End Times, Ezekiel, Revelation
The letter above is the archaic Hebrew Taw, it meant salvation for people about 2400 years ago.
Introduction and Discussion
The time is coming when believers will be remembering the Mark of the Beast in Revelation. The mark is thought by some to be a microchip that will be injected under the skin on the forehead or wrist. In some way it will leave a mark, a slight scar, but will be there just the same. Others say it will be cxõ - chi xi stigma, 2 Greek letters with an obsolete Greek letter that add up to 666. The obsolete Greek õ stigma was also the word stigma stivgma that meant a mark incised or punched into people as a mark of ownership of them. It was in the form of a cross. It was a different cross than the archaic Hebrew Taw that will be discussed later. Then again, there are those who say it is the name of Nero and the anti-Christ will be an incarnation of Nero or another Caesar such as Domitian. The number adds up to the name of the Beast and no doubt it will be obvious to people aware of this prophecy. It may be on the microchip, it may be incised into people, it may be punched, or it may be printed on people.
God works differently. In the Left Behind series of books, the believers had a mark appear on their foreheads so that they could recognize one another, but the forces of anti-Christ and other non-believers could not see it. People that are not familiar with their Bibles criticized the books on theological grounds and then there are people who said it is too "fundamentalist". In any case, I could not fault the authors because of theology or any error in reference to the Bible. God did provide a means of marking those who had not fallen into worshipping other gods and angels showed up to mark them without them knowing it in Jerusalem.
Women were weeping for Tammuz, the god who goes into the underworld because he died. Part of the worship of the sun and the animism that is associated with it is the waiting for the spring of the year. Jerusalem was following other gods and the people who did were to be killed or taken into captivity. The time of trouble will bring about terrible disaster. God knew it was coming a long time ago and sent Jesus to let us in on that fact. He also provided the Prophets and the Apostles with information about the Gathering that will be taken up suddenly, literally "snatched up" into the clouds.
In Jerusalem, people worshipped other gods, animals, planets, the sun and moon, and stars. A careful reading of the Prophets describe what God did and what God will do when the Gathering falls away that are called by His Name. One-third of the earth's population will be wiped out and then another third due to natural disasters that will happen. Of the approximately 6 billion people on earth there will be 3 billion left after natural disasters. A great deal of the calamities will be due to near earth objects hitting the earth, earthquakes, sudden tectonic shifts of the earth's crust, huge tsunamis, drastic changes in weather patterns, and a rain of fallout from the impact of near earth objects blackening the skies. The earth will rock to and fro, wobbled by the near earth object impact, a mountain not made by the hands of man will come screaming into the atmosphere at about 45,000 miles an hour, sloughing off molten blobs of metal that will be on the order of a quarter to half mile hitting the earth in just a few seconds from the time of the entry into the atmosphere. The last major impact like this occurred about 12,000 years ago and 500,000 of these molten blobs hit the eastern Atlantic Coast of North America forming what are called the Carolina Bays.
What might life be like before this happens? A careful reading of the Old Testament and the New Testament reveals what will happen at certain points. In the years or decades leading to problems that may become pandemic, what might things be like?
The solar system is already heating up due to increased geomagnetic radiation and planets are heating up from the inside out. People call it global warming, some nations believe the weather is changing due to pollution being put in the air because of man's activities. There are hard feelings because of this relatively small change that has been witnessed and people cannot reach a conclusion as to whether it is happening or what the cause is. Pieces of Antarctica's ice shelf as large as Rhode Island have started to break away due to warming. Scientists tell us that a rise in disease will result from areas experiencing unusually warmer weather. The effects of increased ultraviolet light and solar radiation are thought to weaken the immune function of animals, including humans. Pollution clearly serves to acts as mutagens, carcinogens, and blood borne pathogens. Certain organic compounds called dioxins attack the reproductive systems of animals, including humans on a sub cellular level. These things cause sex reversal in animals such as salmon, which are pretty complex physiologically. The incidence of breast cancer in women has increased dramatically and the causative factor is likely due to organic pollutants. Political and environmental activists are using this one issue to attack their opponents and get the idea across that people should stop polluting the earth. It may be that global warming and pollution have little or nothing to do with one another.
Those who think that all nations have to do something about issues like global warming and pollution under one government body use it as a reason to promote a global government, the One World government, and New World Order that some see as a threat to freedom and economic well-being. Questions of national sovereignty, the cooperation between nations, and how nations might fare in the future have been parlayed into reason for alarm, protest, and concern. A few hundred or a few thousand protestors draw the attention of the news media. Claims that the earth is dying due to worldwide heat or the advent of stifling air and water pollution have naturally drawn a great deal of attention. Companies that pollute and dump refuse in places on the globe that do not fall under the sovereignty of a country already claim that they are over-regulated and cannot think of a way to do things better. Countries that produce and consume the most goods also have the most companies that process and consume the most raw materials. Questions of greed, responsible corporate behavior, regulation, economic activity that is most beneficial to consumers and the companies, and the impact on countries that are not as developed have components that can and have caused conflict.
The heating of the planet from the inside out is already taking place. The ocean floors are warming first, not the ocean surfaces. The continents float on semi-solid magma and drift a small amount every day. It would be impossible to gain a measurement that has any meaning on a daily or even decades long basis, but the continents are moving. There are convection cells that have hotter magma rising and cooler magma falling providing the mechanism to make the crust move. A sudden rise or fall in temperature would cause the convection cells to change shape and the speed the magma flows in each cell. Whether the temperature will change enough to cause a piece of a continent to break away within a lifetime or several human generations remains to be seen. The atmosphere is being affected by increased solar activity as well and as time goes on, if this increases winds that were thousands of feet above the ground surface may establish a pattern where they sweep across areas before returning to their place in the jet stream. If the winds are on the order of several hundreds of miles an hour these areas would be uninhabitable.
As people are affected by environmental stressors due to natural causes, attention will be drawn to these effects. If decisions are made hastily or incorrect decisions are made due to lack of understanding it will not help. Active planning in many areas of government and the private sector will have some good affects. If steps are taken to reduce the production of goods and materials that cause pollution that in turn cause increases in disease and mortality it may blunt the tendency toward disorganization as stressors take an economic and political toll on people and nations. The use of oil and gas to keep homes warm, produce goods, propel vehicles on their way to deliver goods, and deliver the basic necessities of life to developed and undeveloped nations, and also provide transportation is part of life on this planet. The overall health of the planet seems to depend on stable supplies of oil and gas. How and where it is produced from has caused political unrest and paramilitary action in the form of terrorism. Whether an excuse for pushing sectarian strife among peoples of the earth or a valid complaint, the upshot has been 911 and a global threat of terrorism from those not within the power structure of sovereign nations or cooperation between nations. In short, it has caused polarization of people based on issues such as matters of religion, economics, politics, and environmentalism. In one way or another the groups that are considered to be non-aligned nations have been presented with a paradigm of western civilization as an antithesis to felt or real needs of nations and disparate social and religious groups. The issues of poverty, disease, famine, political strife, genocide, and the environment have been given a focus that is different in ways that the people behind the terrorists can and do use to attack civilization. Governments that oppress, persecute, and murder their own people in numbers into the millions seem to have a loose association on the surface with groups that intend to uproot the known foundations for civilization on a global scale. If nothing else, radicalism is at least fueled by economic help and cooperation as well as military aid on some scale, whether huge or small.
The concepts of rule of law versus the rule of men are being sifted in the milieu of all of these stressors whether economic, military, political, or environmental. How people perceive the gains or losses for the overall good of individuals and nations matters as it turns out. Perception matters and unfortunately overshadows correct assessments of the problems and solutions that come from dealing with these things on a state, regional, national, and global level. Information and how it is presented matters and news media people and organizations know this. Somehow the jaundiced and jaded among us have been led to believe it is wrong to wear a lapel pin that has our country's flag on it, primarily by the news media. It is somehow patriotic to stand against our own country and belittle those who care about our own country. The news media portrays terrorists as freedom fighters in a twisted bit of iconoclasm that plays on the sympathy of people for the underdog. The architect of 911 is seen as a poor idealist with noble intent, when in reality it would appear that his vocations of dealing drugs, owning and trading in slaves, contributing to human misery in other ways before 911 may actually say more about him than the perceptions. The news media seizes on the controversial and makes mountains our of molehills as it is. Even senators like Murray from Washington State preach that Osama bin Laden did nothing more than philanthropic things such as building hospitals and primarily concentrated on charitable causes before 911. None of that is true, but it shows how the lack of information or incorrect information affects people who are elected to represent us in governments. Common people would think naturally that no one could make it to a position of power being that misinformed. Senator Murray is not alone. In this argument it is not so much as whether or not Osama bin Laden is a good guy. Rather, it is the fact that a thief, slave trader, slave owner, and a murderer can cause human misery and a significant number of people think he is the answer to all of our problems. That sounds ridiculous, but many have decided that he helps the underdog and the disinformation by radical groups against civilization is true, therefore he is a champion against life as we know it and that is good. The United States is a powerful nation and arguably has a great deal, the most, impact of any one nation on the planet. Recently the United States contributed an historically large sum of money and resources to combat AIDS in underdeveloped nations. The greatest strides in dealing with pollution and the most information about how to deal with pollution has emanated from the United States. The upshot is that much of the world suspects there is a plan to ruin them using AIDS, disease, military action, economic clout, and pollution in the face of objective reality that says otherwise.
The stressors used as an example only are presented to get one idea across. How the stressors are perceived and what is believed is done about them will affect outcomes, reducing or enhancing our ability to deal with them in the long run. The United States has a functional literacy rate that puts us below that of most if not all developed countries and below many impoverished nations. Educators have power provided to them by the people in the form of government money. In turn, a political agenda out of feelings of idealism no doubt, has turned schools into political organizations for the dissemination of political bias. Despite testing and other means to determine funding, somehow students learn more about political misinformation from the New new new Left than about how to read and write. For some combination of reasons public education is more concerned with agendas and ideals than whether or not an adult can read, write, or tell time by the time they reach adulthood. A great deal of how children learn or whether they do or not rests with parents, who public schools think should not have any influence on the children and teach that. Educators stressing that what does work in our country does not really work is seen as a right. However, students are seen as objects that are part of a power game of politics and do not learn. Instead of learning where Chicago might be on a map, or the capitol of Russia is and what the name of it is, children are learning how to be politically correct and what to think of these places. The socio-economic factors that children are a part of are certainly important and how they think of them will matter but basic information about the world they live in matters as much, if not more while they are in school. No matter how politically correct, how well they learn to spit out propaganda as truth, it does not help in solving a multiplication problem.
If students only know of cities and states, nations, and people groups as political idioms with no real idea of their history, geography, and cultures in an objective, fact-based sense, that is all useless. What we believe is based on what we know. If what people know has no connectivity to what is real and is more about pushing one side of a controversy, people become pawns pushed by whoever has the biggest story and/or lie. Rather than inform children and teenagers with the facts of a matter in whatever area is essential for living and letting them put things together in a workable way, the facts are being left behind. Absolute truth does not exist in schools, or it is thinly recognized in hard sciences. Much more progress is made pursuing truth than believing there is none to pursue and nothing can be known. The light bulb would not have been invented had Edison thought it impossible to achieve and not worth the effort. Young people are actually being taught in school that the Holocaust was fine to have been carried out because the Nazis thought it was fine to carry out based on what they thought was the thing to do. Iraq was guilty of carrying out the grossest of human rights violations, and the most evil of practices on its citizens yet there are actually people that think it is of little or no consequence because the Iraqi government thought it was fine to do these things. The truth being relative, people separated by distance think it is fine human beings were fed into industrial shredders feet first to exact the most pain and terror in the citizens turned victims. Rape, torture, murder, famine, and planned genocide are acceptable to some people because Iraq's practices erode western civilization. People stop mattering in a world where idealism matters more than people.
If we are faced with increasing problems it would be best if we had information that was unbiased by any source. If there will be increasing challenges in the world to deal with, it would be best if they were dealt with in an objective manner. I am personally hesitant to trust that someone who thinks feeding people into industrial shredders is a greater good no matter how evil it is. It seems obvious that they are not going to volunteer to be the first to try it out as a solution and see how it works out with others they have decided to feed into it. Our thinking based on information is colored by perception and how well that perception matches with reality. In short, wasting other humans based on relative ideas of reality that would not match up with its experienced reality actually affects perceptions. Without reality having meaning to people, solutions to problems become non-existent and unattainable as they become hidden in a permanent and real way. Sadaam Hussein could have fed his goldfish in the palaces with something other than shredded people. The manipulation of reality and perception will have real results on a national or global scale if problems affect enough people. If relativism has its say for the most part, the solution will be different than if realism has more of a say. In the popularized perceptions of many part of the relativistic solutions bank heavily upon ridding the world of Jews and Christians that hold to normative and historical interpretations of those faiths. This view is shared by secularists, atheists, relativists, humanists, and Islamic radicals. It is fundamental to ridding the world of western civilization as it is now defined.
At the very least it can be reasonably concluded that information and the perception of it can be another stressor rather than part of the solution in approaching how problems are dealt with on a local, regional, national, or global level. How important individuals and people groups are in apposition and opposition to national and global interests are perceived will have an affect on solutions to any stressors whether natural, militarily, or politically caused. In the framework of the laws of nations as well as the faiths of people, how these fundamental aspects of civilization are observed or ignored will also have an affect that will be real and felt to some extent, whether locally or globally. A realistic assessment of what has worked and how well it has worked in matters of politics, economics, law, morality, culture, and religion has to be based on objective reality. What was the outcome and how good or bad were the affects has to be dealt with objectively? What were the things that led up to the situation that demanded a local, national, or global response and how well was it handled? Making everything morally equivalent and other artificial means of assessing past events seems only to allow for exacerbation of presenting problems so a shift of the balance of power is attained with no real application that will address presenting problems or even the recognition of them. Do you want higher mortality rates, increases in disease and famine, social disorganization, and the breakdown of economic systems and if so, how is that achieved, how has it been achieved in the past? If the forces that are promoting these things are not analyzed so that it is understood how such things come to pass, then it follows that we could by accident, over-reaction, or other means might promote those ends. Short term and long term outcomes have to be realistically assessed based on what we know to be true.
Western civilization knows what happened when the Caesars assumed power as gods, the Ponitfex Maximus-Chief Priest of the empire, political head of the empire, tutelary head of the empire, and military chief of the empire of Rome. Leaving behind the days of a republic, evils were engendered that spread throughout that civilization. People were given scapegoats, cheap wine, and corn instead of solutions to problems. Power mattered more than reality of the needs in the empire at times and Caesars were assassinated or reigned until the end of their time based on power. Caesars, governments, political machines, and terrorists gain power over people which history has shown has nothing to do with coping with problems in and of itself. Rule of law and justice became an animal of what was right in the eyes of the powerful and has done so in repeated attempts by systems that rely on a few. In a way, the one becomes the many, whether the many like it or not. Recent examples of this kind of thing include Stalin, Hitler, Sadaam Hussein, and Kim Jon Il. As it turns out the many do not receive any or many benefits and how well the nations fare when trouble comes is not good. There will always be a number of people who could not find, Moscow, Berlin, Baghdad, or Pyongyang on a map if their lives depended on it. Knowledge of things matters in a Republic, or Federal Republic because people can choose. In totalitarian states people cannot choose and the Left tries to draw moral equivalence between the totalitarian governments and republics for that reason. How well people choose then, becomes important, in everything that we do. Western civilization recognizes that one person pretending to have a plan that subverts choice making has not worked in the past and will not work. If you disagree with how things are going in a Federal Republic, it is likely things could and would be worse in an oligarchy. This is another avenue the paradigm makers get a lot of mileage out of in fear-mongering efforts.
As Christians we know that there will be trouble down the road. We do not live in a vacuum, which is what most of the preceding paragraphs were designed to demonstrate. God teaches us that how well we pay attention to His Word, how well we act according to the whole counsel of His Word, and our affect on the world around us matters. Our rights do not derive from those of men, although we are to respect the current society and political system we find ourselves in at any given time. Jesus said to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to render unto God what is God's. It is up to us to know the difference and our accountability is to God first. We are ambassadors from His Kingdom wherever we find ourselves. In this world in the last century 130 million of us were killed precisely because we do not recognize states as superior to God, nor do we recognize men or women as gods and are explicitly instructed not to do so. The Jews are hated for similar reasons that have to do with our separateness. Although hardly recognizable, our ideas of the rugged individualist, the Ayn Rand kind of hero, and the Yankee "can do" attitude stems from this. We see our God as the source of all things good and sovereign over everything and that we can be responsible moral agents, responsible agents for change, and provide solutions where others see none. We believe we live in an Age of Grace with the Holy Spirit restraining evil, whether it be moral evil or evil from natural or manmade disasters. We see the laws of the whole of the universe in the physical and moral realms as set up by God, decided upon by God, and final judgment of our interaction with them from God. Jesus said to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are to love the Lord our God with all that we are, our mind, soul, and strength. We believe in absolutes, objective reality, grace and mercy and do not see they have to be appositional or oppositional as long as they are in conformance with the Bible.
The word "covenant" occurs in the King James Authorized Version of the Bible 292 times and its plural "covenants" occurs three times. The word "ordinance" occurs 30 times and its plural occurs 27 times in the same Bible version. As Christians we have a personal relationship with God based on the covenants established between Him and us, by Him. Along with these covenants there are ordinances as part of the covenant relationship. The word "law" occurs 523 times in the same Bible. Jesus said that He did not come to change the Law, but to fulfill it. He did that according to Paul because we cannot. We live in an Age of Grace and are free to go to God through Jesus Christ. He sent the Holy Spirit to every believer and still does to those who believe on Him. Even someone totally unfamiliar with Christianity would be forced to conclude just on these few facts alone that as Christians our relationship with God and the covenants with Him matter a great deal. How we interact with others matters as well because the covenants, ordinances, and the Law are an integral part of our relationship with him and others. How we treat one another matters to Him and to the relationship each Christian has with Him. Jesus came and showed us many examples of how He interacted with others, and He told us the way that works in relation to the Father, Him, and the Holy Spirit. Every word He spoke that was recorded has its basis for being spoken in the Old Testament. The new revelations given by Jesus do not conflict with the Old Testament. Paul and others spent a lot of time getting across how that is and how that works.
So, here we are in the 21st Century, expecting the return of Jesus sometime in the future. We can see the basis for trouble that could affect the whole planet and for the first time events are unfolding that make the time seem near that the Gathering will be snatched up by Jesus and the Tribulation begins. It is possible to see conflict on a global scale that has factors possibly so huge that it is not any longer rational to ask "if?", but "when?". Trouble with a capital "T" as in near earth object impact is something realized by scientists and is not part of fanciful day dreams. It never was, but in the 1820's people did not believe a comet or a piece of it could have hit the earth in the past. Geologists accepted a gradualist model to explain changes on the earth and catastrophists were thought to be loony.
Everything was seen as onward and upward through evolution raised to the point of an article of faith based on a gradualist model and no disasters possible to set things back, even a little. This idea caught on in social theory political theory, and theology. The Bible points out from Genesis on that there were rough spots in the earth's history where all of mankind was nearly wiped out and this repeats itself. People are portrayed as imperfect and do not do well with reality all the time. To this, the Bible says that a series of major catastrophes will be experienced that will end the Age we live in now and have lived in since the First Advent of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that the very earth will be shaken and rocked to and fro. The "Do Good and Betterment Societies" of the Darwinian and Marxian model took exception to these observations that God shared in the Bible. Man, beast, and the earth will only get better with the right model based on scientific, social, and political evolution and gradualism. Normative, historical Christianity and especially Judaism was as antithetical to the theorists as were the Geologists who recognized Catastrophism as valid. Almost overnight the Christian, Jew, Catastrophist, and Gradualist were anathema to a new religion based on science seen in the "right" way. Although it is fine that we were pretty much out of vogue the persecution and genocide that resulted was a bit draconian. However, objective reality and the truth of a thing became hateful, worthy of derision among people who saw evolution and man being the measure of all things as the replacements.
So, here we are in the 21st Century and we have seen, measured, and recorded things that vindicate the Gradualists, Catastrophists, the Christians, and the Jews to the extent such things can. In the latter part of the 19th Century it seems that many were looking for anything to explain away the Bible. The cuneiform texts discovered and translated Sumerian-Akkadian and Syrian-Babylonian languages into modern English seemed to be proof the Bible was wrong or derivative, or made-up. Now in the 21st Century, I read these same texts and see how they relate to the revelation of God and see an affirmation of the witness of the Bible. Additionally, the Catastrophists are exonerated in these texts as well in light of what we know to have happened in the past and what is going on now. When another cycle of destruction appears in real terms and felt consequences something else will be going on at the same time. People will have fallen away from God and the Gathering of His people. God predicts through Isaiah what will take place in the natural and spiritual realms. God says:
5The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. 6Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.
Isaiah 24:5-6
He is not saying that people transgressed man's laws, changed man's ordinances, or broken the everlasting covenant with a social idea or a doctrine of mankind. God is telling us as well as having told Isaiah, that natural disaster will be related to the transgression of His laws, the changing by man of His ordinances, and breaking the everlasting covenant with Him. The Holy Spirit restrains evil, both physical and spiritual evil. If you look at the trajectories of near earth objects that have been superimposed on one another around the earth, it becomes plain that we could have been hit a long time ago. Looking to a man or woman, men or women, manmade ideas and doctrines, a nifty system of thought, other gods or goddesses will not prevent trouble and the Bible teaches it brings on trouble. Man being the measure of all things seems infantile and puerile at its best based on our track record. Humanists and the equivalents of the Epicureans of our day vehemently attribute all wrongs in history to "religion". It is kind of like shooting the messenger as if it will stop the thing to come that is dreaded. Reality is a bit lumpy and uncomfortable, especially when we are at our ease and feel everything is going our way. Like the Darwinian devotees that boo-hoo, crying their eyes out over how mean it is to think God would allow an asteroid or comet to hit the earth, some look to the false idea that reality is always good if we will just hold our faces in the right position long enough while parroting the latest apologia for reality not always being great. It is non-sensical. The Bible at least has the common decency to let us in on the truth, whether we like it or not, whether a person concedes the validity of it or not. Over a year ago, someone looking into the possibility of a hit by a near earth object accepts that possibility but rejects the reality of Jesus coming back for His own. He thinks spacemen will come to take us away and save us. Well, they might but it won't stop Jesus from coming back for His people. Ironically he pointed out Jesus has not come back yet, as if to say "so why should I think that He will?" I say it is ironic because that is just what we were told would happen about 2,000 years ago. I am thinking, God will forget and spacemen won't?
Weather will not be good as the time draws near and there will be stifling heat in some places where it was cool and unseasonably cool where it was hot before. Large bodies of water will form where places that were home to millions of people are flexed downward due to fault movement. If the atmosphere degrades as it likely will, trees will spontaneously combust from the heat in some places. Places under the trajectory of near earth objects will be suddenly heated to 10000 C and experience radiation equivalent to microwave radiation measured in megawatts. Those places not directly affected by some or all of the more horrific events will experience increased piezoelectricity due to the shifting of the crust and the effects on the thinking of people will be subtle to pronounced. There will be disease, famine, the breakdown of civil order, and anarchy in some places. Fleshing out the things that will go wrong and the scale of the troubles to happen based on the Bible has a lot of possibilities. I don't want to be around when it happens.
When will all of this take place? It is likely that within the next 12,000 years this will take place if the cause is the expansion of the Milky Way Galaxy from the center that takes place about every 23,000 to 25,000 years. It could be soon. Before there is the destruction that will melt the heavens and the earth, there will be this event. Before the last Great Destruction Jesus will have reigned on earth 1,000 years. The events of Revelation will take place before the Millennial reign of Jesus. The Bible Codes suggest several possible dates. 2004 is the most likely to begin things with dates ranging to 2126 as the least likely.
As Christians, as people of earth, the Bible is clear, it will happen and science is gaining information that supports this view. The Bible says that we will not know the hour or the day and Jesus will come like a thief in the night. In the book Cracking the Bible Codea, Satinover says that with the date of 2004 is the question, "will you change it?" I was convicted of the truth of the power of prayer, repentence, and changed behaviors to change things many years before reading that. I am firmly convinced that prayer and a return to the Lord will have some bearing on what happens and when it does. Part of the events that will take place before the time of trouble is a falling away from the Gathering (Gathering is translated as Church in the Bible, I choose Gathering as some think it refers to an organized denomination to the exclusion of any others). Jesus accepts us as we are and no special denomination or other manmade things can stop Him from accepting us. We as individuals do that or do not.
The story in Ezekiel is instructive and shows us that before we are aware that God has judged a situation, He takes action. He had told His prophets to warn people to stop idol worship, sun worship, and animistic religious practices and they did. The people of Jerusalem were warned well in advance. Jonah went to Nineveh and people repented, forestalling judgment for 120 years. It may be that we have time to start seeking the Lord and humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and turn from our evil ways. What each believer does matters. The people who are God's, those that He will spare, may already have been marked for salvation in some way. If so, then all of the events described about the Tribulation will come soon. As believers, we do not know for sure when it will take place and I pray that people will be spared, there will be time enough to see people I know and care about and love be spared. If we could turn to the Lord in humility and seek Him while there is time, it could result in some wonderful blessings for the whole world. He will forgive us while there is time.
a Satinover, Jeffery, Cracking the Bible Code, William Morrow and Company Inc., New York, New York, 1997.
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