Implosion by Joel C. Rosenberg Read Free Book Online Page B

what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3). The disciples, eager to understand the future, were hoping Jesus would give them at least one sign that would help them know when the “end of the age” would occur and the reign of the Messiah on earth would begin.
    The conversation that ensued, often referred to by Bible scholars as the Olivet discourse, was so important that it was recorded at length in three of the Gospel accounts. Jesus could have given a very political answer, like “No comment. Next question.” Instead, he answered their questions. But rather than giving them just one sign of the last days, he described numerous signs.
    Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 give us three vantage points on Christ’s teaching about the signs of the last days. When one carefully studies all three accounts of the Olivet discourse, along with the other passages in the Old and New Testaments that refer to the last days, a fascinating and sobering list emerges.
    Here are twenty signs Bible prophecy tells us we will see in the last days:
    1. Wars and rumors of wars
    2. Uprisings and revolutions and kingdoms being shaken
    3. Famines
    4. Earthquakes
    5. Pestilences and plagues
    6. Terrors and growing fears
    7. Great signs in the heavens and bloodred moons
    8. The roaring of the sea and the waves
    9. Persecution of the church
    10. Apostasy of the church
    11. Betrayal
    12. Lawlessness
    13. False prophets and false teachers
    14. False messiahs
    15. Increase in knowledge and travel
    16. The State of Israel being reborn and increasingly becoming the epicenter of international attention
    17. The gospel being preached to every nation
    18. A spiritual awakening in Israel and among the Jewish people
    19. A spiritual awakening in Iran
    20. An increase in mockery of Bible prophecy
    That’s quite a list—yet these signs are just the beginning. “But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs,” the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 24:8 (see also Mark 13:8). In other words, the Bible teaches that while all of these signs will be visible in the last days as we approach the Day of the Lord and the Second Coming, these and other events will radically accelerate and intensify as the time of Christ’s return draws nearer.
    Are We Seeing the Signs Come to Pass?
    Is there any sign on that list we haven’t seen come to pass over the course of the last century?
    Let’s briefly consider a few of these “birth pangs.”
    Wars and Revolutions
    Jesus told his disciples that in the last days there would be “wars and rumors of wars” when “nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom” (Matthew 24:6-7). Surely there have been wars and rumors of wars throughout history, but have any been as widespread and destructive as the wars in the last century? They were, after all, called World War I and World War II for a reason—because they were unprecedented in their scope and devastation. The first led to at least 37 million casualties (injuries and deaths), including 200,000 American casualties. [109] The second led to at least 46 million deaths alone—including 6 million Jews exterminated by the Nazis—though some historians believe the number of worldwide military and civilian deaths tops 60 million. [110] Add to this all the other wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and a ghastly picture emerges unlike any other period in history, yet consistent with the prophecies.
    Jesus also said there would be uprisings and revolutions and geopolitical disturbances in the last days (see Luke 21:9-10). Surely there have been uprisings and revolutions throughout history, but there has never been a span of history with more sweeping, bloody, and internationally game-changing revolutions as the last hundred years or so. One country after another has experienced unprecedented upheavals, from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, to the Russian Revolution of 1917, to the Hungarian Revolution of