50 Reasons Why We Are Living In The End Times: Part 1

The Bible says we cannot know the time of the Lord's return (Matthew 25:13). But the Scriptures make it equally clear that we can know the season of the Lord's return (1 Thessalonians 5:2-6):

This passage asserts that Jesus is coming like "a thief in the night." But then it proceeds to make it clear that this will be true only for the pagan world and not for believers. His return should be no surprise to those who know Him and His Word, for they have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to give them understanding of the nature of the times.

Furthermore, the Scriptures give us signs to watch for — signs that will signal that Jesus is ready to return. The writer of the Hebrew letter referred to these signs when he proclaimed that believers should encourage one another when they see the day of judgment drawing near (Hebrews 10:25-27). Jesus also referred to the end time signs in His Olivet Discourse, given during the last week of His life (Matthew 24 and Luke 21). Speaking of a whole series of signs which He had given to His disciples, He said, "When you see all these things, recognize that He [the Son of Man — that is, Jesus] is near, right at the door" (Matthew 24:33).

Every time I think of "Signs of the Times," I am reminded of a great man of God named Elbert Peak. I had the privilege of participating with him in a Bible prophecy conference held in Orlando, Florida in the early 1990's. Mr. Peak was about 80 years old at the time.

He had been assigned the topic, "The Signs of the Times." He began his presentation by observing, "Sixty years ago when I first started preaching, you had to scratch around like a chicken to find one sign of the Lord's soon return."

He paused for a moment, and then added, "But today there are so many signs I'm no longer looking for them. Instead, I'm listening for a sound — the sound of a trumpet!"

One hundred years ago in 1907 there was not one single, tangible, measurable sign that indicated we were living in the season of the Lord's return. The first to appear was the Balfour Declaration which was issued by the British government on November 2, 1917.

This Declaration was prompted by the fact that during World War I the Turks sided with the Germans. Thus, when Germany lost the war, so did the Turks, and the victorious Allies decided to divide up both the German and Turkish empires.

The Turkish territories, called the Ottoman Empire, contained the ancient homeland of the Jewish people — an area the Romans had named Palestine after the last Jewish revolt in 132-135 AD.

In 1917 Palestine included all of modern day Israel and Jordan. In the scheme the Allies concocted for dividing up the German and Turkish territories, Britain was allotted Palestine, and this is what prompted the Balfour Declaration. In that document, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, declared that it was the intention of the British government to establish in Palestine "a national home for the Jewish people."

The leading Evangelical in England at the time was F. B. Meyer. He immediately recognized the prophetic significance of the Declaration, for he was well aware that the Scriptures prophesy that the Jewish people will be regathered to their homeland in unbelief right before the return of the Messiah (Isaiah 11:11-12).

Meyer sent out a letter to the Evangelical leaders of England asking them to gather in London in December to discuss the prophetic implications of the Balfour Declaration. In that letter, he stated, "The signs of the times point toward the close of the time of the Gentiles... and the return of Jesus can be expected any moment."

Before Meyer's meeting could be convened, another momentous event occurred. On December 11, 1917 General Edmund Allenby liberated the city of Jerusalem from 400 years of Turkish rule.

There is no doubt that these events in 1917 marked the beginning of the end times because they led to the worldwide regathering of the Jewish people to their homeland and the reestablishment of their state.

Since the time of the Balfour Declaration, we have witnessed throughout the 20th Century the appearance of sign after sign pointing to the Lord's soon return. There are so many of these signs today, in fact, that one would have to be either biblically illiterate or spiritually blind not to realize that we are living on borrowed time.

I have personally been searching the Bible for years in an effort to identify all the signs, and it has not been an easy task to get a hold on them. That's because there are so many of them, both in the Old and New Testaments.

I have found that the best way to deal with them is to put them in categories, and in doing that, I have come up with six categories of end time signs. We will explore these catetories beginning in Part 2 of this series.

The issue here is that an expression of love or affection is not a personal attack by forum rules nor is it "making it personal" by Religion Form guidelines.

On the Religion Forum, there are three form of "making it personal."

The first is reading another Freeper's mind. For one Freeper to call another Freeper "dear" or say "I love you" is not reading the other guy's mind but expressing his own.

The second is attributing motives to another Freeper, personally. Again, calling another Freeper "dear" doesn't say anything about his motives.

The third is making the thread "about" individual Freepers. This can happen with regard to most any issue - including this one. All the Freepers involved might be told to "knock it off" or "leave the thread" if they have derailed the discussion so badly that other Freepers are adversely affected by it.

It is a judgment call though, like deciding when a thread must be locked for "childish behavior."

If you want to "return fire" for the use of a term of endearment, you must also use a term of endearment such as "honey" or "sweetie pie" or "beloved" etc.

Quite interesting, since he wasn’t prosecuted in civil court. It is true that Tyndale varied in fortune with Henry. His opposition to Henry’s divorce encouraged Henry, who started as an avid Catholic, to hate Tyndale. Thomas More hated Tyndale as well, writing several obscene pieces against him and I’m told one book fingers More as the man most responsible for Tyndale’s arrest.

That said, Anne Boleyn was a strong supporter of him. In one of his works, he argued the sovereign of a country didn’t need to give allegiance in civil matters to Rome. Henry was quite happy when he heard passages of it read, but was not so happy when he found out who wrote the passages.

After his arrest, one of his closest friends, Thomas Poyntz, tried to arrange his freedom. His brother John took a petition to Thomas Cromwell, who had already sounded out King Henry. “A memorandum records that he made a visit to the palace, probably in August [1535] ‘to know the king’s pleasure for Tyndale, and whether I shall write or not’. The king agreed that efforts should be made to save Tyndale. This may have been at the prompting of Queen Anne; she was pregnant again...” - God’s Bestseller, pg 357.

Further, “Cromwell wrote two letters...One was addressed...the archbishop of Palermo; the other was to the marquis of Bergen...The letters have not survived. They must, however, have appealed for clemency as a matter of grace rather than law. Heresy was an international crime, in the sense that the courts of any territory in which a suspect was seized were competent to try him or her, regardless of nationality. Tyndale was thus charged under the laws of the Low Countries.” - pg 357

Poyntz was one of the couriers. “After the marquis had read the letter, he told Poyntz irritably that some Flemings ‘were burned in England not long before’...and that the English themselves burnt Anabaptists at Smithfield” - pg 357

Eventually the marquis did write letters of mild support, but the appeal was turned down by the queen-regent and council. - pg 358 Eventually, the guy who betrayed Tyndale was able to have Poyntz arrested for a time as a suspected heretic.

As I wrote before, Tyndale’s 3 main accusers were theologians: Ruard Tapper, Jacobus Latomu and Jan Doye. After the Tyndale matter, Tapper was appointed by the Pope as inquisitor general of the Low Countries. I should note the Low Countries fell under the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

The actual proceedings were in private. What we know of them comes from what Latomus wrote 6 years later. For a discussion of it, see:

http://www.tyndale.org/Reformation/1/wilkinson.html

Meanwhile, in England, Catherine of Aragon died, first writing Henry a last letter showing far more love that that evil man deserved! If it didn’t prick his conscience, then the stillborn son of Anne may have turned the tide. His influence in the matter with Charles V may not have been sufficient even if he had tried, but with the Tyndale supporting Anne soon to die, Tyndale couldn’t expect any further help, however mild.

Tyndale was found guilty of heresy in August 1536...a year after More’s death. He was degraded from the priesthood and handed over to the civil authorities. Since he was not a relapsed heretic, he was given the mercy of being strangled before burnt, but it seems the executioner did a poor job and he was probably still alive when the fires were lit. There is no corroboration of Foxe’s claim that his last words were for Henry to have his eyes opened, but neither is there a contradictory account.

I’m not certain - I make no pretense of being a historian - but I believe a charge of treason against Henry would have required his transfer to England. Given that he had 3 Catholic theologians as prosecutors, I doubt he was tried for civil treason. Also, Queen Anne was a supporter of his at the time of his arrest, and Henry was suffering no harm from Tyndale’s opinions on his marriage.

Also, there was nothing unfair about his trial. On the charge of heresy, his published works would suffice for conviction. According to “God’s Bestseller”, Tyndale was treated with exceptional courtesy for the time, and not tortured during interrogation. Since what we know comes from one of his interrogators, it could be biased - but there was no doubt that Tyndale was a heretic, as defined in the days of Charles V & the Catholic Church. The decrees from the Council of Trent could have been written with him in mind (although they were not).

King Henry was a horrible man. Thomas More’s wife once told him how glad she was that he had the king for a friend...More replied that if Henry could gain a castle by killing More, then he’d be dead in a moment.

However, the evidence seems good to me that Tyndale was killed for religious reasons. That was quite common in the day, and both Protestants and Catholics did so with glee. Some of Thomas More’s writings show a rather unsaintly rejoicing in how much the burning men suffered. I admire Calvin for some of his theological writings, but if I wandered into Geneva in his day, I would have been executed as a Baptist heretic, if I had the strength to stay true.

Personally, I find it a bit overwhelming at times to realize the things we discuss openly here were once the cause of many men dying in great pain!

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