Are We Living in the Last Days?

A local news program here in Oklahoma recently accused our organization of scaring people with a doomsday message. Never in our 15 years of producing more than 500 episodes for the Key of David program or 19 years of distributing nearly 200 Trumpet issues, however, have we resorted to such vulgar attempts to lure an audience to our program or publication.

We do analyze and describe this world as it is—and as God correctly prophesied it would be thousands of years ago—an evil, sin-sick world lying on its deathbed. That isreality! But it’s no scare tactic. It’s actually a warning message motivated purely by God’s great love for mankind—and one filled with hope!

There was a time when a “last days” message might have seemed fanatical. But with prominent economists, scientists, politicians and commentators now issuing grave warnings about the present course of world events, those days are clearly over.

The other night, I heard a popular radio show host encourage millions of listeners to purchase firearms because of the dangerous times we are living in. And the warning seems to be resonating with many Americans. Gun sales have risen by as much as 50 percent since the election of Barack Obama.

Do you get the sense that some people—many, perhaps—are concerned about the days in which we live?

Remember how close we were to economic Armageddon in mid-September? “The nation is gripped by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” the New York Times wrote at the time. The American financial system “was sliding from grim toward potentially apocalyptic,” it warned (Sept. 20, 2008).

Remember the meeting congressional leaders had with Henry Paulson when the credit crisis was about to boil over? According to Sen. Christopher Dodd, congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system” (emphasis mine throughout). The New York Post followed up with the scary details, saying the market on September 18 was just “500 trades away from Armageddon.”

Regarding the American elections, Thomas Sowell, a black conservative author and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said this about the radical leftist administration that would occupy the White House: “There is such a thing as a point of no return. If, in those first two years, Iran gets nuclear weapons, we will be at that point of no return” (Oct. 31, 2008). Caroline Glick wrote something similar in the Jerusalem Post: “Iran daily threatens to destroy the U.S., annihilate Israel, close the Straits of Hormuz, use nuclear weapons and proliferate nuclear weapons to other states. … Yet one of the first foreign-policy initiatives promised by the incoming Obama administration is to attempt to diplomatically engage Iran with the aim of striking a grand bargain with the mullahs.” She concluded, “Unless something changes soon, the consequences of the jihadist-multicultural alliance will be suffered by millions and millions of people” (Dec. 2, 2008).

What about the appalling breakdown of family life in the West—particularly the U.S., Britain and Israel? In the Spectator, Melanie Phillips described how she has been warning repeatedly over the past 20 years about the “fragmentation of family life,” how mass fatherlessness has created “deserts of depravity and highly damaged children” who are now “damaged parents,” and “that the collapse of social and moral controls” would destroy “the most fundamental values of civilized behavior.” As for Britain today, Phillips concluded, “The truth is that it is all far,far too late. Britain has simply undone the fabric of civilized life” (Nov. 14, 2008).

Are these scare tactics—or accurate descriptions of our real world?

Similar warnings are recorded within the Bible. Take 2 Timothy 3:1, for example. The Apostle Paul wrote, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.” Read how he described the “last days” in verses 2-4. It’s describing world conditions that simply could not have been applied to an America of 100 years ago—or even 50. But it’s uncanny how accurate the description fits today’s world.

What about Jesus Christ’s warning? While on the Mount of Olives, His disciples asked, “[W]hat shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matthew 24:3). The disciples too were intensely interested in what world conditions would be like at the time of the end—yes, the end of this world! Jesus goes on to describe, not the permanent end of Earth’s existence, but rather the end of this age—the world as we know it to be, ruled by Satan (2 Corinthians 4:4; Galatians 4:4). “For then shall be great tribulation,” Jesus said, “such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matthew 24:21).

Even though these words came from Christ’s own mouth, and with evidence piling higher that world conditions are worsening daily, many still cannot accept that all this will ultimately result in great tribulation.

We are, in fact, living in the very last days! The more astute commentators are seeing the outer edges of the oncoming storm.

But what most do not see is that these dark days will usher in the return of Jesus Christ and the dawn of a new age! After describing the imminent end of this age in Luke 21, Jesus went on to say, “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (verse 27). As promised in hundreds of prophecies throughout the Holy Bible, Christ is about to return to this Earth to establish the world-ruling Kingdom of God.

We are destined, as no generation has been before us, to live in two different worlds!

Are you preparing now for the dawn of this new world—putting God first in all that you say and do, striving against fleshly pulls to live the joyous way that the Prophet Isaiah said would soon spread over all the Earth even as the waters cover the sea?