14 March, 2005
Michael Jackson: A Lesson On Finding Reality
In my office, Fox News is constantly running, which provides me with the latest world news. One story that has been in the news for some now is the Michael Jackson's child molestation trial. I have no opinion regarding his guilt or innocence. What I do find interesting is how detached he is from reality.
The King of Pop is a casebook example of self delusion. One has to wonder how the a member of the Jackson Five could, over time, become transformed into a creature that looks and acts like he is from another planet.
Many people talk about Michael Jackson’s lost childhood, but few talk about his lost adulthood. The singer has a long history of weird behavior. Here are a few examples from just the past couple of years:
When Jackson made his first court appearance in his molestation trial, he came to court dressed like a king about to review his royal guard. The most memorial moment of that day was when he climbed on top of his limo and started dancing.
According to a 2003 report in Vanity Fair magazine, Jackson wears a prosthetic nose and once paid $150,000 for a "voodoo curse" to kill director Steven Spielberg.
Also in 2003, Jackson stunned fans in Berlin with a child-dangling stunt. While staying at a Berlin hotel, he placed a towel over his infant son's head and briefly dangled him over the balcony.
In February of this year, he was rushed to the hospital by way of an ambulance. It turns out his grave illness was the common flu.
Last week, Jackson showed up to court wearing pajama pants and slippers. This exploit was widely scorned by even the most straight-laced of news outlets.
In recent days, court records revealed that Jackson is a "spendaholic" who has "an insatiable appetite for money." Between 1999 and 2001, Jackson was spending $35 million a year while earning only $11 million to $12 million annually. Lawyers argued over the possibility he may be facing personal bankruptcy.
Jackson also has run up nearly $4 million per year in expenses from his Neverland Valley ranch in central California, where in April 2001 his amusement park equipment was nearly repossessed for late payments. Jackson's extravagant lifestyle and declining music sales have left him $300 million in debt.
Jackson may have a number of secondary reasons for acting in such a strange fashion. The primary cause of his strange behavior has to be how fame has disconnected him from normal life experiences. The lack of normalcy has left him without the means guide his actions.
Jackson has never had to be accountable for his actions. Others have done everything for him. Because Jackson is constantly surrounded by paid flunkies, he has no one to show him right from wrong.
He did have an earlier episode with molestation charges that could have set him straight, but a large payout rescued him from that problem. Bankruptcy and jail will probably be the singer's first contact with that strange dimension called "reality."
There's nothing new about Jackson's fame-related behavior. He appears to be journeying down the same path that caused Elvis Presley to self-destruct. Elvis was done in by his addiction to prescription drugs.
Jackson is not ignorant of the proper way for a 45-year-old man to act. If late-night comedians started making jokes about my having pedophile tendencies, I'd be very concerned about my public image. In fact, I'd add "sleepovers with toddlers" to my personal "do not do" list.
Most people can learn a valuable lesson from Jackson’s situation. It’s the lack of discernment of the times that causes people fail to comprehend earth’s prophetic reality. We are rapidly getting closer to the tribulation hour, and the desensitization to world events has blinded people to where we are on the prophetic clock.
Jesus said the end times would be heralded by a series of birth pang events (Mat. 24:8). Some of these indicators are moral collapse, apostasy, the rise of the European Union (Rev.17:12), China's growing military might (Rev.9:16) and a spade of global calamities.
Another lessen to draw from Jackson’s life is the benefit of being ready. If Jackson had the ability to perceive what he is doing wrong, I’m sure he would be a much happier man. If people had a clue about their spiritual error, they would save themselves from the type of misery the crowd left behind will have to endure.
"But as the days of Noe [were], so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be" (Mat. 24:37-39).
End-Time Focus Narrows
It’s as if God’s prophetic lens is zooming in from somewhere above, first, framing the world at large, then, hour by hour, focusing more tightly on the region of Planet Earth where human life began. More specifically, that omniscient lens draws into focus present dynamics pulsing around and within the modern state of Israel.
Jesus said, regarding a whole list of things He had just prophesied to happen just before He intervenes into this political, socio-economic and religious hodgepodge of humanism:
"But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is… Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch” (Mark 13:32-33, 36-37).
This admonition by Jesus could not have been for the saints of the tribulation era. They will be able, particularly from the beginning of the second half of that seven-year period, to pinpoint to the day His return in power and great glory as prophesied in Revelation 19:11. Jesus is referring here to His coming to take His Church–all born-again children of God who have died during the Church Age (Age of Grace) and those who are alive at the time of His shout, “Come up hither!” (symbolized in Revelation 4:1).
There is, indeed, plenty to “watch.” Never, since the Church Age began, have the signals of Christ’s coming again been more manifest. The stage-setting storm front for the prophesied seventieth week of Daniel infiltrates and hovers around and over the one place on earth God calls the apple of His eye like ominous thunderstorm clouds seen on the flat plains horizon of Oklahoma during springtime. Christians who can’t sense the brewing apocalyptic storm will miss the opportunity to earn crowns to lay at their Savior’s feet. For those who don’t believe in the One to whose return these signals point, the ramifications will be eternally devastating.
God is bidding those who believe in His Word –His WHOLE Word, which includes prophecy yet future—to focus on what is happening with regard to the nation, the city, and the spot He chose in eternity past to be the geographical center of interaction between Heaven and Earth.
At issue, ultimately, is the peace of Jerusalem. Believers are told to pray for that heretofore elusive peace: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (Psa. 122:6). The intensive focus of prophecy at this moment, which should most powerfully draw the spiritual senses of believers, is the nation of Israel and the unrelenting drive to force peace upon the nation and the region.
Humanly spawned peace will, the world diplomats believe, prevent World War III from igniting because of Israel versus its regional enemies. Their "peace" will benefit the entire world, in the minds of the international community geopoliticians. It is again, as always, Israel that must give up its land in order to bring its Jew-hating neighbors to the peace table. Israel was told in ancient times to occupy the land God gave it. All of it. The people of Israel saw not the milk and honey, but the giants that cowered them. They refused to take the land, a blatant disobedience that brought God’s corrective action.
It is the issue of disobedience about “the land” that has gotten the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the predicaments that have plagued them down through the millennia. It is the question of “the land” that has brought them to their current position of having to further divide the tiny portion of that geography God has allowed them to regain during three wars in modern times.
When they did finally go into Canaan in those ancient days, they obeyed God’s command only partially, choosing not to either kill or remove through force all who illegally occupied the land of promise. While entering the land under Joshua’s command, the city of Jericho was key. We remember one of the most famous of the Old Testament stories about the blowing of the trumpets, and the walls of Jericho falling.
That ancient name is again front and center, again involving Israel’s decision about what to do with a possession God commanded them to occupy. Israel’s continuing disobedience leaps from the hourly news of the swiftly moving developments in that land so rich in Old Testament history. The story reads, in part:
"Jericho Handover On Hold After Talks Stall
Israel will Wednesday hand over security control of the West Bank city of Jericho to the Palestinian Authority, and plans to follow with Tul Karm days later… The two sides reached agreement on the matter Tuesday night, during a two-hour meeting at the Erez junction in Gaza between Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas… Mofaz said that the negotiations between the sides must proceed cautiously and ‘step by step, ’ with the security of Israel's citizens ‘the uppermost priority for us.’ He demanded the Palestinians take more action to disarm the terror groups and arrest activists…” ("Jericho handover on hold after talks stall," by Amos Harel and Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent, Wed. March 9, 2005).
The “Roadmap to Peace” seems on track in yet another attempt to force peace on Israel and its blood-vowed enemies. This one seems different than all the Mideast shufflings we’ve seen before from Kissinger to Powell. It looks as if the foundation is being laid that will lead to the fulfillment of one of the Bible’s most significant end-time prophecies.
While we who diligently watch for last-days issues and events, focusing with God’s brilliantly lit magnifying glass of end-time prophecy, one chief question we need to answer is: What is wrong with trying to make peace, in order to stop all the violence and killing in that region?
The answer is that only Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, will be able to do the job successfully. Man-made peace will not only fail, it will bring about the most terrible time in human history. It will be peace that will destroy many (Dan. 8:25).
Jeremiah the prophet foretold:
“Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob's trouble…” (Jer. 30:7).
Jesus, who gave Jeremiah the prophecy in the first place, reflected on it when teaching while on earth in the flesh: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).
The man-made peace that Antichrist, himself, will confirm, or guarantee (Dan. 9:27) will be, God says, a covenant made with death and hell (Isa. 28:18).
Satan’s all-consuming rage has been, since he led the rebellion in Heaven, to usurp the throne of God. He, too, is focusing in on his beastly goal. He wants all the world to worship him. He narrows his focus to the Middle East, and to Israel. He focuses even more tightly, lusting for the city of Jerusalem, Mount Moriah (the Temple Mount), and the precise spot where the Temple sat. He wants to place his own throne on the very spot where the Holy of Holies was located, narrowing that quest to place his feet where the Ark of the Covenant itself once rested. He will do just this, I believe, during the middle of the seven-year tribulation period.
The devil will physically indwell this hellish tyrant, the Antichrist. Antichrist will exalt himself above all others, “…so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God” (2 Thes. 2:4).
The focus is narrowing for observers of end-time prophecy. The world is, as the Rapture Index indicates, racing toward the tribulation hour at breakneck speed. But, before we who belong to Christ hit that horrifying wall of God’s wrath, the Lord himself shall descend and, with the shout that sounds like the trump of God, lift us off of the highway that leads to Armageddon, and, ultimately, takes rebellious earth-dwellers into the lake of fire.
--Terry
