"The end of all things has approached; therefore be serious and self-controlled in your praying." (1 Peter 4:7 SCS)
By Ted Spaeth, February 2019
I have had a sense that we are living in the End Times ever since I got saved (in November 1983) and left the Catholic Church (in early 1984). It was a very serious and sobering experience, as I was crying out to God after reading the NT to show me how to have my name in the Book of Life of Rev. 20. I was terrified of going to the Lake of Fire. Soon after He saved me and opened my eyes, I next found that I had to depart from the faith of my fathers (i.e., that of almost all my relatives), but the Lord helped me and strengthened me. Needless to say, I didn’t get much encouragement from my family. When I shared my new faith with my grandfather, who was like a father to me, since he had no sons and only me for a grandson, he kicked me out of his house. (He apologized around 18 months later and then passed away two weeks after that. I don’t know if he got saved or not.) I felt very alone at times, so I exerted much effort to find good fellowship with real believers. At times, the only place I could find was radio broadcasts. At least one talked about eschatology.
As time went on, I studied eschatology with great interest and read books on it. When the Internet became available, I also utilized that, mainly after 2000. In 2004, when my youngest daughter became self-sufficient in learning Chinese, instead of studying Chinese around 10 hours per week, I slowly shifted to allocating that time to studying articles, videos and also audio from the Internet, especially after I listened to The Creature from Jekyll Island in 2007. As some people would say, that was when I took the "red pill," i.e., when God opened my eyes to the reality of conspiracies in our world. Having had the opportunity to use information technology since around 1980, I was able to quickly find a lot of good information. Since then, I have listened to dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of men who have different perspectives and insights into the End Times from a Scriptural point of view. I’m grateful to the Lord for allowing me to find some really good men of God (and for some not-so-good ones too - for comparison purposes.) I usually give priority to those with good character and good knowledge of the Word. I especially like men who are called to be "watchmen" - like Nathan Leal and Steve Quayle - as well as other men in the alternative media community.
Jesus said, "My sheep hear my voice." (John 10:27) If a man is not hearing God's voice, it's either because he's not listening or he's not one of Jesus' sheep. Thus, I have felt for 35 years that He’s been talking to me about the End Times. It's often been in my mind and has been a key motivator for me to study and share Truth. I’ve tried hard to take an honest, objective look at all viewpoints from Scriptural and historic perspectives - historic premillenialism, amillenialism, postmillenialism and dispensationalism. A good book for study on the subject is Stanley Grenz's "The Millennial Maze." Also, in my lifetime I've seen tremendous changes in the world in terms of morality (Mt. 24:12, 2 Tim. 3:1-5), deception (2 Th. 2), the degree of financial fraud, Beast technology, number of earthquakes, talk about of aliens and UFOs, talk about global governance, the emergence of the State of Israel, the convergence of religions, etc. (For more information, see the most popular web page on my website: 10 Signs That Jesus Is Coming Back Soon.