As to why He isn't back yet, it was pretty well established that the time for that is set. I sincerely doubt that we can move it up by our prayers.
As for signs of the coming of the Kingdom, yes, we all tend to get a little carried away over optimistic. Here are the facts as I see them. There is no way that the end times scenario could take place without a Jewish state in Palestine. The emergence of that state after 2,000 years of dispersion, is a modern miracle.
I'm told that they don't study most of Israel's battles at West Point because there is nothing to be learned from them. Case in point. The guy holding the Golan Heights in 1973 was down to seven tanks by the beginning of day three. They knew they were going out to die that morning, but they were willing to die to buy time. So their seven tanks rumble out and stretched out before them are over a hundred Syrian tanks. And just as they begin to get in range, the Syrians begin to run away. Some abandon their tanks and run on foot. Others turned the tanks around and left the battlefield.
What is so amazing about these stories is that the people who tell them will frequently tell you that they are not religious. They are secular Jews. They don't pray. They don't really believe in the supernatural. But they are compelled to believe in something or someone as a result of their experiences in battle.
Incidently, humanly speaking, the trickster saved them. Nixon took a 3:00 AM call from Golda Meier. His advisers did not want to help. Nixon asked her what she wanted. She had a list ready. He got a copy of it. And he sent every single thing she asked for by air.
The existence of Israel quickens the pulse and excites the mind, but apart from the Jewish state, I personally don't see one piece of fulfilled prophecy in my lifetime. Not one. This whole thing could go on for another century or two and it wouldn't affect my faith. The Jews could get slaughtered and the state could be destroyed, but that wouldn't affect my faith either. The emperor who followed Constantine didn't like Christianity, and he gave the Jews a state in Palestine. That probably got the prophecy buff's excited back in the day. But later emperors took that authority away from them.
And since you insist on asking such cosmic questions (I'm thinking that these e-mails mike make an interesting book), I have to say a word about time. I had a God encounter a couple of years ago as I was riding my bike past the bus station. And I suddenly had this amazing thought. What if one of these buses smashed into me? What if I died?
And this is what I came up with.
http://mac61107.blogspot.com/
The point is one of the perception of time. If you want to walk with God, you will have to move from your time perspective to His. The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas used to seem like it was a year long. Now I blink and it's gone. And standing there beside my dead body, faced with the reality of a separation from Nancy and the kids, the time perspective once again shifts. They'll be along at the appointed time. And it won't seem like much time at all.
Jesus is coming back quickly. Very, very quickly. And if this whole trains of history wobbles it's way down the tracks for another 1,000 years before He comes back, He is still coming back very quickly. Someday we will look back on this from the perspective of billions of years of existence. He is coming back very quickly. It won't seem like any time at all.
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