Category Archives: End-Times

-Total Solar Eclipse and Times to Come

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On August 21, 2017 millions of Americans viewed a total solar eclipse that started in Oregon and cut a 70 mile wide swath across our nation west to east all the way to South Carolina. It had a unique trajectory that was exclusive to only the U.S. for the first time since the nation’s founding in 1776.

There will be signs in the heavens and on the earth in the last days and one is persuaded to look for some kind of deeper meaning in this natural event. In Biblical times eclipses were looked upon as signs of impending judgment or change. I can remember years ago watching the movie- Apocalypto that featured an eclipse while Mayan priests were sacrificing folks on their pyramid. It was a show stopper as fear gripped the crowd. The closing scenes showed armored Spanish conquistadores in the distance landing on a beach nearby as a chilling portend of coming change. An Actual line in the sands of time.

Nevertheless as our family took in the event on a relative’s farm in Sedalia MO, where we experienced a minute and a half of totality, we found ourselves in awe of God’s creation. In fact everyone we know who saw the total eclipse has remarked about how it was far more of a ‘spiritual’ experience than they had expected.

So was the event a portend of judgment or change in the future for the USA? Nearly all of the prophetic stuff I read looked upon it as a sign of change and almost all positive. Yet when I considered it, all I ever got was that it was a ‘line of demarcation’ – one that we will remember as dividing the time after from that before. Sort of like we Charismatics and Pentecostals look back upon Azusa Street in 1906 as a beginning. But those in San Francisco look upon 1906 in an entirely different light.

Now this week as Houston TX is under water and suffering maybe the worst natural disaster in US history some are coming out of the shadows and calling it judgment. We need to be careful about making such proclamations. What we really need to do is pray for the folks in the midst of that disaster and contribute to the non-profit groups helping the victims.

It will be a time of change for maybe millions of people in Texas and we should pray that it will bring many closer to God and result in positive changes for those who are now suffering some of the worst days of their lives. Lord, inspire your children to rise up in love and unity blessing others in the worst of conditions as a testimony of your love.

There is another solar eclipse coming to America in 2024, this time from north to south. I wonder if we will come to look upon those nearly 7 intervening years as the ‘time between the eclipses’ if we are still around? The words that keep coming to my mind are ‘Hope and Grace.’

-The Fallacious ‘World is Ending’ Debacle

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        (Harold Camping via Wikipedia)

Today is supposedly the day- May 21, 2011 –another date that will live in infamy.  This is like watching an accident about to happen and not being able to do anything to stop it.

It is all over the news. The media is having fun with it. These crazy Christians that actually believe in the Bible. You may have seen a billboard or read the entire back page ad in USA Today like I did, or listened to the frantic radio warning that I just listened to on the way home from work. Every where you turn seemingly something or someone is referring to Harold Camping’s prediction that the world is coming to an end today on May 21, 2011.

Usually on this blog we look at revival and evidences of God moving throughout the world. This is not one of those occasions but the antithesis – a situation where well meaning ‘Christians’ are shooting themselves in the foot and making a laughing stock out of Bible believers.

-8.9 a Sign of the Times?

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The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan is one of the largest recorded in history. I have heard it referred to several times as an event of Biblical proportions. Is the earthquake also a ‘sign of the times’?

Yes.

But it depends on what you mean by that. Is it a sign of the ‘last days’? That remains to be seen however it is a ‘sign of the times’ that we are currently going through for sure.

Everything that is happening in the world right now is exceptional or unique. No one can explain the convergence of economical and political upheaval along with some of the greatest natural disasters the world has ever known.

Is this God’s judgment or is the enemy at the bottom of it all or a combination? Some prophetic folks are referring to all of it as ‘the perfect storm’.

Most prophetic people are saying that everything right now is being shaken that can be shaken. In that sense the 8.9 earthquake is a natural sign for what is taking place. Economies, political structures, alliances, churches, religions, and cultures –everything is being turned upside down and up for grabs.

Lately a lot of prophetical words to God’s faithful have been warnings that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. How much worse? A lot depends upon the prayers of His people. I don’t know what is is like where you are but out here we are receiving a definite call to prayer. Our church is right now trying to set up 24 hour prayer. As it stands now just a few hours in the middle of the night will probably not be covered.

Now For The Good Part

Our enemy has his plans but so does our God. Remember the word that Joseph spoke to his brothers after it was all over. After years in slavery and prison to finally be lifted up as the prime minister of Egypt:

“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” –Genesis 50:20clip_image002

The plan is to save many lives for all eternity—the greatest harvest and revival of all times.  A world–wide harvest but also a major revival for America.

Increasingly we are living in times in which knowledge is expanding at an exponential rate and what is wrong is being presented as good and what is good according to God’s law is now considered bad. But a new day is coming when the faithful church will rise up and shine for a moment like never before as a light and beacon to the whole world.           

-What is Really Behind the Chaos in the Middle East

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Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Lebanon, Bahrain, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Libya, now Algeria and more. What is behind the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa?

The Western media continues to tell us that these folks are all seeking greater freedom but that is a very deceptive and naive view. In reality all of these nations have been in transition for some time with Muslim radical Islamists gaining ground and changing the entire picture of the Middle East.

Western intellectuals continue to talk about Islam as a ‘religion of peace’ that needs to be encouraged to go through some kind of moderate revival or ‘Reformation’ like Christianity went through. So many naively talk about this possibility and totally ignore the fact that Islam is in the midst of a revival all right -a fundamentalist radical revival that is affecting (actually infecting) nearly all Muslims around the world, even those in Western countries including America.

Now for what is really behind it all—principalities and powers. There is an unseen battle going on right now in the Heavenlies.  However, the effects of the spiritual battle can be seen also in the natural.

I had an open vision on 9/11/01 during which the Lord told me that the Prince of Islam had exceeded his authority in the attack and that 100 million Muslims were going to be converted to Christ as a ‘first fruits’ and part of a world-wide Christian harvest and revival.

A couple of years later a Muslim leader in Africa was sounding an alarm that according to his figures at the time over 6 million Muslims a year were converting to Christianity in Africa. Since then the persecution of Christians has become rather severe in Muslim areas of Northern Africa.

We have also documented on this blog on a number of occasions that a secret hidden revival was going on in Muslim countries where people were being converted to Christ through dreams, visions, and healings. It has been  substantially a hidden ‘house church’ movement particularly in Iran where as far as we can tell as many as 500,000 Muslims have come to Christ. 

In the mean time the enemy has come back with a vengeance and persecution of the traditional churches in Muslim countries have been on the increase. For example, over 500,000 Iraqi Christians have fled the country since the fall of the Saddam regime. American forces have ironically gone out of their way not to be seen as protectors of the Christian community and it has become open season on the traditional Christians in that country.

In Israel, Palestinian Christians are persecuted by both the Muslims and the Jews. The Palestinian Christian community continues to decrease as they leave the country though there has been some reports of Palestinian Muslims secretly coming to Christ. The same can be said of Lebanon where a generation ago the Christian community was strong but after the last civil war between Christian and Muslim militias the Islamists particularly Hezbollah now have the upper hand and Christians have lost control over their own communities in the Southern part of the country.

Turning to Egypt, the Coptic Christians who have been part of that country since the first century and have lived in peace with the Muslims in the same communities for over a thousand years are now being increasingly subjected to persecution and violence. This from the ‘freedom loving’ folks that our press is writing about.  According to a recent poll 84 percent of the Egyptians favor the death penalty for any Muslim who becomes a Christian. Obviously a spiritual battle is raging in that country.

Now for a major example of demonic activity in the natural. Iran’s supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Khamenei is telling his leaders that the hidden ‘12th Imam’ is now appearing to him continually and giving him marching orders. Just this week Iran’s President Ahmadinejad told European leaders and later a major Iranian crowd of supporters that the hidden ‘12th Imam’ was behind all of the current chaos in the Middle East and that it was the beginning of the rise of Islam into one dominant Islamist World power under the leadership of the promised Muslim Mahdi –the Shiite ‘12th Imam’:

  “The final move has begun. We are in the middle of a world revolution managed by this dear (12th Imam). A great awakening is unfolding. One can witness the hand of Imam in managing it.”

Wow. Obviously it is time for all of us to pray for the Middle East and for Christian revival and harvest to continue especially in Muslim lands. This is particularly a good time for all Christian intercessors to rise up and be heard and come against the plans of the enemy.           

-Are We Really in the End Times?

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Earthquakes, Wars, natural catastrophes, signs in the heavens above, rumors of war, the whole earth in confusion, leaders calling for a ‘new world’ order, and everyone seems to be against Israel.

Could we really be in the ‘end times’? I hear this question being posed over and over again by Christian friends lately.

When I was younger I was totally convinced that we were in the ‘end times’ and that Jesus would be coming back very soon. I can remember being especially excited over those prospects after reading Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth in 1973. I was convinced at the time and still am that the reestablishment of the Jewish nation of Israel in 1948 was a major end time sign.

Over the next 15 years I read everything that came off the presses having to do with the End Times and Eschatology. PreMil, PostMil, AMil, PreTrib, PostTrib, MidTrib, and PreWrath—I studied it all with as open a mind as I could without letting my brains fall out. In the process I came away with the realization that I could find something missing and sometimes something down right wrong in every book and every eschatological tradition.

If I was forced to pick I would probably lean toward a PreMil-PreWrath approach but most of the time I like to say that I am PanMil and PanTrib—I am going to wait and see how it all ‘pans out’.

Fact is at the end of time when we look back at the final events, every single scripture and prophecy will be completely fulfilled and it won’t be necessary to stretch a thing when it comes to hermeneutics or Bible interpretation.

The only thing that I have studied more than eschatology is hermeneutics and that is why I am super sensitive to the ways many ‘prophecy’ writers run ruff shod over even basic rules of Biblical interpretation.

I have come to believe (and I have stated it before) that when it comes to the end times every single book printed regardless of the tradition has one thing in common—they are all wrong somewhere and lack something. Not only that—if I wrote a book on this subject I would be wrong also on some point or another.

This doesn’t mean that reading books on this subject is a waste of time. Many are valuable and it is important to become conversant with the basic issues and gain an understanding of the possible end time signs. However, I have come to believe that Lord has made it all somewhat cloudy in the scriptures on purpose except for the basic events. The timing and sequence is where there is the greatest disparity between the different traditional schemas.

I have come to believe that the last will be like the first. The last generation will be caught by surprise and be somewhat unprepared for the way the final events happen just like folks were not ready in the first century for a Messiah that came as a poor baby in a stable and went on to become a sacrificing servant cursed and killed on a Roman cross.

Not one ‘prophecy’ teacher in the first century was looking for that sequence of events and a ‘suffering servant’ Messiah. Also I believe that not one prophecy teacher in the end generation will have it completely nailed down either. I do believe however that the reestablishment of ‘prophetical ministry’ in the church will be helpful in preparing many for the events to come.

So, are we really in the end of the ‘end times’? I don’t know, maybe. It sure seems to be stacking up that way!

-End-Times: Two Sides of the Coin

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(-Jerusalem via Wikipedia)

There are two articles that I read which address an ‘end-times’ scenario from entirely different perspectives.

The first is an article I found today on WorldNetDaily: “Zero hour approaches” by Hal Lindsey.

Hal does what he is best at identifying how events in the Middle East are quickly progressing towards an end-time scenario. Iran is on the brink of having nuclear weapons and Hal cites the beginning of an Ezekiel end-time coalition with Russia and Iran in the lead against Israel.

Oh by the way, Hal didn’t mention this, but did anyone notice that Iran just this week put its first satellite up in space using its newest rocket? No I didn’t think so! This story should be as big as ‘sputnik’ was in the 50’s, but the news media is downplaying it and the possible implications for weapons delivery.

The Ezekiel 38-39 battle scenario now is beginning to fall in to place and coming at a time when we have a new administration that might blink when it comes to a possible confrontation with a nuclear power like Russia. Hal always does a great job at scaring the heck out of me!

The second article was published a couple of weeks ago but I just got around to reading it yesterday. It is the second part of a prophetic message for 2009 that I posted on in January: “The Last Days Anointing” (Link NLA) by Loren Sandford.

The message that Loren Sandford brings is the flip side of the coin. While the world is literally going to hell, it is time for the church to rise up and finish the task–the gospel is to go into every nation with signs and wonders demonstrating the Kingdom of God.

While Lindsey and Sandford present two different perspectives, I find inspiration in both of them. After over 35 years of studying eschatology, all of the scriptures, and reading 100’s of books having to do with the ‘end-times’, I am of the opinion that no one has it completely nailed down.

I can find holes in every traditional approach–amil, postmil, premil: pretrib, midtrib, postrib, I like premil/prewrath probably the most. The point is, if it is published somewhere in some book than I am convinced that it is probably wrong in some way.

There are surprises ahead for the church in the last days, one of the reasons that God is raising up prophets again is to give vision to the church in these chaotic times. I know, what passes for prophecy and prophets today is imperfect and not always edifying. But just wait, a new generation of prophetic ministry is on the horizon.

I believe that the Second Coming will be similar to the first in that every single learned scholarly ‘Messianic’ expectation of the first century was proved to be wrong. The church is entering a new era when we will need to rely more closely on the Lord and it will no longer be good enough to continue doing things the way we have done them in the past.