Commentary on world events that relate to Bible prophecy and on Rapture Ready issues world events.

 

Nov 16

Are You Homesick?

I've been living down here in Little Rock, Arkansas, for about two months now. Several people have asked me if I ever get homesick for Omaha. My simple answer is always, "No, not really."

Even though I lived in Nebraska and Iowa all my life, I never grew attached to the region to the point that I would ever long for it. Arkansas is my current home, and if the Lord leads me to live somewhere else, that place will be my home as well.

There are some things about Nebraska that I will miss. I had great Christian neighbors where I lived in West Omaha. And, when it's blazing hot down here in the south, I'll probably wish I could enjoy some of the cooler weather up north.

Of course, there are always trade-offs that tend to balance each other out. I've never lived in Los Angeles, a land of nearly perfect weather. But because of the high crime and horrendous traffic congestion, I have no desire to move to that city.

There is no ideal place to live. Every place you go, you are going to find an earth totally contaminated with sin. Children are starving to death, people are suffering from war and pestilence, "gay marriage" is legal in several states, babies are murdered in their mother wombs, and there are so many heartbreaks.

Some people try to escape the world by moving out to the country. I have found this doesn't work because there is no place to escape from yourself. I'm only 44 years old, and I can feel the effects of the fallen nature on my body. We are directed to be beacons of light to this lost world. You can't be a beacon while hiding in a cave.

If I am homesick for anything, it would be for my heavenly home. I've never been there, but I trust from the Bible's description that it is a wonderful place. Next to it, nothing on this planet is worth yearning after.

I found a poem on the web that talked about being "Homesick for Heaven." Here are a few lines:

I read of the wonders of Heaven above,
In the place He's preparing for me.
No sickness or sorrow can enter that land,
And I wanted its beauty to see.

Yet I needed Christ's help just to cope with each task
That life with its cares sent my way.
Through triumphs and failures that filled up my years,
My Heaven seemed ages away.

But now that I'm living my winter of life,
I find not a day will go by
Without precious thoughts of my Heavenly home,
And my meeting with Christ in the sky.

I'll see all my loved ones who've gone on before,
And I'll sing with the Heavenly throng.
I'll have a new body with no aches or pains,
And I'll worship my Lord all day long.

Each day brings me closer to life's curtain call,
When the face of my Lord I will see.
I'll no longer be homesick, for I will be home,
And with Jesus forever I'll be.

One of the good things about being a student of Bible prophecy is that we know the troubles of this life are quickly drawing to a close. The homesickness we feel is tempered by the fact that we know our departure is coming up just around the corner.

I think the easiest way for people to know if they are genuine believers is to ask themselves if they are ever homesick to see their Savior. A true test of your spiritual condition might be to ask yourself if you can say with true sincerity, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus.”

"Now we know that if the earthly tent [physical body] we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling" (2 Corinthians 5:1-2 NIV).

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken, for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort" (2 Corinthians 1:3-7 ESV).

-- Todd

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Key Prophecies Boiling

Lest you think the end-times train of prophetic stage-setting has begun rolling too slowly across this current hour's strange geopolitical landscape, I offer several points to the contrary.

The first involves the dividing of God's land. That process targets Israel as the chief hold-up to progress toward peace. The "Roadmap to Peace" seems to have been placed on the back burner of Middle East diplomacy. But the truth is far different.

More troubling is the fact that the United States continues to be at the forefront of prodding along the process. And it is Israel, not the Jewish state's enemy antagonists of the region, who is receiving the brunt of the poking.

Israel must give up land won in the 1967 Six Day War: That is the demand of the American administration.

A top State Department official spelled out on Tuesday that the goal of the United States in its negotiations in the Middle East is to pressure Israel into expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to 'end the occupation that began in 1967.'

William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his address to the Middle East Institute Tuesday that he sees the U.S. mandate as one of 'determined leadership' and that American must be straightforward about its intentions. (Hana Levi, "State Department: U.S. Goal to Expel Jews in 'Occupied' Post-67 Lands," Israel National News, 11/11/09)

Burns said that U.S. goals clearly mandate that Israel and a new Palestinian state "live side by side in peace and security." The declaration even more clearly--from God's point of view--speaks to where this generation surely must stand on God's prophetic timeline. At the very least, the undersecretary has put forth some chillingly familiar propositions, when considering prophetic terminology.

Again we think on Joel's foretelling that has come ever more into view in recent times, due to America's and the international community's arm-twisting to make Israel give up more and more of the tiny parcel of land they secured through war--land that is a mere token of the vast land their God actually deeded to them.

I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. (Joel 3:2)

The second point of prophetic stage-setting on the front burner of our time, then, is the American undersecretary unwittingly using biblically prophetic jargon when issuing his imperious-sounding pronouncement of peace-making. Israel and the Palestinian state the powers-that-be intend to create, he said, must "live side by side in peace and security." This has an ominous ring to prophetically/spiritually-attuned ears: "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape" (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

The Lord of heaven declares that such a "peace and security" arrangement as proposed by those who want to impose humanistic hegemony over Israel will actually be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel's back:

Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves... And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. (Isaiah 28:14-15, 18) It will be, of course, the covenant of false peace instituted by the "prince that shall come," as outlined in Daniel 9: 26-27, that will set in motion the last seven years of human history. The Tribulation will culminate in the return of Christ at Armageddon (Revelation 19:11). The third point of stage-setting in the news currently involves yet another demand upon God's chosen nation by one of Israel's chief enemies. This particular news item brings into focus the city that is directly prophesied by Isaiah to be totally destroyed at some point: "The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap" (Isaiah 17:1).

Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday warned that if Israel does not negotiate away the Golan Heights, his nation may turn to more violent methods of reclaiming the territory it once controlled.

Speaking at an Islamic economic summit in Istanbul, Assad claimed to still want to reach a peace agreement with Israel, but said that if such an agreement is not based on Israel full surrender of the Golan, then 'resistance' is an option he is seriously considering.

It was not the first time Assad has threatened war should Israel not meet his precondition for peace talks by guaranteeing a full Israeli pullout from the Golan. ("Israel Today," Headline News, 11/10/09).

Damascus, the longest-inhabited city in the world, according to many historians, is biblically prophesied to be completely destroyed. This is most interesting because, as I've written many times before, Damascus is headquarters to every major Mideast terrorist organization. Each of those hate-filled terrorist enclaves are vowed to erase Israel from the region--and from the world, for that matter. The anger stems from satanic rage that goes back more than three millennia.

But it is that city currently under the domination of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad that God says will be forever eliminated, while Jerusalem and Israel will remain forever.

The fires of things to come are blazing. God's prophetic clock continues to tick--make no mistake.

Terry