Some sayings survive in the church for decades because they feel safe, not because they hold up. Take the old line, “I’m watching for Jesus, not the Antichrist.” It sounds loyal. It sounds confident. But what if that exact posture is the doorway the end times deception walks straight through? Bible teacher Nelson Walters and Tom Cote of the Watchman River channel took that question apart in a recent discussion, and neither one lets the church off easy.
Two Ways to Watch
Tom lays the options on the table. If you hold to a pre-tribulation rapture, you’re watching for Jesus and for the signs leading up to the seven-year covenant. If you don’t, he says, you’re watching for the Antichrist. In his view, that second group drifts into survivalist mode, stocking up on guns, ammo, gold, and food. You think you’re going to escape? You better learn to endure.
Nelson agrees watching matters. But he pushes back on the idea that what you watch for is a small detail. If you’re waiting on a train and you stare at the road instead of the tracks, the train passes you by.
What Jesus Told Us to Watch
The New Testament has 16 places where Jesus and the apostles command believers to watch. Nelson reads a few out loud. Matthew 24:42 says watch, because you don’t know the hour your Lord is coming. Matthew 25:13 says watch, because you don’t know the day or the hour. The point is that the signs exist so we can know the season, not the date.
Where God’s Wrath Really Begins
This is where the two men disagree. Tom ties God’s wrath to the whole tribulation. Nelson says the Bible won’t let you do that. He points to Revelation 16:17, where the great day of their wrath has come. He calls it the only time marker in Scripture. It shows up right after the sixth seal, which puts the start of wrath in the middle of the tribulation, not at the start of it. Nelson agrees believers aren’t appointed to God’s wrath. He just puts the start later.
Hopeful for the Wrong Thing
Nelson questions what the hope is aimed at. Jesus compared his return to the days of Lot. Lot knew the city was about to burn, so he ran to his sons-in-law and told them to get out. They laughed at him. They were hopeful. They were also dead by morning. Titus 2 tells us to look forward to our blessed hope, the appearing of our great God and Savior. But it’s a false expectation to assume the road is easy. The promise is that he comes, raises the dead, and we live with him forever.
The Ten Virgins and the Midnight Cry
Nelson then walks through the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25. He calls it a picture of the church watching for Jesus, not tribulation saints. All ten fall asleep, and nobody sleeps through a pre-trib rapture. They’re churchgoers. Pastors, teachers, everyone.
Five are wise. Five are foolish. The difference is extra oil. The wise brought flasks; the foolish didn’t bother. Extra oil only matters if the wait runs long. Then the bridegroom is delayed and all ten fall asleep. Every one of them. So how can the whole church be watching and the whole church be asleep? Maybe because they missed something that already happened.
At midnight a cry goes out, and everyone wakes up. Nelson digs into the Greek here. The word for cry is not the same one Paul uses in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 for the shout of command at the rapture. That one is a military order. This one, krazo, is a cry of distress, fear, and struggle. And midnight is more literally in the middle of the night, with the weight on middle. So the cry lands in the middle of the tribulation. That’s when the Antichrist is revealed at the abomination of desolation, the very thing Jesus had described in Matthew 24:15.
Why Any of This Matters
If all ten virgins slept through the start of the tribulation, then the sign of the covenant with the many wasn’t obvious. Not to them. That gap is the end times deception Nelson keeps warning about. His channel believes that sign already happened on the Feast of Trumpets a year ago, and that we are inside the tribulation now.
The parable ends with a door shutting. The unprepared virgins come back and hear, I do not know you. Still, the command to watch stands. If everyone wakes up at the midpoint, watching would be useless unless a few people saw it coming first. A few virgins who noticed, who filled their flasks ahead of time. That’s the aim, Nelson says. Keep the lamp of faith burning and fill it before the pressure hits. Warning people ahead of time isn’t a lack of love. It’s the most loving thing there is.
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