I have many friends who are preparing for the terrible days of judgment predicted in the Bible. Many modern day prophets and Bible scholars are predicting disaster beginning in September of this year. They point to blood moons, shemitah, and the Jewish calendar lining up in a similar configuration to previous years, when disasters such as 9/11 and stock market crashes struck, as precedent for huge world impacting events looming just ahead.
Folks are loading up on food, guns, ammo, medical supplies, water, seeds for planting, diesel fuel, candles, and so on.
Billy Graham wrote way back in 1984 in Charisma magazine about this subject and I felt led to share it in part today.
There is definitely a “mystery of iniquity” attached to the four horses in chapter six of Revelation. We may not fully understand everything that will happen when they come upon the earth.
But, Revelation does not end with chapter 6! For John points us in chapter 19 to another horse and rider—One who rides to bring the kingdom of God in all its fullness to earth. Like the first horse in chapter 6, this horse is white. But there the resemblance ends, for the rider of this horse is Jesus Christ Himself, coming in glory and power to the earth.
Let us see what the aged apostle is trying to tell us in the account of the rider on the white horse in Revelation 19. Chapters 7 to 18 deal with the catastrophic saga of history, perhaps just ahead, about which Jesus insisted we are to make no mistake, when “there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:21, 22). It will be a time of nuclear conflagrations, biological holocausts and chemical apocalypses rolling over the earth, bringing man to the edge of the precipice. History will “bottom out” in the battle of Armageddon. We already see its shadow creeping over the earth.
Will man exterminate himself? He almost will, as Jesus stated. But just before man does so, Christ will come back! The demonized leaders “of the whole world” will have mobilized both as antagonists and protagonists of that coming world anti-God system—probably headed by the Antichrist. They’ll be “gathered,” we’re told, “together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16).
If I were not a believer in Christ, I might at this point in history succumb to total pessimism. On August 10, 1982 Ellen Goodman wrote in her column that with “Armageddon perhaps around the corner, what are intelligent people to do? Wrap ourselves in mourning sheets and wait for the end?” Are we to stare up at that intimidating nuclear sword of Damocles that “has hung over us like some apocalypse without the promise of redemption?”
Emphatically not! Jesus urged that when universal holocaust begins “to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). Rather than pulling mourning sheets around us, we are to look for redemption in Christ. We are also to work as if these events are far in the future. Jesus promised a blessing on those who would be found working when their Lord returns.
The world is predicted in the Bible to become more and more evil increasing in intensity like a woman enduring birth pangs. There is no question in my mind that we are living in those days. What Billy Graham wrote so many years ago is even more relevant today as it was then, but so is his advice.
We need to focus on redemption of ourselves and others and work towards building His Kingdom as though those events may never occur in our lifetime. We are indestructible until Jesus has fulfilled His purpose for our lives. Our beginning and ending dates to live in this world were predetermined before the creation of the world and buying all of the food, ammo, and candles in the world will not prolong it even one day. What is important is to keep praying, witnessing, discipling, and making Jesus the Lord of our lives in all that we do.
Focus on God today! He is our salvation; not guns and ammo.
1 Thess. 4:17
Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.
August 18, 2015 – Click here to listen