Some weeks ago I wrote in my blog a commentary I called “The End Is Not Yet.” It began as follows:

Even those who operate issues and events from Christian and even prophetic perspectives are painting a picture that the world is now almost certainly already in an era not unlike that described as the biblical apocalypse.

Aside from the fears about the millions who might die from coronavirus are the just-as-feared economic ramifications of the now officially declared pandemic.

As the weeks progress, I continue to get many emails that want me to reconsider my pre-Trib position regarding the Rapture.

Realizing most who come to Rapture Ready comprehend the term, to make sure everyone fully understands what is meant by the term “pre-Trib Rapture,” I’ll try to make it clear.

The Rapture is the instant (in the twinkling of an eye—that is, a time that cannot be measured) when Jesus Christ will call all believers of the Church Age (Age of Grace) to Himself. Paul the apostle prophesies that stunning event:

Behold, I shew you a mystery; we shall not all sleep [die], 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 further explains:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17)

This promise from God of deliverance from history’s most terrible time (Revelation 3:10) is for all who believe in Jesus Christ for their salvation (Romans 10:9–10). Those who have trusted Christ for salvation of their souls and who have died during the Church Age and all who are alive when the great event of Rapture takes place will go instantaneously to be with Jesus when He shouts “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

In that second of time, all of these saints will be lifted into the clouds and will return with their Lord Jesus to the Father’s House, where He has been preparing “dwelling places” for us (John 14:1–3).

Back on planet earth, terrible things will be taking place. Ultimately, history’s last and most terrible dictator will arise and implement his rule of terror upon most all of earth’s inhabitants. This will be the Tribulation.

So, Christians will be removed, as we have seen, before that Tribulation takes place. Thus we term it the “pre-Trib Rapture.”

This is why Paul writes just after telling of this glorious going home: “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18).

So the emails continue to indicate that some are now beginning to doubt this rescue. More are trying to get me to read theories that the Rapture is delayed until sometime into the Tribulation—which these contend we’ve now entered.

One such email begins: “I know many have been soured on the subject of what is known as ‘the rapture,’ but 1 Corinthians 15:52 makes this a biblical event, despite the confusion around the subject. In this message, I have included a link to the book, in magazine format, that I wrote after God showed me how 1 Corinthians 15:52 would actually occur. This is worth your reading, because it will shake and wake the Church!”

Not to be rude or pompous, but the title of his book, Delayed Rapture, told me all I needed to know. I have long ago ceased to chase after these alternate theories or debate them. There simply isn’t enough time to devote to things contrary to what the Scripture plainly teaches. It is so important at this late date at the end of the age to just plainly teach and believe what God’s Word says on this most important matter.

While we are not in that dreaded Tribulation era, as many believe, issues and events coming at us minute by minute in the news show how close we must be to that moment of Rapture and the beginning of that era of horror which will certainly follow.

One such indicator in the news of where we stand that isn’t talked a lot about today was sent to me by a friend who helps keep me up to date on breaking news.

The Tribulation, in large part, will come upon the earth because of God’s desire to bring about a remnant of believers from the House of Israel—His chosen people.

They are “chosen” because He brought into the world through them the Savior—Jesus Christ—in order to be the slain Lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

God has promised to save one-third of the Jewish race as a remnant to be His chosen nation, Israel, during the millennial reign of Jesus on the throne of David.

That one-third will come from the Lord bringing Jewish believers through the time of Jacob’s trouble (Jeremiah 30: 7). This will be the last half of the seven-year Tribulation era.

So the article my friend sent is an important one dealing with the Jews, as God begins preparing that people for this horrific time to come.

Brooklyn, NY: Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Frankel, also known as the Rime over Rebbe, issued an unequivocal order last week for Jews in the diaspora to leave their homes and immigrate to Israel before a civil war breaks out in the United States reports Bhadrei Haharedim.

Rabbi Frankel is an heir of Menachem Mendel of Rimanov—who was among the early promoters of the Hasidic movement in Poland.

He has been active recently years on social media, especially with his lectures on YouTube, which are usually on the subject of the coming of Moshiach.

But while on a visit to South-American and French Jews who have moved to Florida, Rabbi Frankel was unusually specific about the urgent need to return to Israel and aliyah now: “Leave while it’s possible. Things will get worse and it will be difficult to move from one country to another” the rabbi said.

“After World War II, the survivors came and asked why the Gedolim and the Rebbes (rabbis) did not order European Jews to leave while there was still time and emigrate to Israel or the United States before the war broke out,” Rabbi Frankel told the audience attending his lecture. “Truth be told, they (the rabbis) said and then some, they begged the Jews to flee the scorched earth, but part of the decree was that the Jews didn’t listen.”

“Today,” he continued “Listen to me well, dear Jews, whoever can afford to rise and ascend to the Holy Land should it as soon as possible, and this includes large parts of South America and most of Europe. The US will also become a dangerous place mired in war, and it is still too early to tell which US state will survive, but many parts will be destroyed and poisoned, and a civil war will break out within the US. And states will secede from the federal government. (David Sidman, “Fearing Civil War, Prominent NY Rabbi Suddenly Urges American Jews to Leave for Israel,” Breaking Israel News, April 29, 2020)

Most who study Israel and its end-times juxtaposition within the nations of the world believe God will move most into Israel for the coming Tribulation. The prophecy seems wrapped up in the following.

Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border. (Jeremiah 31:16–17)

There can be little doubt that God’s hand is moving, especially upon His chosen people of the House of Israel. But, the end still is not yet.

We are witnessing spectacular stage-setting for that time of Tribulation and Jacob’s trouble. But the apocalyptic play has not yet begun. It won’t begin until God first raises the curtain with the Rapture of His other chosen people—all believers of the Age of Grace.

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

Perhaps my thinking here will land me in the same looney bin the elite journalist types place the likes of Alex Jones and others. However, I must say that each and every hour of each and every day lately has lit up the “alert” sensors of my conspiracy meter.

The strange, ongoing developments that permeate this entire coronavirus matter just smack of things being supernaturally constructed, thus to bring about government on a global scale.

It is more than ironic that while America elected perhaps the most nationalistic president imaginable—and one who has been to this point tremendously successful in ensuring that America’s sovereignty gets back on track—every other geopolitical effort is aimed at bringing about a global order. It seems the coronavirus has, in a matter of less than two months, derailed the Trump “Make America Great Again” train of success.

I hear from many within the talk-show sphere that to say COVID-19 was created by the deep-state types in order to bring about exactly what we have witnessed—the shutdown of the booming economy—is conspiracy kookdom. Even Rush Limbaugh says that he believes this virus crisis wasn’t created by the people of that dark cabal to bring down Donald Trump. He believes, however, that this “pandemic” is being used by that evil group of swamp creatures and world globalists elite to their best advantage. They are using it to bring this president down, while all the other things they’ve tried—the accusation of colluding with Russia, the misuse of power in the Ukrainian phone call, in trying the impeachment, etc,—has all blown up in their collective face.

So this “crisis” really is just coincidental? This virus—which has already proven to be nowhere close to being as virulent in numbers of hospitalizations and deaths as the common strains of influenza, just coincidentally came on the scene during probably the most volatile and important election year in American history? This disease just, coincidentally, took probably the most booming economy of any nation in history down within a month and locked practically all Americans within their home confines—stripping constitutional rights, including the right to gather in churches to worship, in the process?

The journalists-elite will probably—if they even cared to consider my take as such an insignificant observer—put me in an even more confining looney bin upon my following take on all of this.

I actually agree with those, including Rush, who say that the globalists and deep-state types didn’t create this pandemic to bring down Trump and American nationalism and to get the nation back on track to being part of their drive for one world order. These didn’t sit around and plan this virus to bring down what was conceived as the greatest economic boom in history. I also agree that to think a group of human agents could plan and do such a thing, and pull it off in America’s most important presidential election year, probably does fit within the designation “kookdom.”

But, I do think it was planned, after being conceived within the mind of the evilest of all conspirators. It was supernaturally initiated. The name of the conspirator, the master planner, is none other than Lucifer the fallen—Satan.

At the same time, the God of Heaven knew before the foundation of the planet that Satan would do just that—supernaturally plan and bring about this strange, out-of-nowhere virus that would seem to get the apex nation of history, economically speaking, back on track toward globalism. Take comfort: He wasn’t taken by surprise.

COVID-19, or coronavirus, or whatever you want to call it, is all part of a plan to bring about Satan’s Antichrist regime. Let there be no doubt about that—at least among Christians who hold the pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy. You are not a “kook” if you view it this way through the prism of God’s prophetic Word.

One such proof that these constantly appearing developments are preparing the way for the man of sin to take the world geopolitical stage following the translation of believers to Heaven can be understood through the following:

Big Brother Is Watching — And Wants You to Stay at Home

In both South Korea and Israel, authorities use telecom data to track potential COVID-19 patients. Investigators in South Korea can scan smartphone data to find people who might have caught the coronavirus from someone they met within the space of 10 minutes. Israel, on the other hand, has tapped its anti-terrorist Shin Bet intelligence unit to track down potential COVID-19 patients using phone data.

In the United Kingdom, at least one police force has started using drones to monitor public areas, shaming any residents caught going out for a stroll. Tunisia has taken similar steps, deploying security robots equipped with thermal cameras to enforce the lockdown in the capital city of Tunis.

These measures are just some examples of how governments have turned to digital surveillance tools to track and monitor individuals in the name of slowing the spread of the pandemic. Many citizens in these countries have even welcomed the tracking technology intended to bolster defenses against the coronavirus. (Franz Walker, “The Coronavirus Outbreak Is Sparking the Rollout of More Digital Surveillance,” The Common Sense Show, April 24, 2020)

Surveillance is touted by the doctors on the White House coronavirus crisis team as the way to assure we get through the pandemic. Drones are being used, by some state and local governmental officials, to fly over and monitor people to see that they are either inside their homes or gathering in groups of no more than ten in areas they are so kind to allow us to gather.

None of this is coincidental. We are witnessing Tribulation technology coming into play right before our fear-affected eyes.

Revelation 13 is about to come to fulfillment, and the beast called Antichrist is about to bound up the steps to that stage of world domination.

However, for those who believe in the blessed hope of Titus 2:13, there is no reason to fear. As a matter of fact, all we see developing should give reason for excitement and should do one thing more. It should cause everyone who names the name of Christ to witness, and to pray that as many people as can be gathered into God’s family will come to repentance.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

President Trump and others have said something to the effect that damage done by the coronavirus to society, culture, and the economy might be more horrific than the damage to health done by the disease in America and around the world. By this, I infer that the statement means that by completely shutting down society, culture, and business, the resultant damage will be far worse than if the COVID-19 pandemic was handled like other severe outbreaks of history. Those, for the most part, eventually killed many, but life went on pretty much as normal, and the diseases became much less virulent when the so-called herd immunity kicked in.

The herd immunity is, as I take it, when the point is reached in the spread of disease that human immune systems biologically learn to resist whatever strain of virus or bacteria is involved.

A growing, uncharted-in-America side-effect of the present epidemic crisis is the psychological stress suffered around the country. This nation has never been locked down to any extent, except in rare instances and isolated places. The closest the US has come to this sort of restrictiveness, enforced by government, was during the Civil War when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and restricted other areas of life that run counter to the Bill of Rights.

At that time of the nation being at war with itself, it was argued that locking down civil and other liberties would lead to dictatorship. Many historians now agree that, had it been a president other than Lincoln, with his great, personal character at the time, the unthinkable would possibly have eventuated. We might now be living under dictatorship.

Governments, once they have been allowed powers to control, rarely relinquish that power when things return to normal. As Lord Edward Acton said, “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Or. as one geopolitical figure of our time, Henry Kissinger, has said: “Political power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

We can all, if we’re honest, attest to the veracity of those statements. We can, I believe, get a hint of the truth in those words by what is happening around the nation in some areas with regard to governors and their draconian steps during this “crisis.”

The Michigan governor, for example, has forbidden many things of normal life by shutting the facilities where people normally go for essential services. At the same time, she is keeping abortion clinics, bars, and even places to buy lottery tickets open, calling them “essential services.”

Protests are ramping up around her capitol, as American citizens are demonstrating against what they perceive as tyranny. Apparently, she is on a power trip, as Lord Acton or Dr. Kissinger would say.

The president has said that he feels these protests are in many cases justified. The nation must begin opening up. This shutdown to prevent the virus spread can’t go on without irreparable damage to the economy, thus, to the people of America.

Agreed. It is un-American. It is antithesis to the nation’s principles of freedom. The shutdown must be brought to an end. To do otherwise brings a genuine threat from ideologies that would bring Machiavellian controls that “the prince that shall come” will one day use in his Antichrist dictatorship.

I received the following excerpt of an article in the American Thinker. The thoughts expressed present a solid case for suggesting that all of us seriously consider what this crisis might mean in total context for future national life as we’ve known it.

When societies lose their freedom, it is not ordinarily because autocrats or tyrants have forcibly taken it away. It is usually the result of the population willingly surrendering their freedom in return for protection against an external threat.  While the threat is oftentimes real, it is invariably exaggerated.

This is what we in the United States are experiencing.  The general public has been stampeded by the fear mongering in the media into demanding action from the politicians at both the state and federal level. The politicians respond and do not pause to ask whether these actions will work—just do something! They do not ask if the financial and societal cost to the nation is worth the unknown and perhaps nebulous return.

In its 244-year history the United States has weathered seven of the worst pandemics in world history without the hysteria and loss of liberty and freedom.  All indications reveal that the Coronavirus will be exponentially less life-threatening than any of these previous pandemics.

Is the Coronavirus pandemic serious enough to warrant putting much of the nation’s population into house imprisonment, or wreaking the economy for an indefinite period of time, or prohibiting worshipers from attending their churches, synagogues or mosques, or outlawing freedom of assembly and travel, or destroying businesses that have taken years to build up, or saddling future generations with unfathomable debt? The nation is choosing to plunge millions of people into depression, heart attacks, suicide and unbelievable distress, though they are not especially vulnerable and will only suffer mild symptoms or none at all.

This is what a police state is like. It is a nation in which the government can issue orders and edicts or convey preferences with no legal authority. Yet, it appears the majority of the American people are willing to sacrifice their freedoms and way of life in order to empower such a potential police state in the guise of conquering a pandemic. Governments never give up power once attained. They only seek to normalize it and now they have in their toolbox the knowledge that the citizenry will meekly acquiesce to any national emergency being declared an existential crisis which requires government to unconstitutionally impose its will on the people. (Steve McCann, “How a Police State Is Formed,” American Thinker, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/04/how_a_police_state_is_born.html)

Such a police state—and much, much worse—is coming, according to God’s prophetic Word. However, we have the right to defend against (and especially to protest against) such tyranny before that time of Antichrist, a time that will be beyond our control.

Accepting Christ for salvation assures that one will not face that ultimate dictatorship.

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. (Romans 10:13)

The question at the top of my list is what’s this pandemic all about? As a matter of fact, the many emails I get and conversations I engage in seem to indicate that, in one way or another, this question is chief among topics on the minds of others.

And why not?

The pandemic struck with swiftness and devastation to our way of life, the likes of which nothing in our scope of experience has equaled. Things have been turned upside down because of the coronavirus.

I know it’s the same for you who have been readings these posts lately. We have a deep desire to know exactly what is going on, in light of everything else that’s been happening, in consideration of possible biblically prophetic meanings.

I, like you, have heard many different reasons this world-changing virus has been unleashed.

It’s all about setting the stage for Antichrist is one thought. I, myself, have expressed a number of times that I believe this is one element of the reason for things shifting so dramatically at this late hour.

God is judging this nation because of the murder of more than sixty-five million babies through abortion is another theory. Certainly, a scriptural argument can be made for this.

God is invoking the Genesis 12 curse on America because the Trump administration included dividing up Israel’s land in its Deal of the Century peace plan. This proposition is a growing speculation among some.

There are many more postulations coming forth in the quest to have the answer to the question: What’s this pandemic all about? It’s a question I believe God wants His people to ponder.

Another possibility proffered is that God is wanting to get our attention—not only the attention of the lost souls who are headed down the broad way to destruction, but the attention of true believers.

My own thinking is that there might be some degree—perhaps a large degree—of credence in this thinking. The whole world continues to be stunned by the blow struck by this microscopic entity we call COVID-19 or coronavirus. The staggering occurrence, certainly allowed by God to happen, has diverted our attention from the moment-by-moment activity of living life. Everyone with the capability to get information on what is happening with the disease is paying attention.

People, particularly in America, now hunker down in their homes and wear masks when venturing out for—well, for toilet paper in particular, it seems.

The churches now sit empty seven days a week instead of six. This, in itself, speaks something significant to the question: What’s this pandemic all about?

The world banishes God from public places. Has God now banished people from church sanctuaries?

I jest only to a degree. The second-most-televised governmental authority, just behind President Trump in numbers of hours on camera, seems to have weighed in on God and His place in the nation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, who is given substantial national television time every day to brief the world on the state of the battle against COVID-19, has weighed in on his view of God’s status in all of this.

He’s the Democrat governor who just recently signed the Reproductive Health Act into law, a law that allows for abortion up to the due date and removes all protections for any baby who somehow lives through the abortion procedure.

Cuomo said about the battle against the pandemic:

It [the plateau in the number of new cases] is directly a result of what you do today…. The number is down because we brought the number down. God did not do that, fate did not do that, destiny did not do that, a lot of pain and suffering did that.

One must at least wonder if such an attitude by the governor might be part of why New York City is ground zero for the coronavirus. To banish the God of all creation is a most serious—might I say “dangerous”?—matter for any people.

The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. (Psalms 2:2–4)

Reading through a news article today, the title of an old song sung by Roger Whittaker came to mind, and then the melody of it running through my head caused me to listen to it on YouTube.

“I Don’t Believe in ‘if’ Anymore” begins with a driving beat, telling all the fearsome things of war and trouble the youth of this world face—how they fight the battles to save their nations, etc. The song then gets into a haunting rendition of how the dreams of children are built on “if”.

But the lyrics and melody state that “if” is for children. “It’s an illusion,” the lyrics say. “If’s an illusion. If is for children, building daydreams.…I don’t believe in if any more…” the song goes on to conclude.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a grandfather’s heart for children. Some even think I, myself, am under an illusion by thinking that the Heavenly Father’s great plan in the Rapture is to include all children under the age of accountability—those who are too young to make the decision to accept or reject Christ for salvation.

But despite those who think I’m a bit too soft-hearted (and even some think, “soft headed”) in this regard have it wrong. In this case, I’m not thinking with my emotional heart, but with my belief that God’s Holy Word explains His Holy character.

The God who has given His love letter to mankind deals one on one with each person He has determined to be born into this fallen world. Salvation is an individual matter. It is not a corporate matter, in which He “grandfathers in” all who are born under a certain religious system or to a certain Christian parent or family and brings them into His heavenly family.

The only way we go into eternity to be in God’s heavenly presence following this earthly life is by accepting God’s Son and His sacrifice on Calvary’s cross. When we believe in Jesus Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection, then confess that belief with our mouths, we are instantaneously brought into God’s heavenly family forever (Romans 10: 9–10).

The Rapture is only for those who have made that simple commitment. Nonetheless, those who have never had the opportunity to believe, whether because of mental incapability or because they are too young to understand, will instantly go to Christ when He calls believers to Himself (Revelation 4: 1). Otherwise, God’s very character would be in question. His righteousness would be impeachable, and that is absolutely impossible.

So it was that I was cogitating a bit on all of this after reading some really depressing headlines, and I thought of that word: “if.”

What “if” the Rapture might, in large part, be about to take place for the sake of the children below the age of accountability of this world? Their suffering is unbelievably great in some parts of this increasingly evil sphere.

The news headlines can deflate the spirit of even the most optimistic. Some of them follow:

• New, Larger Wave of Locusts Threatens Millions in Africa

Weeks before the coronavirus spread through much of the world, parts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in seventy years. Now the second wave of the voracious insects, some twenty times the size of the first, is arriving.

• The Virus Vaccine Fetal-Tissue Question

It’s enough to make your head spin. In the midst of the worldwide deaths from the coronavirus, we find ourselves in the midst of another killing issue—that of abortion.

• Giant Asian Hornets That Can “Kill with a Single Sting” to Invade Virus-Stricken US—The US Sun

Giant Asian hornets that have begun to invade the coronavirus-stricken US may cost the economy millions of dollars a year.

• Awakening Volcanic Region in Iceland “Could Cause Disruption for Centuries”

There are other news headlines even more spirit-deflating. However, the above are some immediately surrounding the headline story that pushed my buttons on the “if” matter, in regard to children below the age of accountability. Here is that headline:

• Coronavirus: The Children Struggling to Survive India’s Lockdown

The sudden imposition of a twenty-one-day lockdown in India to stop the spread of the coronavirus has thrown the lives of millions of children into chaos. Tens of thousands are calling helplines daily while thousands are going to bed hungry as the country shuts down to battle the pandemic. With 472 million children, India has the largest child population in the world.

The number is staggering. There are more than 472 million children in India, alone! Many, the story tells, are totally on their own. Many are very young kids, having to find scraps of food when and where they can. These have little hope of salvation of their souls through the process given in Romans 10:9–10.

Some who confute my belief that these will go to Jesus when the Rapture takes place would say that these little ones will go to Him if they die under that age-of-accountability rubric. After all, millions have died in wars, and God hasn’t intervened. Thus they went to Him when they died.

The argument holds no spiritual water whatsoever with me. We are talking about two entirely different scenarios: physical death vs. spiritual separation forever.

We are talking about one thing more—the most important matter: the very character of God.

God has promised to keep believers from that hour of testing –the Tribulation that will follow the Rapture of the Church. These will not face that terrible time of God’s judgment and wrath.

Yet children don’t have the capability to “believe.”

The argument I’ve heard is that children below the age of accountability, like all other people, will have to come to the point that they can “believe.” If they don’t believe, they can’t be “saved.” They can die during the time following the Rapture and then go automatically to Heaven.

Nonsense, I say—and totally out of character for the God of our Bible.

If children of this young age go to be with God in Heaven when they die—and we know they do, as King David related upon the death of his and Bathsheba’s child—without first “believing,” why must the child first “believe” before being Raptured? David’s infant son never came to the point of “believing” for salvation.

Every child during the Age of Grace in this accountability category will go to Jesus at that glorious moment of Rapture.

“If” the children are too young to believe for their individual salvation, they will be rescued from the Tribulation storm that is coming. That rescue will include every child just conceived and those in the womb, including the millions on the very brink of being aborted.

People currently are in near-panic over fear generated by a microscopic virus. Just imagine, tragically, the “crisis” the disappearance of billions of children, even those yet unborn, will create for those left behind!

From my perspective of Bible prophecy in the stage-setting process for the wind-up of the age, three factors leap from current news.

These are in addition to the tremendous developments taking place in the socioeconomic dynamics brought on by the sudden appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic. That virus, coming out of the demonic world, it seems to me, was in itself enough to point to the nearness of the end of this dispensation.

The dire prospects for recovery from the effects of the coronavirus are, if one hasn’t faith in God’s complete control, at the very least emotionally debilitating.

Now, three additional developments bring into sharper focus exactly how near we are to the time when Christ calls for His Bride, the Church. This fact—that Jesus Christ is, for all born-again believers, soon to break through all the depressing news to take His own into Heaven—should excite us.

The first of the factors I see as profoundly setting the stage for the Tribulation era, thus for the Rapture of the Church, involves China’s sudden emergence to prominence on the geopolitical scene.

For centuries, China was a building giant that seemingly chose to stay sequestered behind the Great Wall. It had little major influence. Then the communist takeover gave the vast nation a presence that represented a threat, but one that could be controlled by the greater powers of the West—and even, to some extent, by a Soviet regime that didn’t want Mao Tse-tung to get too far out of line.

China has emerged, as we all know, to become an economic force that, in conjunction with its military presence, some say can nearly rival that of the US. It has become the great, hegemonic power of all of Asia. It is even building entire islands in the South China Sea just to establish a military presence to challenge anyone who dares to enter those waters.

America, it is sad to say, has provided much of the funding for that military burgeoning through insane trade deals of the past. And now, the communist leadership of China is beginning to assert its ever-increasing power. We see some of this through the following:

U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr warned of a range of threats from China including propaganda efforts surrounding the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and efforts to interfere in U.S. elections. In an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Barr described Chinese efforts as a ‘full-court blitzkrieg’ across multiple fronts, which he said includes meddling in US elections, exercising control over key supply chains and promoting disinformation about the coronavirus. (“AG Barr Says China in ‘full-court blitzkrieg’ to Undermine US Elections and Institutions,” Fox News, Rapture Ready News, April 10, 2020)

Many students of Bible prophecy have long viewed China as a leading part of the “kings of the east” army foretold to invade the Occidental world across a dried-up Euphrates River. This is prophetically scheduled to take place during the Tribulation era (see Revelation chapters 9 and 16).

I have termed China “the king of the kings of the east.” Certainly they are swiftly moving into position to fulfill this role.

The second element in the news today that I believe is setting the stage for the coming Tribulation involves Iran.

That nation, which occupies much of the territory of the ancient Persian Empire, is scheduled prophetically to attack Israel in “the latter days,” meaning, I take it, in the post-Rapture era.

Ezekiel the prophet, in chapters 38 and 39, calls it the “Gog-Magog” force, consisting, we believe, of Russia, Iran, and Turkey, along with lesser nations. The following brings to light Iran’s preparation for that assault:

The national security and foreign policy committee for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s parliament declared that Tehran will move forward with its uranium enrichment process, triggering sharp criticism from the US State Department on Thursday. (“Iran Defies EU, Declaring Continued Nuclear Uranium Enrichment,” by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, Rapture Ready News, April 10, 2020)

Iran’s defiance of demands by the US president, the European Union, and especially by Israel for that nation dismantle its nuclear weapons facilities puts the region on track for a prophetic fulfillment. The very mountains that reportedly house these facilities are foretold to suffer catastrophic destruction. Many of us believe it will be Israel that destroys the nuclear capability of its chief nemesis.

The third current new items that I believe shows the nearness of the Tribulation is seen in the following:

In light of the growing demand by the Israeli public, several major Israeli rabbis ruled on the subject and for the first time ruled that it was now permissible to begin the Passover Temple service. As a result of that ruling, the rabbis sent a letter to the Prime Minister requesting that he allow the korban Pesach to take place.

The Sanhedrin emphasized that the plan to bring the altar to the Temple Mount was entirely consistent with President Trump’s recently released Deal of the Century which recognized Israel’s full sovereignty over the site. (“Historic First: Israel’s Top Rabbis Call on Netanyahu to Allow Temple Service to Begin on Temple Mount,” Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, Breaking Israel News, Rapture Ready News, April 10, 2020)

The request was rejected because of feared ramifications of probable conflict with Muslim forces and complications presented by the coronavirus.

However, the demands by the Jews in the area that Temple worship be allowed are growing. The almost completed plans for rebuilding the Temple and the already-prepared instruments of worship assure that the prophecies concerning the Tribulation Temple is nearing fulfillment.

With prophetic stage-setting for the Tribulation in overdrive, the nearness of the Rapture of the Church can’t be overemphasized.

Depression, a deep mood of foreboding, is never far away in times like we’re enduring right now. There are so many different takes on COVID-19 that it’s impossible to form one’s own thoughts on matters involved. The claims and suppositions concerning prospects for the future are so varied—and, in most cases, so terrible—that some are driven to suicide.

Therefore, it’s difficult to get our brains around the severity, or lack thereof, of what we face. It is even harder to discern fact from fiction—or worse, truth from deliberate misdirection. But the information on coronavirus and all attendant to it keeps coming at us, and those informed are deeply affected by that information—psychologically, spiritually, and even physically, in some cases.

Anyone listening to the daily briefing by the Trump administration and its highly regarded medical authorities staff is hard-pressed to get a handle on which way this disease is headed. It is even more problematic to try to determine what the economic picture will look like in the coming weeks and months. Will the pandemic pass, or are we melting into a situation that will devolve into national and world depression—one from the likes of which there is no chance of recovery?

Will, as the president hopes, there be a turnaround by the middle of the year, with medical breakthroughs and the virus dying in the heat of the summer months? Will business rebound from almost total shutdown to people going back to work and the economy soaring again to a time of boom? Will social distancing and sequestering in our homes get rid of the virus?

Or will the disease be without cure or preventative vaccine for months and years, bringing death and economic devastation never before experienced by mankind?

It’s all out there in the minute-by-minute briefings and reports. It is there in the ever-present punditry on networks and through cable channels. It is, in playing with a line from Dickens, the worst of times that might once again be the best of times.

Also, the obverse is there in the blogs, news reports, and opinion pieces from many sources that cut pathways of information through the blogosphere and other alternative media. This is the worst of times, period, and the good times are almost certainly gone forever.

Just a cursory look at a couple of the worst-of-times forecasts—feared by some to never end—can indeed produce a near incapacity for hope of recovery.

• The coronavirus is all part of the Cloward-Piven Strategy to collapse America. COVID-19 is, the blog writer declares, part of an eight-step plan from leftists/socialists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven from 1966 that was designed to destroy the US from within.

The writer gives the eight steps of the plan, asserting that it is being currently implemented. He concludes, I take it, that all elements of the plan have either happened or are currently being exponentially exacerbated by this present crisis.

1. Taking control of the nation’s healthcare
2. Increasing the level of poverty so people must get assistance
3. Increasing debt to an unsustainable level so taxes can be raised to meet the crisis
4. Getting rid of private gun ownership so the police state can be created
5. Massively increasing the welfare state, taking control of every aspect of US citizens’ lives (food, housing, and income)
6. Taking over education, controlling what people read and what they learn about the nation (revision of history)
7. Taking over in area of religion, removing prayer and any mention of God
8. Dividing the nation into classes, pitting one against the other so one must provide welfare for the other. (Taken from Rapture Ready News, April 4, 2020, Geoffrey Grider, “Now the End Begins”)

The writer further declares:

[Steps] 1-5 and 8 are being executed right now in how our government is reacting to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, with steps 6 and 7 already having been implemented since 2008. The American economy is being split into pieces right now by the combination of a $2 trillion bailout with more coming, Americans under stay-at-home orders, and with more people right now on unemployment in two weeks of the coronavirus crisis than in the second year of the Great Depression of 1929.

America as we know it cannot and will not survive a three-month lockdown, it will fall and there is no question about that.

• The Coronavirus is part of China’s plan to defeat America. Another writer believes the COVID-19 crisis is a setup to bring down the much hated America and its leading role in the world. The writer writes that China accuses American soldiers of deliberately introducing the virus in China, as part of Chinese plans to give cover for the coming attack on the US. 

The communist regime, so it goes, will soon attack infrastructure and other American assets in cyberspace and elsewhere. That government has begun, the writer declares, to blame America for the pandemic, thus to have a reason that justifies the inevitable attack when it comes. This, he believes, will then escalate into a military action, and this nation’s internal forces, who are traitorous to America as founded, will do all they can to prevent America’s defense against the Chinese assaults. This is because these revolutionists believe the United States is at the root of all the world’s problems in one way or the other.

It is certain that the dire, apocalyptic, warnings far outnumber the hopes for recovery from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic—either the health effects or the economic effects. Many among those who study Bible prophecy believe the Tribulation, itself, has begun. The end of the world is upon us.

But, Jesus told His disciples—and us by extension—that for believers (such as those immediate disciples who were just about to go into the Church Age or Age of Grace) that the end wasn’t yet.

The Lord prophesied that before the era of Tribulation comes, believers will live during a time when all the signals He foretold will BEGIN to come to pass (Luke 21:28). He told believers to look up and lift their heads in anticipation when these things BEGIN to come to pass, because He, their Redeemer (the blessed hope). was coming to rescue them.

He even told us what that time will be like. It will be a time of buying, selling, marrying, planting, and building. He said nothing of worldwide depression. It will be just like the days of Lot when He will next “reveal” Himself in a spectacular moment. It will be a time of extreme wickedness, but with commerce and even hedonistic pleasures humming right along. That’s what Lot’s day was like, we know, from reading Genesis chapter 19.

It cannot be claimed, and I certainly do not say, that things right now look in any way rosy. They do not. I fully understand the reasons for many at this moment fearing the nation and the world will at any moment collapse into apocalyptic rubble.

But I prefer to believe Jesus and His promises over any news report, ideology, or religious wind of doctrine. He is our One, True Reliance.

He has promised to keep His own out of the time of Tribulation (Revelation 3:10).

I hope you, too, are comforting yourselves with these Words Jesus gave the Apostle Paul to write:

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

Hurricane season brings the phenomenon known as a “steering mechanism.” I’m no meteorologist, of course, but know enough to understand that, in the United States, winds aloft blowing from west to east have an effect on hurricanes approaching our mainland from the Atlantic.

These winds can “steer” those massive storm systems away from the continent and back into the Atlantic. This is usually the case.

The news media plays these things for all they’re worth. They, with wind-blown reporters standing with their microphones on the shoreline, paint the worst-case scenarios each time there is a huge hurricane being generated by warm Atlantic waters as the storm heads eastward from the Horn of Africa or somewhere over that way. More often than not, then, the storm has less effect on our coasts than anticipated. The steering mechanism—these winds aloft—have done their job and lessened the severity of the hurricanes.

However, sometimes these steering currents can force storms up the coast. They then do severe damage to places in more northern latitudes rather than on the lower coastal areas where they initially were expected to make an impact.

It seems we are now in the middle of the most severe moments of an end-times storm. This isn’t the case, however. We are in the process of watching the Tribulation storm out in the proverbial roaring sea as it threatens to land full-force.

The full-blown hurricane will come. Bible prophecy makes that forecast abundantly clear.

But there are winds aloft, so to speak. They are the steering mechanism that will determine when the storm will become full-blown and where it will make its full impact upon the generation that will endure the storm and all the wrath its power will generate.

I think we can look at COVID-19, or coronavirus, if you prefer, as a major steering mechanism in this end of the Church Age. It is like that powerful wind aloft in meteorological terms, shaping things to come not only for America, but for the entire world.

One example of the way this pandemic is steering the great, incoming Tribulation storm is its movement being used by the globalists who are attempting to force America and the world into the model the globalists elite have been trying their best to bring about.

A news excerpt or two perhaps will illustrate.

A Rockefeller Foundation report produced 10 years ago imagined a viral pandemic as the perfect catalyst to implement “tighter top-down government control and more authoritarian leadership,” eerily similar to what’s unfolding during the current coronavirus outbreak.

The report, entitled, “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” outlines several possible future global scenarios, including a “Lock Step” vision in which a “new influenza strain…infects nearly 20 percent of the global population…killing 8 million in just seven months…”

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit,” the scenario begins. “Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain—originating from wild geese—was extremely virulent and deadly.”

“The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains,” the scenario continues, describing almost the exact events of 2020 in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.” (“Globalist Think Tank Laid Out Scenario Where Virus Outbreak Prompts Authoritarian Crackdown,” Rapture Ready News, March28, 2020)

Another news item further illustrates the effects the pandemic-steering mechanism is having in this present hour, eight years after the Rockefeller Foundation Report’s scenario for their globalist ambitions.

The United Kingdom’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called on world leaders to form a “temporary” global government to resolve both the medical and economic crises caused by the coronavirus pandemic reports the Guardian.

The ex-Labour prime minister stressed the need for a task force comprised of world leaders, health experts as well as leaders of the international organizations that could enjoy executive powers to execute the response.

A virtual meeting of the G-20 group of both developed and developing countries, chaired by Saudi Arabia, is scheduled to take place on Thursday. Brown lamented that the meeting didn’t include the UN security council. “This is not something that can be dealt with in one country,” he said. “There has to be a coordinated global response.” (David Sidman, “Ex British Prime Minister Calls on World Leaders to Form ‘One World Government’,” Breaking Israel News, March 26, 2020)

Yet another excerpt of today’s news even more dramatically illustrates the steering mechanism’s effects. It is a more profound example of the supernaturally generated winds aloft, I propose, because God’s prophetic time clock, the nation Israel, is directly in the path of the incoming, apocalyptic storm.

[Israel’s Prime Minister] Netanyahu put out a direct public appeal while dealing with an escalating coronavirus crisis on Tuesday, saying, “Benny Gantz, this is a moment which tests leadership and national responsibility. The citizens of Israel need a unity government that will work to save their lives and their livelihoods. This is not the time for a fourth election. We both know that the gaps between us are small, and we can overcome them. Let’s meet now and establish a unity government. I am waiting for you.” (Dov Lipman, “Unity Government Formed: Netanyahu Stays in Charge…For a Half Term,” Breaking Israel News, March 27, 2020)

The prime minister, in addressing the Israeli people, urged all to stay home, because, he said, “one who infects one person is akin to infecting the whole world.”

He said he doesn’t know when the pandemic will end. He reminded the people, however, that during past plagues, the Jews were stuck in exile. He said:

The coronavirus joins the family of other deadly plagues throughout history—the Black Plague, cholera, and the Spanish flu. When those plagues ran their course in previous centuries, we (the Jews) didn’t have a state. But today we do have a state.

He encouraged his audience by saying, “This gives us unlimited options to control our destiny,” adding, “we are one people, one country and now is the time for unity.”

He concluded:

[The Jewish] month of Nisan that begins tonight is the month of spring and of exodus from Egypt. It reminds us that our nation withstood intense storms. It gives us strength. It gives us hope. We overcame Pharaoh. And although the battle is difficult and challenging, we will overcome the coronavirus with God’s help and with your help, people of Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu is correct; with God’s help, the Jewish people—a remnant—will get past the storm to come. The storm the Israeli prime minister seems to anticipate isn’t yet here. It will be horrific, to be sure. The steering mechanism—the strange, supernatural winds that are blowing—are shaping things prophetically, precisely as God’s Word has foretold.

If you know Jesus Christ as your Savior, you won’t experience the most terrible storm ever to rage upon this fallen planet. Again, the following is the prescription that will protect you from the Tribulation pandemic storm to come:

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

Some years ago I wrote the following:

Israel is the one nation in human history that the Creator of all things chose to be “a people unto himself”: “For thou [art] an holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that [are] upon the face of the earth” (Deuteronomy 7:6).

Jehovah made promises to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that are staggering in their implications. He promised to bless those who bless the nation that would spring from the loins of these men, and warned about His curse for those who cursed those people. God said to Abraham, “Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:1–3).

Certainly, this promise can easily be verified as coming true throughout recorded history. The modern record, as a matter of fact, is contemporary proof of the veracity of the Almighty and His prophetic promises. Historians–except those blinded by the great deceiver, Lucifer—concede, sometime reluctantly, that Israel’s history in ancient times was a record of greatness. David and Solomon’s exploits and accomplishments are legendary, but built upon archaeological facts. Israel has achieved greatness among the nations of this earthly sphere.

My words of those earlier times have continued to prove true, because the facts involved come directly from God’s Word. Israel remains an amazing fulfillment of the stage being set for the ultimate accomplishment of prophecy yet future.

We’ve looked many times at recent examples of such stage-setting. The nations of Russia, Iran, Turkey, and others are preparing for their fateful plunge southward over “the mountains of Israel.” It will be the attack Ezekiel the prophet said would come from the military coalition he called Gog and Magog.

Those nations are in constant, interactive ferment north of Jerusalem. Every day there are reports of this intermingling. Sometimes they are against each other, as when Turkey threatens Russia’s client state, Syria. Sometimes Russia and Turkey can be seen hugging, like when Russia’s Vladimir Putin recently met with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as they continue to plan how best to divide their aggression in some sort of semi-orderly fashion.

Persia (Iran) is right in the middle of the fermentation taking place. One day—post Rapture, I’m convinced—these three (Russia, Iran, and Turkey) will determine to take Israel’s riches—the riches that God promised His chosen nation long ago.

It is with this as prologue that I want to think a moment on a recent news item, with regard to God’s promises to Abraham all those millennia ago.

To me, the current headlines could not be clearer. The veracity of God’s blessings to the old patriarch is being proven right before our twenty-first-century eyes.

While in Israel the coronavirus outbreak is stil, somehow under control, Iran is rapidly becoming a devastated country as a result of the COVID-19 virus and the Islamist regime is hiding the unprecedented disaster while doing not enough to contain the crisis.

Officially the regime says that 3.500 people were infected with the COVID-19 virus while the official death toll is now 107.

“This disease is a widespread disease. It has reached almost all our provinces and in one sense it’s a global disease,” Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani admitted during a cabinet meeting in Tehran while reaffirming the official data about the corona outbreak.

If we take a look at information coming from non-government sources inside and outside Iran, we will understand Rouhani’s words were an understatement.

First of all, Iranian lawmakers such as Abdul Karim Hosseinzadeh revealed that in the holy Shiite city of Qom and Rasht another Iranian city the situation is so bad that streets are full of dead bodies.

“Corpses in Qom are piling up,” Hosseinzadeh wrote on his Twitter account.

The Iranian MP warned that if the regime doesn’t take appropriate action such as quarantining cities Iran will have the highest death toll in the world. (Yochanan Visser, “Iran Attempting to Hide the Disaster It Faces as the COVID-19 Virus Spreads Out of Control within the Islamic Republic,” Israel National News, May 3, 2020)

I’m aware that we must be cautious of appending to current issues and events God’s holy, prophetic Word through “newspaper exegesis.” However, it is proper and even expected to examine whether certain issues and events taking place harbor prophetic truth.

The Ayatollahs of Iran have for years cursed Israel in the vilest terms. They lead in chants, “Death to Israel!” They call Jews the worst names of degradation they can conjure.

We must consider whether the Lord’s promises recorded in Genesis 12 are being proven true in today’s headlines with regard to the coronavirus.

It’s a thing one might accurately say is a prophetic paradox. Some even might claim it’s being two-faced, wishy-washy, or hypocritical. But, it is fact.

To declare that the world is in the midst of climate change is a truism. But that change isn’t out of ordinary for our planet. It is something that happens continually; the climate goes from one season to the next. The Bible edicts that there will be changes in the seasons until God remakes the heavens and earth one eternal day.

The globalist, progressive purveyors of the “global warming” mantra, now altered to the mantra of “climate change,” mean by their diatribes that mankind is wrecking the environment. Mankind alone, therefore, can fix “Mother Earth.” Only humans, not some existential God, at best (who probably isn’t there at any rate), can save the environment.

Those who observe Bible prophecy, especially from the pre-Trib perspective, almost always come down on the side of the view that people are not destroying the planet’s ecology—at least, not through physical activity. We can’t destroy the earth, because we haven’t got the power to do so. Like all of His creation, including human history, God ultimately has His almighty hand on it. He is in complete control, even though He granted us volition, the right to self will.

Those who believe that humans are here by happenstance, such as in the theory of evolution or some other model, believe that we, following our random placement in the sphere of the living, are masters of our own destiny. Many among these religiously believe that through our technological development, using fossil fuels that contaminate and corrupt the geophysical elements, we’re making life unsustainable.

America is seen as the greatest culprit in all of this, even though China, India, and others put far greater amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere. America is held as chief culprit by the globalists elite, of course, because they want our nation’s great wealth (or, I should say “perceived wealth” because of the national debt) to be brought into the internationalists’ orbit so they can plunder it as they see fit. This is why, as we’ve looked at many times, there is such hatred for a nationalist like President Donald J. Trump. He believes American citizens should be in control of America’s assets. Of course, this, too, is subject to violation by the corrupt government practices within the US. The Congress and entrenched, corrupt, bureaucratic entities siphon America’s wealth unabated.

All this said, the climate-change mantra continues and grows with a religious fervor that will be the feverish rallying cry around which Antichrist will one day build his regime, at least initially.

So it would seem that we who look at things from the pre-Trib perspective deny climate change.

Well, yes and no.

We believe and report events that point to the wrap-up of the Church Age, the Age of Grace. We acknowledge that changing weather patterns are primary indicators that Jesus Christ will one day—we believe soon—step out on the clouds of glory and call all born-again believers to Himself in the Rapture!

The growing weather disturbances and other strange phenomena within the natural world indicate the wrap-up of this phase of human history, setting the stage for all biblically prophetic fulfillment.

However, we deny climate change taking place that is caused by our sins against nature—i.e., polluting the atmosphere, etc. Rather, we say it is our sin nature, our anti-God, spiritual transgression that is bringing on nature’s rebellion against such comportment.

Remember Jesus, when He came into Jerusalem riding the little donkey while the people shouted “Hosanna!” The Judaizers told Him to make them shut up. However, Jesus said that if they were to keep quiet, the very stones would cry out. Nature, itself, would shout that He had arrived as Israel’s Messiah.

Well, Jesus is about to arrive again, this time as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Mankind is for the most part denying Him. This anti-God rebellion is causing the very elements of creation to cry out in acknowledgment of His majesty and power.

We who observe prophecy acknowledge that the proliferating weather and other strange geophysical phenomena, many stories about which you can read on any given day on Rapture Ready news, are indeed taking place. However, the earth will not be destroyed by man or any other entity. Earth will be judged by God’s wrath because of mankind’s rebellion. Our atmosphere and existence in general will be judged for Israel’s sake and to bring about a remnant for a magnificently restored earth.

The thing you and I should do with regard to observing these things is to make sure we know Jesus Christ for salvation and forewarn others after giving them God’s salvation message. Then, we will one eternal day hear the Lord say, “Well done, good, faithful, servant. Welcome into the Kingdom, of which you are now joint heir.”