A lot of people talk about end times, “we are living in the end times” they say. How do they know? Some say: “well, they have talked about the end times for thousands of years already and nothing happened. How do you know that today is the end times?” How do you even know when these end times started?
I travel around the world to many countries. Many churches invite me to speak about the future, about the coming of Jesus, about Israel, about the fulfilment of prophecy. Now I come to churches and the people say: “Well this is wonderful, you speak about Israel, about the coming of Jesus. You speak about the Kingdom of Peace that will come to this planet earth. But our pastor doesn’t speak much about it, hardly ever. Why not?
When you focus on the future you may wonder about what future we are heading for. The Bible is very clear about it. Ultimately we are heading for the Kingdom of God. One day Jesus will come back in Glory. He will sit on the throne of his father David and that throne stood in Jerusalem. He will rule among Jacob, which means Israel. And of His Kingdom, there shall be no end!
The weather in the Netherlands is often not very good. In Africa, there is beautiful warm weather and sunshine. In Holland, we listen to the weather forecast. And we are given the weather forecast for five or six days ahead. They can do that today because of the computers and the weather satellites. And so they can predict the kind of weather that comes to me and you.
The prophecies in the Bible are like slides. They contain a lot of details and show what the future will look like. Led by the Holy Spirit, the prophets described it to us. These prophetic slides do not present a road map. There is only one order of events in the Bible and that is Matthew 24. When the disciples ask: “Lord, how will we know that You come back in glory?”