SIGNS OF HIS COMING

1. There is to be a great conflict between labor and capital. This is foreshadowed in James 5:1-8:

 “Come now, you rich [people]; weep aloud and lament over the miseries — the woes — that are surely coming upon you. Your abundant wealth has rotted and is ruined and your [many] garments have become moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are completely rusted through, and their rust will be testimony against you and it will devour your flesh as if it were fire. You have heaped together treasure for the last days. [But] look! [Here are] the wages that you have withheld by fraud from the laborers who have reaped your fields, crying out (for vengeance), and the cries of the harvesters have come to the ears of the Lord of hosts. [Here] on earth you have abandoned yourselves to soft (prodigal) living and to [the pleasure of] self-indulgence and self-gratification. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the (innocent) righteous [man, while] he offers no resistance to you. So be patient, brethren, (as you wait) till the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits expectantly for the precious harvest from the land. [See how] he keeps up his patient [vigil] over it until it receives the early and late rains. So you also must be patient. Establish your hearts — strengthen and confirm them in the final certainty — for the coming of the Lord is very near” (Amplified N.T.).

2. There will be a great moral decay of society. We see this in II Tim. 3:1-5:

 “But understand this, that in the last days there will set in perilous times of great stress and trouble-hard to deal with and hard to bear. For people will be lovers of self and [utterly] self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate (greedy) desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffers), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane. [They will be] without natural (human) affection (callous and inhuman), relentless — admitting of no truce or appeasement. [They will be] slanderers — false accusers, trouble makers; intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good. [They will be] treacherous (betrayers), rash (and) inflated with conceit. [They will be] lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God. For [although] they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it — their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession. Avoid [all] such people — turn away from them” (Amplified N.T.).

3. There will be a passing of personal liberties and freedoms. Already can be seen the foregleam of that which is prophesied in Rev. 13:15-17:

 “And he was permitted [also] to impart the breath of life into the beast’s image so that the statue of the beast would actually talk, and to cause to be put to death those who would not bow down and worship the image of the beast [Dan. 3:5]. Also he compels all [alike], both small and great, both the rich and the poor, both free and slave to be marked with an inscription (stamped) on their right hands or on their foreheads. So that no one will have power to buy or sell unless he bears the stamp (mark, inscription), [that is], the name of the beast or the number of his name” (Amplified N.T.).

Today there is a centralized trend in government, religious totalitarianism, and the attempt of the National Council of Churches to curtail all freedoms of non-conformist churches and Christians.