Then
the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them
a sign from heaven. He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for
the sky is red’; “and in the morning, ‘It
will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ Hypocrites!
You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the
times. Matthew 16:1-3 NKJV
How
would you take being called a hypocrite?
Personally, I cannot imagine a greater insult to my profession of faith
than to hear someone say that to me. So
imagine if you will what the religious leaders of Jesus’ day thought when they
heard Him tell them to their faces that they were hypocrites. Especially so when He made it clear that the
signs they were expected to recognize were as plain as the color of the
sky! For us today, however, this begs
the question will the second coming of Christ be accompanied by signs as
obvious as those that were present at His first coming?
By
now many are familiar with the work of Sir Robert Anderson in his book The Coming Prince, which deals with the
seventy weeks prophecy which we find in the book of Daniel. In his book he shows how the very day of
Christ’s presentation as King was prophesied by Daniel to occur sixty nine
weeks of years, or 173,880 days after the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem which was given by
Artaxerxes Longimanus on March 14, 445 B.C.
Is it then any wonder why Jesus called out the Pharisees and the
Sadducees for not knowing the time was at hand and recognizing it?
Unfortunately,
not only did they not recognize the time of His appearing, they went further by
rejecting Jesus as their prophesied Messiah, and condemning Him to die on a
cross by crucifixion. In doing so, they
willfully ignored the myriad of prophecies that He fulfilled about the coming
Messiah which were written by the prophets of old. Of course, this too was prophesied many years
before by both Daniel and Isaiah.
“Know
therefore and understand, That from the going forth
of the command To restore and build Jerusalem Until Messiah the Prince, There shall
be seven
weeks and sixty-two weeks; The street shall be built again, and the wall, Even
in troublesome times. “And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off,
but not for Himself; Daniel 9:25-26a NKJV
Who has
believed our report? And to whom has the
arm of the LORD been revealed? For He shall grow up
before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form
or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we
should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and
acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He
was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Isaiah 53:1-3 NKJV
Yet
there is something else which has caught my attention that I would like to pass
on to you. There is an old Jewish saying
which you may have heard of which states, “coincidence isn’t kosher”. I have always enjoyed quoting that phrase
because I have often taught studies exploring the possibility that in a world
created by an omnipotent God, there is no room for coincidence since He has
foreordained all that is to occur. With
that in mind, let us return to the subject of the coming Tetrads which we
discussed a couple of weeks ago.
The
first lunar eclipse, or blood moon, is going to occur on Passover next
month. If we truly believe that God has
set the Heavens in their place and all that they contain, and that He also instituted
the Jewish feasts to be celebrated on their appointed days, it follows then
that He was well aware that this eclipse and those that follow are going to
happen exactly on the feast days. I also
find it interesting that the first eclipse is set to occur on Passover, the
very day that Jesus was rejected as the prophesied Messiah, the King of the
Jews.
When
Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus out and sat down in the
judgment seat in a place that is called The Pavement, but in
Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the
sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” But they cried out,
“Away with Him, away with Him! Crucify Him!” Pilate
said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have
no king but Caesar!” John 19:13-15 NKJV
Acknowledging
that Jesus held the religious leaders accountable to know and recognize the
time of His appearing, I believe it goes without saying that He also holds us
as believers today accountable to see and understand the season of His return
for His church.
“And
what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!” Mark 13:37 NKJV
Will
the time of Jacob’s trouble, Daniels Seventieth Week, begin on God’s clock
exactly where it stopped? I believe that
is a fair question to ask, and considering the situation Israel finds itself in
today along with the coming eclipses, it seems to be a distinct
possibility. Am I predicting that this
will definitely occur? No, however it would not surprise me at all if it
did. It is also my firm belief that just
as Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the coming Messiah as a sign to Israel, I
believe He will provide signs of His coming for the church that any who choose
to watch for will see and recognize for what they are.
The
next few weeks may prove to be some of the most exciting the church has ever
seen.
Keep
watching.
