The sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ, removed all but one of the barriers that separate man from God. The one remaining barrier is our free will. We must choose to accept the free gift of salvation even though the horrible price has already been paid in full. As the final few grains of sand slip through the hourglass, God is using every means at His disposal to get our attention and to get us to make that conscious decision to trust in the promise Jesus made in the Bible.
This article is about the myriad of signs that God is flashing before us, imploring us to make that leap of faith and accept His free gift with our own free will before the last few moments, slip away forever.
This is the third article I have written on the subject. The last one was written around the middle of September. This article contains the signs of an imminent rapture that I have noted since then (with occasional references to events prior to that). Time prevents me from elaborating on any particular event, or from listing all but the most significant signs, which have caught my attention. I am not a prophet and I do not have the gift of prophecy. My sources are a long list of news sites I visit each day on the Internet.
The Age of Grace will end in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. When it does the gift of eternal salvation will no longer be free. Instead, it will still be available, but at a terrible price. An urgency is being felt by all mankind as we sense that something big is about to happen. God will not force us to accept His free gift, but he is throwing so many signs at us that it is almost impossible to see the road ahead. Let’s look now at some of the latest signs of an imminent Rapture.
Our planet’s weather has become nothing less than absolutely freakish. From July 24th to August 19th there were 2,899 record cold temperatures and 667 record high temperatures recorded in the U.S. Denver has become one of the latest places to have been hit with a severe hail storm. Pink snow fell in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, during the heat of summer. A rare snow fell in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Unusually cold weather and snow in parts of South America have affected thousands of people in several countries.
Authorities blamed the weather for the death of more than 5,000 cattle. At one point 33,000 people were stranded in the extreme snowstorm. Japan was hit by 2 extremely rare tornadoes just before Rosh Hashanah. At the same time hurricane activity in the U.S. was eerily silent. Typhoon Man-yi hit central Japan with almost 300,000 households told to evacuate.
On Monday, September 16th, Mexico was simultaneously hit with Hurricane Ingrid on its Atlantic Gulf Coast and with Tropical Storm Manuel on the Pacific Coast. Never before has Mexico been struck by a hurricane and a tropical storm at the same time. Mexico was then hit by a third deadly storm as hurricane Manuel struck the northwest state of Sinaloa. Typhoon Usagi has killed at least 25 people in Guangdong province of south China. The storm has affected 3.5 million people on the Chinese mainland. On September 23rd Typhoon Wutip struck China, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Matthew 24 tells that earthquakes will be one of the signs of the last days and will be a sign to us of the beginning of sorrows of the tribulation period that will occur after the rapture of the church:
“For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:7-8, KJV).
Earthquakes have occurred on a regular basis throughout history, but the frequency and intensity of these has increased markedly in recent weeks and months. On August 30th there was a magnitude 7.0 earthquake that rocked Alaska’s Aleutian Islands with a jet-like rumble that shook homes and sent residents scrambling for cover. Yellowstone National Park has recently experienced three earthquake swarms that occurred simultaneously.
Pakistan experienced a 7.7 magnitude quake on September 24th that created 3 small islands. A few days later, on September 28th, a 6.8 earthquake struck the same area. On September 25th there was a 7.0 quake off the coast of Peru. On Spetember 30th a 6.7 magnitude earthquake struck the remote, uninhabited Kermadec Islands of New Zealand. A very strong and deep earthquake of magnitude 6.7 hit off shore Kamchatka (Sea of Okhotsk) on October 1st.
Chiapas, Mexico, was hit with a 6.1 magnitude quake on September 26th. A 5.2 magnitude earthquake on October 1st struck just off the coast of Ecuador. A very strong and deep earthquake with a magnitude of 6.7 hit off shore Kamchatka (Sea of Okhotsk) on October 1st. An intense earthquake swarm has been going on offshore North Iceland, 10 km NW of Gjögurtá, since September 25th. Roughly 1,000 earthquakes have been recorded by Icelandic Meteorological Office over a period of six days.
Earthquakes and volcanoes certainly seem to go hand-in-hand, and recently we have witnessed many dormant volcanoes coming back to life. God told us in the book of Joel that in the last days there would be pillars of smoke as a sign for us:
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke” (Joel 2:30, KJV).
Let’s take a look at some of the volcanic activity that has taken place in the past few weeks since I posted my last article. Sakurajima, one of Japan’s most active volcanoes, experienced one of its most powerful eruptions in decades on August 18th sending an ash plume to 12,000 feet. Mt Tongariro, off New Zealand, sent a plume of steam 6,600 into the air on Aug 20th. There was a new series of eruptions at the Kliuchevskoi volcano on the Russian Kamchatka Peninsula that sent ash clouds to 18,000 feet on August 15th.
The Santa Maria volcano in Guatemala is erupting to 22,000 feet. A new eruption has begun at the Kliuchevskoi volcano, Kamchatka, and is spewing ash to an altitude of over 17,000 feet. The Reventador volcano in Ecuador is erupting and sending volcanic ash to 20.000 feet. Another new eruption of the Sinabung volcano on Sept 14th – 15th in Indonesia has forced the evacuation of 6,259 people. The September 17th eruption sent ash 16,000 feet into the air. A major eruption occurred on August 22nd at the Santiaguito volcano in Guatemala with an ash cloud rising over 8,000 above the volcano.
At least two eruptions have been recorded at the Poas volcano according to the Volcanological and Seismological Observatory of Costa Rica and have spewed ash and lava to a height of between 30 to 45 feet. Mount Lokon in Tomohon, North Sulawesi, has erupted again, spewing volcanic material from the Tompaluan Lokon crater up to 4,500 in the air. On August 31st an ash plume eruption was reported at the Dukono volcano in Indonesia. VAAC Darwin reported an ash plume from the volcano at 8,000 feet. In Peru, the Ubinas Volcano has erupted for the fifth time in two days sending an ash cloud to a height of 82 feet.
On August 15th there were more explosions and a lava flow occurred at the Mackenney Crater of the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala. On August 19th – 20th there was an underwater eruption of Mount Hobal, a part of the Iliwerung volcano, in Indonesia. Beginning on August 19th there was an eruption of the White Island volcano off the Bay of Plenty coast in New Zealand. A small phreatic eruption took place on August 16th at the sub-glacial Kverkfjöll volcano, Iceland. A new and sudden eruption occurred on September 25th at Telica volcano in Nicaragua and produced an ash plume about a mile high. Beginning on September 3rd, Mt Etna began coming back to life after a brief rest and has reclaimed its status of being one of the most active volcanoes on Earth.
On October 6th the Indonesian volcano Mount Tangkuban Perahu rumbled back to life producing 3 small eruptions. A new submarine eruption began on September 28th near the island Jebel Zubair in the Red Sea. The ongoing eruption is southwest of the eruption which created new volcanic islands there in 2011 and 2012. This is occurring along the Zubair Group, a collection of small islands off the west coast of Yemen.
Floods are another means that God uses to get our attention.
Russia’s far east has been hit by the biggest floods in 120 years and has forced 20,000 people from their homes. Many have died in the worst flooding to hit China in decades. Major flooding in the Philippines has left 600,000 homeless. More than 300,000 people across Sudan have been affected by floods in August, according to the World Health Organization.
In excess of 1,500,000 people in Thailand have been affected by flooding since July and more than a quarter of Thailand’s provinces have been inundated. What the National Weather Service termed as ‘biblical rainfall amounts” have triggered massive flash flooding in northern Colorado during September.
The 2013 season of devastating wildfires continues to rage across the American West. As of September 13th there have been 35,440 reported fires that have burned a total of 3.9 million acres, with a quarter-million acres of that having burned in the iconic Yosemite National Park. The following is from an article that struck me as particularly apocalyptic regarding the Yosemite fire. America is truly beginning to suffer God’s judgment.
The Yosemite fire, officially called the “Rim” fire, is really gaining national attention, mainly because it is threatening 2,000-year-old giant sequoias and has created a state of emergency for the city of San Francisco. Both power lines and water supplies into the city are threatened. The wildfire began from unknown causes on August 17th. Peace talks were held in Jerusalem on August 14th and again on August 20th.
This fire broke out in between. It shows little sign of abating. We have come to think of Yosemite as one of the most beautiful and iconic places inside America. Her scenery is stunning and has been immortalized in countless photographs and prints, particularly by Ansel Adams. The name “Yosemite” is a Native American name. The Miwoks lived outside of Yosemite, and the name “Yosemite” was the name they gave to the Native Americans who lived inside the region we now call Yosemite.The name means: “They are killers.”
Interesting that a tremendous wildfire would erupt just outside of Yosemite and then spread into it, a place with the name meaning “they are killers” on the heels of peace talks in Jerusalem in which President Obama forced the Israelis to release murderers, “killers,” onto their streets as part of the “deal.” Yosemite is literally on the “west bank” of America. The Obama-pushed peace talks are negotiating the fate of the “West Bank” of Israel. It has been reported that President Obama pushed the European Union to boycott goods from Israel’s West Bank as a means of economic punishment. Now, $1 billion has been spent fighting 51 fires in our western states, not to mention the tourist dollars that have gone up in flames as well, particularly in Yosemite (author unknown).
God spoke to Israel through the prophet Hosea with a message that seems remarkably appropriate for today:
“Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites, because the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are dying” (Hosea 4:1-3, NIV).
Beginning around November of 2010, animals have been dying in mass all over the Earth. Is God telling us that our sin is so great that nature, itself, mourns? Is God warning us that His judgment is coming? In 2012 there were 465 mass animal death events that occurred in 67 countries around the world. As of October 1, 2013, there have been 626 mass animal death events in 87 countries this year.
Below is a link to a web site that lists these events. Please take a minute to go there and read the accounts for a single month of 2013. Then take a moment to pause and contemplate what all this tragic death must be telling us. God is taking His vengeance out on the animals of this world as a warning to us about what is going to happen to humanity during the Tribulation period that occurs after the Rapture of the church, which is about to take place.
http://www.end-times-prophecy.org/animal-deaths-birds-fish-end-times.html
The threat to humanity posed by the nuclear disaster at Fukushima continues to figure prominently in the news. Fukushima Bay radiation levels are at their highest since measurements began. A series of new leaks of highly radioactive water from hundreds of steel tanks at Fukushima are creating an entirely new disaster as radiation contaminates the ground water. Tepco says that fifty percent of its contaminated water filtration capability has been taken off-line due to corrosion. The enormous amount of radiation that is flowing from Fukushima is reaching the west coast of the United States and is poisoning the entire Pacific Ocean.
God has allowed us to create a disaster that we are not capable of cleaning up and yet we still refuse to turn to Him in prayer and repentance. God told us in the very first chapter of Genesis that He put lights in the heavens above to be signs for us. He told us in Joel, Luke, and Acts as well. I really feel that we should believe what God has repeatedly said and look to the heavens to see what God is saying to us now.
“And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years” (Genesis 1:14, KJV).
“And I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke” (Joel 2:30, KJV).
“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea” (Luke 21:25, NIV).
“And I will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath” (Acts 2:19-20, NIV).
Jupiter’s huge red stripes have suddenly disappeared. NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has spotted a large rotating hexagon that is larger than the planet Earth and is circling the north pole of Saturn. The hexagon, according to NASA, is 15,000 miles wide and 60 miles thick. On August 23rd a coronal mass ejection hurled into space by an erupting magnetic filament delivered a glancing blow to Earth’s magnetic field. The sun fired off an intense solar storm at Earth on August 21st hurtling billions of tons of charged particles at our planet. This solar storm erupted just 21 hours after another powerful coronal mass ejection on August 20th.
A coronal mass ejection propelled into space on August 29th did not hit the Earth, but its solar wind did. A magnetic filament erupted from the sun’s northern hemisphere during the late hours of September 29th hurling a magnificent CME into space. Then the sun went strangely quiet. We are actually at the point in the 11 year cycle of solar activity were we should be seeing a maximum number of sunspots, flares, coronal mass ejections, and general solar activity. Instead, the surface of the sun has suddenly gone eerily calm.
With all of the comets, meteors, and fireballs that have been flying past us in recent weeks it feels like we are standing downrange in a celestial shooting gallery.
A meteor with estimated mass of over 100 pounds exploded over Tennessee on August 28th. Bill Cook, the Head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office, said the fireball reached a peak magnitude of -13. It was brighter than a full moon, and it cast shadows on the ground. The meteor was traveling in excess of 53,000 miles per hour when it exploded. A 230 kilometer wide asteroid designated 324 Bamberga passed 0.81 astronomical units (121 million km) away from Earth on September 13th. On September 17th there were multiple reports in California, Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico of a fireball streaking across the sky.
During the same night there were also multiple reports in Ohio, Wyoming, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Michigan, Virginia, and North Carolina of another huge fireball streaking across the sky. On September 21st hundreds of Texans report seeing a huge fireball streak across the nighttime sky. Two very bright fireballs were spotted and recorded over the skies of Ohio in just two days. They quickly became the 2nd and 3rd most reported events of all time on the American Meteor Society (AMS) website. A brilliant fireball lit up the skies over the Midwestern United States created an amazing light show on September 27th. Astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Survey at the University of Arizona discovered a small asteroid that flew between the Earth and the moon on September 18th. A G2 geomagnetic storm is now in progress following CME impact on Earth’s magnetic field early on October 2nd.
Comet Ison will dominate the nighttime sky in November and has the potential to be one of the most spectacular, if not the most spectacular, comet of all time to be witnessed by humanity. Throughout history comets have been the harbingers of wars, famines, and other disasters. Is the timing of Ison’s arrival a coincidence as we watch for the end of the Age of Grace? Is comet Ison a warning to mankind of the coming tribulation? Will this warning also be for the Church, or will the rapture already have taken place? Time will tell, and it will tell very soon.
God warned us in several places in the Bible that in the last days the love of many will grow cold and that evil will increase. Since posting my last article I have found many examples that fulfill this prophecy:
“And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Matthew 24:11-13, KJV).
Who would have ever thought that feeding the hungry in America would be a crime? Without the requisite permit, anyone caught feeding the homeless in a public park in Raleigh, North Carolina, is subject to criminal arrest for violating a city ordinance. The necessary permit costs an astounding $1,600 per weekend. A Florida ministry that feeds the poor said a state agriculture department official told them they would not be allowed to receive USDA food unless they removed portraits of Christ, the Ten Commandments, a banner that read “Jesus is Lord” and stop giving Bibles to the needy. “They told us they could no longer allow us to have any religious information where the USDA food is going to be,” said Kay Daly, executive director of the Christian Service Center.
More than fifty large U.S. cities have adopted “anti-camping” or “anti-food sharing” laws in recent years and in many of these cities the police are strictly enforcing these laws.
Other examples abound of how the love of many has grown cold in recent weeks. An 88 year old WWII veteran was beaten to death by two teenagers for no apparent reason in Spokane, Washington.
In another example taken from a recent article, an Australian college baseball player attending school in America was killed by three teenagers looking for fun, according to police reports. Christopher Lane, who was out for a jog in the town of Duncan, Oklahoma where his girlfriend and her family live, was targeted at random after he passed a home where the boys were staying. They saw Christopher go by, and one of them said: “There’s our target,’” said Police Chief Danny Ford. “The boy who has talked to us said, ‘We were bored and didn’t have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody.’”
The idea of the love of many growing cold is certainly not unique to the United States. Syrian rebels make films of themselves brutally mutilating and beheading people wherever they go. In one instance they dismembered a little girl with a saw, still very much alive at the time. In another they rip the heart out of a man and then immediately eat it. Syrian rebels perform these unimaginably disgusting acts of cruelty knowing full well that the eyes of the world are upon them.
In recent months the Islamic world has increased its demands for worldwide Sharia law with all of its horrors; where fingers, hands, and feet are routinely lopped off. Last month in an attack on Dumba village by radical Islamists in Nigeria, attackers slit the throats of their victims and gouged the eyes out of many others who survived the massacre. In other parts of the Muslim world, radical organizations such as Boko Haram continue to throw acid into the faces of women and young girls who dare to attend school or learn to read. A report recently released by the United Nations addresses the “unspeakable atrocities” in North Korea.
In the Bible Jesus warns us not to be deceived, saying that many false messiahs will come in His name. Islam is rapidly spreading throughout much of the world and claims to worship the one true god of the one true religion. Much of the world is being deceived by this. This is true even in the United States. New mosques are popping up all across America. The Clarion Project reports that about 1,200 mosques are now operating in the U.S., and almost eighty percent of them were built within the last twelve years.
“And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:4-5, NKJV).
Christianity is in danger of becoming extinct in its birthplace, the Middle East. The most recent example would include the churches, monasteries, and institutions of Egypt’s Christians that are under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporter. Nearly one hundred have been torched, destroyed, or ransacked. Christians themselves are under attack all throughout Egypt and all of the 21 other countries that compose the Middle East, with practically zero coverage in Western media.
Islamist mobs have paraded nuns through Cairo like prisoners of war. Even Christian orphanages in Egypt are being burned as part of the attempt to erase all traces of Christianity. I have to ask why Obama and U.S. officials are so outraged and ready to risk starting a war in the Middle East to protect Muslims, who hate and want to destroy America, but they won’t lift a finger to help the hundreds and thousands of Christians under attack in the Middle East and North Africa.
Not only is the world being deceived by the false religion of Islam, but the evil forces that roam the earth are also working to draw people away from God and toward pagan rites and rituals. One example would include the Burning Man Festival that just took place near Las Vegas and drew close to 78,000 attendees.
We are told in the Bible that in the last days persecution of Christians will increase.
“Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake. And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another” (Matthew 24:9-10, NKJV).
Who can deny that is happening today? I could list a few dozen examples of Christian prosecution that I have observed since posting my last article, but it would take far too much space and would only scratch the surface of what has occurred since then. Christian fundamentals continue to crumble. For example, Britain’s archbishop of Canterbury told evangelical leaders that Christian malice toward homosexuals and homosexuality is “totally wrong” and “demands repentance.” Speaking to a group of Christians at the opening of the Evangelical Alliance’s new premises in London, he said the church must now change its “utterly and totally wrong views” on gay marriage to fit in with society. He reportedly stated: “As I said at the time in the House of Lords, the church has not been good at dealing with homophobia. We must repent of homophobia.”
Another example would include a Christian street preacher who was arrested in Perth for “breach of the peace.” The Reverend Josh Williamson, pastor of Craigie Reformed Baptist Church, is the third Christian street preacher to be arrested in the UK since July. The Christian Legal Centre, which reported his arrest, said the trend pointed to “an increasing hostility towards Christianity.”
In my last article I said that television evangelist and pastor John Hagee, has publicly declared that he no longer opposes a proposed ordinance that seeks to protect the rights of gays, lesbians, transsexuals, and transgender people in San Antonio, Texas. I based this on two articles I read on prophetic news sites. I was very wrong. John Hagee believes in everything the Bible says and is an outspoken supporter of fundamental Christian values. I sincerely apologize to pastor Hagee and to those who read my earlier article.
We see many other similar examples happening all around us of Christian fundamentals crumbling away as well as believers falling away from sound doctrine. This is necessary for the man of lawlessness to be revealed.
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3, KJV).
Carl Worline