Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 12-28-22: Coming Soon – Yet Still a Little While

Pew Research recently conducted a survey on Climate Change in relation to various religious traditions.  Within that survey from April 2022 they asked some questions about end-times beliefs.  I’m not sure what prompted that aspect of the study; perhaps it had something to do with the apocalyptic weather we’re having lately, or that they somehow knew we’d have.  The meme of climate change has certainly been promoted with Armageddon in mind – the intent being that if we don’t DO SOMETHING all is lost, mankind will die out, and the world will self-destruct.  Of course, the problem with this is that the global elites WANT mankind eradicated.  Is there man-made climate change?  Absolutely!  Just not in the manner that’s put forth.  Our CO2 emissions, and the fact that we are carbon-based life forms, have nothing to do with the weather holocaust around the world.  The weather, a.k.a. the climate, is being manipulated – geoengineered, if you will – and the people of the world are being deceived.  It’s just one more trick of Satan.

 

 

Transcript:

Pew Research recently conducted a survey on Climate Change in relation to various religious traditions.  Within that survey from April 2022 they asked some questions about end-times beliefs.  I’m not sure what prompted that aspect of the study; perhaps it had something to do with the apocalyptic weather we’re having lately, or that they somehow knew we’d have.  The meme of climate change has certainly been promoted with Armageddon in mind – the intent being that if we don’t DO SOMETHING all is lost, mankind will die out, and the world will self-destruct.  Of course, the problem with this is that the global elites WANT mankind eradicated.  Is there man-made climate change?  Absolutely!  Just not in the manner that’s put forth.  Our CO2 emissions, and the fact that we are carbon-based life forms, have nothing to do with the weather holocaust around the world.  The weather, a.k.a. the climate, is being manipulated – geoengineered, if you will – and the people of the world are being deceived.  It’s just one more trick of Satan.

 

In fact, what Satan has done is turn the hearts of many away from God with the fear that we’re breathing ourselves to death by exhaling too much carbon dioxide, allowing too many cows to live and pollute the atmosphere through their bodily functions, and that our human population of useless eaters is exploding far beyond the sustainability of the earth.  In the midst of all this, those with varied religious persuasions are largely directing their focus everywhere but on the Lord.

 

These many factors have caused the church to ignore God’s Word with its pronouncements of judgment.  Because Christians generally don’t read their Bibles and have little understanding of God’s work in the Old Testament, they don’t see the relation to us in New Testament times.  Actually, to gain the sense of how God is indeed the same yesterday, today, and forever, we must see what God did in response when His Chosen People – the Jews – rejected Him in order for us to grasp what He will do in our current times.  Make no mistake.  We likewise have chosen to reject our Creator and Deliverer, and for that great sin, there must be a reckoning.  However, likewise, there will be a marvelous and much welcomed deliverance.  The question is: when?

 

We’ll talk about these issues a little more, but first, let’s pray, and read from God’s Word.

 

<PRAY>

 

Scripture

 

Hosea 9:11-17

 

Ephraim’s glory shall fly away like a bird—
no birth, no pregnancy, no conception!
Even if they bring up children,
I will bereave them till none is left.
Woe to them
when I depart from them!
Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow;
but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter.
Give them, O Lord—
what will you give?
Give them a miscarrying womb
and dry breasts.

Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal;
there I began to hate them.
Because of the wickedness of their deeds
I will drive them out of my house.
I will love them no more;
all their princes are rebels.

Ephraim is stricken;
their root is dried up;
they shall bear no fruit.
Even though they give birth,
I will put their beloved children to death.
My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him;
they shall be wanderers among the nations.

 

Coming Soon – Yet Still a Little While

  • The first thing we need to point out is that few people actually understand what the coming apocalypse is or the purpose of Armageddon
  • If you don’t have a Biblical and prophetic understanding of the world, how can you properly define everything that’s happening?
  • If your worldview is anything but one that has God’s perspective given to us through His prophetic Word, you will be completely lost in explaining the events impacting our lives
  • In creating the earth and mankind to populate it, God desired that we would worship Him and steward His creation
  • In the arrogance of His rebellious sons – Satan principle among them – what God intended was completely flipped upside down
  • Humans rejected God to worship fallen divine beings along with the creation itself
  • This is a pattern from long ago – even, and most tragically – among His Chosen People
  • Israel of all the nations on earth should have followed God and Him alone
  • Yet, they wanted to be like everyone else
  • Mikey had a bicycle and a king
  • Israel couldn’t handle having an unseen God, so they clamored for one they could see
  • They wanted the same type of bicycle that they could touch and idolize like the nations around them
  • And, at least a human king kind of made sense to them since he surely wouldn’t require the Jews to be so different and aloof from the world like God did
  • Certainly with a human king, they could understand him
  • You know the Biblical story
  • Israel went up and down – into faith and out of it
  • God in His mercy tolerated their human frailties, but – frankly – grew rather tired of them despite His everlasting love for them
  • He declared that someday He would restore all His glory to them, but they would have to pay the price for rejection and idolatry
  • To this day, Israel hasn’t learned that lesson
  • To see one incidence of this in the past with an interesting confluence to the attitudes of today, let’s go back to ancient Israel at the time of Babylon’s invasion
  • Several prophets of God ministered in those days, among them Jeremiah and Hosea
  • At one point, those who hadn’t been taken to Babylon consulted Jeremiah and asked what they should do following the assassination of the Israelite governor the Babylonians had put in charge
  • Although this group wasn’t responsible for that murder, they feared the repercussions
  • Jeremiah told them to remain in the land of Israel, and God would protect them
  • Despite vowing to do whatever the Lord decreed, they blatantly, arrogantly, disobeyed
  • They did this regardless of the Word that God had spoken in Jeremiah 42:15-18:

But if you say, ‘We will not remain in this land,’ disobeying the voice of the Lord your God and saying, ‘No, we will go to the land of Egypt, where we shall not see war or hear the sound of the trumpet or be hungry for bread, and we will dwell there,’ then hear the word of the Lord, O remnant of Judah. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: If you set your faces to enter Egypt and go to live there, then the sword that you fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt, and the famine of which you are afraid shall follow close after you to Egypt, and there you shall die. All the men who set their faces to go to Egypt to live there shall die by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence. They shall have no remnant or survivor from the disaster that I will bring upon them.

“For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: As my anger and my wrath were poured out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so my wrath will be poured out on you when you go to Egypt. You shall become an execration, a horror, a curse, and a taunt. You shall see this place no more.”

  • Let’s also add to this the warning that God gave through Hosea that we read as our Scripture
  • This Word was to Ephraim, which was another name for the Northern Kingdom, also known as Samaria and Israel after the division of the land at the time of Solomon’s son Rehoboam
  • I guarantee you that God’s declaration concerning Ephraim in Hosea 9:16-17 also ended up being the fate of Judah as the Southern Kingdom, and thus all those to whom Jeremiah brought the Word of God:

Even though they give birth,
I will put their beloved children to death.
My God will reject them
because they have not listened to him;

  • God promised to bereave Israel because they didn’t listen to Him
  • If the Lord says that you will be “a horror, a curse, and a taunt,” you can also bet that your children will have no future – in fact, you won’t have many children

 

  • Now, what I just discussed may seem like a long way from where we started concerning the climate change study and the end times, but we’ll make a sharp turn and get there
  • The Pew Research poll focused on religious attitudes toward climate change
  • This may just be me in interpreting how Pew described certain aspects of this, but I felt an unease on Pew’s part that certain religious people don’t place much stock in the notion – which Pew agrees with – of man-made climate change and its overall dangers
  • It’s like Pew couldn’t believe that a subset of religious folks generally dismisses climate change since their attitude is that God is in charge
  • Again, this is probably just me and my interpretation, but I sensed an indignation in their write-up to the effect of: “How dare they! This whole God-thing is so silly.”
  • Like I say – I’m sure it’s just my bias reading into the implication of their conclusions
  • Anyway, the focus on religion in the study determined that among believers, many hold that God is in charge of the climate and that He has given man dominion of the earth
  • Yes, as Christ-followers we are to exercise stewardship, but not submit per se to God’s creation
  • On the other hand – no surprise – those in the unbelievers’ camp generally believe that climate change is a major problem and we must do something about it
  • But here’s where it gets interesting
  • In the context of this poll, Pew asked some questions about end-times beliefs
  • Here is the reason Pew gives for this:

 

Americans’ attitudes about climate change are sometimes said to be linked to beliefs about the apocalypse or “end times.” As the theory goes, people who believe humanity is living in its last days may be less concerned about the dangers of climate change than those who do not think the world is soon coming to an end.

 

  • Indeed, Pew found this to mostly be true
  • The tragic result is that a large swath of the church rejects the idea that we are in the last days
  • Let me give you some statistics:
  • This gets a little bit tricky, but according to the poll, there are two primary categories concerning end-times beliefs
  • They are:
    • “Believe humanity is living in the end times”
    • “Do not believe humanity is living in the end times”
  • That’s pretty straight forward
  • Within the category of the first instance, i.e. they “believe humanity is living in the end times,” this is subdivided into two additional belief systems of end-times believers
    • The first is: “Jesus will return to earth someday AND the world situation will worsen until then”
    • The second sub-category encompasses “All other end times believers”
  • I found this second grouping rather confusing; but in the notes Pew describes people in this faction with the following definition:
    • “The ‘all other end times believers column’ includes those who believe Jesus will return to earth someday but don’t believe the world situation will steadily worsen until then, as well as those who do not believe Jesus will return or don’t believe in Jesus at all.”
  • Before we go on, we need to tease out a little more what these people might believe
    • #1 – Those who believe Jesus will return to earth someday but don’t believe the world situation will steadily worsen until then
      • In other words, they don’t believe what the Bible says concerning the end times
      • Eventually Jesus will return – it might be in 1000 years as far as they’re concerned
      • In the meantime, all will continue in the world as it’s always been
      • If there appear to be physical upheavals and catastrophes around the world, they’ll level out and nothing much will change
      • The warnings Jesus gave in Matthew 24 apparently hold no water with these folks as to wars, earthquakes, you name it
      • To them it’s all hyperbole and metaphorical
    • #2 – Those who do not believe Jesus will return
      • Remember this is in the “believe we’re in the end times” category
      • That being the case, these presumably are Christian non-believers, i.e. secular, who nonetheless have some sense of an end-times theology
      • They may also include people of other faiths than Christianity or no faith at all
      • Regardless, they have an end-of-the-world outlook of some type
      • They could potentially think the situation in the world will worsen
    • #3 – Those who don’t believe in Jesus at all
      • This subgroup isn’t too different from the one above that I can see
      • If you don’t believe Jesus will return, that seems to also mean you wouldn’t believe in Him either
      • Muslims believe in Jesus – just not the Jesus of the Bible
      • They also believe their Issa – Jesus – will come back as the sidekick of the Mahdi – the 12th Imam
      • Thus, these would have to be strict atheists or other religious believers that totally dismiss the idea that Jesus came to this earth
    • So, what do we learn from this Pew Research study?
    • Of all US Adults, 39% think we are living in the end times
    • That, of course, means that a large percentage of people in general do not believe this
    • In fact, 58% do not believe these are the end times
    • FYI – there is always a small percentage of “No Answer” responses, so the numbers won’t always add up to 100%
    • Of those who say we are living in the end times; the greatest proportion is among those identifying as Evangelical
    • 63% of Evangelicals in total believe we’re in the end times
    • However, of those only 34% believe that Jesus will return to earth someday AND that the conditions in the world will worsen
    • The other 29% of self-identified Evangelicals have other end-times beliefs
    • To this, I have to ask: What the heck???
    • These are self-identifying Christian Evangelical believers, yet less than half of them believe Jesus will return to the earth and the world will grow worse until then
    • That’s a massive disconnect from Scripture
    • It tells me that the so-called believers in this category sitting in supposedly Evangelical churches are extremely far from true Biblical teaching
    • Just a couple other observations from this poll before we move on…
    • 27% of Catholics believe we are living in the end times
    • However, only 7% of all Catholics believe that Jesus will return someday and that world conditions will worsen
    • The 20% of Catholics believing we’re in the end times, apparently have some other idea of what will happen besides Jesus returning
    • Maybe they think Mary will rescue us
    • The rest of the people in Catholicism – 70% of them – believe we are not living in the end times
    • What a tragedy that this branch of the church – for all intents and purposes Thyatira, yet still loved by Jesus – has been so led astray by its leadership

 

  • All this background leads us toward our main point today
  • End times beliefs are obviously all over the board both inside and outside the church
  • In Evangelicalism where the strongest belief should be that Jesus is returning soon and the world will rapidly go downhill – even this segment of the church is greatly divided
  • I’ve pointed out previously how there is a big split between pre-Trib Rapture believers and post-Tribbers
  • The most fervent among us who believe Jesus will come soon before the Tribulation are anxiously watching and waiting
  • Of course, others in our camp aren’t so zealous yet still hold to this theologically sound position
  • Many of the post-Trib Rapture adherents on the other hand are prepping and hunkering down for the worst
  • They believe we’ll be caught up, not in the Rapture, but in the Tribulation
  • Their position is that we’ll somehow be sheltered from the worst of the depredations of those seven years – if they even believe there is a definitive seven years
  • For some, I think that’s an open question, i.e. they may not necessarily think that the Tribulation has a defined beginning and end date
  • Regardless, this group of post-Tribbers is all about escaping what is to come – not by divine means per se when Jesus snatches us from the earth, but through their own efforts in preparing for what’s coming, along with perhaps a little Godly intervention, like the Jews in Goshen had when they came to Egypt during the worldwide famine and God subsequently sent the plagues upon the land
  • Here’s where I’m going with this
  • You’ll recall I mentioned earlier that during the Babylonian invasion and aftermath, a group of Jews left in the land consulted Jeremiah for God’s counsel
  • He told them that if they remained in Israel, they would escape judgment
  • If they disobeyed and went to Egypt, the worst of the worst would come upon them in the form of war, famine, and pestilence
  • Naturally, they chose to ignore God and do what they wanted
  • They went to Egypt and all these curses came upon them
  • Now, in these last days, I have no idea how God may look upon and treat folks who decide they need to dig into this world by prepping to escape His judgment and wrath
  • The one thing I do know is that Christians – the church – believers in Jesus Christ – have been instructed to view this world as an alien place
  • This is not our home
  • We are not to cling to it, rather let go and not grasp at what is temporal
  • And what is temporal?
  • Gold, silver, bullets, food, houses
  • In other words – everything that we put stock in to live day-by-day…
  • It is those things that people think will be necessary to endure the worst time that will ever come upon this earth
  • Yet there is a large number of believers who are doing just that
  • They think that by holding onto this world, God will reward their efforts
  • Can you see how messed up this is?
  • I’m just making an analogy here
  • Again, what God may do is another matter
  • What I’ve observed is that a number of post-Trib Rapture believers are advocating for the creation of localized communities
  • Many are creating these
  • The intent with these communities is to essentially live off the grid as things gets worse and the government becomes more overarching in its control
  • Actually, there are both Christian and secular efforts in this regard
  • It should be apparent that those who are engaging in creating these communities don’t believe that the world will devolve to the point of complete desolation because of God’s coming judgment
  • They don’t – in fact, I’d argue that they cannot – see that the time of the Tribulation as described in the Book of Revelation is upon this world even now
  • We are at the brink of the Tribulation cliff
  • Even if they do think we’re at that point, they obviously can’t understand how awful those seven years will be
  • In a sense, they are like the Israelites attempting to escape to Egypt
  • They think that the Babylonians, i.e. the global elites, will leave them alone if they hunker down in that foreign land
  • Worse yet, they have no apparent concept of how Satan’s rage will manifest in persecution
  • The truth is that Christians and all who don’t comply with the dictates of Antichrist will be hunted down and killed
  • Worst of all, they surely have no idea what the wrath of God and what He rains down upon this world in His various Seal, Trumpet, and Bowl Judgments means
  • These people want to build these protective enclaves and escape all that is to come
  • Rather than placing their hope and trust in Jesus for His deliverance, they intend to ride out the storm like the Israelites hoped to do in Egypt
  • God warns: “Don’t go to Egypt! It will bring you only misery and death.”
  • The problem is that this storm is all-encompassing and will consume the world and everyone in it
  • Here is what God says about this in Isaiah 24:1,4-6:

 

Behold, the Lord will empty the earth and make it desolate,
    and he will twist its surface and scatter its inhabitants.

 

The earth mourns and withers;
    the world languishes and withers;
    the highest people of the earth languish.
The earth lies defiled
    under its inhabitants;
for they have transgressed the laws,
    violated the statutes,
    broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore a curse devours the earth,
    and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt;
therefore the inhabitants of the earth are scorched,
    and few men are left.

 

  • Here are some questions for the post-Trib Rapture folks:
    • Does this sound like a place that will sustain life?
    • Do you seriously think this is a world in which you can shelter within your little self-sustainable communities?
    • Do you really want to?

 

  • Now, let’s address one other pertinent issue in our discussion today, namely when the Rapture might occur
  • I’ve pointed this out in previous Prophecy Updates that there are many who try to tie the Lord’s appearing in the clouds for His church with the various feasts of Israel
  • I disagree with this approach and subscribe to the Galilean wedding belief
  • Once the Son has entered in a betrothal with His beloved Bride, He must return to His Father’s house to prepare a place for her
  • Only when the Father determines – at a time of His choosing and unknown to anyone, even the Son – will the Bridegroom go and snatch His Bride from where she dwells
  • The true church of Jesus Christ is the Bride – He is the Bridegroom
  • When God the Father says to Jesus that He can collect His Bride to Himself, this is the point that the Rapture occurs
  • There is no correlation with any Jewish feasts, and thus it is at a completely unknown time
  • Here’s the problem for us – the Bride of Christ…
  • Given what we know from Scripture that describes the times leading up to the Tribulation – we’re there
  • Because we believe in a pre-Tribulation Rapture, our expectation is that it will happen at any time
  • In fact, the gut sense that many of us have screams within us that our anticipation in this regard is true
  • More than that, many of us are extremely weary of this world
  • I think that also has to tell us something regarding the validity of our belief
  • Yet, we wait and watch and wait and watch
  • Where is the Lord?
  • Surely the time is at hand!
  • What we fail in some measure to take into account – I think – is that God requires His people to complete certain tasks for the Kingdom before He whisks us away
  • I’ve spoken periodically about the dreams of Pastor Dana Coverstone
  • One of the important aspects of these dreams is that they are highly symbolic
  • If someone is interpreting them literally there’s probably going to be a disconnect
  • Dana’s latest dream released in early December that he titled: The Canary in the Coal Mine is exactly what I’m talking about
  • If someone thinks Christians will actually be laboring in an actual coal mine to bring this dream to fulfillment…well, that’s just silly
  • Surely there are numerous facets to this dream
  • I want to just bring out one of them
  • The miners laboring beneath the earth were filthy with coal dust
  • The dream conveyed that those workers were Christ-followers doing God’s work
  • They’re underground – so perhaps not noticed or seen
  • That dark place may in fact be one where sin abounds – this being the reason the workers are covered in it
  • Yet, they work tirelessly and cheerfully with the Holy Spirit in their midst
  • The dream implies a shift change along with the representation of an adversary
  • I don’t know for sure, but the new group of workers going down into the mine while the previous group comes up may indicate two things:
    • All of us laboring for the Lord need a break occasionally
    • God is constantly bringing new workers into His kingdom to labor for Him
  • The adversary may represent a false pastor or the world, in the sense that there are many enemies to God’s work, and they will attempt anything to keep us from doing it
  • Again, there are certainly other pieces to the dream that I’m not addressing
  • But here is the bottom line:
  • The dream indicates that God isn’t quite ready to remove us yet from the world
  • He still has work for us to do
  • Sometimes it’s dirty and filthy with the stain of sin and darkness, yet He is with us every step of the way, although there may also be danger around us
  • Jesus will never leave us nor forsake us
  • As we look up for the imminent return of the Lord, we also have to realize that there are lost and dying people all around us who need to hear about His love and mercy for their lives
  • As much as we want all this to end and to be in the presence of Jesus, according to the perspective in Dana’s dream, we’re not quite there yet
  • We have a little more work to do
  • As disappointing in one sense as this is, we should also rejoice that God values us so much that He would continue to trust us to be about the Father’s business
  • We need to strengthen ourselves in Him and carry on just a little longer
  • If we keep our eyes on Him, while simultaneously working for Him, we’ll think a little less of ourselves and our own situations
  • In other words, the more we focus on what God wants and less on our own circumstances, the time will go by like the blink of an eye
  • When we’re looking at ourselves in the mirror, that’s pretty miserable and disheartening
  • God alone is our hope and our glory
  • He is our promise
  • Just as I’ve titled this message:
  • Jesus is Coming Soon – Yet, it will Still Be a Little While
  • Continue doing the Lord’s work, and we’ll be with Him before we know it

6 Responses to “Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 12-28-22: Coming Soon – Yet Still a Little While”

  1. Reply Jude C

    As I read the pew research poll and saw the strange conclusion’s people had to the last days. Especially the evangelicals, it saddens me that so many don’t believe what the scriptures says about how the days are going to go from bad to worse. I’m reminded of Jesus warning in Rev: 2:4 ( But I have this against you, that you have left your first love ) . I think the love of this world still has a great hold on many, so they just don’t want to here of the wrath to come. But we who hold on to the hope of our Lord coming for us in the rapture have a joy that surpasses understanding. So we press on continuing the good fight, as we wait for his soon return.

  2. Reply Jim Eastman

    This reminds me of Matthew 24. The only thing left before Jesus returns is for the gospel to be preached in all the world. Were obviously not there yet. Everything else has been done or is being done.

    • Reply Gary Ritter

      And yet it’s God who completes that task in the Tribulation with the final call coming from the angel. God always has the last Word.

  3. Reply Kim

    It seems believers who are preparing the most for what’s to come in this world are the least prepared to leave it. It’s the reverse for me, I’m not preparing to stay, I’m preparing to leave.

Leave a Reply to Kim