WE ARE LIVING IN THE END TIMES (2) By Dr. David R. Reagan A Personal Experience Every time I think of Signs of the Times, I am reminded of a great man of God named Elbert Peak. I had the privilege of participating with him in a Bible prophecy conference held in Orlando, Florida in the early 1990s. Mr. Peak was about 80 years old at the time. He had been assigned the topic, The Signs of the Times. He began his presentation by observing, Sixty years ago when I first started preaching, you had to scratch around like a chicken to find one sign of the Lords soon return. He paused for a moment, and then added, But today there are so many signs Im no longer looking for them. Instead, Im listening for a sound — the sound of a trumpet! The First Sign One hundred years ago in 1907 there was not one single, tangible, measurable sign that indicated we were living in the season of the Lords return. The first to appear was the Balfour Declaration which was issued by the British government on November 2, 1917. This Declaration was prompted by the fact that during World War I the Turks sided with the Germans. Thus, when Germany lost the war, so did the Turks, and the victorious Allies decided to divide up both the German and Turkish empires. The Turkish territories, called the Ottoman Empire, contained the ancient homeland of the Jewish people — an area the Romans had named Palestine after the last Jewish revolt in 132-135 AD. In 1917 Palestine included all of modern day Israel and Jordan. In the scheme the Allies concocted for dividing up the German and Turkish territories, Britain was allotted Palestine, and this is what prompted the Balfour Declaration. In that document, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary, declared that it was the intention of the British government to establish in Palestine a national home for the Jewish people. The leading Evangelical in England at the time was F. B. Meyer. He immediately recognized the prophetic significance of the Declaration, for he was well aware that the Scriptures prophesy that the Jewish people will be regathered to their homeland in unbelief right before the return of the Messiah (Isaiah 11:11-12). Meyer sent out a letter to the Evangelical leaders of England asking them to gather in London in December to discuss the prophetic implications of the Balfour Declaration. In that letter, he stated, The signs of the times point toward the close of the time of the Gentiles... And the return of Jesus can be expected any moment. Before Meyers meeting could be convened, another momentous event occurred. On December 11, 1917 General Edmund Allenby liberated the city of Jerusalem from 400 years of Turkish rule. There is no doubt that these events in 1917 marked the beginning of the end times because they led to the worldwide regathering of the Jewish people to their homeland and the reestablishment of their state.
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 23:59:00 +0000
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