The
SIGN of the END of TIME
William
H. Grotheer
Bible
Prophecy Lectures 1995
p 2 -- Twice
during His earthly ministry, Jesus sought to cleanse the Jewish
Temple. At the first Passover, following His baptism, the record
reads:
And the Jews' passover
was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple
those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money
sitting. And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove
them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured
out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; and he said unto
them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's
house an house of merchandise. (John 2:13-16)
At the Passover, just
prior to His death, Jesus attempted once again to cleanse the Temple.
Coming to the Temple after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He
"began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought;
saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer;
but ye have made it a den of thieves." (Luke 19:45-46)
On His approach to the
city, Jesus had paused, and wept over it, "saying, if thou
hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which
belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes, ...
because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation," (Luke
19:41-44) The days of the probation of the Jewish nation as the
chosen people of God were rapidly drawing to a close. Jesus was
entering the last week of His earthly life.
During this last week
- Tuesday to be exact - Jesus exposed before the people, the hypocrisy
of the religious leadership. He used strong language, declaring,
"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the
damnation of hell?" He had sent to them prophets and wisemen,
but they had killed these and persecuted them from city to city,
with the result that "all the righteous blood shed upon the
earth" was to "come upon this generation." (Matt.
23:33-36) The final generation had arrived for the Jewish nation.
Jesus declared emphatically, "Your house is left unto you desolate."
(verse 38) No longer was it "my Father's house." Twice
He had tried to restore it to its original purpose as an house of
prayer. Now it was their house, and it was desolate. Having thus
spoken, Jesus left the Temple never more to enter its once sacred
precincts. (24:1)
This stunned the disciples.
Their whole religious life was centered on the Temple and its services.
Annual pilgrimages had been a part of their life and practice. Now
the center of their religious devotion, desolate! This could not
be, so they pointed Jesus to "the buildings of the temple."
His response only added to their consternation. "There shall
not be left here
p 3 -- one stone
upon another, that shall not be thrown down" (24:2). Silence
reigned as they made their way from the Temple back to a secluded
garden on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Finally, four of the
disciples ventured to ask Jesus a question. Such a catastrophe involving
the Temple had to be the end of the world, so they phrased their
question - "Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall
be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?"
(24:3) They did not ask for "signs", but for the specific
sign that would mark the event. Luke in outlining the response of
Jesus gives the sign which would mark "when these things shall
be," and the sign which would signal the end of time.
He quotes Jesus as saying concerning "when these shall be":
When ye shall see
Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof
is nigh. (Luke 21:20)
Jesus had declared the
Temple desolate, now He gives the sign by which His disciples would
know that the desolation of the city was nigh. The sign was to be
an historical event involving the city, not the temple. When this
sign was to occur, they were to depart from the city. He tells them
why:
For these be the
days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled...
for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this
people. (verses 21-23)
The sign occurred in
AD 66. Cestius with his Roman legions surrounded the city. Josephus
tells us that he then "retired from the city, without any reason
in the world." (Wars of the Jews, bk II, chap. XIX,
par. 7) The Jewish army poured forth from the city in hot pursuit.
The gates were left open, and the Christians departed the city.
Not a Christian perished in the destruction and desolation which
followed when Titus renewed the siege of the city in AD 70. Why?
The Christians believed the prophecy of Jesus, and acted upon it.
Herein is the mark of the true follower of Christ - the acceptance
of His words and acting in harmony with those words.
In this same setting,
- the history of the city of Jerusalem - Jesus gave the sign that
would mark the end of time. He declared:
Jerusalem shall be
trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be
fulfilled. (Verse 24)
We need to take note
of the words which Jesus used as recorded by Luke. First, one word
in the text is translated two different ways. If not understood,
it can limit our perception. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were to
"be led away captive into all nations." The city
was to "be trodden down of the
p 4 -- Gentiles,
until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." There
was to be "upon the earth distress of nations."
Each word emphasized, "nations," or "Gentiles,"
is the same word in the Greek - ta ethne (ta
eqnh)-
and means those nations other than Israel.
These Gentile nations
were to tread down the city. Nineteen centuries of history should
provide adequate proof of this fact - "first the Romans, then
by the Arabs, next by different Christian nations during the Crusades,
fourth by the Turks up to the end of the first world war, then by
the British, and finally by the Jordanians." Then in the Six-Day
War of June, 1967, a dramatic change took place. The Reader's
Digest (March, 1975) in an article, "Jerusalem - Too Holy
for Its Own Good," gave the story:
A stone wall, rising
starkly in the Walled City, figures strongly in Israel's adamancy
over not wanting to give up East Jerusalem. This is the Western
Wall, a fragment of the rampart of a platform on which the First
Temple of King Solomon and the Second Temple of King Herod stood.
The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70, when the
Jews were driven into diaspora, or dispersion. Throughout
19 centuries of diaspora, the wall, or the memory of it served
as a spiritual beacon and a symbol of a lost homeland to Jews the
world over. During that time, Passover and Yom Kippur services ended
in the incantation in Hebrew: "Next year in Jerusalem. "...
When the British withdrew
from Palestine in 1948, and Jews and Arabs fought for the control
of the state, the Jews managed to hold West Jerusalem... Yet, tantalizingly,
the Western Wall remained just beyond reach. Jordan annexed East
Jerusalem as well as the West Bank of the River Jordan, a territory
that surrounds the city on three sides. For 19 years, a no-man's-land
separated the two sectors, and Jordanians refused to allow Jews
to worship at the Western Wall.
When war came again in
1967, Israel urged Jordan's King Hussein to stay out of it, promising,
in return, not to attack Jordan. But, ... Hussein sent artillery
shells crashing into West Jerusalem. Israeli soldiers counterattacked,
and poured into the Walled City. Their religious fervor was such
that many headed directly for the Western Wall, where they paused
to pray. For the first time in 19 centuries, the wall was under
Jewish control. (p. 132)
The restoration of Old
Jerusalem to Israeli control marked the fulfillment of the second
part of Jesus' prophecy - "Jerusalem shall be trodden down
of the nations until the times of the nations be fulfilled."
It also was the sign which signaled the beginning
of the end of time.
p 5 -- Secondly,
we need to consider, how the word, "times" is used in
Luke 21:24. The Greek word translated, "times," is kairos
(kairoV). The same word was
used by Luke in quoting Jesus as He wept over Jerusalem, because
they did not know "the time of [their] visitation"
(Luke 19:44). Paul used the word when he wrote of the accepted time
for salvation. (II Cor. 6:2) It is probationary time - not chronological
time(cronoV).
Thus the fulfillment of "the times of the nations" means
simply that the probationary time allotted to the nations as corporate
bodies was closing.
Thirdly, the record
in Luke connects this event with a specific condition to begin among
the nations - "distress of nations with perplexity." The
word, "distress" is a translation of the Greek word, sunoche
(sunoch), meaning a constricted
passage way, or being "in the narrows." The prepositional
phrase - "with perplexity" (en
aporia) - carries the force of inability to meet the demands
placed on the nations financially. The word, aporia is found
in the papyri used in an imperial edict, in this sense. The verb
form is used of a weaver who disqualified himself from public service
because, though having means, they were inadequate to meet the demands
of the office. (The Vocabulary of the Greek New Testament,
p. 68) We might illustrate the financial picture conveyed by the
use of this word, aporia by contrast. Following the Panic
of 1837, an editor of a paper in the midwest declined an offer of
a cow and calf for a $1.00 advance subscription for his paper "because
he had no way of realizing that amount of cash from the transaction."
There was almost literally, no money. Now there is money but it
is not adequate to cover the increasing costs.
This financial crisis
for the nations began in 1967 as predicted in harmony with the sign
given. The late C. V. Myers, noted in the London Financial Times,
as the "well-known Canadian financial expert" wrote in
his Finance & Energy of July 4, 1974:
It has now been established
over the course of the last seven years -- since 1967 --
that there is nothing in this world the international monetary authorities
can do to stem the advance of gold, or to stem the collapse of inflation
- or to avoid the enormous deflation -- the global liquidity crunch
-- and the resulting depressions.
In 1975, Myers wrote
from Zurich, Switzerland, that the "monetary confusion deepens,"
stating:
From all that I have
observed of international conferences since 1967, I do not
believe that any conference is going to come up with any workable
answer, It seems that the situation will just continue to deteriorate.
Only six months ago we heard every monetary authority in the world
shouting, "either
p 6 -- we
lick inflation or we are doomed. This is the battle of the century."
President Ford said,
we have a war, and we intend to fight this war against inflation.
The way he is fighting this war against inflation is to add a $70
to $100 bil. deficit to the U.S. budget.
What happened to all
the dire predictions of the result of inflation? All brains have
been stunned. There is no answer - - so now they begin to think
no answer is necessary. Or at least they have decided there is no
use thinking about it at all. Therefore I can only see as the end
product, as I have repeatedly said in these letters -- and especially
after attending the big world meetings of the IMF -- the answer
is total collapse. Either the countries will have to go back to
a system which will stabilize the money, such as gold -- or the
social order, not only of the United States but of all of the industrialized
world, will disintegrate, and from this enormous confusion new governments
will arise after much suffering and bloodshed, starvation and horror.
These governments would be dictatorships.
Recently D'Estaing [Economist
and former Premier of France] observed: "The world is unhappy.
It is unhappy because it doesn't know where it is going, and because
it senses that if it knew, it would discover that it is heading
for disaster. ... The crisis the world knows today will be a long
one. It is not a passing difficulty. It is actually the recognition
of permanent change. (ibid, March 11, 1975, pp. 1-2)
Keep in mind this beginning
date for the "distress of nations" - 1967. Newsweek,
noting the great California Tax Revolt of 1978, observed that "since
1967, the value of the dollar has declined 47.6 per cent,
and the average American working family is now barely better off
in real dollars than it was a decade ago." (June 19, 1978,
p. 21) The Consumer Price Index prepared by the US Department of
Labor uses as its "Base Period - 1967 = 100." (See Appendix
A) Jesus gave the signal when these things would begin to come to
pass - the sign of the end of time - Jerusalem would again return
to Israeli control. The beginning of the financial "distress
of nations" coincides with that date!
Movings in the Spirit
World
The date 1967
marked significant movements in the "spirit" world. John
Godwin in his book, Occult America, wrote:
The year 1967
was a historic milestone for the United States toy industry. In
that year Americans ditched their longest-standing favorite among
board games, Monopoly, and elevated Ouija boards to its place. (p.
271)
p 7 -- In 1967,
Eastern mystic religions were introduced into the West. The "hippie"
phenomenon reached a peak in midsummer and turned to Eastern religions
and their writings in an effort to provide meaning for a nonviolent
generation. "The Beatles were the best known of the celebrities
who turned to Eastern religion as they sought 'transcendental meditation'
through contact with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, their chosen spiritual
leader. Timothy Leary advocated drugs like LSD, but also literary
resources of Eastern religion." (World Book Encyclopedia,
1968 Yearbook, p. 476) Isaiah predicting a time of religious
revival "in the last days," indicated that the participants
would "be replenished from the east, and [be] soothsayers like
the Philistines." (See Isa. 2:2-6)
The year 1967
marked the beginning of the "New Age" movement with its
spirit manifestations, and union of Western and Eastern religious
philosophy. Kenneth R. Wade in his book, Secrets of the New Age,
describes the roots of the Movement and the convictions resulting
from "messages" received from the spirit world. He writes:
At the core of the current
New Age movement is a community called Findhorn. Many if not most
of the movement's leaders have visited or lived at Findhorn. The
development of Findhorn illustrates what typically happens when
people try to meld Eastern and Western religions.
The roots of the community
go back to 1953 when Peter and Eileen Caddy visited Glastonbury,
England, In her book The Findhorn Garden, Eileen Caddy describes
Glastonbury as "a center of spiritual power." ...
While meditating at Glastonbury,
Eileen heard a voice speaking to her from within her mind. At first
the voice said simply, "Be still, and know that I am God,"
but later went on to explain that human beings - indeed everything
in the world - are a part of God. So the Caddy's started from a
Western mystical background and soon progressed to Eastern pantheism....
In their spiritual quest
to know the will of God, Peter and Eileen linked up with Dorothy
Maclean, who had developed a facility for communicating with various
spirit beings. The Caddys and Ms. Maclean were employed from 1957
until 1962 at the Cluny Hill resort hotel in northern Scotland.
Peter served as the hotel manager. During his tenure there, the
hotel prospered under the guidance that Dorothy received from the
spirits.
Then at the end of the
summer of 1962 the Caddys and Dorothy suddenly found themselves
unemployed. But because they had learned to trust the god they knew,
this did not worry them particularly. They simply took their small
traveltrailer and moved, along with the Caddys' three young sons
into
p 8 -- a
trailer park on nearby Findhorn Bay. ...
The soil at Findhorn
was more suitable for a quarry than for gardening. Digging revealed
that an inch or so down the soil gave way to sand, and below that
was gravel. The entire area seemed incapable of supporting any type
of garden crop. Yet the following spring, with the right mix of
compost, organic fertilizer, backbreaking work and communication
from beings they called devas, the Caddy's and Dorothy managed to
raise several crops successfully.
In the following years
they continued to expand their garden until it received local, then
nationwide, attention. During this time they became convinced that
the New Age would begin at the end of 1967. (pp. 23-25)
During the years various
New Age - oriented people visited Findhorn. The ones noted by Wade
in his book all had communion with some being from the spirit world.
In 1970 a David Spangler and his soulmate, Myrtle Glines came for
a visit and stayed for three years. During this time Spangler began
to receive messages from a spirit that identified itself as Limitless
Love and Truth. These messages are recorded in Spangler's book -
Revelation: The Birth of a New Age. This same spirit being
had sent messages to other people in England, "These [messages]
formed the basis of their belief that the New Age began at the end
of 1967." (Ibid., p. 27)
A Greek Idiom
Twenty times in his
two New Testament books - the Gospel and Acts - Luke uses the Greek
word, achri(s) (acri)
translated in Luke 21:24 as "until." However, in this
verse and in two others in Acts, he connects it with the Greek relative
pronoun, (hou), (ou[accent
over the o]) making it an idiomatic expression. How is it to be
understood? In Acts 27:31-34, we have recorded the story of Paul's
shipwreck on the way to Rome. During the storm, the crew and passengers
had eaten nothing. Now it appeared the boat was about to be dashed
to pieces on the rocks of an unidentified shore. The text reads
- "And while the day was coming on, Paul besought them
all to take meat." (v. 33). The word translated, ''while"
is the Greek, achri hou, as in Luke 21:24. It is obvious
that it is used in Acts to cover that identifiable period of time
between the first rays of light, and the full light of day.
How shall the idiom
be understood in Luke 21:24? When Israel took control of Jerusalem
in 1967, the government continued to function from Tel Aviv. On
July 30, 1980, the Knesset passed a Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capitol
of Israel. This Law read in part: (See Appendix B)
1.
Jerusalem,
complete and united, is the capital of Israel.
p 9 --
2.
Jerusalem is the seat of the President of the State, the Knesset,
the Government and the Supreme Court.
With this action, the
prophecy of Jesus met complete fulfillment. During this brief definable
period, 1967 to 1980, the probationary time allotted by God to the
nations was closing.
As this period neared
its end, Jimmy Carter was in the White House. When Pope John Paul
II visited the United States in 1979, the President invited him
to the White House. "It was the first time, not only that a
pope has visited the White House, but the first time any pope had
called on a governmental leader anywhere." (Religious News
Service {RNS}, Oct. 6, 1979) Here on the North Lawn, Protestant,
Baptist Jimmy Carter clasped hands with the Roman Catholic Pontiff,
symbolized in Bible Prophecy as "the little horn" of Daniel
7; the second phase of "the abomination of desolation"
of Daniel 8, and the wounded but restored head of the beast of Revelation
13, In welcoming the pope, Carter said, "I welcome you to the
White House the symbolic home of all our people. On behalf of every
American of every faith, I also welcome you into our nation's heart."
(Ibid.)
At the largest reception
of the Carter administration, and possibly the largest ever held
at the White House, attended by representatives of all three branches
of the American government, the pope, at the conclusion of the reception,
surprised the assembled dignitaries and guests by saying, "The
pope wants to bless you -- with the permission of the President
of the United States." (Ibid.) Such an apostolic blessing
by the pope for United States governmental officials would not have
been possible a decade earlier.
An interesting correlation
between this event, coming near the close of the achri hou
of Luke 21:24 in 1980, and 1967 is the fact that Jimmy Carter stated,
prior to his election, "In 1967, 1 had a profound religious
experience that changed my life." ("Carter and Religion,"
Oroville, CA, Mercury Register, May 7, 1976)
In 1980, Reagan was
elected to succeed Carter in the White House. Time magazine
reported that Reagan set as one of his earliest goals as president,
the recognition of "the Vatican as a state" and "to
make them an ally." (Feb. 24, 1992, p. 31) The attainment of
this goal and how it was realized with an assist from the ecumenically
oriented Baptist, Billy Graham, is a matter of history. The contrast
of how this recognition succeeded and the failed attempt of the
Truman administration to appoint General Mark Clark as Ambassador
to the Vatican dare not be overlooked. The strong protest deluged
the White House in 1951 caused the withdrawal of Clark's
p 10 -- name.
The appointment of William Wilson by Reagan met with little opposition
largely due to Graham having defused the Protestant protest. A change
had taken place. Jesus' prophecy indicated that such would be!
What is the prophecy
of Luke 21:24 saying at its least common denominator. Simply, that
the probationary time for the nations had closed, and that God had
given them into the hands of Satan to work his will with them. The
design of Satan is clearly defined in the Scriptures.
Through the prophet
Isaiah, God revealed the heart of Lucifer. He declared of Lucifer's
intent - "Thou has said in thine heart, I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit
also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north"
(14:13). The "mount of the congregation, in the sides of the
north" is "mount Zion, the city of the great King"
(Ps. 48:2), Jerusalem and the Temple site. This final objective
will be realized in the last remnant of time. In describing the
cause for the Sixth Plague of the final Seven, John the Revelator
writes:
And I saw three unclean
spirits like frogs... for they are the spirits of devils, working
miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the
whole world, to gather them to the battle of the great day of God
Almighty. ... And (they) gathered them together into a place called
in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. (Rev. 16:13-14, 16)
"Armageddon"
is a compound word in the Hebrew - "Har" - meaning mountain,
and "Mo'ed" meaning congregation. (See Appendix D) The
final gathering of the rulers of earth is prophesied to be Jerusalem,
at the mount of the congregation. Here the line needs to be clearly
drawn. Jesus as He left the Temple site declared it desolate; now
another is to come, and will seek to exalt himself at this very
site. This will be the antichrist par excellence, with his
vicegerent. Of this the prophet Daniel wrote:
And he shall plant
the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy
mountain; yet he shall come to his end and none shall help him.
(11:45; see also 9:16)
On June 30, 1980, the
Charge d'Affairs of the Permanant Observer Mission of the Holy See
to the UN lodged with the President of the Security Council a text
from the June 30 issue of Osservatore Romano, official organ
of the Vatican, asking that it be circulated as a Security Council
Document. It was (S/14032), and set forth "the position of
the Holy See concerning Jerusalem and all the holy places."
Citing past actions of the General Assembly, the text reads:
As early as its second
session, the General Assembly of the United Nations
p 11 -- approved
on 29 November 1947 a resolution on Palestine of which the third
part was devoted to Jerusalem. The resolution was confirmed in the
next two sessions, on 11 December 1948 and 9 December 1949 while
on 14 April 1950 the Trusteeship Council approved a "special
stature" for the city on the basis of the Assembly's decisions.
The solution proposed by the United Nations envisaged the setting
up of a "corpus separatum" for "Jerusalem and the
surrounding area," administered by the Trusteeship Council
of the United Nations.
This "territorial
internationalization" of Jerusalem was not of course put into
effect, because in the 1948 conflict the Arab side occupied the
eastern zone of the city and the Israeli side, the western. The
position of the United Nations does not appear at least as yet to
have been formally revoked. The General Assembly, as well as the
Security Council, has repeatedly, beginning with the resolution
of 4 July 1967, insisted on the invalidity of any measure taken
to change the status of the city.
The Holy See considers
the safeguarding of the Sacred and Universal character of Jerusalem
to be of such primary importance as to require any Power that comes
to exercise sovereignty over the Holy Land to assume the obligation,
to the three religious confessions spread throughout the world,
to protect not only the special character of the City, but also
the rights connected, on the basis of an appropriate juridical system
guaranteed by a higher international body.
Although Israel became
a nation once again in 1948, it was not until December 30, 1993
that Israel and the Vatican signed an accord calling for full diplomatic
relations between itself and the Holy See. Frank Dimant, Executive
Vice President of B'nai Brith who has met with Vatican officials,
emphasized to a Canadian audience assembled in the Calgary Jewish
Center that "Rome would not have made peace with the Jewish
state unless she was certain that Jerusalem would fall from Israeli
control and become an international city." (The Jewish Tribune,
April 13, 1995, p. 3)
In an editorial in The
Jewish Press (September 2, 1994), it was revealed that just
before the Oslo talks began, Israeli Foreign Minister Peres submitted
a plan to the Papacy outlining the Vaticanization of Jerusalem.
"The plan called for the extraterritoriality of the Old City
and the airport at Atarot, which would become a world-wide meeting
center." (See Appendix C)
What does all of this
mean? Simply in point of time we stand between the fulfilled prophecy
of Jesus as given in Luke 21:24, and the prophecy of Daniel
11:45 which can be seen to be in the process of fulfillment
even now. What then? We read:
p 12 -- And
at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which
standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time
of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that
same time. (Daniel 12:1)
Simply stated, this
means Divine intercession ceases, human probation closes for all
the inhabitants of earth. The end has arrived.
Jesus said:
When ye see these
things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at
hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass away,
till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my
words shall not pass away. (Luke 21:31-33)
Then He counseled:
Take heed to yourselves,
lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and
drunkenness, and the cares of this life, and so that day come upon
you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell
on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always,
that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all of these things that
shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. (Luke 21:34-36)
p 13 -- APPENDIX
A - Consumer Pricing Index Up -- Inflation again double-digit:
p 14 -- APPENDIX
B -- Knesset - Basic Law: JERUSALEM, CAPITOL OF ISRAEL
p 15 -- APPENDIX
C -- The Selling of Jerusalem
p 16 -- APPENDIX
D -- The Jewish Press (EDITORIALS)
p 17 -- APPENDIX
E -- A Place Called in the Hebrew Tongue ARMAGEDDON
End of Book.
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