What's next?

If you are following the news lately, you might be astonished by all of the things happening. Earthquakes, floods, fires, rise in crime etc. There are many who believe that we are living in the end of days. Based on Scripture, I would have to agree to an extent. There are some people who believe that May 21 of this year is the beginning of the end. Hey, I am all for the rapture happening sooner than later, however, I have to say that I do not believe that this will happen. Jesus clearly said that no man would know the time and that HE did not even know when he would return. God knows when this is to happen, yet many men have come forward claiming a date. As far as I am concerned, when any man comes forth with a date, claiming that is the day of the return of Jesus, we should just ignore them. If God wanted us to know the date, it would have been clearly outlined in Scripture, we would not have to do all kinds of math to figure it out.

things are getting interesting...

I remember when I was living in Toronto, in the mid 1990s and early 2000, there was a man that used to preach on the corner of Young and Dundas. I remember hearing him and thinking he was a nut with all his messages of "God Loves You," "Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is near" and "the end is coming." I thought he was just another dooms-day-er, freaking people out. I never really paid attention to him as I waited for the light to change at the corner. You never looked at him, eye contact would draw his attention to you and then you were trapped! So now, it's some 9 years later and I get it. At that time, I knew just about nothing about God, Jesus and the bible, except what I had seen in movies and we know how accurate Hollywood is when it comes to that. (I hope you read a lot of sarcasm into that last bit) Anyway, in 2003 I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour and things changed. I suddenly had this desire to read and learn the bible, and when I did read it, I understood it for the first time. So where am I going with this? Well, the guy on the corner was right. God does love us. We do need to repent. And yes, the end is coming. I am sure that I am losing some of you with that remark, but I'll ask you to stick around so that you can get some understanding of why I say all this. I have been doing a lot of reading and research lately into what is going on in our crazy, messed up world and *surprise, surprise* a lot of it lines up with what the Bible has to say. Anyone who has known me for the last 20 years, knows that there was a time when I dabbled in the occult, visiting psychics, playing with ouija boards, reading tarot cards etc, so you know that I always want to know the future. Well, the Bible is the only sure-fire way to learn what the future holds. The Bible has foretold many events and is 100% accurate. In the Old Testament, Prophets were 100% correct, 100% of the time. This is how the people knew that they were speaking on God's behalf. If the Prophet was wrong, they were not speaking on God's behalf and were killed. Pretty harsh. The most prominent Prophets were Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel but really the Bible in itself is a Prophetic book, showing us what God's plan is, and how Jesus is the fulfillment of many of the Prophecies, including future ones. He was born to a virgin, lived free from sin, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, was betrayed, beaten, spit upon, rejected, given a crown of thorns, crucified, pierced, buried in a rich man's tomb, and rose on the third day. He told us that he would return and for centuries the world has said that he is coming. And every person in every century was right, he is coming, it's just that now, we are seeing the fulfillment of many prophecies indicating that the time of his return is imminent.
Many people look to Matthew 24:3-12 -
³ As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

⁴ Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. ⁵ For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. ⁶ You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ⁷ Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. ⁸ All these are the beginning of birth pains.

9 "Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people, 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold,

I think that we can agree that we are seeing many of the things mentioned in verses 4-8. But did you know that all over the world people are being persecuted because of their faith in Jesus? Maybe not so obviously in North America, but in places like China, India, Egypt, and most of the Middle East, Christians are tortured, and killed because of their faith. More and more people are turning away from the faith in North America, either claiming atheism or that they are agnostic, they believe in something but not necessarily what the bible says and statistics show that 70% of kids raised in the church are leaving the faith by the time they are in college. I think we can agree that there have been many "false prophets" that set dates for the end of the world, only to be proven wrong over and over. There have also been many who have claimed to be Christ, (David Koresh, James Jones, etc) and based on what we are seeing in the news, the love of most has definitely grown cold. I mean, when a kid kills his mother on mother's day or another beats his mom because she drank his iced coffee, or another young person pistol whips her mother so that she will buy her a car, we can clearly see that wickedness has increased and love has grown cold. So what is next?

Look to the middle east... Over the last several months, we have seen many protests. People fed up with tyranny and wanting freedom to choose their leaders and live the way they want to. In some places like Egypt, the people have been heard and the leader has fled. Many believe that this is a step to fulfillment of Isaiah 19, which talks about Egypt falling apart.

Others believe that we are about to see the fulfillment of Psalm 83. Recently there has been a call for a 3rd Intifada. An Intifada is a "shaking off" and the first two have been uprisings against Israel. The first was in 1987-1993 and was a Palestinian uprising against the Israeli occupation in the Palestinian Territories. The uprising began in the Jabalia refugee camp and quickly spread throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The second was in September of 2000 and saw a death toll of over 7000. Again the Palestinians rose up against the Israelis and while the first Intifada was mostly protests, the second was much more violent. As for the third? From what I have seen, this time it won't be just the Palestinians trying to "shake off" the Israelis. Social media has been used recently as a way to organize uprisings and the Third Intifada is no exception... A Facebook page calling for a mass protest to start in Cairo was recently taken down however, beforehand, thousands of people "liked" the page and it had some 75,000 members. The message on the page indicated that "millions would gather in Cairo" "but this time for an All-Arab march toward Israel." It just so happens that this is to take place around the 63rd year of Israels independence. So what is the significance? Psalm 83 reads

¹ O God, do not remain silent; do not turn a deaf ear, do not stand aloof, O God.
² See how your enemies growl, how your foes rear their heads.
³ With cunning they conspire against your people; they plot against those you cherish.
⁴ “Come,” they say, “let us destroy them as a nation, so that Israel’s name is remembered no more.”

⁵ With one mind they plot together; they form an alliance against you—
⁶ the tents of Edom and the Ishmaelites, of Moab and the Hagrites,
⁷ Byblos, Ammon and Amalek, Philistia, with the people of Tyre.
⁸ Even Assyria has joined them to reinforce Lot’s descendants.^[b]

Tents of Edom = Palestinians
Ishmaelites = Arabs
Hagrites = Clan of Ishmaelites
Inhabitants of Tyre = Lebanese
The Descendants of Lot = Moabites and Ammonites

These are the groups of people that are planning to march on Israel in the coming week if the facebook page is to be taken seriously. The Bible tells us that they will not be successful, we will just have to watch and see. As for the significance of the 63 years, I will explain in my next post....