Awaken Bible Prophecy Update 3-24-23: Judgment & Fire Are Coming

Judgment is coming.  If you miss this fact, then you need to read more deeply in the Word of God.  It seems, in many instances, that commentators in the secular world see the coming times of trouble more clearly than those in the church.  They realize that the financial system is massively broken with debt careening out of control, inflation is soaring and likely to ascend to greater heights, and recession is on the horizon just a wrong move away by a nation or federal bank.  The Butterfly Effect is real when it comes to the world economy poised to crash and burn at any time.  The recent Silicon Valley Bank failure is just one harbinger of many to this effect.

There is no man-made climate change, i.e. our ecological system isn’t subject to normal industrial pollution, cow flatulence, the warming rays of the sun being our enemy, or the God-ordained method of how mankind exhales carbon dioxide.  No, there’s none of that.  What is happening is that artificially engineered climate warfare is occurring by evil, satanically possessed people, who wish to follow the lies of their father the devil and destroy humanity because we are created in God’s image.

War is also coming soon.  Again, many who don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior often have a better grasp of this than the church.  It seems that people gather to sing, fellowship, and hear an encouraging word for their lives, but perish the thought that the pastors should raise the specter of tribulation to come.  That might hurt someone’s feelings or make them feel uncomfortable.  It is all about how we feel these days, you know.

Then, there’s the inconvenient fact that the killing of babies in the womb has been a worldwide phenomenon for decades, while before that many children unfortunate enough to be born in pagan cultures were sacrificed to the gods of the land whom their people worshiped.  All in the hope of winning the favor of whatever god they follow and having a better life.  The blood spilled in the earth cries out for justice.

After my having just briefly mentioned these issues that impact the heavens, the lands, the seas, and all of mankind – if you have any kind of knowledge of your Old Testament – can you really say that God will just ignore these things and allow the world to continue for generations to come?  Do you not see that the time of judgment is at hand because it must be?  Don’t you understand that God’s longsuffering patience does have a red line; that once it’s crossed, it’s curtains for those under judgment?

Transcript:

Judgment is coming.  If you miss this fact, then you need to read more deeply in the Word of God.  It seems, in many instances, that commentators in the secular world see the coming times of trouble more clearly than those in the church.  They realize that the financial system is massively broken with debt careening out of control, inflation is soaring and likely to ascend to greater heights, and recession is on the horizon just a wrong move away by a nation or federal bank.  The Butterfly Effect is real when it comes to the world economy poised to crash and burn at any time.  The recent Silicon Valley Bank failure is just one harbinger of many to this effect.

There is no man-made climate change, i.e. our ecological system isn’t subject to normal industrial pollution, cow flatulence, the warming rays of the sun being our enemy, or the God-ordained method of how mankind exhales carbon dioxide.  No, there’s none of that.  What is happening is that artificially engineered climate warfare is occurring by evil, satanically possessed people, who wish to follow the lies of their father the devil and destroy humanity because we are created in God’s image.

War is also coming soon.  Again, many who don’t know the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior often have a better grasp of this than the church.  It seems that people gather to sing, fellowship, and hear an encouraging word for their lives, but perish the thought that the pastors should raise the specter of tribulation to come.  That might hurt someone’s feelings or make them feel uncomfortable.  It is all about how we feel these days, you know.

Then, there’s the inconvenient fact that the killing of babies in the womb has been a worldwide phenomenon for decades, while before that many children unfortunate enough to be born in pagan cultures were sacrificed to the gods of the land whom their people worshiped.  All in the hope of winning the favor of whatever god they follow and having a better life.  The blood spilled in the earth cries out for justice.

After my having just briefly mentioned these issues that impact the heavens, the lands, the seas, and all of mankind – if you have any kind of knowledge of your Old Testament – can you really say that God will just ignore these things and allow the world to continue for generations to come?  Do you not see that the time of judgment is at hand because it must be?  Don’t you understand that God’s longsuffering patience does have a red line; that once it’s crossed, it’s curtains for those under judgment?

We’ll look more deeply at this theological reality in a moment.  First, we’ll pray then read a Word from the Lord.

<PRAY>

Scripture:

2 Peter 3:11-13

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

Judgment & Fire Are Coming

• To help us get to the place where we better grasp what God must do so as to retain His divine character of a just God, it may be useful to examine what happened in the times of several kings in ancient Israel, actually the Southern Kingdom of Judah, namely Hezekiah and Josiah
• My point today actually focuses on the good kings
• Before we get to them, however, we have to talk about several other evil kings to set the stage
• After the days of Solomon, because of his falling away and worship of other gods than Yahweh, God vowed to tear the kingdom from the hands of his son
• That happened during the reign of Rehoboam, and the nation of Israel was split into the Northern and Southern Kingdoms with separate rulers
• The Northern Kingdom retained the name of Israel while the Southern Kingdom took the name of Judah
• The kings of the newly re-formed nation of Israel, comprised of 10 of the original tribes, all – I repeat ALL – walked contrary to the way God ordained
• In the Biblical text every single king in this restructured Israel was considered unrighteous
• All of these kings committed what are known as the sins of Jeroboam
• Jeroboam was the first king to rule after the split within the new Israel
• He opposed Solomon’s son Rehoboam and was actually anointed to carry out the rebellion
• God promised Jeroboam that if he obeyed all that He commanded him, He would bless him and his efforts through the generations (1 Kings 11:38)
• Sadly, Jeroboam did not obey
• Rather, he crafted two golden calves for the people to worship and led them astray
• It was for this great abomination to the Lord, that he immortalized himself in Scripture and became the poster boy for apostasy
• Thereafter, it was always noted that the kings in Israel following his reign walked in the sins of Jeroboam
• What did this really mean?
• It meant that the heart of Jeroboam, the successor kings, and the people in the Northern Kingdom followed and believed in other gods rather than Yahweh, the One who had delivered them from the fiery furnace of slavery in Egypt
• With the repetition of the phrase “the sins of Jeroboam” we know that this was a terrible afront to God, and it always had severe consequences
• Ultimately, because Israel was always apostate, God’s wrath finally rose to the level that He allowed this nation to be overrun and conquered by Assyria in 722 BC
• Here is how 2 Kings 17:14-18 describes this:

But they [i.e. the people of the Northern Kingdom] would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false, and they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves; and they made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal. And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings and used divination and omens and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only.

• Two more evil kings we have to consider before the two I want to spotlight are among those shown to be the worst in the Southern Kingdom of Judah
• The kings in Judah were a mixed bunch
• There were some which followed God’s law and some that didn’t
• King Ahaz of Judah is described as one “who did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (2 Kings 16:2)
• Worse, 2 Kings 16:3-4 tells us:

 . . . but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. And he sacrificed and made offerings on the high places and on the hills and under every green tree.

• Basically – although the text doesn’t specify this directly – Ahaz walked in the sins of Jeroboam
• The act that really drove the final nail into King Ahaz’s coffin is when he went to Damascus, saw the altar there to a pagan god and thought it was so wonderful that he had it duplicated
• When Ahaz returned home to Jerusalem, he instructed his priest – the priest of God! – to place this great altar in the place of the altar of God so he could make his primary sacrifices to a pagan god
• The priest did what he was told and made the pagan altar – go figure
• Ahaz set the altar of Yahweh aside and basically put it in an alcove
• Yet, he still thought he could use God’s altar by which to inquire of the Lord
• The text doesn’t tell us, but I imagine that God didn’t answer any of Ahaz’s calls

• The other truly evil king in Judah was Manasseh
• He was quite problematic among those who flouted God’s commands and basically stuck a finger in His eye
• Manasseh reigned 52 years – so he had a long time to work his wickedness
• He was the son of Hezekiah, who I’ll talk about in a minute, but listen to 2 Kings 21:1-9 that describes the evil he committed:

Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. For he rebuilt the high places that Hezekiah his father had destroyed, and he erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab king of Israel had done, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem will I put my name.” And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. And he burned his son as an offering and used fortune-telling and omens and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. And the carved image of Asherah that he had made he set in the house of which the Lord said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever. And I will not cause the feet of Israel to wander anymore out of the land that I gave to their fathers, if only they will be careful to do according to all that I have commanded them, and according to all the Law that my servant Moses commanded them.” But they did not listen, and Manasseh led them astray to do more evil than the nations had done whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.

• All this was an abomination to Yahweh because of the corrupt heart of Manasseh
• His life was the antithesis of what I call believing loyalty to God
• His believing loyalty was to the gods of the pagan nations
• It was because of his leadership, and the way the people of Judah followed him, that the fullness of evil in the land – in which God was supposed to rule and reign – rose very close to that red line of no return I mentioned earlier
• It caused God to declare a death sentence on Judah, just as He had pronounced it on the Northern Kingdom of Israel for the sins of Jeroboam
• Here is the passage announcing Judah’s end in 2 Kings 21:10-16:

And the Lord said by his servants the prophets, “Because Manasseh king of Judah has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did, who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols, therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. And I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plumb line of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down. And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies, because they have done what is evil in my sight and have provoked me to anger, since the day their fathers came out of Egypt, even to this day.”

Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another, besides the sin that he made Judah to sin so that they did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

• As we’ll see, this foolish provoking of God led to Judah’s demise as it had with Israel
• As 1 Chronicles 9:1 puts it: And Judah was taken into exile in Babylon because of their breach of faith
• This is the same statement made about King Saul when God tore the kingdom from his hands and gave it to David as noted in 1 Chronicles 10:13-14: So Saul died for his breach of faith
• Apostasy – turning from God – is a breach of faith, and a death sentence in one form or another
• This is background
• Just so we have the chronology straight, here’s the sequence of these kings in Judah we’re concentrating on:
  • Ahaz – was an evil king
  • Hezekiah – the son of Ahaz was considered a good and righteous king
  • Manasseh – the son of Hezekiah was incredibly wicked
  • Josiah – who we’ll come to momentarily, was considered good and righteous

• Now we come to the two kings in Judah that are pertinent to this discussion
• These two, i.e. Hezekiah and Josiah, are lauded in Scripture for the condition of their hearts toward God
• Hezekiah’s good acts for the Lord are memorialized in 2 Kings 18:5, which says:

He trusted in the Lord, the God of Israel, so that there was none like him among all the kings of Judah after him, nor among those who were before him.

• That’s a pretty good legacy
• The time came in his life where Hezekiah became ill – perhaps from cancer
• Note: I say this because of how the Prophet Isaiah was instructed by God to apply a poultice of figs on Hezekiah’s boil, or what may have been a tumor
• When the Isaiah told him to get his affairs in order because he would die, he prayed to the Lord for more time on this earth
• God answered his prayer and gave him 15 more years to live
• However, during that time Hezekiah did a foolish thing
• He showed representatives of Babylon all the treasures in his nation
• He couldn’t have known other than using discernment as to what he shouldn’t have done, but this act prepared the way for the subsequent Babylonian invasion
• Here’s what’s interesting about this:
• Through Isaiah, God told Hezekiah that Judah was doomed to eventually fall to the Babylonians
• But for the righteous life Hezekiah had lived, he would not see this destruction
• It would all happen under his descendants
• God delayed His judgment and basically rescued him out of the coming devastation

• Josiah was Hezekiah’s grandson
• Once again, this was a king who walked with God and pleased Him
• Josiah instituted many reforms in the land and did away with most of the pagan altars and practices that his forebears had put into place
• His legacy is captured in 2 Kings 23:25:

Before him there was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to all the Law of Moses, nor did any like him arise after him.

• Unfortunately, none of this was enough to turn away God’s wrath for all that Judah and her kings had done over the years
• Look at 2 Kings 23:26-27 in this regard:

Still the Lord did not turn from the burning of his great wrath, by which his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations with which Manasseh had provoked him. And the Lord said, “I will remove Judah also out of my sight, as I have removed Israel, and I will cast off this city that I have chosen, Jerusalem, and the house of which I said, My name shall be there.”

• Obviously, all the abominations committed against God were cumulative
• He postponed judgment for a time when these righteous kings ruled, but that judgment could not be eliminated
• It had to be fulfilled
• What I find interesting is that God kept Hezekiah from experiencing His wrath, which only increased more under his son Manasseh
• In Josiah’s case, he died an early death at the age of 39
• Why was this?
• God brought him home in order to spare him from what was soon to come – again, a rescue from coming wrath
• We often ask why God allowed someone so young – perhaps a child – to die
• The answer is that He knows the end from the beginning
• He knows that had He allowed a child to live in its present circumstances, bad things would happen
• God allows such a child to die so as to keep it from possible pain and suffering or even from an apostate life
• When Josiah was killed at that time, that paved the way for God’s wrath and judgment to result, and for His Word not to return void
• Again, let’s see what the text says for this time of judgment as shown in 2 Kings 24:3-4:

Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the Lord, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also for the innocent blood that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon.

• God may delay what must come to pass, but He will not forget it
• Judgment cannot be avoided
• With Hezekiah and Josiah in the timing that God orchestrated for their lives, we see a sort of Rapture foreshadowing
• God extended Hezekiah’s life only so long – 15 years – and then he had to die for God’s plan to move forward
• Similarly in Josiah’s case, God cut his life short so that the next steps of God’s purposes could take place
• God graciously kept these kings alive for the time they had because of their righteousness
• There was so little of that generally in the land that they were an exception for us to note
• We need to also understand that regardless of the atonement made by these two kings and the good deeds they did, none of it turned back the wrath of God
• It only kept the wrath and judgment at bay for a while
• Now, you may say, “Golly, Gary, you focus an awful lot on God’s wrath and judgment. You continue to earn your nickname of Mr. Doom & Gloom.  Can’t you lighten up a bit?”
• If I’d been doing Prophecy Updates in earlier times, perhaps I wouldn’t have been as insistent that imminent judgment was on the horizon
• Or maybe not
• What I do know is that the current times are such that all prophetic signs have coalesced and converged to bring us to this point
• The rubber band is stretched to its breaking point
• What must happen next?
• Do you think God is going to relax the tension on the rubber band only to stretch it again at some future point?
• Does that make any sense now that all these puzzle pieces (to mix my analogies) are in place?
• You would think that the church would be all over this and pastors would be shouting from the rooftops to their people to get their souls right with the Lord
• But we’re not seeing that, are we?
• Even among Bible prophecy teachers who are aware of the times and speak of the coming Tribulation, how much emphasis do they put on the fact of judgment itself, i.e. the actual reason for the Tribulation?
• Maybe you hear it from the other people you listen to, but I don’t
• So, here we are
• The necessity of Judgment is the reason for all this
• I’m a relatively lone voice in the wilderness crying out that the Rapture and the Tribulation must happen because of judgment
• It’s in effect no different from God’s statements regarding Israel and Judah
• Again, here’s the verse for Israel:
  • Therefore the Lordwas very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight.
• And here it is for Judah:
  • Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the Lord, to remove them out of his sight
• There is a point that God must remove a sinful, depraved people from His sight
• But, as we’ve seen, He removes the righteous prior to the judgment
• This is why there must be a pre-Tribulation Rapture

• Now, you may wonder: Why us? Why now?
• I touched on the reasons in the introduction
• The chaos and lawlessness of mankind is rising to unprecedented levels
• How long can the earth endure the shedding of blood that has never been avenged?
• Look at the earth and the atrocities heaped upon it one after another
• The skies are being seeded with chemtrails which emit toxic substances that filter down upon the land and waterways
• The weather is being manipulated by the massive radar arrays known as HAARP so that we whipsaw from one extreme to another – warm to cold
• The scientific term for one aspect of this assault is chemically ice nucleated winter weather warfare
• Through this artificial effort to play God, this chemical attack releases non-organic elements into the atmosphere such as aluminum – barium – strontium
• This comes down in an atmospheric river deluge causing massive rain or snowstorms and ruins all it touches
• Do you notice how everything these days is a one-hundred-year event or one not seen in many generations?
• Here’s some advice: Don’t eat the snow!

• Horrific deeds are being perpetrated as poisonous gases and particles are spread in the atmosphere, onto farmland, and in the lakes and rivers
• The terribly deadly substance dioxin that was released when the railcars derailed in East Palestine is an example of this
• Of course, it wasn’t a mistake that those chemicals were burned to release such toxic waste; it was a deliberate act against the people of that region
• As to the war on climate, and the effort to eliminate CO2 – carbon dioxide – that’s a direct attack on man as God made him
• We are carbon-based life forms
• Green plants and trees, absorb CO2 in order to live and thrive
• The current CO2 levels are down around 400 ppm
• True and actual science tells us that green living things need 1500 ppm to prosper
• Is it any wonder there are so many dead trees in formerly lush places?
• Then there’s war
• That’s always good for the environment – right?

• What I’m trying to illustrate is that the earth is a target and has been so for many years
• It has been wasted, and the intent of the powers that be is for much greater blight to occur throughout the world
• Man is under attack, as the image-bearer of God is seen to be inadequate
• Thus, we must become trans-human to improve upon God’s handiwork
• The hearts of men and women have turned increasingly far from God
• We are no longer just apathetic about Him, we are antagonistic toward Him
• The sins of the evil kings I recounted earlier are with us in greater measure than we can even imagine
• Judgment must come
• Unbelieving mankind must be punished
• God must take His vengeance
• For anyone to think that when God’s retribution upon the unbelieving world takes place that there will be an untouched sanctuary is just fooling himself
• The storm coming upon the entire world is so horrific that God has said that unless He cut that time short, all of the earth would be destroyed
• Good luck to the post-Tribbers and their sustainable communities riding out this storm

• The whip cream topping on this cake of the secular world hating God and destroying His creation is where the church of today stands
• Rather – before which it bows
• We’re familiar with Paul’s famous admonition to his young pastor in 2 Timothy 3:2-5 in which he says:

For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.

• All this is pertinent, but let’s reflect on verse 5 for a moment: having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power
• A flyer from the local combo First Congregational Church-United Church of Christ just came into my hands
• On the front page it proclaims: God Is Still Speaking
• Inside, among other things it says that they encourage growth in one’s relationship with God, they seek to work for Christian unity, and they seek to know and serve God
• Among the assertions that their Mission Statement declares is that they strive to be open-minded and committed to God-centered lifelong learning
• How wonderful!
• This must be a church dedicated to the fear and reverence of Almighty God
• After all, they tell us this in so many words
• Well – let’s think again
• Besides this lovely flyer explaining the role of this church and its intended purposes, it also provides a handout to visitors displaying a very colorful flag
• What flag might that be, you ask?
• Why – it’s the classic Rainbow Flag widely recognized as the symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community
• But wait! There’s more!
• The flag also includes five arrow-shaped lines on the left in the two tragic colors of black and brown to represent marginalized LGBTQ+ communities of color plus the traditional colors of pink, light blue, and white used on the Transgender Pride Flag
• This flag is proudly displayed in the church as their commitment to welcome all peoples regardless of sin nature
• And here’s the best thing: When you come through their doors in your sin, you don’t even have to change!
• You can remain just the way you are because that’s how God made you
• Let’s see, what did Paul write again?
• Oh, yes: having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power
• If you needed an example of this truth, just go visit this church in Muskegon, MI

• Included in God’s ultimate plan is what He must do to make the earth habitable for His future, eternal kingdom
• After the Tribulation and following the Millennium, God has said that a massive event will occur
• We see it described in 2 Peter 3:10:

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

• Why does God have this future event planned – especially following the Millennium once Satan’s final rebellion has occurred?
• The reason is that after the Tribulation, the earth is pretty messed up
• God obviously does a restoration so as to make the Millennium quite enjoyable
• However, please note that whatever God does in this regard, He doesn’t cleanse with fire
• The sin the earth has absorbed remains
• The blood of billions of people and of all of God’s creation has never been atoned for, nor all the accumulated sin
• Why?
• Because that takes fire for cleansing
• Thus, the final act of God in preparing the way for eternity and for His true sons and daughters to live in the promised utopia is and must be what Peter describes
• It includes both the earth and the heavens above
• Why the heavens?
• The depravity of man began with the rebellion and abominations perpetrated by rebellious spiritual beings
• All that tainted heaven just as later it despoiled the earth
• The Lord must create a new heavens and new earth to literally begin again with a new Eden – the meeting place between heaven and earth – the place where there was no sin until the lie of the serpent to man made in the image of God
• All this judgment starts with God reaching the point that man has crossed the red line of no return
• That initiates the beginning of the end, and the end of this planet as we’ve known it, drenched in sin and depravity
• It starts with judgment
• We are in the period like the Days of Noah
• Then, God sent the flood to start over
• Rebellion, sin, and depravity had gotten to the stage that God found it untenable to allow life to continue as it had
• So it is now
• Life cannot go on in this manner any longer
• There will not be another generation
• The pastors in the pulpits assuring their congregations that they should dig into to the world and make it a better place are completely missing the template of Scripture
• The time is near
• The Rapture of God’s true church to remove those who are righteous with believing loyalty is almost at hand
• I can almost hear the beginning of the sound of the trumpet calling us home