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“We shall … do well to discern the signs of the times as we pass along, that the day of the Lord may not ‘overtake us as a thief in the night.’” My question is are the signs of the second coming going to be as obvious as we are told or are they going to be subtle and easy to miss??
If history is any indication, they will be whatever we make them to be. I don’t mean that flippantly, but every generation throughout history has seen “signs of the times” all around them – and, often, those signs have meant the impending end of the world to those people.
If nobody knows the timing, as our scriptures say – and if we are not to fear but be prepared, as those same scriptures say, I figure not worrying about seeing the signs of the times and just dealing the best I can with whatever life brings me is a pretty good way to be prepared and not afraid.
I don’t know. My personal opinion is that they’re subtle. Either way, I don’t know if it’s tomorrow or another 2000 years and I sort of don’t care. I pretty much hold the same perspective as Ray. I am of the opinion that there aren’t really more calamities as there were 100 years ago or 1000 years ago, but in our modern age we are far more aware of when they do occur. I think it’s the same thing when we tell our children “be careful when you drive or go out at night or who you associate with”. Always be on the look out & be prepared as much as you can.
It depends on how you define the day of the lord. So far everyone that has ever watched and waited for that day has died before it has come. That has caused some people to reinterpret the day of the lord as the day a person dies. When you die you see the lord, you never know when you will die, so be prepared for that day. In that sense maybe the signs of the day of the lord can be subtle and easily missed, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, a lump, etc.
EnglishMormon wrote:My question is are the signs of the second coming going to be as obvious as we are told or are they going to be subtle and easy to miss??
It appears to be contradictory, no? Many people are very quick to point to floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, wars, etc. as a sign of the end times yet we are told that many will miss the signs. It’s enough to make you wonder whether you are hanging with the “in” crowd, the only crowd that gets it, or whether there are other signs that everyone is oblivious to.
I’ve asked myself, would Jesus return only after things get so bad that he’s got to flex his muscles and rain destruction down on the world in order to clean up the mess or will he come when the world becomes good enough to be a place he would want to come back to?
Some make the argument that the world is a much more peaceful place relative to how things were in the past. We see the disasters that happen and are quick to point to them as signs but how quick are we to point to the service that takes place after the disasters as being signs of Jesus’ coming? Maybe those are the signs and they are so subtle that we completely miss them.
It’s a shame that we’ve tied validation to the disasters and the bad things. I believe it helps to create a negative outlook. I’ve said it on here before, I wish the signs of the times were positive things like a reduction in violent crime, an outpouring of service, an end to wars, etc. We usually find what we’re looking for. We might even get in the spirit of speeding along the second coming via acts of service.
TN, Back when I believed in God/Jesus, my usual response to questions about the signs-o-the-times was to point out that good people completely failed to understand what the First Coming was all about. They had envisioned what the Messiah would do and it turned out to be very different from what they expected; so much so, that they didn’t even recognize that the Messiah had come. So, it’s better to be spiritually alive than to catalog signs, lest we, too, miss the point.
Jesus could come tomorrow and there would be lots of “Told You Sos”. Yet if he doesn’t come tomorrow, you won’t hear anyone saying, “I guess I misread the signs”.
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