Thank you Mr. Kelly for everything your doing. You’ve brought a lot of people to Christ over the years including me. I’ve been saved for several years now and I’ve learned an awful lot since finding your site.
If the rapture doesn’t happen within the next 5 to 10 years are we to assume Israel becoming a nation was not the sign to start the end times and we aren’t that generation to see the second coming?
If so what and how are we supposed to know when this generation is. By all accounts there would be no way of knowing. What is your thinking on this. Thanks again for everything.
The only specific sign that Jesus gave to his disciples on when the end times would be upon us is the abomination of desolation in Matthew 24:15. This sign requires that Israel be back in the land as a covenant keeping people with a working temple. He said this would be Israel’s sign that the Great Tribulation was about to begin. The bible offers no alternative sign to Israel being back in the land.
Therefore the great majority of scholars (who read the bible literally and in context) have always come to the conclusion that the reappearance of Israel is the preeminent sign that the end times are near. Otherwise, as you say, we would have no way of knowing and Paul said these times should not take us by surprise. (1 Thessalonians 5:4)