I want to talk to you about the future but most
people have an ambiguous attitude to the future. We have a mixture of fascination and fear.
We’d like to know what’s going to happen and then we’re not quite sure that we would like to
know. Supposing I had a unique gift of knowledge, the word of knowledge, and could actually tell
every one of you the date of your death so that at the end of today I could stand at the door
and shake hands with you as you left and whisper in your ear the actual day you were going to
die. Now how many of you would like to know? Even if it was fifty years ahead, would you
like to know? No—some of you like me wouldn’t believe it if it was fifty years ahead. But you
see we’ve got this strange curiosity; we want to know what’s going to happen and then we’re
afraid to know. I mean you could celebrate your death day as well as your birthday every year.
Wouldn’t you like that or would you rather remain in ignorance? Would you like to know when the
world is going to end? Well actually scientists are now telling us a date when they believe
the world, as we know it will come to an end. I’ll tell you the date later. But they could be
wrong. So we have this strange ambiguity about the future. We want to know and we don’t
want to know. Now there are three ways of finding out about the future. The first I want to
mention is the way of what I call superstitious divination - clairvoyance, horoscopes. Did you
know that six out of ten men and seven out of ten women read their horoscope every day in this
country? That’s why no magazine or newspaper will come out without its star column. I’m happy to
tell you I don’t know which sign of the zodiac I was born under and I’m not going to tell
you my birthday because I don’t want to know. I’d rather remain in ignorance. But people try to
find out from the stars or from clairvoyants what their future is. Now even the best clairvoyants
like Jean Dickson for example who was one of the most famous in America have never been more
than five percent right in their predictions or to put it negatively they have all been
at least ninety-five percent wrong. So why do people go to them and why do people read
their stars? The second way of finding out about the future is a little more accurate.
I call that the way of scientific deduction. There are now professors of futurology in many
universities and what they do: they extrapolate from the present trends into the future and
try and work out and guess as reasonably accurately as they can what’s going to happen.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in America is one of the foremost bodies that is
doing this work. They have come up with a date for the end of the world and the date is 2050.
Given, they say, the present population growth and the energy resources and the food resources
of our planet - that’s the crossover point beyond which life will be impossible unless we
can change some of the present trends, unless we can limit population growth or find new
sources of energy. So 2050 - we’ve got less than sixty years left according to them. Incidentally
Guildford University came up with the same figure. So 2050 is a figure that’s freely being talked
about. Now scientific deduction about the future is about twenty-five percent accurate or to put
it negatively it’s about seventy-five percent wrong. There is a third way of finding
out the future that is even more accurate and that is the way of scriptural declaration.
So you can either go to superstition or you can go to science or you can go to scripture. Now not
many people realize that this book is packed with predictions about the future. Just about one verse
in every four in the Bible contains a prediction about the future. Altogether there are some seven
hundred and thirty-five different events which are foretold within the pages of your Bible, seven
hundred and thirty-five! Now how accurate has the Bible been so far? Well it may be news to you that
six hundred… sorry five hundred and ninety-six of those predictions have already come true to
the letter. That’s just over eighty percent. Now that doesn’t mean that eighty percent of the
Bible’s predictions are accurate because most of the rest are concerned with the end of the world
so they couldn’t possibly have happened yet. In fact there are less than twenty yet to happen
before the return of Jesus to planet earth. And so far the Bible has proved to be one hundred
percent accurate in its predictions about the future. So why do people go to superstition
and to science when they could read about the future here and know that a book that has
been right in eighty percent of its predictions is probably going to be right for the other
twenty percent, especially about the events at the very end of history, the end of our world.
Now out of all those events - out of the seven hundred and thirty-five predictions - there is one
that occurs three hundred and eighteen times in the Bible. It is the most frequently mentioned
prediction of all and that prediction is that Jesus Christ who lived on earth two thousand years
ago is coming back to planet earth so that we’re talking about the most predicted event in the
Bible and we’re talking about something that is absolutely certain to happen. Now there
are many things we could say about this. But we’re going to ask a number of simple questions.
First of all, where is he coming back? Secondly, how is he coming back? Thirdly, when
is he coming back? Fourthly - very much more important - why is he coming back?
There are plenty of Christians who believe he’s coming back but who have never thought through
why should he need to? Did he not do all that he needed to on the first visit? Why should he come
back? And then the most practical question of all, how does that affect us? Let me ask you
a question just to whet your appetite. Supposing Jesus is not coming back here at all.
Supposing he is staying where he is in heaven and that we will go to join him there when
we die and stay there with him forever and that a new heaven and a new earth will be created
after that, supposing he’s not coming back here but we’re all going to join him there and stay
with him there, will that make any difference to the way you live next Monday morning?
Now think it through. It’s a good question to ask yourself. Well now, let’s go to that first
question. Where is he coming back? And I want to say right at the beginning he’s not coming back
to Ashford where we’re recording this video nor is he coming back to England nor to America
nor to Russia. He’s not coming back to any of the world capitals. He’s not coming back to
any of the religious capitols. He’s not coming back to Rome. He’s not coming back to Geneva or
Canterbury, not coming back to New York, he’s not coming back to Moscow not coming back to Peking.
So where’s he coming back to? The answer of the Bible is quite clear. He’s coming back to his
own city, the city he called the city of the great king - Jerusalem. That’s where we’ll need to
be if we’re going to meet him. That’s the city he left from, that’s the city he’s coming back to.
Now some people vaguely think he’s coming back everywhere. I’m not quite sure that they’ve
thought out how he can do that especially since he’s coming back in a body - with his body - and
a body locates us in one place and you can’t be in two places at once when you’re in a body. So
Jesus is coming back with his body. One tradition says that that body was five feet ten inches
tall. I don’t know if that’s accurate but I mention it just so that you realize it’s real.
He’s coming back in his Jewish body. Therefore he’s got to come back to one place; he can’t come
back everywhere at once, which means that we’ll have to go and join him and in fact we will. As
I’ll mention later you’re going to get your first free flight to the Holy Land; but he’s coming back
to a specific place in his body and we shall meet him at that place and that place is Jerusalem.
That’s the place where everything happened that has enabled us to be here this morning.
Well now the second question, how is he coming back? And here I want to draw first of all
a tremendous contrast with his first coming. When he came the first time hardly anybody knew.
In fact for the first nine months he was on earth only two people knew. And when he was
actually born only a handful of shepherds and a few clever men from the east knew about it.
In fact the whole thing passed unnoticed. His first coming never got into the press of those
days. Nobody took any notice. In fact the sign in the sky of his first coming was again hardly
noticed except by those who were looking hard and studying such things. It was a tiny pinpoint
of light that pointed to where he was born but most people never even noticed that star.
In fact some people have tried to persuade me that the wise men following the star means that
astrology is in the Bible and approved. I want to tell you nothing could be further from the
truth. The basic belief of astrology is that the position of the stars affects a baby when it
is born. But at Bethlehem it was the position of the baby that was affecting the stars and that’s
rather different; in fact it’s completely the opposite. But it was just a tiny pinprick of light
that signaled his first coming. We’re told that the second coming the entire sky will be lit up
like lightning from east to west and the whole sky will blaze and everybody will know something
of unique significance has happened. So the first coming was so quiet, so unnoticed, so humble. The
second coming will be in total contrast to that. In fact I want to give you a little Greek
lesson for three minutes. There are three Greek words that are used in the New
Testament about his second coming which were not used about the first and each of
which is very significant and here they are. The first is a word perusia, which means an
arrival, an important arrival. It was used in the ancient world of the arrival of a royal personage,
the king or queen coming to visit. It was also used of an invading army. When D Day arrived it
was a perusia - something was going to happen that would change the whole situation. So that’s
the first word. It is an arrival of tremendous significance. Second Greek word I want to pass
on to you is epiphania, which means not to arrive but to appear. Have you ever been in Pall Mall,
stood around the Victoria monument on a national occasion and looked up at the balcony of the
Buckingham Palace - that first floor balcony - and waited for those French doors to be opened by
the footmen and then the royal family appears on the balcony - the moment that everybody’s
been waiting for, and a great cry goes up from the crowd of excitement. That’s what this second
word means. It means to come out onto the balcony where everybody can see you, to appear before the
people. Now he didn’t do that on his first coming. Then the third word is apocalupsis and that word
means to be uncovered - not to appear naked but to appear as you really are. Therefore you will
not see a baby lying in a manger on his second coming. He will appear as he really is - the Son
of God with all his glory. Did you see the queen arriving for the opening of Parliament? Did
you see her with the crown and jewels in her glory? She was appearing as she is, the queen
of England; and when Jesus comes back he will appear as he is. He will be uncovered and people
will see his glory. When he came the first time that glory was covered up and all the paintings
with him with halos around his head are quite inaccurate. He didn’t walk around with a halo.
In fact, if he did people would have asked questions but in fact they saw no beauty that
they should desire him. To most people he was simply a carpenter from Nazareth. That glory
was hidden but when he comes a second time it will not be hidden at all. Everybody will
see. Therefore there is a very great contrast between his first coming and his second coming.
But there is not a contrast between his first going and his second coming. Does that sound a
bit Irish to you? Let me explain what I mean. Supposing you had been on the Mount of Olives
with a video camera like this on the day that Jesus ascended into heaven - went back home
to be with his father. And supposing you’d been able to take a video of him ascending
until he disappeared up there in the clouds, supposing that you had that video. And supposing
you could then play it backwards you would have an exact film of his second coming because
the angels at his ascension said to the men who were gazing up into heaven, “Why do you go
on gazing up into heaven? He will come back in exactly the same way as you saw him go.” So
that, whereas his second coming is a complete contrast to his first coming it is exactly the
same as his first going except that it will be in reverse and he will appear out of the clouds.
By the way that means that it’ll be a west wind at the time. The wind will be westerly. Do you
know why I’m able to say that? Because in Israel they only get clouds if the wind is from the
west. When it comes from any other direction it comes from the desert and it’s a dry hot wind
but when it comes from the Mediterranean it picks up moisture and you can see a little cloud forming
that’s no bigger than a man’s hand and that’ll get bigger and bigger and finally you’ll get rain.
So we know the wind will be from the west. Once again I mention this - I want you to realize we’re
talking about reality; not talking about something in a stained-glass window or a fairy tale. We’re
talking about something that will actually happen in this world of ours with the wind blowing
from the west and those cumulus clouds. I love flying above clouds don’t you? Looking
down on the sunlit clouds from above, that’s the nearest thing you’ll see in physical terms
to the shekinah glory of God. Because always you find clouds associated with the glory of the
Lord and I’m sure cumulus clouds are the nearest to that glory, the way they mount up like a
mountain range with the sun shining on them. So that’s how he will come. I’ve told you what
you can see, but I’d better tell you what you will hear. If you don’t like noisy meetings then you’d
better not be around on that occasion. It will be the noisiest meeting that’s ever been held as
well as the biggest. My grandfather is buried in Newcastle on Tyne and on his gravestone - he was a
pastor by the way and on his gravestone are three words, not rest in peace, and the three words are
not from the Bible. They’re from the hymnbook. They’re from an old Methodist hymn and these
are the three words, “What a meeting.” I think people must stand and look at that gravestone
and wonder what on earth is he talking about. Well now, Christians sometimes get meeting-itis
and we get fed up with meetings but what a meeting that will be. The biggest, there won’t be a
stadium on earth to hold it so we’re going to have to hold it in the air. That’s when you
get your free flight to the Holy Land. But the noise! There’ll be archangels shouting their heads
off, there’ll be trumpets blowing - enough noise to raise the dead and in fact it will. Here’s a
lovely thought: don’t worry about dying before this happens, because if you die before it happens
you get a front seat. That’s what my Bible says. Paul says to the Thessalonians, “Don’t grieve
about those who’ve already died. They’re not going to miss anything.” Far from it; when he descends
form heaven with the sound of a trumpet, the dead will rise first so that means they get there first
and then we who are alive catch up with them. So Paul says, “Encourage each other with these
words.” Cheer up. If you die first you get a front seat so we win either way. If we don’t die first
we get a new body straight away and no undertaker measures us up so it’s good news either way. Well
now that’s how he’s going to appear. There will be millions upon millions. There are now fifteen
hundred million people who profess to believe in Jesus so that really will be a big meeting, to say
nothing of all the angels and there are myriads of them and they’ll be joining in too. I can’t
imagine what the singing is going to be like. Now when will he come? And here we run into
problems and Christians are very good at trying to guess dates. I just jotted down a few of the
dates that leading Christians have mentioned. There was a man called Miller and he said it would
be 1843. By the way, if you’re going to guess the date of the second coming my advice is guess a
date well after you will be here because then you won’t have to be around to face the music.
It’s much wiser to think of one well ahead rather than one in the immediate future but Miller said
it was 1843 and from that prediction has come the Seventh Day Adventist movement.
Then there was a man called Russell and he said it would be 1914 and from him came the
Jehovah’s Witness movement but lest you think that it’s only cults or sects that guess the
date of the second coming let me tell you that Martin Luther said it was 1636. Now that was wise
because he certainly would be dead by then. John Wesley was equally wise; he said 1874. And most
Christians love to try and work it out and get the little programs and get the details together.
In our day there have been a lot of people saying, “We are the last generation.” Have you heard
this one? A lot of people have asked me, “Do you think it will be in our lifetime?” Well I hope
it will be in my lifetime because that would mean no funeral and no funeral director being called
in to deal with my corpse. That would excite me very much. I hope so. Every generation hopes so.
But Jesus himself said, “Of that day or of that hour knows no-one not even the Son. The Father
only keeps that date.” So it’s a good thing to be very cautious when somebody tells you, “I
know the date.” Mind you I’m going to tell you in a moment that I think I know the month.
But I don’t know the year. I’ll come back to that in a moment. Now if Jesus himself
was ignorant of the date, are we likely to know it? Nevertheless his disciples did ask him,
“Jesus what will be the signs of your coming”, the signals of your coming? How will we know when
it’s going to happen? Jesus actually gave them signals. He gave them signs. He said, “Now you’re
to watch and pray.” Now what are we to watch for? You can’t watch for his coming otherwise you’d
have to walk around like that all day looking at the sky. He didn’t mean watch for his coming.
He said, “Watch for the signs of my coming.” He told us exactly what they were. Now many, many
years ago I used to go and look at trains. I still do actually. But as a boy I used to love to be
a train spotter and in those days it was the LNER - The London and North Eastern Railway
that ran through my home city of Newcastle on Tyne. What you may not know is that just
outside the Newcastle Central Station is the biggest railway crossing in the whole world. And
there’s a picture of it. I used to go and stand at the end of the platform there overlooking
that biggest crossing where all the lines from London and the south crossed with all the
lines from Scotland and the north. It’s by far the best place to go trainspotting in the entire
country. We learned early to watch for the signals that would tell us when the train was coming.
There were four signals you watched for. In those days, the signals weren’t electric light bulbs.
They were a big arm that went down and up again. Do you remember those? Some of you do. There was
the distant signal, which was a yellow one with black stripes on with a kind of fork in the end.
That was the distant signal, that was the furthest out. Then there was the outer homes signal, a red
one. Then the inner home, and finally there was what was called the starter signal which was right
at the platform and actually cleared the train to start from the platform, so it was saying the
next bit of line is open. We used to watch these signals, four of them. When the distant went down
you knew the train was a few miles away. The outer home went down when the train was in the section.
The inner home you got really excited because you knew it was around the bend and by the time the
starter went down there it was. You could tell how near the train was. Now Jesus gave his followers
four signals, four signs, and they are very, very clear. He says, “These are the signals to
watch for.” He said, “The first you will see in the world out there so watch the world for the
first signal. The second will be in the church so watch the church for the second signal. The third
will be in the Middle East so watch the Middle East for the third signal. And the fourth will be
in the sky and you’ll see that signal in the sky.” Now Christians get into such a muddle about
all these signs but I’ve taken these four signs straight from Jesus. My principle is to start
with what Jesus said and fit everything else in the Bible into what he said. He gave us this
very simple framework into which you can fit all the other details. Now the first signal is in
the world and consists of disasters. Three in particular Jesus mentioned: earthquakes, wars,
famines. He said, “You’re going to see more and more of those,” and I’m afraid we are doing.
Did you know that earthquakes are doubling every ten years? It’s not just that we hear
about them now. There are more taking place. I was earlier this year in the Philippines in the
city of Baguio; I’d never heard they’d had such a bad earthquake but I stood and looked at the
appalling ruin of the Hyatt International Hotel, fifteen storeys and it had just collapsed
like that. They were spraying disinfectant with a hosepipe on the ruins because they
couldn’t get any of the bodies out. All the American and Japanese tourists were buried
under it, streets opened in great cracks. I’ve never actually been in an earthquake like
that so I can’t imagine what it must be like. And famines, there’s plenty of that around and
increasing. And wars - I didn’t realize there’d been thirty-six international conflicts since
World War Two. I keep talking about that as the last war but it wasn’t. Thirty-six and that’s
to say nothing of the civil wars that are now going on. And Jesus said, “When you hear
all these things that’s sign number one.” And he said, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled
because, he said, that’s not the end but the beginning.” He said it’s not death pangs
but birth pangs. It’s painful but it’s the pain of contractions of a new universe
coming. Now that puts a whole different light on it. It doesn’t mean that Christians are
callous or unsympathetic to the victims of these disasters but we don’t say, “I don’t know what
things are coming to.” We say, “I do know what things are coming to.” There’s a good line for
you if you want to witness. When anybody says, “I don’t know what the world is coming to,”
just quietly say, “I do,” and see what happens. You’ll get a good opening. But you see, Jesus
says these are like the first contractions an expectant mother feels. They’re the beginning
of something not the end of something. They’re not signs of the end; they’re signs of
the beginning. Something’s going to be born out of all this pain, out of all this travail.
Something’s going to be born. This is the universe labouring. Paul actually talks about the
whole creation groaning and travailing. And you can hear earthquakes. They groan. They travail.
So earthquakes are natural disasters. Wars are human caused disasters. And famines can be a bit
of both. But Jesus said that’s the beginning of the end. But it’s a beginning that follows. So
don’t let your hearts be troubled. But he said, I want to warn you that when all these
disasters are filling the world that gives a unique opportunity for false messiahs to arise,
for false christs. And we are getting a whole lot of them. Why, we’ve just had one of our national
footballers claiming to be the Son of God coming into the world. I was reading yet again just last
week in a weekend magazine of a man who says, “I am Yahweh and I have come to save the
world.” They’re popping up all over the place. You see when the world is shaking with disaster
after disaster, people are looking for someone to help them out of their trouble. They’re
looking for somebody they can trust and look to, a strong man, and that gives a unique opportunity
to false christs. We can expect a growing number of such false messiahs to appear in our day
because of all the disasters that are coming. Now that’s sign number one and that’s the
danger that accompanies sign number one, the danger of false christs but it’s highly
unlikely that Christians will be fooled by false christs. I had a letter from someone some
months ago, which I’ve mentioned on another video. This person from Staffordshire wrote to me and
he said, “Dear David I have bought one of your tapes thinking that you were a gospel singer but I
was disappointed to find that there was no music, only talk. But he said, I have listened to the
tape and he said, I am the one you were talking about. I am the Christ. I have come to save the
world.” He spent fourteen pages telling me this, good grammar, excellent handwriting.
We’re going to see an awful lot of this; as disasters shake people it provides a spiritual
vacuum into which false messiahs can step. Now signal number two. Signal number two is in the
church and consists of three features. Just as the first signal consisted of three features, three
kinds of disaster: earthquake, war, and famine, so the second signal has three parts to it but
this time they all appear in the church. Number one, universal persecution, the church hated
by all the nations; everywhere the church under pressure. Now that has never actually happened
in the last two thousand years but it is nearer to happening now than it’s ever been. Out of
some what, a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty nation states in our world, there are
less than two dozen where the church is not under pressure. And the number is getting smaller.
In fact the first signs of pressure on Christians are appearing here in England, Christian England.
The pressure is really going to be on us notably at the moment in the education sphere but the sex
discrimination act and the race discrimination act are going to be used against Christians.
So the pressure is going to be on us here. Jesus said the first part of this second signal will be
universal pressure on the church. And the second part of that sign follows from the first. He said
the love of many will grow cold. In other words pressure sorts out the nominal Christians from the
genuine ones. Those who are Sunday Christians or churchgoers will soon disappear under pressure.
I heard of a prayer meeting many years ago in one of the countries behind the iron curtain and
two soldiers burst into the prayer meeting and they said, We’re going to kill the Christians and
they had two Kalashnikov machine guns; they said, we’re going to kill the Christians. And the
Christians thought they were drunk but they were sober. Then they said, “If you’re not a
Christian, get out.” A number got up and ran. Then the two soldiers said to the rest, now will
you please tell us how to become Christians? They said, we had to make sure of you before
we talked to you. Well how would that affect your church prayer meeting? You see? Jesus said
there will be universal pressure and the result will be a falling away of nominal Christians. Now
that’s not bad news. That’s good news because the third part of the signal is this, “And,” said
Jesus, “The gospel will be preached to all the nations.” In other words, when the pressure is on
the church, it sorts the church out and refines the church and the church is then far better able
to get on with the job that Jesus left us to do, namely to evangelize the nations and that you
can see it happening. You can see it happening in China today. There are villages in China
where eighty-five percent of the population have been born again. Because the church is
under pressure and that gets rid of nominal churchgoers who can’t do the job anyway. And the
refined church under pressure grows very fast. Don’t ever pity churches that are being
persecuted. Envy them. Envy them. I remember going to Czechoslovakia years ago and we told
them we prayed for them in England. And they said, “You pray for us? –Why?” They said, “We hold
prayer meetings for the church in England because you’re in a far more needy state than we
are.” That put us in our place and humbled us. So that’s the second signal to look for, pressure
on the church in every country of the world, nominal Christians falling away and the rest
preaching the gospel to all the nations and getting the job done. That’s signal number two.
Signal number three he said will be in the Middle East. And here Jesus quoted from the
prophet Daniel an extraordinary phrase, which Daniel uses three times in his predictions
about the future. That phrase is, “The abomination of desolation.” That’s an inadequate translation.
I’m afraid we haven’t words bad enough in English really to communicate the horror of that Hebrew
phrase. It means something so disgusting, so abhorrent and so offensive. In a sense
it came true before Jesus came. It came true when a man called Antiochus Epiphanes, a Greek
emperor, strode into Jerusalem at the head of an army and did the most unspeakable things.
He went into the temple at Jerusalem and he sacrificed a pig on the altar, pork on the altar,
and then he turned the little vestries - the rooms around the side of the temple - into prostitute’s
brothels, and that’s what happened. It was the most disgusting, blasphemous act that has ever
happened in Jewish history. And they have referred to Antiochus Epiphanes as the abomination of
desolation. In a sense he was or was a foretaste of that. But towards the end of history, we shall
see a man described by Paul in 2 Thessalonians chapter one as the man of lawlessness; a man
who says, I acknowledge no law but my own will, a man who sets himself up as God and in the very
place where God’s name has been placed. Watch the Middle East for that man to appear, for that
dreadful thing to happen again, a man defying God in the very place where God’s name was holy.
And Jesus says, “Those who are living in that area around Jerusalem, as soon as that man appears get
out, go as quickly as you can. Don’t stop to pack, just get out and flee quickly.” But the rest of
you in the rest of the world, he says stay put, stay right where you are. Don’t move. And above
all said Jesus, trust your eyes not your ears. You will hear rumours that I’ve come here, I’ve
come there. Don’t listen to rumours. Don’t let your ears… don’t let anything you hear
mislead you. You just keep watching for me. By the way, in the second signal in the
church I should have mentioned that the danger when that second signal appears will be
the danger of false prophets. And I’m afraid Christians are peculiarly prone to believe false
prophets. They’re not prone to false messiahs but false prophets in the church. And we know
what false prophets say. They always say, “Peace, peace” when there is no peace. They
always say, “Don’t worry it may never happen.” They always want to calm and comfort people.
True prophets tell the truth even if it hurts. So we have signal number one in the world
disasters our there in the world and the danger of false messiahs followed by the world.
Signal number two, in the church pressure on the universal church, nominal Christians falling
away and the rest getting the job done of preaching the gospel, and the danger will be
false prophets who will tell the church not to worry that it’s all right, it’s not going to
get any worse. In the third signal the danger, said Jesus, will be false messiahs and false
prophets. Boy! What a crisis that will bring to us. We’ll really have to be very sure
of our faith then. And we must not listen. I’m afraid Christians are pretty good gossips,
aren’t we? Have you heard the latest, have you heard, have you heard? Jesus said, Listen,
use your eyes not your ears. Watch. He said there’ll be plenty of false prophets telling
you what God is saying. They’ll be plenty of false messiahs saying I’m the Christ because, he
said, wherever there’s a dead body the vultures gather and they’re vultures and they’re just
picking stuff for themselves out of the mess. Now at the third signal I want you to notice two
things. First I want you to notice that Christ has not come yet. Christ has not come yet. You may
hear that he’s come but Christ says don’t pay any attention. Christ has not come. And the second
thing I want you to notice carefully and this is quite far reaching, the Christians have not gone
yet. I put those two things together. Here we’ve got this major crisis in the Middle East, this man
of lawlessness otherwise known as antichrist and all kinds of things. We have this third signal
in the political situation in the Middle East and isn’t that entirely credible now? But Christ
has not come yet and Christians have not gone yet. So we come to the fourth and last signal.
The fourth and last signal is in the sky. This is what the signal will be. The sun will
be switched off. The moon will be switched off. The stars will be switched off one by one
until the entire sky is totally black and there is no natural light whatsoever. Now this
fourth signal gets me excited. I remember as a little boy being taken to a theatre to see a
Christmas pantomime. I recall it vividly. It was the Theatre Royal in Newcastle on Tyne and
I remember sitting there in the balcony and looking at the stage. There was a hubbub of
excitement. Everybody was chattering. Lots of children there and families for the Christmas
panto and then one by one the houselights went out until we were sitting in darkness. And I can
remember now my little heart beating, “It’s about to start. It’s just about.” We were… silence fell.
Then the stage curtains went to the side and there was a blaze of light and it all happened.
Now that’s exactly what the fourth signal will be. God will switch every other light out
so that the glory of Jesus will be the only light like lightning from east to west, from horizon to
horizon. They’ll be just one blaze of light but it won’t be from the sun, the moon, and the stars.
Now I told you what the danger was when the other three signals appeared. The danger of the first
- false messiahs; danger of the second - false prophets; danger of the third - false prophets and
messiahs. What will be the danger of the fourth signal? - Nothing. It will be over too quickly.
So when you get that signal hold on to your hat because you’re off. You will hear something.
You’ll hear that trumpet. You’ll hear a great trumpet blast. So when you see all the lights
go out and see this flash of lightning from one horizon to another and you hear that blast of a
trumpet that will echo around the globe, you hang on because you’re going to meet him and you will.
Now that’s the answer to when he’ll come except for one little thing. I did say I thought
I knew the month, because you see Jesus did everything according to God’s calendar. On
God’s calendar there are three great times of the year. There is Passover, Pentecost,
and Tabernacles. Jesus died at the Passover and he sent his Spirit at Pentecost but he
hasn’t yet fulfilled Tabernacles. Mind you, if you study your Bible carefully - and we haven’t
time to go into it now - you will find that Jesus was born during that feast of Tabernacles -
late September early October. “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” said John.
But if you work it out, that’s when he was born. You knew he wasn’t born in December didn’t you?
Well he was born at the end of September beginning of October but I believe his second coming will
be right on time. Not least because the feast of tabernacles is preceded by the feast of trumpets
and every mention of trumpets in the New Testament is to announce the return of the Lord Jesus so one
of these years, September/October he’ll be back but I can’t tell you which year. Well, we’ll take
a break now and then we’re moving on to the more important questions, why is he coming back and
what difference does that make to the way we live?
