Prophecy Line
Despisers of Good
There is something going on that I believe can no longer be considered anomaly. It smacks ominously of forewarning found within the apostle Paul’s perilous times prophecy of 2 Timothy 3: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be…despisers of those that are good” (2Timothy 3:1-2a, 6f)
Although the signs have been on the cultural and societal horizon for years, the manifestation of Paul’s forewarning became clearer during the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999. It was the first time in such a nationwide way that hatred for Jesus Christ raised its monstrous head, producing martyrdom for the cause of Christ in America.
On Rachel Scott, 17-year-old Columbine student:
Three weeks before the shooting she had witnessed to the shooters Eric and Dylan. Eric and Dylan were the odd pair out and students mostly stayed away from them. But Rachel tried to talk to them and encouraged them to leave their hateful feelings and turn to Jesus. But they hated her the more and even made homemade videotapes mocking her Christian faith.
On the day of the shooting, Rachel was outside the school building having her lunch. Eric and Dylan entered the school campus and first shot Rachel. They shot her in the leg twice and shot her again in the back. They left but returned seconds later. On noticing that she was still alive, Eric walked over to Rachel and grabbed her by the hair, lifted up her head and asked her “Do you still believe in your God?” Her response was unflinching and unwavering “You know I Do”, and that provoked Eric and he responded “Then go be with Him,” and shot her in the head. (FreeHeartDay.com. RACHEL JOY SCOTT – HER STORY MUST BE TOLD. By Sachin. April 20, 2013. http://www.freeheartday.com/rachel-joy-scott-her-story-must-be-told)
That singular, direct act of murder because a Christian wouldn’t deny her Lord might be considered no more than an aberration. The slaughter of Christians within the church of mostly black congregants in South Carolina a couple of months ago could, perhaps, be chalked up as merely an insane man coincidentally choosing a group of believers in Christ in his rage to kill. But, the deadly attack on the college in Oregon this past week should take all growing hatred for those who claim Christ as Lord out of the realm of anomaly and coincidence.
With this most recent shooting, it should, in my view, be considered undeniable that we have witnessed a key prophetic indicator. It is as if God’s finger is pointing directly to the fact that these are the perilous times to which Paul’s foretelling referred.
A gunman singled out Christians, telling them they would see God in “one second,” during a rampage at an Oregon college Thursday that left at least nine innocent people dead and several more wounded, survivors and authorities said.
“[He started] asking people one by one what their religion was. ‘Are you a Christian?’ he would ask them, and if you’re a Christian, stand up. And they would stand up and he said, ‘Good, because you’re a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second.’ And then he shot and killed them,” Stacy Boylen, whose daughter was wounded at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Ore., told CNN. (NYPost.com. Oregon gunman singled out Christians during rampage, By Chris Perez, Danika Fears and Natalie Musumeci. October 1, 2015. http://nypost.com/2015/10/01/oregon-gunman-singled-out-christians-during-rampage/ )
The term “despisers of those that are good” is more than obvious in its application to this news story in thinking on the apostle Paul’s perilous-times prophecy. This young, demented man despised Christians by his own admission through his words and actions. But, the word “despiser” takes on a much more condemning meaning for the evil day in which we live when considering the treatment of the horrendous event.
In almost all mainstream accounts of this story, the reports never mention that the shooter asked the specific question “Are you Christian?” and never do they include the statement that because they are Christians they will die in one minute. In nearly every case, the reports only indicate that the shooter asked what religion the victims were.
This is blatant bias in trying to keep the public from recognizing that Christians were specifically chosen to be murdered. This is, in my opinion, the mainstream press showing its own collective disdain for Jesus Christ–for Christians. They, by omission, demonstrate they are despisers of those who are good.
Why do I say that those who were murdered in cold blood were “good”? Let’s examine the declaration.
Jesus, when called by a man “good master,” asked the man why he had called Him “good.” Jesus told the man there was only one that was good, and that was God. (Read Matthew 19:17.) Jesus wasn’t scolding the man; rather, He was pointing out that all of man is fallen, but that God was without sin. God was the only good. Jesus was and is God. He said as recorded in another passage, “Before Abraham was, I Am.” Jesus was saying that He is God. He is the only good there is.
To further dissect the perilous-times prophecy in question, we next consider why we can legitimately point out that the shooter in the Oregon massacre of Christians in particular was a “despiser of those that are good.” Why the media’s deliberate refusal to mention that Christians were deliberately targeted seems to indicate that they, too, are “despisers of those that are good.”
Jesus, time and time again, declared that those who believe in Him for salvation because of His death on the cross for them are “in” Him–that is, in Jesus Christ. The believer is one with Jesus just as Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, is one with the Heavenly Father. (Read John chapter 17, and this becomes absolutely clear.)
This all means that the true believer in Jesus Christ is in God’s family for eternity. They will be in Heaven forever after this life. The only reason God the Father sees any human being as “good” is through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. When the shooter murdered the Christians, he showed that he “despised” those who were good in the holy eyes of God.
Not only the American news conglomerate, but many in the stratosphere of this nation’s political domain have demonstrated beyond much doubt that they are “despisers of those that are good.” The attitude of Mr. Obama and the tenor of the president’s time in that office demonstrate disdain for Christianity, as far as I’m concerned.
At the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama reminded attendees that violence rooted in religion isn’t exclusive to Islam, but has been carried out by Christians as well…
“Unless we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.” (Breitbart.com. OBAMA AT NATIONAL PRAYER BREAKFAST: “PEOPLE COMMITTED TERRIBLE DEEDS IN THE NAME OF CHRIST,” By: Charlie Spiering. Feb 5, 2015. http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/05/obama-at-national-prayer-breakfast-people-committed-terrible-deeds-in-the-name-of-christ/)
This has been his consistent treatment of the subject of Christianity. He continually praises the godly attributes of Islam, but hasn’t lifted a presidential finger to help stop the genocide against Christians in the places where ISIS (ISIL, as he puts it) are butchering even women and children, including infants. I remember vividly the National Democratic Convention leading up to the 2012 presidential elections. In three separate voice votes, delegates were asked whether they supported the inclusion of God and the recognition of Jerusalem in their party’s guiding policy document. Three separate times, loud shouts of “no” all but drowned out the chairman’s gavel. Chairman Villaraigosa ultimately just declared that the “ayes” had it. –This, despite the fact that there was nowhere near the two-thirds “ayes” voice vote sounded in the hall. As God and Jerusalem were inserted back into the Democratic platform, the hall erupted in boos. Absolute proof that despisers of good were there in abundance.
Recent Supreme Court decisions and other court actions against principles from God’s Word, even going so far as to put Christians in jail and strap others with fines that cause loss of livelihoods, makes it clear that we are in perilous times. We are in the satanic process of being surrounded by despisers of those who are good.
Who Goes in the Rapture?
My book from a few years ago, The Departure: God’s Next Catastrophic Intervention into Earth’s History, is a book written by a number of authors. I was one of the authors and general editor. I selected to join in this effort some of the most knowledgeable authorities in Bible prophecy who wrote chapters on the most relevant topics of our day.
We looked at all issues and events involving what we consider to have prophetic import through the supernatural prism of God’s Word, the Bible. I consider it “our” book, not just mine.
More than that, I believe each of us who wrote for it considers it to be a volume devoted to the Lord Jesus Christ for these troubling although exciting times. We trust that it continues to be a tool to help edify those who are in God’s family by pointing to the very real evidence that proves the coming of “the blessed hope” of Titus 2:13 is likely very near. To that extent, that’s another reason I call it “our” book. It’s written for all believers alive today, with the prayerful hope God’s family will awaken to Christ’s imminent coming.
With the book now in the hands of many thousands, I thought it good to use the commentary this week to look at exactly who I believe will go in the Departure–the Rapture, when Christ gives the command: “Come up here” (Rev. 4:1).
There might be some among the authors who would disagree on a couple of my views about specifically who will go to be with Jesus at the time of the Rapture. However, I will let them answer for themselves in their own forums and in their own ways. My own feeling on the differences we might have is like that of the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee, who more than once said that you can believe the way you want to believe. But, if you want to be right, you’ll want to come along with me on this…
Dr. McGee said that with a chuckle, and I hope you can hear the chuckle in my written expression, regarding my borrowing from that grand old Christian man’s humor.
First, I will state that God’s Word says, without equivocation, just who will go in the Rapture–the Departure: “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 Cor. 15:51-52).
So, it is plain that Paul the apostle was saying two major things about one classification of people. He was writing to the believers at Corinth. But, he was also writing to each and every believer who would come along during the Church Age. Every believer at Corinth during Paul’s day is long since dead. So he had to be addressing those who would be living at the time when Christ would call for them, as well as those alive at the time this letter was written.
The context of the letter is that of informing those Christians about a mystery regarding a stunning event in their future. His words were to put to rest some of their worries about what would happen to those Christians among them who had died. What would happen to them in terms of their going to heaven?
Paul was saying that: 1) Not all believers would die; some would not have to die, but would be alive at the time of a stupendous event; and 2) All believers, however, would be changed. They would be changed in one single moment of time. The dead would be made alive and put into supernatural bodies. Those alive at the time of the event would be changed into supernatural bodies while living.
The “mystery” Paul was revealing–I am convinced–was the one wrapped up in Jesus’ words as recorded by John the apostle:
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)
Paul further expanded on this “mystery” in his letter to the Thessalonians:
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 Thess. 4:16-17)
So, the thing to consider is that believers of the Church Age (Age of Grace)–and Paul was talking to believers of this dispensation—will ALL go to be with Jesus when He calls them in that “twinkling of an eye” (atomos of time) moment–the Rapture. ALL believers of this dispensation will go to be with the Lord! Not a single individual who has accepted Christ for salvation will be left behind.
This truth includes every individual who never reached the intellectual ability–through brain incapacity or because of being too young—to understand that he or she must accept Christ for salvation. These are all under the blood of Christ for redemption and reconciliation to God, the Father. All will go to be with Jesus at the Rapture.
Some believe and teach that only those believers who are living in the will of God will go to be with Christ at the Rapture. Those living “carnal” lives, they believe, will be left behind to go through a time of God’s judgment and wrath, along with the unbelieving earth dwellers. But God’s Word doesn’t teach that some will go and some will stay. ALL believers, Paul plainly writes, will go to be with the Lord at the Departure. Paul writes further to the Thessalonians: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him” (1 Thess. 5:9-10).
It is true that we are told by the Lord as recorded in Luke 21:36 that we are to watch and pray always that we may be accounted worthy to escape all of the things of the Tribulation. But “worthy” in this sense means that we should be living in such a way that we will not be ashamed when we stand before Him at the Judgment Seat–the bema. We should desire to hear our Lord say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
This might not seem fair to those who disagree with me on this–those who believe they are living their own lives within God’s prescription for Christian deportment. But, it’s not what we think is or is not fair that matters. It’s what the Word of God says that matters in any question of spiritual truth. God’s truth–His Holy Word—says plainly that ALL believers who have died or are living during this present dispensation will go to be with the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ, when He makes that shout heard around the world to His bride: “Come up here!”
The Global Warming Gestapo
Pope Francis might not be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as some conspiracy-minded prophecy pundits might have it. That this pope is a climate -change cop in papal paraphernalia, however, is less easy to deny, if the pontiff’s barnstorming through our nation last week is examined in light of his preaching to us on the evils of America’s world-endangering carbon footprint.
I think there should be little doubt that this was a primary purpose of his coming here. Climate change is so low on the worry-meter of the vast majority of Americans–and of citizens of other nations as well–that something had to be done to rev up interest in global warming (or “climate change,” as it is now termed), because people are sick of hearing the specious term “global warming.” Additionally, with the hoaxers claiming that global warming is a threat to the world now disgraced by revelation of their cooked-up, false data, another tact must be taken to gen up fear that the planet will soon be destroyed without action by what I term the global-warming Gestapo.
What better way to gen-up the numbers of climate-change believers than to have the “Vicar of Christ” conducting secular-type masses all over America–the wealthiest nation that global gulagists have pronounced the most guilty on the Big Blue Marble (now the dingy, greenhouse gas-colored ball of haze)?
And pronounce our guilt this pope has done, even while maintaining the gentle, papal smile and soft-spoken homiletic voice. The United Nations used the pope’s visit to America to kick off its Sustainable Development Summit as keynote speaker. He spent much of that secular mass pointing out that the U.S. is the guiltiest of all nations of polluting the planet, thus must lead the way in making amends.
While preaching to the U.N., America, and Israel-hating choir about America’s culpability in the damage to earth’s environment, the pope reflected on statements he has made as chief climate-change cop. Statements like the following:
- “God will judge you whether you cared for Earth.”
- “It is man who has slapped nature in the face.”
- “People occasionally forgive, but nature never does.”
- “The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all.”
- “Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain.”
- “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications. It represents one of the principle challenges facing humanity in our day.”
- “Leaving an inhabitable planet to future generations is first and foremost up to us.”
- “Never have we so hurt and mistreat our common home as we have in the last 200 years.”
- “If we destroy creation, it will destroy us.”
- “The earth is protesting the wrong that we are doing to her.”
- “An international climate change treaty is a grave, ethical and moral responsibility.”
- “Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.”
- “Money has to serve, not to rule.” (My thanks to Geri Ungurean for finding these quotes.)
On the surface, as with most all deception, the sophistry sounds common-sensible and the right course of action. However, there is harbored within the high-sounding phraseology deeply evil, prophetic stage-setting.
With the current pope seemingly totally co-opted by the global-warming Gestapo, it is interesting to consider the mounting Mother Earth worship system beginning to bring forth condemnation of unbelievers in the climate change diatribe. Just as in most leftist causes, the mainstream media takes the side diametrically opposed to the wishes of the people the leftists wish to force into their socialistic construct. And, that structure will bring the entire world of earth-dwellers under the Antichrist system at some future point, according to God’s prophetic Word.
The False Prophet–the second beast of Revelation chapter 13–will be in charge of bringing this global religious system of enslavement to fruition.
“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.” (Rev. 13: 16-17)
Mother Earth worship, I’m convinced, is the rallying cry around which the one-world-order builders wish us all to gather–thus chose this pope to begin changing our minds about global warming. We must be made to fear our world is being destroyed–which it is–by unrepented-of sin of the human population, not by some mythical carbon footprint caused by so-called greenhouse gases.
We get a sense of this mind-changing effort in considering what the global Gestapo’s propagandists are up to. The Associated Press (AP) has become one of the first of the mainstream media to begin the marginalization of those who speak against global warming or climate change as a scientifically established fact. The things they are doing in the area of becoming thought police for the global warming Gestapo are truly mind-boggling.
The AP will no longer use “skeptics” to describe people who don’t believe in climate change
Those who refuse to acknowledge that climate change is caused by human activity will no longer be called “skeptics” by the Associated Press, after the newswire service decided the term was too scientifically rigorous.
The AP explained their decision in a blog post:
Scientists who consider themselves real skeptics—who debunk mysticism, ESP and other pseudoscience, such as those who are part of the Center for Skeptical Inquiry—complain that non-scientists who reject mainstream climate science have usurped the phrase skeptic. They say they aren’t skeptics because “proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.” That group prefers the phrase “climate change deniers” for those who reject accepted global warming data and theory. But those who reject climate science say the phrase denier has the pejorative ring of Holocaust denier so The Associated Press prefers climate change doubter or someone who rejects mainstream science…
But some environmentalists were displeased with the AP’s decision to opt for the term “climate change doubter” instead of outright “denier”.
Ronald Lindsay, president and CEO of the Center for Inquiry, said in a statement:
Referring to deniers as “doubters” still imbues those who reject scientific fact with an intellectual legitimacy they have not earned. The general public, we fear, will still not get a clear picture of which public figures are basing their positions on reality, and which are not.
The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim asked his Twitter followers for alternative suggestions to “doubters” and was offered the following: Armageddon advocates, Canadian land speculators, climate itsallrightists, death cult members, drought enthusiasts, and grandchildren haters. (Http://qz.com/511723/the-ap-will-no-longer-use-skeptics-to-)
Should we be concerned about the environment–and should we desire to keep it as clean as possible, within reason? Of course. We are instructed by God Himself to be good stewards of the earth. However, we are not to make the planet out to be a goddess that demands our worship. Paul the apostle clearly points out the folly of those who have done so in the past (Read Romans chapter 1).
I prefer to remain among the “deniers” rather than follow the dictates of the global-warming Gestapo. I believe I’m in the best of company in so doing. The Architect of the Universe promises the following: “While the earth remained, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8: 22).
Israel Here to Stay?
My “In Box” and the news from Bible prophecy circles bulge with talk of America’s almost certain immediate judgment for selling Israel down the river by making the nuclear deal with Iran, assuring that beastly regime a weapon to carry out its declared destruction of the Jewish state. Many believe this means an almost-certain attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The scuttlebutt on all of this has been coming hard and fast since 2007 or even earlier. Each summer was going to bring an assault by Israel, and all out Mid-East war was sure to ensue.
As I write this, the predictions are not quite at fever pitch as in the recent past, but, many emails continue to proclaim that this is it. The region is going to go up in flames, with Russia now insinuating itself heavily into the region by establishing a massive base in Syria. This is but precursor preparations for the Ezekiel 38 attack. They are there to protect Iran as much as to protect the regime of Bashar Al-Assad, in whom they are invested heavily in several ways.
Russian military will now be in harm’s way, in case of an Israeli strike, and Moscow—from which Gog of Magog prophetic infamy will come–will not abide such an insult. The thought frequently conjectured: Could this be the beginning of Ezekiel 38-39—the Gog-Magog attack?
Israel cannot afford, the argument goes, to allow the Iranian facility to come on line. This, because the spent fuel rods will provide plutonium and other by-products to give Iran the materials from which they can produce nuclear weapons. That’s a simplification of the matters involved, but should suffice, I hope, for purposes of making the point of this commentary.
This attack by Israel will be, the emailers apparently believe, prophecy being fulfilled. This preemptive attack by the Jewish state upon the land of ancient Persia surely will, the messages exclaim, instigate a chain reaction of events. These events will bring the Gog-Magog attack, and perhaps Isaiah 17:1 (Damascus’ destruction) will also be fulfilled. Some even believe it will provoke the long-pondered-over Psalm 83 war supposed by many to be in the offing.
I don’t believe this is the time for the Gog-Magog War, or for the proposed Psalm 83 conflict, should it be an actual prophecy. Exigencies just aren’t ripe for producing the horrific results such conflicts as the Gog-Magog, or even the supposed Psalm 83, conflagrations would inflict. At least, that’s my view from my present perspective.
More than that, I believe that’s the way it is presented from the perspective of Bible prophecy. One thing I do think is an almost 100-percent certainty is that Israel isn’t going anywhere. The Iranian supreme leader’s promises to erase Israel from the face of the Middle East and the world are empty threats. It will never happen—not even with the help of the Gog nation, Russia.
Why do I say “an almost 100-percent certainty”?
This goes to the argument of those who say that it is possible that Israel could be removed from its land yet again. Then, all would have to again rearrange in order to get the prophetic indicators into place like they are now. God might allow Israel’s enemies to again take the Jews from the Promised Land because of their unbelief.
Zola Levitt and I were once discussing the hatred of the Arab nations for Israel. I mentioned that the late Dr. J. Vernon McGee didn’t think that the Jews being back in the land was necessarily a major signal of the nearness to Christ’s return. My friend Zola, a very passionate man when it came to Israel, got pretty exercised, as I recall. He said that he and Dr. McGee “got into it”—as the southernism goes—over this subject.
Zola said Dr. McGee said it could be that Israel might yet be removed from the land of promise. Zola didn’t like that at all, so they had a rather lively discussion on the matter, on camera. I said, “Well, Dr. McGee [who went to be with the Lord in 1988 at age 84] knows now, that’s for sure.” That seemed to calm Zola a bit.
Dr. McGee would no doubt agree that Israel is back in the land to stay, if he could have watched developments of the years since his leaving the planet. Israel being: the center of most all controversy so far as issues of war and peace are concerned; pressured by the international community to give up God’s land; at the center of a forced, phony peace process, with Iran (ancient Persia) threatening from the north. How could he or anyone being privy to such facts say otherwise?
Israel isn’t going anywhere. So, I’ll change my “almost” to an absolute 100-percent certainty.
Although Israel—and the world—are in for some terrible times ahead, I am of the firm belief that we have the very Word of God about the current and future disposition of His chosen nation. Israel is here to stay.
“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the LORD thy God.” (Amos 9:14-15)
Is This Gog-Magog?
Zola Levitt and I were talking privately, and Zola was thoroughly exercised about the topic of replacement theology. Some mainline denominations were beginning at the time to adopt the rising theological position termed “progressive dispensationalism.” The “doctrine” put forward that Christ’s throne had been transferred to Heaven with the Lord’s sitting down at the right hand of His Father. Therefore, the Davidic throne (throne of King David,) was also transferred from an earthly throne to Heaven. This meant, according to the progressive dispensationalists, that Israel had, in effect, been replaced in matters involving God’s promises to the nation.
This was not much different than pure replacement theology, and Zola was about to address, as I recall, the Pre-Trib Research Center group at Dallas that December on this topic. Such once-conservative seminaries as Moody and Dallas Theological had begun to go strongly toward the progressive dispensationalist viewpoint.
Zola, as anyone who knew him will attest, was passionate like few others about Israel and God’s dealing with the Jews. I have never seen him quite so animated as during that conversation somewhere around the turn of the century, as I recall. He said that he and Dr. J. Vernon McGee had once “gotten into it” on a television program over whether Israel was back in the Middle East for fulfillment of prophecy. Dr. McGee held that while it was interesting that Israel had its nation restored after more than 1,900 years in its geographical homeland, he didn’t believe this meant that Israel was necessarily there for the final time. They could yet be put out of the land and return again at a later date.
This, of course, was like throwing a glass of gasoline on a raging fire. Zola said they really got crosswise. Zola held that Israel was there for the final time–for the wind-up of this dispensation (Age of Grace) and into the Tribulation. I told him that Dr. McGee knew the truth now, his having gone to be with the Lord at age 84 in 1988. Zola’s only comment was: “Well, I would hope so…”.
Boy! Would old Dr. McGee have done a 180 on his view of the situation, if he could suddenly be shown developments since getting his–as Zola would later say of his own impending going to be with the Lord–promotion to that magnificent realm. As a matter of fact, I sometimes have wondered if they have not again had their conversation, with both now being in complete agreement on the veracity of God’s Word in regard to His promises to His chosen people.
Every day that passes brings into focus that truth. Israel is like a laser pointer indicating with pinpoint precision that these must indeed be the closing days of this Church Age. Stage-setting for fulfillment of Bible prophecy, as we have pointed out many times, literally fills today’s geopolitical, socioeconomic and religious landscape. Culture and society aren’t just headed toward the cesspool–we have arrived in the septic tank.
The world’s economy is poised to implode, with those in charge of the Fed (Federal Reserve Bank) not knowing which way to turn. to raise interest rates will bring the world’s economy crashing down. To not raise interest rates means that dynamic exigencies as part of the intricately linked world monetary system will heat up even further, making the ultimate crash far worse than any in history when it happens.
The pope is traversing the world apparently spouting strange doctrinal changes in his Catholic system and sticking his papal nose in every free nation’s business. He seems to me in cahoots with the Marxist ideology espoused by those who are said to have mentored the current U.S. president.
Russia looks to be making alliances that will one day -perhaps sooner rather than later–form a coalition like that forewarned by the prophet Ezekiel in his Gog-Magog prophecy. Iran occupies the geographical area of ancient Persia. This Israel-hating state of satanic rage is Putin’s client-state, as is Syria–these and other nations of the Islamist sort prophetically destined to be part of a horrendous end-times event.
Specifically, we must ask whether the most recent movement by Vladimir Putin might be, in fact, the actual staging for this great conflict of Ezekiel chapters 38 and 39.
Those who hold to the likelihood that a Psalm 83 war will precede the Gog-Magog attack will say this cannot be the time of that great Ezekiel 38-39 conflict. I continue to respectfully disagree with the proposition that such an inner ring of nations as given in what I believe to be an Imprecatory prayer by God’s chosen nation in Psalm 83 indicates a separate military action. I continue to believe that the prayer offered in Psalm 83 will be answered powerfully and unequivocally by the God of Heaven with the all but total annihilation of the combined Gog-Magog forces of all surrounding nations who come against Israel.
That Russia has inserted itself into the Middle East in ways that trouble America’s top military generals goes without saying. The Russians have said they won’t hesitate to send a large contingent of ground troops into Syria if the request is made by the Syrian regime.
The AP reported September 17 that Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Damascus wouldn’t hesitate to ask for Russian troops if needed. At the same time he denied that Russian combat troops were already fighting in Syria. Proof continues to accumulate that the Russians are moving in to stay in the region. Many military and other intelligence officials are asking in television appearances what the build-up means. Ezekiel, we remember, said some would be asking the same question as the Gog-Magog invasion began to take shape.
One respected intelligence advisory writes the following.
The Russian military deployment to the Bassel al Assad air base in Latakia, Syria, is continuing at a rapid tempo, Stratfor can confirm. Previous imagery of the airfield, taken Sept. 4, showed significant engineering works underway. New imagery from Sept. 15, provided by our partners at All Source Analysis, reveals the completion of several large concrete aprons that were previously under construction. A large amount of Russian military equipment has also arrived at the airfield. A battalion-sized Russian contingent now appears to be located at the base, along with artillery and attack helicopter support. Several large Russian transport aircraft are also visible on the runway and the nearby ramps. (Stratfor, “Russia fortifies its position in Syria,” September 17, 2015)
With American fighter jets and other military assets in the same general area, there is growing concern that an incident of dangerous sort could happen whether by accident or by instigation. The Russian and American officials have been shown to be engaging in meetings over developments in the war-torn region.
Are we seeing the beginning of a Russian build-up for the fulfillment of the Gog-Magog assault?
I’m of the opinion that this is indeed a point in the staging for that prophesied war. Just what point is anyone’s guess.
My own thinking is that the Gog-Magog assault will take place some time after the Rapture of the Church. This is because this will be a world-shaking, cataclysmic event. Many other lands besides just this region will be affected. This war, in my view, will take the world out of the business-as-usual state that Jesus prophesied will be prevalent at the time He next intervenes into human history in a catastrophic way. Judgment will fall, the Lord said, that very day, just as in the days of Noah and the days of Lot (again read Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17: 26-30).
We see developing a sure signal that the Tribulation period is fast approaching. It it time for believers to work hard to bring as many of the lost into God’s family as possible. At the same time, we must remember to lift up our heads and keep looking up!
Handwriting on the Wall
Think with me for a moment—back to the time on September 11, 2001, when you first learned of the World Trade Center tower being hit by the commercial jet. All eyes quickly went to television screens everywhere in America. Then the second tower was hit, and we were awestruck at the ensuing carnage that took the lives of nearly three thousand people who couldn’t escape the horror.
Remember when the huge monoliths collapsed to rubble with billowing clouds of smoke and dust—a holocaust of flaming fuel and the blood of crushed, burning humanity.
Those of us who look through the prism of God’s prophetic Word couldn’t at that stunning moment help but consider that we were witnessing an event that punctuated the fact that the very end of the age was upon us. The United States of America was somehow, in the collapsing of those giant towers, brought front and center into God’s focus for judgment and wrath about to be unleashed upon a world that has rejected Him.
Think then of what happened just the past week to Islam’s most holy place, as many gathered in Mecca. Another God-rendered exclamation mark seems to have punctuated the handwriting on the wall that began the final sentence of human history.
At least 107 Muslims worshiping at the mosque considered the most holy by Islam died when a gigantic crane crashed from above and crushed the building. Many more were injured.
It seems beyond ironic that this happened on September 11, just this past week.
America and the world have long been holding a debauched banquet to which the God of heaven was not invited. America disinvited Him in 1963 by the judicial act of doing away with prayer and Bible reading in public schools.
The True Deity and His prescription for living life, given through His love letter to humanity—the Bible—has been evicted from all public places, for the most part. Thus with this exclamation point of supernatural irony—Islam’s achieving its mocking tribute to its symbolic conquest of America and the subsequent exclamation Point of anger that looks to have been put on Islam’s fraudulent worship system by the Hand of God—the finger of God might be writing upon the wall the world has erected to keep him out of human affairs. This nation’s and the world’s prophetic fate might thereby be in the heavenly process of being sealed.
Tragically, the message might indeed be one not unlike that Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar, saw being written across the wall of the Babylonian banquet hall that housed the party during his last day on earth.
And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. (Dan. 5:25-28)
Every indicator that God is about to bring human history for this dispensation to a close is on the prophetic horizon.
The Tribulation hour approaches, as can be witnessed hourly on the minute by minute news flashes from around the world.
Time to do what we can for the cause of Christ might be very short. The time to do the Lord’s business is fleeting swiftly. Whatever contributions we have to put into heavenly bank accounts must be done now. “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4).
A Dragon by Any Other Name
Some years ago, a film crew from South Korea’s public broadcasting system came to my home to interview me on things to do with Bible prophecy. I remember them as quiet and very polite. We interviewed for about three hours, and I recall that most of my thoughts during that time were along the lines of: “How can these be the same basic people as their brothers and sisters of North Korea?”
The incongruity of these smiling, gentle journalists and film crew as juxtaposed against my perception of Kim Jong-il, his successor and son, Kim Jong-Un, and the people of the “Axis of Evil” couldn’t have been more dramatic. The North Korean dictator was saber-rattling then, as his dictator-son continues to do periodically today. His antics are mixed with the occasional hands-in-the-air, palms-out-in-professional-wrestler-fashion claim to the referee he planned nothing dastardly. These from South Korea were just the opposite—good guys, who even left for my wife a beautifully crafted porcelain dish as their appreciation for our hospitality.
The peoples of both north and south of the 38th parallel on the Korean peninsula being so close racially and in geographic proximity, why, the thought continues to ruminate, does one people move freely and peaceably about the world, even visiting my home, while the other people harbor thoughts of igniting nuclear war for the sake of enabling a tin-horn tyrant?
Bible prophecy leaps to the forefront of the thoughts. The north is under the influence, indeed, of the evil one. George W. Bush had it right, whether it was the term inspired by the president’s own brain or those of his speech writers. The leaders of the North Korean regime have demonstrated consistently that it is under luciferian influence, as are other diabolists with whom they are in league.
Enter the chief diabolist state of the Asiatic evil empire that Bible prophecy foretells will one day rage into the occidental world:
Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, “Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates.” And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them. (Rev 9: 14-16)
China is touted today as the merging industrial entity that will eventually overtake the U.S. as the economic superpower of the world. The woolly-minded predict in some quarters that China’s newfound economic clout will ultimately make it a responsible world citizen. However, God’s Word almost certainly refers to the great Chinese behemoth when foretelling a massive force that could be spawned by no other nation-state.
China is asserting itself not only in building islands and claiming territorial waters through aggressive expansion of its bases in the South China Sea and other waters close to its territory. It now is moving into territorial waters in regions much more concerning to American defense planners.
Five Chinese naval ships are currently positioned in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, US officials confirm.
It is believed to be the first time Chinese military vessels have been seen operating in the area. Officials say they have been monitoring the ships’ activities, but said they were operating in international waters. In recent years Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on maritime territorial disputes with Japan and South East Asian nations. (Five Chinese ships seen off Alaskan coast, Pentagon says, BBC News, September 3, 2015)
There is coming a time when the huge forces of the Orient will become deadly in their aggression.
And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. (Rev. 16: 12-14)
It is more than ironic that China, put forward by some “progressives” as a budding good neighbor because of its need to foster good will within the global economic community, has for eons been depicted as a dragon. Shakespeare wrote, “A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet.” Call this brutal regime—like that of North Korea, over whom it exerts hegemony—a good neighbor, budding industrial giant or whatever…Bible prophecy seems to be forewarning that a dragon by any other name smells just as dangerous.
Big Brotherism
Marxism, communism, Nazism, fascism–these evoke thoughts of tyrants and dictatorships. Well, Marxism and communism might be wishful utopianism to some within political ideology circles in these days of movement toward socialism. But for the most part, thoughts of these isms generate study-related memories of the likes of Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Mussolini, and other such humanity-destroying beasts.
The matters involved within the recollection include revolution, war, torture, gulag, genocide–any and all systems of governing that should be avoided at all costs. Fear and apprehension over dictatorships were the very reason the United States Constitution was written. Specifically, the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to that Constitution, spells out the rights of each citizen that government cannot usurp. These rights are, the shapers of the Constitution meticulously wrote, “inalienable.” That is, these are rights given by God, thus cannot be taken away by men–and/or women–in government.
Another ism has developed that threatens the inalienable rights of man. Its ominous construction continues at a torrid pace and will ultimately be worse than any of the aforementioned isms. As a matter of fact, it will be all of those tyrannical nightmares rolled up into one system of utter decimation. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, authors of well-known novels, played upon fear of such governments in their futuristic books, 1984 and Brave New World. The swiftness of movement of the developments of late makes their works of fiction look ever more prophetic.
Orwell used London and Britain in 1984 as the genesis of a world of ruthless control. “Big Brother is watching you” is a phrase the author used with portentous effect. It continues to be used by those who warn of the exponentially-encroaching surveillance technologies. Again, Orwell’s vision was almost prophetic in the biblical sense.
A friend who is a well-known journalist in Great Britain recently e-mailed me with the following troubling, though fascinating, information:
I was putting together some slides for one of my presentations yesterday and discovered that Britain has 1.5 times as many surveillance cameras as China! We now have cameras that talk to people, bossing them around in the streets! They are being installed in twenty cities. They are also getting listening devices. Some places also have face-monitoring systems so they can scan for people the authorities are interested in.
The average Briton is now filmed about three hundred times per day! We also have camera cars patrolling the streets, filming whatever takes their fancy and harassing motorists.
We are years ahead of America in plans to put GPS systems in cars, etc. They also want even more speed cameras, speed-averaging cameras–you name it. All of them are being linked into one enormous grid. The records of journeys are logged and kept. As you drive down the main highways, your number plates are scanned every few miles. Our son and I spent a day in the control room where all this information is monitored–an astonishing operation, with screens showing all the main roads. The EU is now planning to store all e-mails, log every web page visited, every phone call, etc., which Britain has done for years.
My friend has told me–has told the world–that cameras train on his home from right across the street, atop a telephone-type pole. It is just a matter of time until all of England is under a surveillance system much more sophisticated and intrusive than our 1940s author, George Orwell, could have imagined. All of Europe is sure to follow suit, and we can see more than cursory evidence that America is coming into Big Brotherism’s orbit of control.
The whole world is on track for super-sophisticated tracking. And a familiar name pops through the inky blackness of cyberspace to make this a readily observable fact. The familiar name is google.com.
Who in the world knows as much about you and your private thoughts as Google? That’s the question Katherine Albrecht, radio talk-show host and spokeswoman for Startpage, a search engine that protects user privacy, posed some years ago to American Internet surfers.
“It would blow people’s minds if they knew how much information the big search engines have on the American public,” she told WND. “In fact, their dossiers are so detailed they would probably be the envy of the KGB.” (Chelsea Schilling, “Life with Big Brother: Killer Way to Slay the Google Beast!” WorldNetDaily, 1/27/2010)
Albrecht detailed how Google and other search engines gather and maintain dossiers on everyone who uses the service. The information is released to governments–to, for example, America’s Homeland Security Agency–when such information is requested. It seems the Bill of Rights is cast aside, without a constitutional amendment of any sort even being considered. Such ability to collect data on their victims was merely the dreams of such people as those in Stalin’s secret service and Hitler’s Gestapo.
Albrecht said Americans unwittingly share their most private thoughts with search engines, serving up snippets of deeply personal information about their lives, habits, troubles, health concerns, preferences and political leanings.
“We’re essentially telling them our entire life stories–stuff you wouldn’t even tell your mother–because you are in a private room with a computer,” she said. (ibid.)
Big Brotherism, of course–in my view–is another way of defining the ideology that is heading up the drive toward establishment of the regime of Antichrist, found in Revelation 13:16-18. With government’s groping for control in ways that totally disregard the wishes of U.S. citizenry, more often than not throwing constitutional safeguards to the winds of political expediency, the ideology becomes ever more manifest through our daily headlines.
All of this shows how very near this generation must be to the Tribulation hour–thus, that much closer to Christ calling His Church to be with Him (John 14:1-3; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
Jesus’ Critical Question for End-Times Believers
A news item of a few years ago about certain polling data grasped my attention. I’m sure many who peruse the news had their curiosity piqued and read it as well at that time.
After looking into the matters reported, I found the poll wasn’t as thorough as I would have liked–but it was fascinating nonetheless. Also, it was too one-sided in ethnic make-up. However, I give it enough credence to examine it here because I believe it revolves around a concern the Lord Jesus Christ expressed while teaching about conditions that will prevail at the end of the age.
A new survey finds that Americans are divided over whether they believe Jesus Christ will return by the year 2050.
Among respondents to the survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Smithsonian Magazine, 41 percent said they expect Jesus’ Second Coming in the next forty years, while 46 percent said it probably or definitely won’t happen.
The poll suggests that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Jesus will return by 2050, compared to only 32 percent of Catholics, and respondents with no college education were three times as likely as those with college degrees to expect Christ’s Second Coming in the next forty years. (“Many Americans Expect Jesus’ Return by 2050,” Associated Press/Israel News, 6/23/10).
To be honest, I was quite surprised that 58 percent of white evangelicals believe Christ will return by 2050. This disconnect in my mind comes from the fact that in looking for interest in Bible prophecy with in the church today (by this I mean, of course, born-again believers–see John 3:3), my colleagues and I find no evidence to support that percentage.
Perhaps I should speak just for myself, but if my colleagues are honest, based upon conversations we’ve had among ourselves, they will confess that the interest just isn’t there in those kinds of numbers.
So, a few cynical (I suppose) thoughts regarding the poll come to mind:
1) The poll was a complete “guesstimate”–even a prefabrication.
2) The poll was skewed because it was taken from among a limited group of believers thoroughly educated in Bible prophecy.
3) The poll reflects a flippancy that will agree that Christ could return within the next forty years because the possibility is far enough in the future that the respondents need not worry about changing their personal conduct.
4) My colleagues and I are wrong and the church–“white evangelicals,” in this case–is expecting the Lord’s return in majority numbers.
If the last point is true, then the fact that so many are looking for Christ is well hidden. I’m a blind guy, as many know, so I can’t see things all that well. But interest in Christ’s return–and in Bible prophecy in general, according to everything I hear–is confined to an extremely small number of folks in relationship to the tremendous number of people who claim the name of Christ.
Clicking through Christian TV networks (yes, we blind guys “watch” TV), I rarely come across a prophetic message. The majority of the viewing fare consists of the prosperity gospel or entertainment that is for the most part a rather poor knockoff of secular entertainment. The preachers who do present a sound gospel message and sound doctrine seldom-to-rarely speak on Bible prophecy. And they certainly don’t touch upon the pre-trib return of Christ in the Rapture.
When I’ve personally asked some of the preachers and teachers why they avoid presenting prophecy, they have said things like: “The people just don’t understand Revelation”; “The subject is just too scary to most people”; or ” We just concentrate on getting people the gospel so they will be saved.”
The honest such preachers and teachers say: “I just don’t know anything about prophecy. I’ve not studied it enough to preach on it.”
What a tragedy, a travesty, this is! There is a singular hope (Titus 2:13) that God’s people have in this swiftly degenerating age. Yet, their shepherds–the preachers and teachers, their suppliers of spiritual food–use every conceivable excuse for not telling Christians about their returning Lord.
Some accuse those of us whose mission we believe it is to concentrate on Bible prophecy in these times of doing so to the point that we ignore Christ’s love and the Bible’s life lessons for His people.
We in no way believe that prophecy should be taught exclusively. However, prophecy constitutes almost 30 percent of the whole Word of God, so the Heavenly Father obviously means for prophecy to be a generous part of the mix for His children’s spiritual sustenance. This is especially true in these days when the signals of Christ’s coming again are every direction in which one looks.
Bible prophecy is being marginalized by those who are supposed to shepherd their flocks, but who don’t want to study it and/or don’t want to risk scaring people out of the pews. This is because it is the feel-good and do-good, entertainment-oriented sermonettes that tickle itching ears and build many of the elaborate end-times edifices.
Understand that I recognize there are huge churches that hold to doctrinal truth and include God’s prophetic Word as part of feeding their attending flocks. This is not to castigate these wonderful pastors, teachers, and staffs. God bless them! But these are in the minority. The dearth of interest in Christ’s coming back in the Rapture, then in the Second Advent, demonstrates the lack of faith resident within Christ’s body at this crucial hour.
Jesus asked the following profoundly troubling question in that prophetic context: “Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8b). The Lord had a somber message for God’s people who will be alive at His sudden, unannounced coming. I once wrote the following as part of a chapter for one of my books that I believe gets across the gist of this commentary:
The indifference so prevalent within the church is, itself, an end-times signal, it seems. The Lord obviously spoke to the fact that God’s own children will in large part be indifferent to the prophetic signals. They will not be living as they should at the time of His coming for them, as He promised in John 14:1-3. As a matter of fact, He forewarned: “And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth. Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” (Luke 21:34-36)
I pray more born-again pastors, Bible teachers, and God’s children of this nation and the world will awaken en masse to the staggering implications of Christ’s Second Coming.
EU as Reviving Rome in Question
Is the European Union (EU) on its way to dissolution? Do the developing economic cracks that seem all but impossible to repair mean that it’s over for the EU?
More to the point of our concern here—if the EU were to fail, does it mean that we who believe we are seeing the Roman Empire reviving in the EU are wrong? Thus, will the area out of which Antichrist is foretold to emerge not be western Europe, rather, from somewhere else?
Are those correct who as of late proclaim the “prince that shall come” of Daniel 9:27 will emerge from the eastern leg rather than the western leg of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream-vision (Daniel chapter 2)?
These questions cross my email quite frequently these days. Europe’s economic problems are worse than those of the United States, it is generally agreed by monetary experts. Could it be that Humpty-Dumpty, who fell apart with the decline and fall of the ancient Roman Empire, who was then patched together in the 1950s and has been coming back together in a major way since, is now on its way to taking another great fall?
I defer in matters of high finance to the experts, such as my friend Wilfred Hahn, when it comes to precisely laying out the case for what is likely to happen in Europe’s, America’s and the world’s precarious economic positions. But there are some important matters within what I believe we see happening, from biblically prophetic standpoint that should be interjected.
Hahn writes:
The Bible tells us that a group of ten ally together out of common self-interest. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the Beast (Revelation 17:13). The large multinational nation groups of today simply have too many conflicts of interest to be any effective consequence in today’s geopolitical environment. Developments in Asia today also, we believe, play a decisive role in these last-day machinations of ten kings. (Wilfred Hahn, “European Union: Is the Revived Roman Empire Finished?)
It makes perfect sense that the many turf fiefdoms held by the powers large and small across the planet will never—under anything approaching normal circumstances—give in to a central authority. Such acquiescence will have to be wrested from their grip in a painful manner.
One thing is sure: The beast system of Antichrist (Rev. 13: 16-18) will manage, ultimately, to get all governmental entities to give him their power and authority (Rev. 17: 12-13). That power and authority will consist, at its base, of economic control. Hahn correctly surmises, because he relies upon Bible prophecy, that ten entities (called “kings”) will ally out of common self-interest. Seven of the ten will willingly give up their power and authority, and three will have it ripped from their grip by the most powerful tyrant ever to draw breath (Dan 7: 24).
Whether the power is taken by willing acquiescence of the seven heads of the entities involved or it is taken by force, as seems to be the case of the three kings having their power and authority stripped from them by the beast in Daniel 7:24, the deed will be done.
It is no surprise. Recent crushing fiscal issues and events point to the inescapable reality that something is going to have to happen soon, or world economic implosion will result. Again, Wilfred Hahn writes:
Recent events are therefore of no surprise. What is always unpredictable in crisis situations, is the specific catalyst that prompts a reappraisal of risk…the sudden awakening to reality. (Ibid.)
I believe that catalyst—the crisis that will cause all sovereign leaderships to realize they must come together to give up their desperately held-onto turf kingdoms—will be the Rapture. The ensuing chaos will cause most everyone left behind to re-think their worldviews. The prince that shall come will have the answers they seek—at least, they will believe him to have the answers.
As expressed before in this column, I’m convinced that a completely changed economic order, based upon Special Drawing Rights (SDR) or a system of electronic funds transfer (computer units, not hard currency of any sort) will be acceptable to most leaderships around the world. The ten kings of Revelation 17:12-13 that correspond to the entities of Daniel 7: 24 will perhaps be, in my scenario, ten pan-continental trading blocs modeled on the Eurozone prototype. Thus, Daniel’s prophecy of the ten-toes final humanistic system of government that Christ’s return will smash to pieces will be fulfilled.
I agree with Wilfred Hahn that the current apparent crumbling of Europe in no way means the EU is finished as the prime candidate for the Reviving Roman Empire. The crisis that will bring everything into perfect prophetic alignment, in regard to the 666 beast government, will, I’m more and more convinced, be the shout from heaven: “Come up here!” (Rev. 4: 1)
Terry James Prophecy Line 