Are We in the End Times? What Scripture Says When the World Shakes

Scripture names wars, disasters, and upheaval as real features of the age between Christ’s first coming and His return, and Jesus tells His followers to watch for them. But He gives these signs the way God gave Noah the rainbow: as a reminder that He keeps His promises, not as a countdown. They tell you God is faithful and that Christ could return at any time. They don’t tell you when.

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For years, my mornings followed the same pattern. The news would be on, something big would be unfolding somewhere in the world, and I’d have my Bible open beside me before breakfast was finished. Nearly every time, I landed in Matthew 24. I’ve since written a full walk through that chapter; this article is about the moment before you open it. I wanted to read Jesus’ own words about what I was seeing in real time, and I’d look for one of two things: whether today was the day, or proof that we were so very close.

I’m not embarrassed by that. If you’ve found this article because something happened this week and you typed a question into a search bar, you’re doing what I did, and I want to say plainly that the instinct isn’t wrong. You reached for Scripture when the world shook. That’s the right reflex.

But somewhere in those years I noticed that the mornings kept coming, the events kept coming, and Christ kept reigning. The pattern I’d been looking for never resolved into a date. What changed for me wasn’t the watching. It was what I learned to see when I looked.

So here’s the question this article is really about: when something big happens in the world, how should a follower of Jesus read it?

Jesus Expected You to Ask This

The question you’re asking is old. Sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples asked Jesus almost exactly what you’re asking now:

“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3)

Notice what Jesus didn’t do. He didn’t rebuke them for asking, and He didn’t tell them the question was beneath them. He answered it at length, and He kept answering it through two full chapters of teaching. Asking whether an event means something is not a failure of faith. It’s a question the Lord took seriously enough to answer.

But notice the first thing He said, before a single sign was named:

“See that no one leads you astray.” (Matthew 24:4)

That’s the opening instruction. Before wars, before famines, before earthquakes, Jesus warned that the greatest danger in a shaking world isn’t the shaking. It’s being led somewhere by people who claim to know what the shaking means. Hold onto that, because it frames everything else.

The Pharisees Could Read the Sky

There’s a moment in Matthew 16 that used to make me uncomfortable, and now I think it’s one of the most important passages for anyone asking your question. The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus demanding a sign from heaven, and He answered them like this:

“When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:2–3)

Here’s what I missed for a long time. Jesus didn’t rebuke them for watching. Watching was the one thing they were good at. They read the weather, they knew the prophecies, and they’d studied the Scriptures more carefully than almost anyone alive. The rebuke was that they had all the signs in front of them and couldn’t recognize the Messiah standing in the room.

They had the data and the wrong framework. That combination is still available to us, and it cuts in both directions. Some believers watch every headline and build a timeline out of it, certain they’ve decoded what’s coming. Others have grown so tired of failed predictions that they’ve stopped watching altogether and treat prophecy as background noise. Both groups have stopped reading the signs the way Jesus intended.

Watching is biblical. Jesus commands it. The question was never whether to watch. The question is what the signs are for.

“See That You Are Not Alarmed” (Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21)

Back in Matthew 24, after the warning about deception, Jesus does name the kinds of events that send people to their Bibles in the morning:

“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.” (Matthew 24:6–8)

Read that slowly, because it’s doing two things at once. First, Jesus is confirming that the event that brought you here is real and expected. Wars, rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes: He named them. They’re not random, and they’re not outside of what God said this age would hold. When you see one, you’re seeing exactly what the King said you’d see.

Second, in the same breath, He tells you how to hold it. See that you are not alarmed. This must take place. The end is not yet. He calls these things the beginning of birth pains, and that image matters. Birth pains tell you something is coming, and they tell you it’s real. What they don’t tell you is the hour. No one has ever calculated a birth from the first contraction, and Jesus chose that picture on purpose.

So the honest reading of the event in front of you is this: it confirms that Jesus told the truth about the age we live in, and it does not tell you the date of His return. Both halves of that sentence are Scripture.

A Rainbow, Not a Countdown

If Jesus named the signs and told us to watch, but also refused to let us build a calendar from them, then what exactly are they for? I think Genesis answers that better than any prophecy chart I ever studied.

After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah and with every living thing, and He gave a sign to go with it:

“I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant.” (Genesis 9:13–15)

Think about how you actually respond to a rainbow. You don’t pull out a chart and calculate when the next flood is due. You look at it and remember that God said something and meant it. The sign points to the promise, not to a schedule. That’s what a biblical sign does.

Every named sign in Scripture works the same way. When the world shakes, the sign is pointing you back to the One who said the world would shake, and who also said how the story ends. The same voice that promised wars and earthquakes promised a new heaven and a new earth, and that He would wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:1–4). You can’t take the first promise seriously and dismiss the second. They come from the same mouth.

And this is where the event in your news feed connects to something much older than the end times. Creation has been groaning since Eden. Paul says the whole creation waits with eager longing, subjected to futility, groaning as in the pains of childbirth (Romans 8:19–22). The storm, the quake, the war: these are the fracture of the Fall showing through. They’re not a clock ticking toward a date. They’re a creation that has been groaning for a very long time and that God has already promised to restore.

That’s what the sign reveals. Not when. Who.

Any Time, and Not Yet

Here’s where I have to be careful, because the same Scripture that refuses to give me a date also refuses to let me get comfortable. Jesus really could return today. The disciples were told plainly that the timing belongs to the Father alone, and that it’s not ours to know (Acts 1:7). Nothing has to happen first that would let you rule out this afternoon. That’s what the church has always meant by expecting Him at any time.

But the same passage means He might also come long after you and I are gone. The Father holds the clock, and He hasn’t shown it to anyone. So a believer holds two things at once, without strain: He could come today, and He may not come in my lifetime. Both are true, and Scripture never asks us to collapse one into the other.

Peter helps here, because he was writing to people who’d been waiting long enough to hear scoffing about it:

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

I used to read the delay as a problem I needed to explain. Peter reads it as mercy. Every day the King doesn’t return is a day someone else is being brought home, and if you’re reading this as a believer, one of those days was yours. That changes how you feel about the wait. You can be thankful for the delay because of who it’s saving, and you can long for His return because of who He is, and there’s no contradiction in that. Longing and gratitude live in the same heart.

That’s the posture I eventually found on those mornings. Not “today is the day,” and not “we’re so very close,” but something steadier: He’s faithful, He’s coming, and until then His patience is saving people. Including some I’m supposed to be talking to.

How an Ambassador Lives When the Ground Moves

Which brings me to the part most prophecy articles leave out. If the sign points to the Promise-Keeper rather than to a date, then it doesn’t send you to a chart. It sends you to your neighbor.

When Jesus described the same kinds of upheaval in Luke’s account, He told His followers how to carry themselves through it:

“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28)

Straighten up. Raise your head. That’s the posture of someone who knows who’s in charge. Christ reigns now, not later (Ephesians 1:20–22), and the event that has everyone else anxious hasn’t moved Him an inch. You get to be the steady one in the room, not because you’ve decoded anything, but because you belong to a King whose reign isn’t up for a vote.

And here’s the truth: the people around you are frightened by the same headline that sent you looking for answers. Some of them are hurting from it directly, and some are simply unsettled by how other believers are talking about it. God has placed you near them as His representative, a citizen of His Kingdom living in what Scripture calls the last days (Hebrews 1:2), and the hope you just found is the hope they need. That’s not a program. It’s presence. It’s showing up with help when the storm has passed through, staying calm when everyone else is spinning, and being ready to explain why you’re not afraid when someone finally asks (1 Peter 3:15).

So let the sign do what it was given to do. Let it remind you that God keeps His word. Let it steady you. Then straighten up, raise your head, and go be the kind of person whose peace makes someone curious about the King.

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Key Takeaways

• Jesus took the disciples’ question about signs seriously and answered it, but His first instruction was a warning against being led astray.
• The Pharisees’ failure wasn’t watching the signs. It was reading them with a framework that couldn’t recognize the Messiah in front of them.
• Wars, famines, and earthquakes are named by Jesus as real features of this age. They confirm His word and tell you He’s faithful. They don’t tell you the date.
• Biblical signs work like the rainbow after the flood: they point to a promise, not a countdown. The one who promised upheaval also promised full restoration.
• Christ could return at any time, and He may not return in your lifetime. Until then, His patience is saving people, and you’re His ambassador to the ones nearby.

Questions To Sit With

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Whatever brought you here today, I’m glad you reached for Scripture. Keep doing that. But when you open it, look for what the disciples eventually learned to see: not a date, but a King who has kept every promise so far and will keep the last one too. The world will shake again, and you’ll be tempted to ask that old question again. That’s alright. Ask it, and then let the answer send you back out into a frightened world as someone who isn’t.

Christ reigns. Christ restores. Christ will return.

Longing for Christ, learning to wait faithfully.

Your brother in Christ, Duane