It is something like when you have been in an auto accident and the offensive party avoids looking at you, as if that would make the confrontation go away. More likely, though, there is some awareness that something is wrong in the world, but there is no known answer to the problem, so hopefully, it will go away.
When I was an early teenager, unsaved and in spiritual darkness, a day came when someone had predicted the world would end. It was a dull, slick cloudy day, and I waited and wondered just how it was going to happen. I was not unaware of the existence of God, but I had no idea how to connect with Him, nor did I realize a need to do so.
I was rather frozen in the place of having no answers and not knowing what to do. Perhaps that is the mindset of much of the population today, that is, those who are at least somewhat aware that society is not normal and is increasingly going downhill.
Surveys by news teams on the street reveal that a majority of that segment of the population here in America, at least and quite likely in most of the world, the attitude is to “get it while the getting is good,” or in another vein, “get all you can, can all you get, and poison the rest!” that mindset has led to the loud “hurrah” for legalized pot smoking in some states, in my opinion.
The news media is totally obsessed with the buildup to the expected 2016 presidential election, while what is left of the time slots is forced to cover repeated murders of innocent people by deranged individuals with an avenging agenda or a desire for notoriety as a warrior for Islamic terrorism.
In America the hopeful goal of most upright, moral citizens who recognize that society is crumbling beneath us is a return to the constitutional foundation that was laid by our founding fathers. However, that is not to be because of two factors that are working in opposition to each other.
The New World Order proponents (which I have written of in several articles, most recently, the one titled, “Which New World Order Do You Prefer?” [1]) have been at their goal of a One World Government since the time of the Tower of Babel, reported in Genesis 11.
On the opposing side is the plan of God, the Sovereign Judge of the universe, who has an appointed time for the end of days, often referred to as the “Day of the Lord,” which starts the wrap up of human history as we know it. In other words, the inscription on our postage stamps, “USA Forever,” is not a proclamation from God.
Is this being not patriotic on my part? No, I call it being realistic in the light of Bible prophecy. God has an appointed time laid out when righteousness will confront evil in its rawest form, and the Sovereign Judge is not moved to action by the turn of circumstances. He makes the circumstances! This passage from Psalm 75:6-8 tells us much of God’s mindset:
“For exaltation comes neither from the east nor from the west nor from the south, but God is the Judge. He puts down one and exalts another. For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is fully mixed, and He pours it out; surely its dregs shall all the wicked of the earth drain anddrink down.”
It is the cup of God’s wrath that contains the wine of His judgment. But lest one would say that this writing in the Psalms is not the way it works, take a look at this segment of Daniel’s prayer in Daniel 2:20-22:
“Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His. And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him.”
Do you recall the strange turn of events back in August, 2008, when Barack Obama met with Hillary Clinton secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) at her place in New York? The Clinton steamroller was about to forge ahead of Obama in a decisive manner at that point in the campaign, as I recall. The result of that meeting was that Clinton bowed out of the race entirely, and Obama was the nominee.
It appears that God had a timetable that was not that of the prevailing circumstances. God sets up one and puts down another, just as the Psalmist wrote. In the prophetical realm, in order to have a one world government, that seventh head of the Beast of Revelation, America could no longer be a sovereign nation . For the same reason, neither could any other nation retain its sovereignty, but destruction of America had to be first in line.
Therefore, Obama is elevated to the front runner, and his opponent, also selected by the string-pulling puppeteers behind the scenes, was not slated to win the presidency. This one, who vowed to “fundamentally transform America forever,” had been primed to do so, according to Henry Kissinger, shortly after his election.
No one, I submit, can honestly say that Obama has not lived up to his ambitions to destroy America. Cover up after cover up has attempted to keep the American citizenship in the dark, but compelling evidence is rampant that we are on the brink of gigantic changes in human history as we know it. Many signs now point to mid-September, 2015, as a possible focal point of transformation.
In previous articles I have looked at Luke 17:26 and following with particular interest in different aspects of the passage. The pertinent issue addressed there regarding the subject of this article is the clear unawareness of those people of Noah’s and Lot’s time that anything was about to happen that would turn their world upside down. The passage bears repeating because of its application to the topic at hand:
“And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Likewise, as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all.Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.
In that day, he who is on the housetop, and his goods are in the house, let him not come down to take them away. And likewise, the one who is in the field, let him not turn back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.
I tell you, in that night there will be two men in one bed: the one will be taken and the other will be left. Two women will be grinding together: the one will be taken and the other left. Two men will be in the field: the one will be taken and the other left.”
These are observations made by Jesus, who infuriated the Jews with His declaration in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I AM!” So Jesus was there and knew what was happening in Noah’s time and in Lot’s time, although the reports in Genesis 6 nor Genesis 19 give us these details. Apparently, then, this narrative in Luke 17 is for the generation which is present at the time when the coming of the Lord is near.
Those daily activities described in the Luke account have reflected the attitude of people for centuries, yet it is not required that we shut down life and find a place to wait out the ensuing circumstances. Jesus said for those who hear Him, “Watch, for you do not what hour your Lord may come.” The challenge to be aware of impending circumstances that indicate an approaching moment of reckoning has not been lacking. Paul admonished the Thessalonians in this manner:
“But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day should overtake you as a thief. You are all sons of light and sons of the day. We are not of the night nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as others do, but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:4-6).
There is much hopefulness about that there will be a great revival and turning back to the Lord along with many conversions before the coming of the Lord for His people, based on this Matthew 24:14 verse:
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.”
The only scriptural account of a great harvest of unsaved people being brought into the kingdom is told in Revelation 7:9-10, where, after the selection of the 144,000 specially ordained Jewish men are commissioned, John sees “a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
The elder present with John tells him that “these are those who have come out of the Great Tribulation.”
A falling away is the dismal report for the expectation of those days before the coming of the Lord in the Rapture. Paul tells Timothy, “In the last days evil men shall become worse and worse” (2 Timothy 3:13), and to the Thessalonians, “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first…” (2 Thessalonians 2:3).
It is now the tenth year since hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the mayor’s awareness alert was replayed: “Leave the city; get out while you can!” After the deluge there were 1800 known deaths, and of the many who did leave the city, 110,000 have never gone back. It brings to mind that passage in Matthew 7:13-14:
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow isthe gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
So the rush to judgment and “let the good times roll” mentality has overcome repentance and turning to righteousness to find peace with God. It is a fearful thing that “a little leaven leavens the whole lump,” as Paul wrote (1 Corinthians 5:6). In Jeremiah’s day, the Lord said this: “You willseek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Is it not past time for that action on the part of each one of us? Psalm 139:23-24 can be our cry of repentance:
“Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties;and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
Endnotes [1] (New World Order article)https://www.raptureready.com/featured/lawley/lawley92.html