The Signs of the Times After Two Days He Will Return

ItÂ’s amazing how people of this blinded generation can discern weather, seasons, and even how to make money; but cannot discern the "signs of the times." Our generation is a blinded generation where darkness has replaced light, and error has replaced truth. People actually love darkness because their deeds are evil. "And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (John 3:19).

The Lord Jesus Christ spoke of this blindness and inability to discern spiritual seasons. His words condemn "sign seekers," but exalt "Biblical discernment." We are forbidden to follow signs, but we are encouraged to discern the Biblical signs that He has erected, both in His Word and correspondingly occurring around us. It is important that Bible-believing Christians learn the difference between false signs that Satan is producing in abundance and Biblical signs that God has given to guide our way to truth. Signs themselves are not wrong unless they are extra-Biblical or taken out of true Biblical context.

Listen to this great text from the Master Teacher, "The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed" (Matthew 16:1-4).

Notice carefully that He forbids us to seek signs, but calls people hypocrites because they cannot discern the true signs that no one needs to seek. The "sign seekers" that He condemns are people that rest their faith on the signs instead of the Word of God. The balance in these Words of Jesus is that everything we need to know where we are in the seasons of God is found in Holy Scripture. Trusting only in Him and His Word and following hard after every "Word of God" discovers them. The "sign seekers" have left off discernment and Biblical faith and are looking for some paranormal sign and some emotional titillation. Sign seekers are actually superstitious people that survive by satisfying their curiosity. Remember the old saying, "Curiosity killed the cat."

Satan is producing a multiplicity of paranormal signs to satisfy this superstitious generation. We have statues that are weeping; faces of Jesus that are appearing in a burrito, on clouds, and the back of highway signs; gold dust that is falling out of womenÂ’s hair; gold that is appearing as fillings in cavities of teeth; and, supposedly, Mary, the mother of Jesus, is making worldwide appearances and healing thousands of pilgrims at her shrines in the process. Fire is falling, cracks of thunders are splitting pulpits, and people are spending hours in drunken stupors around church altars.

The "Christian" world has become a haven of superstitious insanity where these signs have literally replaced the infallible truth of Holy Scripture. The "New Wave" proponents are loudly proclaiming, "God is bigger than the Bible," "He is doing a new thing," and "DonÂ’t put God in a box." It is the same rhetoric that birthed the dark ages of Roman Catholic deception and bondage. It cannot be labeled as anything but "Antichrist" and "false anointed" deceptions. The only sign that Jesus said we are to follow is the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The three days beginning at His death and lasting until His resurrection is GodÂ’s ultimate sign and guides everything we are and everything we do.

The discerning of the signs of the times has nothing to do with our simple faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the foundation of our "born again" experience. We do not live our life by signs or determine our daily walk with the Lord by signs. All of this is based on faith in the finished work of the cross and the resurrection. Signs are given to us in Holy Scripture as a basis of the seasons of God and help us discern where we are in those seasons. This is what the Lord Jesus was teaching us so that we would be able to discern the "signs of the times" and preach/teach to our generation where we are in these wonderful days of Biblical fulfillment.

"Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness" (I Thessalonians 5:5). These days before us were never intended to surprise the Saints of God. His prophets and preachers are supposed to be men that are helpers and friends of the Bridegroom. We must discern the seasons and warn our generation of the impending events about to unfold. His glorious Rapture of His Bride cannot be fixed by a date, but we can discern the growing fulfillment of the overall End Times events and sound a loud warning. That is exactly what this article is all about.

We have entered the seasons of the end. The Biblical signs are growing evidence that the "Day of the Lord" draweth nigh. No one will know the exact date and no one but foolish men dare to try and fix that moment. God is sovereign and will act sovereignly when the time of the churchÂ’s dispensation has been fulfilled. It is clear in every Bible truth that I can grasp that every sign recorded in Scripture is merging towards a glorious crescendo.

• Israel is in place to negotiate a treaty.
• Jerusalem is the cup of trembling to the whole earth.
• Judea (West Bank) is under siege by enemies of Israel.
• The computer can put a number for every citizen of the world.
• A one-world economy is basically in place.
• A one-world religion is uniting in deception.
• Men are quickly installing a one-world political policy.
• The one-world court system is in place.
• There are wars and rumors of wars.
• Earthquakes, famines, pestilence (infectious diseases) are everywhere.
• Bible-believing Christians are hated as never before.
• The world is planning how to get rid of us.

But all of these are the beginning of the signs recorded in the Holy Bible. LetÂ’s look at several beautiful signs that most believers have never seen.

The 120th Year Of Jubilee
The Charismatic deceivers have been using this wonderful occasion as a money-raising ploy. Satan is an imitator and will twist every Scripture to some false end. This is his way of reducing truth and making good people shy away from the true meaning of GodÂ’s great revelation. I believe this entire idea of the Jubilee year is a marvelous sign of the end.

When God was speaking to Noah in the book of Genesis, He made an incredible statement about mankind and the extent of His dealing with them by His Holy Spirit. Here are His eternal words, "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years" (Genesis 6:3).

During this time period, men were living up to 950 years of age, yet God Himself stated that manÂ’s years would be limited to 120. A study of Scripture will show no period of human history that the approximate age of man was 120 years. The Heavenly Father must have been talking about something different. The Word of God is perfect, so whatever He was proclaiming must be seen as perfect and waiting its day of fulfillment.

It became clear when reading the story of Noah that his generation knew the difference between clean animals and unclean animals because seven of all clean animals went into the ark. Apparently, the entire idea of clean animals, Sabbath observance, the Sabbath of the land, and the Jubilee year was an intimate part of oral truth known to Adam right down to Noah and carefully preserved by the Godly seed of woman. Noah probably understood clearly that His Father was giving Him a prophetic picture of the total years of man. He was told to build the ark so that he could preserve the Godly seed until the fullness of time and the Messiah would come.

When you see the book of Genesis as the perfect picture of Creation and GodÂ’s dealing with the human family, then it is easy to hear a prophetic voice in these words to Noah. Multiply one hundred and twenty years (120) by the fifty-year Jubilee celebration and you quickly come to the year 2000 or a total of 6,000 years. If our calendar has been perfectly preserved, then we are living in the very end that our God promised as the finish line. Mercy may add a few years or the calendar calculation may be imperfect, but under any circumstance, we should be ready at a momentÂ’s notice.

We have often understood, and I believe, that Israel is GodÂ’s time clock. Watch this beloved people of the Lord and you will see the clock ticking off the wall of time. For the last 2,000 years, history testifies of this people as first hearing, rejecting, and then rejected. They have suffered as no distinct people have ever suffered and yet survive their identity. The prophet, Hosea, clearly identified these two days (two thousand years) of suffering and promised by the Spirit that in the third day, they would live again. LetÂ’s look carefully at this great prophetic text. "For I will be unto Ephraim as a lion, and as a young lion to the house of Judah: I, even I, will tear and go away; I will take away, and none shall rescue him. I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence, and seek my face: in their affliction they will seek me early. Come, and let us return unto the LORD: for he hath torn, and he will heal us; he hath smitten, and he will bind us up. After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight. Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the LORD: his going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth" (Hosea 5:14-7:3).

It would require blindness not to see the sign that our God is holding up for us to read. In chapter five verse fourteen, the prophet spoke of the Messiah as a "young lion to the House of Judah." He said, "I will tear and go away." In verse fifteen He even stated, "I will go and return to my place, till they acknowledge their offence and seek my face." Then, He continued to say, "in their affliction (JacobÂ’s trouble or the seven years of tribulation) they will seek me early."

Then in chapter six verse one, He promised the glorious restoration of them as a people and the nation as GodÂ’s restored entity. Notice how He concluded that verse, "After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight" (Hosea 6:2).

If every word of Scripture is God-breathed, and it is, then this prophetic statement is a clear promise and even a clear season when the Father will restore the nation to Israel and establish them with His mercy to the glory they missed in rejecting their Messiah. This cannot happen, as is clear from other truths, until the Rapture and the Tribulation Period when the Lord shall return to defeat the Assyrian (Antichrist) and set up His one thousand year reign upon this earth.

The only truth that needs to be added is the Word of the Lord establishing GodÂ’s method of relating earthly time to His eternal clock. The Apostle Peter settled that when he said, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (II Peter 3:8). I wonder if Apostle Peter understood the full importance of this great revelation that he was establishing. We have the entire canon of Scripture compiled together to aid us in understanding; how blessed we are.

Jesus Said, "The Third Day I Shall Be Perfected."
The Bible is a book of incredible revelations. Sometimes, the Word of God speaks with mysteries that cannot be understood until they come to fulfillment. It is always foolish to speculate in advance when the Scriptures give us a shadow without full explanation. Jesus made a statement during one of the crises of His ministry. Apparently, Herod was threatening to kill Him or either the Jewish leaders were promoting that idea. Jesus, with complete calmness and absolute assurance that the will of God could not be broken, made a beautiful statement to the Pharisees. "The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" (Luke 13:31-33).

This statement cannot have meaning without seeing it in a prophetic viewpoint. The sovereign plan of God could not be invaded by failure. He called Herod a fox and said clearly, "Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected." For two days or two thousand years, Jesus has been casting out devils and doing cures, but in the third day or the third thousand years, His kingdom will be perfected and He will sit on the Throne of David.

Conclusion
There are other beautiful types that can be seen in this same light. These signs, if you agree, are nothing but aids in discerning the signs of the times. They were never meant to be signs that guide our plans or affect our daily obedience, but simply signposts of the seasons. I believe that the seasons of the end are upon us. It is time to finish our labours for His kingdom as speedily as possible. We should "redeem the times because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:16). Do not be unwise and do not allow yourself to be hypocritical. If you can discern the weather and judge in secular matters, but cannot read the Scripture with discernment and excitement, you need to renew your spiritual life. It is time to seek the Lord.