Question -- The Lord says no one knows the day or the hour, so why are so many focused on the rapture, the signs, and prophecies and even what they call "high watch days"?
At a superficial level that is right but when you examine that word a little closer it becomes very confusing.
First, does that even make sense? If the Lord were to return tomorrow, are you saying He doesn't know today? Sure, two thousand years ago He might not have known, only the Father, but at some point prior to returning He would know. Because of that many associate this word with a Galilean wedding. The bride and bridegroom get engaged (Pentecost) and then the bridegroom goes and builds a room for him and his bride in His father's house (Jesus said He would build the church). He has two years to do that (two thousand years since Pentecost) and then the Father gives his approval and he comes and gets the bride (rapture). So two thousand years ago Jesus did not know the day or the hour that this would be. But as he builds the church he gets a better and better idea of how much longer it will be. Perhaps he is just waiting for the appliances He ordered from Sears to arrive and then the house is done. Maybe they are scheduled to arrive and be installed on Thursday and He'll come Friday. Now if you are the bride and you are spending time with him each day or at least each week you also would know these things.
That fits what the prophets say in the Old Testament that God will do nothing without first telling His prophets.
Second, Jesus told Sardis that if they did not repent and seek Him and His truth like they did at the beginning then He would come at a time they did not expect and they would be caught by surprise. What kind of warning is that if everyone is going to be caught by surprise. That doesn't make sense. Jesus never said we would never know, instead what He said was that no one knows, therefore we must watch for the signs. The word was not given saying ignore His coming and focus on other things, on the contrary, the fact that we don't know the day or the hour means we must watch.
Third, Jesus gave us three analogies to His coming. A woman who is pregnant and about to have a baby. When a woman is pregnant you do not know the day or the hour that the baby will be born, but you do have a pretty good idea of the month, if it is a full term baby. You also have many signs that you would watch for. There are two key ones, the woman goes into labor and the water breaks. When a woman goes into labor the labor pains are not temporary, they continue and become stronger and more frequent. There have been a lot of things that happened to Israel over the last 76 years but for the most part they were temporary. Like a sharp kick. But since 2023 they have not gone away and have only become more and more intense and more frequent. Israel is definitely going into labor. In addition we could consider October 7, 2023 when the water broke. A second analogy is a farmer who is harvesting a crop. When he plants it he doesn't know the day or hour that he will harvest, but he does have a pretty good idea. He could probably predict to within two weeks. But when you are two weeks away from harvest his prediction will probably be within a day or two. Once he has a five day weather report he can probably begin planning for the harvest. Look at the church. When I was in college if I wanted to study a passage of the Bible I would get out my Vine's word study, my Strong's concordance, Young's literal concordance, maybe Kittle's word study, and a bunch of different Bibles and my Life Studies of the Bible books. The table would be packed full and it would take me an hour to do what I can now do in ten minutes using the Blue Letter Bible and the Bible hub commentaries. I had 26 different versions of the Bible, now with Gateway Bible on the internet I have much more than that. All of those books represent about a ten thousand dollar investment, today all these tools are available for free to anyone with internet access. This was prophesied that at the end of the age we would be able to run to and fro through the Bible. We use to have videotapes of messages on just about every verse of the Bible. The cost of all those was about $200 for the book of Ephesians, perhaps another ten thousand dollars if you wanted the whole set for the entire Bible. Today you can search the internet for messages on any book of the Bible, on youtube, for free. You can see summaries, or in depth exegesis, or even some rather wild speculation. These tools took hundreds of years to make from brothers who gave their whole lives to this endeavor. To me this is like the house of God, the church, being wired and the electricity is flowing. Once the church is raptured those left behind will need bibles and the Antichrist will be seeking them out based on credit card purchases and facebook records of who goes to church. To prepare for this the Gideons have distributed 2.6 billion Bibles that the Antichrist will not have any record of and will not know who has them. Therefore even though he'll control the internet and censor it heavily, there are 2.6 billion bibles that for the most part will not be found, and these have been distributed in 200 countries. So yes, we have prepared for this day. We are also told that before the Lord returns there will be a "falling away". Imagine there is a dumpster outside the construction site that will be filled up with boxes and scraps from the construction. This is what we are also seeing with some of the wild LGBTQ+ displays going on in the pulpit of many churches. Finally, we are told that the day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. You don't know when that will be which is why you have a night watchman. If you are very diligent you will notice a thief scoping out a place prior to robbing it. Perhaps you will notice the minute they cut the power and the phone lines. Even though the thief didn't tell you beforehand, if you are really on your toes you will still know and be ready. Also there are other clues, like when the safe will be full of money, and if it is an inside job take a close look at your employees.
Fourth, Ecclesiastes says there is no new thing under the sun but that which has been is that which will be. OK, what about when Jesus was born, was that a surprise? Not to Mary, not to Joseph, not to Simeon or Anna or the wise men. What about when He started His ministry? Nope, John the Baptist saw the Spirit descend on Him, He had a number of disciples following Him, He announced the Jubilee in the synagogue. What about the crucifixion? Jesus rebuked those in Israel for not knowing the time of their visitation. The prophecies were clear, and He had already fulfilled so many that it was inexcusable for them not to know that He was the Passover lamb that would be crucified on Passover. At the time of Abraham it would have been fair to say that no one knew the day or the hour, but not when He entered Jerusalem riding a donkey with everyone saying "blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord".
I hope this answers the question as to why people, like myself, are focused intently on this topic.
