Of course, it must be said that the reason "the bad guys" are getting it right on the button when "the good guys" are struggling to plainly say what is going on is that prophecy is only prophecy if it is genuinely originated by God and scripture tells us (specifically of the ten kings of Revelation) that God has put it into their hearts to do these things so that the purposes of God will be accomplished. In their very rebellion against the order of God, they are following the orders of God to bring about the fulfilled testimony of God. "Why won't they just stop so everything can be good again? Don't they know they are bringing about the end?" They aren't bring about the end - God is. They are only acting in accordance to what is necessary for us to know the time of the end is at hand. God isn't waiting for the enemy to keep edging closer to Armageddon so He can spring Revelation on an unsuspecting world. The Father Himself loves us and wants us with Him in the way He originally intended when He created us and this planet He designed to sustain us. Yahweh is drawing those who would do everything they could to keep the end from happening in order to prove God a liar (as if that were possible) in His promised plan of redemption, just as scripture says that those who crucified our King would not have done so if they had realized they were being used by God to bring His salvation to mankind through their murderous wickedness and desire to be their own gods.
1 week ago | 0
Living&Active
The Watchful Nomad/ Analytical Hermeneutics
Sometimes it seems to me, as I watch the events on the global stage get set for the time to come, that the enemies and scoffers of the word of God are reading prophecy better than those who deal in proclaiming it. It really seems every move made by those who will be in power during the Tribulation is deliberately being honed to fit the conditions foretold in prophecy (the UN "peace and safety" sculpture comes to mind). It is to the point that I would not be at all surprised if some NASA scientist renames 3I-Atlas (or some other space rock on a collision course with earth) "Wormwood" in an attempt to be funny and mock the prophecy of Revelation that maybe they heard when they were a child.
The odd thing is that many who do take these things seriously and have placed their faith and hope in every word of the Most High treat the discussion of them like they may POSSIBLY be prophetic or related to this or that specific scripture. Maybe faithful brothers (and a few sisters who have taken this work upon themselves) are feeling gun shy after this rash of specific rapture date "prophecies" that have cruised by recently. I have heard today that the channel of one watchman YTer was just suddenly deleted by YT with no warning and no strikes against it. The brother received an email notification that all of his work was simply gone and that he was banned from the platform. Another brother was recently sued in court for proclaiming the pre-tribulation harpazo. The case has apparently come to nothing, but the fact remains that someone TRIED.
I think on this a couple of ways. While I pray that this channel and its content will survive whatever culling will happen once the restrainer is taken away (if not before) to serve as witness to those who might stumble upon it, I also remember that prophecy itself tells us that there will be the two witnesses in Jerusalem, globally hated for their testimony and the judgments they are given authority to pronounce against a rebellious world. There will be the 144,000 sealed sons of Jacob who will also be serving as witnesses and will stand on the mountain with Jesus when His feet once again touch the surface of the earth. On top of all this, there will be angels constantly flying around and proclaiming the gospel and testimony of God to literally the entire globe. Whatever works we do here beforehand that do or don't survive into that period, God's word does not return to Him void without accomplishing the purposes for which He sent it out. That is the promise of scripture regarding our faithful handling of what we've been given to steward here in our own time.
It is also important to remember that the time to come is not our time - that's why we will be pulled out of it. Those who will be here in that time will have as witness against them every single effort of every single believer to reach them, even if that encounter was accidental, indirect, or unspecified. Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit, the afore-mentioned Restrainer, currently has three ministries of conviction on earth with regard to the lost: that of sin, righteousness, and judgment. My point is that I don't think there is any cause for concern over possibly harming the witness of the testimony of scripture to look at specific things today and say, "Yup. This is definitely how that happens."
For instance, Isaiah 17:1 - the Syrian president (former Al-Qaeda commander) was just on U.S. soil meeting with and receiving gifts from our own president. He was invited to do an interview on Fox News, during which he swore to the goal of refusing to agree to peace with Israel while they still have control of the Golan heights and said of his terrorist roots, "I do not deal in the past, but in the present and the future." And Americans, some of whom just elected a similar ideology as mayor of one of this country's "most powerful" cities, are absolutely eating out of this man's hand. Am I supposed to just sit here and NOT say "THIS is just another example of America turning its back on Israel, even if by degrees, and THIS is what leads to Damascus being removed from being a city and left in a ruinous heap"? I think not. Some people insist that the destruction of Damascus will be due to a nuclear attack by Israel. These people forget that Israel is the apple of the eye of the same God who burned Sodom and Gomorrah to cinders, sent a single angel to kill 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in a single night (2 Kings 19), and in between those two events utterly demolished Egypt with a whole slew of plagues that crippled the empire and revealed every one of its gods to be false and powerless before Yahweh. Will WE see that prophecy fulfilled before we are evacuated out of here? I don't know. That isn't specified to be a prophecy for us or for the comfort of Jacob when Israel faces the troubles such as it has never seen. The question should be, "If we don't happen to still be here to learn of Damascus being turned into the world's largest ashtray, is that going to cause you to stumble in your assurance that we are going to all be absent from these bodies and present with the Lord very, VERY soon?
I sincerely hope not, lest you become disheartened for no reason.
1 week ago (edited) | [YT] | 0