Lights in the Growing Darkness: , Prophecy, Israel, and the Call to Stand

I’ve been turning these things over in my mind quite a bit lately—the words of Jesus to His disciples about the end of the age, the visions of the Hebrew prophets, and the sweeping panorama John gives us in Revelation. They don’t feel like distant relics. Instead, they seem to throw a sobering yet strangely steadying light on what we’re living through: the sharp rise in Jew-hatred around the world, the drift into open lawlessness, the relentless focus on self that crowds out almost everything else, and the low-level anxiety that seems to hang over so much of global life. None of this leads me to despair. If anything, it deepens a quiet hope that the story is moving exactly where the Scriptures have always said it would—toward justice, restoration, and the final victory of God.

When Jesus sat with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, He didn’t hold back. They asked Him

about the signs of the end and of His returning, and He answered them honestly: “wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, famines, earthquakes, and false messiahs who would mislead many.” These weren’t the main event, He told them, just the first birth pains. Lawlessness would spread, and the love of most would grow cold.

Yet right in the middle of that warning, He gave them something solid to hold onto: the good news of the kingdom would still reach every nation before the end. There’s no tidy timeline handed over, just a clear, urgent nudge for followers of Christ, keep our eyes open, to endure, and not let the flood of lies or rising panic pull us under.

The prophets fill out this picture in their own powerful, distinctive ways. Isaiah looks at a world weighed down by idols and raw injustice, but he doesn’t stop there; he sees God’s judgment giving way to deep renewal, swords beaten into plowshares, and the nations drawn like a river toward the light streaming from Zion. Daniel walks us through the long arc of empires rising and crashing, then pulls back the curtain on a time of crushing trouble: an arrogant ruler, the horror of the abomination set up in the holy place, and finally the Ancient of Days arriving to stand with His people and establish a kingdom that will never be shaken. Ezekiel, after painting Israel’s return from scattering and exile, warns of a restored people suddenly facing a massive invasion from the north by Gog and his allies. But God breaks in with such force that there’s no question left about who truly rules this world.

The words of the prophets feel uncomfortably relevant right now. The surge in antisemitism, the attacks, rhetoric, and hostility spiking in cities and campuses across continents doesn’t strike me as random political fallout. Scripture has long warned of coordinated opposition to Israel and the Jewish people, rooted in something deeper than geopolitics: a spiritual resistance to the covenants and the Messiah who came through them.

When nations turn hostile or simply look the other way, it carries the weight of Zechariah’s heavy burden-the nations gathered against Jerusalem-and Revelation’s stark picture of the dragon making war on the Woman of the Apocalypse and her offspring.

At the same time, I can’t help but see the very conditions Jesus and Paul spoke of coming into sharper focus all around us. Second Timothy 3 reads like someone looking right at our generation and writing a diagnosis: people obsessed with themselves, chasing money, full of pride and abuse, lacking basic human warmth, stubborn, chasing pleasure instead of God. Lawlessness isn’t just the crime stats climbing, it’s the slow wearing away of any common moral ground, that easy shrug where everyone just decides their own version of truth. This all-consuming self-focus, pumped up by endless social media and a culture that tells us our feelings are the ultimate guide, ends up freezing out real love and leaving people lonely even when they’re constantly “connected.” And the fear. money worries, endless international tensions, that quiet existential dread underneath it all, hits me as exactly those birth pains Jesus talked about, coming faster now and hitting harder.

None of this is cause for fatalism. The prophets and apostles never leave us there. They point instead to God’s faithfulness: Israel’s improbable endurance and return to the land as a sign of covenant loyalty; the gospel advancing even in hostile places; and the promise that the one who endures to the end will be saved. The chaos, painful as it is, is labor, not death throes. New birth is coming.

So I find myself holding two realities at once. I see the brokenness clearly, yet I also see the steadying hand of the One who told us these things would happen. The call feels personal: to live with open eyes, to stand against hatred wherever it appears, to keep proclaiming hope in Christ, and to remain faithful when many grow cold. Like the wise virgins with lamps trimmed and burning, we wait—not in anxiety, but in expectant trust. The kingdoms of this world are becoming the kingdom of our Lord. That future is worth anchoring our lives to, even now.

In this growing darkness of lawlessness and fear, we’re called to stand as lights through good works, truth, and love, and to stand with what Jesus stands with, including His people, Israel. It’s not about predicting tomorrow, but about staying ready, sharing the gospel, and trusting that God wins in the end.

Matthew 5:14-16 (MEV) “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a basket, but on a candlestick, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

1 Thessalonians 5:5 (MEV)

“You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness.”

Ephesians 5:8 (MEV)

“For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light.”