An oft-quoted statement of Jesus in reference to the last days, is the one from Luke 21:28: “Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” But the scoffer and the non-believer—maybe even the believer—raise questions about the validity of relative events meaning anything. After all, “Where is the promise of His coming; you’ve been talking about that for years and years,” they say, not without derision.So how can we know that current events carry the weight of end-time prophetic fulfillment? A couple of Scripture references are important to consider at this point: “Surely the Lord God does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). This one certainly is evidenced in the prophecies of Daniel, as well as the other Old Testament prophets. Peter also gives credence to this advance notice provision in 1 Peter 1:10-12 and 2 Peter 1:16-19.

The other reference is John 16:13: “However, when He, the Spirit of Truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.” Notice that this Spirit will guide a believer into all truth, and He will tell of things to come. I submit that included in the admonition to “Watch” that Jesus repeated so often is the paying attention to current events and matching them with Bible prophecies, thus knowing what things are coming together and pointing toward God’s appointed time.

Now to the broad array of “Things Coming Together” and significantly, all in the same time- frame:

Things Physical

Luke records the words of Jesus as to what to expect in these last days: “And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven” (Luke 21:11).

One only has to read the daily headlines in the news, or do an internet key word search for earthquakes, famines or pestilences, and learn that their increases are hammering the news pages. Especially noted are the many earthquakes in places that were unheard of a few years ago. In the states of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas they are almost a daily occurrence and sometimes multiple quakes in the same day. Of course, these are being explained off by problems created by the oil industry, but I note that quakes are reported at the same time around the globe.

Erratic weather patterns—hurricanes, tornadoes in strange places, seemingly unceasing winter storms, volcanoes erupting or threatening to erupt, are not “global warming” or “climate changing” results, in my opinion. But because of their volume of increase in these days over those of just a few decades ago, I think Romans 8:19-23 better describes the nature of these things:

“For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”

The earth is groaning in anticipation of its redemption from the curse that came upon it when Adam sinned in the Garden and was expelled to a destiny of hacking out a livelihood amid thorns and brambles—see Genesis 3:17-19. Thus man, when he believes, also groans within himself for his own redemption, as the Romans 8 passage declares!

Then, signs in the heavens—unusual solar activity of sun spots, magnetic waves, reversing of its poles; asteroid and meteor bypasses of earth have been repeatedly reported in the news. The coming strange and rare collection of lunar eclipses that NASA, our space agency, has projected for 2014 and 2015, with a solar eclipse in the middle of them and having scheduled dates that are set for the first and last of the Jewish annual feast days that were established in Leviticus 23.

Things Social

In this category we can include the moral decline of societies around the world reflected in sexual orientation issues such as legalization of same-sex marriage, the ground-swell push toward legalized drug culture practices, the resulting thievery, murders, rapes and general distrust and disunity between races and people in general.

It spins out this way: When a people reject the God of creation from their midst, a vacuum does not result in His place—it is immediately filled with evil. In the case of the believer who turns from God, his life becomes filled with the lusts of the flesh. The non-believing society which refuses to allow acknowledgement of God, especially in the person of Jesus Christ, automatically opens the door to whatever diabolical presence that chooses to enter. The result of rejecting God is shown in Romans 1:18-32, and ends with the “falling away” of apostasy that Paul writes of in 2 Thessalonians 2:3.

When that context is followed on to the next level of the encroachment of evil, Paul notes that the final resistance to evil is taken away and then, the source of all evil is revealed in the fullness of that man of sin, that lawless one: “For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8).

That Three-Part Cluster of Things

Those things discussed above, generally things in the earth and in the heavens, are not devised by man, even though Al Gore and his followers would have us believe so, in respect to weather patterns and other physical phenomenon the world has seen unfolding in increasing magnitude.

Mankind definitely is the frontrunner in the social and moral ills of our society, but these are not like they are planned as goals to be sought. It’s like unwanted reminders from God that man really cannot make it without Him. As was mentioned earlier, the message of Romans 1:18-32 is that when a society rejects God and His truth, He turns His back on it and its end result is total degradation. The alternative message is that of 2 Peter 3:9, For God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (“And be saved,” I would add.) Man is not only physical, he also is a spiritual being, therefore what Jesus declared is absolutely essential: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4), as I seem to refer to so often.

So, we come to this cluster of things coming together that are particularly dependent on God’s eternal plan and previously appointed times of their emergence.

Things Economic

Without any shadow of doubt, even, it is clear that Barack Obama’s intentions were well stated in his speeches during the 2008 presidential campaign. Just before the election he made this declaration: “We are just five days away from fundamentally changing America forever!” In his speeches, he would also declare that “America is the greatest nation ever known,” or various words to that effect, then invite listeners to join him in his goal to “fundamentally change it” (i.e. “destroy it”).

America’s economic well-being has become a dismal picture of continual high unemployment, massive government deficits, and increasing social disunity and unrest.

Liberal spokespersons try to convince us that things are going great, even much better than they were under President George W. Bush. But those who know and see the facts on the ground, out in the real world of “bricks and mortar,” realize this president is a fraud, full of deception , in violation of his oath of office, and they are wondering why nothing is being done about it—if we, indeed, are a “nation of laws.”

Consequently, the American dollar, as the world currency, is in jeopardy, and the whole world is floundering in gigantic debts to controlling central banks and centralized banking cartels that can manipulate the economy practically with the touch of a button. Is it not strange, or have you noticed, how many high level bankers have been jumping to their deaths or otherwise ending their lives in apparent desperation of some sort? It is reminiscent of the economic difficulties of the 1930s.

A member of the Rothschild family, about 1820, is said to have stated, “Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I will not care what its laws are.” Of course, the Rothschild banking dynasty had been developing long before that time, from the serfdoms of Europe of old, and many decades would come and go before that great bastion of freedom from economic slavery, the United States of America, would be secretly conquered by an evil conspiracy of high level financial interests who met in utmost secrecy at a place called Jekyll Island off the Georgia coast at the end of November, 1910. There, plans were laid to bring the United States under bondage to a central bank owned not by the government but by domestic and foreign parties intent on world domination. In order to get it passed through the Congress, it was named the Federal Reserve System and was passed into law in 1913. Government officials who are complicit with this conspiracy will claim that it surely is an agency of the U.S. government.

Many avoid a direct answer to the question, but I have heard an IRS Commissioner openly claim that it is, indeed, a valid agency of the government. In fact, however, it is neither Federal nor is it a Reserve. Paper currency is printed by the government printing office, sold to the Federal Reserve for ten cents on the dollar, then loaned back to the U.S. government at face value. Minted coins, however, are transferred at face value.

Did you noticed that nothing of real value is involved in the currency exchanges? The “money” is created out of thin air, declared to be “legal tender for all debts, public and private.” By setting interest rates on the loans made, the Federal Reserve can manipulate the available money supply and thereby increase or decrease the economic activity of the nation. It has been reported that in the early 1930s, member banks were ordered to call in their loans to businesses and farmers and take possession of properties that secured the loans, thus creating, in part at least, the Great Depression of the 1930s.

It should not be surprising if “following the money trail” might lead to the unanswered questions in accounts of the assassinations of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Lincoln issued government-backed “greenback dollars” and Kennedy issued silver certificates by executive order. Neither of the issues were under the auspices of the banking systems then in place. As others have observed, the Golden Rule has been modified to read, “He who has the gold, rules.” (All personally-held gold was confiscated in 1935, and I saw a news article recently that the finders of a cache of gold coins were to turn it over to the Treasury for no more than $35 per ounce in value—same as it was in 1935.)

With $17 Trillion of accumulated national debt on the books, and more readily planned, it is not difficult to see that America will soon go the way of Greece, Spain, Italy and other European countries who are struggling with more debt than their economies can handle—and all owed to central bankers, directly or indirectly, whose goal is a one world economy and a cashless society where exchanges are made electronically and immediately. News headlines are constantly warning of an impending economic collapse, worldwide. (Continued in Part Two).

Jesus said, in John 8:32, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Free from what? If freedom is the goal, then bondage is what must be overcome, and if the  truth would set us free, then a lie holds us in bondage. There seems to be no one-sided issues out there—it’s yes or no, right or wrong, good or bad, up or down, front or back, etc. Some wise person figured it out—for every action there is a responding reaction.

The truth has greater authority than a lie, therefore it can break the hold of bondage and set a person free. Therefore, when Jesus answered the devil’s temptations with quoted Scripture (i.e. “it is written”), He was also showing believers how to combat the lies of the enemy—Satan. Jesus made the astounding claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by Me” (John 14:6) yet many otherwise intelligent people deny emphatically that it could be so.

I submit that if someone could produce viable evidence that their alternate provider of salvation has died on a cross in fulfillment of those foreshadowing blood sacrifices recorded in the pages of the Old Testament, then show us the nail marks in his hands and we perhaps could be swayed toward that possibility! There is not even a shred of a possibility for that to happen. The only alternatives ever produced are merely guidelines for human effort. Cain saw that would not work, even at the very beginning of humanity!

John wrote in his first epistle, “…no lie is of the truth” (1 John 2:20), that is, the truth cannot have any shadow of doubt in it. That is why the Ten Commandments are not just ten suggestions, and why Jesus affirmed God’s edict in His answer to the devil’s first temptation, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).

In that John 8 passage, Jesus began at verse 31, saying, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed,” and in verse 36, He adds, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.” It is the lie of Satan that opposes the truth, with deception continually repeated over the centuries to bring people into bondage to sin through lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Because the truth of Jesus Christ, claimed by a person, Paul could write in Romans 6:14, “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”

In the pursuit of the truth of God, one must come to realize a very basic starting point. Recently I posted a three-part article on the Beatitudes from Matthew 5, and that first Beatitude nails it down pretty tightly.  One must realize he is spiritually in deep poverty and in great need of God’s mercy and grace. To the religious scribes and Pharisees in Jerusalem, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Mark 2:17). Jesus was seen eating and drinking with tax collectors and sinners, and they were critical of Him for it. I suspect that Jesus may have been giving them a back-end message in saying that, for He knew those self-righteous hypocrites needed repentance as much as did those with Him.

Considering Some Key Principles

One of my uncles once was frustrated about the structure of the Bible (he was not a born-again believer). He complained that it would have made more sense to organize it like an encyclopedia, with everything about a topic in its own section. I admit that he had a point, but the organization of the Bible could very possibility be a unique ploy of the Lord to protect His truths from easy manipulation and fraudulent modifications. (It is still not immune from those tactics, as we have seen happen over the centuries.) So, the Lord has scattered His truths throughout the Bible, available to the serious seeker of truth as one who would search for it as for “hidden treasures”(Proverbs 2:1-5).

Jesus seemed to accept the “search and find” concept, and it seems to have worked out that people tend to find what they want to find and not what they should find. He said to the religious leaders, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). This might just pinpoint the major problem some have in their “pursuit of truth,” in that a pre-conceived position could (and does) lead them to only the “truths” that support their mindset.

We need to have the attitude of the people of Berea, of whom Luke wrote in Acts 17:11,    “These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word       with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” The original King James Version calls them “more noble,” and it occurs to me that perhaps     that is why Paul wrote two letters to the Thessalonians and none to the believers of Berea. Nevertheless, it is the standard rule, in a nutshell, of finding God’s truths.  Someone has    pointed out that the Bible is its own best commentary.

At Rapture Ready, Kit Olsen edits, coaches, and helps get these articles in better shape for posting. She recently sent me the following long-standing guideline for Bible interpretation, which I had seen years ago but did not have handy for reference:

The Golden Rule of Interpretation

When the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate content, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicates clearly otherwise.

Following the teachings of early church leaders may not be the ideal source for Bible truth.  As Acts 17:11 tells us, see what the Word, itself, says. Remember, the earliest church fathers were those who wrote the Scriptures, “as moved by the Holy Spirit of God.” Would it not be them who would have the final say? Church traditions have found their way into church doctrine over the centuries, and some have been invented and followed, having no Biblical basis. If the practice is of the flesh, not of faith and biblical truth, it will lead to undesirable results. Three times the New Testament reminds us that “the just shall live by faith,” and once, plainly, “for we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).

To many church people, much of the Old Testament is allegorical, that is, not actual or historical, but symbolic. It plays well when a prophecy doesn’t fit into a preconceived idea. But when tested by the whole counsel of God’s Word, there are unanswered questions that seem to have nowhere to go for answers. For an example, those who tell us that John’s vision of Revelation, or the end-times prophecies, took place in the first century, mainly tied in with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 A.D. leave us with such questions.

What do we do, then, with Daniel 9:27, which says there will be a covenant confirmed for seven years, and in the middle of that period, a sinful person will enter the Temple and declare himself God? But the Temple had been destroyed, yet how did the desecration happen three and one-half years later in a Temple that was no longer in existence?

Other Key Scriptures

Heavy duty mathematics boggles my mind; I can’t go there. But the simple stuff makes sense to me—adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing. When Paul advised Timothy to “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15), he introduced a key principle for Bible understanding. For instance, there should be no question that God has related with  mankind in general and His believers in particular, along with the Hebrew people, differently in different periods of time over the centuries.

A current example was specified when Jesus answered that final question of the disciples in Acts 1:6, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:7-8).

In saying that, He turned their attention to the more immediate era that must precede that restoration of the kingdom to Israel. Paul calls it the “dispensation of grace” (Ephesians 3:2), and in connection with verse 8, it was described in Acts 15:14 that “God at the first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name.”

Now that the initial steps have been made to restore the kingdom to Israel, we know that era is about to be closed. If these things are not lined up right–rightly divided–the result is a false doctrine that does not match scriptural truth. As I quoted 1 John 2:20 earlier, “…no lie is of the truth.”

Other Scriptures I hope and trust to be the foundation of my search for truth and its expression in my articles:

2 Timothy 3:16-17 – “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and isprofitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Hebrews 4:12-13 – “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must giveaccount.”

Isaiah 28:10 – “For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept,line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”

Daniel 2:20-22 – “Daniel answered and said: “Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His, and He changes the times and the seasons. He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding. He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him.”

Amos 3:7 – “Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.”

John 16:13 – “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come.”

Obviously, these are not conclusive. It begs the question of what Paul meant when he told the elders from Ephesus, “For I have not shunned to declare to you the whole counsel of God ” (Acts 20:27). (Emphasis mine.)

A passage that should foster a considerable amount of the fear of God in us any time we embark on a writing exercise is this one:

“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:19).

And, in conclusion:

“In all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works; in doctrineshowing integrity, reverence, incorruptibility, sound speech that cannot be condemned, that one who is an opponent may be ashamed, having nothing evil to say of you” (Titus 2:7-8).