Copyright
© 2024 Michael A. Brown
Chapter 14 “Knowing the Season” is comprised of blogs 14a,
14b and 14c
‘Now
learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its
leaves come out, you know that summer is near.
Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right
at the door…’
(Matt. 24:32-33)
‘When
these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your
redemption is drawing near.’
(Luke 21:28)
We saw in chapters 3 and 6 that, although
we cannot know the day or hour when the Lord Jesus will come for his bride, yet
we can certainly know the season in which he will return. Jesus said in the verses above that we can discern
the season when he will return by recognising the various signs which show us
that the time is drawing close. These
are often called ‘the signs of the times,’ and we will look at them in this
chapter.
The fact that Jesus does expect us to
discern and recognise these signs, to understand them and to live our life in
the light of them, is clear from the way he rebuked the Pharisees on one
occasion for their failure to recognise the times they themselves were living
in:
‘He
replied, “When evening comes, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is
red,’ and in the morning, ‘Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and
overcast.’ You know how to interpret the
appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.”’ (Matt. 16:2-3)
Furthermore, in addition to these signs,
there are also several macro-factors which serve as ‘end-time clocks,’ if you
will, and which indicate to us the progress of the outworking of God’s end-time
purposes. As we shall see below, each of
these clocks is even now ticking down towards ‘zero hour,’ and they therefore
show us that the time of the Lord’s return for his bride is drawing very
near. This is a source of deep joy and tremendous
encouragement to us as believers. We
should not fix our eyes on the worsening problems of the world around us and
give in to anxiety and fear in our heart, instead we should recognise that, for
us, it means that Jesus is very soon going to come to receive us unto himself.
The
partial hardening of Israel and their salvation
Reading:
Romans ch.11
The first of these macro-factors concerns
Israel and the Jews. In Romans ch.11, the apostle Paul argues
that, in the providence of God, it was the rejection by the Jews of Christ as
their Messiah that led to the gospel being brought to the Gentiles. Their transgression has meant spiritual
riches for the world (v.12). Paul calls
the partial hardening of Israel ‘a mystery’ (v.25), i.e. it is something that
not every Gentile believer is necessarily going to understand. Many Gentile commentators have taught wrongly
that God’s purposes for Israel and the Jews came to an end after their
rejection of Jesus and the calamitous events of 70 AD, and that, since then,
God’s purpose has been focused exclusively on the salvation of the
Gentiles. Effectively therefore, the
Church (obviously consisting for the most part of Gentile believers) has
replaced Israel in God’s purposes, and he has no further purpose either for the
Jewish people (except insofar as they may come to faith in Christ) or for their
ancient homeland. They have no prophetic
significance in the end-times.
This false teaching is called
replacement theology, and it blinds many otherwise well-meaning Gentile
Christian believers to God’s end-time purposes for the Jewish people. As I said in chapter 12, Gentile believers
who hold to this wrong teaching justify it by spiritualizing the promises in
the Old Testament that God made to Israel and the Jewish people, and
interpreting these promises in a symbolic way as though they have to do only
with the Gentile Church. In this
way, they disempower God’s promises and purposes to and for the Jewish people. Amillennialism is one of the fruits of this
false teaching, a wrong view of the millennium which became popular through the
teaching of St. Augustine in the fifth century AD, and to which many Gentile
Christians even today still adhere (see chapter 24).
However, Paul warns us to avoid developing
such an attitude of conceit (v.25). The
hardening of Israel is only partial; there is a remnant among them chosen by
grace and they have not fallen beyond recovery (vv.5,11). There have always been some Jews throughout
this present Church Age who have received Jesus as their Messiah (albeit a
small number!). Furthermore, the coming
of the Gentiles to faith in Christ, and their grafting in into the olive tree
of true faith, has the purpose of making the Jews envious of God’s blessing
upon Gentile believers, that they too might then believe (vv.11,13-14). In God’s purpose, this partial hardening of
the Jews will continue only until the fullness of the Gentiles has come into God’s
kingdom, and then the Jews will return to Jesus as their Messiah (vv.25-26).[1] This return of the Jews to Christ as their
Messiah will result in untold blessing for Gentile believers: even greater
spiritual riches and ‘life from the dead’ (vv.12,15).
In the unfolding of God’s end-time
purposes, there are several issues connected to Israel and the Jewish people
which serve as signs to us that the return of Christ is drawing near. We should therefore prayerfully watch and
observe the development of these signs.
1.
The return of the Jews to
their historic homeland
In the Old Testament, God gave many
prophetic promises to the Jews that they would one day return to their historic
homeland, as I said in chapter 12.
The Israelites of the northern kingdom
were exiled and scattered following the Assyrian captivity of 721 BC, and these
so-called ‘ten lost tribes of Israel’ did not return. Following this, the Babylonian captivity (beginning
in 607 BC) similarly saw the Jews of the southern kingdom exiled into the
Mesopotamian area of Babylon, and Solomon’s temple was destroyed in 587/586
BC. However, many of their descendants
returned seventy years later, after around 537 BC, and they eventually re-built
both Jerusalem and the temple. This new
temple became known as ‘the second temple,’ and it was extended considerably in
the period 20 BC – 26 AD.
Later, after the events of 70 AD when the
Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem and razed the second temple to the
ground, those Jews who survived were taken away as slaves and scattered among
the nations. In 135 AD, under Hadrian,
all further Jewish resistance to Roman rule was finally crushed, and the Jews
were banished entirely from Jerusalem.
The name of the city was changed to Aelia Capitolina, the land was
re-named as Syria Palaestina (hence giving us the name ‘Palestine,’ and
deriving from the word ‘Philistia’), and a temple to Zeus/Jupiter was built
upon the Temple Mount area in Jerusalem to replace the destroyed Jewish
temple. This pagan temple was later
replaced by the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque during Islamic times.
This whole area remained in the hands of
the Gentiles from that time on until 1948, when Israel was declared to be a
sovereign nation once again (cf. Luke 21:24).
Since then, the Jewish people have begun to return en masse to Israel
and to re-establish their ancient homeland once again (or at least a small part
of it), in fulfilment of many prophetic scriptures. This returning of the Jews from all parts of
the world to their homeland in Israel continues today.
So when we look at end-times prophetic
scriptures, we can clearly see that they assume that the Jewish people have
returned and are back in their homeland, and even that the temple has yet again
been re-built in Jerusalem (the so-called ‘third temple’) (see for example
Ezek. 36:24-36, Joel 3:1-2, Matt. 24:15-25, Luke 21:24, 2 Thess. 2:4, Rev.
11:1-2). The land of Israel, the city of
Jerusalem, the turning of the Jewish people to Christ as their Messiah, and the
third temple are all significant factors in end-times events. To put this another way and more simply, the
end-time events that are described in Matthew ch.24 and the book of Revelation
cannot take place without the Jewish people being back in the land.
The
fig tree is often used in the word of God as a figurative description of Israel
(e.g. Jer. ch.24, Hosea 9:10, Joel 1:6-7, Luke 13:6-9). Therefore, because of Jesus’ reference to the
fig tree in Matthew 24:32-33, the re-establishment of the modern state of
Israel and the return of the Jews in fulfilment of prophetic scriptures is held
by many to be the most significant of ‘the signs of the times’ mentioned by
Jesus. Put simply, it means that
the return of Christ is very near.
Indeed, if you read again carefully through the list of points given in
chapter 12, it would seem that we are presently in the parts described in
points 10. to 13., and this would indicate that the time of the rapture is very
close. We are living in exciting
and momentous times!
2.
Jerusalem: an
international bone of contention
Ever since the declaration of Israel as a
sovereign state in 1948, the land and its borders have been what seems to be an
intractable international bone of contention.
This is frequently evident from news bulletins. The final status of the divided city of
Jerusalem is part of this intractable problem, and this is also foreseen in prophetic
scriptures:
‘I am
going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples
reeling… On that day, when all nations
of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock
for all nations. All who try to move it
will injure themselves.’
(Zech. 12:2-3)
It does not take a genius to see how this
is being played out in events in the Middle East in our own day. We live in the days when this and
similar prophetic scriptures are and will be fulfilled as we draw ever nearer
to the end of the end-times.
This contention over the status of the city of Jerusalem will continue
into the time of the sixth trumpet when the land will be invaded by the forces
of Antichrist and Jerusalem will be captured (Matt. 24:15-20, Rev. 11:7-13, and
see chapters 20 and 21).
‘I will
gather all the nations to Jerusalem to fight against it; the city will be
captured, the houses ransacked, and the women raped. Half of the city will go into exile, but the
rest of the people will not be taken from the city.’ (Zech. 14:2)
Because of the city’s importance and
significance for each of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in efforts to bring
peace to the Middle East there is even now a growing desire among many
religious leaders to make Jerusalem a centre for the world’s [united] faiths,
in accordance with the concept of the internationalization of the city of
Jerusalem under UN protection. Many see
this as a precursor to the eventual role of the False Prophet of Revelation
ch.13 in pragmatically uniting all the world’s faiths in the worship of the
image of the Beast in Antichrist’s one-world system (Rev. 13:11-16).
3.
The conversion of the
Jews
In the aftermath of the events of 70 AD,
the surviving Jewish religious authorities rejected Jewish Christians from
among their community and banned them from synagogues altogether. This was the beginning of Christianity
becoming a separate and in many ways a Gentile religion, and Jewish people
thereafter became highly resistant to the message of the gospel (although there
has always been a trickle of converts down through the centuries). It also eventually led to the replacement of
the biblical Hebrew feasts with the feasts of Easter and Christmas in the
Gentile Christian religious calendar, and to the whole issue of replacement
theology.
However, as I said above, this partial
hardening of the Jewish people is not permanent, and as we head further into
the final stages of the end-times, we can expect that God will increasingly
open the spiritual eyes of Jewish people and reveal himself to them, bringing
them to faith in Christ as their Messiah:
‘And
I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit
of grace and supplication. They will
look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one
mourns for an only child… On that day a
fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
to cleanse them from sin and impurity.’ (Zech. 12:10, 13:1)
‘The
deliverer will come from Zion; he will turn godliness away from Jacob. And this is my covenant with them when I take
away their sins.’
(Rom. 11:26-27)
‘…that
they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.’ (Rom. 11:31)
There have been a significant number of
Jewish messianic groups springing up in Israel in the last forty years or
so. One of the main purposes of Daniel’s
seventieth week (often confused with the tribulation) is to bring many Jews to
Christ as their Messiah, and it is this believing remnant that the Lord Jesus
will deliver when he returns to earth in his Second Advent (see chapters 20, 21
and 23).
4.
The re-building of the
temple
Both the Lord Jesus and the apostle Paul
indicated in their teaching on the end-times that the activities of Antichrist
in relation to the Jewish people will at some point involve the Jewish ‘holy
place,’ i.e. the temple. This has led
many people to believe that the Jewish temple will be re-built in the end-times
on some part of the Temple Mount area in Jerusalem. As many commentators do, I will refer to this
as the building of the third temple.
This re-building work is indicated by the
words of Revelation 11:1-2, using the imagery of Zechariah 2:1-2f (which
referred to the re-building of Jerusalem in the time of Zerubbabel). This implies that this re-building work will
take place during the latter days of the sixth trumpet at the beginning of the
seven-year period of Daniel’s seventieth week:
‘I was
given a reed like a measuring rod and was told, “Go and measure the temple of
God and the altar, and count the worshippers there. But exclude the outer court; do not measure
it, because it has been given to the Gentiles.’ (Rev. 11:1-2)
At
the mid-point of this seven-year period, after he invades Israel and captures
Jerusalem, Antichrist will set up what is known as the ‘abomination of
desolation’ within the temple. He will
seat himself there and proclaim himself to be God (Matt. 24:15, 2 Thess. 2:4,
and see chapters 20 and 21).
There are many Jewish groups who are even
now strongly advocating for the re-building of the temple, and they have even
gone as far as to prepare the furniture and implements to be used in it, as
well as the priests’ garments, etc.[2] It seems to be only a matter of time
now before this re-building work will actually begin. The wording of Revelation 11:1-2 would seem
to indicate that a pragmatic political solution will be found allowing the
Islamic holy sites of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa mosque to remain in
place on Temple Mount, while space is made further back on the site for the
Jewish temple.
The coming of the fullness of the Gentiles into God’s
kingdom
Not all Christians are familiar
with the significance of God’s purposes for Israel and the Jewish people in the
end-times, because of the prevalence of replacement theology in many Christian
denominations. However, they are, of
course, much more familiar with this second macro-factor: the coming of the
fullness of the Gentiles into God’s kingdom.
Although many Jews in Old Testament times
had an ethnocentric view of God’s purpose, yet it was always his purpose in and
through Christ to bring the message of his kingdom to the nations. As I said above, in the purpose and
providence of God it was the rejection by the Jews of Christ as their Messiah
that led to the gospel being brought to the Gentiles in this Church Age and to
bring them into the family of faith:
‘Here is
my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my
Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations… In his law the islands will put their hope.’ (Isa. 42:1,4)
‘It is
too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and
bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring my
salvation to the ends of the earth.’
(Isa. 49:6)
‘…because
of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles…’ (Rom 11:11)
In his parting words to his disciples,
Jesus gave them the Great Commission to bring the good news of the gospel to
the whole world, and it is this which has been God’s overarching purpose in
this age ever since Christ’s ascension:
‘All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations… And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.’
(Matt. 28:18-20)
The redeemed community of God’s people
which we often call ‘the Church’ came into being on the day of Pentecost when
the Holy Spirit was poured out to empower the early disciples to begin to
fulfil this commission.
Although tremendous advances were made
during the period 1792 – 1910 in bringing the gospel worldwide to all people,
yet it is especially since the 1950s that the gospel truly has reached into
virtually every nook and cranny of the world, reaching the many different
ethnolinguistic and unreached peoples.
The development and use of the internet and different forms of
technology in the last twenty years or so has brought even greater momentum to
this. Anyone who does some simple
research and makes themself familiar with the relevant missiological statistics
will understand just how far this purpose of God has now come. Although the spread and growth of the Church
has always been accompanied by seasons of persecution, yet still, church
movements and mature national leadership have been raised up in many, many
countries of the globe, and the worldwide missions movement has become a truly
international phenomenon. We are living
in exciting days for the gospel! The
Church has never been bigger, more effective, or more widespread in the world
than it is now!
It is God’s desire and purpose that
everyone shall hear the testimony of the gospel before Christ’s return. Put another way, the end will not come until
the gospel has been preached in the whole world. When Jesus returns, there will be redeemed
people from every ethnolinguistic group on earth:
‘This
gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all
nations, and then the end will come.’
(Matt. 24:14)
‘…until
the fulness of the Gentiles be come in.’ (Rom. 11:25)
‘After
this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no-one could
count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the
throne and in front of the Lamb.’
(Rev. 7:9)
The return of Christ for his bride
is the joy and hope of the Church.
Therefore, in view of God’s present purpose of bringing Gentiles into
his kingdom, and our living hope of the return of Christ, our outlook on the
outworking of God’s purpose in our own generation should be very positive. It should motivate us to be active in
witnessing to our faith, and to be working for the influence and growth of the
kingdom of God and its values in society (Matt. 13:31-32). Therefore, as the believing body of Christ we
should be actively preaching the gospel, helping the poor and needy, working
for reform and social justice, and being a prophetic voice to our nation. A true understanding of biblical
eschatology will not make us pessimistic about the future and lead to us
isolating ourselves away from involvement in society: we continue to witness
and labour for our Lord, and we expect him to work powerfully through us, because
he is coming again.
The rise of the globalist new world order
Another macro-factor which acts as
an ‘end-times clock’ is the rise and emergence of the globalist new world order
which even now is being increasingly and openly hailed and sought for by many political
and economic ‘movers and shakers’ in the world.
Seeking global solutions to global problems through global governance
has become the mantra of this movement, whether in terms of migration, economic
justice, climate change, religious harmony, or a whole host of other
issues. It is this globalist movement
that will pave the way for the emergence of Antichrist and his one-world
system. This macro-factor is dealt with
more fully in the following chapter.
Apostasy within the Church and spiritual deception
‘The
Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow
deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.’ (1 Tim. 4:1)
‘At that
time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,
and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.’ (Matt. 24:10-11)
In a seemingly incongruous parallel
with the worldwide preaching of the gospel and the expansion of the Church, in
the end-times there will also be widespread apostasy within the professing
Church. I touched on this briefly in
chapter 5. The Greek word apostasia
used in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 is translated as ‘a falling away’ or
‘rebellion.’ It is used elsewhere in the
New Testament to mean a forsaking of religious faith (Acts 21:21). The apostle Paul said that the day of the
Lord will be preceded by a widespread falling away from the faith, and Jesus
himself also taught that there would be widespread spiritual deception in the
end-times, accompanied by such an end-times apostasy (Matt. 24:10-11,23-24).
For those who keep a watch on the
development of end-time events, this is observable even today. While the gospel is being preached worldwide
and the Church is growing, yet at the same time and in the West in particular,
we are seeing a marked and increasingly open turning away from the Christian
faith and from Judeo-Christian values; the denial by so-called Christian
leaders of the core doctrinal tenets of the Christian faith (cf. 1 John 2:22);
the widespread rise of ‘alternative spiritualities;’ the introduction into
churches of false teaching on such things as sexuality and marriage, and
attempts to pragmatically unite Christianity with other faiths to form a
one-world religion.
Whether it is the re-emergence of ancient
pagan beliefs and practices in Mexico and South America, or the widespread
embrace of New Age spirituality in westernized societies, ‘alternative
spiritualities’ are being increasingly practised by people in many parts of the
world.
An alliance between the nominal,
institutional Church and the world has been a fact of Western religious life
ever since the days of Constantine, of course, but, in addition to this, we are
now seeing the emergence of an alliance between the institutional Church and
other worldwide religions. An outcome of
the Vatican II Council of 1962 – 1965 was that Roman Catholicism has adopted an
‘inclusivist’ theology,[3]
and since then the Vatican has been playing an increasingly significant role in
efforts to bring peace, harmony and unity between the world’s different
religions.[4] Many observers interpret this as the genesis
of the ‘one-world religion’ which will be part of Antichrist’s worldwide
system.
Furthermore, the first Beast of Revelation
ch.13 (who is the head of the worldwide Antichrist system that will arise) will
be accompanied by a second beast who has two horns like those of a lamb. He is called the False Prophet (Rev. 13:11,
19:20). This suggests that this second
beast will be the head of this ‘one-world religion’ in the global Antichrist
system. He will set up an image of the
first Beast and cause everyone to worship it (Rev. 13:12,15), and he will be
empowered spiritually by Satan, performing lying signs and wonders that will
deceive and delude many people (Matt. 24:23-24, 2 Thess. 2:9-10, Rev.
13:13-14).
Copyright
Notice
THE
HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011
by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture
quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized
Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s
patentee, Cambridge University Press.
[1] In Romans 11:25,
the Greek noun pleroma (literally meaning ‘fulness’) is translated in the NIV
as ‘the full number.’ It was used as a
nautical term to describe the predetermined number of men needed to operate a
ship. A ship could not sail until it had
its full complement of sailors.
Similarly, the verb eiserchomai translated as ‘has come in’ described a
ship’s arrival at its destination.
Therefore, Israel’s partial hardening lasts until the Gentile complement
in the body of Christ is complete. The
redemptive purpose of God to bring Jewish people to Christ begins in earnest
after the rapture when the bride of Christ has been taken away (see chapter
20).
[2] See for example
the website of the temple institute at www.templeinstitute.org for updates on
latest developments.
[3] Inclusivism
believes that other world religions inherently contain sufficient spiritual
light and revelation as to be salvific.
God can reach them with the message of salvation in Christ within the
context of their own religious beliefs and practices. There is no need for allegiance to the
Christian church.
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