The Illusive Last Generation

The end-time Prophecy Industry has hoodwinked believers for generations with tales about how they are the last generation and will see Christ’s returnPopular prophecy preachers have been telling us for generations that we are the “last generation” and we will live to see Jesus arriving “on the clouds” in all his glory. Let us hope and pray so!

And this means a long list of related prophetic events must also occur BEFORE he arrives! Of course, so far, none of these predictions and projections have yet come to pass.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash
[Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash]

There is something perverse in promising one generation of believers after another that they live in the very “last days” and will certainly see the “
Son of Man” coming to gather his elect. In fact, this confident assertion has been around in the church since at least the 1830s.

SHIFTING PREDICTIONS


But today, the Prophecy Industry looks to the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948 as the starting point of the ever-changing “last generation.” Originally, the popular belief was that Jesus would come within one “biblical generation” of that year, which the “experts” defined as “about forty years” in length.

Obviously, that did not happen. Despite books like ’88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Come in 1988,’ that year came and went with no rapture or second coming.

But rather than consider whether the entire premise was wrong, the Prophecy Industry changed its definition of a “biblical generation.” Today, the claim is that such a generation is anywhere from forty to one hundred and twenty years.

Others reset the final generation’s start date from 1948 to 1967 when Israel recaptured Jerusalem, or to some other subsequent significant event in the Middle East. Of course, we are now more than forty years beyond 1967, so additional adjustments are again necessary.

To state the obvious, Jesus has not yet arrived in glory. But several other popular expectations are also missing, including but not limited to—

  1. The 7-year Tribulation.
  2. The rapture.
  3. The Antichrist.
  4. The 10-nation European confederacy.
  5. The attack on Israel by “Gog and Magog.”
  6. The construction of the third temple in Jerusalem.
  7. The revived Roman Empire.
  8. The global “beast” system.
  9. The “mark of the beast.”
  10. The false prophet.
  11. The “man of lawlessness.”
  12. The Battle of Armageddon.

I would add the “apostasy” to the list, but I suspect it is already well underway. The present horde of deceivers that continues to “tickle the ears” of millions of Christians suggests this is the case.

Perhaps these events are yet to come, but the prophecy preachers are running out of time and excuses. But rather than admit their egregious errors, the end-time prophecy peddlers simply redefine their terms and their recalculate chronologies.

One prediction that has come true is Christ’s warning that many deceivers will come and propagate false information and distorted expectations about his coming. The evidence for that is plain and abundant for anyone with eyes to see.

It is time to face facts: Either Bible prophecy has failed, its popular interpreters are wrong, or they have lied and misled millions of Christians. Should we not open our eyes and see what the Bible actually says on these matters?

Things went awry from the start when the Prophecy Industry created loopholes and sledgehammered them into the warnings of Jesus - “No one except God alone knows the day or the hour,” and “the Son of Man is coming in a season when you least expect him.”

The usual excuse is that Jesus said we could not know the “precise day and hour,” but we can know the general “season” of his return. Yes, well, Jesus also said “it is not for you to know times or seasons,” plural. And he did, in fact, state that his disciples do not know the ‘kairos’ or “season” – (Mark 13:33).

Such loopholes are necessary for the prophetic game to work. If the words of Jesus are taken at face value, no one can presume to know whether we are the “last generation,” and the whole moneymaking house of cards collapses.

But Scripture has not failed, and Bible prophecy is reliable. The proliferation of deceivers, deceit, and apostasy in the contemporary church validates its many warnings. In contrast, the Prophecy Industry has failed, and miserably so. Ironically, its very existence validates the many New Testament warnings about deceivers proliferating in the last days.

But having seen their predictions and projections falsified by subsequent events time and again, now, many of these hucksters are turning to calendrical cycles, numerology, astrology, Kabbalah mysticism, and other forms of divination and occult practices to peer into the future and make new prognostications that will dazzle their victims.

The deception can and will only get worse, and the predicted final “apostasy” is, from Satan’s perspective, moving along quite nicely.


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