The Second Hebrew Idiom

Matthew 24:6-8



You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8All these are the beginning of birth pains.



Everyone realizes that World War One did not usher in the time of the end, for only 21 years later the world was plunged into World War 2. Jesus did not say the first sign would usher in the end, but said,"All these are the beginning of sorrows." This term 'beginning of sorrows' is the second Hebrew idiom Jesus used. It was used by four of the Hebrew prophets to describe a woman in labor and pain Israel will endure at the end of the age.

Unless a woman's labour is medically induced, her 'sorrows...in childbirth' mirror those of mother Eve after her sin and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Her first birth pain does not mean her baby will be born immediately; in fact, she may have thirty of fifty birth pains, some of which are days apart, before giving birth. In most cases, these pains follow a pattern: The first birth pain warns her that her nine months of waiting are nearly over. Still, in most cases she does not look for the birth of the child immediately; she looks for another birth pain.And when it comes, she looks for another. When at last they become more intense and regular - usually three minutes apart for a period of ten minutes - then she and her husband know the birth is near.

World War I did not signal that we should look for the immediate coming of Christ of 'the end of the age.' It signaled that we should look for more birth pains. And it is my thesis that many other signs, or birth pains, have arisen during these more than eighty years since that 'Great War.' Many of them grew out of that first 'sign,' until today the 'brith pains' are very intense - and may even be in the last phase. If so, 'the end' may be rapidly approaching. In fact, it may be as Jesus said:"Near, even at the doors"( Matthew 24:33)