Staring at the world through my rearview: The Countdown has begun (Part 1 of 2)

Hopefully, I may not be writing about the end-times for a while. The more you read up on the subject, the more you see – and the more things open up. I also notice that people get very uncomfortable around the subject – particularly Christians. It is almost as though Christians say “Repent, Christ is coming soon” – but hardly believe it themselves…and REALLY do not REALLY want it to REALLY happen. (Chuckles) It’s almost like when people say they don’t want the rapture to happen before they have sex on their wedding night – they want to experience the other kind of ‘rapture’


:D Which is fab…


I know many Christians belong to denominational organizations (these things we have come to call churches)that are making a lot of money. Heck, it’s tax free, and all sort of marketing ruses are used to collect money in the name of God – and unlike the early churches, it’s only in few settings you see a breakdown of how these monies are allocated. I was once a member of a denomination in the UK and you can imagine my shock when one of the elders came forward and explained how much had been collected and using precise figures and pie charts to show how the collections had been spent. I was crazy impressed.


He went on to talk about a program called a gift day for the less-privileged and MAN, was I happy to give!! Reason being, you hardly see any sort of breakdown in many denomination, you know the ‘man-of-God’ is living large, the denomination has purchased its 12th keyboard for “worship” (which is actually a life style NOT a live jam), there are plans for expanding the house of GOD (I thought the house of God was our bodies and not the building – which gives a twist to where the tithe should be going, INNIT?!)



What I am getting at is, many Christians have reached a point of being settled in the world, have taken on its practices, and like someone said, feel a lot better when they have a famous person’s name on their pants!


Yet, we really are NOT of the world…


What I plan to do next is highlight prophecies UNFOLDING (note the use of the present-continuous tense!) Some prophecies are fulfilled, some are unfolding, and some are just beginning to unfold – while others are being pointed to by current events. What I mean is, when you think, “this is it”, it may not be it at all. It might just be a decoy or an indication of the possibility of the real deal.
As always, I will harmonize scripture with occurrences in the world today, giving links to explore and news snippets to peruse and I will be as brief as possible, hoping that you will ‘study to show yourself approved unto God’ – and “maybe, just maybe” (like Kheston Walkins, the profound poet said) you just MIGHT become a watchman – going about your business, but looking to the watch, to the sky and letting others know that earth is a plane going down – with waitresses wearing masks to hide their fear.


All the time, movies, music, nudity and ‘entertainment’ constantly flash off the constantly-expanding screens to distract you from reality, with people locked up and silenced because they have been pronounced ‘clinically mad’ by goblins in lab coats – because unlike the easy-to-fool mass of humanity, they have looked away from flashing screens, and out of the windows – and have seen the coming doom and try to speak up. And all the while, the only ones who are truly calm are that way because they see the stairway to heaven under the sea the plane WILL crash into – a stairway… a highway, where nothing unclean passes except those who have become white from being dipped in lamb’s blood and who have traded vultures’ hearts for eagles’ wings…



I will talk briefly about a few trends that signal “the end”.
To do this effectively, I will speak briefly on a sequence of events that scripture has said will culminate in the coming of Christ. (People argue about if the rapture is the same as the SECOND coming. PERSONALLY, I think that’s as trivial as the argument some people had in my university – Does heaven have streets of gold? Using my ‘amazing’ and ‘highly extensive’ communicative skills, I have replied BELOW in ONE word to that argument.



Duh…


Ok, that said, the end of the age as written in the Bible is very Israel-focused.
Israel will be disliked by most of the world, and so will be followers of Jesus. There will be a heavy coalition of nations who will finally come to be under one man. He is known as the Anti-Christ. He is charismatic (like Hitler was), promises peace and unification to a turbulent world, and will seize control of nations. By virtue of his influence, he will have a mark known as “the Mark of the Beast”, without which people cannot buy or sell – the obvious implications being that he controls global finance – and as any economist knows, once you control the finance of a country/nation/entity, you control it irrespective of its VISIBLE law makers.
But, like the biblical Pharaoh, Herod and Hitler – he will hate Israel, and will want to destroy it.


Being subtle, he will have an agreement with Israel, promising peace – but he will break the treaty with Israel.

Globally, certain events will be unfolding. The Anti-Christ comes to power BEFORE the rapture happens (2 Thessalonians 2: 1- 4), and the Great Tribulation is unleashed.

Basically, God, at the time, is pissed off! There are solar flares, mass deaths, there are new diseases, there are massive natural disasters, there is violence, there are colossal fires that take out a lot of civilization and greenery, a meteor falls and hits the earth – it poisons a lot of earth’s waters…
Then things start to get bad.


There is a 200 million army that is unleashed and kills a lot more people, a mysterious breed of stinging locusts hit the earth. At the same time, the Anti-Christ has to ‘handle’ some difficult political concerns and using his hi-tech gadgets, he destroys wonderfully – and then he breaks his treaty with Israel.
Already having an alliance of nations under him, having a central currency, crazy weapon technology, and IMMENSE spiritual backing, he gets a massive force together. He has been given power to kill followers of Christ, so he kills a lot of them along the line.


Yup… he does.


And then he marches against Israel.
It is at this point it starts to sound like science fiction – well, many things were thought of as impossible, but science is doing crazy things already.
So imagine the drama when God steps in.


Israel is surrounded on every side. She is a tiny nation – and a damn stubborn ‘stone of contention’! The sun is rising slowly painting the land below with golden rays as men lay huddled together on the ground, weapons at the ready, ready to make one last and final stand. Several small skirmishes have reduced a vast number of their Israeli fighting force. The Wailing Wall is crowded as Rabbis and soldiers pray. Perhaps Yeshua will intervene like stories in scriptures.



The younger soldiers know the stories but make sure their guns are cleaned, cocked and at the ready – they know there is a such as thing as ‘a good death’. They have heard of strange occurrences that led to the abnormal victory of “the 6-day war”, but that was in the past. Right now, the nation is on the brink of annihilation and with the giants around them, they are really like grass hoppers.

A general lifts up binoculars to his eyes and sighs. The sky is filled with visible and invisible forces with immense firepower that can liquefy a man. Visible and invisible tanks line the hills and terrain around Israel.

Israel is all alone.

But she is God’s own Israel

The apple of his eyes – and her walls are continually before him, for as the hills surround Jerusalem, so he surrounds her.


And then, the heavens open…


A ray of sharp sunlight cuts through the clouds…but it is not sunlight, because the sun is on the other end of the sky. Well it depends on who’s the actual SUN.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane.


It’s Jesus Christ.

Yay!


Er.. but there is something really really wrong with the picture.


You see, there is no smile on his face. It’s a stern look, the eyes are almost dead-pan and they burn like a million suns. His hair is white as wool, not brown like in the pictures, as it billows in the wind. He is nothing like the movies; no lamb-like demeanor, no time for the little children at the moment, no time to carry crosses, no time to display nail-scarred hands, no time to take a beating, or explain parables again and again to people who do not want to believe in the unseen.
It’s a time to war, a time to fight – It’s a time to KILL.
YUP – a time to kill.

(To be continued)