Every few years it happens again. A pastor with a YouTube channel and a calendar and a high opinion of his own decoding skills announces, with the certainty of a man reading the weather, that the rapture will occur on a specific date. Books are sold. Conferences fill. Anxious believers liquidate retirement accounts. The day comes. The day passes. The world keeps spinning. And the unbelieving neighbor across the street has one more reason to dismiss the Christian faith as a ridiculous thing.
I want to say this gently but plainly: the Lord Himself did not claim what these brothers claim.
But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Matthew 24:36
If Christ in His earthly ministry did not know, and the angels of heaven do not know, then a fellow with a Bible app and a chart of feasts does not know. End of discussion.
The opposite ditch
And yet. There is another error, and I think in our day it is the more common one. It is the error of the sleeper. The error of the believer who reads "no man knows the day or the hour" and concludes therefore I do not need to think about it at all.
That is not what the Scripture says. The very next breath after "no man knows the day or hour" is this:
Therefore stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Matthew 24:42
The unknowing is not a license to sleep. The unknowing is a summons to wakefulness. Because the day might be tomorrow. Or it might be in a hundred years. Either way, the call is the same: stay awake.
Why the signs still matter
Some Christians, weary of date-setters, have over-corrected and decided that thinking about the signs at all is somehow unspiritual. That is not the New Testament's posture. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees not for paying attention to the times but for failing to do so:
You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. Matthew 16:3
The believer is a child of the day. We are supposed to know what time it is — not on a calendar, but on the larger clock of God's redemptive history. Israel back in her land. The gospel preached to the ends of the earth. Lawlessness multiplied. The love of many grown cold. Wars and rumors of wars. These are not the timestamp on the rapture. They are the lengthening shadows of evening. The Bridegroom said the night was coming. The shadows are getting long. Anyone with eyes can see it.
Three things the watchman does that the date-setter does not
One — He stays under authority
The watchman is not the king. He does not announce when the king arrives. He announces what he sees. He says there is dust on the road, riders are coming, and then he stands aside. The date-setter, by contrast, has appointed himself a kind of co-regent with God. He has receipts the Lord did not give him.
Two — He is humble about what he does not know
The watchman never says more than he sees. The date-setter, who is mostly just guessing, says far more than he knows. The Christian who has read his Bible carefully will be quicker to say I am not certain than to say here is the chart.
Three — He keeps doing his daily work
The watchman feeds his family, tends his trade, raises his children. He does not abandon the city the moment he sees something on the horizon. He prepares quietly, works faithfully, and trusts the King who appointed him. Paul rebuked the Thessalonians for the opposite error — laying down their tools because they thought the Lord was coming any minute. If a man will not work, he shall not eat, he said. The signs do not exempt us from the small obediences of ordinary life.
The third way
So here is the way I would commend, between the two ditches. Read your Bible. Watch the news. Lay them alongside one another. Notice the convergences without inflating them. Pray more. Scroll less. Tell your neighbor the gospel before time runs out. Live as though Christ might come tomorrow — and as though He might tarry another generation. Both are possible. Both demand the same daily faithfulness.
The sign over the watchman's tower does not say I know. It says I am awake. That is enough. That is what He asked of us.
Stay awake, beloved. The Bridegroom is coming.