Quick recap.
Part 1 traced where the word “rapture” came from.
Part 2 laid out the five views.
Part 3 opened the 70 Weeks of Daniel — and how an ancient prophecy pointed remarkably toward the timing of the Messiah’s first coming.
Which leaves the question everyone’s been waiting for.
If Daniel could point toward the first coming... can we do the same for the second?
Can we know when Jesus is coming back?
I’m going to answer that honestly. But first, I owe you a confession.
Because this isn’t a topic I’m watching from a safe distance.
It’s one I got caught up in myself. (See what I did there?
Last year, around August, I was doing what I always do on my channel — taking what people were talking about and pointing it back to Scripture, back to Jesus.
And suddenly everyone seemed to be talking about one date: September 23rd.
Maybe you remember it. It was everywhere in the Christian corner of social media — TikTok, YouTube, livestreams, prophecy channels, comment sections. People were convinced the rapture might happen on September 23rd, around the Feast of Trumpets. Some spoke with astonishing certainty. Predictions spread. Videos multiplied.
And here’s the thing: I run a Christian channel. I talk about what people are talking about through the lens of faith.
So when one of the biggest conversations online became the return of Jesus, I didn’t feel like I could simply ignore it. That felt like a pastor refusing to address the question everyone in the room was already asking.
So I did what I do. I dug in.
And I’ll be honest with you — the more I dug, the more the connections seemed to pile up. The number 84 tied to Anna in the temple and calculations involving Israel’s founding in 1948. The Feast of Trumpets. A claim that “no one knows the day or hour” was secretly a Jewish expression connected with that feast. Calendar calculations that seemed almost too precise to dismiss.
Sign after sign after sign. From inside that moment, it felt overwhelming.
So I made about seven videos about the rapture. And every one of those videos pointed people toward Jesus. My message, over and over, was: It could happen in a hundred years.
It could happen September 23rd.
It could happen before this video ends.
I never said September 23rd would be the day. I never claimed God had revealed a date to me. I even said that I did not want to become one of those doomsday preachers who circles a day on the calendar and declares certainty.
But in that first video — the one that reached around half a million people — I used one word. I said the signs were overwhelming.
And that’s the word I would take back.
Because when I eventually went back and did the deeper homework, the “overwhelming” evidence became a lot less overwhelming. Interesting? Absolutely. Worth examining? Sure. But overwhelming? No.
I hadn’t technically set a date. But in that first video, I had gathered all of those signs around one particular day and called the evidence overwhelming. Even though I said it could happen September 23rd — not that it would — that word gave the date a weight my evidence hadn’t earned. It made September 23rd feel more significant, more likely, than I could actually justify.
That’s the part I would take back.
Then September 23rd came.
And went.
And nothing happened.
Here’s something I learned when the day passed: sometimes it doesn’t matter how carefully you think you worded something. People remembered the date. They remembered the signs. They remembered the excitement. And when the day came and went, some of them pointed at me.
“Why did you make those videos?”
“Why did you show people all those signs?”
Some of that criticism was fair. And it forced me to think much more carefully about the difference between watchfulness and speculation.
There is an important distinction here. September 23rd wasn’t automatically ruled out simply because someone had named it. The problem wasn’t acknowledging the possibility. The problem was giving that particular date more prophetic weight than I could justify.
Humility has to work in both directions. I shouldn’t confidently circle a date God has not given me, and I shouldn’t pretend I possess certainty about God’s calendar when He has specifically told me that I don’t.
So no, I don’t regret telling people to live ready for the return of Jesus. Scripture tells us to watch precisely because we do not know the timing.
But here’s what I do own. I didn’t merely acknowledge September 23rd as a possibility. I told people the signs surrounding that particular day were overwhelming. And that’s where I crossed the line, because when Jesus says we don’t know the day, no single day gets to carry a certainty God never placed upon it.
My mistake was never the word could. It was making one particular could feel more significant than all the others.
When September 23rd passed, that distinction became painfully clear.
Some of the correction came from inside the church. A well-known Bible teacher — someone who takes Christian teaching seriously — publicly challenged what I had done and asked me to apologize.
So I did. I didn’t want to dig in or protect my ego. I apologized because he wasn’t entirely wrong.
And in the quiet after all of it, a very old story kept coming back to me:
The boy who cried wolf.
The lesson of that story isn’t stop watching the field. Watching the field was the boy’s job. The lesson is not to turn every shadow into a wolf, because if you sound the alarm over and over again and keep being wrong, something gets spent: trust. And then, when the real wolf finally comes, your alarm may no longer mean anything.
Suddenly the image of the watchman we talked about at the end of Part 3 carried a different weight. A watchman has two responsibilities: to sound the alarm when danger is real, and to make sure his alarm still means something on the day it matters.
I understood the first responsibility. I was watching.
What I hadn’t fully reckoned with was the second. Crying “wolf” — even sincerely, even with disclaimers, even because you genuinely believe you’re helping — spends something you cannot easily get back.
And that word overwhelming kept haunting me, because I finally realized something: evidence feeling overwhelming is exactly how failed predictions often feel to the people inside them. That’s what makes them persuasive. If the evidence looked ridiculous to you, you wouldn’t believe it.
The danger comes when everything seems to line up. When the pieces fit. When respected people repeat it. When the charts are beautiful. When the timing feels perfect.
That’s when humility matters most.
I needed a system — a way to be watchful without crying wolf, to take prophecy seriously without pretending certainty, and to watch without becoming obsessed.
That’s what this entire finale is about.
Let’s go straight to His words, because Jesus spoke to this directly, and everything else has to bow to what He said.
But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but My Father only. — Matthew 24:36
No one knows. Not the angels. And, astonishingly, Jesus says, “nor the Son.” Only the Father.
That’s not vague, and it isn’t an invitation to solve a hidden mathematical puzzle. Jesus is telling His disciples that there is knowledge the Father has not given them.
Remember the rule we established back in Part 2?
Be certain He’s coming. Be humble about the how.
After the experience I had, I would add one more line:
Be even more humble about the when.
Here’s something Daniel taught us in Part 3 that I couldn’t stop thinking about after September. God really can place meaningful markers inside prophecy. He did it before.
Daniel’s seventy weeks, on the major Christian readings we explored, point remarkably toward the era of the Messiah.
So the lesson isn’t that biblical prophecy is meaningless, and it isn’t that God is vague. The humbling lesson is something else: having the prophecy does not guarantee that human beings will interpret every detail correctly.
Israel had the Scriptures. They had the promises. They were actively waiting for the Messiah. They studied the prophets and expected God to act. And when Jesus stood directly in front of them, many still did not recognize Him.
That should sober every student of prophecy.
Prophecy can be precise while our interpretation of prophecy can still be wrong.
That is why humility about the “when” is not unbelief. It’s faithfulness. Humility simply remembers the difference between God’s revelation and my reconstruction of God’s revelation.
His Word is perfect. My interpretation of His Word is not.
I can trust Scripture completely while holding my charts loosely. I can believe prophecy without believing every prophecy teacher. I can watch confidently without pretending I see everything clearly.
The people who forget that distinction can end up gripping their interpretation so tightly that they stop hearing the text itself.
I don’t want to make that mistake.
So I hold God’s promises with confidence — and my interpretations with open hands.
Now we arrive at the tension Part 3 left us with. Jesus says we don’t know when, but Jesus also repeatedly says: Watch.
So if we’re not supposed to crack a date, what exactly are we watching for?
Jesus never tells His disciples to stop paying attention. Quite the opposite.
Look at the things He talks about in Matthew 24: deception, wars and rumors of wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution, false prophets, lawlessness, and the gospel going out to the nations.
But right in the middle of that discussion, Jesus gives an instruction that I think we often skip.
...see that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
— Matthew 24:6
Jesus tells them about troubling events and then tells them not to be troubled.
He gives signs and, in the same breath, warns them not to interpret every sign as the final countdown.
“The end is not yet.”
That may be one of the most important sentences in the entire chapter.
Every earthquake does not mean next Tuesday.
Every war does not unlock Revelation.
Every headline is not a code.
Every crisis is not permission to redraw the chart.
The signs were never meant to turn Christians into mathematicians. They were meant to keep the church awake.
Watch the world. Recognize the season.
But don’t worship the headlines.
But don’t pretend you own the calendar.
That’s Christian watchfulness: awake, but not frantic; aware, but not obsessed; expectant, but still faithful.
There’s a moment I keep coming back to because it might be the clearest answer in the entire New Testament to our obsession with end-times timelines.
We’ve already visited this scene. Jesus is about to ascend, and His disciples ask Him one final question:
Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?
— Acts 1:6
Do you hear it? They’re asking our question! When? Is it now? Are we close? Has the moment finally arrived?
And watch how Jesus answers:
It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority.
— Acts 1:7
There it is again. The timetable belongs to the Father.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He immediately redirects them:
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
— Acts 1:8
Look at what just happened.
They wanted a timeline. Jesus gave them a mission. They asked for information about tomorrow. Jesus gave them power for TODAY.
That may be one of the clearest answers in the New Testament to our obsession with end-times timing. Jesus does not rebuke them for believing the kingdom is coming. He redirects their attention toward what they are supposed to be doing while they wait.
Don’t spend so much time trying to locate yourself on God’s calendar that you forget why He put you here.
That’s what I’ve come to learn.
There’s one claim from that whole September conversation that deserves a closer look.
You may have heard it too: that when Jesus said, “No one knows the day or hour,” He was using a recognized Jewish idiom or nickname for the Feast of Trumpets.
I’ve since gone looking for the evidence.
And I don’t think that claim holds up.
There is a genuine connection here. The biblical Feast of Trumpets falls on the first day of the seventh month — later called Tishrei — which usually lands in September or October on our calendar. And in 2025, 1 Tishrei began at sundown on September 22, making September 23rd the first full daytime date of the feast — the very date everyone was talking about. So that part of the connection was real.
What I have not been able to substantiate is the further claim that “no one knows the day or hour” was a recognized Jewish idiom for the Feast of Trumpets, or that Jesus was intentionally using it as a hidden reference to that feast.
What I have not been able to find is ancient Jewish evidence establishing that phrase as a recognized name or idiom for the feast.
I had repeated it too.
And this is exactly why one of the most important lessons of this entire series is:
Beautiful isn’t the same as biblical. Popular isn’t the same as proven. Repeated isn’t the same as researched.
For three articles, I’ve been telling you to be a Berean.
...they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
— Acts 17:11
Turns out Part 4 is where I had to become one myself.
I could end that story right there: the date passed, lesson learned, move on. But that wouldn’t tell the whole truth, because something else happened after September 23rd that I did not expect.
My inbox filled with messages, and some of them said something like this:
“That week woke me up.”
People told me that because they thought Jesus might be coming soon, they went back to church for the first time in years. And they stayed.
They opened a Bible that had been closed for a decade. They prayed. They repented. They called a family member they’d been avoiding. They forgave someone. They got on their knees.
Now, I am not saying false predictions are some clever evangelism strategy. They aren’t. Bad predictions can wound people, produce fear, embarrass Christians, create cynicism, and make people stop listening when the next warning comes.
I’m not defending the prediction. But I also can’t ignore what I saw.
The prediction was wrong. But drawing near to Jesus wasn’t.
Opening your Bible wasn’t wasted. Going back to church wasn’t wasted. Calling the person you needed to forgive wasn’t wasted. Praying wasn’t wasted. Repenting wasn’t wasted.
The alarm may have been wrong.
The awakening was real.
Back in Part 1, I showed you something interesting about Paul’s letters. I told you it would matter later.
This is later.
Put two passages from Paul beside each other and the picture gets fuller.
In 1 Thessalonians, there is unmistakable urgency surrounding the return of Christ:
Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
— 1 Thessalonians 4:17
There is urgency in Paul’s voice. Christ is coming. Be ready. Stay awake. Encourage one another.
But years later, as Paul approaches the end of his own life, another dimension of faithfulness comes into sharper focus.
Writing to Timothy, he says:
And the things that you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.
— 2 Timothy 2:2
Paul teaches Timothy, Timothy entrusts the teaching to faithful people, and those people will teach others after them. Generation after generation is contained inside one sentence.
Paul believes Jesus is coming, but Paul is also building something designed to continue after Paul is gone.
The hope of Christ’s return hasn’t weakened.
The picture has simply gotten fuller.
Paul can long for Christ to come and still plant trees whose shade he may never sit under. He can expect the Bridegroom and train the next generation. He can live with urgency without abandoning endurance.
And suddenly I saw the posture I had been missing.
Watch like Christ could come today. Build like generations may follow you.
Expectation and endurance.
Urgency and faithfulness.
Last September, I understood how to watch.
I needed to learn how to wait.
Here’s something beautiful. And unlike the shaky idiom claim, we don’t need secret history or hidden codes to see it.
There is unmistakable wedding imagery surrounding the return of Christ all through the New Testament.
Jesus repeatedly describes Himself as the Bridegroom.
John the Baptist said:
He who has the bride is the bridegroom...
— John 3:29
Jesus used the same image of Himself:
Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?
— Matthew 9:15
Paul describes Christ and the church through the mystery of marriage in Ephesians 5, and near the Bible’s final pages we hear:
...the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.
— Revelation 19:7
So when Jesus moves, in the same larger teaching about His coming, from “You do not know the day or the hour” into a story about ten women waiting for a bridegroom, we don’t need to invent a hidden code.
The wedding is already there, in the text, in plain sight.
And that changes the emotional center of the entire conversation.
We’re not waiting for an event. We’re waiting for Someone.
We’re not watching a calendar. We’re waiting for the Bridegroom.
And this may be the picture that holds the whole series together.
Jesus tells a story about ten women waiting for a bridegroom:
Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.
— Matthew 25:1
All ten were waiting. All ten expected him. All ten carried lamps. And here’s the detail people often miss:
All ten fell asleep.
Here it is:
But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.
— Matthew 25:5
The difference between the wise and foolish was not that five remained awake while the other five dozed off. They all slept.
The difference was preparation. Five brought extra oil. Five did not.
And why did the extra oil matter? Because the bridegroom was delayed. He did not arrive when they expected. The night stretched longer than anticipated, and eventually the difference between those who had prepared merely for an arrival and those who had prepared for a long wait became visible.
They had prepared for His arrival. The wise had also prepared for His delay.
That might be one of the deepest lessons Jesus gives us about His return. Anybody can feel ready during the excitement. Anybody can stay awake when everybody is talking about prophecy. Anybody can fill a lamp when they believe midnight is five minutes away.
But what happens when midnight stretches?
What happens when the headline passes, the prediction fails, and the Bridegroom seems delayed?
Can you still love Him? Can you still obey, pray, serve, forgive, build, and keep the lamp burning when nobody is talking about the rapture anymore?
The central point is impossible to miss:
Be ready for the Bridegroom — even if He delays.
And listen to the way Jesus concludes the parable:
Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming. — Matthew 25:13
There it is again. You don’t know.
So you prepare for both possibilities:
His arrival sooner than you expected, and a wait longer than you expected.
That might be the entire Christian posture toward the Second Coming in one picture: expect Him soon, and prepare to remain faithful for as long as He chooses.
No — don’t set dates.
But don’t lose your oil either.
Maybe you’re reading this and you were one of the people who got scared last September. Maybe you believed a date, rearranged your life around it, and when the day passed you felt foolish, burned, or embarrassed. Now you almost don’t want to hear about the return of Jesus anymore.
Or maybe your story goes back much further. Maybe somebody scared you with the rapture when you were a child. Maybe you grew up around charts and timelines that were spoken about with the same certainty as John 3:16. Maybe you’ve watched dates come and go for decades: another chart, another countdown, another explanation for why this time is different.
And now the whole subject feels exhausting.
But my dear friends, let’s not confuse failed predictions about His coming… With the promise of His coming.
Our predictions can fail. Jesus’ promise will not.
Don’t let somebody else’s failed calendar steal your blessed hope.
Remember where this whole series began. Part 1. That “caught up” passage. And do you remember how Paul ends it?
Therefore comfort one another with these words.
— 1 Thessalonians 4:18
Comfort.
We began there. Let’s end there too.
For the believer, the return of Jesus is not primarily a threat hanging over us.
Paul gives it to the church as comfort, and elsewhere Scripture speaks of our blessed hope.
So if our end-times teaching produces nothing but panic, obsession, arrogance, and fear, somewhere along the way we may have lost the tone of the New Testament.
And maybe you have someone you love who doesn’t believe — someone you desperately want to be ready if Jesus comes. I understand that ache.
But dates don’t save anyone, and date-setting can breed fear and eventually cynicism.
What draws people to Jesus is Jesus.
So love them. Pray for them. Tell them the truth. Live the gospel in front of them.
Let them see a hope in you that doesn’t collapse every time a prediction fails.
Because here’s where I’ve landed after this whole thing happened.
Maybe God allowed me to walk through last September because I had something to learn. I wanted a system for reading the signs, and instead I got a lesson in humility. I wanted to know how close we were, and instead I learned something about how I should live while I wait.
I went digging through the signs around a date. And somewhere along the way, God brought me back to a Person.
I don’t know the day. I don’t know the hour.
And after four articles, while I may lean more strongly toward some rapture views than others, I still can’t tell you with absolute certainty exactly where the catching up falls — before the tribulation, during it, near its end, or whether the catching up and the visible return ultimately belong to one great climactic event.
We spent an entire article examining those views because sincere, Bible-loving Christians have reached different conclusions — and because some of these texts are harder to fit together than our charts sometimes make them look.
But there is something I know with infinitely greater confidence.
I know the Bridegroom.
And I would rather know the Person who is coming than possess a calendar He never gave me.
At the end of Part 3, I told you that one day we won’t be staring at a timeline; we’ll be staring at Jesus. After everything I’ve learned this year, I believe that more than ever, because the goal was never to become experts on His schedule.
The goal was always to know Him.
Four articles. Hundreds of verses. Five views. Seventy weeks. Two thousand years of disagreement. And if I had to reduce everything we’ve learned to three simple truths, it would be these:
WATCHFUL — not fearful.
READY — not reckless.
HOPEFUL — not hyped.Watch like He could come today. Build like generations may follow you. Keep your hands to the mission, your eyes on Jesus, and your lamps ready for the Bridegroom.
He is coming.
And when He does, may He find us not with a date circled on the wall...
but with our lamps still burning.
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