Too many things happening right now in the world.
War in Georgia, Russia getting restless. Not good. It's odd how many times Russia gets mentioned in discussion of the end times, yet until very recently, I was trying to figure a way around it, since it looked like an unlikely player. But it coming back now. Interesting...
China trying it's best to be a superpower. If only they could manage to be good as well as great. Either way, though, it's moving in a big way, and the Church, though in the belly of the dragon, will be heard from before all is said and done, I believe.
And as China creeps toward freedom, the US abandons it. Just a week or two ago, a total muzzle order of a hate crimes law passed in Colorado. When I first read the article about it that someone had photocopied, I really believed I was reading a make-believe "what-if" piece, so incredibly repressive was the law. But no, it's real. Prison ministry anybody? Though it will be a long time before sitting in a pew will be outlawed, I think those who try to live a holistic and authentic faith may join the ranks of their persecuted brothers and sisters before too long.
If our external freedom is to be short lived, so be it, but let us never go quietly. Let us make such good use of our remaining days that eternity will remember it.
And while the US creaks along it's decent, Iran is counting down to becoming a nuclear power- and one that has an unreasoning hatred of anything western or Christian.
And Europe is dying, preceded in it's cultural death only by the death of it's church. The continent which stopped the Moorish invasion and held itself impregnable against the Muslims for centuries is now disappearing beneath waves of Muslim immigrants- or colonists, whichever term you prefer. The London of Charles Westley, of Hudson Taylor, of so many Christian thinkers and leaders, has sections which now operate under de facto sharia law.
Hope, amid all this, is found in the unlikeliest of places. Africa is a beacon of faithfulness against the apostasy of the west. Asia is surging to the forefront as a sender of missionaries and planter of churches.
And hope is even found in the movement of the darkness itself. We know this will happen. We were told long ago. Finally the world is moving toward the end. All will have had a chance to accept Him, and all who are unwilling will move to oppose Him. No more excuses of ignorance, no more of the separate courses that have divided the earth since Babel. Humanism has failed. Buddhism, as more than a condiment on a religious buffet, is in decline. Hinduism can work out an understanding with Islam. Finally, the only two left standing at the twilight of history are the two sons of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, and their descendants Christianity and Islam. Islam has all the cards too, except one: Christ. In person. On the clouds of heaven.

I'm sketching here a bit, arranging scripture and trends and conjecture, but maybe...? But how ever it all gets there, we do know this: He wins. However dark the situation may grow, that hope is sure.