Parky60 Loc: People's Republic of Illinois

3 REASONS I DON'T WE ARE IN THE END TIMES... YET

Reason #1: The 10 kings/kingdoms ruling much of, if not the entire world, must occur before the Antichrist’s arrival on the world stage (Dan:7:24).

This 10-king system will likely take many years to develop, as major geopolitical changes will need to take place first.

The Antichrist will be opposed to the 10-king system initially, after which he'll defeat 3 of the 10 (Dan 7:8, 20, 24), with all 10 kings pledging loyalty to the Antichrist and receiving royal authority (Rev 17:12, 17), thus changing the system into a theocracy (Rev 13:12, 15). This starts at the midpoint of the 7-year period known as the Time of Jacob’s Trouble (Dan 11:36-40, Matt 24:15-22, 2 Thess 2:3-12).

Therefore, we are awaiting the establishment of the 10 kings/kingdoms, probably located around the Mediterranean Sea (Dan 7:3). We are also waiting for the Antichrist to conquer that yet future system. And while all those events could take place quickly, it would seem reasonable to assume a decade or more would be needed before even the first events could take place.



Reason #2: Israel is currently not ruled by a world empire.

If you believe that the first 6 heads of the dragon in Rev 13:1-4, 17:3, 7, 9-11, are a picture of Egypt, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome (as many conservative scholars do), then the 7th and final head of the beast, the one with the 10 kings, will need to rule over Israel, because ruling over Israel is arguably the one thing a head of the beast must do, typologically speaking.

Ruling Israel is the thing that connects the other 6 empires in history, which is almost certainly why they are singled out from other Satanically inspired kingdoms (Dan 2,7, Rev 17:10-11).

Therefore, since the 10-king system is a precursor to the Antichrist (Dan:7:24), it means that Israel will need to be ruled over by the 10 king system significantly before the Antichrist first comes on the scene. And since Israel is currently a sovereign nation, many events will need to take place before these other events can occur.

Reason #3: Contrary to popular belief, the birth pains have not yet begun.

The “birth pains” in Matthew 24:4-8 (false christ’s, wars, famines, earthquakes), as well as the other events in Matthew 24, such as martyrdom (v.9, 21-22), celestial disturbances in the sun, moon, and stars (v.29), and resurrection (v.30-31), seem to be mirrored in the opening of the seals in Rev 6-7: The Antichrist (v.1-2), wars (v.3-4), famine (v.5-6), martyrdom (v.7-11), celestial disturbances (v.12-17), and resurrection (v.7:9-17). All of which seems to line up with the signs that announce the start of the Day of the Lord in the Old Testament (Joel 2:31).



If this is the correct interpretation, then the birth pains cannot have been occurring already, as many evangelicals teach, but instead the birth pains are prophecies of specific events, which will occur over a very short time period, probably starting at the beginning of the 7-year period, with the strengthening of the covenant, and the starting of the daily sacrifices (Dan 9:27). This will be directly followed by the Antichrist’s wars of conquest (Dan 11:40-12:1, Rev 6:3-4, Matt 24:6-7).

Therefore the main argument used by those attempting to prove that we are in the end times (that the birth pains are occurring now), is a bad, and even dangerous interpretation, because if you believe that the first stage of the 10-king system is the Antichrist’s system, when it isn’t – it may be evil, but it will not be ruled by the Antichrist until just before the midpoint – then you will be more likely to cheer the Antichrist as he appears to liberate the world, including Israel from that evil system.

This deception would be especially potent if the AC claims to be the messiah, supposedly fulfilling messianic prophecies, such as Isa 11:14-16, and other such prophecies of messianic conquests, not coincidentally, of the same nations mentioned in Dan 11:40-45.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

End Times, Last Days, Latter Days, End of the Age?

(Hebrews 1:1-2)

1 "On many past occasions and in many different ways, God spoke to our fathers through the prophets.
2 But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, and through whom He made the universe. (Berean Study Bible)

1 "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways,
2 hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds;" (American Standard Version)

1 "Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.
2 And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son. God promised everything to the Son as an inheritance, and through the Son he created the universe." (New Living Translation)

What is a Biblical explanation of the difference between these phrases?

Quick summary: They all mean the same thing.

End times (as that phrase) is not found in either The Authorized King James or the New International Version of the Bible. It is found in Daniel as “time of the end.” The Hebrew word translated as time (transliterated Hebrew word: ayth) can mean either time of an event or an occurrence while the word translated as end (transliterated Hebrew word: Qets) refers to end of time or the end of a space (i.e., end of the hall).

End of the Age is found in The New International Version of the Bible. The same text is translated as End of the World in the King James Bible. It is used only in the New Testament. The Greek words (transliterated Greek words: aion suntevleia) consistently translated as end of the world or age can mean “completion or consummation of” the following: eternity, the worlds/universe, or period of time/age.

Latter Days (found only in the Old Testament) and Last Days (found in both Old and New Testaments). In the Old Testament, the same Hebrew words are translated as either last days or latter days. The word for latter or last means “end, latter time for prophetic future time, or last/ hindermost. (tyrxa)The word for days is the common word for the day found throughout the Old Testament including Genesis where God creates the world in a period of days (yowm). It can mean day as opposed to night, a 24 hour period, a division of time, a working day, plural days can mean a lifetime, a time period (general) or a year.

How it is translated depends on the context. In the Greek New Testament again the King James translators are consistent. The word translated as last (eschatos) means the end of or last in a series or the end of space. The Greek word for days (hemera) is similar to the Hebrew in that it can refer to a particular day or days as in a lifetime or period of time.

The next step is a bit of a comparison. The words translated as last or end are similar to our English last or end. We might say “He’s at the end of the line.” Or we might say, “He’s last in line.” The meaning is essentially the same. The words translated as day/days/age/or the world can all mean a period of time or in some cases space. We can assume then that that all the phrases are different ways of saying the same thing.

https://amazingbibletimeline.com/blog/bible_timeline_end_times/

Matthew 24:3-14:
"As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. 'Tell us,' they said, 'when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'”

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you.
For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.
You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.
Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.
8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.

“Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me.
At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other,
and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,
but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.
And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.

Parky60 Loc: People's Republic of Illinois

I'll be succinct.

Actually we've been in the last days, end times, etc. since Jesus left the planet.

To clarify, my comments were about that period of time that Jesus and the books of Daniel and Revelation among others warned us about just prior to His return and how they're all intertwined.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

Thank you, Parky,

I knew you knew that.

I think the seeming disparity in wording relates to Psalm 90:4 and 2nd Peter 3:8.

sabath

Do you remember what God said about 6,000 years? I think he ment from Abraham to the second coming of Jesus, the Hebrew Calander says we are at the year 5700+, that leaves us about 250 years.

Zemirah Loc: Sojourner En Route...

Hi sabath, Why do you believe God's numbering of the years begins with Abraham, rather than the Creation and the Fall of Adam and Eve? - Below is partially what the ultra orthodox Jews and the Christian scientists believe.

"The Jewish ultra orthodox Rabbis' explanation of their calendar is as follows:

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/526875/jewish/The-Jewish-Calendar-Year.htm

"The Jewish/Hebrew date on Sunday, April 30, 2023, just passed, was Iyar 9, in the year 5783.

Their number of any given year is believed to be the amount of years which have elapsed since creation.

To find the corresponding Jewish year for any year on the Gregorian calendar, add 3760 to the Gregorian number, if it is before Rosh Hashanah. After Rosh Hashanah, add 3761.

A standard Jewish year has twelve months; six twenty-nine-day months, and six thirty-day months, for a total of 354 days. This is because their months follow the lunar orbit, which is approximately 29.5 days. Due to variations in the Jewish calendar,1 however, the year could also be 353 or 355 days.2

All the biblical festivals — Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot — are dependent on the agricultural seasons. Shavuot is "Chag HaBikurim" (the First Fruits Festival) and Sukkot is "Chag Ha'Asif" (the Harvest Festival). It is necessary within Rabbinical Judaism to make sure that all the festivals are celebrated in their proper seasons.

Thus the Jewish lunar calendar must coordinate with the cycle of the sun and the seasons which are determined by the solar orbit. The problem is that a lunar year, twelve lunar months added together, only adds up to about 354.4 days.4 A solar year, at almost 365.25 days,5 is nearly eleven days longer.

If no adjustment is made, if going strictly by the lunar year, Passover would occur eleven days earlier each year, eventually drifting into winter, then fall, summer, and then spring again, as Islamic festival and feast days do.

The solution is to periodically insert an extra (thirty-day) month into a year, creating a thirteen-month year. Such a year is called a shanah meuberet ("pregnant year") in Hebrew; in English it is called a leap year, and it makes up all the lunar calendar's lost days. It happens about once every three years.

The month is added to Adar, the last of the twelve months. On leap years two Adars are observed — Adar I and Adar II.

Thus, the Jewish calendar is both lunar and solar; the months are lunar months while the years are solar years. This is in contrast to the Gregorian calendar, in which the year is a solar year and the months are formed by dividing a year into twelve parts, and is also quite different from the pure lunar calendar observed by certain religions, in which each month is determined by the moon and a year is simply twelve lunar months strung together.

Footnotes

1. Two months on the Jewish calendar — Cheshvan and Kislev — can be both thirty days, both twenty-nine days, or one of each.

2. This after Hillel established the perpetual calendar. Beforehand, the length of the years depended on the amount of thirty and twenty-nine day months, which depended on the monthly deliberations of the Sanhedrin."

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This is trained Christian scientists of Christian Creationism's explanation of how the Bible gives us the age of the earth:

https://creation.com/6000-years

"How do we know that the earth is 6,000 years old from the Bible?" Given that the chronogenealogies - genealogies where the age of the father at the time of the son’s birth is given in an unbroken chain — end shortly after Noah, how do we get from ~1600 AM (anno mundi = ‘year of the world’) to today, which we would argue is about 6000 AM?

The precision by which we can know the timing of historical events or ages of things is constrained by the precision of the data we’re given. The timing we’re given in the chronogenealogies is accurate to within one year of the event. By this, I mean we can know that Adam was 130 years old when he fathered Seth, but we don’t know if he was 130 and 3 months, or just shy of 131, for example. This is true for all the ages. So when you add up the chronogenealogies, we know that the Flood happened in 1656, plus up to less than 10 years, because we have 10 numbers that have less than a year of uncertainty. If all of the numbers were recorded just shy of the next birthday (for instance, Adam was 130 and 11 months when he fathered Seth, Seth was 105 and 11 months when he fathered Enosh, and so on), the Flood could have been as late as 1665 AM. But clearly this sort of small-scale uncertainty won’t give any comfort to Evolutionists - people who want to add thousands of years to human history.

The Flood to the Patriarchs

There is an unbroken chronogenealogy from Shem to Abraham in Genesis 11, and we’re given the information elsewhere in Genesis1 to extend the chronology until the relocation of Israel to Egypt when Jacob was 130 years old. Going by these numbers, Jacob went to Egypt in 642 + less than 12 years after the Flood, or 2298 + less than 22 years AM. The chronogenealogy ends here, with nearly 2,000 years to go until Christ.2 How do we extend the timeline?
The Patriarchs to the Exodus

Exodus 12:40 says that Israel was in Egypt for 430 years. This harmonizes well with Genesis 15:13 where God tells Abram that his descendants will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years (enslavement did not happen on their arrival in Egypt but some time after Joseph died, when their number became threatening). So the Exodus happened in 2728 + less than 23 years AM.
The Exodus to the Kings

We know that Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years, meaning that they entered the Promised Land in 2768 + less than 24 years AM. But here the chronology becomes a bit hazier for a while. This is because we don’t know exactly how long the conquest took, or exactly how long it was before the judges started ruling Israel. We’re told how long each judge ruled, and how long each period of peace lasted, but some of these clearly overlap, and some judges clearly only ruled part of Israel, while another judge was ruling another part.

What about different dates for creation?

Many people have come up with dates for creation, such as James Ussher (4004 BC), Johannes Kepler (3992 BC), Gerhard Hasel (4178 BC), and Isaac Newton (~4000 BC). Additionally, there are various chronologies competing with each other today (though all with the same ballpark outcome) which would be more precise than this article, but also rely on assumptions that must come from a particular interpretation of the text. It is not the purpose of this article to choose any particular one of these chronologies, but rather to show how the plain interpretation of Scripture gives a straightforward chronology that leads us to believe the world is around 6,000 years old, regardless of which of these other chronological frameworks one uses.

But we have a clear statement in 1 Kings that allows us to continue a reliable chronology. 1 Kings 6:1 says “In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites had come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.”

So if we subtract 124 years (40 each for the wandering in the desert, Saul’s reign, and David’s reign, and 4 for the partial reign of Solomon), we get a period of about 356 years for the judges, which fits well with the numbers in Judges if we assume a few overlaps. So Solomon began to build the Temple in 3208 + less than 23 years AM. Notice that even though we’re thousands of years into history at this point, the uncertainty about the dates is less than 25 years!
The Kings to the Exile
It’s clear that from the very first verse of Genesis, the Bible is concerned with giving a factual account of how God has interacted with the earth.

If we go by the reigns of the kings of Judah, without assuming any co-regencies, from the Temple to the Exile of Judah would have been 429.5 years + less than 21 years. But we know that there were co-regencies in Judah, partly by comparing the kings of Judah to the kings of Israel.3 If we do that, we know that from the Temple to the Exile of Judah is actually around 345 years, at around 3553 AM. At this point, it’s possible to say what the date would be in our terms—and when one adjusts for the differences in calendrical systems, the vast majority consensus is 586 BC. This would mean that 1 AD would be around 4150 AM, plus or minus less than 50 years, and today we would be around 6150 AM, plus or minus less than 50 years.

The Bible is history!

It’s clear that from the very first verse of Genesis, the Bible is concerned with giving a factual account of how God has interacted with the earth. This means that it must give historically accurate details, as well as being theologically accurate. In fact, what we believe about God is based on historical claims, so if the history is inaccurate, then the theology must be as well! One of the ways the biblical authors communicated that they were giving actual history is by recording lifespans, or measuring the amount of time between certain events.

We can be confident that God’s Word is accurate in its historical details as well as in what it tells us about theology.

References and notes

1. Genesis 5 goes from Adam to Noah and his sons; Genesis 11:10ff goes from Shem to Abram; Genesis 21:5 states that Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born; Genesis 25:26 states that Isaac was 60 when Jacob and Esau were born, and Genesis 47:9 says that Jacob was 130 when he went to Egypt.
2. Some argue for gaps in the Genesis 5 and 11 genealogies. For the reasons to take them as unbroken genealogies, see Sarfati, J. Biblical chronogenealogies, J. Creation 17(3):14–18, December 2003, creation.com/chronogenealogies.
3. For more detail about the challenges of interpreting the chronology of the kings of Israel and Judah, see Kaiser W., A History of Israel: From the Bronze Age Through the Jewish Wars (Broadville & Holman: Nashville, TN, 1998), p. 292–300.
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