The Last Days

The Last Days

By Richard P. Joseph

We are often bombarded by end times prophecy experts that we are in the
“Last Days”.  I have been hearing this my entire life.  So I thought I would
attempt to nail down exactly when the “Last Days” really are.  As I am able to
figure out, we have two choices to choose from; the scripture or the modern
prophecy experts.  I have also figured out that these two are indeed mutually
exclusive as either one is correct and the other wrong or they are both wrong
but they cannot both be correct.

All modern prophecy experts that hold to a future last days event have created
this scenario by using modern thought patterns only.   Since there is no such
evidence in scripture that indicates a protracted wait period before the final
days, this leaves only one method of creating a future event and that is by
invention only.  I therefore will not waste any time trying to figure it out since
there isn’t anything in scripture that supports that view.  There, that was easy.  

Now let’s see what scripture says about the last days.

Let us start with the day of pentecost in the year AD 30. Most of us are familiar
with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles in the upper room.
They then took to the streets and were prophesying in various languages.  
Then Peter stood up and declared;

16 but this is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel:
17 ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says,...
If Peter declared that Joel’s prophecy was fulfilled in AD 30, how is
it fulfilled 2000 plus years later?  Now how about what Paul has to
say about it in Hebrews;

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in
many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to
us in His Son,...
Paul is assigning the last days as the time he was then living in.  

Again, if Paul was living in the last days, what are we living in?

If that is not enough, what about what John wrote in Revelation;

1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to
His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He
sent and [a]communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John,
2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus
Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those
who hear the words of the prophecy, and [b]heed the things which
are written in it; for the time is near.

If the message of the apocalypse was to take place “soon” and
“near” then when is that to us today?

In fact if John was addressing his letter to the seven churches of
Asia minor, and those churches disappeared after AD 70, then why
didn’t he address the letter to the churches in America or elsewhere?  

My real goal in these short articles is to prompt people to think
about what they are following and believing.  We were once all in
that same position of believing everything that the pastor says.  So,
the next time your pastor says to check out his teachings against
scripture, take him up on it.  Make an appointment and ask him
the questions I listed above to start with.  If he makes up a story
about a double meaning of scripture, ask him to show it to you in
scripture.  After he can’t do that, and he can’t, then present to him
the simple answer that it is and that is that the second coming was
an event that was to take place in the first century and against the
unfaithful harlot, Jerusalem.  It is all in the scripture and hard to
miss.  You won’t even have to make anything up because it all
makes sense.