The Third Day is also implied in the parable of Good Samaritan. Jesus himself as the Good Samaritan gave the inn keeper two dinarius to take care of the wounded man and promised to come back in the Third Day and reward the inn keeper. Two dinarius are two days' wages, one day for one millenium, so He will return after two millienia. Also, consider the "birth pang" comparison, I mentioned this in my timeline thread that 41 weeks of gestation are 41 jubilee cycles, which are about 2009 years, and that's the length of the church age. Jesus will return when that time's up.
Yes, there had been a lot of Antichrist figures and these signs of times over the last 2000 years, but all of them were on a regional and temporal scale. That's why they're compared with birth pangs - it feels like water's broke and the baby is coming out, but it's a false alarm, the time has not come yet. However, now you see things happening on a GLOBAL scale, and a global government will rise and rule over the entire earth, then you know the time is near. This "Revived Roman Empire" is predicted in the prophecies. Bible is not being interpreted to fit the circumstance, circumstance is being interpreted to fit the Bible.