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Reality Check

Second Coming in 2015!

You might have missed this, but Pastor Mark Biltz of El Shaddai Ministries in Bonney Lake, Washington thinks he knows when Jesus is probably coming back.

In a video interview on the Prophecy in the News website, reported on World Net Daily, Biltz discussed how he had been studying prophecies that focus on the sun and moon (because the lights in the sky are “for signs, and for seasons”).

Biltz believes that the feasts and festivals are God’s signal for when Jesus is going to return. Looking at Matthew 24:29-30, he sees “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light … And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.”

Biltz examined NASA’s eclipse website and discovered the precise times of solar and lunar eclipses, often called ‘blood moons’ because during these events the moon can take on a bloody color. He discovered a rare phenomeon of four consecutive lunar eclipses—this ‘tetrad’ has or will occurred at least six times during this century, but the only string of four consecutive blood moons that coincide with God’s holy days of Passover in the spring and the autumn Feast of Tabernacles occurs between 2014 and 2015 on today’s Gregorian calendar.

The last time the four blood moons occurred in the same pattern was in 1967-68, when Jerusalem recaptured by Israel. The time before that was 1949/50, when Israel became a nation. There were no such tetrads in between the 1600s and 1800s; in the 1500s, there were six but they didn’t fall on Passover.
If there were any before the 1500s, there’s no mention of it. The NASA database reports on average about 220 to 250 eclipses (about 60 total eclipses) per century, since 2000 BC.

The host of “Prophecy in the News” was convinced this particular sign did it: “This is the time! There are no more of these for the rest of the century.” Veteran prophecy watcher Hal Lindsey was more skeptical, calling it “pure speculation”: but he felt we were moving toward the end of the world because of the typical indicators—Israel’s birth as a nation and the rise of Russia, China and the European Union.

Unfortunately, no one in the article dealt with the verses higher up in Matthew 24: “And this Gospel shall be preached in all the world, for a witness to all the nations—and then the end shall come.”

Before anyone writes in, I don’t think that the Great Commission is something that can be “completed” at one moment in time per se—as if some single individual, when told somewhere on the earth, will be the “final person” and “everyone will know”—and at that moment the trump will sound.  I don’t think we can “control” the Second Coming of Jesus—He doesn’t say he’ll come just as soon as we finish the task, only that He won’t come before.  It is not an easy timeline to deal with, but while we don’t know when Jesus will come, we know when he will not. And, if I am reading Scripture correctly, he will not until we have obeyed this command.

The unfortunate fact of this sort of eschatology is that it encourages us to withdraw from the world—to become, in Carl Henry’s words, world-resisters rather than world-changers, a generation of enlightened spectators rather than empowered ambassadors. It’s amazing to me that we are still occupying ourselves with this date-setting nonsense when a billion people have yet to hear the Good News even once. I am, however, given much hope knowing that the vast majority of the church is not caught up in this.

And I am also confident because Jesus’ wording was as much a command as a promise: He knew that one day we would get the job done, and He would be able to say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I just wish we’d get our act together and make that day a little sooner.

Other Related Posts

• Second Coming in 2015!
• Stages of Completeness
• Does our eschatology block our creative thinking?
• Can we reach the goal?
• How to swarmishly make a difference to 100,000 people.

© 2008 Momentum Magazine.
Related: The Mission Manual · Justin Long's Annotated Links and Notes