Prophecy and You
By Hal Lindsey
For many, the study of Bible prophecy is an interesting intellectual exercise. For others, it’s an exciting pastime — almost like reading comic books with their vast, apocalypse-style stories. Even for those who fully believe Bible prophecy, it can seem distant. The events described in Daniel, Revelation, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and elsewhere in scripture often feel utterly divorced from the world in which we live our everyday lives.
You get up in the morning and get ready for the day. You eat and prepare meals. You work and study. You play with the kids or grandkids. You laugh with your friends when they’re happy, and you weep with them when they hurt. The news is full of strange things, but that has come to feel ordinary.
The seeming normalcy of life is, in fact, a fulfillment of end-times prophecy. In Matthew 24:3739, Jesus said, “The coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.”
People of Noah’s day were lulled into complacency by the ordinariness of their routines. In the last days, we see it happening again. As time passes, some parts of the world will be rocked with earthquakes, wars, or famines. But even those things have a way of becoming normal and seemingly routine.
People do what people do. They marry and give in marriage. It’s huge for the couple as well as their friends and family, but in the course of human events, it’s natural — even common. Happens all the time.
When it comes to prophecy, your friends may say they’ve heard it all before. But that, too, is a sign of the end times. 2 Peter 3:3-4 says, “Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, ‘Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.’”
Peter goes on to say that they forget the reliability of God’s word, that by it He created all things. They forget God’s judgment on the world in the days of Noah. They forget that judgment is coming to our world, too. In verses 8 and 9, he writes, “Do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.”
We’re running a marathon whose finish line sits in an unknown location. It might be death, or it might be the Rapture. When the World Trade Center towers fell in 2001, things changed suddenly. But the morning began as an ordinary day. People did the common things they do every day. The skies were clear, masses of people were making their way into Manhattan, and in a matter of minutes they were looking dumbfounded at a smoky sky where massive towers once stood.
Don’t let the ordinary keep you from expecting the extraordinary. Don’t let routine rob you of the urgency of your mission, or a sense of the astounding things to come.
