Nobody knows when Jesus is coming back—we just know that He is. Still, it doesn’t take a prophet to recognize the signs of the times, does it?
I’ve been discussing these issues with my new friend Billy Hallowell, faith editor at The Blaze and author of the new best-selling book The Armageddon Code: One Journalist’s Quest for End-Times Answers.
In part two of this series, we discuss the signs of the times—and what even atheists can’t deny (or shouldn’t). You can still read part one: Why We Can’t Agree on the Second Coming.
Charisma News: What signs of the times are you seeing?
Hallowell: I think many Christians—myself included—sense that something doesn’t feel quite right at the moment. There appears to be a rapid acceleration of cultural detachment from God and biblical standards.
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Certainly some in the secular world see that as a favorable development, but many Christians are concerned. Teamed with the horrific events in the Middle East, which only seem to worsen, they see signs that we’re at least marching toward the end, if not in the midst of it already.
Of course, we’re always technically forging toward what the Bible describes as the end of days, and there’s no telling how was that really will be—5 years, 50 years, 5,000 years. But, at the least, most Christians, I would assume, feel as though something is somewhat off-kilter. And when you look at what Jesus told us about the conditions of the end of days, it’s understandable why those feelings are being experienced by so many.
Charisma News: Did your end-time theology change over the course of writing this book?
Hallowell: This is such a good question. As a journalist, my job was to ask questions of each of my interview subjects, but it was impossible not to check what they were saying against the premillennial, pre-tribulational upbringing and experience I’ve had in a variety of churches throughout my 32 years.
I will say that the overall experience left me with an entirely new appreciation and understanding of the modern state of Israel.
If I were an atheist I would, when confronted with the facts, be forced to admit that the modern-day Jewish state is, at the least, a strange development. Here’s what I mean by that: You have Ezekiel writing 2,500 years ago about an ingathering of Jews back to Israel as well as mentioning Gog and Magog and this invasion that apparently involves Persia.
It’s all very cryptic, and sure, we can dismiss all of that as having been fulfilled in the past I suppose, but, when you look at what’s happening now and compare it to the biblical text it seems implausible, to some degree, that someone would write about all of that 2,500 years ago and then see the same key players moving about more than two millennia later.
Here we are in 2016 with so many of those key players dominating the headlines. In the end, 1948 was a big deal. If you look at that and you compare it to the ancient text anyone who is operating with reason and honesty should, at a minimum, be intrigued. At the least: it’s a strange and an unlikely coincidence. At the most: it’s prophetic. Readers can decide for themselves.
