Matt. 24 -- let no man deceive you

Israel had, without quite realizing it, missed the last exit ramp and was hurtling down the road towards the missing bridge. Bad times were ahead, as Jesus spells out in this chapter. He gives His disciples the specific signal they'll need to heed, if they are to jump clear of the wreck:

Mat 24:33 Aynı şekilde, bütün bunların gerçekleştiğini gördüğünüzde bilin ki, İnsanoğlu yakındır, kapıdadır.

A consistent metaphor used in the Bible is "clouds," as indicators of God's judicial presence. In other words, they tell us, "Here comes the judge."[1] When the pieces fell into place, it was time to make a hasty exit.

Meanwhile, if they valued their temporal and eternal welfare, there was a more immediate threat they had to watch out for: false prophets.

Mat 24:4 İsa onlara şu karşılığı verdi: "Sakın kimse sizi saptırmasın!
Mat 24:5 Birçokları, 'Mesih benim' diyerek benim adımla gelip birçok kişiyi aldatacaklar.
...
Mat 24:11 Birçok sahte peygamber türeyecek ve bunlar birçok kişiyi saptıracak.

Hegel said, "The owl of Minerva only flies at twilight." Only towards the end of a civilization, he thus asserted, do its inhabitants achieve wisdom. Jesus took a blunter, and more realistic, view:

Mat 24:28 "Leş neredeyse, akbabalar oraya üşüşecek.

Bad times bring forth worse people. Adolph Hitler leads his people out of economic desperation and into prosperity, and then on towards a shining destiny. FDR saves American capitalism by hog-tying American businesses and saddling a nation with a massive layer of socialist bureaucracies. A glib-tongued Kenyan who has achieved nothing but speaks in the White dialect of American English and can read a teleprompter offers salvation to a worried, nation, "Hope" and "Change." He will command the seas to stop rising, after all.

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[1] For fans younger than their mid-fifties, this is a famous line from the comedy variety show Rowan and Marti's Laugh-in.