Lindsey's School of Interpretation

Lindsey's Prophetic Jigsaw Puzzle

Lindsey's Perplexing Puzzle

The Function of the Advent Signs

Signs Withheld.  A first vital function of the Advent signs is to nourish the hope and strengthen the faith of believers.  Signs and faith are not necessarily mutually exclusive.  The determining factor is the attitude of belief or unbelief of the person viewing the signs.  Christ withheld signs from “an evil and adulterous generation”  (Matt 12:39) because no number of signs can generate faith in an incredulous and rebellious heart.

Signs Given.  Signs, however, serve to strengthen the faith and nourish the hope of those who believe.  Thus, after the resurrection, Christ presented Himself to His disciples “by many proofs” (Acts 1:3).  Those proofs would not automatically convince hardened unbelievers, but did strengthen the faith of the believing disciples.
 
The attitude of belief or unbelief determines the value and meaning of the Advent signs.  To an unbeliever,  signs are meaningless because he fails to perceive in them the outworking of divine grace or judgement.  To a believer, however, signs are meaningful because they provide constant reassurance that God is at work, bringing human history to its consummation.  How do the Advent signs strengthen the faith of the believer?  The subsequent sections endeavor to answer this very question.

A Sense of Reassurance.  A second important function of the Advent signs is to point forward to the imminent consummation of redemption to be realized at the Second Coming of Christ.  To use an analogy, we could compare the Advent signs to highway markers which give the number or the name of the highway but not to highway mileposts which specify the exact distance to the nearest town.
 
When I drive from Chicago to Detroit, I know that I need to stay on Interstate 94 to reach my destination.  Every time the Interstate 94 sign appears, I am reassured to be on the right highway to my destination.  In the same way the frequent appearance of the Advent signs during the course of history have served to reassure Christians of journeying on the right way “to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb 11:10).

A Sense of Progression.  The Advent signs offer to the believer the assurance, not only of journeying on the right way to the Kingdom, but also of drawing near to the end of the journey.  The “near,” however, is never defined in terms of months or years, because the signs given by Christ are like highway markers and not like highway mileposts.
 
The believer who sees the appearance of the Advent signs is constantly assured of drawing nearer and nearer to the end of the journey, though he can never measure the exact distance to the End.  The Advent signs point toward the nearness of the Advent without pinpointing its exact time.  The latter is a secret which God has reserved for Himself (Mark 13:32).
 
In conclusion, the Advent signs enable believers to experience a sense of certainty and imminence, that is, the assurance of journeying on the right way and of progressing toward the end of the journey when the meeting with the Lord will take place.
 

A third important function of the Advent signs is to call for constant readiness.  A prayer I have often heard runs something like this:  “Lord, help us to be ready for the day when Thou shalt come.” Unintentionally, this prayer reflects a misconception, namely, that what is important in order to be saved is to be ready to receive the Lord, not necessarily today, but on the day when He will come.

Preparation not Calculation. The function of the Advent signs is to encourage, not calculation, prognostication, procrastination, but rather constant preparation and watchfulness.  If the intention of Bible prophecies was to enable believers to know the exact moment when major events will occur, then these events would have been given in a precise, incontrovertible way.  But this has never been the function of prophecy.
 Many prophecies were given by Old Testament prophets regarding the First Advent of the Messiah, but when He came there was considerable perplexity regarding the time and manner of His Coming.1  A major reason is that the intent of the Messianic prophecies was to nourish the Advent Hope rather than to satisfy curiosity as to the exact time and manner of Christ’s Coming.

Daniel’s Messianic Prophecy.  It is remarkable that neither Jesus nor any New Testament writer appealed to Daniel’s Messianic time prophecy (Dan 9:24-27) to prove the Messianic claims of Christ.  This is all the more surprising in view of the frequent appeals to Old Testament prophecies to prove Christ’s Messiahship. If the time-element of Daniel’s prophecy had been clearly understood, it would have been cited, especially by Matthew who quotes Old Testament prophecies extensively to prove the Messiahship of Jesus.
 
The lack of any reference to Daniel’s prophecy can hardly be explained as unawareness of its existence, because we are told that many calculated the actual time of the Coming of the Messiah on the basis of this prophecy.  To stop prevailing time-speculations, rabbis placed a curse on anyone trying to calculate the time of the Coming of the Messiah out of Daniel’s prophecy.2
 
Presumably the Gospel writers were aware of the various Messianic dates which had been derived from Daniel’s prophecy, but they refrained from submitting an alternative date.  A reason could be that they did not fully comprehend how Daniel’s sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks were actually fulfilled by Christ’s life, death and resurrection.  It is important to remember that generally prophecies are not fully understood before their actual fulfillment (Dan 9:1-21).
 
The failure of Christ’s contemporaries to understand Old Testament prophecies regarding the time and nature of His First Advent cannot be explained merely as lack of faith on their part.  Even a man of faith like John the Baptist was confused (Matt 11:3).  Anthony A. Hoekema keenly observes that “if believers like John the Baptist could have problems of this sort with predictions about Christ’s first coming, what guarantee do we have that believers will not have similar difficulties with predictions about Christ’s second coming?”3

Pointing to, not Pinpointing.  This warning is obviously ignored by writers like Lindsey who claim to know exactly how and when all the Advent signs will be fulfilled.  For them, the purpose of the signs is not just to point to the certainty of Christ’s Return and the need for constant readiness, but rather to pinpoint God’s specific timetable of events leading to and following the Second Advent.
 
This irresponsible use of Biblical prophecies has caused and is causing disillusionments and disappointments.  To avoid future disappointments, it is important to recognize that the function of the Advent signs is to encourage, not sensational prognostications, but constant preparation and watchfulness.  The purpose of the signs given by Christ in His Olivet Discourse is not to inform us about the exact time or manner of His Return, but to encourage us always to be ready for such event.
 
The keynote of the whole discourse is:  “Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming” (Matt 24:42; cf. vv. 4, 3, 44; 25:13).  Constant watchfulness and readiness have been encouraged by the generic nature of the signs of the times which, as noted earlier, have found a degree of fulfillment in every age.

Open to the Unexpected.  To watch means to be open every day to witness and experience the unexpected.  Genuine Christian living involves a constant response to the unexpected:  “Watch therefore, for you do not know.”  Some Christians, like Lindsey, prefer to live in the false security of knowing the future.  For them there is little to wait for because they have already preempted the future of any surprise with their agenda of expected End-time events.
 
Christians who rejoice in the divine favoritism which has granted them secret knowledge and special protection for the coming crisis wait impatiently for divine destruction to fall upon the competitors in the next church, city, or country.  The signs which Christ gave to encourage constant watchfulness and readiness have become for them signs to foster a false sense of superiority and security.

 Signs of Divine Grace.  A fourth vital function of the Advent signs is to bear witness to the ongoing cosmic struggle between the forces of Christ and the forces of Satan.  Some signs, such as the worldwide Gospel proclamation (Mark 13:10), reveal the outworking of the power of God and the growth of His Kingdom in this world.

Signs of Rebellion.  Other signs, such as the proliferation of antichristian ideologies, military conflicts among nations, growth of lawlessness, persecution of Christ’s followers (Mark 13:6-9), indicate that the powers of evil are at work, attempting to lead the whole world into rebellion and destruction.
 
The believer who witnesses the signs of the ongoing conflict between divine and satanic forces is constantly challenged to wait eagerly for the day when the Lord will come to terminate this conflict and to establish a new order of justice and righteousness upon this earth.  (2 Pet 3:12).

Signs of Divine Judgment.  Other signs, such as earthquakes, tornados, floods, famines, pestilences (Mark 13:8; Luke 21:11), reveal God’s judgement upon human wickedness.  They are harbingers of the final divine judgment to come.  The Advent signs, then, tell us that there is a conflict going on in this world between divine and satanic forces, but the Lord will soon come as Savior and Judge to bring this conflict to an end.
 
For the believer, natural or man-made calamities are not a reason for despair, because he knows that nothing can defeat God’s ultimate purpose.  God is in control, working out His purpose.  Unpleasant developments are to be expected and their intensification only serves to show that Christ will soon return to terminate this human drama.

A Call to Repentance.  The Advent signs have a message also for unbelievers, summoning them to believe in Christ and be saved.  Some incredulous and rebellious unbelievers will not respond to any number of signs.  Christ rebuked such a people for failing to discern the signs of the times (Matt 16:30; Mark 8:11).  To them the signs only served to increase their condemnation.
 
There are people, however, who do respond to the message conveyed by the Advent signs.  When these persons hear and/or see disasters, lawlessness, military conflicts, lives changed by the power of the Gospel, they are led to search for meaning and hope in their lives.
 
Many Christians have been led to Christ through the experience of a calamity such as internment in a concentration camp, the loss of a loved one caused by war, a tornado, an earthquake or a criminal act.  In such cases, the signs of divine judgment have led to reflection, to a change of behavior and to a commitment to the Lord.  Thus they have fulfilled their prophetic function of calling sinners to repentance and salvation.
 
A vital function of the Advent signs is, then, to reveal the ongoing controversy between the Kingdom of God and the powers of evil.  This revelation challenges both believers and unbelievers to action.  Believers are challenged eagerly to wait for the Lord to come to bring the conflict to an end.  Unbelievers are challenged by the same signs to seek for those spiritual realities which cannot be destroyed by natural or man-made calamities.

This chapter has examined four vital functions of the Advent signs.

First, we have seen that the Advent signs have served to nourish the hope and strengthen the faith of believers in every generation.
 
Secondly, we have found that the Advent signs point believers constantly forward to the consummation of redemption to be realized by the Coming of the Lord.
 
Thirdly, we noted that the Advent signs are given in the Scripture to encourage, not calculation or prognostication, but constant preparation and watchfulness.
 
Lastly, we noted that the Advent signs reveal the  ongoing controversy between the Kingdom of God and the power of evil.  The revelation of such a conflict summons believers eagerly to wait for the Coming of the Lord who will bring the conflict to an end.

 1.  The Advent expectations in the Old and New Testaments are examined at length in the second and third chapters of my book The Advent Hope for Human Hopelessness.

 2.  For a scholarly and comprehensive study on ancient Jewish attempts to determine the time of the Coming of the Messiah on the basis of Daniel 9:24-27, see Ben Zion Wacholder, “Chronomessianism:  The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles,” Hebrew Union College Annual, 46 (1975): 201ff.

 3.  Anthony A. Hoekema, The Bible and the Future (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1979), p. 133.
 
 

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