime.
There are no “end times” signals.
Daniel prophesied the rise of various Empires who would follow after Babylon, leading to the establishment of the Lord’s Kingdom in the days of the Roman Empire (Daniel ch2). Ezekiel predicted the fall of Judah and the spiritual restoration of the Kingdom in the era of the Messiah (Jesus’ first coming, not His second–ch37). Jeremiah promised a new covenant, but not one that would come after Jesus’ second coming, rather one that would align with His first, when His blood would be shed to take away our sins (ch31).
Anyone using the Old Testament to look for signs of the times, clues relating to future events, or warnings related to a modern conflict between Israel and Palestine is using the Old Testament in error. The Old Bible was not written with such things in mind. Likewise, anyone distorting the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, to try and argue that we are nearing the end of the world, is likewise using the words of Jesus in error.
Jesus’ words in Matthew 24 related to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire, a sacking of the city that would occur in the year AD70, roughly a generation after the Lord made His prediciton. He said what He said because He was lamenting how the people rejected Him. He would have cared for them like a mother hen does her chicks, but they wouldn’t have Him (Matthew 23:37). He promised the city would be destroyed and that prompted His disciples to ask “when?” The Lord gave them signs to look for, and sure enough, when those signs came to pass, the disciples recognized them and fled the city. Jerusalem was sacked in AD70, and countless Jews were killed. Not one Christian died, according to historians, because they were already out of the city.
The destruction of Jerusalem was an act of Divine Judgment against the city. It’s worth knowing that God’s judgment big and small (local or gigantic) is often described in the Bible with terms like “the coming of the Lord” and “the day of the Lord” (Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 46, Ezekiel 30, Obadiah v15, Zephaniah 1, etc). Warnings regularly preceded God’s judgment being doled out against a people or a city. The Lord sent Jonah to warn Ninevah. He sent Jeremiah to warn Judah. He sent Noah to warn the world! When it comes to the second coming of Christ, there have been warnings, but warnings are not clues regarding the day and hour. The warning is “get right or die.” That’s the warning. Get right before it’s too late. Get right because Christ could come today, or tomorrow, or in fifty years, or in five hundred years, and so on. We don’t know when He will return; only God knows (Matthew 24:36). If He doesn’t return for 500 years, someone 500 years from now is going to be ready, and someone else isn’t. The one who is ready isn’t going to be ready because they deciphered some clue by reading Daniel upside down on shrooms. He’ll be ready because he read his Bible, obeyed the Gospel, and lived faithfully till the end.
Do not be bamboozled by false teachers espousing unbiblical doctrines like premillennialism. Stop looking for signs of the times. Stop thinking war here or there is a sign that Jesus is coming soon. These things are not Biblical. Jesus may be coming soon…or He may not be, we don’t know, and I think presuming that He is coming soon (whether in word or in hymn) is wildly inappropriate.
Troublesome times have been here for centuries and centuries. They will continue to be here. Have hope in God and endure to the end, whenever that end may be.
~Matthew