Author’s note: The following article was originally written and posted in 2010. The information regarding the status of Christians who consider Bible prophecy important remains relatively unchanged at this late hour of this Age of Grace. I believe Jesus’ command was never more crucial for Christians than at this moment.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).

Jesus’ Critical Question for End-Times Believers

A recent news item about certain polling data grasped my attention. I’m sure many who look at www.raptureready.com‘s news section had their curiosity piqued and read it as well.

After looking into the matters reported, I found the poll wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked—but it was fascinating nonetheless. Also, it was too one-sided in ethnic makeup. However, I give it enough credence to examine it here because I believe it revolves around a concern the Lord Jesus Christ expressed while teaching about conditions that will prevail at the end of the age.

A new survey finds that Americans are divided over whether they believe Jesus Christ will return by the year 2050.

Among respondents to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Smithsonian Magazine, 41 percent said they expect Jesus’ Second Coming in the next forty years, while 46 percent said it probably or definitely won’t happen.

The poll suggests that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Jesus will return by 2050, compared to only 32 percent of Catholics, and respondents with no college education were three times as likely as those with college degrees to expect Christ’s Second Coming in the next forty years. (“Many Americans Expect Jesus’ Return by 2050,” Associated Press/Israel News, 6/23/10).

To be honest, I was quite surprised that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Christ will return by 2050. This disconnect in my mind comes from the fact that in looking for interest in Bible prophecy within the church today (by this I mean, of course, born-again believers; see John 3:3), my colleagues and I find no evidence to support that percentage.

Perhaps I should speak just for myself, but if my colleagues are honest, based upon conversations we’ve had, they will confess that the interest just isn’t there in those kinds of numbers.

So, a few cynical (I suppose) thoughts regarding the poll come to mind:

• The poll is a complete “guesstimate”—even a prefabrication.
• The poll is skewed because it was taken from among a limited group of believers thoroughly educated in Bible prophecy.
• The poll reflects a flippancy that will agree that Christ could return within the next forty years because the possibility is far enough in the future that the respondents need not worry about changing their personal conduct.
• My colleagues and I are wrong, and the church—”white evangelicals,” in this case—is expecting the Lord’s return in majority numbers.

If the last point is true, then the fact that so many are looking for Christ is well hidden. I’m a blind guy, as many know, so I can’t see things all that well. But interest in Christ’s return—and in Bible prophecy in general, according to everything I hear—is confined to an extremely small number of folks in relationship to the tremendous number of people who claim the name of Christ.

Clicking through Christian TV networks (yes, we blind guys “watch” TV), I rarely come across a prophetic message. Most of the viewing fare consists of the prosperity gospel or entertainment that is, for the most part, a rather poor knockoff of secular entertainment. The preachers who do present a sound gospel message and sound doctrine seldom to rarely speak on Bible prophecy. And they certainly don’t touch upon the pre-Trib return of Christ in the Rapture.

When I’ve personally asked some of the preachers and teachers why they avoid presenting prophecy, they have said things like, “The people just don’t understand Revelation”; “The subject is just too scary to most people”; or ” We just concentrate on getting people the gospel so they will be saved.”

The honest preachers and teachers say, “I just don’t know anything about prophecy. I’ve not studied it enough to preach on it.”

What a tragedy, a travesty, this is! There is a singular hope (Titus 2:13) that God’s people have in this swiftly degenerating age. Yet, their shepherds—the preachers and teachers, their suppliers of spiritual food—use every conceivable excuse for not telling Christians about their returning Lord.

Some accuse those of us whose mission is to concentrate on Bible prophecy of doing so to the point that we ignore Christ’s love and the Bible’s life lessons for His people.

We in no way believe prophecy should be taught exclusively. However, prophecy constitutes almost 30 percent of the whole Word of God, so the Heavenly Father obviously means for it to be a generous part of the mix for His children’s spiritual sustenance. This is especially true in these days when the signals of Christ’s coming again are in every direction in which one looks.

Bible prophecy is being marginalized by those who are supposed to shepherd their flocks, but who don’t want to study it and/or don’t want to risk scaring people out of the pews. This is because it is the feel-good and do-good, entertainment-oriented sermonettes that tickle itching ears and build many of the elaborate end-times edifices.

Understand that I recognize there are huge churches that hold to doctrinal truth and include God’s prophetic Word as part of feeding their attending flocks. This is not to castigate these wonderful pastors, teachers, and staffs. God bless them! But these are in the minority. The dearth of interest in Christ’s coming back in the Rapture, then in the Second Advent, demonstrates the lack of faith resident within Christ’s Body at this crucial hour.

Jesus asked the following profoundly troubling question in that prophetic context: “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8b). The Lord had a somber message for God’s people who will be alive at His sudden, unannounced coming. I wrote the following as part of a chapter for an upcoming book that I believe gets across the gist of this:

The indifference so prevalent within the church is, itself, an end-times signal, it seems. The Lord obviously spoke to the fact that God’s own children will, in large part, be indifferent to the prophetic signals. They will not be living as they should at the time of His coming for them, as He promised in John 14:1-3. As a matter of fact, He forewarned: “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 21:34-6; from a chapter by Terry James in a book to be released in 2010).

I pray more born-again pastors, Bible teachers, and God’s children of this nation and the world will awaken en masse to the staggering implications of Christ’s Second Coming.

—Terry

Wtjames1@swbell.net

Author’s note: Our president has once again made the statement, apparently to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that if it were not for himself, Donald John Trump, Israel would cease to exist.

 I cringed in every point of my being when I heard him make that anti-God statement recently, just as I did when he made a similar statement back in 2024.

I again post the article I wrote and had published on Raptureready.com on Monday, October 7, 2024.

Mr. President, I continue to applaud and support your tremendous efforts and achievements on behalf of our beloved nation, but this anti-Biblical statement cannot stand. Please listen up. Such pride and arrogance achieve no good result under the Watchful Eyes of He Who Rules over all Creation.

Please reconsider and repent so that Judgment from on High might Relent.

God’s Word Trumps Trump.

It appears we are, in a sense, at the end of the cosmic endgame. If compared to cards, the winning hand is about to be revealed. And the outcome is not a gamble in any sense.

The One who holds that winning hand cannot lose. He knows every card held by every opponent, and they are all losers. This is because they choose not to accept the hand originally given them, but rather continue determined to play by rules contrary to the One who deals only in truth.

Truth is all that matters in this game, and when deliberately denying the truth, either on purpose or in ignorance, the player suffers loss to one degree or another.

And now I get to the point of this metaphor. I will aim it at the presidential candidate I support in the upcoming presidential election. It is not a gentle comparison I make because I want Mr. Trump to realize that when it comes to God’s Word, we are not in the hallway of our junior high years. It is a deadly serious matter to deny the truth—and God’s Word is the only truth there is.

In this eternal high-stakes endgame, your word, Mr. President, is trumped by the inerrant Word of the one who holds the hand that cannot be overridden.

Your declaration recently is a most egregious misunderstanding of earthly geopolitics from God’s inerrant view.

In his characteristically outspoken manner, Trump has been critical of Jews who support his opponent. At a speech addressing antisemitism Thursday night in Washington, D.C., he warned that if Harris enters the White House as president, Israel would be “eradicated.”

“If I don’t win this election, Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years, and I believe I’m 100% right,” Trump said. “If I do win, Israel will be safe and secure…”

Dr. Miriam Adelson, the widow of late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (who leads the way in a large Jews-for-Trump group), spoke in favor of the candidate, saying that Jews have a “sacred duty” to vote for Trump, “in gratitude for everything he has done and trust in everything he will yet do…”

She has written that Trump “should enjoy sweeping support” among U.S. Jews and Israelis and that Trump deserves a “Book of Trump” in the Bible due to his support for Israel…

She did, however, chide Trump after the event. While noting that his claims had some merit, she added, “Our people have one more secret.”

Adelson quoted from the Passover Haggadah to explain what that secret is: “And this [promise] is what has stood by our ancestors and us; for it was not only one man who rose up to destroy us: in every single generation people rise up to destroy us—but the Holy One, Blessed Be He, saves us from their hands.” (“Trump warns President Harris would “eradicate” Israel, but Megadonor corrects him: ‘Jews have a secret’”—Israel365 News)

Donald Trump, as president, did much to support Israel. He has taken strong and definitive stands against anti-Semitism. For this, he no doubt was at least in part brought to that high office by the Lord. But it is obvious from his rhetoric that he is woefully ignorant of the truth in this cosmic endgame we’re in the midst of.

This Jewish influencer/supporter has corrected him, although I’ve not seen or heard any evidence of Mr. Trump acknowledging that he was wrong by saying that if he doesn’t win this November, Israel will cease to exist within two years.

Mr. President, I hope someone will pass this along to you. You can’t play junior-high word games when it comes to God’s chosen nation. And I say that as one who is praying that if we reach Election Day, you will be the victor. I pray for your safety and for ours as a nation.

That God will assure our continued traversing upon this planet is something we can’t know for certain. But the continued existence of the nation Israel is a God-guaranteed matter.

God’s Holy Word trumps your words, Mr. President. Here is that Word, issued from the Holy Spirit-inspired prophet Jeremiah thousands of years ago:

“This is what the Lord says, ‘He who appoints the sun to shine by day, Who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord Almighty is His Name; Only if these ordinances vanish from My sight,’ declares the Lord, ‘will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before Me’” (Jeremiah 31:35-36).

The date of posting this article is most poignant as we remember October 7, 2023. Israel’s blood-vowed enemies inflicted the most heinous atrocities against the Jewish people since the time of Hitler’s Holocaust.

This is but one more reminder of just how near the world is to entering the time known as Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30:7). But even during the time Jesus Himself said would be the worst in all of human history, Israel and the Jewish people will, as a chosen remnant, be preserved to go into the millennial reign of the Messiah they rejected two millennia ago.

It will not be Donald J. Trump or anyone or anything other that will bring them to that glorious head of all nations of history. It will be done by the very Word of the Living God!

“If his sons forsake My law, and do not walk in My judgments, if they violate My statues, and do not keep My commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off My loving kindness from him, nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of My lips. Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. His descendants shall endure forever like the moon, and the witness in the sky is faithful” (Psalm 89:30-37).