An oft-quoted statement of Jesus in reference to the last days, is the one from Luke 21:28: “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” But the scoffer and the non-believer—maybe even the believer—raise questions about the validity of relative events meaning anything. After all, “Where is the promise of His coming; you’ve been talking about that for years and years,” they say, not without derision.So how can we know that current events carry the weight of end-time prophetic fulfillment? A couple of Scripture references are important to consider at this point: “Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). This one certainly is evidenced in the prophecies of Daniel, as well as the other Old Testament prophets. Peter also gives credence to this advance notice provision in 1 Peter 1:10-12 and 2 Peter 1:16-19.
The other reference is John 16:13: “However, when He, the Spirit of Truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.” Notice that this Spirit will guide a believer into all truth, and He will tell of things to come. I submit that included in the admonition to “Watch” that Jesus repeated so often is the paying attention to current events and matching them with Bible prophecies, thus knowing what things are coming together and pointing toward God’s appointed time.
Now to the broad array of “Things Coming Together” and significantly, all in the same time- frame:
Things Physical
Luke records the words of Jesus as to what to expect in these last days: “And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21:11).
One only has to read the daily headlines in the news, or do an internet key word search for earthquakes, famines or pestilences, and learn that their increases are hammering the news pages. Especially noted are the many earthquakes in places that were unheard of a few years ago. In the states of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas they are almost a daily occurrence and sometimes multiple quakes in the same day. Of course, these are being explained off by problems created by the oil industry, but I note that quakes are reported at the same time around the globe.
Erratic weather patterns—hurricanes, tornadoes in strange places, seemingly unceasing winter storms, volcanoes erupting or threatening to erupt, are not “global warming” or “climate changing” results, in my opinion. But because of their volume of increase in these days over those of just a few decades ago, I think Romans 8:19-23 better describes the nature of these things:
“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”
The earth is groaning in anticipation of its redemption from the curse that came upon it when Adam sinned in the Garden and was expelled to a destiny of hacking out a livelihood amid thorns and brambles—see Genesis 3:17-19. Thus man, when he believes, also groans within himself for his own redemption, as the Romans 8 passage declares!
Then, signs in the heavens—unusual solar activity of sun spots, magnetic waves, reversing of its poles; asteroid and meteor bypasses of earth have been repeatedly reported in the news. The coming strange and rare collection of lunar eclipses that NASA, our space agency, has projected for 2014 and 2015, with a solar eclipse in the middle of them and having scheduled dates that are set for the first and last of the Jewish annual feast days that were established in Leviticus 23.
Things Social
In this category we can include the moral decline of societies around the world reflected in sexual orientation issues such as legalization of same-sex marriage, the ground-swell push toward legalized drug culture practices, the resulting thievery, murders, rapes and general distrust and disunity between races and people in general.
It spins out this way: When a people reject the God of creation from their midst, a vacuum does not result in His place—it is immediately filled with evil. In the case of the believer who turns from God, his life becomes filled with the lusts of the flesh. The non-believing society which refuses to allow acknowledgement of God, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, automatically opens the door to whatever diabolical presence that chooses to enter. The result of rejecting God is shown in Romans 1:18-32, and ends with the “falling away” of apostasy that Paul writes of in 2 Thessalonians 2:3.
When that context is followed on to the next level of the encroachment of evil, Paul notes that the final resistance to evil is taken away and then, the source of all evil is revealed in the fullness of that man of sin, that lawless one: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8).
That Three-Part Cluster of Things
Those things discussed above, generally things in the earth and in the heavens, are not devised by man, even though Al Gore and his followers would have us believe so, in respect to weather patterns and other physical phenomenon the world has seen unfolding in increasing magnitude.
Mankind definitely is the frontrunner in the social and moral ills of our society, but these are not like they are planned as goals to be sought. It’s like unwanted reminders from God that man really cannot make it without Him. As was mentioned earlier, the message of Romans 1:18-32 is that when a society rejects God and His truth, He turns His back on it and its end result is total degradation. The alternative message is that of 2 Peter 3:9, For God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (“And be saved,” I would add.) Man is not only physical, he also is a spiritual being, therefore what Jesus declared is absolutely essential: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4), as I seem to refer to so often.
So, we come to this cluster of things coming together that are particularly dependent on God’s eternal plan and previously appointed times of their emergence.
Things Economic
Without any shadow of doubt, even, it is clear that Barack Obama’s intentions were well stated in his speeches during the 2008 presidential campaign. Just before the election he made this declaration: “We are just five days away from fundamentally changing America forever!” In his speeches, he would also declare that “America is the greatest nation ever known,” or various words to that effect, then invite listeners to join him in his goal to “fundamentally change it” (i.e. “destroy it”).
America’s economic well-being has become a dismal picture of continual high unemployment, massive government deficits, and increasing social disunity and unrest.
Liberal spokespersons try to convince us that things are going great, even much better than they were under President George W. Bush. But those who know and see the facts on the ground, out in the real world of “bricks and mortar,” realize this president is a fraud, full of deception , in violation of his oath of office, and they are wondering why nothing is being done about it—if we, indeed, are a “nation of laws.”
Consequently, the American dollar, as the world currency, is in jeopardy, and the whole world is floundering in gigantic debts to controlling central banks and centralized banking cartels that can manipulate the economy practically with the touch of a button. Is it not strange, or have you noticed, how many high level bankers have been jumping to their deaths or otherwise ending their lives in apparent desperation of some sort? It is reminiscent of the economic difficulties of the 1930s.
A member of the Rothschild family, about 1820, is said to have stated, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I will not care what its laws are.” Of course, the Rothschild banking dynasty had been developing long before that time, from the serfdoms of Europe of old, and many decades would come and go before that great bastion of freedom from economic slavery, the United States of America, would be secretly conquered by an evil conspiracy of high level financial interests who met in utmost secrecy at a place called Jekyll Island off the Georgia coast at the end of November, 1910. There, plans were laid to bring the United States under bondage to a central bank owned not by the government but by domestic and foreign parties intent on world domination. In order to get it passed through the Congress, it was named the Federal Reserve System and was passed into law in 1913. Government officials who are complicit with this conspiracy will claim that it surely is an agency of the U.S. government.
Many avoid a direct answer to the question, but I have heard an IRS Commissioner openly claim that it is, indeed, a valid agency of the government. In fact, however, it is neither Federal nor is it a Reserve. Paper currency is printed by the government printing office, sold to the Federal Reserve for ten cents on the dollar, then loaned back to the U.S. government at face value. Minted coins, however, are transferred at face value.
Did you noticed that nothing of real value is involved in the currency exchanges? The “money” is created out of thin air, declared to be “legal tender for all debts, public and private.” By setting interest rates on the loans made, the Federal Reserve can manipulate the available money supply and thereby increase or decrease the economic activity of the nation. It has been reported that in the early 1930s, member banks were ordered to call in their loans to businesses and farmers and take possession of properties that secured the loans, thus creating, in part at least, the Great Depression of the 1930s.
It should not be surprising if “following the money trail” might lead to the unanswered questions in accounts of the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Lincoln issued government-backed “greenback dollars” and Kennedy issued silver certificates by executive order. Neither of the issues were under the auspices of the banking systems then in place. As others have observed, the Golden Rule has been modified to read, “He who has the gold, rules.” (All personally-held gold was confiscated in 1935, and I saw a news article recently that the finders of a cache of gold coins were to turn it over to the Treasury for no more than $35 per ounce in value—same as it was in 1935.)
With $17 Trillion of accumulated national debt on the books, and more readily planned, it is not difficult to see that America will soon go the way of Greece, Spain, Italy and other European countries who are struggling with more debt than their economies can handle—and all owed to central bankers, directly or indirectly, whose goal is a one world economy and a cashless society where exchanges are made electronically and immediately. News headlines are constantly warning of an impending economic collapse, worldwide. (Continued in Part Two).