The Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that we cannot know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come again. Many a minister has made a career on date-setting only to be shown how wrong he really is when Jesus doesn’t come. There has been a long history from the time of Savonarola and Muntzer all the way down through Hal Lindsay and Y2K. You can find a fairly comprehensive list at http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm From my past there are a couple charlatans who stand out as particularly noteworthy.

Jack Van Impe has been predicting the end of the world ever since I can remember. I attended a crusade in the early 1970’s where he predicted The Coming War With Russia.
His message was so well rehearsed that he preached the exact same sermon in person that we had heard on a record album of the same title. According to Van Impe, by 1990 we were supposed to see Russia march on Jerusalem closely followed by the Red Chinese who were going to march across the dry riverbed of the Euphrates because of some hydroelectric dams the Iraqis were building. Aside from the fact that history never happened the way he predicted, he hasn’t stopped his misguided prophecy ministry. He continues to “foretell” future events and gullible Christians continue to support his half-baked claims and outright fictions.

Later I heard Ed Vallowe, famous for his Bible numerics, predict Jesus’ return. He should have stuck with finding hidden messages in Bible numbers and codes instead of jumping on the apocalyptic bandwagon. Somewhere he latched on to the “Jupiter Effect” as the signal for the next prophetic event on God’s calendar. He predicted that we were going up in the clouds in 1982 when all the planets lined up and cataclysmic events would shake the earth. Curiously, when I heard him speak in 1981, he mentioned that he was booked through 1983. I guess he wanted to make sure his bases were covered in case he was wrong. Good planning on his part.

Since then I have heard that there were 88 reasons why Jesus is coming in 1988, why the Gulf War of George H. W. Bush was going to be the end in the early 1990’s and of course, everyone’s favorite Y2K. None of these came to pass. All of them were false predictions made by ignorant men who refused to accept that Jesus second coming is secret except to those who can spot the budding of the fig tree and can read the signs of the times.

Unlike all of these charlatans, I have scientific evidence that the world is going to end on June 1, 2014. That means that if the rapture is pre-tribulation as we all know it to be, then it must occur on or before May 31, 2007. Now I am not about to set a date, but it is clear that Jesus must come by then in order to give the Beast a chance to fill up the cup of God’s wrath.

This gives all of us a year and a half to take care of everything before His return. My suggestion to all of you is that you make sure all your affairs are in order in the next year to be ready for Jesus when He comes. Now, this is not to say that I am predicting a date. I am not. The Bible tells us that no man can know the day or the hour and I don’t presume to know that. He may come this week, next week, next month or next year. However, we can know the season and with the fig tree budding, I do know for certain that he is coming no later than May 31, 2007.

Personally, if I owned any property, I would sell it now or if I had a retirement fund I would cash it in and spend it. I can’t guarantee that Jesus is coming on this date, but even if he doesn’t then we still have only seven more years before the cloud gets us. We might as well live for today because tomorrow is unlikely to come.