Marion,
Thanks once again for your insight! You are so right! The bottom line should always be for us to be ready at His coming because our salvation has come to us by Jesus Christ who is the author and finisher of our faith! ---Not how well we understand end time prophecy!
Its just human nature for us to want to look into the future and know in advance what is going to happen! The Bible has given us enough to know in order for our salvation to be secure in Jesus Christ!
There are three things we can know for sure: 1) We are promised that He will return! 2) At this point in time, He has not returned! 3) The day or the hour is not for us to know!
However, all that does not keep certain sensationalists, who want to appeal to our human nature which is to try to look into the future, from putting out all kinds of prophecies as if they know more than is revealed in the Scriptures.
Many of them have taken it upon themselves to climb down out of the grandstands, so to speak, and begin to help prophecy along so it will work out in the way they have prophesied, rather than being content to sit and observe its unfolding according to God's divine plan!
That's the main problem I see with modern would be Prophets! It's helping to promote the endless war that is taking place in the middle east today! They are saying that the Jews are suppose to have Israel as an inheritance from God forever so they are wanting to make it available to them!
By so doing, they are overlooking many factors. Here are just a few: 1) Not all Jews want to live in the middle east even if there was peace. 2) If they did there would not be room for all of them even if there were no Arabs! 3) The nation of Israel that God promised the promised land to did inherit the land that was promised to them long ago! Joshua who followed Moses led them into the promised land. They were given the land on the condition that they would continue in all the ways of God! 4) Jesus said that the meek will inherit the earth, not some small piece of real estated somewhere. Today, God is not in the real estate business! Jews can become Christians, and so can Arabs and since Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, peace will come when "Christians" stop promoting war as if God is in the real estate business!
Marion, as you said, ask 10 people and get 10 opinions! You are right and I gave you mine! As for the Scripture you gave, Hank addresses that in his book that I mentioned. If I remember correctly, he explained that Jesus was talking to people of a culture that was far different from ours and used the language of the day. They understood exactly what He was talking about and they understood when those prophecies were fulfilled!
All I'm here to say is that we need to be careful about following the prophetic gurus out there, there are a lot of them and we can get our focus on prophecy instead of Jesus Christ if we aren't careful!
Love and blessings to all,
J.V.