Today, as the new year begins, the cry for peace and safety rings more loudly than ever. I’ve written about the fears and calls for remedy of those fears in numerous posts. The prophecy below is one of the clearest in indicating when judgment will fall.

“For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

Following the Rapture of the Church, that cry will become much more urgent. As a matter of fact, the cry will be demanded from most everyone on earth at that time. The Antichrist will step forward and presumably have the answers to the deluded masses’ life-threatening dilemmas.

We can hear the cries even now beginning to build—not so much by the masses of peoples under the increasingly despotic governing authorities, but by the governing authorities themselves. Their fears, I think the evidence shows, are because they don’t wish their safe havens of ever-increasing wealth-building they’ve carved for themselves to be disrupted.

These fear-mounting threats to world peace

China wants to be number one in all matters of world domination. The CCP wants to retake Formosa (Taiwan). The Communist Party’s dictatorship has lost its fear of the US vanguard against their aggression with the current American presidential administration. The Chinese have, with patience and clever, even brilliant, strategies, tied up the US and much of the Western world with economic/monetary chains.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian military threaten the Ukraine and other neighbors. They have, by taking advantage of the Biden administration’s foolhardy green environmental/anti-petroleum policies, rearranged things in Europe and elsewhere in a way that places increasing hardships upon the average citizenries.

Israel, in the view of the globalist elite, presents a great threat to their drive toward one world by demanding that Iran get off its nuclear weapons ambition. Israel is seen as the hold-up to peace in the Middle East to a large extent, despite that it is the Jewish State’s surrounding enemies that declare almost daily that they will wipe Israel off the map.

The very wealthy and privileged among us are picking up the mantra of peace and safety in the entertainment world as well. The very purveyors of ideology that has been at the forefront of the “woke” cancel culture and the rest of that insanity now seek safety from their constituent masses. It would be humorous if it wasn’t a sin infection that will ultimately enlarge the chambers of Hell.

The following report tells more.

After years of rising crime in Los Angeles, elites in wealthy neighborhoods are finally panicking about the recent string of high-profile retail robberies and home burglaries. Experts say wealthy individuals are purchasing bulletproof cars, safe rooms, employing armed guards, and even constructing walls with barbed wire around their properties.

The issue of violent crime is nothing new to Los Angeles, but a spillover to upscale neighborhoods has put elites on edge. The Hollywood Reporter reports agencies that provide private security are seeing increasing demand for private patrols….

Estate manager Bryan Peele, president and founder of the L.A.-based Estate Managers Coalition, said his clients have “fully equipped safe rooms that they can live in for a few days, if necessary, that are completely hard-wired with phone cables, Internet, everything.”

One of Peele’s clients has three bulletproof cars and wears fake Rolexes. “This guy will take a $200,000 Rolex and copy it, using stainless steel and other metals, so it looks like the original but costs maybe $2,000-$3,000 per watch. So, in the event that it’s stolen, the client is out a lot less money,” he said.

Many upscale homes are installing more cameras, constructing fences with barbed wire, and employing 24-7 security details that will protect them once their private jet touches down to their mansions. (“Hollywood Elites Panic-Buy Armored-Cars and Safe-Rooms Amid Rising Violent Crime,” Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge, December 28, 2021)

Crime in the most elite sections of LA and the surrounding area has risen dramatically since so-called reforms to law and justice have taken place. The madness has caused cries for peace and safety from the most vocal “wokes” in the nation.

Criminals can steal as much as $950 worth of goods and receive only slaps on the wrist. What comes to mind is the scriptural reminder, “Be sure, your sins will find you out.”

Woke culture is reprobate thinking manifest for the entire world to see. Turning one’s back to God, as we are reminded in Romans chapter 1, brings about upside-down thinking.

Sadly, many–most—will never experience true peace and safety, either in this fallen world or, even more tragically, in the world to come—in eternity.

True peace and safety are found only in Jesus Christ. Only He can provide the shelter from the Tribulation storm to come and offer us safety throughout all of eternity during life after death.

Read again the words of the Lord of all lords—the Savior who came to take away the sins of the world. Hear through your spiritual senses the compassion and love in His prayer to the Heavenly Father.

When the Lord Jesus prays, the heavenly Father ALWAYS grants His Son’s prayer. Jesus prayed for the children of God—all children past, present, and future, saved through Christ’s precious shed blood:

“I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them….

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.

Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17: 9–10, 20–26).

 

We’ve just paused to examine, to marvel over, the coming of the Christ child—the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Christmas is, therefore, perhaps an even better time than ever to think on Christ coming again to wrap up all involved in that majestic purpose the Lord declared “finished” from the cross at Calvary.

God’s Word–Jesus, Himself—gave many signals of the wrap-up of matters involving the reclamation of this fallen planet. All of those signals were, most end-times seminary scholars seem to believe, issued to point to the Second Coming. The signs Jesus gave, we are told by many in this category, don’t include the mystery later revealed to and by the apostle Paul. I refer to the first phase of the Second Coming. Paul divulged that “mystery” in the following, of course.

“Behold, I show 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 Corinthians 15:51-5).

I disagree with my friends who believe Jesus never alluded to the Rapture while He was on earth in the flesh, preparing to sacrifice Himself for the sins of fallen mankind. I believe that He did so while speaking to His closest disciples who asked Him questions after He said He would be going away (speaking of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension). The Lord said:

“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” (John 14:1-3).

Jesus was talking here about His return to receive believers into His presence–above the earth (in the clouds); he wasn’t speaking of meeting them on the earth’s surface. Christ’s words here involve the “mystery” that Paul referenced in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus will call all believers to Himself in the air (Revelation 4:1).

Like in the case of His words to His disciples and to us down through the centuries, Jesus’ prophecy concerning the wrap-up of this earth age was meant for all believers, not just for the Jews, I’m convinced. The seminarians mostly believe that Matthew chapters 24 and 25 (the Olivet Discourse) were given only for Israel. The signs given in the Olivet Discourse, they proclaim, therefore don’t include mention of the Rapture of the church of this present age.

We have looked many times in these commentaries how and why I (and may I add significant Bible prophecy teachers) find Christ’s reference to that stunning event in the Olivet Discourse—for example, in Matthew 24:36-42 and again in Luke 17:26-30. We believe these words of our Lord speak explicitly about a time like the “days of Lot” and how He will intervene catastrophically just as He did in that evil time.

Jesus said people will be buying, selling, marrying, planting, and building just as usual. He will intervene into that wicked, evil time, and judgment will fall that very day. But first, just as Lot was taken out of Sodom, so believers must, in that future day of evil and wickedness, be removed is the clear implication.

How near the Rapture? How soon might we hear this call to all believers?

We’ve explored weekly all of the things going on in this world of corruption. We’ve especially dealt with the great deception and deceivers the Lord Jesus warned of. We’ve examined in detail every signal, from deception and deceivers to the precise characteristics of end-times man given by Paul in 2 Timothy chapter 3. They are all front and center in every news cycle as we live our daily lives. We are, as was Lot in Sodom, sorely vexed!

We face such wickedness not just monthly and yearly, but during every minute of every hour during the news cycles that bring ubiquitous evil-doings before us. Therefore, our question about the nearness of the Rapture is a good one.

The days of Lot seem to surround us. When such ungodly, unholy vileness reaches a level that God no longer can abide it, He acts. His next action in dealing with the corruption defiling mankind is scheduled as the last seven years of human history before the Second Advent—the Tribulation.

First, remember, His people—all born again of this Age of Grace (Church Age)—must be removed.

Has the present earth system corrupted itself to the point that the Lord must once again—and finally—begin deconstructing through the most horrendous judgment in history, this incorrigible world of rebellion? In reading the following, I believe we can get a sense of the Lord’s holy mind through words He gave David millennia ago. I see them as comfort in these times.

“Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth.

For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.

The Lord shall laugh at him: for he seeth that his day is coming.

The wicked have drawn out the sword, and have bent their bow, to cast down the poor and needy, and to slay such as be of upright conversation.

Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken.

A little that a righteous man hath is better than the riches of many wicked.

For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.

The LORD knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever.

They shall not be ashamed in the evil time: and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied.

But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.

The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous sheweth mercy, and giveth.

For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the earth; and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off” (Psalms 37:7-22).