Prophecy Line
Rapture “Mystery” Revealed
With so much controversy involving the topic of the Rapture boiling today, I thought it good to look a little closer at that event internally. That is, it might prove interesting to examine the Rapture within the Pre-Trib view to look at a divide that exists.
Mostly, preachers don’t want to address prophecy or, in particular, the doctrine of the Rapture at all. Since the call of Christ to His Church is next on God’s calendar of events, in the view of Pre-Trib proponents, ignoring this great promise of rescue from human history’s most terrible time is something that both baffles and disturbs.
We who are familiar with that great future event know, at least cursorily, the differences within the various views of when the Rapture will occur. Whether it will happen Post-Trib, Mid-Trib, Pre-Trib, etc. is sometimes hotly expressed by the various proponents. However, the vast numbers of preachers in America’s pulpits today would tell you that the Rapture is a mystery to them, as is most of Bible prophecy.
Indeed it is a “mystery” to them, because they never have opened their Bibles with the thought toward looking into the Rapture–the very thing Paul said is a ” mystery” he was showing us–that is, showing believers. They like to use the joke: “I’m a Pan-Millennialist. I believe it will all just pan out in the end.”
Again, it isn’t the hot debate between the Pre-Trib, Mid-Trib, and Post-Trib views of the Rapture I wish to address. To me, the debate is over. The Pre-Tribulation view is the only one in total context of what the Bible says about that great promise that rings true–that makes sense. Paul’s “mystery” unveiled, from the Pre-Trib perspective, is what I hope to dissect a bit.
The Scripture, of course, that sets up this great event is as follows:
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)
Paul says he is presenting a “mystery.” That is, he is dealing with an heretofore unknown matter–unknown to (not understood by) believers in Christ. And this “showing” of this “mystery” is the nuance of truth I wish to examine within the Pre-Trib view of the Rapture–the view I’m convinced is the one the Bible presents through Paul’s unveiling of this most important doctrine.
The seminaries within fundamentalist-evangelical Christianity hold mostly that the Rapture was never dealt with in anyway whatsoever until Paul “revealed” it. The most academically inclined among these will tell you that this “mystery” was never alluded to in the Old Testament. They go on to say it was never mentioned in any way by Jesus and the prophets. It is, they say, only in the Pauline epistles that the Rapture is unveiled.
I believe this is untenable, except by those who refuse to consider that Paul was “showing” the mystery–the mystery of the Rapture that had already been made manifest. He was explaining it, not just pulling it out of the hat for the first time. Paul was unveiling the Truth about what Jesus, Himself, indeed had alluded to as given in the Gospel accounts.
The first mention of this “mystery”–the Rapture–by the Lord we look at was recorded by John:
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)
Jesus said that He will “receive” us to Himself, exactly like Paul reveals in 1 Corinthians 15:51 when he says we will be changed–transformed–for flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 15: 50). That translation into Christ’s presence Paul further unveils in the following prophecy:
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 4:7)
The next words of our Lord about this “mystery” Paul is “showing” us is found in the Gospel of Matthew–in what is known as the Olivet Discourse:
But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left. (Matthew 24:36-41)
Jesus further gave prophecy regarding that future, catastrophic break-in on human history as recorded in Luke 17:26-30. I think it is unfortunate that the most purely academic among fundamentalist theologians within the ranks of Pre-Trib Rapture proponents can’t see Jesus’ “mysterion” mention of the Rapture in the Gospels–the “mystery” Paul is plainly unlocking for understanding for all believers.
I believe that we are very near the moment of being the generation of believers who will be beneficiaries of that twinkling-of-an-eye moment when the Lord shouts, “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).
Stench in God’s Nostrils
Christmas season is in moribund transition, if I may use the term. By that I mean the changes taking place with regard to what Christmas is all about represents much more than simply a decline of culture. The change taking place is moving culture in this nation and the world in direction that will engender deadly consequences.
This world system is dying.
The thought first pierced my thinking while listening to a news program of some sort. The story was about how the leftist, politically correct machine is attacking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Now, I know I’m right off the bat offending the Christmas purists who view any secular characterization in conjunction with the Christmas story as near blasphemy. But, I implore that we get past for the moment how the Advent of Christ has been paganized to whatsoever extent–thus to make the point I hope to make: that we can know how near we might be to the midnight of the age and the call of Christ to His Church.
To get back to the TV news story, the report informed how much of social media is making the story of Rudolph one of how evil American culture has stigmatized anyone who is different. The Millennial view for the most part seems to be that the story shows that group bullying is approved of, thus Christmas is just an American cultural invention to keep those not like the majority in a position of inferiority. The news program’s host said that those who hold such a view obviously haven’t read the whole Rudolph story. She said that it actually was a story of anti-bullying and anti-bigotry.
That, at least, was my take on the news report I heard. Many amongst the Millennial generation increasingly view many things about Christmas as a cultural/societal device to oppress the downtrodden.
Of course, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world, gets totally lost in all of this politically correct machination. Satan’s obvious plot therefore seems to be working effectively, as do many of the other nefarious elements of his blueprint to move mankind farther from their Creator and their only means of redemption.
Several items of news of late punctuate how the grand deceiver is working through human minions to bring about the moribund transition through subverting the true Christmas message.
One such story involves a city ordinance of municipal government in Austin, Texas, that might force churches to hire LGBT people, including pastors. Gay and transsexual employees, including members of the clergy, will almost certainly soon be part of Austin churches if things proceed as they look now.
A second news story reports that Facebook censored a photo of Santa kneeling before a manger scene. The photo was covered up by the Facebook thought police.
Facebook censored an image of Santa Claus kneeling before the baby Jesus, deeming it “violent” or too “graphic.” There was never a reason I could find why they found the scene violent or too graphic. But there was answer to the effect that the scene might offend, although there was no explanation as to how it might offend.
Again, I don’t want to give the impression that I condone mixing Santa Claus with the manger scene–the secular with the truly important truth about the reason for the season. I can see where that might “offend” some in some way. I simply want to make the point of how the moribund transition is taking place incrementally. The Christmas story–that Jesus came to save the lost–is being used as a political tool and a psychological tool to move culture and society ever farther from man’s only hope of redemption. It is a deadly track down which the world is going.
And, it is a worldwide war, not just one confined to America, that is taking place in this regard.
Another report from Italy told of a ten-year-old school girl who fought to have the name of Jesus reinserted into a song that was part of her school’s Christmas celebration. The Lord’s name had been removed from the song because it would “offend.”
The charge in taking the name of Jesus out of the song was that it might offend non-Catholics. The real reason, according to the report, was that the name was taken out because they feared it would offend Muslims and cause violent reaction from that quarter.
These reports , I am aware, are not earth-shattering in comparison to many, much more profound, things being reported around the world. But in God’s Holy Eyes, such treatment of His Son, who died for the sins of a world full of lost and eternally dying people, no doubt is among the most serious offenses.
Bible history is replete with God dealing with generations of people who deliberately flaunt their rebellion in His face. The book of Job reports the Lord’s displeasure and reaction to such rebellion: “Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same. By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed” (Job 4:8-9).
Bridge over the Abyss – Part II
Terry’s note: This two-part series is from a chapter by the same name I wrote in one of my books years ago. Also, I’ve presented it in other published/posted forums. It is more relevant now than ever, so wanted to share it again. (Foreshocks of Antichrist, Harvest House, 1997)
Continuing on the deadly effects of drugs in these last days…
A recent news item testifies that politicians and their mouthpieces view the drug problem as nothing to be concerned about, even if their own staff members are alleged to be heavily involved in illicit drug usage.
Barry McCaffrey, national drug control policy director, asked in Washington that all politicians stop trying to make an issue of whether an opponent has used drugs because “no good can come from it,” adding, “Drug use was a generational thing, and we should just accept that and move on.” Drug infection gushes through the nation’s and the world’s bloodstream, not only degenerating thought processes, but feeding lust and greed as well. Paul’s words ring true today: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).
People of the great Tribulation era will not repent of their sorceries because, like the addicts and dealers of this present hour, they will be willing to pay any price to continue feeding their insatiable appetites. The tremendous growth we are witnessing in illicit drug trade is a foreshock of the coming Antichrist and his system–a system that will, no doubt, at the outset of Antichrist’s reign, promise seemingly brilliant solutions to all problems, including those involving illicit drugs.
The Economic Abyss
Governmental and business institutions grow increasingly concerned about instability within world money markets. Stock market record highs, followed by wild fluctuations, cause worry and sometimes panic for global financial analysts. Despite the chaos, international banking conglomerates continue to merge and meld and network into what surely will soon become a one- world economic order.
The exponential growth in computer technology is without question moving our generation toward the time prophesied in Revelation 13.
Again, Antichrist will offer solutions to unbelievably complex fiscal problems produced when the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride across the world, bringing war, famine, pestilence, and death. “It’s the economy, stupid” might have been a catchy–if somewhat deceptive–political slogan during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. Such a slogan will not be necessary during that future time of tremendous economic turmoil. Everyone will be agonizingly aware of the abyss in which they will be mired. They will beg the beast and his totalitarian system of computer control to institute world order.
Gods of the Abyss
New Age thought runs throughout government, business, and religion at all levels. Sadly, even evangelical Christianity suffers with New Age infection.
The same serpent who seduced Adam and Eve with the lie promising that they would be as God when they ate from the forbidden tree now whispers in the desensitized ears of this generation the same lie: ” You will become gods when you follow the New Age pathways laid out for you by the ascended masters.” But they are pathways leading to the end-time abyss of apocalypse.
Lucifer’s soothing lie that proposes many ways to God’s salvation salves the guilt-ridden conscience of fallen man. It appeals to the supremely arrogant pride that mankind inherited from father Adam when that first man determined to disobey his Creator and instead accept Satan’s offer of godhood.
People today by and large think of salvation, of going to Heaven when they die, as obtainable through self effort. If one lives a good life, God will weigh this against the bad and the person will be found worthy based upon his or her personal accomplishments on the side of good. People need no atoning sacrifice by Jesus Christ to save them. Such is a narrow-minded concept they reject, even though the still, small voice convicts them of the truth during those lonely, empty times when their souls yearn for something, for someone, to fill the void.
Doug Groothuis, assistant professor at Denver Seminary and noted researcher and author on the New Age movement, recently pointed out who Jesus Christ is–rather, who He was, according to New Age thinking. He addressed the fact that New Age thought proclaims that there is no need for a Redeemer. Groothuis said:
The emphasis on Christ is not Christ as the unique and final liberator, the saviour of the human race because of what He’s done through His [crucifixion and resurrection], but that He is kind of an example, the model for what we can do. Jesus was a man who [tapped into] the Christ energy for the Christ Potential…. It’s not biblical Christianity at all.
Groothuis, in further explaining the insidious influence the New Age movement inflicts on this generation, talked about Jean Houston, the New Age guru who spent considerable time with America’s First Lady in the White House during the summer of 1996 as part of the now-famous Eleanor Roosevelt contact incident.
Groothuis said:
[Jean Houston] is very influential. She leads seminars all over the country and in fact all over the world basically on how to release the divine potential within us all. She has referred to herself as a global midwife. She means by that…we all have god within us. We all have the fullness of [deity] within us. But that somehow this god within us is stuck and we don’t realize it, we don’t actualize it so it’s up to people like her to tell us we are divine and how to put that energy out into the world.
Groothuis went on to say that New Age theosophy purports that there is a latent, divine energy that makes up the universe. God is that energy. But there is no distinction between the Creator and the creation. Everything is one and we are all part of that great cosmic unity.
Groothuis said that according to Jean Houston and other New Age thinkers:
The problem of the human race, the reason we have ecological problems, military crises, economic crises, etc., is not because of human sin against a holy God that has affected us all. It’s because somehow we are suffering from a kind of divine amnesia. We have forgotten the divinity within ourselves. So her role is to be a catalyst or midwife to bring out the latent divinity inside of all of us.
Groothuis said that consulting channelers, mediums, and indulging in other occult techniques to achieve one’s goals instead of going to God in prayer is dangerous. He said, “in fact, doing this sort of thing can lead to some kind of encounter with the demonic. We have to remember that Paul said Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light…. If [anything] is leading away from Christ and His gospel, then it’s not of God.”‘
Despite such warnings, mankind strives pridefully closer to the abyss and eternal separation from God. One of the New Age movement’s most renowned contemporary leaders sums up the audacious claim that man does not need God because he is God!
The great and growing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, in reincarnation or the law of rebirth and the power of mind over matter, is part of a great shift in consciousness taking place everywhere and is a direct result of our sense that the old molds of thought and feeling are no longer adequate to express our growing awareness of reality, thus revealing a readiness for a new revelation.
This spiritual awakening must eventually lead to an era of world brotherhood–the keynote of the coming Age of Aquarius.
What is happening now is the outcome of inner forces that are affecting great changes in human thinking and consciousness. This will result in the complete reorganization of the world’s institutions and social structures that no longer answer man’s true need. This will entail the reorganization of our political, economic, and financial systems along more rational and just lines.
New Agers will achieve their paradigm shift to a society that is the antithesis of what God intended for man. The most vicious dictator ever known will then rule over that darkest period in human history, the black abyss of Apocalypse.
The Bridge over the Abyss
People do not need to discover, then nurture, the Christ-consciousness within themselves. No such entity exists. People need Jesus Christ to fulfill the God-shaped void that exists within every man, woman, and child born since Adam brought sin into the world, thus separating himself and his progeny from God.
The Carpenter of Nazareth rebuilt the bridge over the abyss of eternal separation with timber constructed in the shape of the old rugged cross, upon which He willingly bled and died for you and me. Christ’s atoning sacrifice is God’s chosen way to reconcile us to Himself. There is none other.
Foreshocks of the coming Antichrist are everywhere. Those fearful signals that the Beast of Revelation 13 could very soon make his appearance upon the world stage should produce for the Christian not excitement based upon fear, but excitement based upon joyful anticipation. We are promised not Antichrist but Jesus Christ! (Read Revelation 3:10 and John 14.)
No prophecy stands between this generation and the Rapture. Christ’s return for His Church in the air above planet Earth is imminent. You, too, can be part of those who excitedly anticipate that unimaginably exhilarating microsecond when Jesus shouts “COME UP HITHER!”
Accept Him today and receive God’s inward peace which assures that in life or in death, you are His own. So shall we ever be with the Lord.
Even so, come, Lord Jesus.
Peace Quest Continues
The allied forces on June 6, 1944 –known forever thereafter as D Day– wanted to accomplish two things as they steamed toward the coastline of France. They were intent on defeating and destroying the Nazis’ ability to make war. Thereby, they were determined to establish peace that had been taken from the world on a global scale–primarily by the Germans–for the second time in less than a half century.
In reality, however, planet earth has never completely escaped–that is, has never been totally free–of war in recorded history. And, that includes the earliest biblical history. Cain first went to war with his brother, Abel, over jealousy that created rage that ended in the first murder. Man has been killing man ever since, with the slaughter continuing to manifest even on our city streets on a growing scale. I give you as example the streets of south Chicago on which during weekends in particular the black-on-black killing is horrendous.
The governmental authorities, both those in the city of Chicago and the former Obama Administration, hardly even acknowledged during their time of responsibility for assuring domestic tranquility, that a problem existed in the inner cities. The news conglomerate dutifully also ignored, and continues to ignore, the deadly problem.
There is a satanic cover-up on the war that is raging, taking peace from life in America. The same forces covering up our domestic conflict are dedicated to the cover-up directed at keeping the world at large from knowing about the true causes and effects of the war going on in the Middle East. And, that conflict is destined to bring all of mankind to history’s final war of this quickly fleeting age.
God’s Word tells us that it is the quest for such a peace that will eventuate in the most terrible time in human history. Jesus said as recorded in the Olivet Discourse that it will be a time so terrible that it would destroy all flesh on the planet if He did not return to put an end to the warfare.
Daniel the prophet said the peace that the world will seek will be indeed produced and enforced by the “prince that shall come” (Daniel 8:25; 9:26-27). It will be, the prophet Isaiah said, a covenant made with “death and hell” (Isaiah 28:15, 18).
It all involves the Middle East, and, as I said, the news media, as well as a goodly portion of our government–and for that matter, the governments of the world. These refuse to even acknowledge the true causes and effects of the conflict that makes the quest for peace necessary.
This peace is in the making this very moment while you and I consider these matters in this commentary.
This quest for peace, as I and other prophecy observers have mentioned many times, is the number-one signal of where we stand on God’s prophetic timeline. We are watching God’s prophetic Word in the process of fulfillment, as we are seeing other prophesies in process of fulfillment. The Gog-Magog forces, for example, are coalescing; the religions of the world are beginning to amalgamate, agreeing that there are many ways to Heaven; the effort to establish one world order is on the move through Agenda 30,and in other ways.
But, again, it is the desire for a Middle East peace, with Israel held up as the sticking point, that the world intensely desires. The world’s diplomatic community and the global news conglomerate refuse to hear or propose any narrative other than that which declares the tiny Jewish state guilty of holding up the peace process.
The following news excerpt from several years ago proves the point, in my view. The pressures are more subtle in some instances, but are none-the-less building. Even the Trump Administration is involved in the process.
The Arab league supported on Saturday France’s Middle East peace initiative and all international efforts to create lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, AFP reported… Speaking before the ministers, [Palestinian president Mahmoud] Abbas said that the time has come to “mobilize Arab and international wills” towards creating a Palestinian state, however said in order to do so Israel would have to make serious policy changes.
Abbas called for NATO forces to replace the IDF in the West Bank as part of any peace deal that leads to the creation of a two-state solution. He also rejected the idea of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state. (“Arab League supportive of French peace initiative,” JPOST.COM ,TOVAH LAZAROFF, 05/29/2016)
The pressures are great on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government to give in to world diplomatic insistence that Israel give land for peace. That is something, of course, God says will, when it eventuates, bring total war upon the whole world (see Joel 3:2.) This will be the cause and effect of that great, fearful conflict we have come to know as Armageddon.
It will be the result of seeking a false, deadly peace, rather than that lasting and perfect peace that can only be instituted by the Prince of Peace.
Bridge over the Abyss – Part I
You and I are privileged to be living at the most exciting time in the history of the human race. Why is this the most exciting time? Is it because people of this generation are witnessing the formation of governmental power spheres precisely configured like those prophesied for the end of the age?
Is this the most exciting time to be alive because socioeconomic, technological, and religious conditions seem to be rearranging in the exact order that God’s Word predicts they will be as the climax of history approaches? Or are these the most exciting times because the geophysical and astrophysical worlds around us more and more display dynamic upheaval like those prophesied for the apocalypse (awesome displays such as great earthquakes, violent storms, environment-changing volcanoes, devastating floods, and spectacular stellar cataclysms-for example, comets slamming into planets)?
Fear can be a powerful stimulus upon the process of generating excitement. Since the indicators strongly suggest that we stand at the very precipice of that horrific period that Jesus called the Great Tribulation, these are fearful signals indeed. Certainly, however, it would be inaccurate to say that it is a privilege to live in times that are exciting based solely on the fearful events we see occurring all around us. To be privileged implies living in conditions that are enjoyable. Fear-engendered excitement produces no enjoyment for rational-thinking people.
Steps Leading into the Abyss
News accounts coming at us in barrage after barrage from the many media outlets around the world report in large measure the most tragic aspects of the human condition. None are more tragic than instances of violence against children. Nothing that man perpetrates against his fellow man tears at our hearts more than the beastly activities engaged in by child pornographers.
A recent account involving child pornography sheds light on this sin-putrified symptom of our times. The report detailed the indictment of sixteen men on charges that they participated in an international Internet pedophilia ring in which members once chatted online while a 10-year-old girl was being molested. According to the report, the men belonged to a club, a “chat room in which users swapped stories about child sex and conspired to produce and exchange sexually explicit images of girls as young as 5.”
Although we can be thankful that this particular abominable operation was crushed, it was, statistics tell us, only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The knowledge that even one child is at this very moment being subjected to such horrendous activity is heart-shattering. Yet thousands, perhaps millions, around the world endure this vileness that must regurgitate directly from the mind of Satan himself.
Child pornographers exhibit the fact that they are “without natural affection”–one of the major characteristics that Paul the apostle said would mark the end of the age (2 Timothy 3:3). For who with God-given natural affection can look into the beautiful, bright-eyed faces of little ones and conjure up the absolute abomination of child pornography?
The Homosexuality-Abortion-Euthanasia Connection
How Satan hates God’s creation called man! The creature God loved so much that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for continues to follow in the devil’s footprints, which lead to the abyss.
Homosexuality is now termed “gay.” The act that God indicts as being an abomination the Satan-controlled minds of men now call bright, happy, and alternate lifestyle. Despite the reality that AIDS and other deadly diseases such as hepatitis are directly attributable to their “gay lifestyle”–thus making it in fact a death-dealing existence–they refuse to cease their life-ending activity. God’s Word says that they receive in themselves the recompense of their
error which is fitting (Romans 1:27). God, in other words, says that they get what they deserve when they refuse to repent of their abominable activity.
Homosexuality cannot procreate, which further attests that Luciferian hatred is behind it. How better to kill off the human creation?
Abortion in the United States is a highly profitable business that delivers death on demand. Congress, as of this writing, is considering making legal the French-produced RU486 abortion pill.
Reprobate thinking dominates our culture today thinking that calls good evil and evil good, thinking that condones killing for the sake of expediency. As proof that ours is a generation steeped in reprobate thinking–that is, thinking that is convoluted, irrational, and even demented–consider the following.
Rational, loving parents would never for a moment think about giving their child a cyanide capsule. Many of these same parents, however, would support legalizing the abortion pill and would themselves take the pills, effectively poisoning their children in the womb. Death on demand is made attractive when it is legitimized and comes nicely merchandised and packaged. Expedience and convenience declare to the reprobate mindset that the unwanted pregnancy equates merely to an upset stomach or a headache that must have a quick fix.
Euthanasia raises its Luciferian head during the last days of societal collapse. Whether considering the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Incas, or Aztecs–or the more recent atrocities inflicted upon those under the Nazi regime–the systematic murdering of sick, disabled, and elderly people marked those cultures in the last stages of their decline and fall. Unwanted people were and continue to be discarded through genocide, such as that currently taking place in China, where girl babies reportedly are drowned by the millions.
Satan’s hatred for God’s creation called man is easily observable in our own time. “Dr. Death” is the nickname given a medical doctor who routinely involves himself in so-called “assisted suicides.” The doctor’s own words obviously betray his feelings about the sanctity of life and the Creator who gives it.
During a luncheon before the National Press Club, [Dr. Jack] Kevorkian defended himself and attacked the religious community, boasting: “Had Christ died in my van, with people around him who loved him, [it] would have been far more dignified.”
Attempts made to convict him of murder have thus far failed. With each failure of justice comes the desensitizing effects. Ours is a generation quickly becoming anesthetized to the fact that euthanasia is murder. How near we must be to the time when God says, “Enough is enough!”
Homosexuality-abortion-euthanasia are inalterably linked to Satan’s ravenous desire to destroy human beings. God’s Word says that Satan “as a roaring lion who walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
These rampant anti-God activities increasingly find acceptance, even among those who call themselves Christians. But homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia represent a satanically inspired death wish for all people. Individually and collectively, these hellish practices oppose the one and only Lifegiver.
The Drug Abyss
God’s prophetic Word tells us in unequivocal terms about the rebellious, blasphemous generation that will populate planet Earth during the time of the apocalypse, the closing years of this earth age, which Jesus referred to as a period of great tribulation.
“Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts” (Revelation 9:21).
The word “sorcery” is translated from the Greek word pharmakeia. The approximate equivalent is the English word “pharmacy,” which means the art of preparing and dispensing drugs.
Drugs will flow through the veins of that end-time generation while those people blaspheme God even though they know His judgment is upon them. The people of apocalypse will refuse to repent and turn from their total immersion in drug addiction and every other imaginable sin even though their very souls hang in the balance.
Our evening newscasts are all we need to validate that we are already waist-deep in a cesspool of illicit drugs. Every crime on the books, it seems, can in one way or another be linked to the mind-altering poisons routinely distributed on the streets of every city in America. We have only to recall our last local news broadcast to remember a reporter saying something like “police believe this [shooting, murder, robbery, etc.] was probably drug-related.”
Gangs with members as young as seven years old willingly become slaves to drugs and the dealers who live luxuriantly on the billions of dollars generated. Governments are demonstrably inadequate to the task of stopping or even curbing drug trafficking. Politicians promise wars on drugs but inevitably prove impotent in fulfilling those promises once the electioneering is over.
Note: We begin next week with continuation of the deadly effects of the drug culture.
Where’s the Comfort?
Pre-Trib belief antagonists are on the rise. Rapture critics, even among those who claim to believe in the eventuality of a Rapture, just not the pre-Tribulation view of that event, purport to present evidence on every side that our times trumpet the obvious: The world is about to enter the Tribulation. Christ’s call to believers, they say, just isn’t going to happen before Christians suffer at least part of the terrors of that beastly era.
They offer that anyone with knowledge of issues and events going on should recognize that the New World Order bunch is transforming America and the world into the kingdom of Antichrist. All is about to come together for the Gog-led invasion into the Middle East. As a matter of fact, many hold that World War III has already begun.
Advanced computer and other control technologies and instrumentalities are in place for locking everyone on the planet into fiscal bondage and physical slavery to the final empire as prophesied by Daniel.
Those of us who believe there is coming a supernatural Rapture-escape from these judgments on sinful mankind are just living in fantasy land is the collective message I infer from emails and articles that increasingly assault my senses. That I, and all of you, should begin prepping with food, water, gold, silver, and finding a good bunker in which to hunker down during these upcoming days seem to me to be the things these Rapture naysayers are presenting. Seldom do I hear coming from our opponents on the question of the Rapture the admonition to be trying to witness with all our might the gospel of Jesus Christ. I guess there will be plenty of time for that once the Antichrist regime is firmly in place.
While the Pre-Trib proponent holds at the heart of his effort winning as many souls to Christ as possible so those saved won’t go through that time of horrors, many of the anti-Rapture antagonists want to do things to make sure they are more comfortable while trying to survive that hellish time.
Coincidentally–or perhaps not–these just happen to, in some cases of TV and other ministries who openly disdain the thought of Rapture, offer for sale all of these things for survival. The packaged food items invariably are proclaimed to have shelf lives of three decades or longer. So, we can, if we survive, have these supplies to partake of well into the Millennium, I suppose. This, based upon the general theme that they believe the seven-year Tribulation, not the Rapture, is imminent. There have been over the past few years a number of debates taking place on whether there will be the Pre-Trib Rapture or not. The best I’ve heard was the one at the Pre-Trib study group meetings when Dr. Mark Hitchcock completely destroyed the anti-Rapture arguments of the Bible Answer Man.
There are some such debates scheduled for prophecy conferences in the near future. These will perhaps offer new food for thought, but I doubt whether they will change minds on either side of the controversy.
Personally, I believe the time for debate on this matter is past. It is time now to just offer the assurance of that soon to come exhilarating moment when Christ will say “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).
There are so many scriptural assurances of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture that we could fill many articles with them. As a matter of fact, we have done just that on the Rapture Ready website.
I wish to mention only one Rapture factor here, because I believe it is the most reassuring of all truth in God’s telling His children that they are not appointed to His wrath. Here we interject the question proposed in our title: Where’s the Comfort? By that we ask: What comfort is there in the argument that Christians will go through the Tribulation?
Paul the apostle first assures us of this fact: “For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). But, it is the next thought from the mind of God that should cause warm reassurance in the spiritual heart of every believer: “Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).
Get it? We are to “comfort” ourselves, not wring our hands looking for these things to destroy us or to look for Antichrist. We are to be looking for our “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13).
There is no comfort –nor is there directive in God’s Word–to be had in anticipating going through the time of God’s wrath and almost certain martyrdom (probably by beheading). There is no comfort in looking for the worst dictator in the planet’s history to hunt us down and lop off our heads.
Here is what God’s Word promises instead of the dreaded scenario proposed by the Rapture antagonists:
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. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15-18)
The Reprobate, the Rebellious and the Ruinous
News moving a headline at a time today is like an army of angry marchers intent upon tramping the most friendly society and culture to humanity ever to exist into oblivion. Beats anything I ever saw, to put it the way my old Daddy used to say.
I’ve chosen a few news items in my attempt to make the point. We are in the strangest of times, if we apply rationale to existential lunacy assaulting us not just daily, but hourly.
The first might seem innocuous enough. But it is a sort of pet peeve with me and I can’t help but comment to waiters and waitresses every time they bring a Coke or glass of water to the table. I tell them, if you were in California you would be fined a thousand dollars…and possibly put in jail for a month or two.
They, of course, think they have a crazy old guy on their hands. But, they politely and patiently smile and ask with incredulity in their voices–as if they were genuinely interested in my nonsense. “Why?”
Then I explain that such is the penalty in California for those serving customers plastic straws with drinks, etc. Well, the Governor Moonbeam-type infection has spread and now includes our nation’s capital as part of the serve-straws-at-your-own-peril insanity.
Here’s a brief excerpt of the story”
Washington, D.C., will begin enforcing its ban on plastic straws on Jan. 1, which would penalize churches for offering free coffee if it comes with a stirrer.
The Department of Energy and Environment tweeted Thursday that Mayor Muriel Bowser has a “list of recyclables and compostables” banning plastic straws and stirrers. [Mayor Bowser‘s list of recyclables and compostables now requires the use of compostable and/or reusable straws and stirrers when selling food or beverages in the District. Enforcement begins January 1, 2019!…] (“DC Bans Churches From Handing Out Straws With Free Coffee,” Washington Free Beacon, by Elizabeth Harrington, November 17, 2018)
Now, if you are a cantankerous old guy like me, you might wonder what is a church doing handing out coffee in church in the first place–but, that’s probably just “back-number” thinking, as ol’ Dr. Vernon McGee used to say.
The next news item also touches upon a matter that ruffles my feathers. I’m referring to the climate-change mantra that gets more invasive by the hour–that is, it has evolved from the global-warming push by the globalists elite. These are the one-worlders who want to rob the U.S. Treasury–a thing that has within its mostly empty vaults IOUs, not true wealth these days.
Man-made global warming has been proven a hoax, and now man-made climate change is well on its way to being proven the same, according to some experts.
Researchers who were attempting to prove evidence of climate change recently published a study claiming that ocean temperatures were increasing at a dramatic rate, much higher than previous estimates.
The study was blindly accepted by believers in the climate change/global warming theory.
But the researchers have had to retract their bold claims after a mathematician studied their findings and immediately debunked it, spotting errors that called the legitimacy of the entire study into question. (“Mathematician Exposes Global Warming Study Inflating Temp Rise By 600%,” Rapture Ready News, by Neon Nettle, November 17, 2018)
The first news item referenced–about the plastic straws–is somewhat whimsical. But it gives hint of more serious things in society and culture. Concern over plastic straws that might affect the environment in deleterious ways should be analyzed in light of other concerns these same environmentalists hold.
I’m thinking particularly of their concern for what human beings are doing to the environment. The radical among them claim that people are polluting the planet. Humans are over-populating Mother Earth.
These, therefore, are among the strongest of supporters of women’s right to choose in the matter of whether to abort their babies. The thinking is, among the more adamant, that the fewer people on the planet, the better. So there are legitimate reasons for babies to be thus gotten rid of…more than 60 million of whom have indeed been removed since Roe v Wade in 1973. The straw of plastic that would otherwise go into your Coke, you see, is intrinsically of like non-value to the unwanted child that will never see the light of day.
But, the environmentalist –whether radical or less so–will put the egg of the spotted owl or a field mouse and its habitat on a list of protected species. This is what the Apostle Paul called “reprobate thinking” (Romans chapter 1).
This is a generation of reprobate thinking. That mindset has led to problems wrapped up in the second word in the title of this commentary: rebellious.
A third news item shows, I think, an example of reprobate thinking spawning rebellion in our nation.
A report in the Christian Post contends that the number of witches (and Wiccans) has dramatically increased since the 1990s, to the degree that there may be at least 1.5 million witches in the United States, which is higher than the 1.4 million mainline Presbyterians.
“[The practice of witchcraft has grown significantly in recent decades; those who identify as witches has risen concurrently with the rise of the ‘witch aesthetic,’”reported the Christian Post in October, citing data from Quartz, a Trinity College study, and the Pew Research Center.
Between 1990 and 2008, the number of Wiccans in the United States grew from 8,000 to 340,000, according to three religious surveys conducted by Trinity College in Connecticut. In addition, the Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that 0.4% of the population — 1 to 1.5 million Americans — “identify as Wicca or Pagan.” (“Number of Witches in U.S. on the Rise, May Surpass 1.5 Million,” CSN News, by Michael W. Chapman, November 18, 2018)
You might remember the bizarre story of a Los Angeles writer saying she had joined with thousands of witches to put a “hex” on Donald Trump. Diana Wagman said on May 23, 2017, that she and others intended to join forces ” to cast a binding spell on President Donald Trump “under the waning crescent moon.” She said, “It was not meant to physically hurt him, only to keep him from succeeding at his tasks…. I found an orange candle in a box of multicolored ones we use for our Hanukkah menorah. I printed the required tarot card off the Internet and propped it up. I cut an unflattering photo of POTUS out of the newspaper, and I burned it while chanting the words of the spell…. I plan to complete the ritual again.”
Such might be humorous in some sense, but it is profoundly indicative of rebelliousness that has taken root in society and culture.
God proclaims such rebellion is ruinous to any people. His example people, the Jews, fell into such rebellion–and their rebelliousness led to a ruinous future that reached its most heinous manifestation with the Holocaust of Hitler’s day. Moses reported the following in warning the Jewish people about such rebellion:
When thou art come into the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the LORD: and because of these abominations the LORD thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the LORD thy God. For these nations, which thou shalt possess, hearkened unto observers of times, and unto diviners: but as for thee, the LORD thy God hath not suffered thee so to do. (Deuteronomy 18:9-14)
With the abortion infanticide since the implementation of Roe v Wade, we have, in effect, condoned the passing of children through the fires, just as the pagans did. It is abomination, the Lord says. We have reached the point of reprobate thinking that has spawned rebellion against God. He is a God that does not change. He is the same today as when He had Moses warn these things those millennia ago.
Reviving Roman Empire Gestapo Growing
Thinking on the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in the Germany of the 1930s immediately produces realization that the bringing together of ruthless enforcement entities was key to establishment of der Fuhrer’s dictatorship.
It started with the brown shirts, headed by Ernst Rhome, a homosexual thug who did Hitler’s bidding in creating chaos and fear in a failing German republic. When the future Fuhrer began to consolidate power through eliminating opposition, the German Wehrmacht (Germany’s army) soon had to share controlling authority with the Waffen-SS, the black-uniformed, select group of supposedly Aryan troops assigned as Hitler’s personal body guard. The brown shirts were eliminated, and the SS, headed by the now infamous Heinrich Himmler, began the implementation of the final solution—the genocidal war on all Jews in Europe.
At the same time, the civilian police establishment was turned into the dreaded Gestapo, the police force that locked the Nazi regime into place. The Nazi military and civilian policing establishment became, in effect, a single force against which there was little resistance.
And, this brings us to the crux of things going on in that same geographical area from which Hitler terrorized the world.
There is seen by some the development of a movement to establish similar tyrannical controls within the European Union (EU) at the present hour. An article of recent vintage frames the growing threat the concerned observers fear. It states the following to begin the piece.
As the European Union and the establishment behind it become increasingly totalitarian, paranoid, and unstable, the EU super-state is raising up and training its own transnational military-police force. According to reports and its own propaganda material, the EU “Gendarmerie,” as the force is known, will apparently be charged with putting down protests and civil unrest, raiding illegal political meetings, propping up foreign governments, and even confiscating weapons. (“EU Building Potentially Tyrannical Military-Police Force” by Alex Newman,http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/23163, May 10, 2016)
The article states that the EU’s military-police force is merely one component of the broader transnational police-state apparatus being quietly imposed on the formerly sovereign peoples of Europe. The force includes the bringing together of “transnational police” with “transnational army units” and “EU air and naval operations.”
The bringing together of the forces has all been accomplished in the shadows, but is now being thrust into the light of geopolitical reality, according to the concerned observers reporting–those of Breitbart’s U.K. operation.
It was a controversial training operation taking place in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia in April that sparked concern and alarm within Europe and beyond.
Media reports stirred fears of the rise of a tyrannical, controlling force. According to those reports, the training consolidated 600 troops and police officers in order to prepare for crises of the international and civil war sorts.
The EU military-operation information branch reported about its training scheme that the aim of the [April 15, 2016] Comprehensive Live Exercise will be capacity building of police and gendarmes who will participate in international stabilization missions and projects with a police component. The force is aimed at preparing the hybrid military-police force for “future” missions.
The troubling reports said that forces from Islamic Turkey, and Tunisia, as well as the African nation of Cameroon, participated in the “scheming.”
There remains, of course, considerable resistance to the reuniting of Europe. There is at the same time all of this is going on, a strong trend toward nationalism. The threat from the Islamist world, with deadly attacks in places such as Brussels, make the populations, if not the one-world order leaderships of EU nations, deeply concerned about a reviving, unified, European empire that takes protection against dangerous, Islamist, “migrants” out of the hands of local and national authority. Yet, crises that loom, particularly involving Greece-type financial meltdowns and rioting, make probable over-arching EU police controls and military involvement inevitable.
Remember, it was severe fiscal crisis that brought Hitler to power, along with and through his all-controlling military/police monstrosity. There are those who agree with George Santayana that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
God’s Word foretells that history repeats time after time. Every empire has eventually fallen, even, arguably, the greatest of all world empires, the Roman Empire. The same basic ingredients have constituted most every such collapse.
While Santayana’s bit of philosophy has been proven true time after time, he left out a key element in phrasing his thought. It should be: “Those who do not acknowledge God and cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Every world empire has ignored the true God of Heaven. Prophecy tells us that the final empire–that of Antichrist, the Roman prince of Daniel 9: 26-27—will be the most God-hating empire of all history.
Along with all other signals of Christ’s soon return on the world-scene today, the reviving of the Roman Empire is more and more coming into view. It is a sure signal that this generation is at the end of the Church Age and that Christ’s call to His Bride must be near indeed.
Israel and the Art of the Deal
With America’s midterm elections done, except for all the shenanigans going on in Florida and Arizona at the time of this writing, focus of President Trump’s agenda seems destined to soon turn to Israel. His friend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has election problems of his own looming. Trump’s actions and reactions with regard to Israel, therefore, present intriguing potentiality.
The intrigue involves a primary matter of Bible prophecy set for fulfillment in the near future. The peace process involving the Jewish state and its enemy neighbors is at the heart of the intrigue, of course. There is, it is well known in diplomatic circles, a “deal” in the works.
The Trump administration is holding the key elements within this brewing deal close to its presidential vest. But, the man who is known for the “art of the deal” is obviously operating in his interaction with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the same way he always deals. He is a master of keeping his counterparts in negotiations off-balance, most often coming in with proposals at the most crucial time, forcing decisions that leave interlocutors within negotiations without recourse but to agree.
There is no more important negotiation in which Trump could possibly be engaged than this one. We are talking about the very heart of Bible prophecy yet future. This matter involves getting dangerously close to what God, Himself, calls “the apple of my eye.” The nation–the people called Israel–is a most sensitive matter in God’s holy view.
The Israeli prime minister has for years now been subjected to much the same sort of accusation and innuendo Donald Trump has faced. He is embattled on all sides by opposition politicians and by both Israeli national and international news media.
Still, according to polls, it looks like Netanyahu will be reelected in the upcoming election.
He will almost certainly be forced to dissolve the present government and call an election. The question is whether the election will be called next year or sometime very soon–before the end of the year.
One opinion piece explains:
Two clocks are ticking, one in Jerusalem and one in Washington. The problem is that for the time being, they are not synchronized.
With the midterm elections over in the US, President Donald Trump now has the bandwidth and time to shift his focus back to foreign policy issues, including the so-called “deal of the century” that he longs to broker between Israel and the Palestinians. The finishing touches are being put on the plan, and it could be rolled out as early as next month or in January.
The US schedule doesn’t seem to match up with Israel’s schedule, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently toying with the idea of moving up the elections, scheduled now for November 2019. No one in the coalition believes the government will last until then, and almost everyone thinks something – either the haredi draft bill or Netanyahu’s criminal investigations – will prompt the prime minister to dissolve the government in the coming months.
This is important because if the government is dissolved in December, there would be no point in rolling out a peace deal that Israel will not be able to embrace…
This is important because if the government is dissolved in December, there would be no point in rolling out a peace deal that Israel will not be able to embrace. (What will come first – Israeli elections or the U.S. peace plan rollout? by Yaakov Katz, Opinion – Jerusalem Post, November 10, 2018)
Benjamin Netanyahu wants to show the world that he wants to say yes to Israel’s good friend America in the matter of a peace deal. He has most always answered “no” to pressures by American presidents. This is understandable, because these pressures have been brought about by the likes of President Clinton and President Obama. These–and even George W. Bush, with the likes of James Baker pushing matters–have wanted Israel to give up too much to enemies blood-vowed to push all Jews into the Mediterranean.
But now Netanyahu has a president to deal with who has demonstrated both a love for Israel and the ability to accomplish what few, if any, have been able to accomplish.
Does the Trump plan, held closely to the presidential vest, include giving the Palestinian Authority the state they want? Will this mean dividing God’s most beloved city? These are intriguing–and dangerously so- questions to be sure.
Proceed very cautiously, Mr. President.
Will America Betray Israel?
We come to the question “Israel Betrayed by U.S.?” The article’s title is in the form of a question because like so much treachery that has gone on within American presidential administrations’ dealings with Israel, Washington’s overall disregard for that nation well-being continues to be troubling.
The “transparency” presidential candidate Barack Obama and then President Obama promised was never forthcoming. Obama’s intended dealing with Israel for 8 years was wrapped in an impenetrable fog of political doublespeak throughout.
Mr. Obama began his administration almost from the very first day by treating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like a White House exterminator–having him come in a door other than the front entrance reserved for dignitaries who are honored with official reception by the president.
The president, shortly after that first meeting with Netanyahu, abruptly left the prime minister and went to have a private dinner, presumably with his family. It was an undeniable snub.
If this was meant to be within keeping with his promise to have “the most transparent administration ever,” It was certainly transparent that Obama had an utter disregard for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel, our number-one ally in the Middle East, if not our top ally in the entire world.
Subsequent snubs and disrespectful attempts to bully the Israeli leader and the Jewish state were too numerous to get into. Obama’s attempts to intervene within the sovereign affairs of Israel did not abate throughout his years as president. In fact, they increased dramatically as that administration moved forward.
With 9 months left in his presidency left, he doubled down on attempts to intervene into the sovereignty of the Jewish state.
In an audacious display of intrusion into the affairs of Israel’s dealings with its internal enemies–many of whom plot and carry out deadly attacks against Jewish citizens– Obama’s diplomatic enforcers were at work. Ordered to do so, America’s State Department minions joined with those determined to force Israel to bow to international demands in the matter of housing construction in volatile areas of contention at the time.
One news item reported at the time:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Diplomats say the U.S. will endorse a tough new tone with Israel in an upcoming international report. The report is to take the Jewish state to task over settlements, demolitions and property seizures on land the Palestinians claim for a future state…
The harsh language marks a subtle shift. Washington has traditionally tempered statements by the so-called “Quartet” of mediators with careful diplomatic language…(Source: Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper, “US to Take Tougher Tone on Israeli Settlements in New Report,” Associated Press, 5/7/16).
Early on in the first Obama administration, the pressure to force Israel to give in to diplomatic pressures of land for peace became a driving force in U.S./Israeli relations. The effort ramped up from that time. It is as if Obama had an obsessive compulsion to impose his will before his time was ended in the White House.
My personal sense was at the time, and is now, that it was indeed the president’s compulsion that was in play. Because it is the nation Israel we are considering, however, there were then and now are far more powerful intrigues involved. Ephesians 6:12 is at the center of this last minute drive to make the rearrangements that Israel’s greatest hater wants accomplished, it seems to me.
But, my personal sense of prophetic importance of what all of this vitriol pointed toward Israel means is of little consequence. What matters is what the prophetic Word of God says about His chosen nation and its destiny, both near-term and in the ultimate sense.
In that regard, the things we are seeing –like the movement of the American Embassy to Jerusalem –like pressure ratcheting up to force a 2 state solution as part of making a peace covenant can be of profound significance. And in the world vs Israel struggle, we can find little reassurance that anything good can come forth.
America has entered a most dangerous time. Our nation is at risk, based upon the upside-down thinking that is increasingly observable within Washington, D.C.
President Trump, I feel, is a reprieve, but the future beyond the next 2 years indeed looms ominously.
Terry James Prophecy Line 