Transcription
2,000 years ago, Jesus sat on the Mount of Olives with his disciples, and they asked him a question that has echoed through every generation since. What will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?
Jesus did not refuse to answer. He did not say it was none of their business. He gave them a detailed, specific, point-by-point description of exactly what the world would look like right before he returned. That description is recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21, and it reads like today's headlines.
Today, we are going to look at seven specific things Jesus said would happen right before his return. Not things theologians guessed, not things prophecy teachers invented, but things Jesus himself described in his own words, and every single one of them is happening right now.
The first thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is an explosion of spiritual deception, not from outside the church, but from within it. Matthew 24:4 records the very first warning he gave when his disciples asked about the end. "See that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying, 'I am the Christ,' and they will lead many astray."
The first sign Jesus named was not war. It was not famine. It was not earthquakes. It was deception. That tells you something about what concerned him most about the time before his return. Not the physical destruction, but the spiritual misdirection that would pull people away from the truth while believing they were walking toward it.
Matthew 24:24 intensifies this warning with a detail that should unsettle every comfortable believer. "For false Christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect." Even the elect.
The deception Jesus described is not obvious or easy to identify. It comes with signs, wonders, and spiritual power that make it look anointed, look blessed, and look like it is from God. Today, there are more self-proclaimed prophets, more personality-driven ministries, more theologically distorted movements, and more spiritually dangerous leaders operating under the banner of Christianity than at any point in human history. Social media has given every false teacher a global pulpit. Millions of Christians are following voices that sound spiritual and are leading them away from the Jesus of scripture toward a version of him that does not exist.
Jesus said this would happen. It is happening. The first sign Jesus gave about the end was not a natural disaster. It was a spiritual one. Deception so convincing that even genuine believers could be pulled away. That should tell you what the greatest danger of the last days actually is.
The second thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is an escalation of global military conflict on a scale that would cause widespread fear and instability. Matthew 24:6-7 records his words, "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom."
The phrase nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom in the original language is a Hebrew idiom that refers not to isolated conflicts, but to a pattern of worldwide multi-front warfare. The kind of conflict that involves alliances, regional powers, and global consequences.
According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, there are currently more active armed conflicts worldwide than at any point since records began after World War II. Multiple major powers are engaged in direct or proxy warfare simultaneously. Nuclear-armed nations are in open tension with each other across multiple theaters. Regional conflicts that were once contained are spilling across borders and drawing in international alliances.
Jesus did not say war itself was the sign. War has existed since Cain and Abel. What he described was a specific pattern of escalation that would characterize the season immediately before his return. We are living in that pattern right now. Not in a single war, but in a global landscape of overlapping, intensifying, multiplying conflicts that match the description he gave 2,000 years ago on that hillside.
Jesus did not say there would be a war. He said nation would rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. A pattern of simultaneous, escalating, global conflict. Open your news app and count how many active wars are happening right now. Then read Matthew 24:7 again.
The third thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is an increase in natural disasters, food crises, and disease. Not as isolated events, but as a pattern of escalating frequency and intensity that he compared to something very specific. Matthew 24:7-8, "and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of birth pains." Luke 21:11 adds pestilences and great signs from heaven to the list.
The detail that makes this prophetically significant is not the disasters themselves. Earthquakes and famines have always existed. It is the comparison to birth pains. Birth pains do not stay the same. They increase in frequency and intensity as the delivery approaches.
The United Nations World Food Program reports that the number of people facing acute food insecurity has more than doubled in the last five years. The World Health Organization has dealt with more global health emergencies in the last decade than in the previous 50 years combined. The US Geological Survey records show that the frequency of significant earthquakes has measurably increased over the last century. Climate-related natural disasters, floods, wildfires, storms, are breaking records in both frequency and severity year after year.
None of these facts individually prove anything, but taken together, they form exactly the pattern Jesus described. Not a single disaster signaling the end, but a rising, accelerating, intensifying series of disasters that increase like contractions before a birth. The labor has begun. The contractions are getting closer together.
Jesus compared end-time disasters to birth pains. They do not stay the same. They increase in frequency and intensity. Look at the last 10 years of global disasters and ask yourself honestly, are the contractions getting closer together or further apart?
The fourth thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is a global increase in the persecution and hatred of Christians. Not in a few isolated regions, but across the world, and from every direction. Matthew 24:9, "Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name's sake."
Hated by all nations, not some nations, not the nations where Christianity has always been persecuted, all nations, including nations where Christianity was once the dominant cultural framework. Open Doors International reports that over 365 million Christians worldwide currently face high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. That number has increased every single year for the past decade.
In the Middle East and North Africa, ancient Christian communities that existed for nearly 2,000 years have been reduced to fragments. In China, churches are being demolished, pastors are being imprisoned, and Bibles are being confiscated at an accelerating rate. In sub-Saharan Africa, thousands of Christians are being killed by militant groups annually. And in Western nations, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, where Christians were never historically persecuted, there is a measurable, documented, increasing hostility toward biblical values in public policy, media, academia, and cultural conversation.
Jesus said his followers would be hated by all nations. That word all is being fulfilled more completely right now than at any previous point in Christian history. Over 365 million Christians face persecution right now. Ancient churches that survived 2,000 years are disappearing. And in the West, biblical values are increasingly treated as dangerous. Jesus said all nations. He meant all nations.
The fifth thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is one of the most overlooked signs in the entire Olivet discourse and it describes something happening not in the world but inside the church. Matthew 24:12, "and because lawlessness will increase, the love of many will grow cold." The love of many, not the love of unbelievers, the love of believers.
Jesus described a specific cause and effect relationship. As the culture around the church becomes increasingly lawless, the church itself begins to cool. Not because the church is directly attacked, but because the constant exposure to a culture that celebrates what God forbids slowly erodes the warmth, the conviction, and the sacrificial love that once defined the Christian community.
This is not theoretical. Church attendance in the Western world has declined every single year for the past two decades. The number of people identifying as Christian in Europe, North America, and Australia has dropped dramatically in a single generation. Divorce rates inside the church mirror secular rates. Giving has declined. Volunteerism has dropped. Doctrinal convictions that were once non-negotiable are being abandoned by denominations that held them for centuries, not because the Bible changed, but because the cultural pressure became too uncomfortable to resist.
The love is growing cold exactly as Jesus described. Not overnight, not through persecution, through the slow, steady, relentless normalization of lawlessness in the culture surrounding the church until the church itself begins to lose the heat that once made it different from the world it was called to transform. Jesus did not say the love of unbelievers would grow cold. He He the love of many, his people, and the cause was not persecution. It was the slow normalization of lawlessness until the church lost the fire that once made it different from the world.
The sixth thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is the one sign that is not a warning. It is a milestone. Matthew 24:14, "And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come." Then the end will come.
Jesus attached a specific condition to the timing of the end, not a date, not a political event, not a natural disaster, but the completion of a mission. The gospel must reach every nation, and only then does the end come.
According to the Joshua Project and Wycliffe Global Alliance, the Bible has now been translated into over 700 languages with portions available in over 3,500, covering approximately 97% of the world's population in their own language. Missionary organizations operate in virtually every country on Earth. The internet has made the gospel accessible in places where physical missionaries could never go. Underground churches exist in the most restricted nations on Earth. YouTube sermons, including the one you are watching right now, reach viewers in countries where Christianity is illegal.
The gospel has never been more globally accessible than it is at this exact moment in history. Jesus said the gospel would be preached to all nations before the end. That condition has never been closer to being fully met than it is right now. And the tools God is using to accomplish it are the very technologies that most people use for entertainment. The gospel is now accessible in languages covering 97% of the world's population. Underground churches exist in the most restricted nations on earth. YouTube is preaching in countries where Bibles are illegal. The mission Jesus gave is closer to completion right now than at any point in 2,000 years.
The seventh and final thing Jesus said would happen right before his return is the most chilling of all because it describes not a catastrophe but a mood. Matthew 24:37-39, "For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day when Noah entered the ark and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man."
Eating, drinking, marrying, living normal lives. The sign is not that something dramatic will be happening. The sign is that life will feel completely deceptively ordinary while every warning God has ever sent goes ignored by the majority of people alive. This is the most precise description of the current moment that any prophecy in the Bible provides.
Despite wars escalating on multiple continents, despite famines spreading, despite earthquakes increasing, despite persecution rising, despite the church cooling, the majority of the world continues to live as though none of it carries any spiritual significance at all. People are scrolling, shopping, planning vacations, debating politics, and going about their routines with the same casual unawareness that characterized Noah's generation. A generation that had a preacher building a massive ark in full public view for 120 years and still did not take the warning seriously.
Luke 17:26-30 adds that the same pattern existed in the days of Lot, ordinary life continuing right up until the moment judgment arrived. The warning is not that the end will come with no signs. The warning is that the signs will be everywhere and most people will not care. The most terrifying sign of the end times is not a disaster. It is the fact that all six previous signs are happening simultaneously and most people are scrolling past them without a second thought. That casual unawareness is itself the seventh sign.
Here is what I need you to carry out of this teaching. I am not setting a date for the return of Christ. Nobody can do that. Jesus himself said in Matthew 24:36 that no one knows the day or the hour, not even the angels, not even the son, only the father. But Jesus also rebuked the Pharisees in Matthew 16:3 for being able to read the weather, but unable to read the signs of the times. He expects his followers to pay attention to what is happening around them and measure it against what he said would happen.
False teachers are multiplying. Wars are escalating globally. Famines, plagues, and disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity. Christians are being persecuted in more nations than ever before in history. The love of the church is measurably cooling. The gospel has reached more of the world than at any previous point and the majority of people alive are living as though none of it matters. Every single sign Jesus described is present simultaneously, globally, and intensifying. That has never been true before in the history of the world.
Luke 21:28 gives the instruction that applies directly to the person watching this video right now. "Now, when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads because your redemption is drawing near."
Straighten up. Do not collapse under the weight of what is happening around you. Raise your heads. Do not look down in fear. Your redemption is drawing near. The same signs that terrify the world are meant to encourage the believer because they confirm that the God who said these things would happen is the same God who said he is coming back to finish what he started.
Live urgently. Live faithfully. Live as though the return of Christ could happen in your lifetime because for the first time in 2,000 years, every sign Jesus described is present on the earth at the same time. And that is not a coincidence. It is a countdown.
Subscribe to Faith Ablaze Network right now and hit that notification bell. We release teachings like this one every single week. Share this video with every person you know, believer or not, because the signs Jesus described are not hidden. They are headlines and the people in your life deserve the chance to read them before the window closes. And leave a comment below. Tell me which of these seven signs impacted you the most today. God bless you and I will see you in the next message.