Awaken Biblical Prophecy Commentary – If the Bible Is a Broken Record, Then So Am I

If you’ve read or listened to any of my many Commentaries, one theme you may have noticed is that I continue to harp on the severity of the coming 7-year Tribulation.  The use of the word harp is probably unfortunate but why not?  Merriam Webster defines it as: to dwell on or recur to a subject tiresomely or monotonously.  So yes, there’s old Gary talking about the Tribulation again.  Ho-hum, can’t we just move on?

Transcript:

If you’ve read or listened to any of my many Commentaries, one theme you may have noticed is that I continue to harp on the severity of the coming 7-year Tribulation.  The use of the word harp is probably unfortunate but why not?  Merriam Webster defines it as: to dwell on or recur to a subject tiresomely or monotonously.  So yes, there’s old Gary talking about the Tribulation again.  Ho-hum, can’t we just move on?

I do try to bring awareness of the Tribulation in different ways but the main point I attempt to make is that it will be more horrendous than anything that people can imagine (or ignore).  If you’ve read the Old Testament and absorbed the message of the prophets, you have likely seen the repetitive nature of the warnings of these men – pretty much all of them as it turns out.  I’m no prophet by any means, but I’ve heeded what these ancient men of God said and seen the results in the text of the people refusing to listen to and obey the warnings.  For my part, I simply believe what Solomon described in Ecclesiastes 1:9-11:

What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.

In other words, what goes around comes around, but nobody remembers.  What this means for us is that the way that Israel forgot about or rejected God with the subsequent awful results will likewise happen to us.  It won’t necessarily be exactly the same as to how it happens, but the end game is the same.  The prophets inevitably spoke of four major catastrophes that God rained down upon His people for their sins of turning from Him and acting just as the pagan nations did.  We could use the Biblical language of Psalms to describe this:

Three disasters are awful for the people; four are beyond our grasp.

We see this in Jeremiah 15:2 among other similar verses:

‘Those who are for pestilence, to pestilence,
and those who are for the sword, to the sword;
those who are for famine, to famine,
and those who are for captivity, to captivity.’

There are at least these four catastrophic events with which God judges and punishes.  They are:

• Pestilence
• Sword
• Famine
• Captivity

Thus, it should come as no surprise that when the Tribulation Judgments are unleashed, initially through the 2^nd through 4^th Seals in Revelation 6:3-8 that this is exactly what we see:

When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and wine!”

 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth.

And yes, wild beasts are also added to the terror in some of the warnings by the prophets.

Now, you’d think that some few aware and awake Bible prophecy teachers would be discussing these kinds of things.  Maybe some are, but I don’t happen to know of them.  So, those several of you who follow my rantings and ravings get the brunt of this.  That which the prophets of old said would happen to Israel will in very much the same manner happen during the Tribulation – except that it will be even worse!

What wasn’t occurring in those prior days are the natural/supernatural events that the earth itself will be subject to in God’s wrath.  It is these things that will make life on this planet doubly unbearable – yet, again, who talks about this stuff?

Starting with the 6^th Seal in Revelation 6:12-14 look at what happens:

When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. The sky vanished like a scroll that is being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

Can you imagine the terror?  I won’t read the verses to you but consider the Trumpet Judgments in Revelation 8-9.  Fire and hail rain down with 1/3 of the earth’s trees and grass burned up.  Before people can turn around, they’re hit with 1/3 of the seas turning to blood, the same number of creatures dying, and that percentage of ships destroyed.  Then the waters turn poisonous, and there are alternating periods of blackout with no sun or moon – absolute darkness.  Just to get the point across that this time isn’t one of fun and games, demonic, locust-like creatures plague the earth with persistent sores for five months that make people seek death, but cannot die.  Then we have the killing demons breathing fire and brimstone wiping out another huge swath of the population.

And God is just getting started.  The Bowl Judgments are even worse.  In Revelation 16 everybody who has taken the Mark of the Beast is plagued by sores – probably from the tip of their noses to their private parts, just to be extra unpleasant.  Think of the worst poison ivy rash all over your body you’ve ever had and multiply that by ten.  All water everywhere is turned to blood.  Gosh, I wonder what people will drink to survive?  To make life a challenge, the sun is set to extra-high scorch for some period of time.  You thought living in 120-degree temps in Arizona was bad?  Wait for this.  Can you imagine the multiplying effect on those awful boils by adding this kind of heat?  Then, the sun goes completely dark.  My bet is that no electricity, no fires, no nothing will generate light of any kind.  If you’ve ever been in a total blackout in a deep cave, you know what this is like.  On those tours however, they turn the lights back on.  Not at this point during the Tribulation until God decrees.  How long will that last?  We don’t know, but the agony will be so great that people chew off their tongues.

William Forstchen wrote a well-received novel titled One Second After – a post-apocalyptic thriller that deals with life in a small surviving community after a catastrophic EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) attack that destroys the American electrical grid and effectively throws the nation back into the 1800s.  I’ve also read the follow-up books in the series: One Year After and The Final Day.  What strikes me is the graphic descriptions of how most of mankind turns into rampaging beasts after this event, and the hopelessness that most people exhibit.

Brutality is the order of the day once America loses its creature comforts.  With no electricity, there’s no refrigeration.  No refrigeration means no food for most people.  How do the millions in the cities survive?  Pillage.  Loot.  Kill.  The base instincts of man take over.

Refrigeration is necessary for many life-saving drugs.  I’m not a big fan of drugs and medicines these days put out by Big Pharma, but think about how diabetics require refrigerated insulin.  Those who are dependent on such medications would soon lose them as they spoil.  Then these people are dead.

Gangs form, and their brutality is one with their desperation and the loss of humanity.  If other humans not in their tribe are fair game, then game they actually become, as their flesh is the only meat available.

Will a similar scenario result in America following the Rapture?  I don’t know that there will be an all-encompassing EMP since there is a Biblical necessity for electronics and computers to facilitate the Mark of the Beast technology, but there could be isolated EMPs.  The one sure thing is that supply chains will be disrupted and cities will devolve into chaos as people become increasingly desperate.

As it turns out, the Biblical prophets provide a similar description of the impossibility of life when Jerusalem was under siege.  Here is just a little of Jeremiah’s lament in Lamentations 2:19-22; 4:10:

“Arise, cry out in the night,
    at the beginning of the night watches!
Pour out your heart like water
    before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
    for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
    at the head of every street.”

 Look, O Lord, and see!
    With whom have you dealt thus?
Should women eat the fruit of their womb,
    the children of their tender care?
Should priest and prophet be killed
    in the sanctuary of the Lord?

 In the dust of the streets
    lie the young and the old;
my young women and my young men
    have fallen by the sword;
you have killed them in the day of your anger,
    slaughtering without pity.

 You summoned as if to a festival day
    my terrors on every side,
and on the day of the anger of the Lord
    no one escaped or survived;
those whom I held and raised
    my enemy destroyed.

 The hands of compassionate women
    have boiled their own children;
they became their food
    during the destruction of the daughter of my people.

These kinds of circumstances will be multiplied exponentially during the Tribulation.  And why did God bring all this ruin to His people?  Many passages could be cited.  Here is Jeremiah 23:13-15:

In the prophets of Samaria
    I saw an unsavory thing:
they prophesied by Baal
    and led my people Israel astray.
But in the prophets of Jerusalem
    I have seen a horrible thing:
they commit adultery and walk in lies;
    they strengthen the hands of evildoers,
    so that no one turns from his evil;
all of them have become like Sodom to me,
    and its inhabitants like Gomorrah.”
Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets:
“Behold, I will feed them with bitter food
    and give them poisoned water to drink,
for from the prophets of Jerusalem
    ungodliness has gone out into all the land.”

Those who were charged with leading the people led them straight to hell.  These verses speak of the false prophets, but their rulers (noted elsewhere in the text) were corrupt, and by their words and deeds showed their disdain for the Holy One of Israel.  We are no different today, whether in America or the rest of the world.

Nothing textually in the Bible indicates a reprieve from what is to come once the birth pains begin.  They are surely upon us.  They have begun.  That means we’re in a countdown situation until the Tribulation officially begins.

However, what is described in a post-apocalyptic thriller and by the true prophets of God shows a completely hopeless outcome.  Ruthless times will be inhabited by cruel and unrelenting men after only one thing: their own personal survival.  Words cannot even begin to describe the horrors of this coming time.

This is why those of us who know, love, and serve Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are so blessed.  We have the ultimate Blessed Hope – the promise that God will keep us from this terrible wrath that will soon encompass the world.  This is our joy.  It is what keeps us going despite how weary we may be.

Indeed, just as Jeremiah 17:17 exults:

 You are my refuge in the day of disaster.