“But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away,” 1 Corinthians 7:29-31.
On a number of occasions, I have referred to certain events currently being referred to and reported upon in the news with increasing frequency, as indicating that the close of this age is coming very near.
The Christian has been given various matters to watch out for as signs of the approach of the end of this age!
Remember the Words of the Saviour.
“And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree, and all the trees; when they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand. So likewise ye, when ye see these things come to pass, know ye that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand. Verily I say unto you, This generation (the Jewish ‘nation’ – Editor) shall not pass away, till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.” Luke 21:29-33.
The two subjects I have referred to as indicating that ‘the time of the end’ has come upon us, are the increasing rise in antisemitism and the other is the spread of the availability and increasing use of drugs.
Here are recent headlines from news websites.
The first states:
Beaten for being a Jew on the streets of Britain: Outrage at ‘utterly abhorrent’ antisemitic attack on orthodox Jewish building inspector in Slough
The report begins: ‘A sickening video showing a Jewish man fearing for his life after a stranger shouted ‘dirty mother ****** Jew’ at him during an unprovoked assault has been condemned as ‘utterly abhorrent’ antisemitism.
Footage capturing the horrifying ordeal shows the victim, who was standing outside a property while carrying out work as a building inspector, being subjected to a torrent of racial slurs, including that he was a ‘baby killer.
At one point, the attacker threatens the man with physical violence, saying ‘I’ll break your ****** jaw’ before accusing the man of ‘killing kids in Palestine’.
Two other headlines read:
High Street mini-marts selling cocaine, cannabis and prescription drugs, BBC secret filming reveals
Police arrest two over alleged drug sales through shops in West Midlands
The report states: ‘The arrests come after a BBC investigation found cocaine, cannabis, laughing gas and prescription pills being offered for sale in mini-marts on UK High Streets. . . . During the BBC’s investigation, drugs were readily offered to its undercover researchers, who secretly filmed in shops across four neighbouring West Midlands towns.
As part of the investigation, the BBC also analysed dozens of local news reports. From Bideford in Devon, to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, to Belfast in Northern Ireland, the analysis found that drugs had been found in more than 70 shops and linked premises, including crystal meth and heroin.’
AD 70
Ever since the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, the poor Jew has been under the cruel abuse of the unbelieving Gentile!
There have been times of absolutely horrifying persecution, maltreatment and tyranny by the nations of the earth against the Jews.
Within living memory, the world has witnessed the Nazi ‘Holocaust’ which resulted in some six million European Jews done to death in the most barbaric, and cold-blooded manner.
I have no doubt that brought down the wrath of God upon the Nazi regime and the humiliation of the German race, with the exception of those brave Germans who opposed Hitler, many of whom suffered the same cruel fate.
Calvary
We must, when considering antisemitism, consider Calvary!
It was there that the Jewish race, favoured of God by His entering into a covenant with their founding fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, killed their promised Messiah, and brought about divine judgment upon the race.
The terms of that covenant are repeatedly recorded and preserved for us in Holy Scripture.
“After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus? And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir. And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be. And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness. And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it,” Genesis 15:1-7.
Repeated
The terms of this Covenant were repeated and elaborated upon to subsequent generations of Abraham’s offspring.
This Covenant was what moved the Lord to deliver Israel out of Egypt.
“And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them,” Exodus 2:23-25.
However, time and again Israel forgot the covenant and disobeyed and spurned the Lord, and turned away to idolatry. This happened so often that the Lord said through His servant Jeremiah, some 800 years after the ‘Exodus’:
“The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Cursed be the man that obeyeth not the words of this covenant, which I commanded your fathers in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Obey my voice, and do them, according to all which I command you: so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God: that I may perform the oath which I have sworn unto your fathers, to give them a land flowing with milk and honey, as it is this day. Then answered I, and said, So be it, O LORD. Then the LORD said unto me, Proclaim all these words in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, saying, Hear ye the words of this covenant, and do them. For I earnestly protested unto your fathers in the day that I brought them up out of the land of Egypt, even unto this day, rising early and protesting, saying, Obey my voice. Yet they obeyed not, nor inclined their ear, but walked every one in the imagination of their evil heart: therefore I will bring upon them all the words of this covenant, which I commanded them to do; but they did them not. And the LORD said unto me, A conspiracy is found among the men of Judah, and among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. They are turned back to the iniquities of their forefathers, which refused to hear my words; and they went after other gods to serve them: the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers. Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them,” Jeremiah 11:1-11.
The consequences of the rejection of God’s Word and His merciful warning was the Babylonian seventy year captivity, the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem.
However, they did not learn, in the long term from this dreadful experience.
No, when the promised Messiah came amongst them and showed by His own words and miracles that He was their Messiah, they rejected Him, called Him a liar and an imposter and despite the pleadings of the Roman Governor, Pilate, they demanded His death.
“Pilate therefore went forth again, and saith unto them, Behold, I bring him forth to you, that ye may know that I find no fault in him. Then came Jesus forth, wearing the crown of thorns, and the purple robe. And Pilate saith unto them, Behold the man! When the chief priests therefore and officers saw him, they cried out, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Take ye him, and crucify him: for I find no fault in him. The Jews answered him, We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he was the more afraid; And went again into the judgment hall, and saith unto Jesus, Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer. Then saith Pilate unto him, Speakest thou not unto me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and have power to release thee? Jesus answered, Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above: therefore he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin. And from thenceforth Pilate sought to release him: but the Jews cried out, saying, If thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar’s friend: whosoever maketh himself a king speaketh against Caesar. When Pilate therefore heard that saying, he brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgment seat in a place that is called the Pavement, but in the Hebrew, Gabbatha. And it was the preparation of the passover, and about the sixth hour: and he saith unto the Jews, Behold your King! But they cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar. Then delivered he him therefore unto them to be crucified. And they took Jesus, and led him away. And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha: where they crucified him, and two other with him, on either side one, and Jesus in the midst,” John 19:4-18.
Before this dreadful wickedness was carried out by the Jewish people, under the direction of their leaders, the Saviour had warned them as He entered the city in apparent triumph, of what they would do and the consequences of their actions.
“And when he was come nigh, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen; saying, Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven, and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master, rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation,” Luke 19:37-44.
But the Jewish people, just like the Gentile nations today, gave no heed either to His words of mercy or His words of warning.
In consequence, in AD 70, the Jewish nation ceased to be and the race was scattered amongst the Gentile nations and it remains so still today.
Yes, in 1948, the Jewish state was re-constituted but by far the majority of Jewish people remain still scattered amongst the Gentiles.
Mercy removed
Through the centuries since AD 70, the nation chosen of God has been handed over to judgment by His removing of His mercy and grace from them on a national level. There were many thousands of Jews delivered from sin through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, as the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles show, but AD 70 brought God’s judgment in a very full manner upon the scattered nation.
I read just a few days ago of a very much earlier warning from the Lord to His chosen people, of the consequences of persistent and wilful rebellion.
“But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments; and if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments, but that ye break my covenant: I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you. And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: And your strength shall be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees of the land yield their fruits,” Leviticus 26:14-20.
That warning phrase, “I will punish you seven times more for your sins,” appears in verses 21, 24, 28.
I have noted the verse 36 on many occasions: “And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.”
I have thought of that verse when watching news film of the Nazi cruelty toward the Jewish people during the time of Hitler’s pogroms, both in Germany and in the lands that the Nazis overrun.
I have looked on in sorrow of heart at the fear upon the countenances of men and women and children as the Nazis brutally rounded them up for death and I have thought of the words of verse 36.
Rejection
Rejecting Christ is a more serious matter than rejectors realise. Yet it is illustrated in the centuries of persecution that the Jewish people have brought upon themselves for that crime of which Peter charged them in Acts 3:13-15.
“The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied him in the presence of Pilate, when he was determined to let him go. But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; and killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses.”
The seriousness of the crime will be realised one day by all who take no heed to the Gospel offer of mercy and pardon!\“And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day,” 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10.
All nations
In that day the nations of the earth will learn that sinful treatment of the Jewish people was but a foreshadowing of the dreadful retribution that they would reap for their rejection of the very Christ that the Jewish people rejected.
I might add that God has mercy in store for the Jew! We read of this in these words of Paul in Hebrews 8:10-12.
“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people: And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”
The apostle is quoting a very old promise declared by Jeremiah, some 2800 years ago!
Coming days
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more,” Jeremiah 31:31-34.
That will come about on the day of the Saviour’s return to this earth.
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn,” Zechariah 12:9-10.
“Behold, the day of the LORD cometh, and thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee. For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle. And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south,” Zechariah 14:1-4.
These words, which indicate the wonderful plan of mercy for His ancient people, also tell us of the conclusion of the times of the Gentile persecution of the Jewish race.
Divine deliverance
“And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. . . . For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished; and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the LORD go forth, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.”
This present age will conclude with, amongst other things, seven years of Antichrist’s rule from Jerusalem. In the final three and half years, he will throw off his ‘cloak’ of peace and declare himself for what he is — The Antichrist.
Paul puts it like this.
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God,” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4.
The Great Tribulation
That period is referred to by the Saviour as the “Great tribulation,” Matthew 24:21.
The period will end with the return of the Saviour to deliver His people physically and redeem them spiritually.
“Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory,” Matthew 24:29-30.
The tribes of the earth mourning is that “mourning” I have already quoted above, Zechariah 12:10.
So, the rising tide of antisemitism, sad and contemptible as it is, is a herald of the approaching “Day of the Lord”.
Increasing Drug Problem
As for the selling and taking of drugs becoming ever more common so that it appears that they can be purchased in the ‘corner shop’ as easily as a bar of chocolate is obtained, that reminds us of what Revelation 18 tells us of the last days!
Grea Fall
The chapter relates the downfall of Antichrist’s great commercial city, the rebuilt Babylon of old, and the fall and lamentations of the merchants who were the mainstay of the Antichrist’s mercantile empire.
The condemnation of these utterly ‘bankrupt’ merchants, who are suffering the loss of all things under God’s judgments, contains this statement from the “mighty angel” whose words are recorded at the end of the chapter.
“And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth,” Revelation 18:23-24.
The phrase, “For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived” is of particular interest.
Literally the phrase may be rendered ‘For by thy administering of drugs were all nations deceived.’
The latter-day merchant will be a peddler of drugs – and that ‘legally’!
Government’s response
The BBC reports, mentioned earlier, contain the Government’s response to what is happening.
“The government is working with police, the NCA and Trading Standards to “take the strongest possible action against these criminal businesses”, a spokesperson for the Home Office said. West Midlands Police said it would always work with partners ‘to act on complaints about illegal drugs sales, anti-social behaviour, and crime and disorder’.”
Great, now we can expect ‘the strongest possible action’, like that taken to stop the ‘invasion’ of illegal immigrants who are almost daily landing with the aid of the Royal Navy and the RNLI lifeboats!
We must not heed the words of men but rely upon the infallible “Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever,” 1 Peter 1:23.
The sun is setting and the night of godlessness and satanic chaos draws on rapidly.
Let every believer take note of the “signs of the times”!
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Monday 27th April 2026