But when the proper time should come it would also be expected that the Lord, whose right it is, would take over the affairs into his own hands.

And so he said: "We give thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great; and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth."-- Revelation 11:17,18.
[432]It will be observed that the Lord does not do all of his work in a twenty-four-hour day, but that gradually he performs his sovereign will.
Specifically answering the question concerning the end of the world during the time of his presence, Jesus said: "Nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes [literal and symbolic--revolutions] in divers places.

All these are the beginning of sorrows." (Matthew 24:7,8) Exactly on time, at the end of the gentile dominion, at the beginning of the end of the world, nation rose against nation and kingdom against kingdom in the most devastating war that man ever dreamed would come to the world.

There followed in its wake a great pestilence, the Spanish influenza, which swept the earth; and the famine is still raging amongst many peoples and kindreds of the earth; and there have been revolutions, as well as many literal earthquakes in various parts of the earth.