Douglas Shearer

Heralds of the Tribulation Douglas Shearer

This book, Heralds of the Tribulation, exegetes Matthew 24, a chapter very few Christian leaders are willing to teach on anymore. I sometimes think that most Christian leaders these days treat Matthew 24 like the plague; that coming into contact with it will lead inevitably to a serious spiritual and psychic illness - or, at the very least, will cause needless anxiety and night sweats. But what's amazing about this particular chapter is how its description of the events leading up to the Tribulation coincides almost exactly with what we are witnessing each and every day on television; on the internet; in our newspapers; and often in our own neighborhoods - at our own shopping malls, at our own schools, and at our own jobs. All of it with a regularity that has acquired such a monotonous beat that we sometimes tend to tune it all out: the loss of ethical norms rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition; a deep-seated and malevolent lawlessness; a level of hatred and violence that we've come to accept as "normal;" on-going vilification of the police; immorality on a scale that's unprecedented - with "good" now being called "evil" and "evil" now being called "good;" loss of social cohesion and a resulting governmental paralysis; an anti-Christian bias that for anyone sixty years or older is simply stupefying; a hatred of Jews that rivals pre-World War II Europe - along with a venomous hatred of Israel that has followed in its wake. But most of all, the rebirth of Israel and the capture of Jerusalem, indispensable props on the stage that Jesus in Matthew 24 tells us God will set for Christ's return - one of which occurred in 1948 and the other in 1967.