Time is fleeting, swiftly moving away from us as we live these increments of life on this judgment-bound planet. Time cannot be recalled; it cannot be re-lived. What’s done is done. What time remains is all we have left to do what we will with our lives on Earth.

Time, as my great friend Chuck Missler often said, is linear—it is from one point that begins its movement to the concluding other point, the end.

God, Missler offered, created time for humankind. The Almighty is outside the confines of this linear sphere of existence for the creation. What God has assigned–and each life He gives has a purpose He intends for us—it’s up to each of us to accomplish.

This, of course, can be done only by obeying God’s directives. Here’s how God’s Word puts it:

“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

For believers who have an intense interest in Bible prophecy, I believe they’ve been given the assignment of watching, as the Lord Jesus commanded.

Jesus, in a sweeping description of the wrap-up of humanity’s timeline, mentioned the many signs that would be increasingly evident as the finale leading to the Tribulation nears. He then gave clear instructions to believers who would be alive at that time. Despite that many, particularly those of the seminary sort, will argue otherwise, I believe the Lord was alerting us to the future time Paul would later describe in prophesying the Rapture of the Church:

“Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near: So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. 

“Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch. Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:28-37).

One such believer who takes her Lord’s command seriously is Jan Markell, founder and host of Understanding the Times radio program and Olive Tree Ministries. Her most recent article personifies, I think, obedience to Christ’s command and the scriptural exhortation given in Proverbs 3:5-6.

We should follow her lead in taking advantage of the time that’s left to us on Earth. Here is a bit of Jan’s “watching” as Jesus commanded:

I love short lists that folks can peruse and then dig deeper on their own. Today I came up with ten issues that tell me the hour is later than we thought. So, here’s my latest summary. Don’t be discouraged. Look up!

1. Europe is looking for an Antichrist figure. Prophecy News Watch reports a disturbing willingness among citizens to embrace strong, decisive leadership that could bypass democratic processes if it promises stability and results. One in five Europeans say they would prefer a dictatorship in certain circumstances, and a quarter admit they would not mind if a capable leader limited democratic rights and acted without accountability—provided he was effective…

2. Intensifying Lawlessness is everywhere. In Minnesota, not one elected official who participated in the Somali fraud of billions of dollars has been removed from office or arrested. The Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, in part responsible for the mayhem, just made Time Magazine’s top 100 influential people. Thanks for rewarding incompetence!

3. ICE has been demonized repeatedly, particularly in my hometown of Minneapolis. They have been arresting illegal aliens convicted of murder, domestic abuse, sexual assault, and more. In Minnesota alone, nearly 500 illegal aliens have been released back into the community because state and local officials refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement.

4. Canada is poised to criminalize Christianity with a ban on citing biblical truths, reports The Federalist.Let that sink in. Crazed zealots in the leftist elite have turned Canadian Christians into scapegoats. They are considered deplorables…

Added to this outrage, Canada is offering to euthanize seniors. Canada’s free healthcare offers the director of Dying to Meet You to the elderly who may be struggling. Surely love has grown cold (Matt. 24:12)…

5. The ultimate in calling evil good just transpired when the United Nations handed Iran a seat at the Women’s Rights Table. Iran—the regime whose morality police beat a 22-year-old woman named Mahsa Amini to death for a loose headscarf—has just been elevated to a role within a key United Nations body shaping global policy on women’s rights, disarmament, and terrorism prevention. This is last days’ lunacy and strong delusion (II Thess. 2:11), and it abounds everywhere. (“Ten Reasons to Look Up,” Jan Markell, https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Ten-Reasons-to-Look-Up-.html?soid=1101818841456&aid=VhSKtaNBdew)

Jan’s article went on to document five more end-times indicators that, indeed, should alert fellow watchmen to be looking up!

Heaven’s purpose for Jesus’ command to watch is to alert us to the shortness of time left to do our assignments. The souls of men, women, and children hang heavily in the balance. Their only hope–like our only hope—is the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s grace gift of salvation He accomplished on that cross at Calvary.

Christ’s purpose in telling us to watch is also to encourage those of us in God’s family, as we must live as did Lot in that ancient time in Sodom.

The wickedness and evil will end. Jesus will return and put it to an end.

Ours is a future wherein time will no longer be a factor. We will be in that eternal region where there is no evil or wickedness to incessantly come against all that is godly.

Our days are numbered, the Psalmist tells us:

“The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. Who knoweth the power of thine anger? even according to thy fear, so is thy wrath. So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom” (Psalm 90:10-12).

My favorite song, as I sense my own days flying away, has become “Teach Us to Number Our Days” by Marty Goetz. I hope it blesses you as it does me.

Let us watch to work during these precious days we’ve been granted to bring as many souls as possible to Christ so they, too, will move from this time of trouble into that glorious timelessness of God’s eternal realm.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus! 

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For years, I’ve had Jesus’ prophecy of Luke 17:28-30 at the center of the message I believe our Lord wants delivered at this late hour of the Church Age:

“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Luke 17:28-30).

Well, that message hasn’t changed. It still resonates as the one prophecy I believe is most directly meant for this sin-darkening planet that’s on the cusp of receiving God’s wrath because of humankind’s rebellion against Him.

Jesus said when He next intervenes into the evil affairs of Earth’s inhabitants, the “righteous” will be removed. In the “days of Lot” in Jesus’ prophecy, it was Lot and his family who were removed because Lot was considered the only one in Sodom who was righteous. In the case of Christ’s next intervention, He indicated that another righteous entity will be removed to safety. This, of course, will be all who believe in Jesus for salvation–collectively called the Church.

I always preface what I say about that moment of Rapture with Jesus’ statement that, at the time, people of Earth will, as in Sodom of Lot’s day, be buying, selling, planting, building, and marrying—in other words, going about business as usual.

Even with all the evil going on now–and it’s probably worse than it was in ancient Sodom and Gomorrah—it is still business as usual, as I view it. Despite the evil–the wars and rumors of war, the deception, the ethnic upheaval all over the planet—there isn’t yet catastrophic disruption of life on earth.

So, in this sense, our time is exactly like Jesus predicted in Luke 17:28–30.

The one thing that has puzzled me to an extent is what Jesus said about the sudden destruction that will, like in Lot’s day, happen immediately upon the removal of the righteous.

As we know, the ancient cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. And the destruction apparently came immediately following Lot’s removal; the cities were decimated. For millennia, scientists and archaeologists thought the Bible’s account of the destruction to be myth. But in most previous decades, there is evidence that indeed these cities were destroyed, and even sulfur residue of the region at the south end of the Dead Sea proves that something devastatingly powerful blasted the area. Pottery shards and other evidence that humans once inhabited the region are still being extracted from beneath the earth’s surface there.

Jesus, again, said: “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.”

My dilemma in this prophecy is wondering how the Rapture of the Church will be followed by the destruction of all inhabitants, because we know the world will be filled with unbelievers during the seven-year Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week). So, this must mean the destruction that will take place will have to be different than that which instantly and completely obliterated those ancient cities.

I’ve sort of resisted the idea that there will be nuclear war, or at least an all-out nuclear World War III, prior to the Rapture of the Church; otherwise, it could not be business as usual leading up to that call of Christ to all believers, living and dead.

Many observers, even some I hold as good teachers in the pre-Trib view, have been saying we are already in the early stages of World War III. That is, the world is now in the throes of everything it takes to begin a worldwide conflict, as in the times preceding World Wars I and II. Dr. Robert Jeffress of First Baptist of Dallas was one I heard say this just the other day.

He said, if I heard him correctly, he believes the Rapture will occur at the time of some other world-shaking event. He believes, he said, it might be a nuclear exchange that introduces World War III, or some such conflagration. This might cause many of the left-behind to miss the full prophetic implications of the disappearance of millions.

In thinking on this, and based upon the build-up toward conflict involving such nuclear powers as Russia, China, North Korea, and, of course, the United States, I believe this might be the case. The Church might be snatched (harpazoed) into the clouds of Glory just as nuclear missiles begin raining down around parts of the globe.

This would certainly be “sudden destruction” but would not constitute total devastation as in Sodom and Gomorrah.

The devastation would quickly expand across the world, causing unbelievable chaos–eventuating in total destruction by the end of Armageddon when Christ returns. However, I don’t see in any way how this expanding destructiveness could negate attention paid to the disappearance of millions of Earth’s inhabitants.

As you know, I believe all children below the age of accountability, even those just conceived, will be instantly absent from Earth when Jesus calls the Church. This alone will cause panic and chaos unlike any situation one can truly imagine. Undoubtedly, the news pundits of the planet will somehow attribute this to being a phenomenon, either of unprecedented, unfathomable nuclear exposure, or to, as we’ve talked about before, some action by so-called extraterrestrial space brothers who have been observing human tendencies toward nuclear war since the advent of the atomic bomb.

Paul, following his words about the Rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, prophesied the following that seems to lend credence to such a sudden-destruction scenario.

“But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).  

Jesus Himself told of this coming moment when sudden destruction would forever change things on the earth:

“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man” (Luke 21:34-39).

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Thank you for your support of Prophecyline!

Please know that your donations to our Prophecyline platform are so much appreciated. We continue to watch and strive to inform of relevant prophetic issues and events during these times so near the moment of our Lord’s call to His Church. Your support is very much needed.

If you consider our efforts worthy as we try to cover news and end-times culture, and if you wish to contribute, please send a check payable to Terry James and put in the notation line “for Prophecyline.”

Send to:

Terry James

PO Box 38

Benton, AR 72018