A Time For Prayer
Last week, Terry and I traveled to Dallas to attend the 2008 Pre-Trib Study Group, a conference made up of prophecy scholars who gather to present papers that mostly defend the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine. Joel Rosenberg was this year’s special speaker, and despite the economic hardship this year, we had a record crowd.
Because the material is of a very academic nature, I spend most of my time meeting with other members and doing three video interviews with people involved in other end-time ministries. During the two-and-a-half-day meeting, I only attended one two-hour lecture. That was one more than my partner Terry.
There is one part of the gathering that I always attend, however: the briefing on current events that's given by four speakers on the second night of each year's conference. Since I first joined the conference back in the late '90s, I’ve never heard a current events presentation with such a dark outlook on the future.
What makes 2009 such an ominous year are all the potential flash points. I've never seen a time marked by so much activity related to Bible prophecy. Here is a list of the main ones:
The threat of a major terrorist attack
The social impact of the worldwide economic meltdown
The drive towards the establishment of the global government
Russia becoming more like the old Soviet Union
Iran trying to develop an atomic bomb
Israel being threatened by several of its neighbors
America making a sharp political turn to the left
With so much activity taking place today, you would think that prophecy-minded believers would be very busy getting ready for the Lord's return. I've noticed that the abundance of prophetic activity has had the opposite effect on Christians: Most seem to be doing nothing. It’s rather ironic that apathy is so prevalent; Jesus said that it would be a major sign of the end times.
"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" (Mat. 24:44).
Right now, everyone seems to be watching for something big to happen. We might soon witness a major war in the Middle East, or the occurrence of some other calamity. Because the rapture could easily be the next event on God’s calendar, I would hate to have it occur while I was doing nothing.
There is no guarantee that Christians will be able to stand by as passive spectators. If our Lord tarries, hardship could be ahead as the current economic recession turns into a depression. As the world becomes more wicked, we may also find our religious freedoms soon coming under pressure.
Rather than just waiting around to see what happens, all Christians have the opportunity to take an active role in hastening our Lord's advent. Jesus Christ specifically told us to pray for His return. "After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Mat. 6:9, 10).
Now that 2000 years have passed and all the signs point to the nearness of the last days, our prayers have the power to be more meaningful, more important, and more necessary than ever. God is still in control the prophetic time clock, but He will certainly listen to the voices of His children if they join together to call on Him.
I don't know why any believer wouldn't be crying out in prayer to "hasten the coming of the day of God" (2 Pet. 3:12). For many years, I've felt like a stranger in this land. Lately, I feel like Lot must have felt as he lived amongst the Sodomites. Many non-believers email each day, wishing I would indeed be raptured away, so my hope is that they soon get their wish.
I ask every child of God reading this week's Nearing Midnight Update to spend sometime this week praying for the Lord's soon return. At this late hour, the triggering point for the blessed hope may just require a few more Christians to say “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20).
---Todd
Galloping Globalism
The hoof beats are no longer muffled rumbles in the distance. The riders of apocalypse thunder ever closer in the spiritual ears of those attuned to hear what God’s prophetic Word has to say about end-times things that will be prevalent in the final generation of this dispensation.
More significant is the fact that the secular world-watchers are beginning to pick up the ever-increasing noise of the ominous white, red, black, and chloros-colored chargers and their planet-threatening horsemen. The earthly news hounds discern the threat, but only in humanistic terms–what the noise means so far as the natural interaction of earth’s nation-states are concerned.
“I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible…” (Gideon Rachman, "And now for a world government," Drudge Report, 12/8/08).
So obvious are the tremendous forces pushing the nations of earth toward one world that journalists who have little to no interest in or knowledge of Bible prophecy are making the connection. This world is changing dynamically, dramatically, astonishingly, even before the much ballyhooed coming administration of Barack Obama--who has made “change” his mantra--has taken power.
The scribes of the secular sort are almost parroting what those who hold to the futurist view of Bible prophecy have been writing for decades. But, of course, they still don’t get it that they are contributing to fulfillment of prophetic headlines–even details—spoken and written long ago by the Old and New Testament prophets.
“Financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty” (Rachman). The mainstream journalist here wraps his analysis of the developing movement into one-world order with much of the same kind of description we who write about prophecy from the books of Daniel and Revelation use in dissecting things involving the development of Antichrist’s beast regime.
“A 'world government' would involve much more than cooperation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model…
So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.
First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis, and a ‘global war on terror.’
Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: ‘For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.’ Mr. Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries…
But–the third point–a change in the political atmosphere suggests that ‘global governance’ could come much sooner than that…
So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government" (Rachman).
We observe with intense interest the G-20 members prominent in the news as of late. The point has been made that suddenly the nations and their leaderships–those who have always found it impossible to sit down and negotiate in good faith over even the simplest of differences—now seem almost as one in their view that a new financial order is warranted. It is amazing to watch the multi-billions, even multi-trillions, of dollars taken as out of nothingness and thrown into the unprecedented financial morass afflicting America and the world. The financial “experts” aren't treating the worldwide economic implosion like doctors intelligently treating an illness. Instead, they are more like wildly addicted gamblers throwing all of the money they can beg, borrow, and steal into a last-ditch effort to win the one big pot that will extricate them from the financial disaster they themselves have created.
Globalism seems to be the answer, they obviously have concluded. But, their actions remind of the prophecy we’ve looked at more than once:
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure” (Psa. 2:1-5).
The powers that be amongst the nations have long since cast God aside, thinking to bring the world back to Babel and the one world Nimrod and the boys determined to build. Globalism didn’t work then. God guarantees in His prophetic Word that it won’t work this time.
--Terry
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