What If?? (Part 2)

Continued from previous post…

I was perusing the headlines again this morning as I usually do, and was once again overwhelmed with everything that is in motion in our world.  It is on my mind quite a lot that I need to continue with a post that I started a few days ago, titled, “Are These Really The Last Days?”  I felt an urgency though to get some of these thoughts printed out first.  I really do believe that the time is much shorter than we think.  I am watching a whole array of heavy events in the making that are going to hit in very short order, some of them in multiples.  Our world as it is today will not be the same by next year this time.

One message that is coming through hard and fast though from a select group of true God-seeker type Christian leaders is this:  Christ’s coming is imminent and the church needs to get herself prepared—and FAST!  It is a mark of the great grace of God that He keeps guiding and directing us.  He also warns us when things are about to change.

I know there are many that question how “imminent” His coming really is, because a good many of us have grown up hearing this.  For the moment though, I’m going to ask you to set it aside and just follow my line of thought for a bit…”What If?”

What if the escalation we are seeing around the globe really is pointing to the culmination of all things?  What if the rapture is a real event at the beginning of the Biblical tribulation?  I know there are readers on both sides of this issue that visit this blog-site, and I have a lengthy piece to put on line real soon showing why I believe a Pre-Tribulation Rapture is what the Bible teaches.  Be that as it may though, either way we need to be absolutely prepared—in any and every way possible.  Let’s listen to the calling of the Spirit of God that is saying that we need to prepare ourselves to stand before the Son of Man.  I typed out the scripture in the previous post that makes this statement, “Keep awake then and watch at all times (be discreet, attentive, and ready), praying that you may have the full strength and ability and be accounted worthy to escape all these things (taken together) that will take place, and to stand in the presence of the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:36, Amplified)

I am convinced that we are not able to fulfill the things that are mentioned as conditions in this verse unless we are in a place of “hearing” the still small voice of the Spirit of God.  That takes communion with God.  This is not the physical act of partaking of communion at the regular times each church does so, but the communion we have available to us as true Christ-followers in the privacy of our own prayer lives.  I am finding that there are more and more people being drawn to that inner communion with Him.  On the other hand, I am sadly also witnessing many disregarding God’s pleas to hear what He has to say and apply so that they can also escape what is coming and stand before the Son of Man instead.  How tragic to make the wrong choice—especially at such a critical time.

I have a bit of a different belief in how I see the chronology of events in the Book of Revelation in the Bible.  I believe that the first three horses and their riders are released as a precursor to the actual seven years of tribulation described in this book as well as in many other Biblical passages.  I’ll write a piece on this as soon as I can find the time but I was gratified to find that I am not the only one that has this belief.  But, as I’ll describe to you in a post very soon, the first three horsemen have been released on this earth within the last handful of years.  The fourth horseman is the one that brings about the death of  25% of the world’s population.  I believe that we got a warning of the release of this horseman on worldwide news video in Cairo.  Whether that was a picture of the actual release is something I’m still thinking through, but I’m suspecting so.  What this horse and rider appear to be doing now is swiftly setting things up for his devastating ride circling the globe with his God-allowed judgment on this earth and its inhabitants.  We have no idea of how serious this will become in very short order!

The good part of the story though, I believe, is the fact that this rider on his horse cannot fulfill the worst of his agenda until the Restrainer that I Thessalonians describes, is removed.  This is the Holy Spirit working through God’s true remnant on this earth.  There is enough power flowing through the “true blue” followers of Jesus Christ that the devil cannot do his worst until the restraining force is removed.  As far as the rest of the particulars of this, I’ll save until later.

Here is something that God spoke to me just the other day.  I felt the Spirit of God saying that the church in general has gotten stuck at the Brazen Altar of the Old Tabernacle.  Many of you haven’t read much about this temporary “temple” that God provided for the Israelites while they were doing their desert wanderings before they entered the promised land.  The basics of this tabernacle were of course incorporated into both the temples built later in Jerusalem.  It would be good to read back into the Old Testament and see how this tabernacle was laid out, and what God’s path to His Presence was.

Just for the sake of this post though, the Brazen Altar was a large altar built to handle the many animal sacrifices that God gave the Israelites instructions about how to perform.  Animals without any flaws were used as sacrifices to cover the sins of the people throughout the year.  All of this looked ahead to the Perfect Sacrifice that was going to be the first appearance of the Messiah, who was innocently crucified on the cross in Jerusalem.  This provided “salvation” for every man, woman, and child that bowed their knee before God and admitted their need, and asked forgiveness for their sins.

Many people are offended by the whole sacrificial scenario, but mankind’s condition required a means to have their sinful condition covered in order to have a relationship with a Holy God.  People in modern society are offended that their “good lives” aren’t good enough to satisfy God.  They don’t realize however that it isn’t so much the individual acts of sin that man commits that cuts him off from God, but the condition of being in sin from birth because it is carried down through every human’s bloodline since Adam’s fall.  All the “good-living” in the world will not remove something that is carried in the bloodline of every human.  Jesus’ death and resurrection provided the ultimate perfect sacrifice necessary that didn’t just “cover” sin, like it did in the Old Testament, but eradicated it completely.  That is why Scripture says a person becomes “a new creation” when they have been cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb of God.

Getting back God’s statement about the church having gotten stuck at the Brazen Altar, He said that we seriously need to revisit the second article of furniture as one enters the Tabernacle enclosure.  The second stop was a brazen laver.  It was lined on the inside with mirrors so that one could see any spot of dirt or anything else that would keep the person from appearing before the Lord spotlessly.  The laver was not a second need for salvation, but had to do with examining one’s self in the light or mirror of God’s Word and allowing the cleansing that the Blood of Jesus bought and paid for.

The laver could very well be thought of when one looks at James 1:22-25:  “Do not merely listen to the Word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.  Anyone who listens to the Word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.  But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”

We live in a world that is filthy.  It is quite evident when you sit in a barber shop or beauty salon and just listen to people for a while.  Most any work place that you spend your days at will provide you plenty of garbage that you need to sift through.  It is the same with TV.  We’re having to be more and more selective in programs that we watch.  The rules of what is or is not decent are being lowered every year.  The God-ordained marriage relationship is ridiculed more and more.  If it is not criticized, it is made to look out of date; belonging to an archaic idea that doesn’t fit our society’s needs anymore.  Our kids are being prepared for safe sex in grade school anymore.  Marriage itself is changing, and where it will go can be seen by reading history.  People are already trying to marry their computers!

The reason I bring all this up is that everything in this world attacks our intimacy with God.  Too many of us don’t realize that our Christian walk has just started with Salvation.  That is only the first step!  Then we need to go on and walk out this wonderful salvation.  But, our time is robbed; our belief systems attacked; true Christian fundamentals gradually dismantled, and so much more.  By the time we get a little time with God, we are so pressed for time we never really connect.  Even if we manage to give more time to our walk with God, the study of His Word, and prayer, we find ourselves questioning if this is all real!  Are we believing in a fairy tale?  Is the Bible really true?

If it has ever been important to know where we stand, it is today.  The world is falling apart around us and the world is entering into a time like none other in its history.  We are going to need to trust God for things that are not going to be readily available.  We are facing food riots here in the United States very soon—this spring or summer I’m pretty sure.  Our nation is bankrupt whether some want to admit it or not.  The whole world’s economy is at the point of collapse, but the Bible said it would.  The wars that are prepped and ready to be ignited would stop the hearts of many if they knew about them all.  Natural phenomenon is becoming “unnatural phenomenon”.  The earth’s core has been partially destabilized ever since the big quake in the Indian Ocean in 2004.  The mega quake in Chile only added to the problem.  The earth’s interior is quivering and is showing signs of horrific changes that are imminent.  There are a number of areas showing great pressure and signs of impending cataclysm.  We have several monster possibilities within our United States lower 48, which I’ll describe at another time.  Our weather is obviously way out of sync.  Nothing is normal.  Crop damages and losses around the globe are not painting a pretty picture.  The world’s masses cannot be fed this year.

We are also seeing the beginning of a very violent season of sun activity.  Along with that, there are things in the cosmos that are scaring those that know what is happening.  One of them has to do with Planet X, or “Niburu”.  The Sumerians wrote about its last pass, including all of the mass destruction on the planet, but it was ignored by the intellectuals—until early in the 80’s, and then it seems it was covered up so the planet does not panic.  The elites in the world however have built hundreds of heavily built underground shelters all over the world—over 200 of them in the U.S.  Only the super wealthy have places reserved for them though!  I’m trying to be very careful with this, but, as I said,  there is increasing evidence that the science community knows a whole lot more about this than is being let out to the public.  There are observatories that have been built within the last ten years for one reason only—to watch the path of this very large planet that has an elliptical orbit like a comet does.  According to information I’ve read more than once now, it will be visible with the naked eye or at least by binoculars by this spring.  It appears it is hurtling toward the inner solar system and will make a pass late 2012.  We are expected to see many effects of this already this year, 2011 because of its tremendous effect on the whole solar system as it passes through, around the sun, and back past the earth a second time before heading back out to continue its elliptical orbit passing through the outer parts of our cosmos, and so on.

If this is true, and I am now expecting that it could very well be, the earth will go through horror.  The Sumerians described monster tsunamis that washed clear over some continental areas.  They described earthquakes that were massive, some bringing mountain ranges down, others rising up.  They described some continental areas sinking into the ocean while others were lifted out of the ocean.  They described storms like we’ve never seen or have ever been recorded since their records.  There are an abundance of Scriptures that describe exactly the things the Sumerians wrote about.  Jesus also referred to those that have been rulers over the world, but have robbed it and hidden their wealth underground—only to find that destruction will find them.  More on this later…

I won’t go into more in this post as it is a detour to my subject for today.  The point is this:  Regardless whether you believe in the Rapture of the church at the beginning of the tribulation, which is God’s judgment and wrath on a rebellious planet, we will need to be enjoying a close communion with the only ONE that can protect His own.  If Christians are not pulled out of here, we are going to have one whale of a ride and will need God to sustain us—which He obviously can.  If He however pulls us before these events really unfold, we still need to do some heavy introspection of our own spirituality and relationship with Him.  We are going to want to be seen worthy of escaping all these things, as it says in Luke 21:36.

Do we really want to give our Great God our daily leftovers?  Are we going to continue to treat the Great Sacrifice that was made for our sins as lightly as we have gotten to the place of doing?  Are we going to be faithful with what He has given us to use in bringing Him glory while we are still here, or are we just going to give God his five minutes a day?

I have no intention of “guilting” anyone into grudgingly approaching God with a half-hearted repentance.  He deserves our best!  He deserves our complete humility and realization that we must represent Him well.  We will have an eternity to celebrate our freedom and inheritance.  Is it worth it?

What if He came later on today?  How about tomorrow?  Don’t ignore God’s patient but urgent call.

Jake

To be continued…