Theological academicians–primarily seminarians–sometimes accuse those who look at issues and events of the hour in light of Bible prophecy of engaging in newspaper exegesis. By this, I presume they mean that such practice is improper because one cannot discern Bible prophecy unfolding based upon such examination.
I would much prefer being accused by those with the theological doctorates of engaging in newspaper exegesis than to stand one day before my Lord and know that I failed to understand these times. And, these are indeed prophetic times!
Looking at the wide view of the times in which we live under the microscope of God’s prophetic Word, it is a staggering vista to be sure.
Evil men and seducers are becoming worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. I just did a presentation on this massive assault on Truth during the Prophecy Watchers conference in Norman, Oklahoma. Paul’s warning about evil men and seducers growing worse and worse can be seen dramatically affecting religion, society and culture, politics and government and the news and entertainment media.
Continuing to look at the times in a wide view of prophetic stage-setting for the wind-up of the age, the Middle East is most revealing.
The Gog-Magog coalition, as we have examined many times, is forming to Israel’s north. This is precisely as the prophet Ezekiel foretold.
Turkey–ancient Togarmah—is in the process of leaving NATO and is drawing closer to Russia and Iran (more about this a bit later).
Israel continues to be assaulted at its borders on a daily basis. The UN takes the side of Israel’s Islamist enemies in most every issue addressed within that corrupt, international body.
The Jewish state is under constant pressure to give up its already precious little land to the so-called Palestinians. Even the United States is complicit in trying to force a peace that includes a two-state solution.
Israel, we can see in our broad view of prophetic development, is rapidly becoming the cup of trembling and burdensome stone of Zechariah 12:1-3.
Many, many other prophetic developments are front and center each and every hour of every news cycle. So, through a broad, sweeping examination of developments in considering today’s issues and events, discernment should be forthcoming. Any Christian, each of whom is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, should be able to understand these times so near the dénouement of the Church Age (Age of Grace).
Now, back to the matter of Turkey–ancient Togarmah, as presented by Ezekiel the prophet in Ezekiel, chapter 38. As I wrote above, Turkey is in the process of leaving NATO, the Western alliance that has long been a policing force against the bad actors, particularly the aggressive sorts among those of the Eastern hemisphere.
This is where the microscope of Bible prophecy can be used to focus more sharply, looking closely at the issues and events of our time. I like to call it prophetic fine-tuning.
We are all familiar by now with the assassinated journalist who was somewhat involved with the Muslim Brotherhood. He worked for the Washington Post and was, it is alleged by most pundits, murdered by forces from Saudi, Arabia. The murder occurred within the Saudi consulate in Turkey. The ramifications have been profound.
The bottom line of the matter, for my purposes here, is to express my contention that the mainstream news media and the Democrat Party–and much of the Washington, D.C. establishment–have tried to use the murder to destroy President Trump’s relationship with the Saud royal family. That relationship is one that was negotiated because the Saudis need American military equipment and support to fend off a growing threat from Iran.
Difference in the Islamic sects, one Sunni and the other Shiite, is at the heart of the hatred between Saudi and Iran. It is a schism that has driven the royal family to ally with the west in many ways. Now that alliance is threatened because of the journalist’s murder. Trump is expected to severely sanction the Saudis, thus threatening to destroy the relationship. Many billions of dollars in sales to Saudi and more than 6,000 jobs are at stake.
In fine-tuning the prophetic picture because of being able to discern the times, I’m confident in predicting that, ultimately, the relationship between the Saudis and the Western alliance won’t be destroyed.
Many scholars hold that Sheba and Dedan here are in reference to the Arab areas that today constitute the Saudi Kingdom. If this is the case, the Saudis will be aligned with the Western alliance–which those scholars believe are referenced in the rest of Ezekiel 38: 13–at the time of the Gog-Magog assault.
This is prophetic fine tuning. Such examination of issues and events through the prism of Bible prophecy can help the spiritually attuned Christian discern the times–as the Lord obviously expects of those who are His.
Springtime in the Arkansas-Louisiana-Oklahoma-Texas region evokes somewhat precautionary thought of nature’s most singularly powerful storms. By that, I mean storms that can do the most complete devastation within the areas across which they sweep.
These, of course, are the huge tornadoes almost certain to occur in one or more of the aforementioned states from April through June. Oklahoma, particularly, is prone to produce the most powerful of the twisters. We remember a couple of 300-miles-per-hour tornadoes within the last several decades in that state. One of them was considered by the weather experts to have contained the strongest wind ever recorded on planet earth. I believe that 318 mph was the figure.
My friends just outside Oklahoma City lost everything except their lives in one such monster storm a few years ago. Some of the readers of my commentaries very generously contributed to a fund to help those folks–the family of a great personal friend of mine who is part of a team that heads a major prophetic ministry in Oklahoma City.
When I was last in that city, someone with me pointed out a company that manufactures and sells tornado shelters that was very near the TV studio where we taped some programs. It was a stark reminder of the fact that we were right in “tornado central.” Without a “fraidy hole” (as we in the south call them) to go down into, one is on his or her own. People are subject to the vicissitudes of the winds that come sweeping down the plains in springtime, as the musical, Oklahoma would have it.
As we point out constantly and consistently in these commentaries, there is a storm brewing. It is a supernatural storm, and it is a certainty. It will strike. It can be clearly seen gathering on the prophetic horizon.
Whether considering matters involving geopolitics, socioeconomics, religion, or any other aspect of the human condition, the forecast looks bleak indeed. No shelter of the human-manufactured sort can protect against the boiling, chaotic tempest that the Lord Himself predicts for times just ahead.
The entire book of Revelation, of course, is a detailed, blow-by-blow description of that coming Tribulation tempest. John outlines twenty-one specific destructive aspects of the storm in a series of seven scrolls, seven trumpets, and seven bowls of judgment.
Again, there is no human manufacturer that could produce a safe place against what is certainly scheduled to be the worst time of destruction the planet has ever known (and that’s saying a lot, considering all life was destroyed by water in the Flood of Noah’s day). But, thankfully, there is a superhuman shelter that is readily available to each and every person alive today.
In thinking on that shelter, my own ruminations caused me to wonder more deeply about God’s promises.
Like in those two instances, God’s children–those who are righteous in His holy eyes–who are alive at the time of the Rapture will be taken out of harm’s way. The terrible storm of His judgment will then fall. All believers will go into that supernatural storm shelter prepared for them in Heaven, while there is great chaos and carnage on the planet that is ripe for God’s wrath.
And, there is a second supernatural storm shelter that will be provided during the Tribulation tempest itself. I believe the following prophecy and promise applies to both the saints who will be raptured and to another group of believers –the believing remnant of Jews who will find shelter through God’s divine direction. This protection will likely include Tribulation-era Gentile believers to some extent, too.
Jesus, Himself, points the way to the supernatural storm shelter. It is the ONLY way to assure that we can be safe while the coming Tribulation tornado ravages a judgment-deserving world.
October 21, 2018 2:39 pm / 21 Comments on Coming Out!
The forewarning God gave the Apostle Paul to pronounce has been ridiculed as have few other of His prescriptions for living while on the planet He created for humankind. As a matter of fact, governments–such as that of Canada–have gone a long way toward making offering such scriptural condemnation crime worthy of punishable by imprisonment.
For example, one TV ministry recently told a guest minister you would recognize that he was not to say anything about homosexuality. If he did so, the TV hosts told him their ministry would be heavily fined–$50,000. And, the ministry possibly would be forbidden to air programs in Canada in the future.
So, the gay community has not only come out of the proverbial closet, but now has major governments championing them as they proceed to emerge.
Actually, the nucleus of this article isn’t meant to dwell upon the coming out of the so-called gay community. That is very old news in this swiftly moving era as we near the end of this Age of Grace, as I am convinced with every ounce of discernment within me this generation is approaching.
The opening of that barrier to total immorality–the homosexual closet door-–however, I believe, is precursor to–indication of–the opening of a much more massive door. I think the door has been opened to the demonic nether region–to the dark dimension from which end-times evil is beginning to emerge.
In every direction we look these days as prophetic observers (watchmen on the wall), there is inexplicable activity by people that flies in the face of common sensibility. I refer to the rage in the streets that not only has not abated, but continues to increase as part of America’s former political process. I say former because the process is no longer recognizable within what was previously the civility norms of that process.
Many examples could be given to express what constitutes the end-times reprobate mindset. I’ll give just one of recent vintage you might remember.
Reacting to the Kavanaugh confirmation, a Georgetown professor said white Republican senators deserve to die “miserable deaths” while “feminists laugh as they take their last gasps.
But the invasion from that netherworld seems to have transcended merely the bringing about of the reprobate mindset prophesied by Paul–the mindset of those like the professor who is charged with inculcating the minds of America’s youth. The insanity takes on even more pronounced end-times madness.
In what is becoming a regular political expression of the left-wing, an occult bookstore in Brooklyn is organizing a gathering to hex newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Each hour that passes brings such reports and even stranger indications that the demonic world is coming out of that netherworld closet.
Sin infection spawned from man’s disobedience has metastasized globally at this late point of the final dispensation leading to Christ’s return. It is not far-fetched to think of things that are happening in such biological terms, or to express them as such, while two major players in Bible prophecy bring the terminal situation into focus.
The European Union (EU), thought by many observers of prophecy in Scripture to be the global nucleus out of which will come a revived form of the Roman Empire in accordance with Daniel 9:26-27, continues front and center in relevant news. The most central national entity of eschatology for the wind-up of human history, Israel, is, of course, always the key player in today’s news of prophetic portent, in my estimation. Of all developments in the milieu of end-times things going on, it is as if some master pharmacologist has upon his lab table a petri dish within which broils a deadly mixture prophesied to explode in a breakout of human history’s deadliest era.
Effervescing within that dish are the virulent ingredients that threaten to take peace from the earth in the form of war unlike there has ever been on planet earth. That war will not be brought about by the players most often believed to be the instigators of man’s final war. Quite the opposite.
Armageddon will be brought about by the One the false religionists of the world of Christendom proclaim could never judge sin harshly. He is love, and no loving God could react with such hateful, punitive action, these purveyors of prevarication promise. Here, again, is what God’s Word says about the very end-times things that are taking place within that petri dish I use as analogous symbolism.
That, my friends, is Armageddon that the Lord is prophesying through Joel. The nations of the world are going to pay a terrible price for their rebellion against Him and for the treatment of His chosen people, the Jews–Israel.
The intention to divide God’s land–land He gave to Israel forever–is at the heart of the prophesied simmering brew. The world–including much of Christendom, is turning against Israel in the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) piling-on. This, of course, involves economically punishing Israel because they refuse to give up land in order to give the Palestinians a nation within current Israeli borders–land won by Israel in several wars that already belonged to them by divine promise in God’s holy eyes.
The EU, out of which the one who will be Antichrist will emerge, many prophetic observers believe, has consistently spoken out of both sides of its official mouth. Its spokesmen seem to obliquely defend Israel, while at the same time holding the Jewish state responsible for the hold up to a peaceful solution to the Israel-Palestinian so-called problem. A news item within recent years makes the point.
The all-out effort to “divide” God’s land–that given Israel in perpetuity– is underway. Even though America’s present president has chosen to support Israel in most every respect, the Jewish state remains at the center of this dangerous petri dish mixture. Certainly the world must be near the time when the final prophecies will begin manifesting. That means the Rapture of all born-again believers is even nearer!
Memory must be relied upon to know what is on the screen, to keep in line the order of points to be made, and to speak to all of the facts and ideas in between. So it is that while preparing for my speaking session (which, by the time this commentary is posted will already be history), the true importance of what is involved speaks to my spirit. It is a matter that burns into my conscience as one charged with trying to address what the Lord prompts me to present.
Lord willing, I have by the time of this posting, spoken on “Deceivers and the End of Days” at the Prophecy Watchers Conference in Norman, Oklahoma.
The lecture/session is based upon the book of the same name, Deceivers. It revolves around Jesus’ prophecy given on the Mount of Olives as recorded in Matthew 24:3-5. The book is a compilation of chapters written by fourteen of the most well-known writers, broadcasters, and teachers of Bible prophecy from the Pre-Trib view of eschatology. Authors present their analyses of how current issues and events of our time are all setting the stage for fulfillment of Bible prophecy for the very end of the Church Age (Age of Grace).
While working on writing this article and thinking on continuing preparation for the upcoming presentation (from my perspective at that time), I kept being distracted by the desire to watch the punditry about the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation. I got caught up in this world’s political goings-on. My thoughts ran the gamut from: What does it mean to how the abortion controversy will play out from this point forward? to What does it mean for the upcoming November midterm elections? Does Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation mean that the national electorate will see fit to vote to assure that constitutional principles will prevail over the radical mob mentality that threatens civility? Also, I considered whether the current president and his policies will continue to build a booming economy as is happening presently.
Much of this is what I will be talking about (did talk about, from the point in time this is posted) in that session–i.e., my thought was to dwell on America and all things going on in this country with regard to the end-times Deceivers acting within religion, society / culture, politics /government, and news and entertainment media.
It hit me, then, during that preparation: The religion, societal/cultural, political/governmental, and news/entertainment media things occurring in this nation are insignificant in relation to things going on in the human, spiritual heart at this critical moment. The ultimately important thing is not how all of the prophetic stage-setting is affecting the well-being of each of us and our lives in America. This nation–its governmental/social-cultural/media and religious systems–are all soon doomed to pass away.
My thinking on these things in terms of how Mr. Trump or any other leader or system of leadership might improve–or, for that matter, cause to be deteriorated–life in America is exercise in futility. The all-important thing consider is the human condition, in terms of spiritual exigencies.
We are told in God’s Word to pray for leaders in government so that we might “lead peaceable lives.” But, there is no percentage to be gained by placing faith, or even trust, in government–ever. Government–all of existence under the present world systems and regimes of this age–are passing away. All is “vanity,” as the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes put it.
There are no such worldly entities as a godly or Christian government. The best we can hope for is a reasonable government that adheres to basic, godly principles the Founding Fathers were influenced by the Holy Spirit to build within our Constitution. It is wholly just and right to fight, politically, for these things at the ballot box and fight, literally, against those who would destroy our nation.
All that said, one thing matters most of all–beyond all else–to each human being alive at present: What is the status of one’s soul? Do you and I know Jesus Christ as the One who was crucified, buried, and resurrected to life those two thousand years ago? As important as it is to love country, family, and all the things that are good that life brings, the status of our souls are what matters.
We must pray and vote to see to it that our liberty is preserved so we may live peaceable lives despite all of the evil percolating all around us. But, embracing Jesus Christ for salvation is the one action we can take to assure life for an eternity of joy and ever-increasing exultation. We will, at that eternal moment, begin to live and love our friends and family who are saved more intimately than can be imagined while in this earthly existence. In Heaven we will praise the Savior who provided, once and for all, payment for the sin that would otherwise separate us from God the Father forever.
Again, the truth of that all-important matter is wrapped up in the following, penned by the Apostle Paul: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).
Terry James’ “Piercing the Future” just re-released!
Piercing the Future is filled with the prophetic insight of some of the most well known Bible prophecy teachers of this closing era of the Church age. Most authors are names you will instantly recognize.
You can get this tremendous overview of Planet Earth’s immediate future in paper back or in Kindle.