(Ver. 1.2)  This is Part 1 in a series of advanced Bible Lessons about the signs of the end times.  Many people in our world do not understand that we are at the end of the end of our age.  A time called the end of the “last days” on earth.   The door to this Age of Man’s dominance upon the earth in conjunction with the works of Satan is closing rapidly.  Most of the world proceeds in the darkness and grows more evil for they do not know the signs of the time.  It is true what the prophet Hosea said “My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge”.  No doubt if people only had the right knowledge, they would also be able to see the times of God’s seasons are concluding quickly.   However, I heard a TV preacher the other day make a statement that I agreed with 100%.  This pastor of a church here in the U.S. prophesied a coming reveal of God’s Word; his statement said every mystery of God will be revealed in the next 2 years.  While I do not know if 2 years is the time frame for Christ’s return or not, I believe that there are countless numbers of mysteries in the Bible to be discovered by God’s people and that God will reveal them by His Spirit to His people before Jesus returns.  I mean think about it, why would God hide information in His book if it was not going to be revealed?   What do we need with mysteries and hidden information from the Bible in heaven?  I had a commenter say that it will sure be nice when we get to heaven and God can teach us all the things that we missed out on down here.  Why can’t God teach His people the truth, here and now?  Do you think that God is incapable of teaching His people what the truth is in the Bible?  All it takes is for God to show us some little keys and suddenly the whole book could unfold right before us like a giant puzzle solved.  You see when we get to heaven, there will be no enemies up there, no evil, no crime, and no deception and then what will we need with the truth?  From my vantage point on the earth, the church needs to know the truth now so that we can become one body in harmony and accord with each other.   That means we have a lot to learn in a very fast time frame.  If you are interested in learning these secrets of God with me, then get involved with what God is doing in these last remaining days on the earth.

1Th 5:1  But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you.

Why did God not have to write about the times and the seasons to these His people?  What the Bible does is reveal something that implies we will be able to see these times and seasons and understand that the coming of the Lord is at hand.  You can certainly look at the world around us and see many of these things mentioned in the Bible about the end are happening all around us.  There have been earthquakes, wars, rumors of wars and many going here and there saying peace, peace!   The signs of the times surround us every day.  Technology, computers and the internet have made it possible for the Anti-Christ to take control of the world’s finances like never before.  The Arab nations are building nuclear weapons and the nation of Israel is in perilous times.   There are terrorists and people killing people and people dying all around us.  In our calendar year, the seasons are used to determine the times of planting and reaping.  God has been planting seeds for the last 2000 years.  The knowledge of God has exploded like never before, but there is also a coming time of harvest, where God says that’s it, it is finished!  How do you tell people this and not sound crazy in our world today?  You sound like a chicken little saying the sky is falling!   You come across as a fool, but at least you can be a fool for Christ.

1Th 5:2  For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night.

So we have a verse that contradicts the previous verse.  This verse says the coming of the Lord will be like a thief in the night.  You just never know when a thief will show up.   But, what we have here is the same event from two perspectives.  Those who know Christ will be able to see the coming times and for those who do not know Christ it will happen suddenly without any warning.

1Th 5:3  For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.

We certainly see everyone today in the world calling for this illusive peace.  What they do not understand is who is behind these wars, the spiritual forces that manipulate and control people in doing the evil that they do.   This verse is again given in contrast to other verses in the Bible that reveal the church is not appointed to wrath.  Sudden destruction is not coming to the church, if you think it is then you are very confused in who wins this spiritual war.  Sudden destruction will come upon the evil people in the world who do not want to see the coming of Jesus.  The church of Jesus will be taken up and out of this destruction before it happens.

1Th 5:4  But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.

Here we have the previous verse to verse conflict resolution given to us very clearly.  We the church, are not those who are in the darkness.  The destruction is only for those in and of the darkness.  Those who walk in the darkness are those who have been blinded not to see the truth of God.  These are those who have been deceived into believing lies.  These verses in 1 Thessalonians 5 are contrasting the end events from two perspectives, one is light and the other is darkness.  Do you understand this?

1Th 5:5  Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.

We again see that the church of God is those who walk in the light of God.  Anyone who has light can see what is happening in the world because of the light that God is shining upon us.  This is in stark contrast to those in the darkness who cannot perceive the times or the seasons.

1Th 5:6  Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.

God says let us therefore be awake while we are in the light of day.  This is a spiritual statement and not a physical statement.  People still sleep at night and work during the day physically.  But, these natural realities correspond to spiritual realities that we must understand clearly.  To watch and to be sober is another contrasting statement to those who like to party during the night and get drunk.  These concepts are not that difficult to grasp if you have eyes that see spiritual things.

1Th 5:9  For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,

For God has not appointed us to wrath.  I spoke of this verse earlier because I wanted to show you that God is not angry at the church.  Wrath is a coming time of punishment for being evil and rejecting the truth.  Wrath will never be given to anyone who has been delivered from it by the blood of Jesus.  Jesus became sin that we might become the righteousness of God and this makes us saved from the impending doom of the world.  The Bible says that we (the church) have been reconciled back to God.  That means to be brought back into right relationship with Him.  I do not understand how people ignore verses like these in order to teach a mid-tribulation or post-tribulation rapture of the church.   The church will not be here during the time of wrath and that means we will be taken out of here very soon.   Jesus almost 2000 years ago said this about the times that we are living in:

Rev 22:20  He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

In being able to recognize the times and seasons, it requires that you understand the Bible and what it teaches on these subjects.  If Jesus could make this statement of coming soon almost 2000 years ago, how close do you think that we are today to the return of Jesus?  How could Jesus say this and it be a truthful statement?  To human perspectives 2000 years is almost an eternity.  But, we of course understand that God lives outside of the dimension of time in an eternal self-sustaining mode of existence.  God is called the ancient of days in the Bible, so time to God must be completely different than time to us.  To man 2000 years is a very long time since man only lives to be a 100 years old, but to God, it is just a yesterday.  If I said to you today, “I’ll see you tomorrow”, is that a long time to you?  To most people, tomorrow is not a long time.   We are simply talking about at the most 48 hours.  So when you see Jesus speaking of 2000 years as a short time you must find God’s definition of what time is in order for you to understand the real truth of the Bible.  This is called letting the Bible interpret itself:

2Pe 3:8  But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

So by God’s definition of time on the earth, one day can represent a time period of 1000 years to Him.  What God is doing is changing our definition to His definition so that we can see things from His perspective.  This is one of the most important concepts for correct Bible interpretation that you can find.  This definition gives us a reference to time that was hidden in the Bible.  When you start analyzing the Bible using this information you can begin to see why Jesus could say that He would see us at the end of the day tomorrow and it be nearly 2000 years on our timeline.  Therefore 2000 years would not be a long time in God’s eyes.   Seeing things the way God sees them is one of the most important keys to understanding the Bible.  Let’s break down this information we just read for a future point of reference:

1000 / 24 = 41.6667 years = 1 God Hour.   So One hour in God’s timeline would be just over 41 years of our calendar.

41.6667 / 60 = 0.6944 years = 1 God Minute.  One minute to God would be approximately .7 of a calendar year to us.

0.6944 * 365 = 253.47 days = 1 God Minute.  One God minute is just over 8 months of our calendar.

253.47 / 60 = 4.2245 days = 1 God Second.  101.388 hours = 1 God Second.  6083.25 seconds = 1 God Second.

While I have not found a reason why these numbers are significant, the concepts behind them are what I am trying to convey.   To hear when God tells you to wait a minute, that it could mean wait up to 253 days for the answer.  Even God’s Wait a Second, could be over 4 days long.  It is a radical shift in our perspective of time concepts.  It causes us to come up to a higher dimension of spiritual understanding.  It forces us to renew our minds with some new spiritual facts and knowledge.   What I am attempting to show you is that many times in the Bible God is defining words differently than we do.  Do you understand that any verse in the Bible can change dramatically depending on the definitions of the words found in the verse?  If we use man’s definition of the word found in the verse, there is a high probability that we just got it wrong.

By the law of first mention, we must go back to Genesis 1:5 to see the first time the word “Day” is used in the Bible.  God goes through a series of 7 days of creation, doing something new every day that is unique to the world that we live in.  This is a God week by definition and according to the definition of what a day is it means a period of 7000 years.   However, we must also change our perspectives to see what else is hidden in this information.  I do not believe that it took God 7000 years to create our world; I believe that God is trying to teach us something else about these days of creation.    If you have read my other blogs, you already know that these 7 days of creations are prophetic statements of the history of man on the planet.  Every day of the creation account has symbolic meaning of something that transpired in the earth during that millennium.   The 7^th day is a representative pattern of the coming millennial reign of Christ.  This is God’s day of rest upon the earth where we have no enemy to fight or defend against.  The first 6 days of creation are days of work for man, where we definitely have a great challenge presented to us by God.  Our enemy Satan has come with great fury knowing that his time is very short.  So while we do not know the exact day or hour for Christ’s return we can clearly see that the harvest season is fast approaching.  There is no way to know how long of time that we have exactly on the planet.  Our year 2010 is a corresponding year of 5771 in the Jewish calendar.  The Jewish people have supposedly calculated from the time of Adam’s creation to today and they think it has been just under 6000 years by a few hundred years.  I think that they are close but that it is much closer to that magic number of 6000 years than we think.  There is no way that God is going to wait over 200 years to come back to the earth, people would not survive that long.  If I had to guess a number I would say that the Jewish year is closer to 5985 to 5991.  But, that is just me pulling numbers out of the air that mean nothing.  It is only logical to see that Biblical prophecy is falling into place very rapidly around us.  I do not think that the coming of the Lord can wait more than a very few years.  If God does wait, then we are in trouble.  The world’s economies are declining and the wickedness in the world is increasing at rates that are off the charts.  I’m not going to explain the 6 day time line of creation like I have tried in other blogs.  So please if you do not understand these concepts go and search my website for additional information on this subject.  Using this information let’s look at some Bible verses that certainly apply:

Mat 17:1  And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart,

When you realize that Jesus did nothing by chance or accident, you begin to see important prophetic verses in the Bible with hidden double meanings within them.  In this verse it says Jesus went up to a mountain top and took with him Peter, James and John.  The symbolic representations in this verse are very clear.  If a day is as a thousand years then after 6000 years (6 God Days) of time on the earth Jesus will come to take His church up to be with Him.  This is what I see that this verse implies, you of course can believe whatever you like.  While on the mountain top Jesus meets with Moses and Elijah.  These are also two symbolic representations of those who were dead (Moses) and those who were caught up alive (Elijah) to be with Christ.  This whole story in this chapter of Matthew is giving us a prophetic confirmation of God’s timeline on the earth in hidden terminology.   I hope and pray that you can see it and how it fits together with other Bible verses.

Mat 24:37  But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Here Jesus is telling us some more secrets about His impending return.  It says that as it was in the days of Noah it will be again in the coming of the Lord.  So how was it in the days of Noah?  In Noah’s day, the people mocked Noah for building an ark.  They laughed because they knew not the impending coming disaster nor could they discern the times or the seasons because they were in darkness.  They lacked “knowledge” of the truth and perished because of this lack of knowledge.  Jesus says in this chapter of Matthew that they ate and drank and had parties.  They married, built houses and went about their ways ignoring the coming disaster.  This is a very important lesson for the coming of the end of the age that we are living within.   Noah was considered righteous and is a type of the church family of God.  Noah knew exactly when the disaster would start and how it would end.  Noah was prepared for the disaster, so Noah was saved from the disaster.  Noah escaped the wrath of God, and so it will also be with the church.  This is a clear pattern of the true church in the world today.  These are those who can read the signs of the times and understand the seasons.  The Lord’s coming will not come as a thief in the night just like the rain did not come as a thief in the night to Noah.  If you are prepared for Christ’s return then you will know and see His return clearly.  In the parable of the 10 virgins, there were 5 who were foolishly not prepared and went away for oil.  These are types of the people in the world who do not know God.  They will not perceive that the time is too short to try to get more oil.  While you are away Jesus will come back and those who are ready will go up.  This parable is an attempt by God to tell you to get ready now before you realize the time is too close at hand to get more oil.  Noah was 600 years old when the flood came, do you think that this could be a symbolic indication of the coming 6000 years of Christ’s return?   I certainly do.   Let’s look at one more verse about the end of time in relation to a historic type:

Luk 17:28  Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;

I take these verses very literally.  When Jesus says the coming of the son of man will come like it happened in the days of Lot, what does that tells us?  The righteous were taken out and the destruction began to rain down immediately upon those cities.  This again gives us a picture of the pre-tribulation departure of the church.  God does not appoint the righteous to His wrath.  This verse says those in the earth will be eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building and their consumed focus on these activities will cause them to miss the coming of Jesus.

Joh 2:1  And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:

God gives us little clues in the Bible in vastly spread out verses.  Here we have a reference to a real event that occurred during the days of Jesus on the earth, but God uses it to inform us of a spiritual event that is coming.  These types of verses are allegorical and they are real events that happened on the earth, but they show us a spiritual reality.  After two God days (2000 years) there is coming a wedding feast that will occur in heaven on the third day.  While the earth is experiencing the vials of Revelation, the church will be in heaven getting ready for a wedding feast.  Verses like these are very interesting and potentially controversial because it appears that I am pulling something out of context to teach a spiritual prophecy.  However, God uses this technique throughout the Bible in symbols, types and shadows and allegories.   I mean think about it, God could have used any number of days in this verse and it could have been accurate, but God chooses to use 2 days and then Jesus went to a weeding.  Do you think this is an accident?  I certainly do not!

Joh 4:43  Now after two days he departed thence, and went into Galilee.

Again we see that Jesus could have stayed however many days that he wanted, but it is recorded that Jesus stayed here 2 days and then the departure occurred.  Is this another coincidence or is this a prophetic picture of the coming departure of the church?  Only you can decide what you believe, it is.  I will believe that it is a prophecy.

Joh 6:40  And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.

Approximately four times in this chapter, Jesus uses the term the “Last Day” in conjunction with a time of resurrection and new life.   What is the last day of the week?  The “Last Day” of the week would be to the Jewish people the Sabbath, also called the day of rest.  The God Sabbath is also called the Millennial Reign of Christ.  We can very clearly see that Jesus is saying that there is coming a God Last Day where some things will change dramatically for us.  There are a bunch of verses like this one in the Bible that make much more sense when viewed in the context of the prophetic creation week.   When you apply God’s definition correctly you can understand how they are telling us our time on this earth is closing to an end, when we return to reign with Christ on the 7^th day.

Joh 7:37  In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.

Wow, there are so many verses that we could go into that give us this repetitive clue of the coming “Last Day” when the feast will come.  This of course will be the covenant marriage feast of the Lamb of God to His bride, the church.  You must search your Bibles for these little hidden clues and then you will begin to understand them.  God uses some very tricky methods of hiding information in the Bible in plain sight.

Joh 12:1  Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead.

Again we see an amazing coincidence of 6 days and then a feast.  The Passover was a representative symbolic meal of covenant between God and Israel.  This is a pattern of the coming Marriage Supper when the church eats and drinks with Christ.  So God could have put any number of days here in this verse but, chooses 6 as being significantly important for us to see.  This verse also speaks of being raised from the dead after these 6 days, so that is again too amazing to be an accident.  These are just more prophetic pictures of the coming to the end of our current earth age.

So while the Bible does not give us exact dates and times, it gives us enough information to discern the times and seasons that we are living in.  I hope that you are beginning to understand the concepts being taught and can see the references to the soon return of Christ.  God Bless!

If you would like to continue reading in this series you may go to “Part 2“.