Question: The Lord can come at any time now, but couldn’t have even 70 years ago. I want to ...

Question [from Scotland]: In Global Peace and the Rise of Antichrist, you admit that the signs for the Second Coming have only manifested in the last 60 years (establishment of Israel, weapons capable of destroying all flesh on earth, apostasy, ecumenism, multinational economy, etc.). Without these signs the Second Coming could not have taken place, so the Rapture, which precedes it by seven years, could not have occurred. Thus your teaching of imminency must be wrong.

Christ couldn’t have raptured His Church in the 1700s, for example, since the conditions of Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians, Revelation, etc., were not present: nation of Israel in her own land, weapons of mass destruction, global economy, apostasy, world religion, etc. The Lord can come at any time now, but couldn’t have even 70 years ago. I want to believe that the Rapture was imminent from the very beginning until now, but how can you defend that doctrine?

Answer: Israel could have been brought back into her land and all of the conditions necessary for Great Tribulation events could have been pulled together in short order at any time in history. We can't imagine how this could have happened, but God could have caused it, no matter how impossible it seems to us today. He is the God of the impossible, able to do anything, and that must include these developments as well, at any time.