Articles

That fourth feast of the Lord, called Pentecost and the Feast of Weeks, was fifty days after the Feast of First Fruits and included that Sunday of the Resurrection of Christ. There were 49 sabbaths plus one day to start a totally new era of God’s plan for the ages.

There were four major beginnings, or launchings, of events at that feast time. The first was the power from on high the disciples were promised in Acts 1:8a: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you….” It was the fulfillment of Joel’s promise that God would give them a new heart like never before, in Joel 2. That promise is echoed by Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:17, saying, “He who belongs to the Lord has become one spirit with Him.” And, in verses 19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.”

A second event within this one is the beginning of the church age, when Peter identified Christ as “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), and Jesus said, “Flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but My Father who is in heaven, …and on this rock I will build My church.” (On Peter’s confession, not on Peter, the man, as the Roman Catholics have claimed.)

Also in Acts 1:8b is the launching of the Great Commission, to take the gospel of Christ, the good news of His salvation, to the ends of the earth: “…and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

The Old Testament accounts of the Jewish people did not have such a direct command to take the knowledge of God to all people, but the psalmist wrote, in Psalm 107:2, “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy.” From Abraham to Christ was a time of revealing the likeness of God to all people of the world, by the moral dictates of the law, yet the Jewish people constantly rebelled, refusing to obey the Lord and profaning His name. Yet God did not fail in His commitment and promises to them, for His own name’s sake. The Spirit-filled body of Christ, His church, was the ultimate promise fulfilled.

That gospel message was identified by Paul, specifically in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures….” (Those Scriptures would have been Old Testament Scriptures, of which Isaiah 53 would have been prominent in his thinking.)

Paul wraps this up in Romans 3:23-24: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Matthew’s account of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 emphasizes His authority over all things:

“And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ Amen.”

What about that final promise—”And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age”? What happens after that? And when does the age end?

Knowing the end from the beginning, even in this situation, we can be assured that now, He is with us, and at the end of the age, we will be with Him. Hidden, then, in this Great Commission command is the truth that there will be a “taking out” of believers from this world. The Rapture, then, is again identified in the plan of God.

Another event initiated at that first Pentecost was the setting aside of Israel in favor of taking the gospel to the Gentiles, as declared in Romans 11:25:

“For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.”

At the Jerusalem Conference recorded in Acts 15 by Luke, we learn from James’ summation thus: “And after they had become silent, James answered, saying, ‘Men and brethren, listen to me: Simon has declared how God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name.'”

The end of the age of the church and the Great Commission to the church happens when Jesus returns for His body of believers. John 14:1-3 tells what will happen then: “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”

Then God’s attention is turned back to the Jews again for that final 70th year of Daniel’s prophecy, which was stopped at the end of the 69th year (Daniel 9:1-2 and 24-26). It turns out to be weeks of years. That is, instead of seven days in the week, it is one year as a day and seven years for a week. Thus, a week of seven years. The only time another “week” of seven years is mentioned is in Daniel 9:27 when the coming “prince,” the Antichrist, “confirms a covenant with many for seven years.”

Those seven years of tribulation foretold in Revelation 6 to 19 are a time when the Jews are brought to realize that Jesus Christ is their true Messiah and they accept Him, yet through hard suffering.

The church is not mentioned in those chapters of Revelation 5-18 until the marriage supper of the Lamb in chapter 19. The Great Commission to the church is no longer in effect then, for God anoints 144,000 young Jewish men to take the gospel of the kingdom to all tongues, tribes and nations. Their results are reported in Revelation 7 as multitudes.

Where are we now in God’s timetable? The worldwide embracing of sexual immorality as an acceptable equal to morality compares to the time of Lot and his departure from Sodom. Luke 17:28-30 tells the story: “Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.”

The “falling away” from the faith and lawfulness is rampant, but the Scripture says the One who restrains that evil will be taken out of the way for the Antichrist to have his time for judgment. The coming together of these things will come “as a thief in the night,” and those signs are looming on the horizon.

Contact email: andwegetmercy@gnail.com

Satan’s Little Helpers Revisited

About 25 years ago, I wrote an article called Satan’s Little Helpers. It was about how the forces of darkness use the liberal media to implement the devil’s agenda. Most people would agree that the press has a bias, but nothing is ever done to change things.

The liberal media controls about 95% of all the news that is distributed in America. Years ago, CNN and the three major networks were more rounded in their news coverage. They would put their thumb on the scale to give news stories a leftist slant. Today, they don’t even pretend to weigh the news. They tell you what the news weighs because they know the weight of everything.

Because the news has become so badly laced with leftist propaganda, I felt the need to revisit this problem. A week ago, I was looking at Yahoo news and was amazed at how many times Yahoo’s general news page had stories that focused on Donald Trump.

The former president was mentioned nine times in various articles. Joe Biden, the current acting president, was only mentioned once. A news story said that Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren renewed her push for President Biden to cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt.

Trump is still popular with the liberal media because he is useful in advancing their agenda. It has been nearly 1.5 years since Trump lost the presidency, and the press is constantly finding fresh scandals that involve him. Biden doesn’t get much press coverage because he is a senile invalid.

The constant news coverage of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol has reached profound nauseating levels. The liberal media and the Democrats are going to milk the action of a few idiots for years to come. Never mind the fact we have Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, runaway inflation, and the meltdown of supply chains. We need to find everyone who took an unauthorized tour of the capital.

The press has been supporting an issue related to the January 6th attack. The left is trying to use a legal action, which was solely related to the Civil War, to disqualify anyone who supports Trump or the protestors in any way. It doesn’t matter that an Arizona judge has tossed lawsuits that attempted to disqualify Reps. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) from holding office. The judge said the disqualification clause was removed by Congress by the Amnesty Act of 1872.

The ruling in Arizona will not change anything. The liberal media and two groups linked to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a self-described socialist, will simply go to other judicial courts that are friendly to their Marxist views. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is the main target of the disqualifying ploy. A judge refused to throw out the lawsuit that is aimed at Greene. I understand why socialists would like to decide who gets to hold public office. What distresses me more is the silence from voters who are having their rights attacked.

Obama recently made a speech where he called for social media sites to ban people who are spreading disinformation. This task can be accomplished because he and fellow leftists have a monopoly on truth. They fail to realize that Nazi Germany labeled reports that the Jews were being mistreated as disinformation. The USSR also viewed arguments that communism doesn’t work as disinformation.

When Elon Musk reached a deal to buy Twitter, several leftist outlets expressed concern that Musk was going to turn Twitter into a platform for free speech. Many dictators have justified their iron-fisted rule by attacking democratic rule as a state of chaos. I guarantee that Twitter is now going to be attacked as a sanctuary for all forms of evil.

I’m going to end by quoting a paragraph from my “Satan’s Little Helpers” article. What I wrote implied that the liberal media will be ready to play a role in tribulation events. A quarter-century on, it is clear that they are now at fully ready status.

The liberal media will be a substantial player in end-time events. When the Antichrist finally does come to power, the liberal media will be tripping over itself to report his every word. The values that the press currently portrays will perfectly match the values of the forthcoming Antichrist. It will be love at first sight.

“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8).

–Todd

Nuclear Neurosis and Prophetic Prognosis

The diplomats of the world are making noise about Russia more and more looking like it will come to the nuclear option in finally defeating the Ukrainians. Thus, more and more people are becoming nervous that we are headed for World War III.

The worry—the threat—has always been that once a nuclear weapon has been used, things will escalate until all-out atomic war results. All the big nukes on all the tips of the ICBMs and other delivery systems will be unleashed. Planet earth will be turned into a cinder–or at the very least, it will be made inhabitable.

Russian President/dictator Vladimir Putin, among wanting more control and power in his region of hegemony, wants to secure the wheat and other grains of Ukraine to add to Russia’s considerable grain possession. In this way, he will control the food of the world—at least to a considerable extent.

It is said that, even now, Putin and his top adjutants are hunkered in underground facilities for protection from the nuclear exchanges that are to come. Of course, a lot of things are said these days about a lot of things.

In fact, a lot has been said about a lot of things for a long time. We have heard that economic collapse is coming within days for—literally—years, even decades.

We have been told that the polar ice is melting at a rate that would bring the edges of New York harbor to downtown Manhattan and up to the first or second floor of the Empire State building within anywhere from twenty to forty years. Actually, the levels in New York Harbor haven’t changed significantly since the warnings were issued.

All of that is not to say nuclear exchanges couldn’t happen. I believe, as do many who believe in God’s Word, that at least one city of the world is going to experience perhaps a nuclear strike. I’m referring, of course, to Damascus, Syria, which will become a heap of rubble within a very short time.

This doesn’t mean necessarily that it will be a nuclear weapon that does the destruction. It might be a meteorite, or even possibly one of the planet’s greatest earthquakes ever.

But Damascus is going to cease being a city, and in a very short moment of time. God’s prophetic Word has said so. It will happen, according to the prophecy in Isaiah chapter 17.

And God’s prophetic Word is the only reliable source to depend upon when it comes to future events. Everything else is just guesswork. The guesswork might be based upon strong evidence, but it’s still guesswork.

God’s prophetic utterances are 100% reliable. And it is for this reason that we can examine the nuclear neurosis going around these days under God’s stethoscope in order to get a 100 percent accurate prophetic prognosis about whether all-out nuclear conflict will occur in the days just ahead.

First, we look at a news item from a less-than-reliable source the majority of Americans still go to for news.

Vladimir Putin has been ignoring those in his inner circle who warn of economic ruin if his invasion of Ukraine continues, it has been claimed.

Kremlin officials are becoming “increasingly” worried Vladimir Putin could use limited nuclear weapons as part of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Officials at high levels of government spoke to Bloomberg, claiming they believed the invasion was a “catastrophic” mistake which will set Russia back years.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Kremlin sources said there is no sign Putin will change his mind and faces no direct challenge within the walls of the Kremlin.

He has also repeatedly ignored those who have attempted to warn him of the crushing effects his war could have on Russia’s economic and political future, destroying two decades of growth…

Some said they share fears voiced by the US that Putin will turn to a limited nuclear war, in which two nuclear superpowers engage in a direct confrontation which does not end in either a surrender or massive destruction.

However, US officials have clarified there is “no practical evidence” nuclear weapons will be used imminently.

the CIA said Putin could turn to using a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon out of “potential desperation” to claim a small victory. (“Putin officials ‘increasingly worried’ he could unleash limited nuclear weapon,” News Yahoo.com UK)

The gist of the news story, in my view, has a specific purpose: to ramp up fear of a nuclear conflict to divert the attention of voters from other issues of political importance to the globalist power brokers. But that is a story for another time. The thing to look at here is that God is completely in control—not the power brokers who can, and will eventually (during the Tribulation), unleash war…of the nuclear sort.

So, looking at the matter of the nuclear neurosis through the heavenly stethoscope, we come to Jesus’ words I’ve brought to our attention many times. They speak directly to our day. Jesus’ words do not equivocate on the condition of the world when He will next make His presence known to all on the earth. It will be the Rapture that will occur in times exactly like they were in the time of Lot in Sodom.

There is no indication whatsoever, prior to the catastrophic intervention by Christ, of nuclear war that devastates the planet.

Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (Luke 17: 28–30)

—Terry

Major Events Happened at Pentecost :: By Gene Lawley

2 May 2022