I’m now going to disclose my on-target, nailed-down prognostications of the end times.  The meat and potatoes, ins-and-outs of the millennium and the tribulation.  Their ABCs with i’s dotted and t’s crossed.  My predictions?  Actually zero, zippo within a bucket of goose eggs!  Except for this– I know that Jesus is coming back again.  So get ready and be on the alert.  When?  No idea.  The bulls-eye specifics?  Not from me.  After all, I find it difficult to make predictions, especially about the future!!

When a Bible school student, I develop an aversion to all the end times guesswork.  Wrangling, verbal wrestling and arguing, which I figure may be mere student-things in Bible school.  Wrong.

Over the years I’ve run across quite a few who know, or so they imagine, all that’s going to happen when Jesus returns.  And I mean ‘all’.   Goings on before He comes back, in the middle and at the end.  Theories, hobby horses, charts and graphs.  I flee from them straight to Scripture, which makes more sense than guesses and guesstimates from all those final-event pundits put together.

The book of Daniel is fodder for these speculators.  So take a gander at the last chapter.  Daniel covers the main points.  The archangel Michael helps him understand ‘…the time of the end’ (Dan. 12: 4).  What’s happening?  Terrible traumas will plague the world.  Shock and misery like never before.  But God’s people experience deliverance.  Those whose names are in His book, the wise and those who share their faith, receive everlasting life (vs. 1-3).  The ungodly share none of the Lord’s eternal bounty.  Sadly, none.

Then Daniel’s told to seal away, lock up his prophecy for a later time.  When?  Later–‘…until the time of the end’ (v. 9).  Again, when?  Only God knows.  What’s revealed is that troubles will be for a time, some more time, and then a tad bit longer (v. 7).  The point?  Difficulties don’t last forever for God’s people.

Daniel wants more info.  He has a yen for added end time details (v.8).  This is what he’s told by an angelic messenger–‘…Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.  Many shall purify themselves…’ (Dan. 12: 9-10).

Bottom line–go about your life, living well for Jesus, knowing that whatever happens, whenever it does, we’re to be ready and wide awake, while remaining in the best hands ever.  The very best.  That much I guarantee!

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for standing with me through all times.  Amen.