World Changers

[A.W. Bowman]

While I am doing this study on a different forum, I thought there might be some interest here.

Financial collapse, water/food quality and quantity, oil/energy shortage, natural disasters, terrorism (bio and nuclear), failure of the electrical network, etc.

Looming on the horizon are a number of natural and man-made events that have been foretold in the books of the Bible. Even as this article is being written, many of these events have already began unfolding over the world. Yet, with all of the catastrophic hype and doom and gloom forecasters, we do not hear much in the way of what we should expect and what attitude should Christians take toward all of the disasters that are already befalling us – and are yet ignored. The first thing to recognize and come to grips with is that the doom and gloom preachers (religious and speculator) have not even come close to what is happing right now, much less what will be coming along very soon.

There is an old Jewish saying, “If you keep saying things are going to get worse, long enough, you stand a good chance of becoming a prophet.”

From Daniel to Revelation, we have been told that as the day of the Lord approaches the entire earth will go through an ever increasing level of turmoil, not unlike the travails of a woman giving birth.

While the entire world has been experiencing the early stages of this world changing process, the western hemisphere has been relatively quiet. Of course, over the past hundred years there have been a few events, such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a couple of major earthquakes in Alaska, California and even in the mid west. So, while the rest of the world is experience even greater volcanic eruptions, greater earthquakes, tsunami, and storms that produce great magnitudes of destruction. In addition, with the growing human population, the threat of one or more pandemic diseases grows more acute every year. All of these things are being reported throughout the world in greater number, frequency and magnitude of severity. Then there seems to be a growing awareness to the possibility of the earth being hit by large chunks of space debris, from old spacecraft with nuclear fuel onboard to large asteroids.

With the advent of there now being over six trillion people on the face of the earth, and growing ever more rapidly, it doesn’t take much of a physical event to create an horrendous toll in human death and suffering. Yet, in addition to all of these things, there is yet another, and possibility an even greater threat to mankind, and that is mankind itself.

The second major element in the end-time events are the actions of men. This can be seen throughout the world in the armed conflicts between different governments and between the general population and their governments. Then we also have minority groups, some with significant numbers, who are waging war around the world with anyone and everyone who disagrees with them and their agendas. We generally refer to these individuals and groups as ‘terrorist’.

What these people seek is to create uncertainty and fear within a population, by killing and maiming as many as possible without warning or regard to gender or age, for the purpose of extracting political, religious, and/or economic concessions. Their tools range from rocks, clubs, to guns and knives, to biological and (today, the threat of) nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

The effectiveness of the assault by people on a society is just as great and perhaps even greater than most natural disasters, mega volcano eruptions being an example. One such eruption could result in the extinction of perhaps half of the world’s human population, plants and animals, as have been recorded in our world history.

What are the elements of that both natural and man-made disasters have in common? While in undeveloped countries, the effects are about the same. Compared to the industrialized nations, notability in the West (Western Europe and the US, Canada, etc.), the effect will be small. In the industrialized nations, however, the results will be beyond comprehension.

Disrupted and polluted water supplies will kill many within a week.
Loss of food products will result in mass starvation.

Infrastructure will collapse. The highway system, rails, air travel will come to a halt because of a lack of fuel availability. The electrical system will fail because of fuel shortages and disrupted power grid overloads and general physical collapse. The international financial system will not only fail, it will cease to exist when any wide spread national electronic banking, record keeping, and information transfer fails. All financial (including investment) institutions are now all inter connected.

The majority of the world’s populations are centered in and around mega cities that are growing by thousands every week. A biological agent turned loose in the water supplies will wipe out millions in days. Food riots will kill, no one knows, how many.

The Bible informs us that we stand at the edge of a precipice when a third of the world’s water will become undrinkable. One third of the population will die. Today that figure stands at over two trillion people. Think about that number. One third of all plants, animals and fish will die. We are indeed living in interesting times. Because in the face of all of this, there is an ever increasing number of wars and rumor of war circulating around the nations of the world. Some wars are with other nations, and many wars are confined within the borders of individual nations. Then with all of this facing us, the nations of the world are still expending their attention on aligning themselves against just one people and one country, Israel, but again, this is especially so concerning the aligning of Israel’s Middle East neighbors.

The imminent fall off the current Egyptian government will result in a Muslim Brotherhood puppet government that will have the trappings of a democratic government. However, within one to three years that government will fall to the Islamic Clerics who will have taken over that government, and Israel will find another army posed on its southern borders. All of these events have already started taking place according to recorded scripture.

Birth pangs - increasing in frequency and intensity.

I'll be posting more on this subject later this week. However, with all of this - Jesus has given us a reason to hope - and a plan.

[Digging4Truth]

Looking forward to it.

[Sister Alvear]

interesting....looking forward to reading more.

[Godsdrummer]

Art

You say from Daniel to Revelation these things are discribed, please provide scripture passages as I was raised with this teaching but have not been able to find the scripture passages that teach this in the context you are bringing out. What I mean is that it seems we read into these passeges more than what is there. Maybe I am missing something.

As for the day of the Lord comming, what greater sin could the world commit than crucifing the Lord of heaven, of which God brought judgment upon those people when he destroyed thier holy city Jerusalem in 70ad? During that time just the atrociaties that came upon those in Jerusalem during the 3and a half years of seige have been unparalled women eating thier own children, even bird poop was being eaten and desired as food.

[supertone]

Interesting read! Thanks.

Small note, in your post you're mentioning trillions of people, I think you mean billions. Cheers

[A.W. Bowman]

Originally Posted by supertone

Interesting read! Thanks.

Small note, in your post you're mentioning trillions of people, I think you mean billions. Cheers

Good catch! In 2010 the world's population stood at 6.8 billion

[A.W. Bowman]

I thought I could simply post a follow up to my original post and be done with it. Wrong! I see at least two more posts need to be made. Yes, Loren, my friend, I’ll address your notes also.

But, first:
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In the first part of this short overview, I painted a rather dismal picture concerning both the natural and man made disasters what we might expect to see, and are even witnessing today. I also said that Jesus has given us a reason to hope - and a plan.

Well, as I continue to look upon these unfolding events and place them over the events as revealed in the Bible, in truth I do see neither an end nor an escape from the events that are bring about the return of our Lord and Savior. There is but one path that a person can take and that is ‘through’ the process.

It really makes little difference if one is a pre-trib, mid-trib, or post trib rapture believer. It make little to no difference if one is a preterits, partial preterist, or futurist in their eschatology. The events taking place around us, both ‘natural’ and manmade are either laid out in The Book, or they are not. There are men and women today who will testify to what is taking place all around us and there are those who do not see God’s hand in all that is taking place, according to His revealed purpose.

In many churches we have the clarion call for an ‘end time revival’. Most Western thinking Christian can at least sense that the time of the end is very close, but still refuse to acknowledge it in their lives. This can be observed in the lifestyles individual believers choose to maintain. Within the Holiness movement we see preachers trying to get folks into heaven by imposing strict rules of dress and behavior on the assembly – to earn one’s ticket on the heaven bound train. We have the love churches, where no one is excluded from salvation or from spiritual leadership, even those who openly practice immoral relationships. There are the spiritual churches, where every spirit is welcome, regardless of its origin. And other such like movements in the assemblies. And, it is getting worse, especially here within the Western churches. I cannot speak for the rest of the body of Christ that is scattered over the bulk of the world.

Matthew 24:3-31 paints a picture just as dismal as what I presented in my first post, even worse. It is a picture of both heroic perseverance, and a dismal falling away (2 Thessalonians 2), it is a picture of hard times for all of mankind, even the Saints (Revelation 13:7-9), for in that day the believers and the followers of Christ shall be sifted from the body of Christ, leaving only the true disciples and many of them shall die for the faith (Revelation 20:1-5, also see 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

A short digression:

We must remember that the book of Revelation is a classic Hebrew apocalyptic book, where events are not presented in the linear time format that we Westerners are use to thinking in, but in a spiral time line that allows for identifying reoccurring and/or directly connected events outside of straight start to finish sequence of events. Another Hebraism is that technically Tanakh Hebrew has but two tenses, perfect and imperfect. Which is to say that things will happen or that they have already have happened.

In Hebrew prophecy we will find some future events are presented in the ‘past or future tense’, frequently translated into the ‘present tense’ or even in mixed tenses. An example would be Isaiah 9:6-7. For unto us a child is given (present tense) and the government will be … (future tense), giving the impression that the child was alive at the time of the writing of the prophecy, and the when he grows up he will take David’s place as king. From an English language/thinking world view, his would require the prophecy to be fulfilled within Isaiah’s generation. History witnesses to the fact that the Messiah did not, in fact, live during the time of Isaiah and he was not the next to ascend to David’s throne, it was Solomon, and David’s line of kings did not continue unbroken.

The ‘rapture’ (the caught up, 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18), takes place after the resurrection of the dead in Christ, before the millennial reign of Christ on earth and before the resurrection of all of the others who did not die in Christ (Revelation 20:4-6). So, where is our hope and the plan of escape from the trials that are upon us?

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While we are looking for the advertised end-time revival, God is also telling us that while many may come into fellowship with us, there will be all the more leaving our fellowship when the difficult times come upon the saints in its full force (Revelation 13:6-10). While the church has been undergoing a great persecution in the rest of the world, it has passed by mostly ignored by most Christians in Western Europe and the Americas. The opening shots of that war have been fired among us, but even now it goes mostly unacknowledged.

Christians and our Jewish brothers are being attacked, driven out of their homes and countries, imprisoned, tortured and killed for the sake of the gospel and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The number of believers that are being martyred every year reaches almost the entire number of martyrs counted from the first century on (see The New Foxe’s Book of Martyers). Yet, the predominant Western Christian thinking is that we shall escape the very thing that Jesus himself promised would be our lot (Matthew 13:20-21, Romans 8:35-39, Matthew 5:10-12, etc) should we choose to follow after Him and preserve to the end.

Today many still think that being a Christian is a good social thing to do. Or, it is sometimes viewed as an easy way of acquiring ‘fire insurance’ – ‘get out of hell free card’. Then, if the whole Jesus trip is just a story, it will not have cost me very much, just some time and a little money. If Jesus is authentic, however, then I will have a free pass to heaven, or, “If I just do enough religious things, hard enough, I’ll be acceptable unto God and I’ll make it in.” Another, more sinister approach is, “Look at what I (or, we) have done for the kingdom of God, in the authority of the name of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit!” None of these approaches will have any standing in the last day.

I’ll have to continue this a little later.

[Godsdrummer]

[QUOTE=A.W. Bowman;1026111]

I thought I could simply post a follow up to my original post and be done with it. Wrong! I see at least two more posts need to be made. Yes, Loren, my friend, I’ll address your notes also.

Art I am going to do something I don't usualy do, that is go down paragraph by paragraph. I realize you are going to address my questions but it seems you have in this post that I can respond to them.

In the first part of this short overview, I painted a rather dismal picture concerning both the natural and man made disasters what we might expect to see, and are even witnessing today. I also said that Jesus has given us a reason to hope - and a plan.

We christians sure like to paint, and the dismal the picture the better to scare others into the kingdom of God. Either we scare them with the thought of going to hell or the thought of missing a rapture and going through a judgment of God on the world.

Well, as I continue to look upon these unfolding events and place them over the events as revealed in the Bible, in truth I do see neither an end nor an escape from the events that are bring about the return of our Lord and Savior. There is but one path that a person can take and that is ‘through’ the process.

We continue to allow the meadia to make us think things are worse than they are. The word tell all that "love God will sufer persecution", We believe our politicians that have told us we are destroying the world, that the ice caps are going to melt, that there is a hole in our atomosphire, we put more care and time into saving animals than humans. In a world when we have the internet and can check things out with the touch of a button, we still allow the media to direct our vision the way they want too.

Where some see unfolding events I chose to see life as it always has been and will be. Where others look to a earthly kingdom where Christ is going to come fix everything and they don't have to do a thing. I chose to see the kingdom of God here right now and chose to live in such a manner that we can change the world to fit the kingdom of God more closely.

If one wants to go through the "process" of salvation, I will believe the promises of God word and accept the grace of God by faith as Abraham did and become a friend and son of God and accept who I am now instead of waiting for a litural earthly kingdom that is here already.

It really makes little difference if one is a pre-trib, mid-trib, or post trib rapture believer.

Mat 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
Is this the tribulation you are talking about? This happens right after the Christians are instructed to flee Jerusalem before the seige. During the three and a half years of the seige women ate thier own children, fought over pigeon poop to eat to name a few of the tribulations that came upon those that did not repent. As far as history goes search out the tribulation that came upon Jerusalem and compare it to anything else that has been done to manking or by mankind since then and tell me if anything worse can some upon the world.

Further this was a judgment brought upon "that generation", for commiting the greatest sin mankind has ever commited and ever will. And there is not one sin you and I can ever do that is greater that would bring any worse judgement on us then what those first century Jews did when they crucified the son of God and then did not repent.

It make little to no difference if one is a preterits, partial preterist, or futurist in their eschatology. The events taking place around us, both ‘natural’ and manmade are either laid out in The Book, or they are not. There are men and women today who will testify to what is taking place all around us and there are those who do not see God’s hand in all that is taking place, according to His revealed purpose.

Let me share with you a scripture God gave me yesterday,Jer 25:13 And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations.
Jer 25:14 For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.

God promised here that he will recompense kings that serve themselves and against God, we have seen this happen over and over where nations have risen unto themselves and God has brought them down. Rome, Germany, Russia, to name just a few that come to mind right away. And If America does not restore her basis of being build on the principle of God she too will be brought down.

In many churches we have the clarion call for an ‘end time revival’. Most Western thinking Christian can at least sense that the time of the end is very close, but still refuse to acknowledge it in their lives. This can be observed in the lifestyles individual believers choose to maintain. Within the Holiness movement we see preachers trying to get folks into heaven by imposing strict rules of dress and behavior on the assembly – to earn one’s ticket on the heaven bound train. We have the love churches, where no one is excluded from salvation or from spiritual leadership, even those who openly practice immoral relationships. There are the spiritual churches, where every spirit is welcome, regardless of its origin. And other such like movements in the assemblies. And, it is getting worse, especially here within the Western churches. I cannot speak for the rest of the body of Christ that is scattered over the bulk of the world.

Again you paint a picture from a slanted point of view, the vast majority of mainstream Christian mega churches do not water down the word or principles of the word. When we listen to the media make such a big issue of churches that have allowed homosexuality into the pulpits, naming a organiziation that has been around long enough to become traditonal. We fail to see that they are a minority and that the majority of Christianity is still strong.

Matthew 24:3-31 paints a picture just as dismal as what I presented in my first post, even worse.

Matt writes of those events that would come to pass upon that generation, the destruction of the temple, the end of the age, and the sign of his comming in judgment to those of that generation for thier ungodly ways.

It is a picture of both heroic perseverance, and a dismal falling away (2 Thessalonians 2),

Just what is Paul talking about here in Thess. ? An aposticy or a departure? check it out.

It is a picture of hard times for all of mankind, even the Saints (Revelation 13:7-9), for in that day the believers and the followers of Christ shall be sifted from the body of Christ, leaving only the true disciples and many of them shall die for the faith (Revelation 20:1-5, also see 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Has not this been happening for two thousand years? How we can look down through history and think we as Christians today will suffer worse than those that have already gone on before us ignores the love of God to his people.

Art I too will have to continue this at a later time.

[A.W. Bowman]

Excellent thoughts and comments - yes, please continue.

[Godsdrummer]

Originally Posted by A.W. Bowman

Excellent thoughts and comments - yes, please continue.

Hey thanks
As I read down through my post I realize that I have again come accross as condesending. My deepest apologies, that is not my intent, My intent is to try and get people to step outside the traditions that have become the message of our generation and back into the word with a deeper understanding of what the word is.

Again I will try and continue in the next couple of days.