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.”

Dr. Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, is a regular contributor to Fox News and Fox Business channels. The host of one program I regularly listen to on Fox Business is Lou Dobbs. Dr. Jeffress appears on that show weekly.

Dobbs, the program host, recently gave a series of catastrophic possibilities that could soon affect us all:

The coronavirus, he said, was about to blow up into a pandemic. Already, at the time, more than 1,100 people had died. The numbers of those with the coronavirus was exploding in China and had jumped all boundaries to begin proliferating around the globe. The US had at the time only fifteen cases, with no deaths, but the doctors and scientists he had interviewed during the show I last tuned in to and during other programs painted a possibly disastrous scenario even for the US if they couldn’t soon get a handle on how to deal properly with the spread of the disease.

Then, there was the matter of fears of climate change. Many, especially among younger Millennials, fear they have but a dozen or fewer years to live on the planet, because the polar ice caps will melt and drown everyone, or worse. The earth, itself, will be depleted of breathable air due to carbon dioxide emissions and other toxic substances.

Then there is reportedly an asteroid that is to pass near the earth. It probably has done so by the time this article is posted. One pundit said the asteroid was large enough to be a continent-destroyer—capable of decimating all of North America. It was to pass within a million miles of the planet, but that is considered a near miss, according to scientists in the know. It is said to be but one of a number of such space objects headed our way.

Locusts in Africa and other regions are devouring all things edible. They are the largest swarms ever seen in modern history, according to the show’s host and his guests, who speculated what could happen if these creatures ever get to the crops on this continent.

Then, there is the matter of the wildfires and other disasters in Australia that look to be apocalyptic-like catastrophes.

Lou Dobbs then introduced his guest, Dr. Jeffress, by saying, “Pastor, is this the end of days?”

Jeffress, in his usual upbeat way, said something like, “No. It is not the end of days,” then added, somewhat more seriously, something like, “But these are all signals the Bible says will be occurring at the very end of the age before Christ’s return.”

The pastor went on to speak for a few seconds about what Matthew 24 and Revelation have to say about these sorts of signals. Dobbs then talked about the great fear that seemed on the rise, and asked if we should be afraid.

I was very proud of Dr. Jeffress’ answer, which went something like: “The way to not be fearful about these coming things is to make sure that you know the One who controls all these end-of-days signs. Make sure you know Jesus Christ as your Savior.”

I don’t know how many heard the Lou Dobbs program that night. His is program has some of the highest numbers of viewers for its time slot. So, several million at a minimum were listening, I presume.

Regardless of the number of people who watched the program that night, there is a nation and a world full of people who live daily in fear of things coming on the earth. But a more problematic number of people suffer a state of mind that even more egregiously adds to a world pointing in directions other than the one God has prescribed. That mindset consists of almost complete apathy about anything heading down the pike that looks like the age is coming to an end and God’s righteous judgment is on the brink of falling.

Both the fear of things such as climate change, etc., and the apathy infecting the fearless combine to constitute what I call the “end-of-days delirium.” Those who have no fear, especially of God and His judgment, mostly inhabit the Western world. The American populace in particular falls into this category.

The reason? Because of the comfortable, even opulent, lifestyle enjoyed by Americans when compared to the rest of the world.

Europe was, for the most part, long ago given over to the delirium of end-of-days apathy. America is now nearing the end of that exponentially spreading malady.

The progress of this humanistic disease has been eloquently dealt with by Alexander Tytler, a Scottish history professor (1714—1778) who is generally given credit for chronicling the stages of a democracy’s demise. I once filed away its essence as repeated by Kirby Anderson, a radio host and host of Probe Ministries.

If we stay on the road to decay, Anderson relates what awaits us:

The decline of this nation (just as the decline of every other nation) is due to spiritual factors. The political, economic, and social problems we encounter are the symptoms of the spiritual deterioration of a nation…. Each of the great civilizations in the world passed through a series of stages from their birth to their decline to their death. Historians have listed these in ten stages. (1). The first stage moves from bondage to spiritual faith. (2). The second from spiritual faith to great courage. (3). The third stage moves from great courage to liberty. (4). The fourth stage moves from liberty to abundance. (5.) The fifth stage moves from abundance to selfishness. (6.) The sixth stage moves from selfishness to complacency. (7.) The seventh stage moves from complacency to apathy. (8.) The eighth stage moves from apathy to moral decay. (9.) The ninth stage moves from moral decay to dependence (America with her growing addiction and servitude to the government—Socialism—has entered this stage). (10.) And the tenth and last stage moves from dependence to bondage.

Of course, there is the possibility of an eleventh stage, and that would be (11.) total obliteration—full annihilation or Armageddon.

It’s easy to discern that this nation could well be in stages 9 and 10 at this point. The septicemia I term end-of-days delirium has set in.

The only Rx to begin dealing with this disease that is infinitely more toxic than the much-feared coronavirus is that dispensed by the God of Heaven. His Holy Name is Jesus Christ. He will one day make all things right again.

Of all my cogitating on Bible prophecy, the thought just never struck.

I’m partner with Todd Strandberg in raptureready.com. I’ve written hundreds of articles on the subject. I’ve authored entire books devoted just to the topic. Yet I’ve never even thought, much less written about, one particular aspect of the matter. Some might correct me on that, but that is my memory—or failure thereof—on this thing specifically involved.

The topic, the subject, is the Rapture—that stupendous instant when Jesus Christ steps out on the clouds of glory and shouts with the last trump and the voice of an archangel, “Come up here!”

We believe that it will happen in an atomos of time—quicker than it takes for light traveling at 186,000 miles per second to enter the eye and strike the retina. That’s much faster than the eye can blink, I’m told.

Again, we believe that millions of all born-again believers who are alive will vanish in that instant. It will happen all over the world, but perhaps in no place on earth will the great event be witnessed by more people than in America. And, I’m not meaning that this is because there are more Christians—true believers—in the United States than in any other place on the planet. That might be the case, but that isn’t why I state it.

The thought, as I said above, had not crossed my mind until an epiphany came in the form of an email by a Christian sister, whom I presume is a long-time family member of our Rapture Ready website.

Although I won’t mention her name, I will relate a part of her email that struck deeply into my prophecy-watcher alert center:

Terry: Concerning the Rapture discussion about whether or not people will see us leaving when we are caught up. They will certainly see SOMETHING, because there are cameras everywhere constantly filming everybody.

So, if I’m out in the middle of the street talking to one of my neighbors when Jesus suddenly calls me up into the clouds, at least three of my neighbors’ security cameras are going to record my disappearance.  (Where did she go?  She was standing right there talking to Dave and then she just disappeared!”).

Whether we just disappear or can be seen rising up after we are transformed, the cameras at the grocery store, the bank, the jam-cam on I-10, the neighbor’s security camera or doorbell ring camera, all those cameras recording everybody everywhere all over the world are going to capture it all.

Again, this is just an idea that never struck me. But it will surely happen just as she describes, barring an unforeseen EMP attack or other phenomenon that shuts down all cameras in the nation.

Anyone who has watched forensic shows that record crimes in every possible location knows that we’re under constant surveillance. There is no way we can escape the cameras looking down on us from telephone poles, building roofs, or wherever.

Even drones now circle overhead and record every movement we make, both for law enforcement and commercial purposes. Private drones now keep track of us just for amusement and entertainment.

But it’s the cellphone and other devices held by individuals in every town in the country that make the emailer’s observation of special, prophetic significance.

People are literally filming on their phones every moment of every day and night, especially in America, where so many people have smart devices. There is no doubt that the disappearance of people around towns all over America will be captured in that staggering instant.

The news-gathering entities around the US will be soliciting every video they can find. Social media venues will go crazy with quantities of footage that will likely almost melt down many websites. It will be the most filmed event in history!

Many of those video recorders will still be going when they hit the ground, having been dropped by Christians doing the filming. These, too, will give credence to the message of those of us who have been teaching the truth of the pre-Trib Rapture.

Perhaps it is the many such videos that will convince a great number of people who have heard our message. The message? That Jesus has called believers to Himself. Those who see and are thus convinced might then seek earnestly all information left behind that forewarns of what they have just witnessed.

My thanks to my emailer friend who stimulated the thought about history’s most viewed event!

It has been taking place for decades, even longer. The American and world public have become anesthetized, or at the very least numbed, to the effects. At least half of this nation’s population seems to be in a near-comatose state, in consideration of what is right and wrong in terms of what the founding fathers meant in establishing a constitutional republic.

I refer to the incessant propagandizing of the people by a news conglomerate that mimics in most every way the Big Brother news leviathan of George Orwell’s novel 1984. The author invented the term “doublespeak,” defined as language that deliberately disguises, distorts, or reverses meaning to further an agenda, often by governments, corporations, marketers, or other power structures.

The novel tells of a socially stratified, post-nuclear war world ruled by three superstates—Oceania, Eastasia, and Eurasia. The ruling elite keep the “proles” under their oppressive governmental thumb. These are the worker bees who are given just enough entertainment and mind-altering things to imbibe to keep their noses to the grindstone of serving the state and to keep their minds off the machinations of those who govern them.

We have, since the late 1950s, and even before then, been victims of the emergence of Orwell’s 1949 vision of a dystopian, news-propaganda monster. It appears that perhaps two-thirds of the American populace has fallen into Orwell’s “prole” category within today’s political process.

Perhaps this figure is a bit of an exaggeration, but the astonishing disconnect is troubling. According to reactions I see in the matter of people understanding whether information they get is reality or propaganda, no other conclusion can be reached. Millions are falling for the lies that they should be allowed to do what is right in their own eyes. Anyone who holds up biblical or even constitutional founding principles as the way we should comport ourselves is met with angry protestation.

Those of us who believe abortion, homosexuality, use of illicit drugs, pornography, fornication, adultery, and other such evils are wrong, are seen by a vast section of the nation’s population as the evil side of American society and culture.

We have witnessed the Orwellian-like news organizations of our day in action. These join that vast number in pigeonholing Christians and “moralists,” as they would have it, into a corner they call “hate-mongering.”

A campaign planner of one political party’s candidates recently called all who oppose the leftist-agenda Nazis. He then proceeded to, in Hitler-Aryan fashion, tell those around him what he will do to that opposition once his party wins. He said he would summarily kill some and put others in gulag. The rest would go into reeducation camps to get their minds right. The mainstream, Orwellian news media, so far as I can determine, said nothing to condemn this campaign planner’s rhetoric.

Evil doesn’t change. The rhetoric, under the right conditions, will become murderous implementation when opportunity arises.

There are still those with satanic-controlled minds who would perpetrate on Americans the same sort of atrocities the Nazi beasts inflicted upon the Jews and other victims of those days.

There is coming a time, God’s Word foretells, when people will fall totally for the doublespeak and newspeak of those horrendous times. The ultimate Big Brother will forge a regime so powerful and evil in influence that no one, in human terms, can resist. He will have the consummate propaganda machine to brainwash and reinforce his dictatorship’s absolute control. His minions are now being prepared, in my view, to carry out his inculcation of the “proles” of that Tribulation time. They will be all who are left behind because of their unbelief when Christ calls believers in the Rapture.

Today’s mainstream news organizations are acting as a prep school for inflicting the future lies of the son of perdition. So it is not too far-fetched to see a bit into the future and apply prophetic Scripture, based upon what we see developing at present. The nation and world are being prepared for the ultimate manifestation of the Orwellian world the author forecast with the release of his 1949 novel.

Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 9–12)

You don’t have to be among the “proles.” Accept Christ right this moment. You will go instantaneously to be with Jesus Christ in an atomos of time—faster than the eye can blink—when He says “Come up here!” (Revelation 4:1).

To hear Him when He calls, follow the Apostle Paul’s soul-saving instruction:

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)