We have become so intent on anticipating one tiny corner of the Last Days – the coming of the Antichrist – that we’ve missed the biggest part of End Times Prophecy. Yes, the Antichrist is one scary dude, and no one wants to be caught by his arrival. But, he’s only a small part of what’s happening.
More importantly, we’ve forgotten that Satan isn’t the one orchestrating the events that we see coming toward us. God is doing that. And, the single biggest topic about the Last Days is this one:
The Redemption of Israel
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Missing The Bigger Picture
On the one eschatology forum that I moderate, a woman made the very common claim that the Great Tribulation was for the Jews. I’m always shocked by such declarations, but I understand why they are made.
If you believe in a Pretribulation Rapture, you are locked into believing that.
My response was to point out something that should be obvious, but is often forgotten:
The Redemption of Israel claims about a third of all the prophecies in the Bible.
Why would God cram such a gigantic event, into such a tiny slice of time?
The answer of course, is that our Lord isn’t doing that. God’s plans for Israel are much bigger than three and a half years. In fact, His plans for the Children of Jacob are earth-shattering. Literally.
I make this point in my book Ezekiel’s Fire, and you might be getting a little tired of hearing it. So, allow me to describe the flip side of that coin:
The Redemption of Israel will be amazing.
Yeah, the initial part of that event will be hard on all of us. But, it will also sweep away the horrible corruption that has captured our families, our communities and our churches. Much of that evil will be swept away in a blink of time.
None of us will enjoy the loss of the luxuries that we enjoy or the huge loss of life. I’m with you in that, but I also know that the sinfulness in our churches cries out for judgment from God – not to mention, the foulest of evils in our society. So, it is only right that our civilization be crushed by this cataclysm. But, there I go again, being negative.
The bright side of all of this will be Jacob’s Return to God and Jerusalem becoming a place of worship. The nations of this world will know with utter finality that our God is true, and that Jesus is the only way of salvation. In fact, I think that we can confidently make this claim:
The Gospel will have its finest hour.
Millions will come to faith in Christ in Israel, and I’m betting that even more millions will do the same across the world. What a glorious hour it will be. If you and I suffer or even die in the process, that’s a tradeoff that I am more than willing to make. If suffering or death means that hundreds more will be saved, I gladly embrace it. If it means millions or even a billion… even better.
Unfortunately, we cannot see this message of hope because our teachers have blinded us with fables and tall tales that have little or no basis in scripture. And this is true about every single eschatology that we hold today. What a colossal mess.
Read Your Bible
But, I have a prescription for all of us:
READ. YOUR. BIBLE.
I’ve had to repent of a lot of misunderstanding about what the Bible says, and the only way that I’ve been able to see my errors is precisely due to reading my Bible, cover-to-cover, over and over and over. And, I won’t stop doing that until God takes me home.
And, I have created two apps for Android cell phones that will help you do that. They are very simple, and I use them every day for my own reading. You can find them here:
https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/
But John, shouldn’t we STUDY the Bible?
Yes, but most people do such a ‘study’ by consulting commentaries and putting the Bible under a microscope. Following Christ is not about good scholarship and twisting Bible passages this way and that, to create meanings that God did not intend. Scholarship is a man-centered activity, and it should be clear that it has led us down a very dark path.
Our History With Catastrophe
Now, where were we… ah yes. The Redemption of Israel and Ezekiel’s Fire.
Why would God allow us to go through such a catastrophe like Ezekiel’s Fire?
The answer is that this is nothing new, since we’ve already been through one catastrophe after another already.
If you’ve ever sat through a history class, you will undoubtedly have learned about the Black Death. But, you probably didn’t know about the other catastrophes that destroyed our civilization several times.
The volcanic winter of 536 created a global famine that killed a huge number of people. We just aren’t sure which volcanoes were responsible. That catastrophe laid the foundation for the plague that wrecked the world just five years later.
The Plague of Justinian of 541 killed half the world’s population, weakened the Byzantine and Persian empires, who then weakened each other further by fighting each other. This led to such dismal conditions that a caravan robber named Muhammad could sweep out of the Arabian desert, slaughter millions of Christians and capture North Africa and the Middle East.
Muhammad’s followers went on to rampage throughout Asia and Africa murdering all who would not bow before them. They were only stopped by geographic barriers like the Gobi desert and the Sahara – and by the determined resistance of European armies at Vienna in 1683.
All of this shattered the centralized power of the Eastern Orthodox church, which is why we have so many smaller Orthodox communities. The Armenians, Greeks, Russians, Syrians, Coptics, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Macedonians, Serbians, Albanians and who know who else – they all developed their own orthodox traditions once the Byzantine empire no longer held sway over them.
In 1315, the Great Famine killed off as much as a quarter of Europe’s population, and who knows how many in Asia. That famine weakened the world so that the bubonic plague could conquer the world again.
The Black Death arrived in Crimea in 1347 when the Muslim Golden Horde brought the bubonic plague to the Genoese trading port of Caffa, where is spread into Europe along trade routes. It lasted seven years, destroyed Western Civilization, broke the back of Roman Catholic power and killed more than half of the world’s population.
The Renaissance that began in northern Italy owes much of its success to what the Black Death did to Rome. As the plague began to wane, Italian writers started referring to a ‘rebirth’, looking away from Romanism toward new ideas. Rebirth is exactly what ‘renaissance’ means.
These great catastrophes that shook the world, also changed the course of history. Without the volcanic winter of 536, we wouldn’t have had the Plague of Justinian, and without the plague of Justinian, Islam would not have been able to conquer the weakened empires of Asia. Without the Great Famine of 1315, we wouldn’t have had the Black Death of 1347 and the breaking of Roman Catholic control of Europe. Without such horrifying events, there would have been no Renaissance or even a Protestant Reformation.
Do you think that you or I would have any freedom of religion, if these catastrophes hadn’t swept the world, destroying the civilizations that persecuted us?
Remember that Rome murdered us by the millions. And we would still be huddling in isolated sanctuaries in perpetual danger of being massacred by Catholics, if the Black Death hadn’t taken their power away.
We owe our very freedoms and way of life to civilization-killing cataclysm.
The fact that catastrophe will come again, when Gog and Magog descend upon Israel, should not be a surprise to any of us. And, it will create the conditions for a renewal of the Body of Christ with a special emphasis upon Jerusalem and Israel.
It will be a new Renaissance.
Unfortunately, the story of this rebirth will eventually end with the coming of the Antichrist. None of us look forward to that, but it is all a part of God’s plan for victory over Satan.
The Season For Reading Prophecy Begins
For those of you using the One Year Bible format, September 8th is when you will begin reading Isaiah. And, for the rest of the year, you’ll read one prophecy after another until the end of the year. When December 9th rolls around, you’ll get a double-whammy – where you will begin reading both Joel and Revelation.
Of course, you don’t need to wait to read all that, but prophecy shouldn’t be the only reason why you read your Bible. We are all in desperate need of spiritual growth, and we aren’t going to get enough of it if our spiritual life only exists on Sundays.
How can we serve God, if we don’t know what He says?
So join me and a host of Christians as we read the words of God. You will be blessed.
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also will reject you… Hosea 4:6
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Keep this ministry alive with a donation.
Subscribe for free to Revelation Six and receive my articles in your inbox:
https://revelationsix.substack.com/subscribe
And, read my two books:
I created Android Apps that will help you read through the Bible in a Year. You can find them here:
https://revelationsix.com/android-apps/
If you miss my rantings about geopolitics, idiocy, resource collapse and incompetent globalism, follow me on Twitter.
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