Note: This week’s article was written some time ago. Never, however, has its subject been more time-appropriate than at this moment. With issues and events moving at accelerating swiftness, and in ever-greater proliferation, we must be constantly aware of the glorious fact that we could at any moment meet Him face-to-face.

–Terry

No scriptural proof-text in God’s Word more clearly points to the first of the two phases of Jesus Christ’s Second Coming than the following:

For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5:2)

We who hold to the pre-Trib Rapture viewpoint are often accused of being deceivers. We’re condemned by our detractors as leading astray Christians who are alive now—if they live to see it—who will be required to endure the Tribulation, thus to wash their robes clean in preparation for inheriting God’s Kingdom.

We are castigated for foisting upon innocent, gullible believers a “secret Rapture” that will somehow lead these Christians to take the mark of the Beast (Revelation 13:16–18).

I’m not precisely sure of their “reasoning,” but I think they claim this because they are convinced that the ones who fall for the Rapture viewpoint won’t be able to recognize Antichrist when he comes to power. We who teach the pre-Trib Rapture, so the accusation goes, would have falsely led these people to think the Church would not be here when Antichrist is on the world scene.

Almost all who are antagonistic toward the pre-Trib Rapture doctrine teach that the “elect” will have to endure part or all of the seven-year Tribulation era.

Those who hold to a post-Tribulation Rapture or a no-Rapture position believe that Christ will come back at the end of the Tribulation, at Armageddon.

They believe that is His only return in the Second Coming. Other views regarding the Second Coming have Christ returning when the earth is perfected and made ready—but we won’t go there in this essay.

Let’s look at only the pre-Trib and post-Trib Rapture positions to explore what is meant by the “thief in the night” references in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10. These two viewpoints offer the greatest contrast to examine in consideration of the Second Advent of Jesus Christ within the overall belief that Rapture will, according to Bible prophecy, happen before His foot actually touches the earth.

The pre-Trib view says that Christ’s Second Coming is in two phases, separated by at least seven years. The post-Trib view says that the Rapture and Christ’s return to the Mount of Olives will occur almost simultaneously–certainly with no more than a matter of days separating the two events. The post-Trib position says there is no “secret” Rapture. Christ’s coming again will be fully seen in the heavens by all, including Christians who will be watching for Him to break through the darkness of that hour.

We agree that the Rapture of the Church (all born-again believers in Jesus Christ for salvation since the Church Age began at Pentecost) will be anything but “secret.” The world will instantly go into cataclysmic chaos at the moment that stunning event takes place. The imagination is hard-pressed to fathom the ramifications of what will happen when millions suddenly vanish. Every child below the age of accountability will be gone in that mind-boggling instant. I am convinced that all babies (including those in the womb) will be instantly in the presence of Christ in the clouds of glory. Every corpse of every dead Christian will be raised to join with his or her soul to meet Christ in the air in that atomos of time.

The Rapture will be mystifying, and to some it will be an inexplicable phenomenon, but it will not be a secret. It will happen before the eyes of a stupefied planet of left-behind earth-dwellers. This declaration that Jesus will call His Church to be with Him seems audacious to many. But, it didn’t seem so to the Apostle Paul. He was quite confident—even adamant—in his prophecy concerning the “mystery” he had been given by the Holy Spirit to instruct all believers through the Age of Grace (Church Age).

Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51–52)

He explains what will take place next, in that stupendous fraction of a second:

For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:15–17)

Jesus Himself told of this “mystery” Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:51. The Lord explains what happens after believers—both the bodies of the dead and those who are living—are caught up in the air to be with Him:

Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:1–3)

So, the Rapture will take place. Believers and the bodies of those who died during the Church Age will be “caught up” in one single moment of time. “ALL,” not “some,” will go instantly to be with Jesus, who will then take them into Heaven, where He has been preparing their dwelling places since He ascended from the Mount of Olives.

Again, the pre-Trib position on this joyous event is that it is imminent (could happen at any moment), and will happen before the Tribulation period begins.

The post-Trib position says that it happens at the end of the most terrible time in human history, just as Jesus Christ is returning from Heaven at Armageddon.

The pre-Trib view holds that it will occur at an unknown time. It will be a stunning, sudden, and unannounced-to-the-world-at-large break-in upon business as usual on planet earth. The post-Trib proclaims that it will occur following all of the horrors of the judgments outlined in Revelation.

The pre-Trib view says the world at large (left-behind earth-dwellers) won’t see it coming. The Rapture will cause all left on earth to wonder what has happened. The post-Trib view says that all eyes will behold Christ’s coming again to a hellish planet, and the living and dead saints will then be gathered to Christ.

The defining thing to consider in thinking on the two diametrically different views of the Rapture and Second Coming is wrapped up in the term “thief in the night.” The Apostle Peter again uses this mysterious term first used by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:2:

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. (2 Peter 3:10)

Peter is saying here that the day of the Lord–that time when God and His Christ, His Son, takes over this fallen planet—will begin like a thief in the night.

It will be a sudden, catastrophic break-in upon a world doing business as usual. (Read Luke 17:26–29 to understand how things will be going along as usual when Christ comes back.)

This description hardly fits the post-Trib view, or any other view that says Christ will Rapture His Church during a time of unprecedented trouble (Jeremiah 30:7; Matthew 24:21). This indicates that it will be a total surprise, because a thief in the night doesn’t announce his coming with great fanfare.

The break-in is swift, stealthy—totally unexpected.

Peter foretells in these passages that the “day of the Lord” will then run its course, until the remaking of the heavens and the earth. The Rapture will begin this “day of the Lord,” which will then run at least 1,007 years.

This is the first phase of Christ’s Second Coming. The Rapture occurs like a “thief in the night.” The Second Advent, when Jesus’ foot touches down on the Mount of Olives, is the second phase of His Second Coming.

There are those who say with vehemence that it is blasphemous to equate Christ’s coming again as being like the break-in of a thief in the night. How dare we liken the Lord to a “thief”!

Really? Here’s what Jesus, the Creator of all things, said about this matter:

But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh. (Matthew 24:43–44)

Looks like a pretty good case for the Lord’s sudden intervention into the nefarious affairs of this increasingly wicked world, doesn’t it? That thief-in-the-night moment could happen, literally, at any moment. Certainly, signals of the Tribulation are beginning to come to pass.

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. (Luke 21:28).

It was a time when the Cold War continued with fresh memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Filmmakers stimulated the theater-going public with offerings of dark humor steeped in fears of thermonuclear war.

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming! was the title of a 1960s movie—a comedy—in which there was panic in a New England village on the Atlantic Coast. A Soviet submarine had run aground because of its commander sightseeing the American coastline. The crew was sent from the sub to find a boat that could dislodge the sub and free it to continue its cruise.

There was great angst for a time, as the New Englanders thought they were being invaded by the Russkis. The movie was hilarious, with the people and the sub occupants coming close to conflict. But there was a meeting of two young people—the woman an American, the man a Russian submariner.

I took a year or so of Russian in college, but viewing this movie was where I learned to say “I love you” in Russian.

The story ended just right, as any good love story should, with the Russian sub threatened for destruction by US Air Force fighter jets flying overhead, but the pilots, seeing the New Englanders all around the sub, didn’t attack. The people were protecting the Russians, and soon the sub slipped back into the Atlantic deep.

I can’t remember what happened to the two young folks who were in love, but I presume all, too, was well in that department.

At this moment, the Ukrainian people find nothing funny about their experience. Yet there is a love story within its unfolding that can be discerned. While reports that hundreds, even thousands, on both sides of Putin’s aggression are being killed or maimed, there are reports of human interaction that unveils compassion of biblical proportion.

The Ukrainian people have, it is said, taken wounded Russian soldiers into their homes or to facilities and cared for them, even as the Russian forces continue their assault. On the other side, there are reports of Russian troops laying down their weapons and returning to their homes, because they haven’t the heart to continue killing people who are basically the same as the people they left back home.

I don’t know the degree of veracity of these stories, but give some credence to them because they are being reported across the entire spectrum of news forums—mainstream and alternative.

One wonders the fate of the troops who defect in this manner. Vladimir Putin is reported to be, like one-time dictator Joseph Stalin, executing generals who fail to accomplish their missions. Thus the four or five generals are reported to have been killed, with their deaths blamed on Ukrainian resistance fighters. What is the truth? Who knows. Well, only our God.

The troops who have a change of heart surely are meeting fates at least as bad as the generals rumored to have felt Putin’s wrath.

And it is Putin’s unknowns that have pundits and ordinary people worrying alike. Will there be World War III? As a matter of fact, has World War III already begun—has Putin now set out on a course that will end up involving all of Europe and eventually the entire world in a global conflict? Is Putin another Hitler, whose trajectory the Russian dictator seems to be following?

Some within Bible prophecy circles are wondering the same things. Is the world now seeing the beginning of the earth’s third global conflict? Are we about to get into nuclear combat one on one with the Russkis, as Slim Pickens, who played the captain of a hydrogen bomb-armed B-52 in the movie Dr. Strangelove, once said?

One acknowledged “expert” weighed in with the following assessment.

Author and former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News Digital Thursday that a no-fly zone presents the most risk among known scenarios, but currently-unknown actions could inadvertently cause an escalation during the “fog of war.”

“Usually the path of the escalation is difficult to predict, it can come out of nowhere in the fog of war,” Koffler said.

Koffler argued that the current conflict in Ukraine is a “proxy war” between the U.S. and Russia that could easily escalate into a “shooting war.” (“The largest risk to an escalation of the conflict would be a no-fly zone enforced by NATO, experts say,” by Michael Lee, Fox News)

Diplomatic sources believe some within the US and Europe are poking the Russian bear by embracing the idea of no-fly zones over Ukraine—and by the introduction of MiG-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian military to enforce that no-fly zone.

Such action, they believe, would bring about the shoot-down of Russian planes. A no-fly zone, plus such US-approved introduction of weaponry, would, Vladimir Putin has said, be considered an act of war.

The Russian tyrant has instructed his forces to fire a hypersonic missile into a Ukrainian underground military facility. The missile wasn’t nuclear-tipped, but the plain message analysts are saying Putin wanted to send is that Russia can, with the new, Mach 5 missile technology, reach not only the near points of Ukrainian territory, but all of Europe. The hypersonic missiles have a vastly larger range than the mid-range missiles heretofore used by the Russians.

Putin has said he is not averse to using tactical nukes to accomplish the Russian military mission of subduing parts of that nation the dictator believes belong to Russia.

All of this has the world of diplomats and even Christian prophecy pundits wondering whether there is about to be World War III, which will end in nuclear exchanges that will completely disrupt the world carrying on as we have known.

Well, we can interject that, with the way things have been carried on as of late, a heavenly disruption might be warranted. We’ve seen wickedness arise at levels that, as Ruth Graham might have concluded, rival the evil of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Only God’s divine patience and mercy can explain why nuclear combat, one on one with the Russkis, hasn’t already broken out into WW III.

Diplomats of the world, many of whom are Christians and even Bible prophecy students, would adamantly disagree with my assessment about the prospects for World War III and nuclear annihilation.

I say without reservation that I have no fear of an all-out, global war at this juncture in human history. And that is the salient point—the words, “at this juncture in human history.”

For the current war waged upon Ukraine—or any other war—to explode or even gradually grow to all-out World War III would be contrary to what the Word of God foretells. As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ Himself, who is the very Word of God who holds together even the elements of the atom, foretold the following. (Again, remember that “the day when the Son of man is revealed” refers to the Rapture of the Church.)

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. (Luke 17:27–30) 

It would not be business as usual if the planet had just been ravished by nuclear devastation, just as it wouldn’t be business as usual if Christ was “revealed” at the end of the most horrific time imaginable—the end of the Tribulation.

There will be World War III, and there will be nuclear devastation, I have absolutely no doubt. But it will be after the Rapture, when all believers are in the only safe harbor there is—in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ when He calls us to Himself.

There is only one way to go to this assurance and safe harbor.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)

As anyone knows who reads these commentaries, our website is raptureready.com. The articles are, of course, generated and disseminated from this platform on a daily basis. Our Nearing Midnight section is our weekly platform from which to launch commentary on what we consider the most relevant and vital issues and events of the hour. All opinion pieces are Bible centered, and their overall tenor is to point to how near the midnight hour we are in regard to the occurrence of the Rapture—that glorious moment when Jesus Christ calls all believers to Himself.

The words I hear when talking to believers about the Rapture of the Church is that while they hope it will happen soon, they are afraid it’s way out there in the future. This is a common thread I find in thinking of fellow Christians these days. That’s not to say all are thinking in this direction. Many who come to our website look around at all that is happening and express that they don’t see how the Rapture could be meant for any other generation than ours. They see all collateral cultural and societal prerequisites for that stunning event to occur.

So what is the probability that the Rapture is scheduled in God’s plan for humanity in either a sooner or in a later timeframe? Is there any one signal on the prophetic horizon that might give a clue to answering that question? I believe one area to look at might provide illumination.

Believers and nonbelievers alike are being fed a daily diet of doomsday fodder. COVID-19 more or less suctioned the attention of the world’s populations into its orbit of terror. This, I sense, was done deliberately. That is, it was a deliberately created, worldwide, pathogenic assault specifically designed to bring people under the cloud of gloom and doom. As a matter of fact, documentation being unveiled is beginning to point in that direction, providing proof that it was spawned to control the minds and movements of the earth’s populations.

Added to the pandemic was the intent to radically change cultures and societies through the wokism we’ve all been subject to over these weeks, months, and years. Overall, it’s been an effort to move people’s thinking away from the God of Heaven and toward anti-God thinking. That effort to totally corrupt mankind has been largely successful, and governments of the world have become, as Romans 1:28 tells us, reprobate at every level. That is, our leaders can’t and/or won’t think rationally. Every thought is only on evil continually, it seems.

This is exactly the mindset of the antediluvian world of Genesis 6, the one Jesus said would be prevalent at the moment of His catastrophic intervention into the affairs of mankind. He said it would be “as it was in the days of Noah.”

We see not only the mindset that was anti-God, but violence, that fills the whole earth, exactly as described in Noah’s day. Consider that with the upside-down thinking of the legislators and city councils of the so-called blue states and blue cities, murder rates are up exponentially in some areas. The catch-and-release policies of the blue cities have validated those policies’ wrong-headedness, their insanity. The reprobate thinking of governors, mayors, and legislators are manifest for anyone who cares to see.

America has at least half a population and half a Congress with the same deadly disease—Romans 28-level reprobate thinking. The current president of the United States seems at the apex of present American leadership manifesting upside-down or reprobate thinking. This isn’t just the ranting of some prophecy nut. His wrongheadedness is evident, and his handlers who surround him must closely guard his movements daily, keeping him from press conferences and having him avoid most questions of substance by White House and other reporters.

While wars and rumors of wars ratchet up to the point of threatening to break into World War III, according to some, the American military, led by the present chiefs of staff who advise the president concentrate on creating a culture of woke-ism within the ranks. Some in our military even wear rainbow symbols, indicating their awareness that the transsexual movement is front and center in their midst. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff seems all in regarding his support for this LBTQ incursion into the American military. This is, to my thinking, Sodom and Gomorrah-level reprobate manifestations in these days that look forever more like those days of Noah and days of Lot of which Jesus prophesied.

All of the above constitutes substantial evidence that the Rapture of the Church might be close to fulfillment. But one particular symptom of our time stands out significantly. And it is much more than just a symptom. It is a growing monster created by evil men and seducers, who deceive and are themselves deceived.  Those greedy creators of the monster have reached the point they can no longer control its voraciousness.

The evil men and seducers to whom I refer are the money powers that be. These are the men (and women) whose only desire, it seems, is to create larger and larger debt among those they force to do their bidding, financially speaking. These globalist, fiscal elitists’ evil, economic shenanigans have brought this generation to a moment I believe Jesus, Himself, was speaking to, regarding His next intervention into this doomed, rebellious world. More about this in due course.

The following excerpt defines the uncontrollable monster, I think.

For years I have been clear that the world is reaching the end of an economic, financial and monetary era which will detrimentally affect the world for probably decades.

It is unequivocal that all currencies will finish the 100+ year fall to ZERO in the next few years. It is also crystal clear that all the asset bubbles – stocks, bonds and property – will implode at the same time leading to a long and deep depression.

We had the warning in 2006-9 but central banks ignored it and just added new worthless debt to existing worthless debt to create worthless debt squared – an obvious recipe for disaster.

So as is often typical for the end of an economic era, the catalyst is totally unexpected and worse than anyone could have forecast…

If a miracle doesn’t stop this war [Russia and Ukraine] very quickly (which is extremely unlikely), the world will soon be entering a hyperinflationary commodity explosion (think energy, metals and food) combined with a cataclysmic deflationary asset implosion (think debt, stocks and property).

The world will be experiencing totally unknown consequences without the ability to solve any of them for a very long time.

All the above will most likely happen even without a global war. (Buckle Up: Greyerz – The Dark Years for the World Are Now Starting in Earnest,  King World News, Rapture Ready News, March 12, 2022)

Prices at the gas pumps and in the grocery stores—the shelves of which are growing increasingly sparse in products—are rising quickly. The above expert analyst and others predict the whole world economic system is about to experience a crash of apocalyptic dimension. If this happens, the world will again have to gather up the shambles and bring things back to a relatively normal way of conducting life. This would take many decades if it could ever be reconfigured in getting things back to how they are at present.

Jesus’ words tell us that when He comes again, people will be in times like in Noah’s day. That is, it will be a totally evil time of violence. Well, we are there at present, are we not?

But the Lord foretold something other. And it is what makes me think the Rapture of believers will be sooner, not later.

Jesus said the generation will be like in the days of Lot and his vexation in Sodom and Gomorrah. That means, of course, that it will be a totally debauched, sexually perverted and wicked time. Are we not there?

But He said one thing more. He said people will be buying, selling, building, marrying, planting—all the things of normal activity. He predicted no worldwide financial collapse. “It’s the economy, stupid,” we might say to those who believe we are going through the Tribulation. (Although I would never use those words issued by James Carville in managing Bill Clinton’s election.)

But it is, in fact, the world economic situation we should look at in wonder. It is still held up in spite of the any second collapse the experts have been predicting for some time.

The collapse is being held up by God, the Restrainer, I have no doubt. It will be the Rapture that will pierce that enormous, constantly building economic bubble.

That moment is indeed imminent!

There is one and only one way to go to Jesus in this glorious event when He calls—the one and only way of escaping the coming time of trouble such as people of the earth have never endured.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9–10)

Authors note: This week’s article is rather lengthy. It is the conclusion I wrote to our book Discerners: Analyzing Converging Prophetic Signs for the End of Days

I believe it is more relevant to this hour even than when it was published a few years ago. Certainly we are now nearer that spectacular moment when the Lord Jesus Christ will call us to Himself in an atomos of time.

Our weekly column on the raptureready.com website is called “Nearing Midnight,” named so because we discern that planet earth has almost reached the midnight hour of the Church Age, or Age of Grace.

Whereas the geopolitical humanist powers that be frame their view of human history’s closing minutes within their “Doomsday Clock,” we observe these fleeting times before Christ’s call to the Church by placing the template of Bible prophecy over the converging of prophetic stage-setting.

The political scientists and other scientists can only guess at what will happen to the human race. Most all believe that humankind will meet its end from nuclear holocaust or by climate-change disasters.

We who give total credence to what God’s Word has to say about the consummation of the age can know for certain, through a detailed preview by God, Himself, how the end of all things will unfold. We don’t know precisely when the end will come. We can know, however, the general time when it will begin to manifest.

We can know for certain when the midnight hour of God’s prophetic timeline is approaching.

The Lord Jesus gave His family (born-again believers) explicit instruction about how and when to discern the nearing midnight hour.

And when you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your head, for your redemption draws near. (Luke 21:28)

Note that Jesus didn’t say to watch for when these things “come to pass.” He said “when these things begin to come to pass,” we are to “look up and lift up our heads, for our redemption is drawing near.” At that time, He will be on His way to rescue His Bride, the Church, from the carnage that is about to take place on earth.

The blackness of the midnight hour will descend following that rescue of the Church. Seven years into the Tribulation, complete evil will have engulfed the planet with satanic darkness. The first bright gleaming that pierces that most horrendous time of all of human history will then burst through the billowing storm clouds of Armageddon. Brilliant light will part the heavens, and Christ and His army will appear.

So, discerning the times in which we find ourselves is all-important to the believer. If it wasn’t possible to discern the times, Jesus wouldn’t have told us: “What I say unto one, I say unto all. Watch” (Mark 13:37).

He promises in Revelation 3:10 that we’re not appointed to God’s wrath and will be kept out of the very hour of that wrath.  

So, what are the things the Lord forewarned would be taking place—beginning to come to pass—that we see happening at this very moment? Exactly what are the things for which we are to look?

Remember, the whole Bible is the Word of God. And, Jesus is that Word (John 1:1).

Every prophecy, whether already accomplished or yet to come, is attributable to Him. God, the Holy Spirit, inspired the Old and New Testament prophets to give the prophecies. So, we don’t have to consider just what the Lord Jesus, Himself, said by way of prophecy to discern the times in which we live. We can and must consider every prophecy yet to be fulfilled, presented in the Bible by all Bible prophets, as part of the process.

I am of the camp that believes we’re seeing the stage being set for fulfillment of prophecy yet future rather than fulfillment itself. The one caveat concerns the nation Israel. My view is that Israel again being a nation after millennia of dispersion across the world is fulfilled prophecy.

That said, however, everything we see happening around us at this very hour has significance. Some things involved are profoundly significant.

One such profound sign of stage-setting for fulfillment is the coalition of nations forming to Israel’s north.

Russia (land of Magog), Iran (much of ancient Persia), and Turkey (the land of Togormah) coming together in a coalescing alliance is a spectacular example of God’s foreknowledge of things to come. These, of course, are exactly the central actors scheduled to come against God’s chosen nation, Israel, according to Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.

It must be agreed that much of the stage-setting itself is likened to fulfilled prophecy in some ways. For example, the Apostle Paul’s “perilous times,” presented in 2 Timothy 3, is almost a vivid snapshot of these spiritually darkening days. While prophecy yet future, for the most part, seems reserved for the Tribulation (Daniel’s seventieth week), developments in our nation and world today are becoming ever more like those given in God’s Word for that last seven years immediately preceding Christ’s Second Advent.

Luciferic darkening has so infected this generation in America and throughout the world that we who “watch” in order to discern the times are brought face to face with end-times insanity born of greatly increased rebellion against God. Other than the fact that Israel itself is what most discerners view as the most dramatic sign of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline, there runs a deadly septicemia throughout humankind that marks this as a generation at the end of its prophetic rope. The infection proves we’re in the terminal stage of rebellion.

The Apostle Paul explains very clearly that infection, satanically injected into humanity’s collective bloodstream.

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. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1:18–32)

Carefully reread the above block of prophecy. It is astonishing how much it says about the human condition at the time of Christ’s next catastrophic intervention into mankind’s rebellion.

In my view, no descriptive could be more vivid or accurate of what has taken place in America over the past decade. This nation, despite its founding as a Christian nation—and it was so founded regardless of whether anyone wants to dispute the fact—has served as the prototype for the human condition and comportment given here by the Apostle Paul.

The most recent presidential election and the era surrounding it encapsulates practically every nuance of condemnable points about rebellious man herein characterized by the great apostle. It shows where we currently must stand on God’s prophetic timeline.

Paul points out that the culmination of all the rebellion against the God of Heaven results in the Lord turning the rebels over to a “reprobate” mind. This is where this generation, as a collective, stands.

A reprobate mind is one that cannot think clearly. These rebels turn everything upside down. Good is called evil and evil is called good in their convoluted world.

Even Christendom—all religious entities that claim Christianity as their base—has become terminally infected with this end-times lunacy. These are false-teaching, apostate wolves in sheep’s clothing who cannot (and do not even want to know) truth. They’re of the totally reprobate mind Paul described.

An example of this religious septicemia during our time is provided by my close friend and colleague, Daymond Duck. Daymond writes the following:

On June 16, 2019, the building caretaker at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, Dan Davidson, dressed up as a drag queen called Sparke Leigh.

Sparke wore a purple dress, make up and high heels.

Sparke stood at the door of the church to greet people as they entered. (It seems to me that Auburn is a church in name only.)

During the children’s portion of the worship service, Sparke went on stage and read “The Story of Harvey Milk and The Rainbow Flag” (possibly the opposite of training up children in the way that they should go).

Sparke could have read Scripture and shared a Bible Story with the children (such as what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah), but Sparke preferred to talk about Harvey Milk and the rainbow flag (days of Lot, departing from the faith, even worse, turning evil into good and flaunting it at church, etc.).

Literal events like this are why I believe the Master of the House is coming (and soon). (The Master of the House is Coming, Daymond R. Duck, raptureready.com commentary.)

Indeed, in consideration of a worldwide cultural and societal 180-degree turn away from God, the spirit-filled discerner of these prophetic end times cannot but conclude that the moment of Heaven’s judgment must be very near at hand.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. (Titus 2: 13)