Mark 13:32 – “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father…”
A lot of people in our day, especially in the last few years, are feeling very anxious and stressed with the way our country and world is going. Anytime there are global conflicts or crises, it always raises the question of what the end times will look like and whether we’re in them now.
What Jesus says and the Apostle Paul echoes is that getting closer to the Second Coming of Jesus will be like “birth pains”. If you’ve ever given birth or seen a woman give birth to a child, she’ll have some signals that birth is coming up soon and then every once in a while, contractions will come. You know birth is immanent when contractions start to be more painful and frequent. Those are the birth pains.
That idea of birth pains gives us an idea of what nearing the time of the Second Coming will look like. There are always wars but, in that time, there will be a lot of wars. There’s always conflict, but there will be a lot of conflict. There’s always evil, but there will be a lot of evil. It will be more intense, frequent, and constant.
Those who enjoy studying eschatology, or the study of the Last Days, like to look at cultural events and compare it to the Bible. For example, the Bible says there will be plagues and we look at something like COVID and think, does that count as a plague? As we get closer to the end of time, the Bible says in 1 Timothy 4:3-4 that demonic deception will increase, “For the time is coming when people will not endure soundteaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions,and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” Genesis 10-11 talks about the desire to build one unified globalist society, which is now possible with technology and being pressured by international trade and the move toward digital global currency.
Are we in the Last Days? Since the Last Days are technically the time between Jesus’ first coming to die and rise for sinners, and His Second Coming to raise all sinners and sentence them to eternal Heaven or Hell, we are in fact living in the Last Days. Some think they know when Jesus will come, but there have been many false guesses throughout history.
I would encourage you to think like every day could be your last day and the most important question is instead, “Do you know the Lord?” Whether it’s the end times return of Jesus Christ, a car accident, or a cancer diagnosis, we’re all going to die, and we want to know Jesus, raise our families to know Jesus, and tell as many people about Jesus as we can.
The best way to be ready for the Last Day is to spend every day obeying God and being ready to see Jesus face-to-face! Rather than focusing on when Jesus is coming, which is something we cannot control, it is better to ask, “What kind of person will I be when He arrives?”, which is something we can control.
Do you think the end times will come in your lifetime? For more on this topic, watch Pastor Jimmy Evans’ sermon from Trinity Church called “A Prophetic Timeline of the End”: https://realfaith.com/sermons/a-prophetic-timeline-of-the-end/.
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