How long is God's Wrath?

 ^{Just the other day I posted a comment about being "pre-wrath" as opposed to "pre-trib", and I got a response that perplexed me. The response basically said that "pre-wrath" was the same as "mid-trib".
I'm not sure where that idea came from, but in my mind that doesn't fit at all.  
Because this comment came from a leader in my church I thought I should explain the difference to others out there that may think the same thing.
There are those that think of the Tribulation as being 7 years, and those who think of it as being 3 1/2 years. I am fine with both of these thoughts, because the Tribulation is not revealed clearly until the 3 1/2 year mark.  
I personally think we are in the first part of the seven years now, but I will not know for a fact until I see the 3 1/2 mark come to pass. At that mid-way point there are many things mentioned specifically; not the least of which is "the abomination that causes desolation". Then Israel being cared for miraculously, while the Anti-Christ turns his attention to Christians who are then be-headed, plundered, etc. while the two witnesses pour out plagues on the people who are loyal to the Anti-Christ.  All of these things are in the last 3 1/2 years.  
Then, according to my beliefs, the church will be raptured and there will be a brief time of God's Wrath starting at the temple in Jerusalem, and circling out from there.  The angel of death will kill everyone without the seal of God on them. These sealed individuals will be the people (mainly Jews, I assume) that receive salvation directly following the rapture of the church. 
Ezekiel 9:3-6 talks about this:}
 “Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it.” As I listened, he said to the others, “Follow him through the city and kill, without showing pity or compassion. Slaughter the old men, the young men and women, the mothers and children, but do not touch anyone who has the mark. Begin at my sanctuary.” So they began with the old men who were in front of the temple."
And in Revelation if you go through the chapters you'll notice that in earlier chapters it talks about a third of everything dying, or turning to blood, then in chapter 16 on, it says "every living thing in the sea" died, and so on.
There is clearly a distinction between His 'Wrath" and the just the 'Tribulation".
The talk about a third of things dying etc. goes right along with all the verses about the three and a half years.


But why do I think that the wrath only lasts weeks and not months or years?  That is simple. I look at the Fall Feasts, and I look at history.
In the Fall Feasts (that I've already talked about in previous posts) we see that The Feast of Trumpets speaks of the rapture (the Feast where "no one knows the day or hour") and wedding of the Lamb and all that.  We see that The Feast of Tabernacles speaks of God coming to dwell with us, happiness, and a time for explaining the scriptures.  In between these two feasts we have the Day of Atonement: a day when the veil is lifted and the priest goes into the Holy of Holies; a perfect time for Jews to clearly see their Messiah.
There are two weeks between the two feasts; plenty of time for the Wrath of God.


If you doubt that that is enough time for the Wrath of God, let me point you to history...
2 Samuel 24, when David took a census.  He wasn't supposed to, and God gave him three options:
vs 12. "I am giving you three options. Choose one of them for me to carry out against you."“Shall there come on you three years of famine in your land? Or three months of fleeing from your enemies while they pursue you? Or three days of plague in your land?"
David said to Gad, the prophet of God, “I am in deep distress. Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great; but do not let me fall into human hands.” So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died. When the angel stretched out his hand to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord relented concerning the disaster and said to the angel who was afflicting the people, “Enough! Withdraw your hand.” The angel of the Lord was then at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite."  (Which is where David ended up telling Solomon to build the temple).  It is no coincidence that this is the same site that God's Wrath starts at the end.
Three days was the time allotted for God to plague Israel in the time of David.  Seventy thousand died, but God stopped the angel before he stretched his hand out toward Jerusalem.
  Two weeks is plenty of time!
..and that's all I have to say about that.


 

Psalms 83

With Egypt's fate hanging in the balance I thought today's bible reading was very interesting.

Here's Psalms 83 verses 1-8

"O God, do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God. See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads. With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish. “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”  With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you— the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites, Byblos, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre. Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot’s descendants."

As you may remember from my last post or if you're good with geography Edom, Moab, and Ammon are inside modern day Jordan. Amalek is east of Egypt and Philistia is near Gaza. Tyre and Byblos are in modern day Lebanon, and Assyria is modern day Turkey. 

If Egypt's new government does not uphold their peace treaty with Israel, Israel will be in the same predicament as it was back in the Psalms... surrounded by enemies on all sides.  The quote inside Psalm 83 "Come, Let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel's name is remembered no more," is exactly what Ahmadinejad had said he wants to do.

All eyes are on the middle east.  Actually, I'd say one eye on them, one looking up.

Luke 21:28 "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

Present day Beast

On You Tube search for "Walid Shoebat Kingdom of the Antichrist".  
(maybe this link will work). http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B3964578952A6A97Sit back and learn!


Walid is a former Islamic terrorist who converted to Christianity.  I have read some of his works, and listened to him on numerous radio shows, but I had not stumbled across this video before.
It was very informative and just made me rethink all the commentary I've ever heard on ALL of the Bible, not just the books of prophecy.
One point he makes that threw my western hermeneutics into a spin is his talking about "mountains".  He quotes "with the faith of a mustard seed, you can move mountains," and goes on to mock how westerners have made mountains mean any obstacle we face.  He explains that in the east mountains have always meant "kingdoms", and that is evident when Revelation talks about the "woman who sits on  7 mountains", etc.
He talks about the geographical location of all countries mentioned in Daniel and Revelation and how they are all Muslim nations alive today.  The animal parts of the beast in Revelation 13 that we so readily believe as literal places in Daniel have not changed in being mentioned in Revelation.  The mouth of a lion, still speaks of Babylon, which is present day Iraq.  The feet of a bear still speaks of the Medo-Persian empire, present day Iran.  The body of a leopard encompasses the area of the ancient Grecian empire today the 10/40 window.  The Iron is NOT the Roman empire, it is the Ottoman empire. The Antichrist is called the prince of Tyre, modern day Lebanon.  He is also called the Assyrian which is modern day Turkey.  (K)Cush is said to follow him, and that's modern Sudan.  He goes on.
In another video that I went to after watching all of these Walid talks about the symbolism of what we call "666" and how is matches Arabic writing that says "In the name of Allah".
I highly encourage you to at least put on this series of videos and let it play in the background of your day. Then you decide if you wanna look up more of what he says.


Walid will be on the Hannity show tonight (Feb 1 2011).
I'm hoping he will talk about Egypt!

Something to watch

http://www.waytozion.org/video/stream/timeline/timeline.html

This is 2 hours long.  Not a short over view at all, but really worth a listen if you care about such things.
It's a presentation of Daniel's time line and how it all equals up with the fact that we are IN the Tribulation right now, and when we can expect to see things coming to pass.

 This man's presentation gives the exact date of the abomination of desolation and the fleeing that is to take place after that...  which he puts in March of 2013 at Passover time.  Well given that the bulk of the natural disasters and such happen towards the end of 2012, that makes perfect sense to me.
He calculates the last 70 7's of Daniel as 70 Shavuots (Pentecosts), from the "commandment to restore" Israel in 1947, which makes the year of Jubilee start in 2017. Anyway, I have Dale (a guy who commented on here a while ago) to thank for directing me to this link.
 I hope you find it as interesting as I did.

Seven Years From When?

I've never kept it a secret that I think we're in the last 7 years before Christ's return. 
That's a big statement. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to risk that, because if I'm right, it's important that I tell people.

Harold Camping predicts that judgment day is coming on May 21st of this year (2011). Now I'm not saying something won't happen then... but it surely won't be judgment day!  The three and a half years of tribulation haven't happened yet. He thinks the rapture will be the day before, but the rapture is prophetically spoken of in  the feast of Rosh Hashanah which is usually in September. 


Now for what I think. 
I've already written posts about Rosh Hashanah, and about the tetrad of eclipses coming in 2014-2015 that may line up with the eclipses spoken of in Revelation.

Have you ever heard of the cosmic sun cycle? 
I hadn't.  But I recently found out that on April 5th on the first day of Passover in 2009 the sun returned to it's starting point for the third time.  The sun was in the same position on the very first Passover in Egypt for the first cycle.  The second cycle fell during Purim, in the story of Queen Esther.   Pretty cool huh?
Passover is a feast of redemption, and on April 5th the final redemption cycle began.


In the book of Ezekiel  in chapter 4, Ezekiel was told to lay on his side for 390 days to represent how long Israel would be punished for.  In Leviticus chapter 26 God says that Israel would be punished 7 times. 390 x 7 = 2,730 years.   Israel's captivity by the Assyrians began in 722 BC.  The year 2009 was 2,730 years later.
I think that the final seven years very likely could've started directly after '09.
2012's "shift" may cause enough chaos that the people of the world will be willing to be governed by a one world government headed by the Anti-Christ.
The three and a half years following 2012 could be the time spoken of in Daniel and in Revelation.
The church will be raptured at the end of the 3 1/2 years at the same time that the two witnesses are raised from being dead in the streets for three days. Then God's wrath will be poured out over the world, starting at the temple mount, for only a month or so, before the millennial reign of Christ.

Bowing to the Rising Sun (and other "detestable practices")

I've been reading Ezekiel and I had to stop at chapter eight when I realized I didn't know exactly what he was talking about.
First off it starts with:
"In the sixth year, in the sixth month on the fifth day". 
When was that?
Well the it was the sixth year of exile of King Jehoiachin. (We know that from earlier chapters) The sixth month is Elul (around August).  Six is a number of preparation... also the number of "man".  It would be interesting if it were also on the sixth day, but it's not, so I won't try to read anything into that.


So imagine Ezekiel: "sitting in my house and the elders of Judah were sitting before me", and all of a sudden he gets a vision of these same elders (and then some) deep in idol worship.  That's pretty intense. You know he had to talk to them after this whole vision was over.  I would hate to have been in his position... (To say nothing of his positions in previous chapters).
God tells him,  “ look toward the north.” So he looked, and in the entrance north of the gate of the altar he saw this idol of jealousy.
From the commentaries I read it seems to be a general consensus that this was an asherah pole that had been replaced after King Josiah had them all torn down only a generation ago.  There is even mention of Jaazaniah son of Shaphan being a part of the vision. (Shaphan was the guy who brought the sacred scrolls to Josiah, which led to him tearing down all the idol worshiping monuments.)
So Ezekiel sees the asherah pole in a holy place, then God tells him to dig through a hole in a wall to see through a secret doorway.  In this vision he sees 70 elders (plus Shaphan's son Jaazaniah) all holding censers with incense, and around them on the walls were "all kinds of crawling things and unclean animals and all the idols of Israel."
It's interesting to note that Jaazaniah's name means "Jehovah hears". Verse 12 says, "They say, ‘The LORD does not see us; the LORD has forsaken the land."  (Exactly the opposite of his name.)
Then Ezekiel gets a vision of the court of women (the only place that the women were allowed to go in the temple area). There they were mourning the god Tammuz. At first glance I thought, well, at least they are just crying over some idol, but that's not the real story. I looked up the god of Tammuz and found that in mythology he was a lover of Venus, who is basically alive for 6 months then in the under-world for 6 months.  When the rivers are dry, he's gone... when they are there, he's alive. The rivers even run red (with his blood) near the end... because of the red rock and it's dye that is seen when the river is small. So in their "mourning" these women prostituted themselves and wailed and all that jazz that goes along with Satan's style of "worship".
Then God shows Ezekiel the inner court of the temple. (That's holier still.) ..."and there at the entrance to the temple, between the portico and the altar, were about twenty-five men. With their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, they were bowing down to the rising sun in the east.  He said to me, “Have you seen this, son of man? Is it a trivial matter for the people of Judah to do the detestable things they are doing here? Must they also fill the land with violence and continually arouse my anger? Look at them putting the branch to their nose!  Therefore I will deal with them in anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they shout in my ears, I will not listen to them.”

This is where I decided to put it on the "All About The End" blog. I always look for Islam in prophetic passages. This passage is not all about the end... It's from a prophecy that has already been fulfilled. But in their Baal worship of facing the rising sun we can see clearly that Islam (which also faces the rising sun) is continuing in a detestable practice.  Bowing to anything, be it Mecca or the sun, is idolatry. 
I hate to even bring it up, but take Obama's rising sun symbol for example. Can anyone honestly deny his ties to Islam? God help us.


Anyway... God mentions in the visions "They will do even more detestable things than this."  We know that right at the cusp of the last 3 1/2 years before Christ's return the Anti-Christ will set up the "abomination that causes desolation" in the area of the Temple.  I would almost say that the Dome of the Rock is already an abomination... but I guess there will be something worse.  We won't have to wait too long to find out.

The Day After Elections

Well, most of the news is in... we'll see if anything changes today.  It's a small victory for both sides in my opinion.  I'd like to think that it will lead to a bigger victory later for God-honoring people, but my bible tells me otherwise.
Matthew 24:10-13 "At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved."
This verse comes directly in front of the verse warning about the "abomination that causes desolation" which happens at the beginning of the last three and a half years spoken of in Daniel and elsewhere.  
The love of most has not grown cold yet. I'd say we're not even a third of the way there. Yet as time progresses everything speeds up.  In my short lifetime things that were impossible before are now everyday occurrences.  Everything that needs to be in place before the two witnesses come on the scene is in place. The technology to be able to allow some to buy and sell and others to not is all out there. Monitoring systems to keep tabs on everyone... it's all there. 
As we see our government taking over more and more, we see the stage being set for the control that must be present when the Antichrist comes to rule the world.
How will it happen? Why would anyone accept a world dictator?  We're not that stupid.
Really? I look at facebook posts and wonder sometimes. The bible says that the Antichrist will seize his kingdom through intrigue, (Daniel 11:21-23) and with only a few people he will rise to power.  That means the majority will not even "elect" him, he'll just somehow take over. Verse 24 says he'll distribute plunder, loot and wealth among his followers. So his followers become wealthy, but the rest do not.  He will plot the overthrow of fortresses—but only for a time. (If "time" is like the rest of these chapters, that means a year.)
The following verses talk about this "king" from the North being against a king in the South.  The southern king will try and wage war, but will not be able to stand because of the plots devised against him.
The king of the North goes back and forth venting his fury against the holy covenant.  The holy covenant here obviously involves God's people. Some commentaries say it's all about Israel, others say Israel and her allies, others say the Christians. Then (verse 31-32) “his armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation. With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him."
Now is the moment in the reading where you do some introspection to answer the question "Will I be one of the ones who 'knows' my God, and will firmly resist the Antichrist?"  Consider this: “Those who are wise will instruct many, though for a time they will fall by the sword or be burned or captured or plundered. When they fall, they will receive a little help, and many who are not sincere will join them. Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time."  (Again, hopefully the "time" spoken of is just a year, but who knows.)  Will you resist even if it means being stolen from, martyred, or tortured?  You may get help from someone you think is your friend only to find out that they are against you. You may "stumble", but it's only a purification process. 
Scary times are ahead but Jesus said, "When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28)  That is the hope.  No matter how bad our country gets, no matter who betrays us, no matter what they do to us, as we see more and more natural disasters, more wars and rumors of wars, even when we see the Antichrist rise to power and "vent his fury on the holy covenant" we can STAND UP and LIFT OUR HEADS, for our redemption is drawing near!  AMEN!


Back in Daniel it says that the Antichrist will do as he pleases. He will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will say unheard-of things against the God of gods. He will honor a god of fortresses, and will greatly honor those who acknowledge him. He will make them rulers over many people and will distribute the land at a price.  (Most would agree that this god of war/fortresses that Daniel speaks of refers to the god of Islam; Islam being a religion spread by any means necessary.) 
^{I've already talked in the past about Islam's messiah and how he lines up perfectly with our Antichrist. Read Joel Richardson's book "the Islamic Antichrist" for more info.
It's easy to see how after multiple natural disasters and multiple collapsed economies a world in dire straights would accept the "help" of a man who seems to have all the power in the world at his fingertips. Miracles and wonders will follow him where ever he goes. He will bring peace, and prosperity to all who follow him.
If you think the world is "blind" now... just wait, it'll get worse.}