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In the first chapter of "The Revelation of Jesus Christ," John described Jesus standing in the midst of seven golden candlesticks. As he neared the end of that description, he mentioned some instructions which Jesus gave him as to what he should write in the book, saying,
"And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, 'Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter' " (Rev. 1:16-19). It is indeed these three things which John wrote in his book, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ."
No one was given this revelation except John Zebedee, and, in so doing, He showed that, when He has a special work that needs done, He picks a man to do it. The ministry of Paul is another prime example of this. Consider also Mark 13:34, "The son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch."
Jesus gave the porter's job to Peter, that is the responsibility of governance, as Jesus showed us in John 21:15-17, "Feed my sheep," and Matt. 24:45-47: "Who then is a faithful and a wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?" Apparently, Jesus made Peter to sit in the "Chief" seat, above the other brethren. And Matt. 24:47 proves that the Lord will have such a man ruling over His household when He returns "in like manner" as His disciples had seen Him go away.
The Holy Scriptures reveal that, after a time, Christianity would fall away from the truth of the Gospel, and plunge into a period of great spiritual darkness (Acts 20:29). He further showed that, just before the return of our Lord Jesus, He would manifest, among the Gentiles, the Glory which He had manifested among the Jews in the first century (Rom. 2:6-11)
During that vast time of darkness, which began a few short years after the destruction of the Jewish nation in A.D. 70 (Jude 1:3-4), many false doctrines received veneration by the new, carnal and liberal ministers who rose to power, just as Paul prophesied, in Acts 20:29, that they would.
During her downward spiral into that spiritual pit, the "faithful city," of Isaiah 1:21-27, (the Church of the Firstborn, Heb. 12:22-25) became a harlot, and the Lord changed her name to "Mystery, Babylon The Great." Every visage of "The Church" which God had so wonderfully manifested upon that Jewish half of the Church of God was gone; to be seen no more until it is manifested upon the Gentile half of the Church, just before the return of our Lord (Rom. 2:6-11).
When Protestantism began to come out of the Babylon of Rome, in what has long been called the Reformation period, they carried with them many of the doctrinal errors which had so long prevailed. Those errors are prevalent yet today throughout the Christian community. Jeremiah boldly, and plainly, addressed this condition, and explained that, just before the return of Jesus Christ, the Gentile Christians would finally realize the extent to which they have been influenced by those long-standing, and much emphasized, errors. He said, in Jeremiah 16:16-21, "O Lord, my strength, and my fortress, and my refuge in the day of affliction, the Gentiles shall come unto thee from the ends of the earth, and shall say, surely our fathers have inherited lies, vanity, and things wherein there is no profit." That "day of affliction" hastens upon us even as I write.
One of those errors is supported by its perpetrators' misapplication of Matthew 24:35,36, which says, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, - But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." We hear preachers read these words and declare boldly, and with finality, that no one knows when Jesus is coming back, nor can they know.
This is an amazing misuse of the words of our Lord Jesus. This statement is not even about the coming of Jesus. It is about a great cataclysm which shall reek havoc upon "Heaven and Earth," not "upon the world," and that event does not occur until more than a thousand years after the coming of Jesus and the resurrection of the dead.
In Matthew 24:3, the disciples asked Jesus a three-point question, saying, "When shall these things be (the destruction of the Temple)? And what shall be the sign of thy coming? And of the end of the world? Jesus took the space of the rest of chapter 24 and all of chapter 25 to answer the three points of their question. The answer to the first question included the destruction of the nation of Israel together with the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70. The answers to the second and third questions show that both events occur shortly before His return.
It is not particularly easy to rightly divide "His answers," but the part with which we are dealing here is quite simple. "The end of the world (the collective civilizations of the Earth)," is about the events which shall occur in the last 120 years or so before the resurrection; many of the details of which are revealed in the parables of both the 24th and 25th chapters.
In Job 24:1, God asked us, "Why, seeing times are not hidden from the almighty, do they that know Him not see His days?" Why indeed? Even in the Old Testament "the children of Issachar, were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do" (1 Chron. 12:32)." Not all of the tribes knew the times, but that did not keep the tribe of Issachar from knowing.
We are living at the very end of our allotted 6000 years. Actually, the 6000th year begins with the autumn equinox in 2010. That year is the fulfillment of the O. T. allegory of the year of Jubilee. That is the year in which our Lord shall come, and the dead shall be raised, and we shall be changed.
I know that some of you will think that it is blasphemy for me to make such an assertion. However, I know men who claim that God called them to be pastors, and others claim to be evangelists. That doesn't seem to bother anyone. What about ministers who claim to be teachers? Or more yet, what about those well known, and prominent, ministers today who claim to be prophets? If any man is a prophet, and God is going to do anything, He will reveal it to that man, and/or other such prophets and apostles, before he does it, just as He said he would do, in Amos 3:7. Jesus is coming, and before He comes, God will tell us when and where. How else could Rev. 19:7,8 possibly be fulfilled? It is absolutely necessary that the Bride knows when the Bridegroom is coming, otherwise she could not possibly go out to meet Him.
In the March, 1962 issue of the newspaper of The Church of God, "The Vision Speaks," the prophet Grady R. Kent published an article in which he declared "The Beginning of the End." Then, in about the last week of that April, while Brother Kent was on a mission to Israel, God spoke to me in a voice, and revealed to me how to calculate the time of the end, by the allegory of barley harvest.
The Lord spoke to me again, in the fall of 1962, and told me that my grandfather, who was about 84 at the time, would die in 1969, and then I would know that I was right about the time. My grandfather did die in the Spring of 1969, as a sign to me, so that I would surely know that I had not simply imagined that voice which had spoken to me in April, 1962. And I have not been disobedient to the heavenly vision.
Again, in October of 1963, the word of the Lord came to me in a vision, showing me that He had chosen me to reveal to the Christians, who would be living in these final, perilous years of the grace age, God's schedule: His prophetic time table, as those events are about to come to pass.
In about the 2nd or 3rd week of October 2001, about a year after the beginning of the Palestinian Intifada against Jerusalem, I began to prophesy that the carnage in Jerusalem would cease in about the last of March, 2004. Then, in our May, 2002 issue of The Bible Guys News Letter, I declared that fact openly to whoever might get a copy of our newsletter, or read it on our website, "thepeopleoftruth.org." By the end of March, 2004, the carnage in Jerusalem had indeed stopped, and for five full months thereafter, there was not one attack in all Israeli territory, by the which God emphasized the fact that the Intifada against Jerusalem had indeed fulfilled the forty two months of which John prophesied in Rev. 11:2. But that was only the first of three, three and a half year periods. We are now in the last seven year period before the coming of the most famous Bridegroom in the history of mankind. It is time, yes high time, to wake out of sleep, and begin to get ourselves ready for his arrival.
God spoke to the Apostle John, and gave him a special task, to write the revelation of Jesus Christ, and the effect of His ministry, from early in the first century A.D., unto the end of the seventh millennium, and beyond. Even so, God has spoken these things to me, and has given me this ministry so that, if you will hear His words, His counsel, and His reproof, and seek righteousness and seek meekness, it may be that you shall be hid in the day of His wrath (Prov. 1:22-33; Zeph. 2:1-3).