Many contributors and readers at AATW know that I believe the return of Christ is near. I will not state a year or make any of the specific predictions that date-setters do. I do not believe He will return in the next year; all I can say is that, in my spirit, I feel the coming and believe it will be within my lifetime.

I have held this belief for some time. It is born from an intuition, deep within, and from reading Scripture. Jesus in His Olivet Discourse gave a sequence to help us understand when His return would be near: the Abomination of Desolation; the Great Tribulation; the darkening of the sky; the sign of the Son of Man and the return of Jesus on the clouds.

Without a proper understanding of this sequence, the Olivet Discourse becomes unintelligible. The intertextuality between the Olivet Discourse and the Book…