Judge Robert H. Bork, viciously, and in my view unjustly, attacked by bitter congressional opponents when he was proposed as a candidate for Supreme Court justice by President Ronald Reagan, foresaw before most in D.C. and elsewhere this nation’s slide into gross immorality. The title of a book he wrote subsequent to his withdrawal from the Supreme Court selection process framed perfectly the direction of American culture. Bork’s 1996 volume, Slouching Toward Gomorrah, was certainly appropriately descriptive, befitting a people who were becoming more and more materialistic, and increasingly entertainment mad by the minute. Although his was mostly a critique of the politics of liberalism, the descent into immorality about which he warned, from the top (the ruling elites) down (those who are the ruled over), clearly unveiled the pattern that puts this nation in grave danger today.

Gomorrah, of course, was the sister city to Sodom, home of Abraham’s nephew, Lot, and Lot’s family. God himself supernaturally destroyed both of those cities with fire and brimstone from heaven, according to the account in Genesis chapter 19. God sent divine judgment because the society and culture of those cities had become irreversibly debauched, with every facet of human life debased to the point the stench of their sins were a constant irritant in the nostrils of the Almighty.

The question addressed here will revolve around whether America –slouching toward Gomorrah-like immorality two decades ago during Judge Bork’s time in the national spotlight—now might have reached the time Jesus Christ described when prophesying about the end-time generation that will exhibit debauchery and base deportment “as it was in the days of Lot”:

“Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Lk. 17:28-30).

Key prophetic signals that this generation –worldwide—is at the time very near the culmination of the Church Age (Age of Grace) are flashing across our daily headlines. Those who are Bible students, if they miss these end-time prophetic signals of the days in which we find ourselves, are either deliberately ignoring those indicators, or have a world view that requires the denial that God’s Word, the Bible, is truth. They must see Bible prophecy –indeed, the whole Bible—as simply a volume of interesting literature, or as an ancient morality tale. Let us examine the key end-time things prevalent at present.

Israel and the Pressures for Peace 

We who study prophecy constantly cover the most significant of all present signals of where we stand on God’s timeline. We watch carefully the American State Department cause Israeli Jewish citizens to be removed from hard fought-over and won Israeli territory. We observe while the so-called international community connives  to find just the right equation that will bring everyone in the region to the peace table. This, of course, includes apparently putting Jerusalem on the block for dividing among the adversaries.

God’s Word prophesies that there will be a covenant of peace on the table at the time the “prince that shall come” –who will be Antichrist—will confirm, or guarantee. This, however, will be a “peace” that God equates to a covenant made with death and hell. He will personally disannul this hellish agreement.

Slouching Toward Sodom 

Lot lived in Sodom, the city so wicked that the Lord’s righteousness demanded He destroy it, along with Gomorrah. Jesus said, as given above, that it will be like the days of Lot when He takes His people out of that generation. Destruction will then begin to fall in the form of His wrath and judgment.

After looking at the primary geopolitical indicators of just this past week, giving us a snapshot of where this generation might stand on God’s timeline of prophecy, we must ask whether there is a specific marker that was in the account of Sodom and Gomorrah –in Lot’s day—that is prevalent in society at present. Glad we asked, because –again, just the past week—the pages of Bible prophecy, given by Jesus himself, leaped from the pages of today’s news. A pastor in Alabama is refusing to step down after confessing to having AIDS, sleeping with church members without telling them about his HIV infection, taking drugs, and misusing funds. Rev. Juan Demetrius McFarland has  been at Montgomery’s Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church for 21 years. In Sunday sermons starting Sept. 14, McFarland admitted his health status, then his misdeeds, the pastor and members of his flock told WSFA 12 News. The church membership voted 80-1 to remove McFarland on Oct. 5, but he will not leave. A lawyer representing deacons in the church said McFarland and a supporter would not let them on the premises, telling deacons trying to change the locks they would face “castle law” if they tried to come to services. “They’re worried if they show up to church, they could get shot,” Kenneth Shinbaum said. “Unless the pastor steps down voluntarily, this may very well end up in court.” McFarland may turn up in court for another reason: In Alabama, spreading a sexually transmitted disease is a Class C misdemeanor; since nobody has filed a complaint, McFarland isn’t under investigation at the moment.(The Week, Rapture Ready News, October 10, 2014)

Lot, one of a very few citizens of Sodom whom God saw as righteous in His eyes–his family members, obviously being the others—was “vexed” at the things going on in that society. He was distraught at the debauched culture surrounding him, smothering him and his family. The primary debauchery, if one reads the Genesis 19 account and subsequent accounts of that culture/society in other places in God’s Word (e.g., Romans 1) we find homosexuality literally ruled everyone and everything.

That was the day of Lot. The end-time flood of godlessness is gushing this generation toward exactly that judgment-bound end. But, God’s judgment will not fall until His people are removed from the coming day that will be like that Lot endured for a time. We see God’s mercy and grace in removing His servant Lot, when the Lord assured Lot: “Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the name of the city was called Zoar” (Gen. 19:22).

Again, Jesus said about that time of Lot’s vexation: “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed” (Lk. 17:30).

If you have ever caught a finger in your eye from someone while you were engaged in athletics, or if you have ever been poked there in some other way, you know the agony. Your whole body convulses because of the pain. The reaction is immediate, and violent.

The God of creation likens man’s dealing carelessly with Jerusalem to their jabbing Him in the eye: “For thus saith the LORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye” (Zech. 2:8).

The world of nations is closing in on Jerusalem. Pressures are being brought to bear upon that city–the center of the earth, from God’s perspective.

God tested Abraham and Isaac there, providing a ram as substitutionary sacrifice just as Abraham was plunging the knife downward toward his son’s heart. Jesus Christ, who himself wept over Jerusalem millennia later, was sacrificed for the sins of mankind near the spot on Moriah where the ram was caught in the thicket.

Jerusalem, atop the Temple Mount (Moriah), is where God’s Law, the Ten Commandments etched by the finger of God in stone tablets, resided within the Ark of the Covenant. Jesus fulfilled the Law, with God’s sacrificial act of supreme mercy and grace for lost and perishing mankind. The veil covering the holy of holies in the Temple ripped apart from top to bottom at the moment Jesus voluntarily gave up His life on the cross at Calvary. Mankind has, since that most profound moment in human history, had direct access to the throne of God through prayer in the name of Jesus. Is it any wonder that the Supreme Being is sensitive about anyone who might act destructively against the one place on the planet where He chose to reach down to sin-blackened mankind and provide redemption by sacrificing His only begotten Son?

Yet, no consideration is given by the nations’ leaders to what God’s Word says about this strange geographical site that is a special contact point between lowly man and his Creator. The Temple Mount reportedly was on the table with regard to man-made peace efforts at the turn of the millennium, according to a news item of some years ago.

“…According to declassified Israeli government documents published today by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, during U.S.-led negotiations in 2000 at Camp David, Ehud Barak, then prime minister, agreed sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be either ‘ambiguous’ or control would be determined based on the bond of each party to the site. The Palestinians would therefore control the upper sections of the Mount, which houses the Al Aqsa Mosque and also is the site of the First and Second Jewish Temples…” (WorldNetDaily.com, “Revealed, Israel Agreed To Forfeit Temple Mount,” Aaron Klein, Dec. 13, 2007).

Apparently, treachery at the highest levels of the Israeli government continues to be pervasive. The “doves” still are willing to give up everything just to achieve some degree of peace with the likes of what we see going on now with ISIS  and all other terrorist Islamists who are blood-vowed to push Israel into the Mediterranean.

The current American presidential administration–like others before–is in the process of wading in on the effort to push Israeli/Palestinian movement toward a peace the Lord of heaven declares will never stand.

Mr. President: Be aware, and beware while you take America into the three millennia-long fray. Be sure, in your “hands-on” actions aimed at making man-made peace that is doomed from its inception, not to poke the Almighty in the apple of his eye.

Here is God’s ominous forewarning to those who either overtly or covertly, whether through commission or omission, do anything to deleteriously affect His city, Jerusalem: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem” (Zech. 12:9).

Evolution versus creationism in America is the long-argued disagreement between “science” and “religion”–although on the religious side of the debate it is almost exclusively Christianity that holds to the creation model. Most religions don’t enter the fray, in a major sense. This is likely true, for the most part, because most major religions, unlike Christianity, are intertwined with governments of the various nations in which they exist.

For example, Islam is an inseparable part of the governments of most Mideast nations. Asian countries and their governments are dominated by Buddhism, Hinduism, or Islam. The point is, they have no reason to debate evolution versus creationism because their cultures don’t worry about things like separation of church and state so that politicians can appropriate power to exert control over the masses. Their political processes and religions are one and the same.

It is good, therefore, that the founding fathers of the United States built into the Constitution the freedom to worship as the individual citizen chooses—prohibiting the establishment of a state religion. Tragically, those who believe that the Constitution is a living organism rather than what the founders meant it to be–a document of established laws—have, through incremental judicial assaults on the legislative branch’s constitutional jurisdiction, brought America under a warped view of church and state. They have used a totally non-constitutional document, a letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist ministry, to kick God out of government-involved life in the nation. And, the government is so pervasive that this kicking God out involves almost every aspect of public (and much of private) life these days. The “liberal” –or “progressive” mindset, as they would have it, has evolved –if I may segue way with that controversial term—from wanting God out of public life, and out of private life as much as possible, to a quasi-spiritual mindset that seems designed to join them in the religion of another sort.

Religion, no matter the sort, if it is to be a form of worship and not a forced bending of the knee, requires faith. Each religion has a dogma, or a central tenet or tenets in which they place their faith. The terrorist Islamic fundamentalists of the ultra-fervent type that crashed the jets into the World Trade Towers in 2001 each had faith that by so doing, they would instantly find themselves in the presence of their own harem of 72 virgins upon awakening to eternal life under the approving smile of Allah.

The “faith” we are increasingly being asked to embrace –that global warming threatens to destroy the earth, and we humans must alter our lifestyles to save the planet—is rapidly being accepted by the gullible. It is “faith” that, in my view, could ultimately be the nucleus of the central tenet of the one-world religion that will demand measures that will eventuate in the forced worship as outlined in God’s prophetic Word for the tribulation era.

“And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed” (Rev. 13:11-15).

A new religion has been formed. It is the mantra, “we must save earth,” that we see and hear every time we open a newspaper or hear and/or view news today. Global warming is the “faith” of evolutionistic sophistry with which this generation is being inculcated. The global elitists–aided and abetted by American politicians who take hook, line, and sinker the unproved bait that every word the evolutionist-spewing, so-called “scientific” minds regurgitate—are the new priesthood of Global Warmingism.

A former vice president of the United States says global warming is threatening Planet Earth with imminent destruction, and his declaration is made the gospel of the religion. He is given the Nobel Peace Prize for his “revelations” on the matter. It has to be that he received special “revelations,” because he is woefully unqualified to make such pontifications, either by education, scientific acumen, or by experience. He is seemingly made high priest of Global Warmingism through the dissemination of every word he says, and is honored by the Hollywood and mainstream media, receiving an Oscar and other grandiose tributes. There is antithesis to his thesis, however. It comes from one who does have the education, acumen, and experience.

“John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, once wrote an article in which he calls the idea of man-made global warming ‘a scam:’ ‘It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus. Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild ‘scientific’ scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmentally conscientious citizens’” (Weather Channel Founder: Global Warming “Greatest Scam in History,” by Rick Moran, American Thinker Blog, Nov. 8, 2007).

Global Warmingism isn’t the first humanistic religion to bring God’s judgment. Paul the apostle reports one that occurred in past human history:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen” (Rom. 1:18-25).

Are there strange things happening in earth’s weather? Yes, and in the earth as well, with increased seismic activity that spawns eruptions of volcanoes and earthquakes. Does man cause these through global warming? No. Does man cause these things otherwise? Yes, in my view at least. Man creates them through rebellion against the Creator of all things. The globalists are doing so today through worship of Planet Earth.

Jesus told the Pharisees at the time He rode the donkey into Jerusalem, offering himself as Israel’s Messiah, that if the people refused to praise Him, the very stones would cry out in great protest. The “stones” are crying out today. I believe creation will do so much more pronouncedly the closer to Christ’s Second Advent the world moves.

Angry e-mails pour into my In Box quite often if something I’ve written gets published in a national venue. This isn’t unique. Actually, I appreciate such feedback, because such hostile responses reassure that God’s message is reaching beyond the choir, as they say. It’s not that I enjoy being hated, but it is somewhat validating to know the Lord’s Word still is as described in Scripture: “For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).

We can know that our efforts to disseminate truth from God’s Word, the Bible, are being effective when those efforts encounter fierce opposition. And, we are in the very best of company in that regard. Here is what the Lord, Himself, said about that kind of encounter: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me” (Jn. 15:18-21).

Several years ago, anger from one particular person screamed with rage while my JAWS synthesized voice program read the e-mail to me. (I must listen to, rather than see, text because of being blind.) The issue she had with my venue –and with me in particular—was based upon one excerpt from a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) found on our website. That excerpt was printed in The Village Voice. The FAQ dealt with God’s right to judge mankind. Here’s what –in part– she said. Hers is one of the milder responses we often receive:

“The only salient and honest assessment one can come to is that the people connected to your [site] are in it for the bucks. You are in a word hypocrites and posers and are shamelessly using the name of Jesus to sell your product. You are one of the false prophets Jesus warned us about. Terry James has lost all sensibility as well as all spiritual, scholarly and intellectual grasp of reality. The assertions of your site WILL NOT GO UNANSWERED by either the religious community OR the secular, so search yourselves for precision of message before you DARE to assert others should be incarcerated or killed because we do not agree with you!!”

She accused me of being the writer of the answer to the particular FAQ. She was wrong on that count –although I did agree with the person’s answer to that FAQ, upon reading the answer in its totality, and in considering the biblical context. I tried to explain the context of the answer by giving her Scripture to show that we, as Christians, certainly have no right to judge others, but that sin must –and will– be judged by the God of Heaven. No one can enter His presence for eternity until sin has been judged and dealt with. Jesus did that on the cross for all who accept His supreme sacrifice for their sin. I pointed out that Jesus, Himself, will judge those who reject God’s grace gift offer.

She launched, then, in her reply, the same sort of argumentation we hear time after time when matters of judgment and sin are angrily addressed. Here’s what she said, in part:

“You are NOT commanded in any way shape or form to condemn others by the Word. It isn’t there Terry. You are commanded to love thy neighbor as thyself, irrespective of whether they are a sinner in your view or not. That is the highest law. It is not your place to sit in judgement [sic] against others. That is the highest CHRISTIAN LAW. You radical xtians who believe yourselves to be THE JUDGE have totally maligned the Word. Not only are you not ‘loving thy neighbor as thyself’, you are proposing to HURT AND KILL YOUR NEIGHBOR, and then try to justify that with scripture that doesn’t exist.

Three crusades, the inquisition, mass murders and genocide, the destruction of cultures, languages and whole societies based on the wrong notion that the Bible gives them the right to condemn. Men wanting to BE GOD is nothing newsy, but when you stand in such judgement [sic] you are diametrically opposed to the Word, and you are something other than CHRISTIAN!

My Jesus is forgiving, merciful and meek, my Jesus speaks to the heart from a closed closet door, my Jesus walked in the light and not once condemned a single person. Ever. My Jesus said “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” If you are gonna preach the Word you better remember this. It is not at all a surprise that your strange reading of scripture could not hold up to scrutiny.”

I apologize for including that much of her retort to my attempt to give her Scripture about God’s judgment on sin, but had to do so to get to the part of the whole e-mail encounter that needs addressing in this commentary. I will let you form your own opinion about this particular case. I don’t want to judge her –as she has already charged.

There is a profound false perception about the love of God. Sometimes the false perception is out of ignorance; sometimes it is deliberately rebellious and steeped in hate-filled luciferian sophistry.

The accusation by those who claim their own brand of Christianity as centered in a Jesus who never judges anyone most always charge that we who say God does, in fact, judge sin are somehow guilty of wanting to murder or physically harm all who disagree with us. By this, they do what they accuse us of doing. They judge us –and, falsely, I might add.

Jesus, who is God, doesn’t judge sin, huh? Hmmm… Let’s see about that by having a look at the Scriptures I sent another of the angry e-mailers who wrote me, accusing the website, and me of judging them, their proclaiming that judging, or condemning was something Jesus would never do. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.” (Jn 3: 17-21)

Jesus won’t judge sin, huh? I suggest those who believe that lie from the great deceiver read Revelation 20: 11-15!

Most of earth’s inhabitants don’t recognize Jesus Christ as deity, of course. It is not to those that this commentary is addressed. Those, however, who claim Jesus as the heart of their belief system need to grasp the truth about His love. It is the same as God’s love. That is because Jesus IS God! God’s Love (Jesus’ Love) is not the Lord’s refusal to judge people in some Eternal Politically Correct Way. God’s (Jesus’) love is His offer of redemption from the sin that separates people from Him. Judging their sin through judging Jesus as the Lamb that takes away the sins of the world –that’s the love of God toward us. But, one must recognize that he or she is a sinner, thus acknowledge that he or she needs salvation. The person must then repent and ask the Savior for the grace gift of love available to each and every person in the world.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn. 3:16).

Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s minister of propaganda during the years of the Nazi regime, put to the test Vladimir Lenin’s declaration that if you tell a lie often enough and long enough, people will soon come to believe it.

Millions of Germans did, indeed, come to believe the lies–chief of which, the one that the Jews were the single greatest cause of the problems Germany had experienced during the depression of that day. Many believed Goebbels’ incessant diatribes against all semitic peoples, and that the fuehrer was akin to a god, who would lead the German people to the utopia the propagandists termed “The Third Reich.”

The evil Nazi mouthpiece and the venom he injected into the Germans proved God’s word 100 percent accurate: “The getting of treasures by a lying tongue [is] a vanity tossed to and fro of them that seek death” (Prov. 21:6).

Few regimes in history have inflicted upon their victims the catastrophic scope of death and destruction wrought by the Nazis. Hitler’s promises to the German people were based upon demon-inspired deception; his promises of peace to the world were predicated upon hellish lies. The result was the death of millions in war and in the Holocaust. The people to whom the fuehrer made the promises suffered perhaps more than anyone, with the iron-fisted Soviet dictatorships from Josef Stalin through Leonid Brezhnev and beyond oppressing a divided Germany, as part of the spoils of war.

There is another apothegm that warns sternly, echoing within the ears of this generation. But, no one seems to be listening. At least not enough people are listening to cause a red flag of alarm to alert this generation.

George Santayana the philosopher said that those who refuse to learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. The God of heaven gives His prescription/antidote for the lies spouted by the minions of the father of lies: “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding” (Prov 23:23).

Not only are the geopolitical leaders of the world forgetting the warning of Santayana’s famous words, but so-called leaders within the body of Christ are beginning to fall victim to the very propaganda device Lenin warned about, and Goebbels gleefully adopted as his methodology for mesmerizing the German people of the 1930s and 40s. They are –many already have—falling for the lie that has been proclaimed loudly for a long time.

The nucleus of the lie is that Israel is the problem. This lie is, I’m beginning to think—the key to the coming Antichrist kingdom –another proof of the wisdom of Santayana’s words. Hitler’s horrors will be revisited upon not only the Jews (Jacob’s trouble – Jeremiah 30:7), but upon the whole world (read Revelation chapter 13, especially v.16-18). Antichrist’s regime will make Hitler’s Nazi atrocities seem almost child’s play by comparison, according to Jesus: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).

Jesus gives, in the Olivet Discourse, forewarning that great deception will be prominent at the time He is set to return. Deception is at the very first of His warnings, as a matter of fact. Paul the apostle foretells in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 that one of the major things that will be going on during the tribulation era is that a “lie” will deceive most people. There can be little doubt that Antichrist’s system of world control will come in on a platform of deception that will put to shame, in terms of magnitude, Goebbels’ lies about the Third Reich.

Daniel the prophet forecast how the end-time tyrant will use deception. Antichrist will, Daniel foretells, come in on a platform of deceptiveness: “And in his estate shall stand up a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries” (Dan. 11:21). The “beast,” as he is called in Revelation 13, will concentrate most of his vitriol –as did Hitler—on the hated Jews: “And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do [exploits]” (Dan.11:32).

God’s people will stand strong against the deception that the Jew is the root of all evil during that era, Daniel foretells. Not so in this pre-trib era for the most part, it is sad to have to say. We can see the effects the satanic deception is having by looking at Israel. We can always count on the Jewish state to provide insight, while those who watch world issues and events through the prism of god’s prophetic Word seek discernment in these closing days of the age.

We remember how then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during a visit to New York during his time in power, proclaimed that he was for peace –wanted to live in serenity, like every other good citizen of the planet. This message was, on its surface, a far cry from the hate-filled rhetoric he used when he addressed his constituency back in the land where ancient Persia once sat. He flattered and cajoled the press and diplomats alike, and was flattered and feted in return. Israel was, by omission –those reporters and government officials who were so gaga over Ahmadinejad ignoring the tyrant’s stated fate planned for all Jews—accused, without overtly stating their opinion, of obviously being the culprit in Middle East threats of war. That this great man, the Iranian president, was just too interested in peace for the whole world to ever be a warmonger, was the sense one got upon observing the love fest during those times.

Yet strangely, Ahmadinejad at the same time managed to tell the deluded, gullible, deceived people who fawned over him precisely his goals and ambitions. It was Hitlerian –even more profoundly mesmerizing than that. The man was positively luciferian in his deceptive presentation at Columbia University, and at the U.N.

Ahmadinejad spoke against U.S. intrusion in the Middle East; rejected the UN Security Council’s authority to take action against Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program; refused to retract his statements that Israel should be destroyed, removed from the world; held to his stance that people do not have a right to live their lives based upon right of personal freedoms; did not budge from Islamic demands that women be kept wrapped in silence beneath the cultural and societal surface.

The Iranian dictator, while refusing to answer directly questions about those matters, still managed to get reported as saying that Iranian women have full rights, and are free to live their lives as they please, and that homosexuals are not executed or tortured –adding that there are no homosexuals in Iran. These absurdities went basically unchallenged by the American mainstream press, which saw a lie behind every Bush Administration statement and consistently launched “journalistic” investigations based upon the slightest hint of perceived wrongdoing.

The news media did reportorial acrobatics to write glowing reports on Ahmadinejad, looking for any small sliver of evidence that he advocated peace and desires no ill will toward Israel, or Jews, anywhere. Today, even though Ahmadinejad is gone from the scene and others have taken his  and his regime’s place,  media hasn’t changed. They seem intellectually incapable of ascertaining truth about anything to do with Middle East insanity in hatred toward Israel. Shades of the Fuehrer! Foreshadows of Antichrist! The beast of Revelation, chapter 13, will one day –perhaps sooner rather than later—place his key of great deception into the lock that holds shut the door to his murderous kingdom.

It should make perfect sense to those believers who trust God to be in absolute control at all times: He has never sent judgment and wrath without pleading, corrective attention-getting measures and unmistakable warning signals of impending doom to those rebels who shake their fists in His face, then turn their backs to the only One who knows the end from the beginning. America and the world are almost surely at the latter end of the divine yardstick of judgment, which measures the extent of the Lord’s lovingly generous–though not infinite–patience.

Most who study Bible prophecy have, through the years, rolled the thought over and over in thinking upon things to come: “Why is America not mentioned in Bible prophecy?” Many have concluded that the United States must suffer a catastrophic fate, either from the outside or from the inside. The nation’s destiny is either one of implosion or explosion–detonations which, in either case, will spell the end for the most technologically advanced country in the history of the human race.

Surely, God will not allow the American ship of state to slip beneath the crushing waves of the times without unmistakably clear signals that she is nearing shoals that cannot be navigated.

A foretelling by Jesus himself brings to mind current crises gripping the U.S. and, by extension, the entire world. It is quite familiar to the student of prophecy: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring…” (Lk. 21: 25).

Whether considering this combination of end-times signs figuratively or literally, a case can be made that the present national and world circumstances might be the time of which Jesus spoke.

This generation of earth dwellers has seen, and continues to see, wonders in the sky. Man has accomplished space adventures in going to the moon and other planets with machinery. He has witnessed astrophysical phenomena through the Hubble telescope, gigantic sun eruptions, fantastic photos of a comet slamming into Jupiter, loss of the Challenger and the Columbia. Then, there were the astronomical alignments of 2012 and the “Blood Moon “ phenomena scheduled for 2014-2015, with the predicted world-shaking that some see as portended, so far as Bible prophecy is concerned. The signs in the sun, moon, and stars are there.

The latter part of the Luke 21:25 prophecy also leaps to the forefront of thinking about the present hour. We have seen the figurative and literal seas roaring, with Katrina, the tsunamis in Indonesia and in Japan. Figuratively, all nations seem in great turmoil, with their peoples in societal and cultural tumult. The literal, roaring waves have produced the most costly devastation in recorded history along America’s coasts within recent years. However, it is the middle part of the prophecy that most dramatically speaks to this generation.

Jesus foretold that the nations will, near the time of His return, be in perplexity. The leaders will be floundering for answers to the profound dilemmas confronting them, is the implication. The perplexity will only cause them to go farther into rebellion, we can gather from the psalmist’s prophecy: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psa. 2:2-3).

Fact is, we are in a time of unprecedented “perplexity” so far as my memory serves. The pundits, from the president of the United States and the top Senate and House leaders to the Fed chairman and even former Fed chairmen, tell us that we face economic Armageddon if something is not done to straighten out the fiscal train wreck some of those same “leaders” have been primary in causing. In all of the scrambling, finger pointing, and doomsday rhetoric, one fact is powerfully obvious by omission: None of them has been heard calling out to God. Not one mention of soliciting help from the God of heaven has been forthcoming, so far as I’ve heard. Certainly, asking God’s help hasn’t been heard in a public way.

As I write this, America’s “leaders” continue to –supposedly– “fix” the economic disaster they have allowed to be created. We will see how it plays out. In a larger context, the swift economic movement currently taking place is not without its prophetic significance, God’s Word assures. There is coming, according to Bible prophecy, a completely satanized (if that is a word) economic order. We are seeing a major start to that coming global rearrangement. The fiscal problems will get “fixed,” ultimately. I’m convinced it will happen during the time that follows the rapture of the Church. But the peoples left on this judgment-bound planet won’t like the change the decisions of the politicians of the world –apart from God Almighty—will produce for them.

The luciferian machinery of enslavement is churning America and the nations she so traumatically affects, in terms of economic equilibrium, toward the beast-system of the tribulation.

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:16-18).

I want to devote this column to examining a couple of areas contributing to what seems the winding down of human history, in preparation for the things Jesus talked about in the Olivet Discourse almost 2,000 years ago. He was precise in His prophecies about conditions leading up to His second advent. Two of those predictions involve some things manifesting their presence on the scene today. And, there is more to them, I think, than, as they say, meets the eye. Jesus foretold as part of that Olivet Discourse: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places” (Matt. 24:7).

We often cover the “nation against nation” portion of this section of prophecy by Jesus. Also, we have pointed many times to the dramatic rise and spread of larger and larger “earthquakes.” I would like to look for this brief time into the “famine and pestilence” part of the Lord’s words–perhaps stretching the literal application of those terms, using metaphorical license just a bit.

Every empire throughout human history has gone through much the same kind of boom and bust cycle. This is because the fallen minds of men set up human government, so the ultimate outcome of empire building–no matter the benevolence with which the effort begins, results in decline and fall.

Sometimes the falls seem abrupt, although they had been deteriorating, like when the Medes and Persians invaded beneath the walls of Babylon to end that great empire that was once the “head of gold” ruled over by the great King Nebuchadnezzar. More often–especially in latter-day times—the empires slowly dissolve, without catastrophic overthrow. Two modern empires to consider in that regard are the Soviet empire, which imploded, then was forced to dissolve and reconfigure in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The British Empire, of course, is now in the throes of dissolution. The sun, which was boasted to never set on the British Empire, has indeed set. The result is that the gospel light is all but turned out and the dark forces of Islam are spreading like the pestilence of Pharaoh’s day, when Moses forewarned him of things to come if Pharaoh didn’t let God’s chosen people go.

Perhaps the segue is somewhat less apropos than it could be. However, thinking on pestilence of a religious nature now bringing the British Empire to its final throes of dissolution sparks thought of recent news about pestilence of a biological nature—the way that plague-condition is most often considered.

The ancient Roman Empire, once the most glorious empire on earth, is thought to be linked to a modern plague with which our generation is intimately acquainted. The following is from a number of years ago, but still is appropriate for consideration in thinking on these things in 2014. “The spread of the Roman Empire through Europe could help explain why those living in its former colonies are more vulnerable to HIV. The claim, by French researchers, is that people once ruled by Rome are less likely to have a gene variant which protects against HIV. This includes England, France, Greece and Spain, New Scientist reports. Others argue the difference is linked to a far larger event, such as the spread of bubonic plague or smallpox… The idea that something carried by the occupying Romans could have a widespread influence on the genes of modern Europeans comes from researchers at the University of Provence. They say that the frequency of the variant corresponds closely with the shifting boundaries of the thousand-year empire… Dr Susan Scott, one of the researchers, said that the idea of Roman occupation being the driving force behind this was another theory to be considered. ‘We just don’t know. This is just another piece of the jigsaw, but we’re waiting for the big piece of evidence which will solve this’” (“Roman Empire ‘raised HIV threat,'” BBC News, 9/4/08).

Today, the Ebola virus, it is feared, will eventuate in an apocalyptic pandemic. One story tells of it’s spreading horrors. Dogs can act as a transmitter of Ebola, but canines do not development symptoms from the virus, according to medical experts. A medical doctor told News24, “this means that dogs won’t get sick but they still could carry a potential risk through licking or biting.”

Ebola Is Rapidly Mutating As It Spreads Across West Africa

For starters, the data show that the virus is rapidly accumulating new mutations as it spreads through people. “We’ve found over 250 mutations that are changing in real time as we’re watching,” Sabeti says. While moving through the human population in West Africa, she says, the virus has been collecting mutations about twice as quickly as it did while circulating among animals in the past decade or so. (Dogs feast on Ebola victim carcasses in Liberia, Rapture Ready News, Aug. 29, 2014).

Famine is another major signal that the time of Christ’s return is near. The forewarning of massive famine is, in addition to Jesus’ words in the Olivet Discourse, predicted in the ominous passages dealing with the riding forth of the horsemen of the apocalypse. “And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine” (Rev. 6:5-6).

Human governments, determined to do things that are right in their own eyes, and to break the safety bands that tether them to the Creator, are most often the cause of the famine that have plagued mankind throughout history, and that continues to do so today. Mounting famine of catastrophic potentiality grows by the hour.

The farther mankind moves from the God of heaven, the more trouble comes humanity’s way. While man sows to the wind, he is guaranteed to reap the whirlwind. Such is not what the Lord wants for His rebellious creation, but the cycle that leads to decline and fall is inevitable when God is pushed aside. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Gal. 6:7).

Whether nations, empires, or individuals, the Lord must be in control, or pestilences and famines will ultimately come. God’s judgment must fall on rebellion, and the tribulation judgment hoof beats thunder in spiritually attuned ears today.

The world changed drastically in the 20th century. The most powerful time of change came in mid-century, with World War II and the Jewish Holocaust, accompanied by the explosion of the first atomic bomb, and that horrific weapon’s first use on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, Japan. There swiftly followed the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls at Qumran, and the birth of modern Israel, coinciding with the formation of the United Nations.

Technology, the development of which had moved at a snail’s pace throughout history until the late 19th century, seemed to ignite in rocket-like fashion. Inventions burst forth from the time of the steam engine to the telegraph, electric power, then to powered flight…and, well, you know the rest.

President John F. Kennedy, in his January 20, 1961 inaugural address, summarized the position that generation held on history’s timeline: “…man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life…”

The very year the president was assassinated, America’s leaders chose to gravitate toward the latter option verbalized by Kennedy two years earlier—to begin to “abolish human life”. That year –1963—the Supreme Court elected, without inviting America’s electorate to participate in the decision, to kick God out of public schools. This downward spiral of moving away from the Life-Giver –God—and toward death, eventuated ten years later with Roe v. Wade and the murder of almost 60 million babies in their mothers’ wombs since.

Something profound had happened to this human sphere. When one dissects the strange dichotomy –the fantastic progress in man’s knowledge and technological achievement, and at the same time the geometric progression of violence and degeneration of morality in this nation and the world—a truly empirical conclusion must acknowledge that something eerie is going on. Planet Earth is experiencing dynamic rearrangement that even the most fervent apostle of the faith system called evolution must be hard-pressed to explain.

God’s Word, the Bible, through Jesus and the Old and New Testament prophets, however, are not hard-pressed to explain. This world is becoming as it was in the days of Noah and Lot (read Luke 17:26-29). Planet Earth is experiencing an invasion–not from Mars, the Pleiades, or some other far-distant star system, but from right here, where earth’s trouble has stemmed since the leader of the invasion first entered man’s sphere of existence. The invasion is interdimensional, not extraterrestrial.

Lucifer, in his first assault on God’s creation called man, first deceived Eve, then convinced Adam to disobey God, with whom Adam and his wife had walked perfectly. From that point, Satan attacked humanity with a vengeance, his minions even intermingling their seed with humankind.

The chief Scripture that both tells of the serpent’s (Satan’s) war against humankind and the fact that God promised that woman’s (Eve’s) seed would ultimately crush the Devil’s head, is found here: “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

What I want to look at in this Scripture is the fact that the invaders (Lucifer’s minions, the one-third of the angels who rebelled in heaven and were expelled) possess “seed”. They would go on to intermingle their “seed,” with the “seed” of the woman, Scripture tells us:

“There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Gen. 6:4).

We again are given the abominable mingling of the fallen angels’ seed with the seed of human women:

“And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day. Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (Jude 1:6-7).

Just as the Sodomites–the homosexuals of the doomed city of Sodom– committed fornication with “strange flesh” (with those of the same sex), the fallen angels, Jude is saying, went after “strange flesh” (those of a different creation –human women).

Jesus said it would be the same as in that antediluvian time when He returns in the second coming. The minions of Satan will again be in process of contaminating or corrupting human genetics. God had to judge that world, killing all except Noah and his seven family members, and animals selected from earth’s animal populations.

The latter-day invasion is manifested–I’m convinced—through the strange, unexplained UFOs, apparitions, stigmata, and other things reported by even quite credible people. Just watch Discovery, History, A & E, and National Geographic cable channels to understand just how much of these things are going on today.

Additionally, we’ve all heard about the recent group of former military people, pilots, scientists and government officials–now retired–who have come forward to try to get out the message that, indeed, these things are being witnessed. Mainstream news media and government by-and-large are still stonewalling efforts to get to the truth about these anomalous matters.

The main point to make is that this invasion is but one more signal of where we stand on God’s prophetic timeline.

Are there “nephilim”–giants, as in the days of the Genesis 6 report—again coming into view? Is there presently luciferian intervention into the very genetic make-up of humankind? I’m of the opinion that the answer is “yes,” at least in that the rulers of the darkness of this world (Ephesians 6:12) are influencing human scientists and others through cloning and other covert projects.

I will speculate a bit here by way of a question or two.

Why is the “son of perdition” declared by Jesus himself to be lost from the beginning (Jn. 17:12)? Isn’t everyone to have a chance to repent and be saved—to be given their day in court–whether at the bema (judgment seat of Christ) or at the great white throne? Yet this man of sin–the son of perdition, the Antichrist “beast” and his sidekick, the false prophet, are apparently not given their day in court. Both are simply thrown into the lake of fire. They are the first two to be thrown in that eternally burning place of punishment. There will be none other in that place prepared for the devil and his angels until Satan is thrown in that fiery lake at the end of the 1,000-year reign of Christ. Then, they will be joined by the billions upon billions of lost souls who are cast in the lake of fire following the great white throne judgment of Revelation 20:11-15.

Here is my speculation, but one based upon a good scriptural foundation, I think.

The beasts described in Revelation chapter 13 –both the world leader, who will demand worship, and the false prophet, who will force people to worship him—might well be without souls, in the sense that human beings have souls. Human souls can be redeemed. Angels cannot be redeemed, once lost –as in the angels who rebelled with Lucifer.

It is prudent to ask if the Antichrist and the false prophet are the offspring of the angels–are nephilim, the result of the intermingling of the serpent seed with the seed of human women. Certainly, they will perform great feats as Genesis chapter 6 reports of the angelic/human offspring of the pre-Flood times.

Are Antichrist and the false prophet to be nephilim?

Again the commercial, if you will indulge me. That’s what my novels, The Rapture Dialogues, and The Nephilim Imperatives, are about, in general –that, mixed with a human love story and with the love story of all time –God’s love for His creature called man. I believe that if you get and read the novels you will find the story fascinating, as Mr. Spock of Star Trek would say. Although fiction, the story is wrapped in truth from God’s Word—and in Bible prophecy, in particular. The story is all about the end times invasion we are even now experiencing.

These are strange times. The times are, I believe Bible prophecy tells us, scheduled to get even stranger. Yet, there resides within the portentous days in which we find ourselves excitement born of anticipation.

Jesus foretold such a time just before He again intervenes into the affairs of mankind by returning to destruction-bound Planet Earth. He said: “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man” (Lk. 17:26).

Jesus prophesied that the generation alive at the time of His Second Advent will be living in circumstances like the generation that experienced the flood of Noah’s time. The Lord went on to say that things would–on the surface of life—seem normal for the times. “They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage…” (Lk. 17:27a). But, those days –just beneath the surface of business-as-usual—hid a tsunami of cataclysmic proportions. Jesus indicated that the wickedness swelled subtly within that generation, and that the antediluvian world rocked along, “…until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all” (Lk. 17:27b).

I propose that Jesus was speaking to specific causes that set in motion that flood of Noah’s day, and deluged that generation beneath the global tsunami, when He predicted: “And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.” The Lord was forewarning, I’m convinced, that 1) violence like the violence that filled the whole earth will mark the generation alive just before He comes back at Armageddon; and 2) there will be an invasion of Planet Earth on a scale like that which assaulted the antediluvians. These particular characteristics will mark the end-time generation as being like it was in the days of Noah.

Scriptures attest to these ungodly characteristics of the days just before the global flood. This, despite the fact that some “theologians” go to great lengths to deny the veracity of God’s Word in reporting those times.

Actually, those two pre-flood characteristics were inextricably linked, the second being the chief cause of the first. God’s Word reports the great invasion:

“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose… There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown” (Gen. 1-2, 4).

God’s telling of the truth of this invasion from other worlds next gives the effects and the actions necessary—caused by the fallen angels that rebelled with Lucifer, who then produced offspring with human women.

“And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them” (Gen. 6:6-7).

The terrible effects in particular that apparently filled God’s cup of wrath and made Him say, “enough is enough,” are seen in the following: “The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Gen. 6:11-13).

God cannot lie. Jesus is God, the Creator of all things. He prophesied that it will again be like it was in the days of Noah, when the time of His return to take over the planet from earth’s rebels nears. We have only to look around—view today’s headlines—to know that we are in a time that is marked by violence. As a matter of fact, we are engaged in a “War on Terror”! The very nomenclature given the conflict shows the nature of Planet Earth’s present generation of humankind.

The Apostle Paul tells more specifically about the nature of this end-times invasion–an invasion identical to that inflicted upon the final people of antediluvian times. We are so familiar with the Scriptures that we see this alert by the great apostle as a sort of ho-hum part of Scripture. It is not so. It points to where we are today, in the middle of an all-out assault by creatures from another dimension. Paul writes: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).

Many of you know that my novel, “The Rapture Dialogues: Dark Dimension,” dealt with this eerie but most relevant topic. Although presented in a fictional setting, I believe the Lord intends to use the story to warn where we are on His prophetic timeline, and forewarn of the all-out return of the other-worldly beings far more deadly than could be any so-called extraterrestrial beings from other planets.

The tremendous fascination by media and the secular world in the sightings, apparitions, encounters, abductions, etc., are obvious by the number of hours devoted to these things on nightly TV fare. But, the real story can’t be found there. The real story is reported from the pages of God’s Word.

My next novel was a sequel to “The Rapture Dialogues.” The second novel is “The Nephilim Imperatives: Dark Sentences.”

I’ve had a number of readers tell me they are fascinated by the on-going intrigues in the continuing story. I am currently working on a book that is more-or-less a third story that tells of what the world almost certainly soon faces from the powers and principalities in high places of Ephesians, chapter 6.

Next week, my commentary will continue with part two of “The End-Times Invasion.” We will examine carefully the character called Antichrist, and where that “son of perdition” might fit within the end-times invasion of Planet Earth.

One, solitary birth is the basis upon which the future hangs for every person ever to enter this mortal realm we call Planet Earth. How each man, woman, and child who has reached age to understand the Salvation issue views this visitation determines where their home will be for eternity.

Many believe Jesus was sent by God to show us how to live a good life. Some believe He was a great prophet and teacher. Others believe He was a philosopher, right up there with Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest. A few among the billions who have lived since His birth have believed Jesus is the Son of God, but perhaps one among others of a created angelic order assigned to influence the affairs of mankind. Still fewer believe that He was who He claimed to be –the only begotten Son of God – the way, the truth, and the life (John 14: 6).

No birth of any individual has ever caused the excitement and controversy that the birth of Jesus has engendered. Was this baby a stranger of an other-worldly order, sent to earth to provide moral guidance? Was Jesus sent to philosophize on the vicissitudes of the human existence? Or, was this visitation something more?

Jesus came into the world through the Jewish Race. Only those inalterably antagonistic to the truth of history will argue against that. So, we should examine this birth –this visitation—through the prism of Israel, and that Jewish nation’s dealings with the one called Jesus.

Although there are other histories about the era, the Bible’s historical account has, through archaeological unveilings, proven time after time to be accurate in details concerning matters surrounding Jesus, the Jews, and Israel. (One such example is the relatively recent discovery of artifacts and evidence that one called Pontius Pilate ruled the area of Judea during the times attributed to Jesus’ crucifixion. Until the discovery, Pilate’s existence as an historical figure was seriously doubted, even denied by many historians.)

We can know the accuracy of how the nation Israel –the religious Jews in particular—dealt with the one called Jesus. We can know with assurance that He performed miracles, and claimed to be God, Himself, by using the Bible’s documented veracity as proof that Jesus was born exactly as foretold in detail by Old Testament prophets. These Jewish religious leaders’ treatment of Christ’s first coming as a baby, lays groundwork for understanding what that first visitation means to the souls of all mankind. Understanding that first coming, also will help frame the vital importance of how each of us view Christ’s prophesied Second Advent.

Tragically, the pious Jewish leaders refused to accept that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah sent from Jehovah to be their King, and their Savior. They rejected Him, despite the precise prophecies He fulfilled in His coming, and His ministry. They chose to have Rome rather than Jesus rule over them. The results of their rejection continues to reverberate, not only in the region called the Holy Land, but throughout the entire world. Armageddon is building, its nucleus grounded in Satanic rage against God’s chosen people.

Jesus wept over God’s people of Israel and the city, Jerusalem. He foresaw times ahead that would eventuate in calamity for them.

“And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” (Lk 19: 41-44)

Christ’s first visitation was ignored and scoffed at by the religious leaders of the time. Their choice was their own way, rather than God’s way. Each preferred to do what was right in his own eyes. True to Jesus’ prophecy, Jerusalem was laid waste, the temple destroyed, and the Jews scattered to every part of the world. Genocide was committed against them to the point their very existence as a race was threatened.

Israel continues to pay the price. Anti-Semitism is growing in Europe, and around the world. The nation is becoming marginalized, just as the prophet Zechariah forewarned in Zechariah chapters 12 and 14.

But there is a bright day coming for that people –those whom accept the Messiah’s second visitation. Paul the apostle warned believers not to feel superior to Jews. He forecast a coming time when Israel would shine among the nations.

“For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in.” (Rom 11: 25)

God foretold, again through the prophet Zechariah, that believing Israel will yet recognize the Lord Jesus –upon His second visitation to planet earth.

“And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for [his] only [son], and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for [his] firstborn.” (Zech. 12: 10)

The Apostle Paul foretold: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob.” (Rom 11: 26)

A parallel can be drawn between the ecclesiastical Jewish leaders of the time of Jesus’ first visitation, and many among mainstream evangelical clergy today. Neither group considered nor considers prophecies of Christ’s coming as relevant to their times. Their attitude is much akin to the one described by the Apostle Peter.

“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” (2 Pet 3: 3-4)

This sin-darkened sphere is on the brink of another visitation. Unlike the first, when He came as a humble baby, who was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, He will come the next time as the King of all kings, and the Lord of all lords. Let us who claim Christ as Savior heed His words about His coming again. And the first phase of that Second Coming will be unannounced, and in the twinkling of an eye –the Rapture!

“Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” (Mark 13: 35-37)