3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, his disciples came unto him apart, saying, Tell us when these things shall be, and what sign shall be of thy coming, and of the end of the world.
4 And Jesus answered, and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
5 For many shall come in my Name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many. 6 And ye shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.7 For nation shall rise against nation, and realm against realm, and there shall be famine, and pestilence, and earthquakes in divers places.8 All these are but the beginning of sorrows. Matthew 24:3-14 (1599 Geneva Bible) Read verses 9-14 on the site.
When I was a youth back in the 1960’s I remember hearing many sermons in our church about how the signs of the end of the age were upon us and that it would only be a short time until the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. In 1970 Hal Lindsey published his book The Late Great Planet Earth….
I read it while I was in the Navy stationed at the Bureau of Naval Personnel. I bought it at the bookstore of a church in Washington, D.C. that I was attending at that time. The focus of that book was to get the reader to buy into the fact that the signs of the times were indicating that the Great Tribulation was very near. One of the points they used during that time to show that we were in the birth pangs was how horrible things were throughout the world morally, politically, militarily, and how the “gospel” was being preached around the world. Here we are over 50 years later and I defy anyone to say that things have improved in any of those categories since then. In Matthew 24:3-14, which I placed at the top of this post, our Lord tells us what the world would be like leading up to the end of this age. This age began at the Cross and will continue until the cup of God’s Wrath is filled. <Continue reading post>