Jesus told us to read one particular tree.
When the disciples asked Him what to watch for before the end, Jesus did not hand them a calendar. He pointed them to a tree. “Learn the parable from the fig tree,” He said — learn to read a season the way a farmer reads spring. Not a date on the wall. A change in the branches.
Now learn the parable from the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near; so, you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door. (Matthew 24:32–33)
No one panics when a fig tree buds. No one runs into the street shouting that the branches are tender. You simply notice, and you say quietly to yourself: summer is coming. That is the posture Jesus is after — not hysteria, not date-setting, but a settled, watchful reading of the season we are in.
The tree and the nation
All through Scripture the fig tree stands as a picture of Israel. So when many teachers who keep their eyes on Israel — the emphasis Amir Tsarfati has pressed for years — read this parable, they hear something specific: watch the nation. And the most remarkable fact of the last century is exactly that. A people scattered to the ends of the earth for nineteen hundred years, without a homeland, keeping their identity against every odds, were regathered to the very land the prophets named. The branch that looked dead for centuries went tender again.
Ezekiel saw it long before it happened — a valley of dry, sun-bleached bones, and the word of the LORD calling them back into a living nation:
Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel; behold, they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope has perished. We are completely cut off.'” (Ezekiel 37:11)
Our hope has perished. We are completely cut off. That was the honest verdict on the Jewish people for most of recorded history. And then, within a single lifetime, the bones came together. Whatever else you make of the modern Middle East — and sober believers debate the details — the plain fact of a regathered Israel is a sign no previous generation could point to. The fig tree that Jesus said to watch has leaves on it.
Read the season without setting a date
Here is where a watchman has to hold two things at once, and most people drop one of them.
The first thing: the season is real, and Jesus commands us to recognize it. “When you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door.” That is not a suggestion. To yawn through a generation that watched the fig tree bud is to fail the very test the Lord set.
The second thing, spoken in the same breath by the same Lord: you do not get the date. Ever.
But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. (Matthew 24:36)
Read those two verses together and you have the whole balance. Recognize the season — but claim no calendar. The moment a teacher slides from “summer is near” to “the Lord returns in this specific year,” he has stopped reading the tree and started playing the slot machine, and he always ends up embarrassed and, worse, discrediting the very hope he meant to defend. Jesus gave His disciples the same correction to their faces after the resurrection, when they still wanted the timeline:
He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or epochs which the Father has fixed by His own authority.” (Acts 1:7)
Not for you to know the times. It is for you to know the season, and to be ready in it. Those are not the same assignment, and confusing them has wrecked many a sincere believer.
Leaves on the tree change how you live
So what do you do with a budding fig tree? You do not build a bunker and you do not build a chart. You lift your head.
But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21:28)
Notice what the signs are supposed to produce in a Christian. Not dread — the world already has plenty of that. Not endless speculation about which world leader is which prophetic figure. The season is meant to straighten your spine and lift your eyes, because the same events that make the unbelieving world tremble are, for the child of God, the footsteps of a Redeemer at the door.
And Jesus staked His own credibility on it. He ended the parable with a promise that towers over every headline:
Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. (Matthew 24:34–35)
Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one word He spoke will fail. So we watch the tree the way He told us to — soberly, not sensationally; expectantly, not anxiously. We refuse the temptation to name a day, and we refuse the opposite temptation to sleep through the season. We keep short accounts, we tell people about Jesus while there is still light, and we live like men who genuinely believe He is near, right at the door.
The branch is tender. The leaves are out. You do not need to know the hour to know the season — and you do not need to know the hour to be found ready. Straighten up. Lift up your head. Your redemption is drawing near.
Teaching the Word. Watching the Times.
— SmithForChrist