There is much questioning, speculation, and worry about exactly what the ghastly attack on Israel by Hamas means in terms of Bible prophecy. What it all means with regard to the Rapture seems the prime focus of concern.

Is this the beginning of the Gog-Magog war of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39? Is the assault the beginning of a Psalm 83 war? And, added to the subject is the question of Isaiah 17:1. Will Damascus meet its total destruction as part of things about to unfold, since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others within the IDF and Israeli defense officials have vowed immense retaliation?

I certainly don’t have the answers—at not least from a 100-percent knowledgeable perspective. But we can definitely postulate a bit based upon a studied view of God’s Word that involves future fulfillment of prophecy.

We who believe in dispensational truth and accept the premillennial, pre-Trib view of things to come know that what’s happening is not coincidental. It all points to exactly where things should be if the world is at the very end of the Church Age, or Age of Grace.

We also have a number of other signals pointing to the end of this dispensation—signals that the stage is being set for fulfillment of prophecies about what will immediately precede Christ’s Second Advent:

>The globalist minions are trying to bring into being the New World Order, which we, as pre-Trib advocates, know will eventuate in bringing Antichrist to the world stage.

>These same minions are bringing to bear, in addition to AI and surveillance instrumentalities, a new monetary system of digital control involving computer-satellite technologies that will give the man of sin the control Satan wants to exert over the peoples of Earth.

>Diabolist nations of history yet future are shaping up for their end-times roles. Russia and China, for example, seem to be stepping into their destructive roles described in Ezekiel and Revelation.

>Wickedness and violence are ramping up, making cultures and societies around the globe like they were in the days of Noah and of Lot—while business goes on, particularly here in America, pretty much as usual.

>Religious amalgamation proceeds, melding—with the blessings of Pope Francis—into a common, end-times religious model of some sort that is yet to be determined.

>All the while, there is a falling away—an apostasy—amongst some of the mainstream denominations within Christendom. (I use the word “Christendom” because I’m not referring to Christians but to those with a false facade of Christianity.)

So, while things are coming together in the Middle East—surrounding and totally involving God’s chosen nation—thrown into the milieu of developments is every other prophetic indicator for the wrap-up of history just prior to Christ’s Second Coming. All ingredients for Daniel’s seventieth week are shaping up for the time Jesus said will be the worst ever (Matthew 24:21).

All of this considered, my own thinking about developments in this ongoing devastation in Gaza is governed by Jesus’ prophetic statement that I believe is perhaps the most important involving matters leading to the Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week): The Lord’s words that all things will be like they were in the days of Lot (Luke 17:28-30).

By this, I mean that when an event as devastating as the destruction of all of Israel’s enemies takes place, all semblance of “business as usual” will be out the window. The world will change spectacularly for the worse during that destruction and all that will follow, according to Daniel 9:26-27.

Seven years of hell on earth will begin to rage, and all “business as usual” will be lost in the chaos.

So, while the things we see developing now are profoundly troubling, the end is “not yet”—as Jesus put it in His Olivet Discourse. There remain wars and rumors of war leading to the final dispensational era called the “Great Tribulation” or the “time of Jacob’s trouble”—the last three and a half years of Daniel’s seventieth week.

I’m convinced that although we believers might be here to see considerable war-making, we won’t be on Earth to witness the end of the things we see going on now in the land that’s destined to host the Gog-Magog war and Armageddon.

Like Lot and his daughters, we will be taken (the Greek word paralambano) by force from this sphere slated for God’s judgment. The “force” that snatches believers from the hour of God’s wrath will be our Savior’s call: “Come up here!”  

Here, yet again, is how to hear that call:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

A most relevant Scripture for this moment on God’s prophetic timeline is:

“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25).

More than 1,200 enthusiastic believers “assembled together” the week before last in Norman, Oklahoma, during the Prophecy Watchers conference. As if on cue, a profound event occurred to highlight the reason Gary Stearman, Bob Ulrich, and Mondo Gonzales have Prophecy Watchers as the name of their ministry. Israel, God’s timepiece, as we sometimes refer to that prophetic nation, was attacked on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

All eyes and ears of the gathered prophecy watchers in Norman were affixed upon the ongoing “war,” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has termed the conflict.

As I understand, more than two thousand people live-streamed the conference. So I sense that the very core of believers yearning for Christ’s return were tuned in to the conference and that the Lord might have, in His own omniscient orchestration, made sure the observing eyes and ears of His eternal family who are yearning for His Son’s call to the Church were affixed on and attuned to the brutal, beastly assault on His chosen nation and people yet again.

Of course, all the speakers at the conference, myself included, were bombarded with questions about what this war might mean. I’m sure readers of this commentary are asking the same.

Let me say that I, too, am asking the same questions regarding what all this might mean.

Like all of you who are intensely interested in what’s going on, my own interest revolves most specifically around: What does it all mean in terms of the nearness of the Rapture?

I believe that is a perfectly appropriate question to ask, based upon Hebrews 10:25 quoted above.

The key phrase here, of course, is “as ye see the day approaching.” This goes to the very heart of our Lord’s desire to be faithful members of His heavenly family. We are told we should gather with fellow children of God while we see or watch for the approaching day.

The “assembling together” phraseology isn’t merely a suggestion to go to church regularly but a command to come together as one in watching developments pointing to that day. I believe “that day” refers to the time of Tribulation and, more importantly, to the Day of Christ when the glorious dawn breaks for all believers—that spectacular instant when Christ calls us to Himself in the Rapture.

Watching for that day is not an exhortation to only those who attend prophecy conferences. It is a command to all believers in Jesus Christ, who has secured forever their place in God’s eternal family.

Again, we are commanded by Jesus as to what we should be doing as we see the day approaching:

“What I say unto one, I say unto all. Watch” (Mark 13:37).

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

All conference attendees in Norman were stunned to have such a powerful signal to be “looking up” when the news of the attack on Israel suddenly came. The word “coincidence,” as Hal Lindsey has noted, is not in God’s vocabulary. The atrocity against Israel has immense significance.

This present Israeli war will have profound ramifications, I believe, based upon all the many other things we see as we watch the day approaching.

If you don’t know the One who has all of this otherwise frightening confluence of end-times signals under complete control, follow what our God Instructs so you will become a member of His eternal family. You will then be able, through Holy Spirit discernment, to see with clarity that “day” approaching.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).