Is This The End Of The World As We Know It?
The above photo was taken in a local Baptist church here in QLD Australia, and the verse is one of my favourite Bible verses, mainly because it was one that I read at my baptism in 1980, also in a Baptist church, but in New Zealand.
I chose this verse out of a list of baptism-related verses suggested to me by the pastor who was going to baptize me, and as I had always had a love of Bible prophecy, I chose this one, because I had this feeling at the time, that during my lifetime I was going to experience the time about which Jesus prophesied 20 centuries ago.
Fast forward to May 3, 2020. As I write these words, the entire world is under an unprecedented global lockdown which some are saying will lead to a worse outcome than the Great Depression of the 1930's. Food supply lines are being threatened, which could lead to famine, but in spite of all this, people are mostly unaware of what lies in the future,
and are hoping for the best. Could this be the time referred to by Jesus Christ as "the end of the age"?
Anyone who has been following this blog will know that I have been talking about this subject for a few years now, and to be honest, nothing much has changed in the last few years - until 2 months ago when the lockdown started, causing me to think that perhaps I need to revisit the theme of a Post I published on this subject about 11 months ago. The link is below if you want to see what that was about:
https://steemit.com/life/@auskiwi/will-the-end-of-the-age-be-in-2020
For a number of years now, I have had a working theory that if we could only figure out the correct calendar in relation to when Jesus Christ was born, and more importantly when He ascended or was "raptured" to Heaven, we can know when will be the year, and maybe even the month or week of the end of the age, which I believe will be punctuated by the rapture of the church (those who are alive and remain). I will shy away from trying to determine the day or hour though, as that seems to make some people uncomfortable.
I won't go into why 2020 is the year of the rapture, as I covered that in the Post mentioned above, but let's just say that the next few weeks are what we in the watchman community refer to as a "high watch time". I'm not dogmatic about getting all that close in terms of a day anyway, because even though we know the ascension of Jesus Christ was 40 days after His resurrection, because of the nature of the Jewish calendar, it's hard to know what day the ascension actually fell on in the year 20 AD. If someone has the answer to that question, please comment below.
If we go by what day that Ascension Day occurs this year in the church calendar, it's either the 21st or 22nd of May, depending on whether we follow the Jewish practice of the day beginning at sundown, or the Christian practice of the day beginning at midnight. But hey, any day from now to the end of May, or even into June could be a possibility. I have always been skeptical of datesetters and datesetting, and believe we will only know for sure when the day arrives.
A lot of people reading this will be asking, well so what? Who is this Jesus anyway, and what significance does he have to my life in 2020? Larry Norman summed up the answer to that question quite nicely in the last verse of his 1972 song "The Outlaw".
Some say He was the Son Of God, a man above all men,
That He came to be a servant and to set us free from sin.
And that's who I believe He was, 'cause that's who I believe,
And I think we should get ready 'cause it's time for us to leave...
Maybe that time has finally come in May 2020.
Even if it hasn't, it's a good idea to be ready, because your life will end and eternity will begin for you one day, maybe sooner than you think...