Category: revelation

Posted in end time, prophecy, revelation

Update to "wealth skew" blog entry published on Sunday

Posted on by elizabethprata

Here is a blurb updating my recent post on Wealth Skew, the gap between rich and poor that is present now and will continue to its widest and worst in the Tribulation. A news article this morning confirms “Census finds record gap between rich and poor:” I posted the entry on Sunday and the news is from today, Tuesday. The original post is here and also contains the update. Please read the original post for the context & the bible verses…:) Also, the Census article is very interesting.

UPDATE
I found this news article this morning:

Census finds record gap between rich and poor:
The income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession. The top-earning 20 percent of Americans — those making more than $100,000 each year — received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent earned by those below the poverty line, according to newly released census figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

Posted in bp, end time, prophecy, revelation

The BP spill is not a fulfillment of prophecy

Posted on by elizabethprata

Many people have been asking and wondering if the BP Oil catastrophe in the Gulf is a fulfillment of Revelation 8:8-9 – “And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed,” and/or Revelation 16:3 – The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died.”

No, it isn’t a fulfillment.

First: the Revelation judgments have not begun. They will not begin until after the Rapture, and Israel is returned to a state of covenant relationship with God (Romans 11:25). We in the church are not appointed to wrath (1 Thess 5:9), and the judgments of Revelation are wrath (Rev 6:16). God is clear on this point. I wrote an explanation with more scriptures, here, if you would like to delve into the subject more deeply.

Secondly, the verses say that the seas became blood and turned into blood. Not oil that looked like blood. John was familiar with the plagues of Egypt and knew that God had the capability of turning large bodies of water into actual blood. In Revelation, when John could not explain what he was seeing, he said things like “Then I heard what sounded like a voice” as described here in Rev 6:6. Other times, when he could exactly describe what was happening, he wrote “He called out in a loud voice” as in Rev 7:2. So writing the seas will be blood means the seas will be blood. Take the literal when it is plain.

Third, the Gulf of Mexico is a small body of water and the amount affected is only 35% of that. Most of the globe is water, 70%. There are approximately 140 million sq miles of ocean on our planet. The Gulf of Mexico is 600,000 square feet, and the amount affected by oil is 200,000 sq feet. So we are a long way from biblical proportions, even though the catastrophe is horrendous.

However, the horrendous catastrophe in the Gulf is an example of how quickly and devastatingly the LORD can and will render pressure on the people to repent, and during the Tribulation, to render wrath to punish. If we think this is bad now, then imagine how VERY bad it will be when a third of the earth’s seas are dead, and later, all of them. I think the BP spill is the beginning of an ongoing event that can turn into a judgment during the Tribulation. But as of right now, it is not a fulfillment, it is merely a localized catastrophe of the kind we are told would be brought to bear on an unrepentant people.

In Haggai, the LORD told prophet Haggai to ask the people if they noticed the pressure He had brought to bear on them in His plan to make them aware of the need to return to Him. He had put a drought on the land, caused the rain not to fall, made their purses like sieves (the more they spent the more they wanted), made their exports decline, He put a drought on labor…He pressured them. Squeezed them. The LORD could be doing that now with the oil spill, pressuring America to return to Him and repent. The Lord is patient and long-suffering, pressuring His people increasingly to give them an opportunity to return to Him. When they don’t, then He starts the judgments.

That said, though, the BP oil catastrophe is gut-wrenching to watch and experience as a nation.

Tar balls washing up on all five Gulf states now: More than two months after oil from BP’s blown-out seafloor well first reached Louisiana, a bucket’s worth of tar balls that washed onto a Texas beach means the crude has arrived in every Gulf state. In a development potentially related to the BP oil spill, a recent news report stated,“two baby sperm whales died [on June 23, 2010] after beaching themselves on Florida’s East Coast; ‘Infections and toxins are going to be the big killers of these animals’ says pathologist.” Christian Science Monitor reports that a dead sperm whale was found floating and decomposed. Forty-five dolphins have beached themselves on the Gulf shores as well.

This is beyond heartbreaking, but imagine when a third of the sea creatures die. Or ALL of them. I simply cannot imagine. You do not have to be here when those judgments come down, though. You can confess your sins to the Lord and ask Him to forgive. He will! And then you can be dining with saints at a heavenly banquet, and then rejoice with praise and shouts when the Lord remakes the earth and restores all the animals to perfect environments.

Posted in end time, revelation, the beast, the gods are angry

Gods are angry, the beast, and Brimstone Pit

Posted on by elizabethprata

Thunder, lightning stop Obama Memorial Day speech
President Barack Obama’s Memorial Day observance was stopped in its tracks on Monday by a torrential downpour accompanied by bolts of lightning and booming thunder.

I laughed when I read Drudge’s headline this morning. It was the first thing I thought of when the torrential rain and thunder stopped Obama’s speech. But on a larger scale, I find it interesting that the secular world adopts so much biblical language with impunity. Is it the Spirit speaking to them? Do they know what they are doing when they say these things? Do they understand how close to the truth they are? (Left, mythical god Poseidon)

I’d written before that the end time language the European Union was using was too blatant to ignore and that its chosen symbolism either knowingly or unknowingly was straight from the bible. In the here and now, during the past week I’ve noticed at least three allusions to the bible and unwitting adoption of language straight from prophecy.

Of course, Drudge’s “Gods are angry” line is funny and in many Christians’ opinion, accurate (if we remove the ‘s’ from God, that is). In the bible, particularly Revelation, when lightning is accompanied by thunder and hail it is a symbol of God’s judgments and plagues. (Rev 4:5; 8:5; 16:9)

This week also I learned that in 2004 the deepest underwater volcano was discovered. Scientists named it “Brimstone Pit.” We’re all familiar with brimstone from the bible. Any preacher who preaches sin and judgment is called a ‘fire and brimstone preacher.” But the fire and brimstone are very real in God’s vocabulary. He used it in the past to smite Sodom for its homosexuality. Peter explicitly says that Sodom and Gomorrah were examples of what will happen again to the ungodly. (2 Peter 2:6), We see this will be so in Revelation, where brimstone is a symbol for eternal torment (Rev 9:10 and 19:20), and judgments of God (Rev 9:17-18; 14:10; Luke 17:29-30). Brimstone is not just an old-fashioned word. It the very real word for sulfur. In the biblical punishments of the past and of the promises of punishments future, God rains down brimstone from the sky. Volcanic eruptions also contain sulfur in its solid and its gaseous state, which, when erupting, rain down fire and brimstone from the sky. And there have been a lot of volcanic eruptions lately. One of the reasons Brimstone Pit was so named is because it emits yellow sulfur almost constantly.

This week also, a news article about BP revealed that BP calls the runaway oil leak under the Gulf of Mexico ‘The Beast.’ And here, “The BP executive admitted his company had “failed to wrestle the beast to the ground yesterday.” Of course, the Beast from under the sea appears in Revelation 13:1, “And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. He had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name” and this is the Antichrist.

Why is it that man is able to accept the connection between earth’s events and divine intervention when it prevents their disfavored politician from speaking, yet fail to realize that He is very real and always using His signature vocabulary to get our attention? Is it THAT hard to accept our sin and its consequences from a holy God? Apparently. That divine interventions occur and always have? I guess so. But that blindness will come to an end soon. In the coming Gog-Magog battle, God veritably pokes His head out from the veil between this world and makes Himself known.

“You will advance against my people Israel like a cloud that covers the land. In days to come, O Gog, I will bring you against my land, so that the nations may know me when I show myself holy through you before their eyes.” (Ezek. 38:14-16)

It is but a small graduation from Mythopoeic thought- that nature’s acts were the result of many divine beings’ interventions on the world (Egyptians), to nonmythopeic thought, that the ancient Hebrews’ One True God as not a will within nature, but was a force or law behind nature. But there still exists the gap between man’s personal sin and the Way out. It takes a submission, though, and that pride is almost too hard to break in this latter day. In the very end that pride will not be broken. (Revelation 16:1) You notice if you read the verse that man knows it is God punishing them, yet they refuse to submit.

Though the Jews will recognize God in the Gog-Magog battle, they still fail to see Jesus as their Redeemer and His work on the cross as the connection between personal sin and His grace. They identify the Antichrist as the redeemer because of his political savvy, intelligence and seeming generosity in allowing them to sacrifice once again in a rebuilt Temple. All external qualities.

Theirs will be a mistake almost leading to their extinction yet is rectified halfway through the Tribulation when they finally accept Jesus as the Savior. Hallelujah!

Yet there is something in the language of God that speaks to the spirit and the soul since the beginning of time.  That language speaks today when secular man ‘picks up’ on the symbols, adopts them, and understands a glimmer of truth behind them. Revelation contains so many symbols because although languages change, even die out,  pictures don’t change. Whether it is 510 BC or 2010 AD, we all know what a beast is. Everyone knows what thunder and lightning are. Everyone knows what brimstone is and does. It is my hope that these glimmers of understanding at the soul level transform into a conscious recognition of His presence in the world, and that man will submit to Him, escaping the bondage that sin holds on so many.

Posted in end time, guatemala sinkhole, prophecy, revelation

OK, this is just getting weird. Sinkhole from hell in Guatemala

Posted on by elizabethprata

UPDATED- If you are looking for the story of the man in Florida who was sleeping and a sinkhole opened under his bed, go here.

 —————————

The CNN article this appears in alludes to, but does not explain, how a tropical storm cause such a massive and eerie hole. A three-storey building fell into it.

The office of Guatemala’s president handed out this aerial view of a crater that opened up after Agatha hit.

In this same place, Guatemala, a violent tropical storm battered the region, resulting in mudslides and floods and deaths, and just two days before the tropical storm hit, a volcano erupted.

I’ve been tracking sinkholes lately, and it seems they are opening with regularity in unexpected places. Not that a sinkhole by itself means instant plague of biblical proportions, but the work that God is doing on the earth that was promised and described for us in Matthew 24 and other places means that his warnings for the end time will come and are coming. His language has not changed. So we look to the bible as to what these things meant in the past and see if they could be applied to what is happening now. Are there examples of the earth opening up in the bible?

In Revelation:

“And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away with the flood. But the earth helped the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and drank up the river which the dragon poured out of his mouth.” (Rev 12:15-16)

Note, the flood is always a symbol of overwhelming destruction. The earth opening its mouth is reminiscent of the incident in Numbers 16:31-33:

“As he finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive to Sheol; and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly.”

In other sinkhole incidents, this incident happened a week ago in Canada. Note the use of the word “freak” and that the area was not known for sinkhole activity…
Horror as freak sinkhole swallows home and family of four
“There’s news of a tragedy today concerning a home in Canada which was engulfed by a giant sinkhole. All the four members of the family were killed in the incident which occurred while they were watching T.V. together. During a freak landslide in Quebec, the sinkhole opened up to swallow the French-Canadian family home. The family that lived there, the Prefontaines had been watching an ice-hockey game in the basement lounge of their home in Saint-Jude overlooking the Yamaska River. The two children killed were only around the ages of 9 and 11, according to the Timesonline.co.uk. Although rescuers launched a desperate attempt to save the family, late last night their bodies were finally found with Quebec’s emergency management co-ordinator, Michel Dore saying, “They were found very close to one another, some of them lying on the family couch in the basement.” The giant crater that formed completely destroyed the family home and five other houses in the area were evacuated. Apparently the house was in a location not considered to be at risk from sinkholes and the Saint-Jude Mayor, Yves Bellefeuille said the community was in shock. For more on this story go to the timesonline.co.uk. We send our thoughts to the extended family and friends of those killed.”

In TN a sinkhole on the Interstate opened up last week, swallowing half a lane:

I-24 reopens after sinkhole repair
A stretch of eastbound Interstate 24 between Nashville and Chattanooga has reopened after a massive sinkhole was repaired. The 25-foot deep sinkhole developed suddenly on Tuesday in Grundy County. Crews with the Tennessee Department of Transportation had to excavate 35 feet to reach the bottom of the sinkhole and remove unstable material. The area was filled in with more than 5,400 tons of graded solid rock and the interstate was repaved.

What does it mean? I don’t know. I do know that in the end time and especially the Tribulation God re-forms the earth. The earth certainly is groaning lately. That it is cracking up is no surprise. One can only hope that Isaiah’s praise of God holds true today for those experiencing travail:  “When Your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness. (Isaiah 26:9b)

Posted in chile, earthquake, end time, prophecy, revelation, security gate

Raw video of the Chile quake

Posted on by elizabethprata

I post this for a reason. It is a Chilean security camera focused on a gate. The shaking evident as the earthquake in Chile today ramps up, you see just how violent an 8.8 magnitude quake can be.

“And there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder; and there was a great earthquake, such as there had not been since man came to be upon the earth, so great an earthquake was it, and so mighty.” (Revelation 16:18) Revelation describes an earthquake to come that will be so strong that it will exceed every other earthquake that has ever happened. It will be so strong that it fells all the cities of the earth. It will be so strong that every island disappears, likely covered because of the resulting tsunami.

The earthquake that Revelation describes is bigger than the one that hapened today. The strongest earthquake ever recorded occurred in 1960. It was a 9.5 magnitude that struck Chile. It hit off the coast, causing tsunamis over 60 feet high, that traveled as far as Hawaii, Japan, and New Zealand, killing 4,000-5,000 and leaving over 2,000,000 people homeless. The earthquake that Revelation describes will be even BIGGER than the 9.5.

If you are not saved by grace and blood of Jesus, then you may well survive until the end of the Tribulation when this prophesied earthquake hits. I ask you to ponder the violent shaking seen in the video of the 8.8 that occurred last night in Chile, then ponder also if you want to be on the earth when an earthquake occurs that will make the violent shaking in that video seem like a placid pond in comparison. If you do not want to be around, and you have been feeling a little tug in your heart, then that it the Holy Spirit convicting you of your sins. Sins are things you do that are wrong and disrespect God, like lying, stealing, rotten thoughts, anger, and a host of other things. Anyone who has unforgiven sin in their heart cannot be near to God and will forever be banished from His presence upon death, to a place commonly referred to as hell.

But a remedy is available for you. No, you cannot stop sinning, it is in our nature, and only one man has ever lived who never sinned- Jesus. But you can ask Jesus the Spotless One to forgive you of your sins. If you genuinely feel guilt and sorrow over your past actions, and desire to live a more pleasing life to Loving God, then ask Him to forgive you. He will. Then He will send the Holy Spirit to help you resist sin in the future.

I hope the earthquake’s shaking has shaken your very soul and that you accept His offer of forgiveness before it is too late for you or too late in time. For there will be a moment in tine when God, who knows your heart, will see that it is too hardened to accept mercy and will give you over to sin’s consequences. (Rom 1:26; Zech 7:11-12)