Category: tribulation

Posted in iran, north korea, tribulation, war

North Korea and Iran’s war drums are beating so loud the US responds

Posted on by elizabethprata

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle with You.”

OK, I took a liberty, changing the intent of the Stealers Wheel’s lyrics to add the capital Y to indicate God in the lyric.

I am concerned in watching the militaristic beating of the war drums to our “left” – North Korea, and to our “right” – Israel and Iran. Yet God is in control, He is in the middle of us. (Matthew 18:20).

Let’s take a look at the situation of North Korea first. Drudge put this up yesterday:

Always crazy, always unpredictable, North Korea is the one nation in the world which may indeed use nuclear weapons as a matter of curse or just for no reason. You never know what they may do, and that is because they are a closed nation. We are cut off from indicators, diplomatic channels, hints or feints. We are shadow boxing with a mirage when it comes to North Korea. They are closed to journalism, economic exchange, and communications. China is their only ally, and even they are getting exasperated with North Korea.

When you close a people off from the world they have no basis or benchmark to determine what reality is. The North Koreans believe that the US is poised to lob a nuke at them and that NK is right to defend themselves by lobbing one first.

The NK leaders, formerly Kim Jong Il and today’s Kim Jong Un, often make inflammatory statements that have no basis in reality. But no matter, they seem intent on striking the US with a nuclear weapon and they just might indeed do it.

Max Fisher at the Washington Post wrote a few days ago, “Here is a partial list of some of North Korea’s terrifying threats and provocations since the United Nations Security Council imposed new sanctions late last week: nullify the 60-year armistice that had ended the Korean War, sever the emergency communication line with South Korea, order frontline troops to prepare to “cut the windpipes” of their enemies, threaten to “wipe out” a South Korean island and pledge “all-out war.” ” Fisher said that NK loves to threaten WWIII (but probably won’t follow through“. Notice the ‘probably.’ I think they will. But I’m just a schmoe blogging in my pajamas. What do I know?

However, more seriously and ominously, the US apparently isn’t taking any chances. This time NK’s threats caused the US to make a response in action. They deployed missiles.

U.S. to bolster missile defenses to counter North Korea threat: Hagel
“(Reuters) – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced plans on Friday to bolster U.S. missile defenses in response to a growing nuclear threat from North Korea, adding 14 interceptors to a missile defense site in Alaska by 2017 and deploying a radar tracking system in Japan. The decision to add 14 new anti-missile interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska amounts to a reversal of an Obama administration decision in 2010 to stop expansion of the missile field there at 30 interceptors. The Bush administration had planned to deploy 44 total interceptors. Hagel said the decision to deploy all 44 interceptors came as a result of the growing threats from Iran and particularly North Korea, which tested a third nuclear device last month and launched a rocket that put a satellite in orbit in December.”

A government doesn’t move war materiel for nothing. When you start deploying missiles, it is serious.

Now as to the jokers to the right, Iran is also doing its crazy thing. The nation got daring this week. “An Iranian fighter jet approached a U.S. surveillance drone over the Persian Gulf but broke off its pursuit after the pilot of a U.S. escort plane radioed a verbal warning, the Pentagon said Thursday,” reports HuffPo.

More concerning is the wrangling between Israel and the US. The US says that the nuclear red line for Iran is more than a year away. Israel says it is a matter of weeks (this spring to summer).

Who is right? The mistake is not recoverable. I wrote in February of this year that the bible indicates  more than once that a nuclear war in the Tribulation is likely.

In another war drum beat, The Times of Israel reports that the Intelligence Chief says Syria is ready to use chemical weapons.

I don’t know when war will come. I don’t know from whence it will start. But it will. The bible tells us that in the Tribulation, peace will be taken from the earth. (Revelation 6:3-4; Matthew 24:6). However, I do not know how many wars or battles will take place prior to the removal of the saints in the rapture before the Tribulation begins. We must be prepared.

But that preparation will only last so long. We will be called home soon and whenever that event occurs, blessedly, we will study war no more.

Source

Above, Lesleigh Coyer, 25, of Saginaw, Michigan, lies down in front of the grave of her brother, Ryan Coyer, who served with the U.S. Army in both Iraq and Afghanistan, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia March 11, 2013. Coyer died of complications from an injury sustained in Afghanistan. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

War is an outward indicator of the state of man’s heart. Man’s heart is wicked and deceitful, who can know it? (Jeremiah 17:9). Man’s thoughts and intents are only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5). Unregenerated man is at a state of war with God, all the time. War on earth is the manifestation of all that.

But when Jesus comes, “He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” (Isaiah 2:4)

Cling to that. Man and Savior reconciled, man and nation at peace with themselves and with their Holy God. Hallelujah! (Colossians 1:20).

Posted in damascus, iran, israel, north korea, tribulation

Syria conflict: Many dead in huge Damascus bombing

Posted on by elizabethprata

BBC News reported yesterday,
“A huge car bomb in the Syrian capital Damascus has sent smoke billowing across the capital’s skyline.

“Syrian media and pan-Arab satellite station al-Jazeera have spoken of deaths and injuries resulting from the blast, which state media have blamed on “terrorists”. Ambulances rushed to the scene near headquarters of the ruling Baath party. The violence comes as Russia and the Arab League say they want to broker direct government-opposition talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov described the violence as “a road to nowhere”.

“The opposition Syrian National Coalition is holding a two-day meeting in Egypt to discuss a framework for a possible solution to the Syrian war. Some 70,000 people have died since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in March 2011, the UN says.”

Other estimates have the casualties over the two-year civil war period as high as 90,000.

This photo from Syrian State Media Sana of the bombing shows a tragic story.

When Jesus said in Matthew 24:6 that as a sign of the end there would “be wars and rumors of wars,” that was a statement meant for the Tribulation. The discourse Jesus gave in Matthew 24 was regarding the 7-year Tribulation AKA Time of Jacob’s Trouble. The Tribulation as prophesied in Revelation 6-20 has not begun.

However, it is interesting to note the severity of the current situation both in the Middle East and in the Asian spheres (North Korea vs. South Korea, & China vs. Japan). It is even more interesting to note this in light of the fact that those two regions are specifically mentioned as being participants in the global end time Tribulation wars. (Isaiah 17, Isaiah 19, Psalm 83, Ezekiel 38-39, Rev 16:12, etc)

In Israel, war has taken on a heightened priority. Iran is nearing the red line in which there would be no turning back if they get close enough to developing a nuclear bomb. The red line refers to the moment of no return that Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu said Israel would not let Iran cross, when he spoke to the UN in September 2012. He said at that time that Iran would be close to finishing a bomb in the spring.

Israel-watcher Joel C. Rosenberg has more.

Netanyahu warns: IAEA centrifuge report shows Iran nearing nuclear “red line.”
“Iran has begun installing advanced centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant, a UN nuclear report said on Thursday,” according to Reuters and the Jerusalem Post. “In response, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Iran is closer today than ever before to obtaining the necessary enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. … Netanyahu termed the report “very grave,” and said it proved that Iran is moving swiftly toward the red line he set out at the UN in September. He said during that address that Iran must be stopped before it crosses that line, something he said at the time could happen as early as the spring.”

Several weeks ago, North Korea released a video that seemed to show an American city, likely New York, in flames due to a NK nuke. They have released another video, this time, depicting Obama on fire from flames in a nuclear blast. It is a crude response to the world condemnation for North Korea’s latest nuclear test. It does, however, remind us that our most potent enemy perhaps is North Korea.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about Iran’s boast that claimed they were already nuclear. In that piece I said that in my opinion nuclear exchanges will take place during the Tribulation, and showed how several verses from the bible seemed to show us either death from a nuclear war and cleanup from a nuclear war. In the same piece I’d linked to above, Joel Rosenberg write about Iran, NK, Israel, US and nukes, stating,

“This is particularly troublesome in the light of the fact North Korea recently conducted another nuclear warhead test. Guess who was present at the test? The head of Iran’s nuclear program. Did Pyongyang just help Iran test an A-bomb? As I’ve written on my blog, there is growing evidence that Iran and North Korea are working hand in glove in developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Netanyahu warns that the North Korea nuclear bomb test proves that economic sanctions are not enough to stop Iran. …”

As I drove to work today, the car ahead of me was decorated at the back bumper with stickers. One said, “If you’ve seen one nuclear war, you’ve seen them all.”

That sentiment, as darkly humorous as it is, will soon be all too true.

Posted in martyr complex, pre-trib, tribulation

What, are you chicken? I double dog dare you to go through the Tribulation!

Posted on by elizabethprata

“Chicken! Bwaawck bwaawck bwaawck!” Children on the playground pretend to be tougher than they are, and taunt others into doing deeds which are in effect, kind of dumb or downright dangerous. Kids don’t like to be called chicken, or be to be seen trying to get out of a punishment that all his mates are enduring.

These kind of puffed up playground games are just that, children’s games. However, a new kind of game in the sandbox of theology is emerging and that is the ‘bwaack bwaawck bwaawck! You’re too chicken to go through the Tribulation’ game.

Post-Tribulation doctrine believers, or believers who are not sure which stance to take on when the rapture will take place in relation to the Tribulation, level an accusation against Pre-Tribulation believers. They say that we are either chicken, or not a strong Christian, or have some kid of pride to even think we will escape all these things. (but we will … says Luke 21:36).

Theirs is wrong thinking. It actually is a kind of perverse, reverse pride in itself, something I’ll explain in a moment. I’d like to address several of the misunderstandings that a person who thinks these things betrays.

Chris Koelle, Book of Revelation, Graphic Novel

But first, to make something clear, far from being angry or upset that a person isn’t fully understanding of the biblical reasoning behind a pre-Tribulation doctrine, I am sad for them. It must be very scary to think that they are going to enter the worst time on earth where billions will die horrible deaths. But in these people who level sandbox charges of an ad hominem flavor, I ask for moderation and patience from you.

Now, in my opinion, a person charging pride or arrogance or chicken-ness in stating one will be removed prior to the Judgments, labors under one or more of the several following misunderstandings. They either-

-misunderstand what pride is,
-misunderstand what the Tribulation is prophesied to accomplish,
-misunderstand the Church Age believer’s position before Christ, or
-have a false or superficial understanding of just how bad the last 7 years will be.

First, what is pride? We already know that God hates pride (Proverbs 8:13). We are not talking about the kind of pride we feel about a job well done. The kind of pride God hates is pride that stems from self-righteousness. This is a sin, and God hates it because it is a obstacle to seeking Him. Pride is seeking satisfaction in something we have accomplished, instead of seeking to be weak so He will be strong in us. That kind of pride is giving ourselves the credit.

Having arrived at a doctrine via prayer and diligent study and which is supported biblically is not pride. It is study. As GotQuestions defines biblical study:

“First, through prayer and humility, we must rely on the Holy Spirit to give us understanding. Second, we should always study Scripture in its context, recognizing that the Bible explains itself. Third, we should respect the efforts of other Christians, past and present, who have also sought to properly study the Bible.”

I have done these things and I arrived at an understanding of when the rapture will take place. I am comfortable in my understanding and I adhere to it, because it makes sense in the large scheme of things- and by that I mean from Genesis to Revelation. (As a commercial for the bible- Genesis and Revelation are marvelous bookends, one is controlled Creation with a forward-looking redemptive intent and the other is controlled UNcreation with a backward-looking redemptive intent). I have a biblical response to support my Pre-Trib stance.

The second misunderstanding a person often has is a misunderstanding of what the Tribulation is prophesied to accomplish. The pre-church age and the current church age are different. Before the Church Age began (which started at Acts 1:8) God was working through His people the Jews to bring the message of salvation. As the blog Compelling Truth states,

“They were chosen as a nation to receive instruction on Who God is and how to worship Him. Their mission was to embody this knowledge by obeying the laws God gave them and spreading the truth about God to other nations. Since God chose Israel as a nation, His blessings and their obedience were to be on a national scale.”

However, the Jews rebelled, and they rejected their Messiah. The mystery then became that Jesus was going to use the Gentiles to bring His message. (Ephesians 3:6, 9, 11). He partially hardened the hearts of the Jews so that they would become envious. (Romans 11:7, 11).

“But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their fullness bring!” (Romans 11:12)

But make no mistake, God will release that hardening when the full number of the Gentiles comes in (Romans 11:25) and then His work with the Jews will resume. From the cross until now, He has set Israel aside in the timeline of things, in a 2000 year pause. This was so that He would build His church. That pause is noted in Daniel’s prophetic timeline, a chapter also called the Prophetic Clock and the Seventy Weeks of Daniel.

This was a very broad summary of the complex and wondrous plan of God regarding His people the Jews and His people the grafted-in Gentiles. But understanding that God has a plan for each, and that plan is not the same, is critical to understanding what the Tribulation is due to accomplish. So, what exactly is God planning, and why? The what is mainly contained in Revelation, though parts of what is going to happen are scattered throughout the entire bible (Ezekiel, Zechariah, Joel, etc). The why is in Daniel 9:24.

Again, Daniel 9 and verse 24 has the specifics:

Credit

“The prophecy contains a statement concerning God’s six-fold purpose in bringing these events to pass. Most scholars believe that we are now living in a huge gap between the 69th week and the 70th week. The prophetic clock has been paused, as it were. The final “seven” of Daniel is what we usually call the tribulation period. Verse 24 says the seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thine holy city, 1) to finish the wickedness, and 2) to seal up the sins, and 3) to reconcile the iniquity, and 4) to bring in everlasting righteousness, and 5) to seal up the vision and prophecy, and 6) to anoint the most Holy.”

Note that the main intent is to resume dealing with Daniel’s people (the Jews) and the holy city (Jerusalem). The Tribulation focus is NOT THE CHURCH. Of course, all sinners who are left behind in the Tribulation will be part of the effects of His dealing with the Jews, and one of His intents is to stop sin globally, but the part the church plays in Hie eternal plan will have been accomplished when “the full number comes” in. (Romans 11:25).

In one sense, it is prideful to think that the church is the focus of everything all the time. It isn’t. We are a special blessing, and we are His bride, but He will return to working with His remnant the Jews during the last 7 years. It is their time, not ours! And that is to the glory of Christ, who will see His people finally mourn the One that they pierced and accept Him as their Messiah! They will come to accept Jesus as their Messiah (Zechariah 12:10). God will restore their relationship with Him (Ezekiel 11:17).

The third kind of misunderstanding a person shows when they charge a Pre-trib believer with pride or  arrogance or cowardice for their beliefs is a misunderstanding of who we are in Christ. As Daniel’s verse explains, 3 of the 6 purposes of the Tribulation are to deal with sin. Though I pasted the verse above, here is what the NLT says-

“A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place.” (Daniel 9:24 NLT)

However, those in the Church have a position before God: clean. (Revelation 19:8; Revelation 3:4; Isaiah 64:10). He has forgotten our sin. (Hebrews 8:12). They were nailed to the cross. (Colossians 2:14). He remembers them no more. (Hebrews 10:17). Why would He keep us on earth to punish us for our sins when according to Him, our sins are as far from the east as the west? (Psalm 103:12). If He keeps the Church, His Bride, on earth to punish us for our sins, then all those other verses become lies.

“Robe of Righteousness” by Lars Justinen

No, our position before Christ is clean, arrayed in White linens, the robe of righteousness. He is not going to drag His clean and washed Bride through the mud of the Tribulation to punish our sins. Our sins are finished. The sin of the Jews is not.

As an aside, oftentimes people make the mistake of using the word Tribulation as a general term for trials or trouble. The two words are different. Of course Christian people throughout the ages have endured trials or tribulations. But THE Tribulation is altogether different. The word that the Gentiles use comes from Matthew 24:9. In Matthew 24:9 Jesus did say “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.” But the official term for the 7-year time period is “The Time of Jacob’s Trouble.” (Jeremiah 30:7). It is also known as The Day of the LORD.

Saying that THE Tribulation is the same as general tribulation is like saying that THE Antichrist is the same as an antichrist mentioned in 1 John 2:22. The pockets of persecution Christians have endured since the beginning are definitely not the same as the worldwide testing with a 6-point plan that the entire inhabited world will endure at the end of time. (Revelation 3:10). In the former, glory was brought to Christ via the deaths of the martyrs and the effect was to spread the Word. In the Tribulation/Time of Jacob’s Trouble, it is not glory but punishment and the effect is that the saints will be wearied (Daniel 7:25) and eventually overcome. (Revelation 13:7) so that satan’s sin will be made full.

As for the perverse, reverse pride in saying that a saved person of His church will go through the Tribulation, John MacArthur spoke to that.

“If a person comes along, and this is popular today, there are a lot of people who…who wanna go through the Tribulation. It’s become…got sort of a martyr complex, you know? In a very mechanized society and a…and very high-powered society and a very…a very easy kind of existence, a lot of people would try. They kinda think it’s neat to go through the Tribulation, and they see the movie about thief in the night, and they can see themselves running from the beast and all this intrigue; … sometimes I’ll listen to a Christian…those Christian television programs, and they’re talking about, “Well, you know, I’m not convinced that we’re going to be taken out. I think we may go through it…” you know, and it’s all very dramatic. Listen, folks, well, I don’t wanna be there. It doesn’t sound good to me at all. If I have my choice of being here with the beast, to be in Heaven with Jesus, it isn’t even a question.”

A person who even dares to think that they can withstand a moment of the Tribulation is wildly self-deluded. I say this lovingly but pointedly- the last 7 years will be hell on earth. The Holy Spirit will not restrain men from their evil inclinations. Everything will be happening. Child slavery, perverse molestation, bestiality, violence and gore unparalleled. Demons will chase you, the ground will collapse under your feet, the volcanoes will be going off, and probably Yellowstone’s supervolcano too. Half of America will be blown away. Sulfur will rain down from the sky. The sun will burn you to a crisp and there will be no water to drink. You will be cold, hot, hunted, starved, lonely and grossly diseased. And that will be just the first half. The second half will be worse.

Jesus said that it will be the worst time on earth that ever was or will ever be again (Matthew 24:21). You think you can withstand that? Half of the stricken cruise ship Carnival Triumph had a bunch of whiny babies on it that didn’t last 3 days before they turned into savages grabbing for the last lobster. You do not want to withstand 7 years of hatred and being stalked tot he death!! You most likely cannot. Most will not. The Holy Spirit will not be indwelling you to aid you in resisting sin, so you will not have His help there. If they are beating up innocents now just to see them bleed, and raping 100 year old women, what do you think they will do when the RESTRAINT is gone!?!?

They are going to tear out your eyes with their fingernails just to hear you scream, and get bored halfway through and wander off to do something worse to the next person.

No, I know I do not want to be here. Yes, I am a chicken. I am scared of all that. Any sane person would be.  Call me chicken, I am. I am strong enough to know my weakness. I am low enough to know my high position before Christ.

I also know that through years of prayer, study, and a contextual understanding, Jesus is going to call His bride home and consummate His long-awaited reunion. We will finally be called Wife!

“Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

If you want to be punished, that’s your thang. If you think you’re strong enough to withstand hell come to earth, go for it. If you want to fling sand my way, go ahead. But please refrain from extra-biblical emotional remarks because after all, you’re the Bride too. We are one in Christ. I love all my brethren, even the ones with a martyr complex 😉 And I hope you would love me too, the big chicken 😉

Or maybe, we can simply share what we believe and why from the bible, and love on each other without the sandbox games?

Posted in Carnival cruise ship, hope, tribulation, triumph ship

Cruise Ship Carnival Triumph disaster: think of it as a metaphor for the Tribulation

Posted on by elizabethprata

There was a Carnival Cruise ship that was disabled by a fire and floated powerless and helpless for five days, stranding over 4,200 passengers and crew before it was finally towed into port.

I was always leery of embarking on a cruise. If anything happened, and increasingly things do, you have nowhere to go and are at the mercy of the limits and boundaries of the ship. There is no escape.

I feel for the passengers, who really did undergo a terrible situation for days on end. Illness, unsanitary conditions, lack of water, stench, and hunger were the order of the day. Here are some of the snippets from one news story about the passengers’ eventual safe disembarkation–

Passengers cheer escape from horrible cruise
“The vacation ship carrying some 4,200 people docked late Thursday in Mobile after a painfully slow approach that took most of the day. Passengers raucously cheered after days of what they described as overflowing toilets, food shortages and foul odors. Many were tired and didn’t want to talk. There were long lines to check into rooms. Some got emotional as they described the deplorable conditions of the ship. “It was horrible, just horrible” said Maria Hernandez, 28, of Angleton, Texas, tears welling in her eyes as she talked about waking up to smoke in her lower-level room Sunday and the days of heat and stench to follow. She was on a “girls trip” with friends. She said the group hauled mattresses to upper-level decks to escape the heat. As she pulled her luggage into the hotel, a flashlight around her neck, she managed a smile and even a giggle when asked to show her red “poo-poo bag” – distributed by the cruise line for collecting human waste.”

“The lower floors had it the worst, the floors ‘squish’ when you walk and lots of the lower rooms have flooding from above floors,” Hill wrote. “Half the bachelorette party was on two; the smell down there literally chokes you and hurts your eyes.” She said “there’s poop and urine all along the floor. The floor is flooded with sewer water … and we had to poop in bags.” The company disputed the accounts of passengers who described the ship as filthy…

I well know the desperation of saving for years to go on a big vacation, the desperate hope that the weather will cooperate, the jealous countdown of the few days on the vacation compared to the towering number of days at work. (350 vs 15). I cannot imagine the heartbreak of honeymooners, anniversary couples, and families that were impacted by conditions that were described. But I want to take a moment’s pause to explore two thoughts.

These are First World problems. So a few bachelorettes had to poop in a bag for a few days. Some of women on a “girls’ trip” went without access to clean water for a few days. (A girls’ trip is an extra in life, ladies.) They were a little bit hungry for a few days, and a little bit cold. They lived with a few days’ uncertainty as to when their horrific situation will ever end.

There are billions of people all over the world who live that way for a lifetime.

Ghetto in Porto Alegro, Brazil

Foraging in a Tijuana dump for recyclables to sell, and for lunch

Children playing in their neighborhood, Cairo

Greeks fighting for free tomatoes and leeks thrown from a truck

Darlene Rosas, 66, lives alone in a condemned FEMA trailer 40 miles outside of Eagle Butte, S.D. (Source)

No, those are First World problems, the frustration of a person’s thousands of dollars lost on a one-week vacation turned icky. Let’s put this into perspective.

Secondly, think of the cruise ship as a microcosm of the earth. Look at the time of their misery as the time of the Tribulation. What happens when the infrastructure we depend on and take for granted suddenly breaks down? How do we react? Toilets, sewer treatment plants, trash pickup, roads for smooth transportation, government subsidized public transport, regular deliveries of groceries to stores … all infrastructure and all privileges we take as our due. Somehow we think that access to food, water, sanitary conditions, and proper functioning of everything will always be so. If anything, the successive weather events of late have shown us how easily all that can and is disrupted. Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Joplin tornadoes in 2011, the Super-blizzard of 2013 show that large swathes of the nation can suddenly be floating powerless and helpless, with millions of people bemoaning their (hopefully) temporary situation.

What would a regular person in the US do when sanitary conditions, food, and freedom of movement are suddenly gone? There were two responses on the Carnival Triumph ship. One was that many turned to sin. It didn’t take long, just a few days, before they resorted to savagery and fighting to get food.

“Conditions on board a cruise ship stranded in the Gulf of Mexico have deteriorated dramatically, reportedly leaving passengers fighting over food and the vessel caked in urine and raw sewage. Passengers on board the US cruise ship Carnival Triumph, which has been stranded since Sunday after an engine fire, are using mobile phones to convey tales of carpets soaked in urine and passengers sleeping in tents on deck. Food supplies are said to be running low, with passengers forced to queue for hours for cold onion and cucumber sandwiches, and there are also reports of fights breaking out as groups of “savages” fight over the dwindling supplies.”

Other reports indicated that the people complained, slept for escape, fought, and were “crying and freaking out.”

Others did the opposite. They formed a Bible study group.

Joseph and Cecilia Alvarez of San Antonio said some passengers passed the time by forming a Bible study group. “It was awesome,” he said. “It lifted up our souls and gave us hope that we would get back.” (source)

Still envisioning the cruise ship as earth, and the total breakdown of everything on that ship as the coming Tribulation, some cruise ship passengers decided to think of others and of Jesus rather than their temporary earthly conditions. This is the second response. While some were moaning and crying and sleeping and fighting, others during the Tribulation delved into their faith in Jesus and patiently endured the trials that were set before them. Their faith lifted up their souls and give then hope that they will get back home. (Revelation 14:12).

Below is a Lyle Ratliff/Reuters photo, and the caption says “Passengers cheer after disembarking from the Carnival Triumph cruise ship after reaching the port of Mobile, Alabama, February 14, 2013.” Taking a moment to stretch the metaphor of the stranded cruise ship being a crippled earth during the Tribulation, these two ladies, covered in robes of righteousness, praise the Lord for their release from sinful and deteriorating conditions. OK, not really. But it’s nice to imagine.

If you are alive and unsaved during the time of the rapture, you will enter a time where conditions such as described on the cruise ship will erupt, and in fact be a million times worse. You will have two responses: retreat further into your sin, or turn to Jesus for release from bondage to that sin. You will not escape the conditions, unless you die, which is a severe likelihood. But you will have hope and your soul will be uplifted. You will see that grace abounds, that He is eternal and your conditions are temporary.

However, you can escape all these things in the first place by turning to Jesus now. Once you repent of your sins and He becomes the Lord of your life, He sends the Holy Spirit to indwell you. You gain a perspective that whatever conditions you are enduring now are merely inconveniences that will end at the rapture. At that time you will receive your glorified body and live in eternal grace and perfection with Jesus.

The earth is like the Carnival Triumph, a floating petri dish of putrefaction and decay, people stuck there with no hope of getting away from the worsening conditions. Except in real life, there is hope: Jesus. That’s why we need to tell the passengers on this ship of earth that the savior is coming and the ship will be saved. There is a way off, away from polluted hallways and hopeless people. He is coming to deal with sin and sinners, and to renew the earth. (2 Peter 3:10), Revelation 21:1). The way is to repent of sins and look to Jesus for all things. He is coming soon. Though the passengers on the Triumph ship took four hours to get off, the rapture will be a moment, a blink and we are gone, changed forever.

“Behold! I tell 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 trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” (1 Corinthians 15:51-53)

Christians, in troublous times, turn to the bible. Turn to where there is hope and comfort. Start a bible study. Discuss the hope and joy of Jesus with like-minded people. You will feel better. Non-Christians, and I mean all other people including atheists, Catholics, pagans, Buddhists, Mormons…, turn to Jesus as your hope. The fear and darkness you feel inside is the lack of HIM in you. Salvation does not guarantee a resolution to your uncomfortable or unwanted conditions. If you are paralyzed, you will still be paralyzed. If you have MS, you will still have MS. If you are poor in Cairo, you will likely still be poor in Cairo. What salvation affords you, in addition to grace and rescue from the coming wrath, (Romans 5:9), is an eternal perspective that helps you cope with current conditions. You receive comfort from God as to His love and watchful notice of you, His little sparrow. You gain an understanding that a few years or decades of discomfort in this life does to equate to the billions and billions and billions of ages in eternity with the Perfect. (1 Corinthians 13:10).

Today is the day of your salvation. Now is the eternal hope come to dwell in you! To the unsaved the Spirit says:

For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2)

But I pray to you, O LORD, in the time of your favor; in your great love, O God, answer me with your sure salvation. (Psalm 69:13)

To the saved the Spirit says:

Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. (Revelation 3:10)

Posted in ahmadinejad, iran, khamenei, nuclear, tribulation

Has Iran become a nuclear nation?

Posted on by elizabethprata

Matt Drudge had a headline under a compelling graphic yesterday afternoon.

I am a child of the cold war, born in 1960 and raised in my formative years with Sputnik at my back and the ‘sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to earth’ to my front. The 70s and 80s are still vivid in my memory of the Russkies, Reds, Commies that were neck and neck militarily with the US and someday might even invade. And nukes. Goodness, the nukes we all worried about.

In the 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a new generation was raised without the Red boogeyman as a political specter. We all went on to “greener” pastures, literally, with worrying about the environment and global warming and population control. The Bomb was so passe.

But in 2007 when the Russians started to make a surprise comeback, those of us who were old enough to remember the Cold War, Iron Curtain, East Germany, Berlin Wall, and the military buildup, collectively shuddered. The bomb is back. Oh, boy, is it back.

In God’s economy, the bomb never went away. But more on that in a minute.

Yesterday Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (above, right) and Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei (left) revealed that they already have the bomb. This may be true. It may not be true. We will see. But the point is, they want it and one way or another. Iran is going to wind up possessing a bomb, if they don’t already. Here is the news article-

Ahmadinejad: Iran already a nuclear state, but has no intention of launching attack on Israel
“Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says that while Iran is already a nuclear state, it has no intention of attacking Israel. Ahmadinejad was interviewed on the eve of his visit to Cairo, where he will attend the 12th Islamic Summit Conference, due to open there on Wednesday. … Ahmadinejad said the world must now treat Iran as a nuclear country. “They want Iran to go back to what it was in the past, but they won’t succeed. They assume we’ll give in to pressure; such thoughts are misguided. We’re already an industrial and nuclear country, a country that has conquered space.”

Wait, back that up- a ‘nuclear country’? Well, maybe they mean nuclear power. Like, electricity.

Maybe so, maybe not so. The interview went on-

“Mentioning the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran, Ahmadinejad said that while it might be easy to launch missiles or attack using fighter jets, Iran’s response and defense capability were important in this context.”

Ahmadinejad is being cagy, perhaps to save face in recovering from the terrible loss of the Fordow nuclear processing plant, sabotaged two weeks ago. Maybe Ahmadinejad is telling the truth.

Is there a biblical take on nuclear war?

Yes, and no. The bible does not explicitly mention nuclear missiles in the Tribulation, of course. But it is my opinion, nuclear exchanges will take place. I will offer scriptures on why I think so and leave it to you as to whether the future portends nuclear war, or not.

Zechariah 14:12 tells of the time when Jesus returns. His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, and the mount will split during a major earthquake and make a huge valley. At that time, the armies of satan will be surrounding and attacking Jerusalem. Jesus’s return stops it. He says, “And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem: their flesh will rot while they are still standing on their feet, their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. And on that day a great panic from the Lord shall fall on them, so that each will seize the hand of another, and the hand of the one will be raised against the hand of the other. Even Judah will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations shall be collected, gold, silver, and garments in great abundance. And a plague like this plague shall fall on the horses, the mules, the camels, the donkeys, and whatever beasts may be in those camps.” (Zechariah 14:12-15).

The ‘plague’ could be an actual plague like the one that attacked Herod when worms ate him and he died. But the description here sounds much more like hat happens to flesh during a nuclear blast. I looked it up. The eyes, tongue, lungs, internal organs etc literally melt.

Revelation 6:14 speaks of a great earthquake and other signs happening: stars disappear and the sky recedes like a scroll. In my research about what happens when a nuclear blast detonates, I learned that there is a shock wave that travels in the air. The shock wave travels at supersonic speed, as well as the wave that travels upward, carrying the dirt, ground, and debris with it. A vacuum immediately around the blast occurs during this time. It is like the atmosphere rolls up and then rolls back.

In the aftermath of Gog Magog war of Ezekiel 38-39, there is a scene which is explicitly described. Ezekiel 39:11-16 has it:

“On that day I will give to Gog a place for burial in Israel, the Valley of the Travelers, east of the sea. It will block the travelers, for there Gog and all his multitude will be buried. It will be called the Valley of Hamon-gog. For seven months the house of Israel will be burying them, in order to cleanse the land. All the people of the land will bury them, and it will bring them renown on the day that I show my glory, declares the Lord God. They will set apart men to travel through the land regularly and bury those travelers remaining on the face of the land, so as to cleanse it. At the end of seven months they will make their search. And when these travel through the land and anyone sees a human bone, then he shall set up a sign by it, till the buriers have buried it in the Valley of Hamon-gog. (Hamonahe is also the name of the city.) Thus shall they cleanse the land.”

The specifications for cleanup are similar to a bio-hazard protocol which would be instituted after a nuclear blast. In addition, the name “Hamon Gog” means “multitude of Gog.” In the Hebrew it bespeaks of a multitude, multitude. A LOT of bodies. And we see that there are so many it takes 7 months to bury them and an entire valley has to be set aside for the mass graves. It seems that nuclear blasts would be one kind of weapon to cause such massive casualties.

In Isaiah 17:1 the oracle states that Damascus will cease to be a city. Instead it will be heap of ruins. Even during the London Blitz of 1940 by Germany with conventional weapons, the city was not reduced to a heap of ruins. And Hitler tried his best. 348 German bombers escorted by 617 fighters blasted London for 12 hours. However, a nuclear blast could reduce a city to rubble…

In Revelation 6:8, Death and Hades ride out on a pale horse. A quarter of the earth’s people are killed and after that in Revelation 9:15 another third of the world is killed. As a matter of fact, so many die during the 7 years that Jesus said no flesh would be saved if He does not cut short the time. (Matthew 24:22).

Now, God does not need me to make a case for Him. He could move His hand and that many people would succumb to death at any moment. But it seems that with so many nuclear weapons still in the hands of man, the high level of deaths during this prophesied time of total war, and the verses which seem to indicate nukes are used given the effects recorded in Isaiah, Revelation, Zechariah and Ezekiel, that it seems logical to conclude that nuclear weapons are launched at some point.

The blessing is that the believer will not be here to endure any of that. Jesus Christ is not going to put His bride thought nuclear winter and radiation fallout. We will be take up to be with Him where He is- in the place He has prepared for us, (John 14:3) New Jerusalem

So Iran claims to have the bomb. Well…the Tribulation will be a time when man’s inclinations of evil will be a time when nukes will most likely be used. What do you think?

Posted in poseidon adventure, rapture, remnant, tribulation

The Rapture, the Remnant and the Poseidon Adventure

Posted on by elizabethprata

Enoch is an enigmatic bible figure. Not a lot is known about him. He was seventh from Adam. He was the father of Methuselah, the bibles’ oldest recorded person. We know Enoch walked with God, and then he was not, for God took him. (Genesis 5:21-24)

And in the NT we know that God was pleased with Enoch, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.” (Hebrews 11:5)

And we know that Enoch prophesied. Jude 1:14 has the prophecy-

“It was also about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, “Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones,”

Which is pretty cool because Enoch lived before the flood and the only people to survive the flood and thus record the prophecy are Noah and his sons and their wives. It was a prophecy that is obviously important for the succeeding generations to know about.

“The exact meaning of Methuselah’s name is somewhat uncertain: Dr. Henry Morris said it may mean, “When he dies, judgment.” Others say: “When he is dead it shall be sent” (“it” refers to the Deluge) (Cornwall and Smith, Exhaustive Dictionary of Bible Names). He was the oldest man of whom we have any record. This very ancient man lived before the Flood, and died at the age of 969 years, in the year of the Flood (Gen. 5:21-27; 1 Chr. 1:3). This fact, plus the former possible meaning of his name, suggests that Methuselah’s very godly father, Enoch, received a prophecy from God when his son was born, thus the name. Methuselah’s great age may be further evidence of God’s “long-suffering… in the days of Noah” (1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 3:9).” (source)

My opinion is (and this is speculation but it’s based on logical bible interpretation) is that Enoch will be one of the two witnesses during the Tribulation. Hebrews 9:27 says it is appointed for a man to die once and then face judgment. The verse obviously does not mean to die only once, because Lazarus and others died twice. And with the exception of the people who will be raptured, in my opinion the verse means that everyone has to die at least once. Enoch and Elijah never died. But if they are the two witnesses, they come down to earth and prophesy for an appointed amount of time and then they are killed. They eventually do die, fulfilling the general rule that Hebrews 9:27 states.

So even at that early date, God planned the second coming, precisely and perfectly, even down to the name of the Methuselah who was the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. His use of Enoch however was not just literal, but as with many lessons from the Old Testament, it was also a picture, or a type.

Enoch is a well-known type of the Church. He walked in fellowship with God and warned the world of coming judgment (Jude 14-15). Enoch had the distinction among the patriarchs of not seeing death. He was instead translated to heaven, being a picture of the Rapture of the Church. Enoch was translated to heaven before the flood came. After he was taken, God brought the flood upon the world, which is a foreshadow of the judgment to come in the Tribulation (2 Pet. 3:3-10; Lk. 17:26-27). (source)

Have you ever thought of Enoch in that way? He is a picture of the rapture, the church taken up to heaven alive before the long-prophesied judgment is unleashed.

Noah is a man of faith. There is no doubt that the lessons we can learn from his life yield many treasures of God’s character and might. He used Noah in a mighty way and Noah’s faith is a reminder to us today about being steadfast in trusting God.

But in addition to a literal lessons we can learn from Noah or about Noah, Noah was also a picture or a type. Noah was representative of God’s remnant of the Jews, going through a global judgment but being supernaturally preserved during it.

Lambert Dolphin has a good essay on the concept of the remnant. Numerically, the remnant has always been very small. Keep that in mind.

God foretold what will happen at the outset of the Tribulation and in a whistlestop discourse He marched the Apostles through the overview of it in Matthew 24. In Revelation, He gave more detail to John through a series of visions.

The remnant preserved through the Tribulation, though alluded to in Matthew 15-25, is slightly more specific in Joel 2:32, Zeph. 3:12f, Zech. 8:12; 13:7-9. It is a lot more specific in Isaiah 63:1-6, where the ancient name for Petra is called Bozrah.

In Revelation 12:6, we read a bit more about Petra being the stand-in for the Ark, where His remnant is preserved and protected through the global judgment:

“The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.” The woman in context here is Israel. Revelation 12:14-16 has a bit more. Zechariah 14:1-3 speaks of it also, and uses similar language.

The point is, the LORD always preserves a remnant. he has promised to do so and He will again. He will literally carry them through to be His glorious trophies after the judgment subsides.

So we have mentioned Enoch as a picture of the church, taken up bodily before the judgment starts. We have spoken of Noah, a faithful man and his family preserved through the global judgment which will be a picture of the Tribulation. But what about those who come to salvation during the Tribulation? The most vivid picture I can use here is an analogy of the movie The Poseidon Adventure.

I know that cultural references are usually no good for the obvious reason that they are not truth like the bible is. Just as obviously, if you haven’t sen the movie then the analogy fails. But here goes anyway, lol.

The Poseidon Adventure was a 1972 disaster film about an aging cruise ship heading to Greece from NY on its final voyage when it met up with a tsunami wave broadside and was capsized. Parts of the movie were filmed aboard the RMS Queen Mary, whose encounter with a rogue wave in 1942 inspired the book upon which the film is based. The movie was a critical and audience success. The original poster for the film had the tagline “Hell, upside down.” This is the analogy. The Tribulation will be hell on earth when everything everyone knew will be turned upside down.

The scene in which the wave turned the ship upside down was memorable. It happened on New Year’s Eve, and being a luxury liner, the ballroom was filled with people dressed in fancy clothes and wearing jewels and eating luxurious food. They are having a good time, oblivious to the danger that is coming their way.

Suddenly and without warning, their world literally turns upside down. It happens fast and nothing looks like it did before. Mangled catwalks bar their way. Lumps of fire-glowing infrastructure are a menace. The lights go out. Many try to find a way to survive but they make wrong decisions and are killed in constant disasters such as explosions, steam pipe breaks, drowning, fires, etc.

A very small band of people fight their way through by going toward the propeller room, which is counter-intuitive because in a sane world the propeller room is down, under the waterline. But in an upside down world, the propeller would be above water. It was difficult going because everything is backwards and is so unlike the world they had been living in just a few moments before. Even at that, many in the small party die. Only 5 people on the entire ship of thousands make it to daylight.

The Tribulation will be hell in a world turned upside down.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” (Isaiah 5:20)

“Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.” (Habakkuk 1:4)

The world will be upside down! A hellish struggle with death at every corner!

You have a choice in which group to belong as this age winds to its end. You can be saved by the blood of Jesus now, repenting of your sins and escaping all these things in the rapture. If you are Jewish you can wait and be supernaturally converted to Christianity during the Tribulation, if you aren’t one of the billions who die first, and hope that you will be included in the very small remnant who make it to Petra to be protected by God. Or you can shake your fist at God, hope you don’t die along with the billions of others, and become one of the very, tiny few who become born-again, and escape the guillotine of the antichrist and live through the Tribulation to emerge in the morning after.

I am saved by the grace of Jesus, I KNOW that I KNOW that I will go in the rapture, which will occur prior to the tribulation. I often wonder what the morning after the rapture will be like. How bright the glory! How peaceful the lands! How beautiful His brethren! How faithful His angels!

Listen to the song from The Morning After (from the Poseidon Adventure) and listen to it with a Jesus-tinge. I hope to see you there, the morning after.

Posted in germany, hitler, holocaust, nazi, tribulation

Holocaust- the cry "Never Again!" will turn to ‘not again!’

Posted on by elizabethprata

The motto of the Jewish Defense League is “Never Again!” referring to the Holocaust of WWII at the hands of Nazi war criminals.

The other night I happened upon an interesting-sounding documentary on PBS that I stuck with and then was sorry I did (kind of). It was called Elusive Justice. Part of the summary says,

“In the absence of a sustained international manhunt and centralized prosecution, the task of bringing Nazi war criminals to justice was undertaken by a handful of individuals — acting without official status or government support. These so-called Nazi hunters collectively identified and brought to justice thousands of Nazi war criminals.”

I enjoy justice and legal books and documentaries, so I watched the film.

And then my watching turned into horror. Oh, of course I knew that the holocaust was the worst genocide on earth in all of history. I knew that Hitler was the worst personification of evil ever to inhabit a body, and will remain so until the antichrist comes and supercedes his evil by a factor of a million. I knew that the piles of bodies discovered at the camps and in graves stunned the liberators so much that many of them were not able to function normally ever again. But I never watched the video or deliberately looked at visual images of the carnage.

Until the Elusive Justice movie.

Those terrible images of piles of bodies. Of walking skeletons liberated from death camps. The tortures, and the callousness of the deaths. Shallow graves. Terrible, terrible ways they invented to kill mass quantities of people. Of human beings.

Watching a Holocaust documentary with a biblical perspective means my brain processes the information differently than it did when I saw photos and videos of the Holocaust with a blinded mind as a lost person. In a sanctified mind, we wash through each image and each fact through a brain that is daily becoming more occupied with Christ. It is daily growing more light and less dark. Rather than the information we’ve obtained floating around in a loose morass of relativistic morality, our brain compares everything it absorbs with the bible’s facts and laws and uses His word as the benchmark to everything else.

In the heart-department, it means now I have a heart-burden for the lost world which does not know what is coming…or who is coming. My mind faints at the thought of what Revelation reveals for Israel…for the Jews…for the Christians…and for the lost.

For example, Revelation 6:8 says that when the Fourth Seal is opened, the pale horse of death is released.

“And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.”

If we interpret that to mean that a fourth of the earth’s people will die, then it is mind-blowing. And remember, the entire Tribulation will take place within precisely 7 years, and the Great Tribulation will have the entirety of its events take place within 3.5 years.

In Revelation 9, the Sixth Trumpet judgment releases death angels. “So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind.”

So let’s break down the Tribulation’s death numbers and compare them to the German Holocaust of WWII.

In the Elusive Justice documentary it was stated that the Nazis/SS killed 2/3 Europe’s Jews in 10 years. “The SS was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP). It began at the end of 1920 as a small permanent guard unit. … Under Himmler’s leadership (1929-1945), it grew from a small paramilitary formation to one of the largest and most powerful organizations in the Third Reich. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Himmler’s command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–1945).” (Wikipedia)

The standard number of overall Jews killed is 6 million in WWII’s 6 years. Breaking it down, that is a death rate of 1M Jews per year.

The German Nazis killed Jews in death camps not just in Germany, but they died in Croatia, Bulgaria, Poland. In all of Europe. I was astounded at how quickly the organization within the Nazi Party coalesced to become an efficient killing machine within just a few short years. Amazing rapidity.

Right now there are 6.93 Billion people on the earth. Round that up to 7 Billion.

Of the seven billion people on earth now, if 1/4 are killed by Revelation’s Sixth seal, that means 1.75 billion people die soon into the Tribulation. So people are already dying in great numbers before the Sixth Trumpet is blown, when another third dies. That is another 1.75 billion.

Did you catch that number? By the time the 7-year Tribulation is half over, half the world’s population is dead, 3.5 billion people. 3.5B in 3.5 years.

In the Nazi Holocaust, 1 million Jews were killed per year. In the first half of the Tribulation 1 Billion die per year.In half the time!

And then the Great Tribulation begins. In the second half of the Time of Jacob’s Trouble AKA The Great Tribulation, the devil is thrown down to earth. This makes him very angry. He begins his pursuit of the Jews and the Christians with total evil purpose and intent. ALL the universe’s evil is funneled through one man, the antichrist, who becomes indwelled by satan, who in turn single-mindedly pursues God’s chosen. (Revelation 12: 13-17; Revelation 13:7, Daniel 7:21)

I want us to imagine three things.

1. The carnage. This below

and this also (Bergen-Belsen, 1945),

Is NOTHING compared to the death rate of the Tribulation. The documentary said that in some cases the Nazis killed hundreds of thousands a day. If you remember the terrible feeling you had at seeing tens of thousands killed the Banda Aceh Christmas Day quake and tsunami in 2004, or the feelings of horror as you watched the Japan quake and tsunami wash away tens of thousands in March 2011, increase that order of magnitude to millions a day killed in successive events that occur one upon another, and are bigger and worse than both those events, and you have a glimmer of the Tribulation carnage.

As an aside, if you do not believe the Church will be removed in the rapture prior to all this wrath and death, and you think you can handle it, YOU ARE WRONG. I see too many people casually take the doctrine of the rapture as a kind of an ‘oh, well, it’ll all pan out in the end’ potentiality and in their false humility (really pride) they fold their hands across their stomach and complacently say, “Well I have a strong faith, I would hope that I could remain faithful during that time.” Jesus Himself said it will be the worst time the world has ever known, which means worse than the Flood when man was completely evil all the time! (Genesis 6:5) He said if he didn’t cut it short Himself, no one would survive. (Matthew 24:21-22). The mind will not be able to handle life then, either having gone crazy at seeing the things that are coming upon the earth and having a heart attack on the spot, (Luke 21:26) or simply by living with people whose minds are totally deluded and drenched with sin. (Romans 1:28-31). All that tells me is that they have not studied Revelation or that they have an inflated sense of self.

2. Next: think of the easy evil of man. The men in 1928 who later did these Nazi war crimes were normal men, but by 1929 had joined the Nazi party and later the SS. They became genocidal criminals very quickly. It is what Paul means when He says there is none good, no not one. (Romans 3:10).

There was this little Polish town called Jedwabne. John MacArthur mentioned it in a sermon recently. He said,
———————-
“I’ve been reading, in fact I’ve finished reading a little book called Neighbors. It’s a secular book written by a man named Jan Gross and it looks at a very strange anomaly for sociologists to deal with and anthropologists to deal with in the world in which we live. The explanation of the contemporary sociologists and anthropologists is that man is basically good and that when man does something really bad it’s because he gets brainwashed, and the only explanation for the Holocaust in German, the only explanation for good German people massacring six million Jews is that they were under a relentless onslaught of Nazi propaganda that literally overpowered their thinking so that eventually they were so severely brainwashed that they just went out and massacred the Jews. That has been the standard response by the evolutionary sociologists and anthropologists who believes that man is on the ascendancy getting better and getting better and has to explain the incredible Holocaust of Germany to say nothing of the 50 million, perhaps, that were killed by Stalin, and the explanation has always been, well, they were under this brainwashing for a long time and they were so brainwashed they couldn’t think the normal way. They were terribly victimized by this brainwashing. And then they found this town in Poland called Jedwabne.”

“Now in ’39 when Hitler started his movement to take over the world for the Third Reich he didn’t want to have to fight a war on the eastern border so he made a truce with Russia and in order to kind of keep a buffer zone, Germany is here, Russia is here, in the middle is Poland. And so he split Poland down the middle and annexed the eastern part of Poland to Russia and took the western part to Germany so there would be a buffer there. So Jedwabne was in eastern Poland and was never occupied by any Nazi’s, it was never occupied by any Germans, it was occupied by Russians. Russians weren’t trying to conquer the world as such, they weren’t interested in racial propaganda, and so there was not propagandizing at all of the 3,000 people that lived in Jedwabne, 3,000 people, 1,600 of them were Jews. The Jews had lived in the town for 300 years. They farmed together with the folks, the Gentile people who were there, they went to school with them, they worked with them, they occasionally married them, they bought their groceries in the same place, they worked the fields together, they carried on the same social events in the town, and they had for 300 years. There was essentially no racial attitudes there. Everybody got along fine.”

“Well in, it June 22, 1941 and Hitler didn’t want that truce anymore because he wanted to defeat Russia so he swept through Poland and the truce was broken and he took that town Jedwabne along with Poland all the way to the Russian border. That was on June 22, 1941. On July 10, that’s a little over two weeks later, the Gentile townspeople massacred all 1,600 Jews in one day, slaughtered them all. The ones they couldn’t stab with a pitchfork or behead with an axe because they were running out of time that day, they herded into a barn, poured gasoline all over the barn and incinerated them all.”

“This nagging event couldn’t be explained by the sociologists. Absolutely could not be explained by the sociologists because that town was never under any Nazi propaganda. They’d never been there.”

“This history records indicate not one of those people was killed by a German. Not one of them was killed by a Nazi soldier. Every single one of those Jews was killed by one of his neighbors, hence the title of the book. And the question the sociologist asks in the book, and he can’t really answer, is how in the world can people in a two week period massacre their neighbors in a blood bath? How can they do that?”
—————————
This is the spirit of antichrist, (1 John 2:18) which is the same spirit of evil we find in the emergent church, a la tolerance and interfaith. Those two positions – Nazi death camps and emergent church- seem like extremes but they are not. Since they are both godless, they are exactly the same flavor: evil, and totally opposed to God. It is how and why all the world’s false religious doctrines will blend into one muddy amorphous blob of evil in the last days when men kill for fun (Mark 13:12) and shake their fist at God (Rev 9:20-21; Rev 16:9, 11, 21)

They could do these genocidal war crimes because we are evil. And they will do it again in the Tribulation, except more efficiently. because an order of tenfold more of humankind will die at the hands of evil man, simply because evil man wants them to die.

3. Third, think of the holiness and glory of God who saves. In his book, The Existence and Attributes of God, Stephen Charnock noted God’s holiness “is the crown of all His attributes, the life of all His decrees, the brightness of all His actions. Nothing is decreed by Him, nothing is acted by Him, but what is worthy of the dignity, and becoming the honour, of this attribute”.

And yet He saves men who build concentration camp gas chambers- if they repent. He would have saved Hitler if he had repented. He saved you. Me.

In Charles Hodge’s Systematic Theology, Hodge said of God’s holiness,

“This is a general term for the moral excellence of God…. Holiness, on the one hand, implies entire freedom from moral evil and, on the other, absolute moral perfection. Freedom from impurity is the primary idea of the word.” (Systematic Theology, Vol. 1, 150-151).”

God is on His throne and He is holy. When He saved you, He declared you holy. This is the universe’s 2nd most amazing act, that after Jesus died and was resurrected, (the universe’s greatest act) through Him we have eternal holy life.

Oh, and by the way, Israel National news reports that German Neo-Nazi Party Appeals to Court for Legitimization.

Never again? Sadly, yes again. And soon, by the looks of things.

Posted in edmund fitzgerald, eternity, tribulation, wrath

Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

Posted on by elizabethprata

“Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

What an evocative lyric. It is from Gordon Lightfoot’s song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It is a haunting ballad of a ship that went down in a November storm on Lake Superior in 1975. The last thing that they heard from the ship was a radio communication from the captain, who said, “We are holding our own.” Minutes later she sank suddenly. Twenty-nine men lost their lives on that fateful day. A record cargo worth 24 million was lost too. The nightly newscaster Harry Reasoner reported, “All that’s been found is an oil slick and some debris.”

Though over 240 ships have been lost on the rough sailing lake, it is the Edmund Fitzgerald that most captures the imagination.

Why would that be? Of all the wrecks of all time, other than the Titanic, so many have gone unremembered. The SS Central America’s loss off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857 was greater in loss of cargo worth and greater in lives lost. More than 550 passengers and crew died and 30,000 pounds of gold sank with them, contributing to the Panic of 1857.

The SS General Slocum caught fire and sank in New York’s East River on 15 June 1904. More than 1,000 people died in the accident, making it New York City’s worst loss-of-life incident until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Perhaps we are so touched by the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald because of the Lightfoot song. It is vivid to be sure. Perhaps because of the lack of consensus on how the great ship sank. To this day there are competing theories, but after good video was taken from a submersible in 1994, the only thing that became more evident is that the ship broke up on the surface and the trip to the bottom tortured it. The twisted metal between the two halves spoke of the power of the seas when it chooses to claim a ship. A body was discovered laying beside the bow, still in his life jacket. The power of the seas claims lives too, and the torture of such a loss is just as great and greater. Perhaps because it is impossible to truly understand how time telescopes when you are in such an environment. The minutes do turn to hours.

If you are a mariner you know when you’re in a storm your two hour watch seems like days, and you look at your watch and only one minute has passed. It is disorienting to be in the dark, with waves crashing over you. You never know where the next wave will come from, always on the lookout for the rogue. Where is the lighthouse? Bleary eyes keep searching for that saving light, but all you see is more waves, and more dark, and fear. You feel helpless, powerless, in the dark, crying out to God for desperate help.

The Fitzgerald, or any other ship in distress, is a microcosm. It will be like that in the Tribulation, for example. Helpless, fearful, in the dark, navigating blindly, rogue waves washing over you, piteously crying out to God, wondering, where is the love of God in all this? Will this ever end? And just as suddenly as it began, it is over. Your tortured trip to the deeps is the last journey of your mortal body, while your soul flies to hell, where it will stay forever. Until the judgment that is, when your resurrected body will be reunited with your soul and the agony will really begin.

Suddenly when the trumpet call of the rapture sounds and Christians fly away, your storm will begin. The world’s storm will begin, there will be no safe harbor. There is no Whitefish Bay to aim for, no place that will offer you a good anchorage.

The storms will be relentless; earthquakes, tornadoes, diseases, violence, war. One after the other will crash over you relentlessly and yet you will never know where the next will come from. you will look for relief but will not be able to find it. And that is before the demons arrive. Their bite will be agony and you will want to die, try to die, but death will flee from you. (Revelation 9:6).
 
The agony of pain and tribulation will be unceasing. The trapped feeling, that this will never end, that there is no way out will pervade your mind and make you mad with despair. The knowledge that death is going to come but the agony of not knowing when will pierce your demented soul.

But God is love, you say. Isn’t this just too depressing? Yes it is depressing. I cry when I think of the  countless millions who will be lost. Maybe you are one of those. The Tribulation will be a time of wrath. God is love, but He will pour out His wrath on men.

Carm.org defines His wrath:

“Biblically, wrath is the divine judgment upon sin and sinners. It does not merely mean that it is a casual response by God to ungodliness, but carries the meaning of hatred, revulsion, and indignation. God is by nature love (1 John 4:16), however, in His justice He must punish sin. The punishment is called the wrath of God. It will occur on the final Day of Judgment when those who are unsaved will incur the wrath of God. It is, though, presently being released upon the ungodly (Rom. 1:18-32) in the hardening of their hearts. Wrath is described as God’s anger (Num. 32:10-13), as stored up (Rom. 2:5-8), and as great (Zech. 7:12). The believer’s deliverance from God’s wrath is through the atonement (Rom. 5:8-10). “For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,” (1 Thess. 5:9).”

The Tribulation is a near-future seven-year period of time when God is prophesied to finish His discipline of Israel and to finish His judgment of the unbelieving world. So yes, He is love but He is wrath too. “Love is an attribute of God. Love is a core aspect of God’s character, His Person. God’s love is in no sense in conflict with His holiness, righteousness, justice, or even His wrath. All of God’s attributes are in perfect harmony. Everything God does is loving, just as everything He does is just and right. God is the perfect example of true love.” (source)

He sent His son to take the wrath we deserve. If you believe on the name of the resurrected Jesus, you will escape the wrath and live an eternity of love with God. But if you refuse His love gift of Jesus it means you accept the wrath. Believe on Jesus today. Repent of your sins and believe that Jesus is Lord, having lived a perfect life and taken the punishment for your sins unto Himself. God was pleased to substitute His son for your penalty and resurrected Him as proof of that acceptance. If you repent and believe you will not have to endure the Tribulation’s wrath. It will be a time when the waves of trouble turn the minutes to hours. You will beg to die, but if you die apart from Jesus, those waves of agony turning minutes to hours will never end.

You will have a chance to believe in Jesus after the rapture, the bible shows us that there are martyrs who are killed for their faith, a faith they came to after we were taken out of the time of Jacob’s Trouble. But you may die before then. You may die during the first moment of the Tribulation. You may come under the delusion and believe the antichrist. It is too risky. This is the Age of Grace. Now is the time.

“All that’s been found is an oil slick and some debris.” That will be YOU.

You will be a smudge on the great timeline of history. You think you are holding your own, but destruction is moments away from you. You, debris, blotted out from the Lamb’s book of life and entered in the book of death. A name, a person forgotten and dispersed as an oil slick eventually dissipating to something of no consequence, like a vapor. An enemy of God howling in agony in hell while the rest of blessed eternity continues joyfully apace.

JESUS IS THE LIGHT. Come home to safe harbor.

Posted in gas, prophecy, secede, secession, tribulation

What the current secession movements have to do with gas in CA

Posted on by elizabethprata

I read the news and when I spot a pattern, I think about why a pattern of something has emerged. One news items is just a news item. Two on the same subject is a coincidence. Three, now that makes a pattern. When the pattern relates to prophecy, then I write about it.

The pattern is secession. There are three secession movements in the works, one of the three is not a threat but completed. Would you have thought that secession of Venice from Italy, the Lakota Nation from America and Catalonia from Spain are related to the California refinery problems and also to prophecy?

Here is the secession news.

The Lakota Sioux have been seeking independence from the Union since 2007 when they declared independence. This week (again) they announced secession.

“We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us,” long-time Native American radical leader Russell Means said. The move potentially impacts the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. … This time, [Activist Russell] Means detailed reasons for the secession including a long list of problems facing the Lakota, such as unemployment, healthcare and life expectancy as well use of natural resources. In a rambling video, he also added a massive number of reasons for why his new nation would be both strong and lawful – talking about everything from credit card companies to global warming as problems they aim to escape.”

The UK Telegraph is reporting today that Venice Italy is holding a mass rally to push for secession from Italy. Italy actually only became a nation in 1861. “Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north, it borders France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia along the Alps. To the south, it consists of the entirety of the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Sardinia–the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea–and many other smaller islands. The independent nation-states of San Marino and the Vatican City are fully sovereign enclaved microstates within Italy, while Campione d’Italia is an Italian exclave in Switzerland.” [source]

Mass rally in Venice to call for independence from Italy
“Inspired by the nationalist aspirations of Scotland and Catalonia, pro-independence campaigners will hold a mass rally in the heart of the lagoon city on Saturday, calling for an urgent referendum to be held on the issue. Indipendenza Veneta, a newly-founded pro-independence movement, says it expects several thousand people to turn up for the rally. They will be ferried across the Grand Canal in gondolas to deliver a “declaration of independence” to the headquarters of the Veneto regional government. It may sound fanciful, and it will be fiercely resisted by Rome, but activists want to carve out a new country in north-eastern Italy which would comprise Venice, the surrounding region of Veneto and parts of Lombardy, Trentino and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. The “Repubblica Veneta”, as it would be known, would encompass about five million people.”

The Venetians were inspired by Catalonia, so here is the story of Catalonia, Spain’s secession issue. “Catalonia is an autonomous community of Spain, with the official status of a “nationality”.” (source). The map below shows the territory of Catalonia in red. The manila colored section to the west is Portugal. Spain is bordered to the north by France.

Spain: Catalonia increases push to secede
“Spain’s economic powerhouse Catalonia took its first step toward independence – and threatened to proceed unilaterally if necessary – in a serious challenge to Madrid’s already besieged central government, which is struggling with social turmoil and economic uncertainty. Catalonia’s conservative regional leader Artur Mas moved up local elections to Nov. 25 in an effort to secure the political mandate he needs to press the central government to authorize a referendum on independence. But he said that Catalonia could proceed with a referendum even if Madrid didn’t authorize one.”

The key reminder here regarding prophecy is that man’s boundaries fail. They look solid on a map, but they are fluid. If you know history you know that Europe changed dramatically after WWI. It changed dramatically again after WWII. In the 1990s it seemed that there was a new country every day, with the breakup of the Soviet Republic, the Czech states, Yugoslavia, and Bosnia.

The main idea is fragility. Man’s infrastructure of boundaries, nations, and governments are just that, man’s. When man sets boundaries, they eventually change or fail. Do not get too attached to the idea of “America” or the world continuing on as it always has been, or the idea of a unified Europe. It is shocking when things change fast, but if you are attached to Jesus you know He is permanent. Everything else dissolves away. Have compassion on those who are clinging to that which dissolves. They are disoriented and upset.

The secession movements we read about here may or may not come to something, but I’ll tell you one fact: eventually, and soon, all the nations will be carved up and re-knit together into a new world order of ten kingdoms, and then one final kingdom. Things are going to shift dramatically. (Revelation 13:1; Daniel 7:16-24; Daniel 2:41-42). That change has begun and is even well underway.

Now what does all this have to do with the price of gas in California? It is still about man’s infrastructure and its resultant fragility.

Refinery problems keep gas prices surging in California
“California gas prices continued surging Friday, adding another 17 cents per gallon on average, and the increases are expected to continue for at least several more days, ensuring long lines and short tempers at pumps around the state. A week of soaring costs has led some stations to close and others to charge record prices … Among the recent disruptions, an Aug. 6 fire at a Chevron Corp. refinery in Richmond left one of the region’s largest refineries producing at a reduced capacity, and a Chevron pipeline that moves crude oil to Northern California also was shut down.”

So two refineries were shot down and the nation’s largest economy and the world’s 8th largest economy overall is in total disarray. Hmmm. Man’s infrastructure is soooo fragile.

What is going on in CA is a micro-picture of what is going to happen when war breaks out in the Middle East. We know that war does break out eventually, because the bible clearly shows us that in the last days Syria, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Russia, Iran, etc go to war. Oil prices will skyrocket, if it is available at all. Just as the CA troubles show us, gas prices skyrocketed within days, where it is even available. And that is with just two refineries impacting the oil delivery system. When the oil is choked off at the source, the world will go bananas, and daily life as we know it will change instantly.

One example is in the article I linked to above. “Rebecca Olson, 43, of Irvine, drove to a Costco in Tustin hoping to find lower prices than the $4.65 in her neighborhood, but the pumps were closed. The part-time preschool teacher said her husband already spends $500 a month on gas, in part because he commutes nearly 100 miles a day to a new sales job after being unemployed for a year. They’ve already parked their GMC Yukon SUV indefinitely. If gas prices keep rising, Olson said they’ll sell her husband’s Infiniti G35 that requires premium fuel and buy a more efficient car, while making their children ride their bikes to their activities.”

You’ll see mules, donkeys, bikes, golf carts, mopeds and horses on the road again. Cars will be jettisoned to the side like dying dinosaurs.

Man has put an overlay of civilization down on the earth through artificial national boundaries, and criss-crossed it with electrical wires, roads, and pipelines, and then dotted the skies with satellites. All this will be wiped out. The coming earthquakes & tsunamis will take care of the pipelines and wires. Electro-magnetic pulses and sun-storms will zap the satellites and computer chips (which are in cars, too). Civil unrest will re-arrange the colorful swathes on the maps with names like America and Italy, and Canada like so many jigsaw puzzle pieces.

The new word for the era is “fragile”. And there is nothing we can do about the coming changes.

Except to repent and have faith in Christ! Trust Christ and you will have security of your soul forever, and you will become a citizen of the New Jerusalem in the New Earth. (Revelation 21:1-4). HIS boundary lines will never fail! HIS Light will never go out! (Rev 21:23). Become a Christian and get a new perspective about the coming changes, and you will not fear but rejoice.

Posted in false prophets, false teachers, peace and security, tribulation

While they are saying peace and security

Posted on by elizabethprata

Here is some Middle East news. Things are deteriorating so rapidly over there it is breathtaking.

1. Jordan’s King Abdullah dissolves Parliament, calls early elections
“The royal decree follows Abdullah II’s pledge to bring in political reforms aimed at avoiding anti-government unrest in the wake of the Arab Spring. Jordanians have been pressing for a greater say in how their country is run and demanding corruption be tackled. Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood said in July its political party, the Islamic Action Front, would boycott the polls. The group has called for the monarch’s powers to be curtailed, and for an overhaul of the parliamentary system in which the prime minister is appointed by the king rather than elected. It has said it would boycott polls until such measures were introduced.”

The King may look stable but no situation in the ME is stable right now. This editorial in the UK Guardian asks, “Is Jordan heading for chaos?” The answer is yes. Yes it is. No nation will survive the chaos that is coming, and the chaos will begin in and around Israel.

Iran is not stable, either. Iran’s rial currency plunges in value, causing riots.

2. Iran’s currency plunges, protests in streets, clashes with police
“DUBAI (Reuters) – Riot police clashed with demonstrators and arrested money changers in Tehran on Wednesday in disturbances over the collapse of the Iranian currency, which has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar in a week, witnesses said.”

Lost 40%!!!??? Imagine if the dollar had lost 40% of its value in one week!

This next one merits an uh-oh.

3. Another mortar has fallen into Turkish territory, and Turkey is even more incensed now. Turkey is a member of NATO. NATO nations are allied by treaty and must come to each other’s defense if attacked. The Lebanon Daily Star reports this afternoon, “Israel says Syrian mortar strike was attack on NATO. Says attack on one NATO member attack on all“

“PARIS: Israel’s Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor said on Thursday a deadly Syrian mortar strike on a Turkish town had to be considered an attack on a member of the NATO alliance. Israel is technically at war with Damascus and occupies the Golan Heights that it seized in the 1967 war and later annexed, but it has generally taken a cautious line on the uprising in its Arab neighbour. “One has to say that according to the NATO treaty, it was an attack on a member of NATO, and that means France,” Meridor told reporters during a visit to Paris, referring to France’s membership of NATO. Syria and Israel have not exchanged fire in three decades, and a parliamentary briefing in July by the Israeli armed forces chief about the risk of “uncontrollable deterioration” in Syria were interpreted by local media as a caution against opening a new fighting front with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

3a. The UN scrambles to defuse Syria-Turkey tensions
“UNITED NATIONS – UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “alarmed by escalating tensions” between Syria and Turkey and warned that the risk of the 18-month-long Syrian conflict embroiling the entire region was growing, his spokesman said on Thursday. “The Secretary-General is alarmed by escalating tensions along the Syrian-Turkish border,” Ban’s spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters. “As the situation inside Syria deteriorates yet further … the risks of regional conflict and the threat to international peace and security are also increasing.”

Speaking of peace and security, there is this headline from today too:

Turkey seeks ‘peace and security,’ not war with Syria

And the UN speeches last week were full of references to peace and security.

“The world is in need of a new order of trustworthy leaders offering peace and lasting security.” Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, UN Speech, 9/2012

“Jordan’s King Abdullah said in his region of the Middle East, new opportunities are needed, especially for youth, to “fill the universal desire and basic human right to live in freedom, dignity and peace. … Abdullah also spoke of the Palestinians’ need for dignity and safety. UN Speech, 9/2012

Prophecy says, “While people are saying, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

While they are saying…

Now it should be noted that the context of the verse is of the Day of the LORD, which means the Tribulation leading up to the actual moment of Jesus’s reappearance, coming in glory. But the problem of false prophets who tout peace around the next corner is as old as the hills. God told Jeremiah to say,

“They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” (Jeremiah 6:14)

The wicked false prophets were telling the people that peace was coming, and that no trouble was on the horizon. They dressed the bleeding wound lightly. That wound was the Israelites’ separation from God. They were faithless, and the false prophets were capitalizing on their penchant for listening to the easy cure rather than the hard one. There are always people eager to hear an easy message being preached, and in that day, ‘peace, peace’ was the most favored one.

It is like that today, with so many false prophets and false teachers. The message most favored in the American church these days is “prosperity, prosperity.” The false ones preach an easy message to tickle the ears, and they find many willing listeners to heap up to themselves as eager followers to their false message. (2 Tim 4:3).

In the Tribulation, though there will be catastrophic wars, destructive natural disasters, and an economy and government gone wild, the false prophesiers will be saying “peace and safety is just around the corner!” As always, there will be eager people willing to listen to the false message and who refuse the hard cure: humble repentance.

In this day, just prior to the coming Tribulation, they are saying “peace and security!” with increasing fervor. (Imagine how many people will be saying it then, and how often, if it is so frequent now!)

The verse right before the one in Jeremiah 6 where they were saying “peace, peace”, is this. I believe it to be apt today. It closes out chapter 5:

“An appalling and horrible thing has happened in the land: the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes?” (Jeremiah 5:30-31).