Watching Without a Date

No one knows the day or hour

No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Matthew 24:36

I think even premillennials get into the idea that, because no one knows the day or the hour, there is nothing to look for. The problem I have with that is that it is, to me, an example of scholarly sterilization. They emphasize sterilizing everything out of what they are looking at so much that only the text is left. They do not have the author, God, or the rest of the Bible. They look at one specific section and exclude everything else. That does not really help you understand the Bible.

My pastor, Dallas, has had a little fun with my different views, calling it ‘Rexology.’ It is all in fun, and he is usually just showing that people think different things. I usually have a bit of a different view. But the reason is that I do not look at one section of theology and say ‘that's my position,’ then look over at another and say ‘that's my position.’ I am trying to build one system in my mind.

God does not change

God is not one thing over here and another thing over there. People get confused and think He is so wrathful in the Old Testament and so loving in the New. They forget there was a lot of grace between those wrathful events. And look at what Jesus said to the Pharisees and Sadducees. It was very truthful, and kind of harsh. He threw out the money changers. There were still wrathful things, because God is not just a kind person. He is also just. He is also righteous. He is not just one thing.

"Because I, the LORD, do not change, you descendants of Jacob have not been destroyed. Malachi 3:6

His character does not change. He does not change on a whim. When you look at the absolute precision of the sixty-nine weeks of Daniel, and then go on to the next coming and say, ‘But that one is completely unknowable,’ that does not seem like the God I see through the Bible. He does not change.

When you look at things separately, they can seem to contradict. When you look at them with the right view, suddenly they come into line. They make complete sense with everything else you know. When you build it as one, everything affects everything. And you can likely get more insight into something like ‘no one knows the day or hour.’

The wise will understand

I heard, but I did not understand. So I asked, "My lord, what will be the outcome of these things?" "Go on your way, Daniel," he replied, "for the words are closed up and sealed until the time of the end. Many will be purified, made spotless, and refined, but the wicked will continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked will understand, but the wise will understand. Daniel 12:8-10

To be clear, by the wise we are talking about Proverbs 9:10: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom." Proverbs 9:10 We are not talking about the experts of the day. We are not talking about people we think are intelligent, or who have a lot of biblical knowledge, because even they can be led astray. We are talking about those looking to God for the answers, for the truth.

Never set a date

I do not agree with the idea that you cannot talk about dates at all. But you have to be very careful when you talk about dates, and you should never set dates. I do not have an issue with discussing them, looking through the Bible, and seeing what is going on.

With the sixty-nine weeks of Daniel we have hindsight, and we can see the perfect picture. Looking forward, you have to hedge your bets, because it isn't necessarily God telling you this, it's you seeing it somewhere in God's word, and maybe it is there, or maybe you are not understanding. So you have to be careful.

The last days

This is where I have real trouble with the views that expect a golden age without any trouble. That is not what I see in this world.

But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these! 2 Timothy 3:1-5

This is what we are going to see in the last days, and I would argue it is what we see. Sadly, we do not just see people committing a sin like abortion. It goes beyond that. They want to celebrate it. We all fall short; none of us is perfect. But there is a huge difference between doing something evil and celebrating something evil.

Isaiah has a word for that: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil." Isaiah 5:20

A doomsday clock, not a countdown

When you look at all this, I would say the stage is set. But we also have to hedge our bets. I argue we should use something like the doomsday clock in our minds. The idea is that we could be seconds from midnight, with everything set and in perfect place, and then a few pieces fall away and we are back to fifteen minutes to midnight. It is a temperature gauge, not a countdown.

I truly believe that when the second coming has happened, we will look back and see the perfect countdown picture. But that is not where we are right now.

2030 and 2033

For a long time, ten years at least, I have thought 2030 and 2033 might be big dates, because they are 2,000 years from the two years people generally believe Christ was crucified. AD 33 is the more popular one.

About six months ago, I was asked to work with the youth on some of this end-times material. I thought, why don't I look at those two dates and show that they mean nothing. And I was partially right.

2030 has absolutely nothing special about it. Nothing biblical or celestial points to it. I still think people will go nuts over the hype.

The next part is not me setting a date or saying anything will happen. I would caution you to be careful with it. I hope that by learning about it you will not get caught up in hype, whether or not it is the date, and that you will keep doing what you are supposed to do until Christ comes.

Blood moons

Earlier I mentioned the failed prediction about the 2014 and 2015 blood moons. A tetrad is just four total lunar eclipses in a row over about two years. It is somewhat rare, about sixty since the time of Christ. 2014 and 2015 were special because the eclipses landed on Passover and Sukkot both years. That got attention because of Joel:

The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and awesome Day of the LORD. Joel 2:31

Most people think this is about the second coming, that a solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse come before it. Blood moons tend to get people hyped, and even more when they line up with the feasts. That was the hype around 2014 and 2015. Tetrads that line up with all the feasts like that are rarer, about eight of them.

So the next logical question for me was to look at AD 32 and 33, since I usually consider AD 33 the year of the crucifixion. There is no tetrad there. There is a total lunar eclipse the year before, not on Passover, and a partial lunar eclipse on Passover of AD 33, and a solar eclipse fifteen days before that Passover. Interesting, especially when you are looking at Joel.

My next thought was to look for tetrads where only one year lines up with the feasts. To my surprise, no one seems to think that way, and there is no data on it. Absolutely none. So I went through all the dates and used a calculator to figure out which feasts the lunar eclipses landed on for each tetrad. It turns out this is even rarer than having all four line up. Take it with a grain of salt, because all of these calculations have some give in them, and you have to open the window a little, so you might include something you should not. But even with those open windows, I found only three tetrads that lined up for one year, and only two where it was the second year, like AD 33 would be if you filled in the rest. None of them had the solar eclipse.

That is not the case for 2033. 2032 and 2033 have a full tetrad, the second year lines up with the feasts, and there is a total solar eclipse. Something very common through the entire Bible is partial fulfillment and then full fulfillment. You can easily see how AD 33 could be the partial and 2033 the full.

Eclipse dates to check against NASA's eclipse catalog: total lunar eclipses on April 25, 2032, October 18, 2032, April 14, 2033, and October 8, 2033; total solar eclipse March 30, 2033. NASA Goddard, Five Millennium Canon of Lunar Eclipses and of Solar Eclipses (Espenak and Meeus) Passover 2033 begins the evening of April 13. Whether each eclipse falls on the feast day itself or within a day of it should be confirmed against a Hebrew calendar.

The feasts

That is what gave me pause. It looks even more enticing when you look at the feasts.

The solar eclipse happens before Passover, the feast when Christ was sacrificed. And fifteen days before Sukkot is the Feast of Trumpets, Rosh Hashanah. "On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly announced by trumpet blasts." Leviticus 23:24 It is a very important high holiday, and it is often associated with the rapture. Why? Because ‘no one knows the day or the hour’ is a perfect description of that holiday. It is the best description I can come up with. It is actually two days, because they do not want to miss it, and they do not know exactly when it will start. They are waiting for the moon.

After the Feast of Trumpets come days of remembrance and repentance, something that would fit after the rapture. Then comes Sukkot. "On the fifteenth day of the seventh month the Feast of Tabernacles to the LORD begins, and it continues for seven days." Leviticus 23:34 It remembers being in the wilderness. Jewish people put up a temporary booth outside and eat in it for seven days. "You are to dwell in booths for seven days." Leviticus 23:42 Seven days. You might say a week. Maybe the seventieth week.

There are many overlapping layers like that, much more than I can cover here. It is truly amazing. But again, you need to be careful.

See also: The Feasts Still Ahead.

I do not know

I honestly do not know what to do with 2033. I cannot say it is or is not the year. I will most certainly be holding my breath a little during that year, because it absolutely is interesting, especially with everything lining up around Ezekiel 38. But again: doomsday clock, temperature gauge. Everything might be in place now, and that does not mean pieces cannot fall out of place, and we are back to waiting a thousand years. I do not see it at this point, but there is always that possibility. I have my biases. I can be wrong. Absolutely.

Jesus' own word for us is to keep watch: "Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come." Matthew 24:42

Back to the lesson: Watching Wisely.