Important Months

By C. Eldon McNabb

Ever since September 28, 2000, when the Palestinians declared the Intifada, and began their brutal attacks in Jerusalem, there has been, to me, a peculiar characteristic of the reporting of events related to that uprising. It looks as though the people reporting the news are deliberately using months instead of years to describe the duration of the violence against Jerusalem.

In reports about the space shuttle Columbia disaster on February 1, 2003, special note was made about the first Israeli astronaut. I took particular note when, during the report, the "twenty-eight months of the Intifada" were mentioned.

Again, on April 14, a newspaper article announcing the new Palestinian Cabinet stated, "With the fighting in Iraq winding down, the United States is expected to resume efforts to end the 30 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence." Curiously, the fact that thirty months of violence had now transpired was noted here, instead of perhaps describing it as "two and a half years."

Whatever their reasons may be, they are reporting the time in months by the providence of God so we Christians will hear what I have been declaring for most of that thirty-month period. This violence against the city of Jerusalem is the direct fulfillment of the prophecy in Rev. 11:2. A short time ago, the U.S.-backed "road map" was expected to bring this violence to its conclusion by sometime in 2005. However, recent reports indicate that a Palestinian state with provisional borders could be realized within a year, which falls more in line with God's schedule which calls for forty and two months.

This whole thing is a sign to the Christians of the world to alert them to the fact that the work of the two witnesses in Rev. 11:3 is the next thing on God's schedule. Their work is to make the wake-up call in Matthew 25, "Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him."