Back to when I could see to read –now more than 30 years ago—I had 3 versions of George Orwell’s 1984 in my library. As a matter of fact, I believe those volumes are still here in the book shelves — somewhere.

I had read all three versions years before, during college years and afterward in subsequent re-readings. I believe I reread the book even during the actual year of 1984.

Of course, my interest in Orwell’s work involved more than merely an interest in dystopian literature. The book smacked of the Tribulation era described in the Bible. Its chief character, not the protagonist Winston Smith, but Big Brother, reminded of how Antichrist will control most of the world during that 7-year period known as Daniel’s seventieth week.

Now, because of blindness, I must have everything read to me through a computer voice synthesis program called Jobs Accessible Word System or JAWS as is its acronym.

Books –or any other text—must be presented in a text document form for JAWS to read them. So I now must have books in computer text to read books like Orwell’s novel. If I had such a document, I would certainly be reading 1984 at the present time. It seems that Mr. Orwell’s fictional cogitations were almost prescient – thus, the title of the commentary: Nearing Orwell’s Nightmare.

Orwell’s book sparked my interest in writing a novel along the lines of 1984 but Bible-centered in its scope. The novel’s title is Jacob’s Trouble – 666, which is inclusive of Jeremiah 30:7, the entirety of the books of Revelation, and some of the book of Daniel.

I believe my own effort at such a work of fiction was prompted by the Holy Spirit, but being the fallible human writer I am, I fell far short of capturing the nuance of developments that have now eventuated in movement toward the seven-year era that will constitute the Tribulation. And what a ride it has been upon the heaving waves of satanic tumult toward that horrendous time of which the ascended Lord Jesus forewarned through His beloved disciple John.

News of the hour the past week caught my attention with regard to indicating just how near this generation is to the dystopian world John foretold, Orwell described, and that I tried to capture in my fiction. And such news has been compiling day by day –sometimes hour by hour, as I indicate. Mostly, in mainstream venues, the words are, in most every case, constructed in such a way as to push into the reader’s mind the leftist ideological rants of the moment.

Orwell’s novel presented a completely changed way of covering news –and every other kind of communication. It was called News Speak. A governmental organization devoted every working moment to changing the way people heard news and even how they were influenced to think about what they heard. This brainwashing was called Double Think.

Here is an excerpt from 1984:

“Just the man I was looking for,” said a voice at Winston’s back.

He turned round. It was his friend Syme, who worked in the Research Department. Perhaps ‘friend’ was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays; you had comrades, but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others. Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak…

“How is the Dictionary getting on?” said Winston, raising his voice to overcome the noise.

“Slowly,” said Syme. “I’m on the adjectives. It’s fascinating.” […] “The Eleventh Edition is the definitive edition,” he said. “We’re getting the language into its final shape – the shape it’s going to have when nobody speaks anything else. When we’ve finished with it, people like you will have to learn it all over again. You think, I dare say, that our chief job is inventing new words. But not a bit of it! We’re destroying words – scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won’t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050.”…

It was B. B.’s idea originally, of course,” he added as an afterthought.

A sort of vapid eagerness flitted across Winston’s face at the mention of Big Brother…

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we’re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year, fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there’s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It’s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won’t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

[Source: 1984 by George Orwell, Part 1, Chapter 5, 1949]

So, Thoughtcrime” was prosecuted in Orwell’s 1984. They were in the process of doing away with this form of crime. They were simply in the process of changing everything in the way of communication so no one could go against the state –the governmental dictates.

Reminds of wokeness and cancel Culture, doesn’t it?

The Tribulation’s Big Brother will no doubt use every satanically-inspired technology to do exactly what Orwell’s B.B. was doing during that fictional dystopian era.

Antichrist will doubtless use the most highly advanced AI to institute Satan’s drive to enslave every human on earth. Certainly, we are witnessing efforts to bring that enslavement into being even at this moment, just prior to the Rapture.

Speaking of which, you don’t want to be here when Big Brother of the Tribulation comes on the scene. Rather, you want to go to Jesus when He Calls from the Clouds of Glory, where there will be Great Joy and Grand Reunion at the same time Antichrist turns the planet into something worse than portrayed in 1984.

Here is how to go to Christ when the Rapture happens.

“That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

An epiphany struck while listening to a radio talk show host I sometimes listen to during weekday mornings. The words that sparked the revelation came from a cut from a TV program the radio host played. The cut was from the ABC program The View.

I don’t know which of the four main View women hosts did the speaking –that is, I don’t remember the name given of that View host. It was, of course, either Sunny, Joy, Sara or Whoopi. And the words that ignited my thinking in writing this commentary should have been unremarkable – that is, if I weren’t a student of Bible prophecy from the preTrib perspective.

But the words the woman spoke, interspersed without any sort of emphasis or context, among the rest of her statement, making the words unremarkable at best, struck like that bolt of lightning that struck the Statue of Liberty’s torch a couple of weeks ago.

Sunny, Joy, Sara, Whoopi, and the rest were making fun of those who had made statements that the eclipse of April 8 or the Francis Scott Key Bridge’s destruction were signs from God. They ridiculed those who said that these things and other things happening, like the earthquake that shook New York City, was Judgment from the Almighty or portended Judgment about to be meted out by Deity.

In the middle of the couple of paragraphs of the harangue the particular host of the show was making, she said amidst the audience’s laughter and applause something like “the rapture” didn’t come…”

This stunned me. Here, one of the three most non-Bible-centered people one could think of was, although as merely a casual mention, referencing the next prophecy to be fulfilled, we who study from the preTrib view believe. If Sunny, Joy, Sara or Whoopi understands that the Rapture is an element in God’s Prophetic Timeline, then every American must surely have at least a cursory acquaintance with the term.

In thinking further, my dear friend and mentor, Dr. Tim LaHaye, and his co-author, Jerry Jenkins, came to mind. The Left Behind books, in what was the top-selling series of Christian fiction in publishing history, saturated America and the world with the term that Whoopi or one of the other women of The View casually threw in there when mocking everyone who had predicted that the eclipse and surrounding hoopla was a signal of Judgment from God.

Some of the entertainment world –the late-night hosts on television, and others, also scoffed at those who mentioned that the eclipse, etc., had prophetic or Heavenly judgment overtones. These had also joked about Biden’s designation of Transgender Day of Visibility on the day Easter fell this year. They, observably in my view, delighted in pulling this off against the Christian world and their perceived view of its judgmental foolishness.

The most ungodly among our populace, who dominate the airwaves with their celebrity, have made certain that the unbelievers know of Heaven’s failure to follow up on any Judgment that believers in Christ expect. They accuse that we look down on them with feelings of superiority, and God’s lack of judgmental response is reason, they obviously believe, to celebrate with good-natured fun-poking.

All of the joking and mocking proves one thing: the lost world of people, particularly in this nation, is without excuse. Satan, through being prince of the power of the air, does his devilish work of deceiving the masses through use of his minions who have information dominance in this fallen world. So there can be no doubt that the lost, especially the lost here in America, have heard or read time and time again about God’s coming Judgment –and even more importantly, about His Redemptive Plan for mankind through the Sacrifice of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

The devil has convinced the masses that God’s Intervention into the physical world is good to use as the butt of jokes. God is, at most, an existential being, Satan lies. God set things in motion, and it’s been hands-off for the most part since that time. But the God of Heaven has a different View, and Judgment is on the way.

“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 showed 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” (Romans 1:18-21).

The God of Heaven is, first and foremost, not a God of Judgment and Wrath but of Love and Mercy. He Desires that all come to Him for Repentance and Forgiveness. He has moved Heaven and Earth to bring all people into His Eternal Family. Here, again, is how to be Forgiven and thus go in the Rapture when Christ Calls believers or go directly to Heaven when life on this sphere is finished.

“That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

Early Friday morning, April 5, I was listening to news while getting ready to start morning work. The announcement came that a 4.2 earthquake centered somewhere beneath New Jersey had shaken the northeast, with 4.8 on the Richter recorded in New York City.

While 4.8 would be barely noticed in parts of California or some of the western environs, an earthquake of any magnitude in the northeast U.S. provokes considerable angst. These just don’t occur that often beneath the solid rock that is Manhattan.

A day or two before the quake, a torrential storm of rain, wind, and lightning struck the New York City area. A photographer caught an explosive lightning strike hitting the Statue of Liberty’s torch. Before that, of course, we know the Francis Scott Key Bridge, named after the author of our national anthem, in Baltimore collapsed when struck by a container ship heavily loaded with environmentally dangerous cargo.

Now, I’ve not been one to easily accept that God necessarily makes His Displeasure Known through Displays of Geophysical Reaction.

However, there has seemingly come the time to acknowledge that things have reached the point that coincidence likely has diminished as a percentage of cause and effect in considering such occurrences as witnessed just recently.

While the earthquake was shaking the Big Apple and regions of the eastern U.S., another report reached my ears.

The audio on one or the other news programs I was listening to had a United Nations official saying that Israel must be dealt with harshly in the matter of its attacks on the civilian populations of Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu must be replaced as Israel’s prime minister and Israel made to cease wreaking destruction on the defenseless Palestinians.

It was reported that, at that time, the U.N. Building was affected by the shaking, as was downtown Manhattan and even Yankee Stadium.

Whether one holds to the notion that God reacts in this way to matters adversely affecting Israel, it can’t be dismissed that there has been, of late, an incremental stepping up of such geophysical gyrations.

The Prophet Zechariah foretold that all nations will eventually come against God’s chosen nation and people. God will, Zechariah says, cause all to be injured who do so (Zechariah chapter 12).

God Himself tells through the Prophet Joel that He will bring all nations to face the horror of Armageddon because of their dealings in forcing Israel to divide His land –the land He granted Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forever (Joel chapter 2).

In that regard, an article makes clear what Israel’s leader thinks about the current pressures being brought against his country.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met on Thursday with a Republican U.S. Congressional delegation, which was organized by AIPAC, at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

During the meeting, which also included the AIPAC senior leadership, the Prime Minister briefed the delegation on the fighting in the Gaza Strip and answered the Representatives’ questions on defeating the Hamas terrorist organization, the unrelenting efforts to free the hostages, and the issue of humanitarian aid…

[Netanyahu gave the representatives 3 points in outlining Israel’s need of help from the U.S., the most important for considering the dividing of the land being the third point.]

“The third thing is this: there is a contrary move, an attempt to force, ram down our throats a Palestinian state, which will be another terror haven, another launching ground for an attempt, as was the Hamas state in Gaza. That is opposed by Israelis, overwhelmingly. We just had a vote in the Knesset: 99 to 9. Do you have those kinds of numbers? I think you might have those numbers if you bring that same resolution, that same resolution to Congress. I think you’ll have a similar or at least a very powerful majority.”

Netanyahu concluded: “I think it’s important because the people of Israel choose life, and life means security, and security means defeating our enemies but also standing together for our common civilization.”

[Source: Netanyahu to Republicans: ‘There’s an attempt to ram a Palestinian state down our throats’ | Israel National News – Arutz Sheva; April 5, 2024]

So many strange things are happening in a seeming convergence of prophetic signals. It is certainly prudent, as Watchers on the Wall, to observe the geophysical gyrations in order to try to discern the Prophetic Forecast. We should keep Watch, as Jesus Instructs.

“And what I say to one, I say to all, watch” (Mark 13:37).