Dr. David Jeremiah Urges Christians to Be 'Ready' for Christ's Return: 'Ignore It at Your Own Peril'

"There's no excuse for us, if we read the Bible, to be surprised. Because the Bible tells us that this is going to happen. He talks about the upheaval in the world that's going to take place before the Lord returns," he told The Christian Post in a recent interview.

"There's no sign of the return of Christ and the rapture, but there certainly is a prediction of the kind of season it's going to be, and I think we're living in that season right now. I believe that Christians really need to stay glued to the Scripture and not get too far away from the truth because it's pretty precarious right now."

Jeremiah also drew attention to what is supposed to take place before the rapture, such as deception, wars, and rumors of wars.

"The Bible says, 'Be careful that no man deceives you.' Well, we live in a time when the truth is almost gone, and nobody knows what to do with that," he said. "And then the Bible talks about wars and rumors of wars and all kinds of sickness and pestilence, and we just went through the COVID experience. It's the first worldwide pandemic that I've ever been a part of, and maybe the first one that was totally worldwide."

"Those things get your attention, and we read about those in the Bible," he added. "And when you start seeing some of those things happening in the world where you live, you should sit up and take notice."

On Jesus' return, Jeremiah warned against false teachers predicting the exact date Jesus is supposed to come back.

"The Bible never predicts the date," the pastor contended. "The first thing you should do is if you hear somebody say He's coming back, and they start saying dates, you should walk away because that's not the truth."

Still, Jeremiah stressed that Christians must live with a sense of readiness and be willing to share the Gospel with others.

"You can ignore it all you want to, it's going to happen anyway," he said. "If you do what I do, you meet a lot of people who think that because they don't believe it, that makes it untrue. Well, it doesn't matter whether you believe it or not, it's true anyway, and you better wake up to it. Because if you don't, one day, you're going to experience it. … You can ignore it if you want to, but it's you do it at your own peril."

Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Philip Steury

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.