Q390 : World Events — is the Rapture Near?

I have two questions that are branching out a little - towards specific Bible prophecies and fulfillment. Both are looking at the world’s geopolitical situations today and assume the Bible prophecies for the end times will be fulfilled in our time:

1. How will the final One Word Government led by someone from Europe be able to control the world with a muscular and militarily aggressive imperial/nationalist mindset? The mindset that will empower the beast/Antichrist is very different from the political consensus that has underlined Western societies since 1945. Much of the Western world denounced imperialism after World War II and even up until the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year, there is no appetite in Europe for engaging in warfare, to develop a serious military, nor are there any signs that expansionist nationalism that marked the classical Greece city states or Rome, or the 16th to 20th European colonial empires, are making the comeback. The dominant mindset of Europe (and the US too) in our day is/had been post-national globalism, pacifism, a “diplomacy at all costs”, accompanied by a belief that nationalism is the root cause of wars. Must there be many geopolitically radical/disruptive events happening to our world in the first place (which will make the status quo consensus in Europe no longer tenable, in a similar fashion as Zionism went from fantasy to reality in the 50 years between the late 1897 to 1948, spanning from the Dreyfus Affair and the Holocaust) before the Antichrist comes onto the scene, and if true, must it imply also that timing for the rapture is likely to be far away?
2. I can’t envision a plausible geopolitical situation from our world today which enables Jerusalem’s the Dome of the Rock shrine/Masjid Al-Aqsa mosque complex to be destroyed and replaced by the Third Temple. Even the most ardent pro-Israel politicians in the West don’t demand this to happen, and a majority of Israel’s Jews still don’t want the Temple rebuilt as of 2022. And let alone the Muslims and the mainstream left/liberal political business and culture leaders and opinion makers in the West (principally the US and Europe). If the former US President Donald Trump’s decision in 2017 to recognize [West] Jerusalem (Jerusalem’s new city) as Israel’s capital was already controversial enough and attracting attacks from Muslims and everybody among the West’s “more mainstream“ leaders and opinion shapers, the act of replacing the Dome of the Rock with the Third Temple itself will go well beyond what’s geopolitically acceptable in our world today. How will/can such a seachange materialize that will enable the Temple be rebuilt? And like question 1, since such a world is radically different from the one we are living in, should we assume that the timing for rapture and the Second Coming of Christ is still far off?

A390 : by Tony Garland

I have two other questions that are branching out a little - towards specific Bible prophecies and fulfillment. Both are looking at the world’s geopolitical situations today and assume the Bible prophecies for the end times will be fulfilled in our time:

Thinking that Bible prophecies for the end-times will be fulfilled in “our time” has been the history-long snare of the Church. When reading various historical accounts, it is commonplace to read of Christians who assumed that the events of their day were the near precursors of Christ’s return. For example, consider the “Fifth Monarchy Men”^a in England, at the time of Oliver Cromwell (mid-1600s), who were convinced they were politically bringing in the final, fifth monarchy revealed in chapters 2 and 7 of the book of Daniel. Many other examples could be given (e.g., during WW1, WW2).

You make some insightful observations concerning the geopolitical climate in which we presently live and then raise several questions:

1. . . . if true, must it imply also that the timing for the rapture is likely to be far away?
2. . . . should we assume that the timing for rapture and the Second Coming of Christ is still far off?

The doctrine of imminency^b — which I believe Scripture to teach — makes it impossible for us to categorically state, or even suggest with any confidence, that Christ cannot come for the Church “in the next moment.”

Part of what drives the imminency doctrine is that there is no clear time-text Scripture gives for the period of time between Christ returning for His own in the Rapture and the events which usher in the Tribulation. So whatever we might conclude about whether conditions are ripe for the events associated with the Day of the Lord — when Christ comes upon an unprepared world as a thief^c — we must not conflate those opinions with the likelihood of whether or when He could come for His own prior to that time.

I would also observe that Scripture is replete with situations where what God predicted seemed unlikely—especially in regard to timing, yet conditions changed in ways which were completely unexpected (e.g., 2 Kings 7:1-2, 17-20). This is my own expectation regarding how rapidly God is able to bring about change on the world stage when the time is right.

I believe that our mandate is to simply hold fast to what God has predicted WILL take place, then to keep our collective noses to the grindstone — as it were — and “do business” until He comes (Luke 19:13).

This is one reason I’m not a big fan of the multitude of prophecy conferences which keep many on the edge-of-their seat year-after-year. That might sound strange coming from someone who has written a commentary on Revelation^d and continues to work on a companion commentary on Daniel^e. The problem with these conferences is, knowingly or not, they can convey the impression that Christianity is a sprint-—when in fact it is more like a marathon. It has been my seasoned observation that a steady diet of “end-times fulfillment is just around the corner” leaves a trail of disillusioned, burned-out believers who wind up throwing the baby (the study of prophetic passages) out with the bath water (the sensationalism).

While I’m a proponent of understanding all of God’s word — including prophetic passages — I’m not one who spends much time looking around at geopolitical developments as if they have much bearing on how I should live or Who I should focus on. Besides that, geopolitical developments shift like the wind. What looks significant at one moment often becomes Biblically irrelevant the next. Sure: there are large-scale developments one can watch (e.g., Israel back in the land, the growing global rejection of God’s standards, the apostasy of the Church), but trying to evaluate the likelihood that God may return for His Church “soon” seems more of a distraction since it can’t be known.