Developing trends continue.
These would include an intensifying emphasis on political and economic "globalization"; increasing exploitation of Mideastern turmoil in the interests of fundamentalist Islamic expansionism; continued advance of gay agenda (e.g., recent legalization of gay marriage in Britain and Canada); escalating HIV/AIDS-related havoc in various regions of the world; rising geophysical and climatological concerns, ad infinitum. It is not difficult to envision an emerging scenario of prophetic implication - nor would we necessarily disagree.
A fundamental problem at this point lies in the common tendency to take perceived end time fulfillment and, somewhat akin to a conjectured pictorial completion based on one's possession of a limited number of jigsaw puzzle pieces, convince ourselves as to total insight and understanding. (One need only peruse the plethora of prophecy related works with which the evangelical/fundamentalist community was inundated throughout much of the twentieth century to grasp the basic point here.)
That biblical prophecy is designed to provide practical points of reference as opposed to comprehensive detail becomes vital to prophetic interests at large. This reflects, among other things, a designed intent to discourage those pursuits motivated primarily by curiosity regarding the future - a "religious National Enquirer" mindset, to put it somewhat candidly. Various cases in point might be cited. While ascribing significant import to an end time return of Israel to its homeland, for example, Scripture offered little concerning that greatest of post-Flood catastrophes whereby the the Jewish people would be particularly motivated to return "home" (i.e., Hitler's Third Reich and World War II).
The principle yet applies. Failing of such understanding, the "experts" of Jesus' day had the divine agenda "all figured out" - and missed his advent entirely. Now, as then, there are specifics yet to be known and details yet to be grasped. No one knows it all. Given such, the Lord advised the prophet Jeremiah on two occasions that, "In the last days [i.e., time of fulfillment] you shall understand it clearly" (Jer. 23:20; 30:24 NASB).
Much may be learned here.
Burl Ratzsch
