As we started this series, we referred to the boy who cried “Wolf” so many times that no one believed him. Many today see modern day prophets and watchmen doing the same as the boy. Are we really at the end of the age, or is it all superstition, speculation, or hype? In part three I will continue showing what I see happening in our world that makes it clear that we have arrived at that most crucial time in man’s history.
I have spent a considerable amount of time presenting the possibility that the first five seals of Revelation 6 have been in progress since the Church was instituted, particularly after the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2. As already stated, this, in my view, does not preclude these same four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from completing a final stampede to conclude the work they have been commissioned to accomplish on this planet at the very end of the age. Presenting this possibility is not an attempt at creating a “new doctrine.” This view of the unfolding of the Seal Judgments is not the traditional way of understanding the unfolding of Revelation chapters 4-6, but it is also not unheard of. A number of prophecy teachers are in line with this understanding today and more are coming to the same conclusion as time passes. The reason I feel it is important is because many think that those who pay attention to Bible prophecy have cried “Wolf” many times, so they are falling back asleep and not realizing we are much closer to the return of the Messiah than they may think. Understanding how the events that Jesus predicted unfold helps us to see the imminence of His return. Also, allowing for the fact that the Seal Judgments may have been unfolding for some time now, helps to clear up some prophetic issues that have been a bit difficult to reconcile in the past.
A strange event was captured by many of the news cameras during the riots at Tahrir Square in Cairo during the very early stages of the so-called Arab Spring in February 2011. Many viewers may have seen but this but may not have recognized a possible connection and warning of the imminence of the end of the age. This revolution in Egypt, which some say numbered as many as an unbelievable 33 million protesters across the nation. millions of them descending on the capital city, Cairo, brought a crack-down by the Egyptian authorities within Tahrir Square which, according to leaked documents, took the lives of over 900 demonstrators. Right in the middle of this enormous angry crowd, the cameras caught what looked to be a phantom; a translucent pale green horse carrying a Rider. The videos show this wispy green phantom slowly making its way through the crowd. He was apparently invisible, but in watching the video afterward, one could wonder if this was not silently fueling the rage of the masses that had gathered. Within seconds after the cameras started filming the phantom, which, incidentally, journalists described as resembling the fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, it is clearly seen lifting off the ground and disappearing out of sight. The crowd was oblivious to it all, but for some reason, multiple world news cameras were able to capture the bizarre event. This video is still available on YouTube.
If it is in fact true that the first five seals of the Book of Revelation were opened and have been unfolding in ever increasing measure after the slain sacrificial Lamb of God had made His appearance at the heavenly scene recorded in Revelation 4-5, what about the sixth seal? Let’s take a moment and read what is said about the sixth seal in the Scriptures:
I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come and who is able to stand? (Revelation 6:12-17)
This seal, which includes a world-wide earthquake, has not yet happened. The strongest recorded earthquake on record at the time of this writing is a 9.5 on the Richter scale. It happened on May 22, 1960 in Valdivia, southern Chile. Is it possible for the earth to experience a world-wide quake? According to a number of geologists, that very possibility is now being recognized. As of yet, there is no record of such an earthquake ever having happened, but, as we read in the Revelation passage above, it is coming, and I am convinced we are very close to this event. It is my belief that the opening of the 6th Seal will begin the actual judgments of Daniel’s 70th week. I find it interesting that Scripture describes men on the earth attempting… to hide themselves in caves and inside mountains, wanting the mountains and rocks to fall on them so that they will be hidden from the face of the One sitting on the Throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come…
We know from the warnings Jesus gave that, among other signs, earthquakes would increase as the end of the age nears. Later in this series of articles, I intend to return to the subject of earthquakes; presenting not only statistical records showing the steep increase of earthquake frequency and intensity, but also of volcanic action. I will also show how the signs in the heavens that are presenting themselves are directly connected to this phenomenon. There is much more unfolding in our heavens today than most have any idea of. And…they are a direct fulfillment of what was prophesied in the Word of God. For the moment though, let’s look at an issue that is probably the greatest sign of all pointing to the imminent return of our Messiah KING…Israel.
The hated, and yet, amazing JEW…where do I start? Mark Twain had this to say:
“…if statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and had done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it.
The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed; and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
Could it be…is it possible, that God, the Creator and upholder of all things, has anything to do with the strange phenomenon of the Jew?? I, personally, think there is no other answer. Here is something God proclaimed approximately 4,000 years ago in Genesis 12:
Now the LORD had said to Abram (later Abraham {my personal notation}): “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3
In essence, what happened here is, GOD, the Almighty, appeared to a pagan man named Abram, and made a deal with him, saying that if he agreed, He, the Almighty, would bless him immensely, making him great, and cause his descendants to become a blessing to all the families of the earth! Who could turn down such a deal? Abram certainly did not, and the rest of the story has been unfolding ever since.
Because we in the 21st century do not understand the Mesopotamian culture of four millennia ago, I need to bring another important Scripture into the picture. We find God confirming His agreement with Abram, using a tradition used to seal covenants in Abram’s time period. It is found in Genesis 17, starting at verse 7, it reads:
Then He said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” And he said, “Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it?” So He said to him,”Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old-ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” The he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.
Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and behold, horror and great darkness fell upon him. The He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions,. Now as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried at a good old age, but in the fourth generation they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”
And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, that behold, there appeared a smoking oven and a burning torch that passed between those pieces.
On the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying: “To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates–the Kenites, the Kenezzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the AMorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.” Genesis 15:9-21
I included this lengthy passage of Scripture to show how God made this covenant with Abram. In those days, when the two parties making a covenant sealed the covenant, normally, both parties would walk between the slaughtered animals and birds, saying, if I were ever to break this contract, may what has been done to these animals be done to me. In this case however, because God knew that no man would or could ever have the power to confirm his end of such a covenant, He put Abram to sleep and walked both sides of the covenant Himself. In other words, there was no way that this covenant would ever be broken. It would be fulfilled in its entirety, no matter how long it took and no matter what obstacles rose up to attempt to keep it from being fulfilled. History confirms the fact that God has lived up to every bit of the covenant, regardless of what the world, or the Jew himself, has done to threaten its fulfillment.
Thomas Newton, a British clergyman, the Bishop of Bristol (1704-1782) spoke these words:
The preservation of the Jews is really one of the most signal and illustrious acts of divine Providence…and what but a supernatural power could have preserved them in such a manner as none other nation upon earth hath been preserved. Nor is the providence of God less remarkable in the destruction of their enemies, than in their preservation…We see that the great empires, which in their turn subdued and oppressed the people of God, are all come to ruin…And if such hath been the fatal end of the enemies and oppressors of the Jews, let it serve as a warning to all those who at any time or upon any occasion are for raising a clamor and persecution against them.”
Leo Tolstoy put it like this:
“What is the Jew?…What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew–is the symbol of eternity. …He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.”
All one needs to do is do a little historical reading to find that all these things that have been said are true. How many times throughout history have despots attempted to wipe the Jew from all historical remembrance? How often have they been relegated to the lowest stations in society, yet they always found a way to rise back up above the limits put upon them. Could it be that God had His hand on this special people after all? I believe so.
John Adams, Second President of the United States said this about the Jew:
“I will insist the Hebrews have contributed more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations…They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the glove and have influence the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.”
As proof of what these men have said, and more importantly, proof that God in fact did fulfill, and continues to fulfill, His part of the covenant agreed upon in Genesis 15, I have included a sample of some Jewish accomplishments below. Considering that well over 99.5% of the population of the world is non-Jewish, this list is pretty impressive. For instance, of the 660 Nobel prizes from 1901-1990, 160 of them were won by Jews. Jews have won more Nobel prizes than any other ethnicity. They have won 40 times more than should be expected of them based upon population statistics. This appears to hold true in many other fields as well.
Great Thinkers
- Albert Einstein: the most famous scientist of the 20th century, among his accomplishments was his groundbreaking theory of relativity (including his famous equation e+mc2)
- Karl Marx: German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary
- Dr. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian physician, was founder of psychoanalysis and father of psychiatry.
Science and Medicine
- Dr. Jonas Salk: created the first Polio Vaccine
- Carl Sagen: astronomer
- Dr. Abraham Waksman: coined the term antibiotics
- Casmir Funk: a Polish Jew, pioneered a new field of medical research and coined the word “vitamins”
- Dr. Simon Baruch: performed the first successful operation for appendicitis
- Dr. Paul “magic bullet” Ehrlich won the Nobel Prize in 1908 for curing syphilis
- Dr. Abraham Jacobi: considered America’s father of pediatrics
- Dr Albert Sabin: developed the first oral polio vaccine
Business and Finance
- Haym Solomon and Isaac Moses: responsible for creating the first modern banking institutions
- Jews created the first department stores: The Altmans, Gimbels, Kaufmanns, Lazaruses, Magnins, Mays, and Strausses, (as well as many others) became leaders of major department stores
- Milton Hershey: Hershey’s chocolate founder
- Steve Balmer: CEO of Microsoft and richest Jew in the world
- Michael Dell: founder of Dell Computer
- Larry Ellison: founder and CEO of Oracle
- Julius Rosenwald: revolutionized the way Americans purchases goods by improving Sears Roebuck’s mail order merchandising
- Hart, Schaffner, Marx, Kuppenheimer and Levi Strauss: became household names in men’s clothing
- Isadore & Nathan Straus: “Abraham & Straus” eventually became sole owners of Macy’s, the world’s largest department store, in 1896
- The fortunes of English-Jewish financiers such as Isaac Goldsmid, Nathan Rothschild, David Salomons, and Moses Montefiore helped England become an empire.
- Armand Hammer: (Arm & Hammer) was a physician and businessman who originated the largest trade between the U.S. and Russia
- Louis Santanei: the financier who provided the funds for Columbus’ voyage to America
- Levi Strauss: invented durable pants first used by 49ers during the Gold Rush. The pants he created, called levis or jeans, have become an emblem of the American West and an emissary of the Western lifestyle around the world
Entertainment Industry
- Samuel L. Goldwyn & Louis B. Mayer (MGM): produced the first full-length sound picture, “The Jazz Singer”
- European Jews: the founding fathers of all the Hollywood Studios
- Adolph Zukor: built the first theater used solely to show motion pictures
- George and Ira Gershwin & Irving Berlin: three of the most prolific composers of the 20th century
- Stanley Kubrick: Director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many other films
- Harry Houdini (Weiss): considered the father of Magic
- Sherry Lansing of Paramount Studios: became the first woman president of a major Hollywood studio
- Flo Zigfield of “Zigfield Follies”: the creator of American Burlesque
- Michael Landon: famous actor, Little Joe Cartwright on Bonanza
- Paul Newman, award winning actor
- Barbara Streisand, famous actress
- Steven Spielberg: the most successful filmmaker since the advent of film
Invention
- Theodor Judah: chief architect and engineer for the American Transcontinental raliroad
- Louis Bloustein: he and his son opened the “first” gas station, eventually founding AMOCO OIL.
- Emile Berliner: developed the modern-day phonograph. The machine he patented was called the gramophone. Berliner made possible the modern record industry. His company was eventually absorbed by the Victor Talking Machine Company, now known as RCA.
- Jewish Louis B. Mayer (MGM): created the idea for the Oscar
- Robert Adler: Television Remote Control
- Ruth Arnon: Israel biochemist and co-developer of the multiple sclerosis drup Copazone
- Selig Percy Amoils: South African Opthalmologist and biomedical engineer
- Zhores Alferov: the heterotransistor, winner of 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics
- Hermann Aron: German engineer, electric meter
- Donat Banki: carburator
- Lazslo Biro: Ballpoint Pen
- Samuel E. Blum: LASIK eye surgery
- Ralph H. Baer: father of video games
- Dennis Gabor: Holography, Nobel Prize in Physics
- Stanley N. Cohen: genetic engineering
- Fred Cohen: inventor of computer cvirus defense techniques
- Charles Ginsberg: Videotape
- Leopold Godowsky, Jr: color photography
- Peter Paul Goldmark: long Playing Record
- J. Robert Oppenheimer: theoretical physicist. The “father of the atomic bomb”
- Isador Isaac Rabi: discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance
- Harold A. Rosen: synchronous communications satellite
- William Salcer: designed tanks and armoured cars, jet engines for Israeli Air Force. Held 12 patents.
- Edward Teller: Thermonuclear Bomb
- Paul Maurice Zoll: Defibrillator/Cardiac Pacemaker
Art and Literature
- Marc Chagall (born Segal, Russia): is one of the great 20th century painters
- Emma Lazarus: famous poet…”give me your tired…your poor…your huddled masses,” appears as the inscription on the Statue Of Liberty
Other well known names, not necessarily known that they are Jewish:
- Bob Dylan: musician
- Sandy Koufax: famous baseball pitcher
- Jerry Lewis: comedian
- Jack Benny: Radio and TV comic
- Jerry Seinfeld: stand-up comedian
- Herb Albert: leader and trumpeter of Tijuana Brass
- Benny Goodman: clarinetist and bandleader
- Groucho Marx: comedian
- Paul Simon: musician
- Peter Sellers: actor
- Arthur Miller: playwright
- Julio Iglesias: Internationally known singer
- Henry Kissinger: U.S. Secretary of State
- Alan Greenspan: Federal Reserve
- Leonard Bernstein: musician
- Billy Joel: musician
- Julius Rosenwald: philanthropist
- Arnold Schoenberg: composer
- Felix Mendelssohn: composer
- Leon Trotsky: facilitator of the Russian Revolution
- Mayer Rothschild: financier
- Franz Kafka: author
- Anne Frank: diarist
And the list goes on, and on, and on. It is not possible to list the hundreds of additional inventors, musicians, educators, politicians, actors and actresses, movie producers, writers, statesmen, and every other endeavor of mankind. Jewish people are overly represented in every area of leadership in this world.
Am I saying that the Jewish people are better than anyone else in the world? Of course not. But, what I am saying is that they are a unique and special people, and it was God’s doing. It was God who chose Abraham to be father to a people’s group God called the “chosen” people. As we look back at past history and our world today, Jewish people have a higher representation percentage-wise in areas of excellence than any other race on Planet Earth. God has most definitely kept His promise to the patriarch Abraham.
In Part 4 of this series, we will look at what place the Jewish nation has in today’s world and what God says about its place in the immediate future leading up to the imminent return of Messiah, Yeshua. We will also look at the miracle of the Jewish peoples returning to their homeland after over 1,800 years scattered around the globe, and how that is such a powerful proof of the imminence of the end of the age.
To Be Continued
Jake Geier