I once wrote the following in an article titled “Israel Betrayed by U.S.?”:

Israel today stands in the bull’s eye of rage. This is true in the case of being targeted by the Jewish state’s perennial antagonists, the Arab and Persian Islamist enemies. It is true in the case of the entire international community, whose constituent nations see Israel as the congestive blockage to regional and world peace. But it is the growing antagonism by United States presidential administration operatives that is most disconcerting while this beleaguered planet wobbles toward a time of unprecedented trouble.

As a matter of fact, that coming time of unparalleled strife that will bring all nations to Armageddon is termed “the time of Jacob’s trouble” by Isaiah the prophet: “Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble” (Jeremiah 30:7a).

And, it is Jacob’s trouble–the prophesied end-of-days dastardly treatment of Israel by the nations of earth–that will cause the God of heaven to bring them to Armageddon. This is what the prophet Joel foretells: “I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land” (Joel 3:2).

Will America Betray Israel?

We come to the question “Israel Betrayed by U.S.?” The article’s title is in the form of a question because like so much of this American administration’s dealings, the “transparency” presidential candidate Barack Obama and then President Obama promised is not forthcoming. Obama’s intended dealing with Israel is wrapped in an impenetrable fog of political doublespeak…

Since the time of that writing, a number of years have passed. Mr. Obama began his administration almost from the very first day by treating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu like a White House exterminator–having him come in a door other than the front entrance reserved for dignitaries who are honored with official reception by the president.

The president, shortly after that first meeting with Netanyahu, abruptly left the prime minister and went to have a private dinner, presumably with his family. It was an undeniable snub.

This was apparently meant to be within keeping with his promise to have “the most transparent administration ever.” It was certainly transparent that this president has an utter disregard for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel, our number-one ally in the Middle East, if not our top ally in the entire world.

Subsequent snubs and disrespectful attempts to bully the Israeli leader and the Jewish state are too numerous to get into. Obama’s attempts to intervene within the sovereign affairs of Israel have not abated as of this late hour in the Obama administration. In fact, they have increased dramatically.

While there is less than nine months of his time as president remaining, Mr. Obama is said to be planning many interventions into Israeli autonomy.

In yet another audacious display of intrusion into the affairs of Israel’s dealings with its internal enemies–many of whom plot and carry out deadly attacks against Jewish citizens–American’s diplomatic enforcers are at work. Ordered to do so by Barack Obama, America’s State Department minions join with those determined to force Israel to bow to international demands in the matter of housing construction in volatile areas of contention.

One news item reports:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Diplomats say the U.S. will endorse a tough new tone with Israel in an upcoming international report. The report is to take the Jewish state to task over settlements, demolitions and property seizures on land the Palestinians claim for a future state…

The harsh language marks a subtle shift. Washington has traditionally tempered statements by the so-called “Quartet” of mediators with careful diplomatic language…(Source: Matthew Lee and Bradley Klapper, “US to Take Tougher Tone on Israeli Settlements in New Report,” Associated Press, 5/7/16).

Early on in the first Obama administration, the pressure to force Israel to give in to diplomatic pressures of land for peace became a driving force in U.S./Israeli relations. The effort has only ramped up since that time. It is as if this president has an obsessive compulsion to impose his will before his time is ended in the White House.

My personal sense is that it is indeed the president’s compulsion that is in play. Because it is the nation Israel we are considering, however, there are also far more powerful intrigues involved. Ephesians 6:12 is at the center of this last minute drive to make the rearrangements that Israel’s greatest hater wants accomplished, it seems to me.

But, my personal sense of prophetic importance of what all of this vitriol pointed toward Israel means is of little consequence. What matters is what the prophetic Word of God says about His chosen nation and its destiny, both near-term and in the ultimate sense.

In that regard, the things we will see develop in these days and months leading up to the November election and beyond can be of profound significance. And in the America and the world vs Israel struggle, we can find little reassurance that anything good can come forth.

America has entered a most dangerous time.

Road rage has always been something that has confounded me. My first exposure to the phenomenon came in a humorous fashion. It was presented on The Wonderful World of Disney in animation. One of Mickey Mouse’s close pals–the floppy-eared, buck-toothed Goofy–was the featured character.

The narrator talked about the Goofy character, while the human-like canine went about preparing for work one morning. The narrator told the viewer that this was the gentlest of creatures–a person who wouldn’t harm a fly.

Goofy was polite to his wife and children; he peacefully read his newspaper at the breakfast table while sipping his coffee at a leisurely pace.

Goofy got up from the table, wiped his mug with a napkin, folded the newspaper, and put it beneath his arm. He grasped his briefcase, put his fedora on his head, kissed Mrs. Goofy goodbye, hugged the little Goofies, and opened the door to his garage.

All the while the narrator was telling the viewer just how soft-hearted and, indeed, how wonderful a husband, father, and citizen was our about-to-be work-commuter. Mr. Goofy opened the driver-side door to his sedan, sat in the seat–all the while a tranquil, most pleasant half-smile on his mug.

Then it happened! The moment he grasped the steering wheel, a profound transformation took place. His mug contorted into a vicious, snarling countenance. His smile became a fang-bearing scowl of evil. His eyes widened and became red with bulging blood-veins popping to the surface, his black eyes shifting angrily while drool seeped from the sides of the jowls and he snorted flames and smoke from his big snout.

Goofy became the supreme picture of rage. The narrator described the transformation and gave the viewer the complete account of Goofy the maniac’s trip into the city of his workplace.

Soon after that program aired, I became a regular driver, having reached the age of getting a driver’s license. However, I can’t recall at the time having experienced road rage myself, or even having seen it take place in the real world. But, the creators of that Disney program obviously had experienced the phenomenon.

A little later in life I certainly witnessed the fact that road rage exists. The phenomenon seems to be less and less a phenomenon–rather, has turned into a “new normal” for driver comportment.

The latest incident we might recall is when a former NFL football player was shot to death while he and a female passenger were on a city street. The former player apparently bumped a car in front of him for blocking him from proceeding. He then steered the car around the car he had bumped.

The driver of the car that was bumped sped after the offending vehicle. When he caught up with the former player’s car, the offended driver fired several shots into the other car, resulting in the former player being fatally wounded.

Such reports are not at all uncommon today. It’s as if the human mind has lost all control of reasoning ability while behind the wheel. I believe the phenomenon–now the new normal–might be part of the apostle Paul’s perilous times of 2 Timothy chapter 3. There seems little doubt that today men (and women) drivers are increasingly “fierce” and “incontinent,” as the KJV puts it. That people are without ability to govern their tempers is a bottom-line characterization of the human condition that could legitimately be concluded. Angers flare out of control over the slightest perceived personal disrespect. Too often, such incidents end with bloodshed.

All of the above is but representation in microcosm of the larger manifestation of the ferocity and incontinence (lack of control) that is raging across the world at present. 

On a much more profound scale of uncontrolled fury, a corpulent little tyrant In North Korea starves his people, while pouring money into military and nuclear technology with which to threaten the world. The mullahs of Islam incite hatred, encouraging all-out jihad against Israel and all who won’t bow the knee to Allah. In American inner cities, organizations devoted to anarchy and mayhem for the sake of acquiring and/or maintaining power over their ethnic masses go about tearing down the societal fiber of America’s culture. Total chaos appears to be but a major crisis away–perhaps in the very near future. Deteriorating economic conditions on a national and global scale could well be the catalyst for producing such crisis, many experts warn.

Everything looks to be out of control, while those elitists who want to bring all peoples back to Babel and a one-world order of absolute rule search for avenues to reach their utopian goals.

Uncertainty is the disorder of the day, however, no matter how far reaching are the programs and manipulations of the would-be globalist masters. This world, with its myriad building troubles, should have by now imploded from untenable, economic pressures or else exploded in nuclear fire because of road rage-like insanity in planetary conflict.

But, planet earth wags on. The uncontrollable is for some reason still under control.

God raises up kings and nations, and He brings them down. Nothing within all of creation is ever beyond His controlling hand.

Whether considering worries about the upcoming presidential election, fear of North Korea and its nukes, ISIS and its barbarous terrorism, or the fearful diagnosis of a devastating illness or loss of those we love on a personal basis, all is under control at all times. There is no situation, no matter how profound or how personal, that the Lord of Heaven doesn’t control.

The key to being at peace within the safety and assurance of God’s control of all circumstance is to be within the heavenly Father’s family.

This relationship is achieved, of course, only through acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior (Romans 10: 9-10). The Lord appeals to all of mankind to consider the matter of His absolute control and authority over all that exists.

“Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in: That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity. Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.” (Isaiah 40:21-26)

Note: This April 22 was the fifth-year anniversary of the Good Friday trip I was given to somewhere on the perimeter of Heaven. It remains as vivid in my every waking moment today as right after it happened.

I wanted to again present the articles I wrote at the end of that year–2011–because I believe we are so very near the time of Christ’s call to us–“Come up hither!” (Revelation 4:1).

Also, I wish to announce my just completed book which is now being prepared for publication at New Leaf Publishing Group. Rapture Ready…Or Not:15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind is scheduled for release July 1, 2016.

I’m certain in the deepest regions of my spirit that this book is a major reason for the round trip to that other dimension on that Good Friday five years ago.

I’m having considerable trouble exercising patience as this book approaches its release. I just can’t wait to share it with you.

Without intending to attract unto myself any aggrandizement–for the Lord of Heaven is the only Person deserving such–I believe I was commissioned to deliver this message. Rapture Ready…Or Not, this generation is on the brink of God’s most profound intervention into human history since the day the Great Flood of Noah’s day burst upon the world.

Here is Part II of that December 2011 Nearing Midnight article.

             ___

There is no specific signal that presages the Rapture of believers in the Scriptures. That calling by Christ to those who know Him as Savior will be unannounced and instantaneous. Paul the apostle’s words inform us of that stunning event: “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).

Paul says further: “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).

The website Todd Strandberg began in 1987, before the internet was making an impact to any extent on life in America and throughout the world, encompasses what Christ expects every born- again believer to become. Todd gave it the name raptureready.com, a nomenclature defining a spiritual condition eternally crucial to each and every living individual.

All who have died during this Church Age (Age of Grace) are now beyond getting “Rapture ready.” They are either “Rapture ready” or not. People alive at the present time, if they don’t know Christ as Savior, still have opportunity to get Rapture ready. All who are saved (know Jesus as their Savior) are Rapture ready in one sense, but might not be Rapture ready in another. We will try to clarify these matters. It is most important that we do so.

I testified in my commentary last week of instantaneously standing before a throng of heavenly witnesses (Hebrews 12:1-3) the moment my heart stopped beating. This happened three separate times. Each time my heart ceased to beat, I was somewhere in eternity. God the Holy Spirit’s assurance of where I was and who the beautiful, cheering young people were becomes more strongly burned into my own spirit by the day.

The only action I have taken in my life to warrant being instantly transported to that heavenly realm was to accept Christ as my Savior. There is no other action I could take while in this physical life to assure my instant transport into those stunning surroundings. While my near-death experience wasn’t the Rapture, of course, I believe with all that is within my spiritual understanding that it was a type of what awaits the generation of Christians alive at the time of that great event, as described by the Apostle Paul’s prophetic words as given above. At that future moment of Rapture, all who have died during the Church Age, or who are living at the time, will stand not before a throng of witnesses as I did, but before the Lord Jesus, Himself! “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

All who are living today who do not know Jesus Christ as Savior stand in mortal danger. When their hearts beat the final time, they will find themselves in the same, unimaginably horrid place as the rich man described by Jesus in the story of the rich man and Lazarus (read Luke 16:19-31). Likewise, the moment Christ says at the Rapture: “Come up hither” (Revelation 4:1), the person who hasn’t accepted Christ will be left behind on earth to face a time in human history of which the Lord Jesus Himself said: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved” (Matthew 24:21-22a).

Being Rapture Ready

So, it is imperative to make clear what it means to be Rapture ready. Our eternal souls hang in the balance of God’s impending judgment. The Lord of Heaven must judge sin, because He cannot abide sin in His holy presence. No sin can enter the gates of Heaven. And this is where God’s magnificent love comes to the forefront of His dealing with each of us who are sinners.

He loves you and me so much that He sent His Son–God in the flesh, Jesus Christ—to come to earth to be the perfect sin-sacrifice, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, whose blood takes away the sin of the world. To be Rapture ready, you and I must be “saved” from our sins and made pure in the righteousness found only in Christ. When we believe God and accept Christ as Savior, we become Rapture ready in the eternal sense. We will go to Heaven upon our death, or will be raptured when Jesus steps out on the clouds of glory and shouts: “Come up hither!”

But, there is another meaning of being Rapture ready. Each Christian is responsible for being Rapture ready in this sense. To be Rapture ready as a child of God means we are to be living our lives in a way pleasing to God. We are to lift the name of Jesus so that men, women, and children will be drawn to Him for salvation. We are to be watching for His any-moment return in the Rapture.

Let me make it clear. I believe the Word of God tells us that every person who is saved through the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ will go to be with Him at the moment of Rapture, no matter the state of his or her fellowship with the Lord. We will ALL stand before Him, Paul tells us.

However, to be truly Rapture ready as a Christian means that we are living life in such a biblically prescribed way that when Jesus calls us we will not be ashamed to look Him in His omniscient eyes. We should desire above all else to hear Him say “Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matthew 25:23b).

End-times world conditions today are unmistakable. That face-to-face meeting could take place at any moment!

Note: This April 22 is the fifth-year anniversary of the Good Friday trip I was given to somewhere on the perimeter of Heaven. It remains as vivid in my every waking moment today as right after it happened.

I wanted to again present the articles I wrote at the end of that year–2011–because I believe we are so very near the time of Christ’s Call to us– “Come up hither!” (Revelation 4:1).

Also, I wish to announce my just-completed book that is now being prepared for publication at New Leaf Publishing Group. Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind” is scheduled for release July 1, 2016.

I’m certain in the deepest regions of my spirit that this book is a major reason for the round trip to that other dimension on that Good Friday five years ago. I’m having considerable trouble exercising patience as this book approaches its release. I just can’t wait to share it with you.

Without intending to attract unto myself any aggrandizement–for the Lord of Heaven is the only Person deserving such–I believe I was commissioned to deliver this message. Rapture Ready…Or Not, this generation is on the brink of God’s most profound intervention into human history since the day the great Flood of Noah’s day burst upon the world.

Here, then, is Part I of my thoughts in December, 2011, following that April 22, 2011, Good Friday event.

            ___ 

Being prepared to meet Jesus Christ face to face–as far as trying to make that my constant state of mind is concerned–has been part of my every waking moment since Good Friday of this year. Not wishing to go over it in a public forum like this one ad nauseam, nonetheless, I’ve been considering the relationship between my near-death moments of April 22, and being Rapture ready, as is the thought wrapped up in our website’s name. So, here goes yet again…

This is intended to be an exhortation for all of us who name Christ as our Lord–urging us individually and collectively to hold Him close to our spiritual hearts during this Christmas season. It is not meant to dwell upon my personal experience as an overriding point of focus. Many who read this column on a regular basis know some of the details of my heart event on Good Friday of this year. I’m often corrected by my wife, Margaret, for not calling it a heart attack. For some reason that description just doesn’t register within my aging gray matter. Others have heart attacks, not me.

I remember thinking at the time it was occurring that this wasn’t possible. The EMT working on me told the hospital dispatcher that he had a “coronary in progress.” It didn’t register then, either. There I was, however, being rushed toward Saline Memorial Hospital, gasping for breath, the pain behind my sternum feeling as if it would explode my chest at any second.

I remember arriving and the gurney being tugged toward the ER outer doors. Then, there was the computer-like blip and I was suddenly before a large heavenly throng of young, beautiful, cheering men and women. The ambiance of my surroundings was dazzling, and I wanted to join them. There was no recollection whatsoever of where I had been–no memories of this planetary existence.

I was, the doctor later told Margaret, dead on arrival.

They hit me with the defibrillation paddles–yes, just like you’ve seen in the shows where they say “Clear!” and then apply the paddles, making the body nearly jump off the table.

I felt nothing, but the action did cause me to leave the place I never wanted to leave. I remembered thinking, “I want to stay here forever in this perfect place.” But, everything turned dark and I awoke in total darkness on the gurney. This is because I’m blind due to a retinal disease, as many who read the account know. The pain behind the sternum grew worse and I heard the blip twice more. Each time I was before that cheering, enthusiastic throng of vibrant, young people. The sights were astonishing, colors of every description emanating from somewhere I could neither determine, nor cared to investigate. The third time I was among them, we were all racing, or being drawn by some powerful energy toward a destination I would never know. I was again in the hospital, this time on the cardiac unit’s procedure table. I had again been hit with the paddles.

I had survived the “widow maker,” an artery-blockage that I was told only 5 percent of victims live through. I was clinically dead three times, my heart having stopped each time. I had been given a journey and return trip that few are privileged to experience–and I say that meaning it as humbly as it is possible to express the fact.

The reasons for and meanings of this experience have been confirmed and affirmed in my spiritual understanding. I’ve dealt briefly with those impressions from the Holy Spirit in a previous article, “HeavenVision.” God willing, there will be a more in-depth presentation on these matters in a book we have planned for release early in 2012, entitled HeavenVision: Glimpses of Glory.

I continue to be given insight into what it all means. As stated at the beginning of this commentary, my thoughts have been turned toward being ever ready to meet the Lord Jesus Christ face to face since that Good Friday when my heart ceased to beat those three times. One of the things constantly on my mind is that my heart could fail again at any moment.

My rehabilitation has been an absolutely amazing success story. And, in that regard, I thank so many of you whose prayers were obviously heard in the throne room of Heaven. I honestly haven’t experienced one moment’s problem, in any way, with my heart or anything else of consequence regarding my health. In fact, I was given the “Arkansas Cardiologist Association’s Patient of the Year Award for 2011” on November 18. I was asked to speak to their convention and I told them that I don’t know why I should be honored. All I did was survive. My Lord, Jesus Christ, deserves top honors, because He holds the keys to death and hell. I then said that they, the wonderful medical professionals, also deserve honors for being the ones God chose to put me back into this race.

The only problem has been cracked teeth and one crowned tooth broken completely off that resulted from being hit with the paddles those three times. Nonetheless, the thought is there that one’s last heartbeat can occur at any moment.

Each time my heart stopped, I stood not before Jesus Christ, but in front of a cheering cloud of witnesses as given in Hebrews 12:1-3. This simply means, I have been assured in my spiritual understanding, that this wasn’t really death. It was a preview I was given for reasons the Lord has determined. But, I will, when God’s timing has come to fullness for my life, stand before my Lord and Savior. It will happen just as instantaneously as did my near-death trip to the fringes of glory. I am ready for that moment, because Jesus saved my soul with His work of redemption on the cross at Calvary nearly 2,000 years ago. When my heart beats that final time, I will, in the twinkling of an eye (see 1 Corinthians 15: 52), stand before Him, and will be with Him for all of eternity.

But, my heart has not stopped for that final time. When Christ calls all believers, living and dead, to Himself, I will, if still alive, stand instantaneously before Him just as I stood instantaneously before that cheering cloud of witnesses on Good Friday, April 22, 2011.

Being Rapture ready is being ready, period. It means you are prepared to meet the Lord at any moment–at all times. Every believer has the same promise–to be present with the Lord when life on earth is over.

“We are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight): We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

Next week we will go in-depth, examining details about what it means to be Rapture ready.

Springtime in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Oklahoma-Texas region evokes somewhat precautionary thought of nature’s most singularly powerful storms. By that, I mean storms that can do the most complete devastation within the areas across which they sweep.

These, of course, are the huge tornadoes almost certain to occur in one or more of the aforementioned states from April through June. Oklahoma, particularly, is prone to produce the most powerful of the twisters. We remember a couple of 300-miles-per-hour tornadoes within the last several decades in that state. One of them was considered by the weather experts to have contained the strongest wind ever recorded on planet earth. I believe that 318 mph was the figure.

My friends just outside Oklahoma City lost everything except their lives in one such monster storm a few years ago. Some of the readers of this column very generously contributed to a fund to help those folks–the family of a great personal friend of mine who is part of a team that heads a major prophetic ministry in Oklahoma City.

When I was last in that city, someone with me pointed out a company that manufactures and sells tornado shelters that was very near the TV studio where we taped some programs. It was a stark reminder of the fact that we were right in “tornado central.” Without a “fraidy hole” (as we in the south call them) to go down into, one is on his or her own. People are subject to the vicissitudes of the winds that come sweeping down the plains in springtime, as the musical, Oklahoma would have it.

As we point out constantly and consistently in these commentaries, there is a storm brewing. It is a supernatural storm, and it is a certainty. It will strike. It can be clearly seen gathering on the prophetic horizon.

Whether considering matters involving geopolitics, socioeconomics, religion, or any other aspect of the human condition, the forecast looks bleak indeed. No shelter of the human-manufactured sort can protect against the boiling, chaotic tempest that the Lord Himself predicts for times just ahead.

Daniel the prophet forecast the storm that approaches:

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate. (Daniel 9:27)

Jesus zoomed in more specifically to forewarn about the power and destructiveness of the coming supernatural storm:

For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. (Matthew 24:21)

The entire book of Revelation, of course, is a detailed, blow-by-blow description of that coming Tribulation tempest. John outlines twenty-one specific destructive aspects of the storm in a series of seven scrolls, seven trumpets, and seven bowls of judgment.

Again, there is no human manufacturer that could produce a safe place against what is certainly scheduled to be the worst time of destruction the planet has ever known (and that’s saying a lot, considering all life was destroyed by water in the Flood of Noah’s day). But, thankfully, there is a superhuman shelter that is readily available to each and every person alive today.

In thinking on that shelter, my own ruminations caused me to wonder more deeply about God’s promises.

Jesus prophesied that the time He next intervenes into the affairs of mankind–revealed by His catastrophic interaction–the world will be exactly like it was in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot. (We read of that prediction in Matthew 24: 36-42, for example.)

Like in those two instances, God’s children–those who are righteous in His holy eyes–who are alive at the time of the Rapture will be taken out of harm’s way. The terrible storm of His judgment will then fall. All believers will go into that supernatural storm shelter prepared for them in Heaven, while there is great chaos and carnage on the planet that is ripe for God’s wrath.

Many new believers who were left behind when the Rapture happened will come out of that Tribulation storm, some as martyrs and others as flesh-and-blood survivors to repopulate the millennial earth during the reign of Christ upon His Second Advent.

And, there is a second supernatural storm shelter that will be provided during the Tribulation tempest itself. I believe the following prophecy and promise applies to both the saints who will be raptured and to another group of believers –the believing remnant of Jews who will find shelter through God’s divine direction. This protection will likely include Tribulation-era Gentile believers to some extent, too.  

Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be over past. For, behold, the LORD cometh out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity: the earth also shall disclose her blood, and shall no more cover her slain. (Isaiah 26:20-21)

Jesus, Himself, points the way to the supernatural storm shelter. It is the ONLY way to assure that we can be safe while the coming Tribulation tornado ravages a judgment-deserving world.

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6)

Sin infection spawned from man’s disobedience has metastasized globally at this late point of the final dispensation leading to Christ’s return. It is not far-fetched to think of things that are happening in such biological terms, or to express them as such, while two major players in Bible prophecy bring the terminal situation into focus.

The European Union (EU), thought by many observers of prophecy in Scripture to be the nucleus out of which will come a revived form of the Roman Empire in accordance with Daniel 9:26-27, is front and center in relevant news. The most central national entity of eschatology for the wind-up of human history, Israel, is the other key player in today’s news of prophetic portent, in my estimation.

Of all developments in the milieu of end-times things going on, it is as if some master pharmacologist has upon his lab table a petri dish within which broils a deadly mixture prophesied to explode in a breakout of human history’s deadliest era.

Effervescing within that dish are the virulent ingredients that threaten to take peace from the earth in the form of war unlike there has ever been on planet earth. That war will not be brought about by the players most often believed to be the instigators of man’s final war. Quite the opposite.

Armageddon will be brought about by the One the false religionists of the world of Christendom proclaim could never judge sin harshly. He is love, and no loving God could react with such hateful, punitive action, these purveyors of prevarication promise.

Here, again, is what God’s Word says about the very end-times things that are taking place within that petri dish I use as analogous symbolism.

“For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.” (Joel 3: 1-2)

That, my friends, is Armageddon that the Lord is prophesying through Joel. The nations of the world are going to pay a terrible price for their rebellion against Him and for the treatment of His chosen people, the Jews–Israel.

The intention to divide God’s land–land He gave to Israel forever–is at the heart of the prophesied simmering brew. The world–including much of Christendom, is turning against Israel in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) piling-on. This, of course, involves economically punishing Israel because they refuse to give up land in order to give the Palestinians a nation within current Israeli borders–land won by Israel in several wars that already belonged to them by divine promise in God’s holy eyes.

The EU, out of which the one who will be Antichrist will emerge, many prophetic observers believe, is presently speaking out of both sides of its official mouth. Its spokesman seems to obliquely defend Israel, while at the same time holding the Jewish state responsible for the hold up to a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestinian so-called problem. We learn more about all this within the following excerpts of current headlines.

Without the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there would be no Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, the European Union’s envoy to Israel said Monday, arguing that the best way to fight BDS is to take steps to advance a two-state solution…

“The most effective antidote against the BDS movement is to solve the Palestinian issue. If there were no Palestinian issue, there would be no BDS movement,” [EU] Ambassador Lars Faaborg-Andersen said at a conference in Jerusalem…

Earlier during the conference, which was organized by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily newspaper, Faaborg-Andersen expressed the EU’s desire to see Israel thrive and said the union completely rejects any efforts to boycott Israel. “Let me make one thing 100 percent clear: The European Union is against BDS. Our policy is totally opposite of BDS. Our policy is one of engagement with Israel.”…

But it is important for Israel not to be seen as undermining a two-state solution, he said. “If more effort is put into showing a will to move forward and to obtain progress in this process, it would greatly weaken the BDS movement.” (Source: The Times of Israel , Boycotts will disappear when Israel advances peace, EU envoy says, by Rapheal Ahre, March 28, 2016)

The all-out effort to “divide” God’s land–that given Israel in perpetuity– is underway. America’s president has chosen to put the United States at the center of this dangerous petri dish mixture. Certainly the world must be near the time when the final prophecies will begin manifesting. That means the Rapture of all born-again believers is even nearer!

Once upon a time I wrote in an early draft of a book manuscript about the spirit of antichrist as given in the Bible.  It was more or less a question positing whether this passage might have something to do with anti-Semitism to some extent. Here is the Scripture.

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” (1 John 4:1-3)

My cogitation revolved around whether the words:”in the flesh” might somehow include/involve the fact that Jesus came into the world through Jewish ” flesh.” After all, Christ came into the world through the Jewish race. Satan has always wanted to have the world deny that the Jew has any special place in God’s plan for humanity.

The Jew has been hunted and hated throughout history. Adolf Hitler said the Jew is sub-human, and much of the communist world would agree with the Nazi thought in that regard, history shows. They were mistreated–brutally–by Stalin and subsequent dictators and held as the scapegoat for all problems the dictators themselves created and perpetuated. This is still going on in our time in Russia and other places. Anti-Semitism is on the grow  in virulence and scope in Europe in a way that has not been seen since pre-Nazi Germany.

Islamist hatred is not only on the grow as violently as at any time in history, it is accepted with hardly an objection by the rest of the world. Our own president, in my view, is culpable in looking the other way as burgeoning anti-Semitism explodes around the world.

As I was saying, I wrote in the manuscript about this question–and it was in an inquiring, speculative tone, intended as mere examination, not as adamant postulation. I wondered if denying that Christ came in Jewish flesh somehow figured into the matter of anti-Semitism, because Antichrist, himself, will certainly champion great hatred for God’s chosen people.

Bible prophecy is replete with foretellings of how Antichrist will persecute and murder those of the Jewish race during the Tribulation–i.e., might  denial that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” mean, in part at least, that the Antichrist spirit has at its core hatred for the Jew because that is the “flesh” through which God chose to usher His only begotten Son into this fallen world?

This went over not at all well at the publisher with whom I was under contract to do the book. I was told this was false teaching–or as I recall, that was the tone and threat I inferred the response to mean. The words were rather strongly put that I must cut that portion or they couldn’t be a part of such heresy. Well, again, that was how I interpreted the charge and subsequent threat.

Someone at the publishing house had a quite sensitive spot which I had obviously touched, not able to understand that I wasn’t challenging the standard take on what constitutes ”the spirit of antichrist.” I know that the meaning is, primarily, that there is a visceral denial among those of this lost world that God came to earth in the flesh to die for the sin of mankind and to redeem mankind. Still, He did enter this world through the Jewish flesh.

I find the fact that Christians who truly have a pre-Trib, pre-Millennial view of Bible prophecy seem the only core entity that doesn’t display animus for Israel. Most of the world sees Israel as the cause of the problems with regard to the so-called Palestinian question. That the Jewish state is illegitimate, and the illegal occupier of land belonging to the Palestinian people, is the never-ceasing mantra.

Those who aren’t openly hostile to Israel either give nods of approval to those who say Israel is the problem or say nothing at all as that nation is verbally pounded and hounded from every quarter.

So-called Christian  organizations–even those churches claiming to be evangelicals–join in the satanic stream-of-consciousness insistence that Israel no longer is inheritor of God’s promises made to that people. These enthusiastically join the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction” (BDS) movement in their denial that the Jews are God’s chosen people.

Okay, I might be way off the mark in my ruminations about the Jewish race–about Israel–being a part of John’s warning in this antichrist spirit passage. But, the Jews are indeed being hated today like throughout all of history. That anti-Semitism is on the rise can’t be denied by anyone other than those who are cerebrally incapable of realizing it, or who are liars.

Every indicator points to the likelihood that the one called Antichrist is about to step out of the shadows of this rising hatred and into the spotlight for doing his dastardly deeds against God’s chosen people, the Jews.

Thankfully, born-again believers will have to exit the world stage first. The antichrist spirit so prevalent today is proof-positive that the time of that exiting–the Rapture– must be near indeed.

An infection is spreading  among the American populace. It isn’t of the bacteriological or viral sort in the biological sense. But, it is an epidemic  in some ways more virulent, more septic. It seems to have contaminated society at every level–even Christian pastors I would have thought would have been biblically vaccinated against the anti-God strain.

Unrestrained by apparently any prophylactic inhibitor, such as media censorship or even Moral Majority-type protective shielding, the salacious show goes on. And, it is made manifest before the nation and the world in an observably, unabashedly shameless display.

It shouldn’t surprise, one must suppose. We’ve had hints of such lasciviousness within the White House, particularly since JFK’s passing–that is, since enough time has passed that historical spelunkers have exposed the sexual trysts in the White House of Camelot’s leader way back there fifty-plus years ago.

A president was later deemed a “crook” by the Watergate inquisitionist. But, other than often-expletive, deleted language discovered on the infamous recordings of the Nixon White House, there was nothing even remotely approaching the sexual goings-on like during the Kennedy White House years.

Many accounts of LBJ and his rather raw and rowdy approach to the presidency have since produced accounts of sexual debauchery in the White House. But, until Bill Clinton, all was kept in the Oval Office closet. That closet was opened for all to know when that president’s activities with the young intern within the small study just off the oval room was uncovered.

That down-and- dirty activity–a paraphrase of how Obama’s preacher, Jeremiah Wright, put it–opened  the once-high office of the presidency to the cesspool humor and conversation once reserved for the porn magazines and shops where only the most derelict would openly venture.

Now, on the presidential election debate stages where once the all-important issues and events of our time were heard, we are subjected regularly to debased topics once only discussed in those forbidden books such as in Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker.

Talk of male and female genitalia are in today’s political discourse thrown about in vulgar, slang invectives as readily as Richard Nixon might have once thrown accusations that John F. Kennedy was too young and inexperienced for the presidency.

It is an astonishing thing to consider–the Nixon-Kennedy debates (or any other) as against what we are seeing now.

I remember the kind of gutter talk we are hearing by presidential candidates today thrown about by teenage boys during junior high and high school when I was in the ninth grade or so. Back then, those lunkheads–of which I was much too often one–would never deign to bring that sort of conversation out into the light of adult society.

Now, we have presidential wannabees talking about such things–right out in front of the bright lights and cameras, proudly airing their braggadocios salaciousness for the world to hear.

There is, obviously, according to the polls, a vast, reality show-type audience that is entertained by all of this new “populist” political trash-mouth talk. Those who aren’t necessarily amused or entertained by it sit in silence for the most part, overlooking the degree to which the once most- respected office in the land is being debased and degraded.

Some of this silent sort, as I say, are recognized names within evangelical Christianity. It is most distressing to have to acknowledge that this is the case.

This is not to put down any one presidential candidate, or to build up another. My only exhortation to the reader is that you use much discretion and pray for godly discernment during this crucial election season.

We are in prophetic times, of this I have no doubt. America is subjected to this presidential political purulence at a time when powers and principalities in high places intend to assert their wickedness upon a generation ripe for the coming Antichrist rise to power.

The Scripture that comes to mind should serve as a mirror into which we, the voters, should look, while doing our best to move in a direction other than moved the once-condemned people the Scripture depicts.

Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the LORD.

I will surely consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them. (Jeremiah 8:12-13)

We have looked a number of times in this column at those who mock the end-times message and the Rapture in particular. Because those who scoff have been of the abrasive, unbelieving variety for the most part, there is a standard Bible verse reply I’ve usually employed in response.

The scriptural reply has most often been intended to let those mocking know that they are, in actuality, fulfilling Bible prophecy.

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. (2 Peter 3:3-4)

As of late, however, such a reply doesn’t quite fit that which should compose an appropriate response. That is because the questions are coming weekly from genuine believers in the Pre-Trib Rapture of the Church. These Christians are worried–some very worried.

These look around them and on every side they see and feel the satanic pressures from this fallen sphere closing in. Issues and events –the very ambience in which they find their lives engulfed–generate thoughts that their circumstance is beginning to look much like the Bible’s description of the Tribulation itself.

To illustrate the growing angst, I’ve chosen the email of one such Christian brother who wrote this past week. His words pretty much get right to the point of the many other emails expressing like emotion. Here it is in its entirety:

Why is the Lord delaying the rapture? It should have happened years ago. We would be in the millennium now enjoying true peace and prosperity without the suffering. I don’t get it. It’s God call of course but 58 million aborted babies in the US since 1973, Christians tortured and murdered worldwide, people who believe in Jesus longing for his return suffering immensely. I don’t get it where is our Lord and Savior?

The emailer  didn’t use any soft nuances of greetings or any other niceties. He just laid his spirit-distressed emotions right out there.

You don’t answer such gut-wrenching concern with the apostle Peter’s prophecy as given above. This child of God is worried. He is puzzled; he is perplexed. It’s the kind of questioning I’ve heard in my own kid’s  anxieties when they were young and felt disappointed for one of my failures or the other to keep a promise. “Dad should never let me down like that” is the tone.

Only, this perceived unkept promise isn’t from an imperfect, human father. I say “perceived unkept promise” because the promise isn’t unbroken whatsoever. The error is in the question of the imperfect child asking it. His Perfect Father will, as always, be one hundred percent faithful to keep every promise made.

The Lord Jesus, Himself, in His ascended position, said the following to John the Revelator:

Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)

Jesus said it, and that means the Heavenly Father said it–promised it! Jesus said that He and the Father are One. They are inseparable–one and the same–the first and second Persons of the Godhead–the Trinity.

God cannot lie, the Scripture tells us. Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. God keeps His promises. So, this brother in Christ, like all the other believers who look to the “blessed hope” of Titus 2: 13, who are in fear and worry while watching this fallen world closing in, need an answer from the Word of God.

The Heavenly Father gave the answer to Peter to pass along to us, just a bit farther on in Scripture. The answer to why the Rapture hasn’t occurred as soon as almost all of us wish it would occur is, at least in part, wrapped up in  the following:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. (2 Peter 3:9)

The Tribulation that will follow this Age of Grace will be filled with horrors that even John, under divine inspiration, had trouble describing. The Lord wants to provide every moment possible during this present dispensation for those lost in their sin to come safely into the shelter who is His beloved Son Jesus Christ. God wants this for the lost, because, following the Rapture, making the decision to accept Christ for salvation will be more difficult by a multiple of factors. Facing beheading is but one of those factors!

That is the reason–or at least a primary reason–the Rapture hasn’t yet occurred in this generation, according to God’s Word.     

That said, I must take notable exception with the emailer’s contention that God is “delaying” the Rapture. You can take this to the bank–well, to the banks the way they used to be–God is not delaying the Rapture. It will happen precisely in the twinkling of the eye at the moment the Father has determined.

Jesus said:

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)

God knows exactly the instant He will send His Son to get His Bride, make no mistake. There is no delay.

On that note, issues and events closing in on us show that we are almost certainly very near that exhilarating moment of instantaneously finding ourselves face to face with the Lord Jesus. Just how near we are to the Rapture–if we could indeed know–would likely allay all fears.

I’m excited to tell you that my new book, Rapture Ready … Or Not: 15 Reasons This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind, is at present being prepared within the publishing process. Because of the lateness of the prophetic hour, I sense to a degree never experienced before that this is a book I’ve been commissioned to write. We will be able to tell you more soon, Lord willing.

President Obama recently made the statement, in effect, that anyone who tells us the economic situation in the United States is not getting better is “peddling fiction.” This he said despite the fact that the debt clock is ticking at a rate that will soon have Americans and generations to come owing beyond $20 trillion. Extrapolated out over an extended number of years, some economists are saying unfunded liabilities of this nation amount to in excess of $200 trillion.

Like it or not, believe it or not, you and I are being swept along by the tide of human history toward something profoundly ominous. Hourly news accounts, no matter how much they’ve been doctored to try to present a recovering national and global economic picture, engender fearful concerns about things to come.

It is almost impossible to grasp the causes and effects of the evil shaping and moving America and the world toward a destiny the supposed best minds on the planet can’t determine. However, that inability to define the problems, much less find solutions, doesn’t stop them from making seemingly wild stabs at trying to channel all of us into a drastically changed economic national and world order.

But, are their attempts really wild stabs, or is there method to their madness?

History is replete with attempts to reshape national and even global economic realities. Money equals power and power exerts control upon this fallen planet. Power is the ultimate endgame of all who seek it for themselves.

Henry Kissinger put it this way: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

The declaration can be understood in recalling the most ancient of accounts of an infamous personality seeking the greatest of all power:

For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. (Isaiah 14:13–14)     

Humankind’s determination to do the same—acquire the power to which the angel named Lucifer aspired—hasn’t changed since the serpent first told Eve that she and Adam would be like God if they ate from the fruit of the forbidden tree (see Genesis 3:5). Tracing the serpent’s trail of power madness to a later time recorded in the Bible (Genesis chapter 11), Nimrod was the would-be one-world- order builder of his day, following the Great Flood of Noah’s time. He, like every megalomaniac since, lusted for God-like power.

Man’s lust for power continues to grow; he has not learned the lessons of the past because, as a whole, he regards the Word of God as irrelevant to the governance of the earth. One philosopher of renown, George Santayana, put it this way: “He who does not remember history is condemned to repeat it.”

The corruption that God saw and condemned in antediluvian times, which caused Him to destroy all upon the earth except eight people, has again reached a dangerous level. Dictators prove the truth of another bit of philosophical wisdom, this by Lord Edward Acton: “All power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

In my estimation we see this level of power being sought in the words and actions of the current presidential administration. Circumventing the U.S. Constitution at every opportunity because this president has “a phone and a pen” poses a danger to this republic. To at the same time have another branch of government that is supposed to act as a check and balance to an out-of-control executive, yet does nothing to present opposition, creates real and present danger to this nation.

While mainstream media types of network and cable seemingly sway acceptingly in the mesmerizing economic flute notes of the charmer — the real peddler of fiction — the immediate future looks ominously bleak, according to true financial experts who are without the benefit of the mainstream’s ubiquitous microphones and cameras to get out their warning. The nation and the world are about to experience economic collapse the likes of which has never occurred, is their message.

These are most all in agreement. There will come a trigger point, or a tipping point. This will be one moment in time, and it will prick the immense financial bubble that the money powers that be have manipulated to this point of crisis we face.

My own belief continues to be that it is God’s great hand of control rather than the would-be economic masters that has prevented the bubble from bursting. The crisis awaits the moment in time when the Lord, Himself, will burst the bubble.

If one studies carefully the news of late, it becomes clear that the term “cashless system” is coming more and more into vogue. The economic gurus at the highest levels — in human terms and in supernatural, satanic terms — seem to be preparing a system of Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). They want to do away with physical currency and go to the cashless, computer system so they can carry out their sleight-of-hand, monetary machinations electronically.

The marks-and-numbers system of economics of Revelation 13:16-18 is more than just on the drawing board. We are seeing it come to pass in our daily news. All that is required for its implementation is the crisis that will bring it forward. I am convinced that crisis will be created by the Rapture of all who name the name of Christ.