As close as we will ever get to knowing the day and the hour before Jesus actually comes is tucked in an overlooked passage of scripture from the Apostle Paul. But first, some background. Just after my 78th birthday in April last year, I was talking with my doctor about my health conditions, and he reminded me that life expectancy for a male now is 77 years. That tells me that I am living on “borrowed time” and it brought me to think of my generation and how it fits into Bible prophecy. (Now, a year later, the immediate future—perhaps six months or so—appears much more ominous, even predictable, than it did then.)In Matthew 24:32-34, Jesus says this: “Now learn this parable from the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see all these things, know that it is near—at the doors! Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”

The fig tree has long been considered a “type”, a symbol, for the nation of Israel, and this budding of the fig tree example relates to the restoration of Israel as an independent nation on May 14, 1948. The “dry bones” of Ezekiel 37 take on life, once again. And the generation that sees this happen will see all of the prophetic events Jesus named in His projections just prior to this fig tree example.

How long is a generation? Psalm 90:10 tells us very clearly that it is seventy to eighty years. Here is an astounding “coincidence”: Add 70 years to 1948 and the year 2018 comes up, for the beginning of that generation’s demise. And we are still within the context of God’s “no man knows the day or the hour” of Christ’s coming limitation. How is that? It looks like those who live past 70 years are living on “borrowed time”, and the uncertainty of our personal longevity is truly in the hands of the Lord. And so it is with “this generation”. We can juggle years and months around in an attempt to pin down the time of the “coming of the Son of Man” more closely, but it is conclusive that He will come “as a thief in the night”, as the Scriptures repeatedly tell us.

Let’s look again at that Psalm 90:10 passage: “The days of our lives are seventy years, and if by reason of strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away” (NKJV). The psalmist apparently was lamenting our struggle, but the fact of God, only, knowing “the day or the hour” of our passing is made evident in that unanswered longevity question for this generation. Note also, at the end of the verse, his expectation at the end of his and our time-“and we fly away”. Could this be a subtle reference to the Rapture?

If the Rapture were to occur tonight, the length of “this generation” would include the seven years that are identified as the final “week” of Daniel’s prophecy of “seventy weeks of years” (Daniel 9:24-26). Add seventy years to 1948, then subtract seven years and the resulting year is 2011, yet no Rapture occurred then. Is this generation, which now includes believers and non- believers, then living on “borrowed time”? If the calendars match with God’s calendar, we are now, in 2013, 65 years into this final generation (1948 +72 – 7=2013, a 65-year period), for the Rapture (in a pre-trib setting) will occur seven years prior to the end of the age and the second coming of Christ. God has given 70-to-80 years as a generation, thus, sometime between 2011 and 2021 the Rapture will likely occur. (Yes, there are people now living well into their 90’s and a few into their 100’s; it only heightens the uncertainty of the timing of His coming.) What are the converging events that would indicate that the time is near, the “times and seasons” aspect?

Are we, then, close upon the time of the “day of the Lord”, the time of the Rapture of the Church and the beginning of the “time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7)? (Note that Daniel 9:24 identifies that time period having to do with Daniel’s people and their Holy City.) The following consideration of current events and Bible prophecies will test the reality of this looming possibility.

The statement of Jesus in Matthew 24:36, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only…”, and similar statements and illustrations in all the Gospel accounts, have bothered Bible students for years. Yet, there is no way of getting around what the Scripture says.

In one place (Matthew 24:4), He says this: “But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into.” Yet, one might quickly think, “If I just knew the hour He is to come, then I would be sure tobe ready”, and perhaps many of us have thought just that. However, the strong implication in His statements that we are always to be ready to go to meet the Lord, whether it is to meet Him coming for us, or to meet Him when our temporal lives are over on earth.

A very pertinent scripture to this point is 1 John 3:2-3, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

Like a Thief in the Night

The “like a thief in the night” parallel is commonly related to His coming on the “day of the Lord”, and implies “suddenly and without pre-announcement”. To highlight the apparent fact that most people will not be prepared for His sudden appearance, Jesus recounts two historical situations which evidence that stark reality in Luke 17:26-30: “And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man:

“They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” These scriptures tell us several important and time-wise things:

1) Most people will not be aware of the signs of the times and what is on their doorsteps. Their lives will be in a “forever rut”;

2) These incidents illustrate the Rapture of the Church, the true believers, and it is clear that it will occur before the judgment of God upon the disbelieving world, for no such normal life activities will be possible at any time, “pre-wrath”, middle or post tribulation. For when the rider on the white horse enters the scene (Revelation 6), the major struggle for all people will be summed up in one word: “survival”;

3) All born-again believers will be raptured, even the most back-slidden one among us. Lot was not the best example you could find of a righteous man in his day—the Angel practically had to drag him out of the city, saying “the Lord cannot judge this people until you are out of the city” (Genesis 19:22). Peter says of Lot, “If (God)…delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked (for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)— then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations…” (2 Peter 2:7-9). There will be no “partial” rapture—and any conclusion to the contrary is heresy.

4) The context of Luke 17:26-37 tells us that the Rapture will be sudden and world-wide—daylight for some, darkness of the night for others (thus the confusion of days and hours for each time zone).

(Continued in Part II, where we will see how current events and Bible prophecy are coming together in a dramatic showdown, possibly sooner than later.)

My observations over the past 40 years or so of the trends and move- ments in the secular and political world have long ago led me to believe there are strong undercurrents of activity in the shadowy sidebars of the world stage. The open denial makes the silence even more deafening, and the strange rush of various spokespersons to claim, “I am not a conspiracy theorist, but….”, makes that topic even more magnetizing to the curious and the truth-seeker. Thus, it begs the question, “Is this arena of secrecy in the secular-political world paralleled in Bible prophecy?” Let’s explore that area first.The fall of man from the favor of God in the Garden of Eden, as reported in Genesis 3, was not an unexpected even in God’s eyes, for He is eternal, knowing the beginning to the end. Acts 15:18 says, “Known to God from eternity are all His works.” And even more mankind-personal is the statement in Titus 1:2, “…in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began….” God had created man “after His own image”, with an indwelling Spirit which enabled them to fellowship in true harmony there in the Garden. The man was given other qualities, such as intellect, emotion, ability to think, decide and act (God told Adam to name the animals He had created and take charge of things), but that one feature that connected man to God was the spiritual link, the Spirit of God within man.

God had told Adam that he could not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for if he did, he would die that very day. So when Adam took of the fruit from the hand of Eve and ate it, along with Eve, they died. But they did not collapse there on the ground! The Bible records Adam’s physical longevity as 930 years (Genesis 5:5). What died, then, when they ate? What they did afterward tells the story well—their spirit died, and they were separated from God and from His fellowship, eternally…except for that promise made before time began! Titus 3:5-7 is so worded that it explains the manner in which redemption takes place in the “spiritually dead” individual: “…not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that having been justified by His grace we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” And, we have here an understanding of why Jesus said to Nicodemus (and all mankind), “You must be born again!” (John 3:3). It is a renewed relationship with God, the Creator, through His Spirit indwelling the born again believer.

Mankind Without Spiritual Connection

However, we see that now man had the knowledge of good and evil and could choose which direction he would go with his new-found “ freedom”. Now a spirit of anti-God had become fixed in this mind of man and evil raged—Cain killed Abel and the choices of evil over good became such that God observed from heaven, “that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5), and His judgment came in the flood that took all mankind except Noah and his family.

God started over with eight people, yet it was not long until that was not working, either. There were, as the Bible does report, people who believed God and obeyed Him between Adam and Noah, and after the flood, but that thread of rebellion and independence from God reigned in the human heart in great abundance. It was not long until those intelligent, “free-thinking” gathered in the plains of Shinar and set about to build themselves a city with a tower “that reached into the heavens, lest they be scattered across the whole earth.” God apparently saw something in their minds and hearts that was beyond the seemingly innocent endeavor they were engaging in, for He “came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, ‘Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city’” (Genesis 11:5-8).

Thus, we have what I call the “Tower of Babel Syndrome”, which carries on the motto of “we do not need God”. And we see that thread of rebellion exhibited throughout the history of the secular world, as well as the history of God’s chosen people, Israel.

Fast forward, now, to Daniel’s prophetic visions where he sees a beast with four heads which are identified as ruling kingdoms of the world —the kingdom of Babylon, where he was then, and the coming kingdoms of Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome (Daniel 2). Then, the Apostle John writes of his vision in Revelation 13:1 that reveals a beast of seven heads. They include two kingdoms prior to Daniel’s time, Assyria and Egypt, for John is looking backward while Daniel was looking forward. Note carefully that these heads are kingdoms that cover the historical period of civilized mankind. They, individually, were ruling governments ruled by dictators.

It is interesting that John’s vision was seen at the point of time of that sixth head, Rome, and the seventh head was future (as well as an eighth head, mentioned in Revelation 17:10). He writes that one of the heads, one of the kingdoms, is mortally wounded, yet lives. Now, the only head, or kingdom, that is then alive is the sixth head, Rome. All others are in the past, or not yet on the scene. A gap of many centuries will now be in effect until the latter days when this head (kingdom) that “was, and is not, and yet is” again reforms from the descendents of that former great Roman empire. This seventh headnow on the threshold is the coming one word government, the “ New World Order”, which, according to Henry Kissinger, Barack Oboama has been “primed to lead us into”.

Now, what has all this to do with the fall of man and the long history of his rebellion? Look at this: “So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast….” (Revelation 13:4). In chapter 12, there is seen “a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads” (Revelation 12:3). He is busy there trying to eliminate the Jews, but note the similarity of his description with that of the beast John sees rising up out of the sea. This raging dragon, identified as the devil himself, has been the driving force behind every secular kingdom since the beginning! And, he will be that same guiding spirit in the coming seventh head of the beast. No doubt that all these kingdoms of the world were those the devil offered Jesus in the temptation experience (Matthew 4:8-10), for all the kingdoms of the world are the devil’s own possessions!

This seventh head of the beast has a destiny: “There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time” (Revelation 17:10). The five kings that have fallen were the heads of the beast prior to this sixth one in whose regime John now lives, i.e., “one is”. “And the other has not yet come” refers to the seventh head, a resurrection of that sixth head, after many years.

My underlining of the phrase, “he must continue a short time” is to note that this head of the beast is not yet a person and is destined to be replaced by a person, as stated in v. 11: “The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition.” I submit that the beast of seven heads, being motivated and energized by the dragon, the devil, is being used by the Antichrist, working behind the scenes with all the powers of a one world government that responds to a worshipping population. It appears that ten horns had previously been in the ruling setup, but three were eliminated, and finding even seven too much or too slow to work with, the Antichrist dumps all seven after “a short time” and becomes the eighth head. One person, one show, and no opposition. But he is going to perdition, the verse says. (Kingdoms don’t “go to perdition”, but persons will.) The beast is now personified in the Antichrist, and he will be consigned, along with the false prophet, to the lake of fire to burn forever (Revelation 19:20).

Linking Prophecy to Current Events

As I indicated earlier, this underlying resistance to the ruling of God Has been in vogue and ever increasing with the passing centuries, until now, when so-called “conspiracy theories” regarding shadow governments and a New World Order are mentioned with much more openness. The organization called the Bilderberg Group has met each year since 1954, in secret and with an agreeably silent press. Heads of state, high-level government officials, industrial leaders, leaders from the financial industry, high-level news personnel, and others world- wide, including potential US presidential candidates, are among regular attenders. You would be surprised to see who some of the guests are in a given year.

Membership in Bilderberg, a smaller, tight-knit group, is fed from the larger Trilateral Commission, set up by David Rockefeller some years ago, with Jimmy Carter as its first chairman. Members of that group are fed in from the much larger and much older organization, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). These things are not hidden; you can do a Google search, find websites, membership lists and other information about the CFR, at least. You would really be surprised at the list of members in this group. They cross political lines like a loving family at a 4th of July picnic, who openly are seemingly at each other’s throats. David Rockefeller, a long-time leader in this now open and prophetic “conspiracy” confessed in his memoirs in this manner: “Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

The annual meeting of the Bilderbergers this year has just finished (June 6-9), and some foreign press personnel were calling for it to be open to the press, but that is not likely to have happened, given their history of tight secrecy with extremely guarded facilities. One investigative reporter, who hounded the group for decades, securing meeting locations, lists of attendees, topics of discussion and other secret information, Jim Tucker, has just passed away recently, at ag 78. Hopefully he had trained a replacement before passing, but it appears that their plans are thought to be far enough along that it does not make any difference whether or not they are kept secret. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this latest meeting of the “elite of the world” as policy for implementation.

Certainly the vortex of converging events, prophetic and secular, is swirling increasingly downward, but according to God’s eternal plan and His appointed timetable. Remember that Jesus said, “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28). And the beginning of these last days started when Israel was officially restored to its land on May 14, 1948. Time left for salvation is running out.