1) “ The
lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall
cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew
24:50-51)
2) Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard
that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour... And
now, little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his
coming.(1 John 2:18-28)
*** **** *****
In part 2 of this
article I argued that Christ appeared in the clouds over Jerusalem in Iyar, AD 66 as recorded by the Jewish historian Josephus. The passages
cited above are similar in that they describe events which all occur in “one hour.” What is meant by this unusually
short period of time in these passages?
As I discussed
previously, each millennium from creation is divided into hours. The millennium from creation when Jesus lived (852 BC
to AD 149) was divided into 12 hours. Assume for the sake of argument that Christ really did return in the clouds
in the month of Iyar, AD 66. If a day is a thousand years to the Lord (2 Peter 3:8) and there are twelve hours in a day (John
11:9) then how long was one hour in Jesus' millennium? The answer is precisely 1,000/12 or 83.333 years. This happens
to equal the precise interval from Iyar, AD 66 to Tishri 1, AD 149.
Jesus returned
at the 11th hour, the last hour, of that millennium. Regarding #1 above, although
Jesus will return when the world ends at the expiration of some millennium, this passage describes a day and hour when he would
return and some Christians would not expect him at that time. In #2 John equates the last hour with Jesus' coming.
The theory then is that the above passages are discussing this one hour
period.
As I mentioned in part 1, Jesus' two cloud
comings were to serve as signs for when to watch for the end of the world. Carefully
read Matthew 24:30:
And then shall appear the
sign of the Son of man in heaven:
Here it explicitly states that
the appearance of Christ in heaven would be a “sign.” How is it a sign? It must have been viewed as a sign of
when to watch for the end of the world. One will notice in Luke's Olivet Discourse that the disciples asked Jesus "what
sign will there be when these things shall come to pass?" (Luke 21:7) By "these things" they were talking about the end of
the world. The sign of when the end of the world would come to pass was Jesus' cloud coming. Because both happened at a predictable
time in relation to the creation date they therefore serve as signs for when to watch for the end of the world. The first
appearance in AD 66 served as a sign that people should watch for the world's end in AD 149 and AD 1149. The second appearance
in 2006, for which we have a date certain, is now the sign for all subsequent generations of when to watch for the end.
