Constant Crisis Mode

One of the most active features of our domain has been the Rapture Index. It has been the subject of a plethora of articles by the secular media. When I started it in 1987, my simple interest was focused on the activity of end-time events. There have been times when not much was going on in relation to Bible prophecy.

When I was in the Air Force, there was a time when I could be sent on a 45-day deployment to the Middle East and leave the site on hold the whole time. Today, if I forget to update something on a daily basis, I get calls from friends worried about my health.

A couple of years ago, I realized that the Rapture Index had lost its importance, primarily due to the fact that it is constantly stuck at high levels. The index has not been below 170 in 20 years. It is amazing that the index had a low of 58 in 1993. What keeps the RI high is that we are in Constant Crisis Mode. There is always something going on that keeps prophecy-related events in the news.

One of my favorite drought sites is the US drought monitor: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu. It is run by the University of Nebraska, and they track areas of the US that have received below-average amounts of rainfall.

The site has records that go all the way back to the year 2000. I looked at them and noticed that in most years, the average level of droughts was less than 30% of the whole US. Right now, the percentage of the US in drought condition is 60%, which is the highest reading in the history of the site.

Because most western states receive their rainfall during the winter months, there was much hope that this season would end the Californian drought. The first couple months of winter looked good, with California receiving large amounts of rainfall, but the rain suddenly stopped. Since very little rainfall occurs in the summer months, California is back in the red zone for drought.

California has been in the drought category for four years straight. I was amazed at the state record of having the largest wildfires each year. I didn’t think there was anything left to burn in California from the 2018 to 2020 fire seasons. Somehow California had the misfortune of having 2021 as the fresh record for the most areas burnt.

Normally when winter comes, the recorded numbers of wildfires significantly decrease because of the reduced average temperature and the increased moisture levels. A week ago, I saw a map that had at least a dozen fires burning over the state of Texas.

What makes the current fire season odd is that I’ve been tracking them for several years and noticed the few odd years. In 2018 we had a generally wet year. It was odd because the moisture levels made it unproductive for growing anything.

I’ve been monitoring wildfires for 37 years, and I don’t ever recall so many fires during the spring in the Midwest. There was one report of fires in the Smoky Mountains. The Smoky Mountains are named so because of the natural configuration of clouds. To have an abundance of moisture is very odd and dangerous.

The funny thing is not that we are entering into a season that is prone to fire hazards; we are approaching a season that is the kingpin of fire dangers. I know we quickly become complacent to end-time views but are at a point where we don’t understand the current reality.

The reason why we are experiencing constant crisis is that we are very near to the cause of these end-time events. Once we realize that God is in control of events, we can make sense of the progression of events.

“And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?'” (Revelation 5:1-2, NKJV).

__ Todd

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Author’s note: This week’s Nearing Midnight article is one written some time ago. Never, however, has its subject been more time-appropriate than at this moment. With issues and events moving at accelerating swiftness, and in ever greater proliferation, we who name the Name of Christ must be constantly aware of the glorious fact that we could at any moment meet Him face to Face. –Terry

Thief in the Night

By

Terry James

No scriptural proof-text in God’s Word more clearly points to the first of the two phases of Jesus Christ’s second coming than does the following: “For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thess. 5:2).

We who hold to the pre-trib rapture viewpoint are often accused of being deceivers. We are condemned by our detractors as leading astray Christians alive now –if they live to see it–  who will be required to endure the tribulation, thus to wash their robes clean in preparation for inheriting God’s Kingdom.

We are castigated for foisting upon innocent, gullible believers a “secret rapture” that will somehow lead these Christians to take the mark of the beast (Rev. 13:16-18).

I’m not precisely sure of their “reasoning,” but I think they claim this because they are convinced that the ones who fall for the rapture viewpoint won’t be able to recognize Antichrist when he comes to power. We who teach the pre-trib rapture, so the accusation goes, would have falsely led these people to think the Church would not be here when Antichrist is on the world scene.

Almost all who are antagonistic to the pre-trib rapture doctrine teach that the “elect” will have to endure part or all of the seven-year tribulation era.

Those who hold to a post-tribulation rapture, or a no-rapture position, believe that Christ will come back at the end of the tribulation, at Armageddon.

They hold to the notion that that is His only return in the second coming. There are other views of the second coming that have Christ returning when the earth is perfected and made ready, but we won’t go there in this essay.

Let us look at only the pre-trib rapture and the post-trib rapture positions for the purpose of exploring what is meant by the “thief in the night” references in 1 Thessalonians 5:2 and 2 Peter 3:10.

These two viewpoints–the pre-trib, and the post-trib–offer the greatest contrast to examine in consideration of the second advent of Jesus Christ, within the overall belief that rapture will, according to Bible prophecy, happen before Christ’s foot actually touches down on Planet Earth.

The pre-trib view of rapture says that Christ’s second coming is in two phases, separated by at least seven years. The post-trib rapture view says that the rapture and Christ’s coming back to the Mount of Olives will occur almost simultaneously–certainly with no more than a matter of days separating the two events. The post-trib position says there is no “secret” rapture. Christ’s coming again will be fully seen in the heavens by all, including Christians who will be watching for Him to break through the darkness of that hour.

We agree that the rapture of the Church (all born-again believers in Jesus Christ for salvation since the Church Age began at Pentecost) will be anything but a “secret”. The world will instantly go into cataclysmic chaos at the moment that stunning event takes place. The imagination is hard-pressed to fathom the ramifications of what will happen when millions suddenly vanish. Every child below the age of accountability will be gone in that mind-boggling instant of time. I am convinced that all babies (including those in the wombs of their mothers) will be instantly in the presence of Christ in the clouds of glory. Every corpse of every dead Christian will be raised to join with his or her soul to meet Christ in the air in that atomos of time.

The rapture will be mystifying, and to some an inexplicable phenomenon, but it will not be a secret. It will happen before the eyes of a stupefied planet of left-behind earth-dwellers. This declaration that Jesus will call His Church to be with Him seems audacious to many. But, it didn’t seem so to the Apostle Paul. He was quite confident–even adamant—in his prophecy concerning the “mystery” he had been given by the Holy Spirit to instruct all believers down through the Age of Grace (Church Age).

“Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51-52).

He explains what will take place next, in that stupendous fraction of a second: “For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:15-17).

Jesus himself told of this “mystery” Paul refers to in 1 Corinthians 15:51. The Lord explains what happens after believers –both the bodies of the dead and those who are living– are caught up in the air to be with Him: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye 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 unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (Jn. 14:1-3).

So, the rapture will take place. Believers and the bodies of those who died during the Church Age will be “caught up” in one single moment of time. “ALL,” not “some,” will go instantly to be with Jesus, who will then take them into heaven, where He has been preparing their dwelling places since He ascended from the Mount of Olives.

Again, the pre-trib position on this joyous event is that it is imminent (could happen at any moment), and will happen before the tribulation period begins.

The post-trib position says that it happens at the end of the most terrible time in human history, just as Jesus Christ is returning from heaven at Armageddon.

The pre-trib view holds that it will occur at an unknown time. It will be a stunning, sudden, and unannounced-to-the-world-at-large break-in upon business as usual on Planet Earth. The post-trib proclaims that it will occur following all of the horrors of the judgments outlined in Revelation.

The pre-trib view says that the world at large (left-behind earth-dwellers) won’t see it coming. The rapture will cause all left on earth to wonder what has happened. The post-trib view says that all eyes will behold Christ’s coming again to a hellish planet, and the living and dead saints will then be gathered to Christ.

The defining thing to consider in thinking on the two diametrically different views of the rapture and second coming is wrapped up in the term “thief in the night”. The Apostle Peter again uses this mysterious term, first used by Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:2: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Pet. 3:10).

Peter is saying here that the day of the Lord–that time when God and His Christ, His Son, takes over this fallen planet—will begin like a thief in the night.

It will be a sudden, catastrophic break-in upon a world doing business as usual. (Read Luke 17:26-29 to understand how things will be going along as usual when Christ comes back.)

This description hardly fits the post-trib view, or any other view that says Christ will rapture His Church during a time of unprecedented trouble (Jer. 30:7; Matt. 24:21). This indicates that it will be a total surprise, because a thief in the night doesn’t announce his coming with great, cataclysmic fanfare.

The break-in is swift, stealthy–a totally unexpected event.

Peter foretells in these passages that the “day of the Lord” will then run its course, until the remaking of the heavens and the earth. The rapture will begin this “day of the Lord,” which will then run at least 1,007 years.

This is the first phase of Christ’s second coming. The rapture occurs like a “thief in the night”. The second advent, when Jesus’ foot touches down on the Mount of Olives, is the second phase of His second coming.

There are those who say with vehemence that it is blasphemous to equate Christ’s coming again as being like the break-in of a thief in the night. How dare we liken their Lord to a “thief”!

Really? Here’s what Jesus, the Creator of all things, said about this matter:

“But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:43-44).

Looks like a pretty good case for the Lord’s sudden intervention into the nefarious affairs of this increasingly wicked world, does it not? That thief-in-the-night

moment could happen, literally, at any moment. Certainly, signals of the tribulation are beginning to come to pass.

“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh” (Lk. 21:28).

—Terry

Food Insecurity

Sometime last year I wrote an article about how we were facing a shortage of food. We had drought conditions in the US, China, and South America. Normally, things balance out by having a surplus of food production in some other area of the world. If we have a bad year in North America, the next year is likely to be normal or above average.

The one thing that has been saving the world from a global famine is the increase in the yield per acre. In the 1940s, the average farmers were only able to produce 40 bushels of corn per acre. Today, a farmer is able to get 144 bushels of corn from an acre of land.

In 2020 we had a massive derecho hit the state of Iowa. Millions of acres were damaged by the wild storm. The yield for the whole nation was still up because we had a record harvest per acre that year. Going forward, we cannot rely on higher yields because we simply have reached the limits of turning sunlight into grain.

We had about four years in a row where our luck was bad for food production. We are weeks away from the planting of the 2022 crop, and there are already indications that this year will see a shortfall in food production.

The condition of China’s winter wheat crop could be the “worst in history,” the agriculture minister said, raising concerns about grain supplies in the world’s biggest wheat consumer. Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the country’s annual parliament meeting, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian said that rare heavy rainfall last year delayed the planting of about one-third of the normal wheat acreage.

A survey of the winter wheat crop taken before the start of winter found that the amount of first- and second-grade crop was down by more than 20 percentage points, Tang said.

“Not long ago, we went to the grassroots to do a survey, and many farming experts and technicians told us that crop conditions this year could be the worst in history,” he said. “This year’s grain production indeed faces huge difficulties.”

Argentina has long been one of the largest exporters of corn and soybeans. It has halted all exports of soy products. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disrupted the global food supply chain as the prospect of dwindling stockpiles catapulted food prices to record highs.

According to a memo signed by Javier Preciado Patino, the secretary for agriculture markets, Argentina made moves last week to increase control over local farm goods by suspending soybean meal and oil for export. Following the news from Argentina, soy meal futures prices jumped more than 2.2%.

Since late February, Argentina has intervened in food markets with a subsidy for the domestic wheat industry similar to earlier policies for vegetable oils to mitigate soaring costs for consumers. The UN expects global food prices could increase another 8%-20% from here.

“The government typically puts a block on the export register, known as DJVE, before increasing taxes on shipments in order to stop farmers from preempting the hike with a flood of selling,” Bloomberg said, adding there’s speculation on commodity desks that Argentina will increase taxes on soy meal and oil to 33% from 31%.

Soy traders tell Reuters the sudden halt in Argentine supplies will steer importers toward the United States and Brazil for replacement supplies.

“Buyers have no choice but to reduce consumption or go to alternative sources for supplies,” said one Singapore-based trader. “We expect higher demand for U.S. meal. In Southeast Asia, buyers such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand were heavily reliant on the Argentine meal.”

Indonesia, the world’s largest exporter of cooking oil, will reduce exports of edible oils as a domestic shortage sparks panic hoarding among households, a sign of rising protectionism around the world as countries deal with record-high food prices. The nation of Ukraine is the largest exporter of sunflower oil. There will obviously be a shortfall of this product on the global market.

Russia is one of the largest exporters of fertilizer in the world. With Western sanctions blocking the movement of potash, ammonia, urea, and other soil nutrients, the yields of corn, soy, rice, and wheat are going to be hurt.

In agricultural powerhouse Brazil, some farmers are already applying less fertilizer to their crops, and some federal legislators are pushing to open protected indigenous lands for the mining of potash. In Zimbabwe and Kenya, small farmers are reverting to using manure to nourish their crops. In Canada, one canola farmer has already stockpiled fertilizer for the 2023 season in anticipation of even higher prices ahead.

Another blow to food production has been the spread of a highly pathogenic Bird Flu. Egg prices have soared as millions of chickens have been wiped out by the virus. Spread by migratory bird droppings, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is reporting cases in 30 states, totaling roughly 13 million birds that have had to be killed.

To find out why we are having so many problems with food production, we need to turn to Bible prophecy. Jesus said that calamitous events would be the warning sign of the last days. They would get worse over time, like birth pangs. This is what we are experiencing, so the rapture must be very near.

“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?’ Jesus answered: ‘Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 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. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains'” (Matthew 24:3-8, NIV).

--Todd

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Assessing Prospects for WW III

It was a time when the Cold War continued with fresh memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Filmmakers stimulated the theater-going public with offerings of dark humor steeped in fears of thermonuclear war.

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming! was the title of a 1960s movie—a comedy—in which there was panic in a New England village on the Atlantic Coast. A Soviet submarine had run aground because of its commander sightseeing the American coastline. The crew was sent from the sub to find a boat that could dislodge the sub and free it to continue its cruise.

There was great angst for a time, as the New Englanders thought they were being invaded by the Russkis. The movie was hilarious, with the people and the sub occupants coming close to conflict. But there was a meeting of two young people—the woman an American, the man a Russian submariner.

I took a year or so of Russian in college, but viewing this movie was where I learned to say “I love you” in Russian.

The story ended just right, as any good love story should, with the Russian sub threatened for destruction by US Air Force fighter jets flying overhead, but the pilots, seeing the New Englanders all around the sub, didn’t attack. The people were protecting the Russians, and soon the sub slipped back into the Atlantic deep.

I can’t remember what happened to the two young folks who were in love, but I presume all, too, was well in that department.

At this moment, the Ukrainian people find nothing funny about their experience. Yet there is a love story within its unfolding that can be discerned. While reports that hundreds, even thousands, on both sides of Putin’s aggression are being killed or maimed, there are reports of human interaction that unveils compassion of biblical proportion.

The Ukrainian people have, it is said, taken wounded Russian soldiers into their homes or to facilities and cared for them, even as the Russian forces continue their assault. On the other side, there are reports of Russian troops laying down their weapons and returning to their homes, because they haven’t the heart to continue killing people who are basically the same as the people they left back home.

I don’t know the degree of veracity of these stories, but give some credence to them because they are being reported across the entire spectrum of news forums—mainstream and alternative.

One wonders the fate of the troops who defect in this manner. Vladimir Putin is reported to be, like one-time dictator Joseph Stalin, executing generals who fail to accomplish their missions. Thus the four or five generals are reported to have been killed, with their deaths blamed on Ukrainian resistance fighters. What is the truth? Who knows? Well, only our God.

The troops who have a change of heart surely are meeting fates at least as bad as the generals rumored to have felt Putin’s wrath.

And it is Putin’s unknowns that have pundits and ordinary people worrying alike. Will there be World War III? As a matter of fact, has World War III already begun—has Putin now set out on a course that will end up involving all of Europe and eventually the entire world in a global conflict? Is Putin another Hitler, whose trajectory the Russian dictator seems to be following?

Some within Bible prophecy circles are wondering the same things. Is the world now seeing the beginning of the earth’s third global conflict? Are we about to get into nuclear combat one on one with the Russkis, as Slim Pickens, who played the captain of a hydrogen bomb-armed B-52 in the movie Dr. Strangelove, once said?

One acknowledged “expert” weighed in with the following assessment.

Author and former DIA intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler told Fox News Digital Thursday that a no-fly zone presents the most risk among known scenarios, but currently-unknown actions could inadvertently cause an escalation during the “fog of war.”

“Usually the path of the escalation is difficult to predict, it can come out of nowhere in the fog of war,” Koffler said.

Koffler argued that the current conflict in Ukraine is a “proxy war” between the U.S. and Russia that could easily escalate into a “shooting war.” (“The largest risk to an escalation of the conflict would be a no-fly zone enforced by NATO, experts say,” by Michael Lee, Fox News)

Diplomatic sources believe some within the US and Europe are poking the Russian bear by embracing the idea of no-fly zones over Ukraine—and by the introduction of Mig-29 fighter jets to the Ukrainian military to enforce that no-fly zone.

Such action, they believe, would bring about the shoot-down of Russian planes. A no-fly zone, plus such US-approved introduction of weaponry, would, Vladimir Putin has said, be considered an act of war.

The Russian tyrant has instructed his forces to fire a hypersonic missile into a Ukrainian underground military facility. The missile wasn’t nuclear-tipped, but the plain message analysts are saying Putin wanted to send is that Russia can, with the new, Mach 5 missile technology, reach not only the near points of Ukrainian territory, but all of Europe. The hypersonic missiles have a vastly larger range than the mid-range missiles heretofore used by the Russians.

Putin has said he is not averse to using tactical nukes to accomplish the Russian military mission of subduing parts of that nation the dictator believes belong to Russia.

All of this has the world of diplomats and even Christian prophecy pundits wondering whether there is about to be World War III, which will end in nuclear exchanges that will completely disrupt the world carrying on as we have known.

Well, we can interject that, with the way things have been carried on as of late, a heavenly disruption might be warranted. We’ve seen wickedness arise at levels that, as Ruth Graham might have concluded, rival the evil of the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Only God’s divine patience and mercy can explain why nuclear combat, one on one with the Russkis, hasn’t already broken out into WW III.

Diplomats of the world, many of whom are Christians and even Bible prophecy students, would adamantly disagree with my assessment about the prospects for World War III and nuclear annihilation.

I say without reservation that I have no fear of an all-out, global war at this juncture in human history. And that is the salient point—the words, “at this juncture in human history.”

For the current war waged upon Ukraine—or any other war—to explode or even gradually grow to all-out World War III would be contrary to what the Word of God foretells. As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ Himself, who is the very Word of God who holds together even the elements of the atom, foretold the following. (Again, remember that “the day when the Son of man is revealed” refers to the Rapture of the Church.)

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 17:27–30)

It would not be business as usual if the planet had just been ravished by nuclear devastation, just as it wouldn’t be business as usual if Christ was “revealed” at the end of the most horrific time imaginable—the end of the Tribulation.

There will be World War III, and there will be nuclear devastation, I have absolutely no doubt. But it will be after the Rapture, when all believers are in the only safe harbor there is—in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ when He calls us to Himself.

There is only one way to go to this assurance and safe harbor.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)

–Terry