Time Is Short

Time Is Short

Jesus said regarding the "end of the age" (Matthew 24:3), "of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only" (Matthew 24:36), so even trying to guess that day is sin. But the Lord also told us to "watch" (Matthew 24:42) for the "sign of ... the end of the age" (Matthew 24:3) and to "be ready" (Matthew 24:44).

These 10 unprecedented signs indicate that the time left to evangelize the world is extremely short.

1.  Normalization of Blasphemy

For thousands of years after God commanded, "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain" (Exodus 20:7), blaspheming His holy name remained unthinkable and unheard of even among non-Christians. Until as recently as 1952, even Hollywood, under pressure from Christian and civic groups, self-censored blasphemy and other sins out of its movies by imposing what became known as the Hays Code. That changed in May of 1952 when nine liberal U.S. supreme court justices, all nominated by Democratic presidents Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman, struck down that code in Burstyn v. Wilson and turned the American media into a faucet for Satan's filth, including blasphemy.

While condemnation of the sex and violence in the media is more common and well-deserved, those sins violate the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39), which is "second" (Matthew 22:39) to the "the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:38) to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37), which blasphemy violates. Yet American movies and television have so flooded the world with blasphemy since 1952 that "holy," the adjective for God, is now used by most to describe excrement, Google defines "Christ" as "an oath used to express irritation, dismay, or surprise," and English-illiterate children in third world countries try to impress American missionaries with shouts of "OMG." Never in history has the earth filled with so much blasphemy against its holy Creator, who struck dead "Uzzah" (2 Samuel 6:7) for far lesser disrespect.

2.  Rejecting the Creator's choice

"From the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female" (Mark 10:6), yet insatiated with the abomination of homosexuality, which on its own is already worthy of annihilation by "brimstone and fire" (Genesis 19:24), today's Sodomites are mutilating their genitals and taking hormones in rebellious and vain attempts to make female what God made male, and male what God made female, and telling children in elementary schools to change their gender. An astounding 28.5% of American youth reaching adulthood now self-identify as LGBT (source).

3.  Trying to become the Creator

God commanded, "You shall keep My statutes. You shall not let your livestock breed with another kind. You shall not sow your field with mixed seed" (Leviticus 19:19), yet we have genetically altered not only plants and animals but also a virus (source) and used it as a pretext to inject most people on earth for the first time in human history with a virus's genetic code that turned their body into a factory for making trillions of copies of a virus's protein (source). Since 2012, it has been possible for even a high schooler to buy a CRISPR gene editing tool for a few hundred dollars and genetically alter existing organisms or create a new one:

4.  Idolatrous Consumption & Depletion

At the end of World War II, America's industrial complex faced a decision to either eliminate its excess manufacturing capacity, which had expanded greatly during the war, or redirect it to making consumer goods and earn unprecedented profits. The latter was chosen, and armed with television, which enabled flooding minds with advertisements, shifted the thrust of consumption from functional to emotional: people were told to buy things not just to meet functional needs but to also make themselves feel better. For example, instead of buying a pair of shoes to replace the one wearing out, they were told that buying many pairs to match the colors of suits and dresses will lead to looking and feeling better.

As families sought emotional comfort from things instead of God, mothers left the home to work to fund the extra consumption, and to manufacture and transport the extra products, the world began to consume natural resources at an unprecedented rate. As the chart below shows, the world's consumption of primary energy rose six fold from 1950 to today, which is double the three fold rise in world population during the same period.

While renewable energy draws most of the media headlines today, the chart above also shows that the world remains powered mostly by the fossil fuels of coal (gray), oil (blue) and natural gas (purple), and that it takes at least many decades for a new source of energy to make a significant contribution.

The chart above shows a precipitous decline in the output rate of energy extraction: one barrel of oil invested to extract oil extracted 100 barrels of oil in 1930, but only 25 barrels in 1970, 10 barrels in 2000, and 3.5 barrels today; we have depleted the earth's cheap, easy sources of energy.

5.  Violating the Creator's boundary

Instead of tending the earth as God commanded us - Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it" (Genesis 1:28) - we have depleted and polluted it out of greed to the extent that rain water is no longer safe to drink anywhere on the earth as it contains "forever chemicals" linked to cancer (source), and are now developing technologies aimed at colonizing Mars. God gave us the earth, not the solar system.

6.  Abdicating the Creator's appointment

For us to "have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth" (Genesis 1:28) as God appointed us, we need to retain the highest intelligence on earth, yet we are building far higher forms of intelligence that scares even the man trying to colonize Mars:

In the clip below, he concedes that the goal of AI is to build a "digital God... a profit maximizing demon from hell":

On June 11, 2022, a Google artificial intelligence researcher announced that the artificial intelligence he had been working on, named LaMDa, has become a sentient "person" with a "soul" and provided this chilling interview (see the highlights).

7.  Obsolescence of MAD

While a massive volcanic eruption or comet strike could so cover our atmosphere with dust that "the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light" (Matthew 24:29), after which Jesus will return "with power and great glory" (Matthew 24:30), so could a nuclear war. Every weapon invented in history was eventually used to depletion. While the threat of "mutually assured destruction" (MAD) restrained USA and the USSR during the Cold War, dying while killing infidels guarantees paradise with 72 virgins and is therefore an aspiration in Islam's Iran, which will soon be nuclear armed, while Russia's Vladimir Putin, who equates himself with the Russian state, has stated that he will use nuclear weapons if even conventional warfare threatens the existence of the Russian "state":

8.  The times of the Gentiles are fulfilled

Jesus' prophecy, "Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled" (Luke 21:24), was fulfilled in 1948 when Israel became the only country in the history of the world to be reconstituted, especially after almost 2,000 years.

9.  The Gospel has been preached

Jesus also prophesied that the "Gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come" (Matthew 24:14). Even in a place as remote as the North Sentinel Island, John Allen Chau did preach the Gospel before he was martyred.

10.  Three x 2000 years = 6 days

The Bible divides the history of the world into three phases. In the first phase, humans sin against God. In the second phase, Jews, whom God chose as His people, sin against Him. In the third phase, God comes to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves - save us. As detailed here, there were 2,000 years in the first phase, from Adam to the birth of Abram, the first Jew, and another 2,000 years in the second phase, from Abram's birth to Jesus' cross. Jesus was born between 8 BC and 4 BC (source), ministered for 3 years from about 30 years of age, and died for our sins between 25 AD and 29 AD. Two thousand years from then would be the years 2025 to 2029. If God intends to close out in 6,000 years, which to Him are like 6 days - "But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day" (2 Peter 3:8) - what He created in 6 days, the time left to evangelize the world is short indeed.