During this troubling movement into ever-increasing evil, those among Bible teachers, writers, broadcasters, et al., who proclaim there is to be no pre-Tribulation Rapture are having a field day. They feed the business of prepping for a dystopian world. They stoke the fears of those who agree that life as it’s been known here in America will collapse into a Mad Max-type struggle for existence any day now.

And, in a way, they can’t be blamed. Everything points to a profound loss of sense of reality. End-times insanity certainly seems unstoppable while mankind moves farther and farther from God and toward that time John described in the book of Revelation.

Hearing podcasts today that talk of the horrors to come is disturbing. Not hearing anything about what is coming from the pulpits of most churches is even more disturbing. What disturbs most is that nothing is being told of the truth that Jesus Himself promises: the glorious calling of the Church into His presence at a time of enveloping darkness, like what’s taking place now.    

I recently began listening to a particular podcast because I wanted to hear the host’s take on the stealing of the 2020 presidential election. After I heard that, I continued to listen as much out of daily habit as for any other reason.

The blog’s host paints—correctly, for the most part—a bleak future just ahead for the nation and the world. He points out the globalist minions who want to bring the rest of us under their domination. He includes that he believes the vaccines are all part of the control they intend to establish. They are, he offers, designed to do physical harm to recipients in order to bring the world’s population down dramatically over the ensuing months and years—i.e., he insists the vaccines will interact with immune systems in deleterious ways to cause people to die from the vaccines’ effects.

He believes the world—and the US, in particular—is in for some of the darkest times in human history. Only a few will survive.

And this is where he loses my attention. He says only those who prepare properly will survive—that is, those who are true patriots with a godly or morality-based belief system.

The globalists elite and others of the would-be rulers will submerge into their extravagant underground bunkers and even fully-equipped-for-survival cities.

Folks without these resources will still be able to survive if they follow the prepper rules for survival, including buying survival products such as those offered in his store.

When the blog host began talking in terms of his belief in God—even in Jesus Christ—and his acceptance that the book of Revelation speaks of exactly the time of coming unprecedented trouble he is talking about, my interest was piqued.

He is apparently friends with a couple of well-known writers who delve into the subject of the hard times ahead for the nation and world. These are known to come against any notion of the Rapture of the Church. They’ve even on occasion scoffed at the idea of a pre-Trib movement of God’s people out of harm’s way. Christians will go through the Tribulation, but if properly prepared, will be kept more or less safe by God, they insist. Therefore, they must stock up and brace for the great hardships to come in order to survive.

I perceive that the blog host is, if he is a true believer—and I believe he is—he is a very immature one. That is, he has no understanding of Truth found in God’s Word in regard to prophecy yet future. I gather this opinion based upon several months now of listening.

When he began talking about the judgment and wrath in Revelation, earnestly imploring people to prepare to go through those times, I could do no other than find his email through a close friend who knows one of the men I mentioned earlier—one who is not a pre-Tribber. I emailed the blog host an offer to send him several of my books dealing with exactly the time of terrible trouble to come he’d been talking about. I also told him that his friends who teach against the Rapture are wrong, and, since he says he wants to consider all sides of matters, I wanted to present him with the truth about Christians not going through that coming time of horror.

I haven’t heard back from him. To even consider an alternate possibility to the position his anti-Rapture associates teach would go against his—and their—business models, as well as against their belief system regarding Bible prophecy.

I sensed, however, that I should make the effort to provide truth on that most glorious promise of our Lord that we will be delivered from the time of evil the likes of which mankind has never before seen.

Things going on in every facet of life at this moment, to the observant Bible prophecy student, point to very dark times ahead. The blog host I mention sees a moment coming when things will suddenly and catastrophically change. He thinks it will be brought about by the sudden fall of the US dollar as prime currency for the world, or because of some other financial disaster. Everything will collapse around the people of the nation and the world, and only those who are prepared—by having essentials of life stored, etc.—will survive. Billions will eventually die, he proclaims.

He is right about the coming calamity, except for being able to store enough gold, silver, and food to survive, and the cause of the catastrophic crash and movement into that world that will make the fictional era of Mad Max seem tame and rational by comparison.

That great, catastrophic time of unprecedented trouble will take place when millions of believers are called to be with their Lord in the heavenly clouds above this wrath-bound planet. That moment is drawing near. We can be sure of this because the Lord Jesus Himself said that when believers see the things that are now beginning to take place, we’re to “look up” because He (our Redeemer) is drawing near (Luke 21:28).  

My friend Pete Garcia and I are just completing a book on all of this, to be released in a few months, titled THE DISAPPEARING: Future Shocks That Will Rock the World.

The Apostle Paul says the following to what looks to be this generation:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve, as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.

For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18)

This week—the week of the Ides of March 2021—finds the world’s most powerful government, the most powerful government in all of history, in a state worse than that of ancient Rome under Julius Caesar. The difference in the American Empire and the ancient Roman Empire is that the people in power today are laboring under guilt that the election they won under questionable circumstances might have created a nation half-full of patriots who might come for them.

Plutarch wrote that, despite the warning by a seer named Spurinna predicting that the Ides of March of 44 BC harbored danger of assassination, Julius Caesar apparently gave it little thought. It is recorded that Caesar passed by the soothsayer while he was on the way to the Theater of Pompeii where he would be assassinated and joked, “The Ides of March are come.” implying that the prophecy had not been fulfilled, to which the seer replied, “Aye, Caesar; but not gone.”

The people, after all, had been basically convinced to bestow on the great Caesar the designation dictator perpetuo (“dictator in perpetuity”). This was done through the Roman democracy’s elective process. The dictatorial head of Roman government had no reason to fear the people. Of course, there were sixteen senators, one among them a close friend, who didn’t like the idea of having a dictator for life. The results were, of course, that we now view the 15th of March (the Ides of March) as an especially ominous date–thanks much to the Bard, William Shakespeare, and his play, Julius Caesar. 

Getting back to the American equivalent in government to that ancient Roman Empire, the guilt of which I speak, of course, is obvious. Half of the US voting public—and probably much more than half—voted for the other candidate. There is much anger now smoldering just beneath the surface of societal calm that the election was stolen. It is equally apparent that the guilt festering within the ranks of those who won or stole the election, depending on which you choose to believe, has created an Ides of March-type paranoia.

Those in control have since the January 6 hubbub in Washington, DC, when the Capitol and other government buildings were attacked, reacted and continue to react like they fear an Ides of March–type Roman Senate assault on them at any moment. DC is a locked-down, armed camp, with National Guard forces and hastily constructed barriers of various sorts walling off the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Foreign intruders, mostly illegal, many carrying COVID-19 infections and other diseases, are allowed more and more access into our southern borders. American citizens are locked out, more and more, from interacting with the governmental leaders whose salaries we pay and who supposedly who work for us. The president of the United States is kept from confronting the American people as all other presidents have done. The republic, even more than was the Roman republic all those centuries ago, is in a dire way. This Ides of March indeed looks ominous, going forward.

The following news/opinion editorial illustrates, I think, the guilt-ridden nucleus of leadership.

The Department of Defense on Tuesday agreed to keep thousands of National Guard troops stationed at the U.S. Capitol until late May, extending a posting that began after rioters overwhelmed law enforcement on Capitol Hill two months ago.

The problem for Democrats is when you blatantly flaunt election law and then institute policies that no one wants (e.g. money to Iran, bombing Syria, opening the southern border, putting children in cages, passing a massive spending bill that provides handouts to your friends and pays off your debts, etc), and then install a man as President who doesn’t know where he is and is led around like a geriatric patient, you get scared Americans will see through your corruption.

Democrats complained about a southern border wall but created a wall for themselves.  They demand the military guards it.  But they won’t send the same troops to protect our country’s border! (Joe Hoft, “Military Agrees to Keep Thousands of National Guard Troops at US Capitol for Weeks to Protect Corrupt Democrats Who Are Terrified of the American People,” Gateway Pundit, March 10, 2021)

The reason there is such anxiety among the political entities who have surrounded themselves with protection is a matter of basic character. Americans who consider themselves to have been done wrong in the 2020 elections still believe in the constitutionally mandated way of conducting personal and national life as established by the founding fathers. They wouldn’t perpetrate such violence unless in necessity of defense of life and liberty.

Those who at present hunker fearfully behind the barriers, walls, and weaponry of the National Guard would, themselves, consider assaulting with armed insurrection to get their way. They would utilize the very militant methods of which they falsely accuse the 74 million-plus voters who oppose their proven ideological movement away from traditional American values and traditions. To know this is true, we have only to remember the destructive evil of the anarchists they encouraged and protected while those surrogate forces tore down and burned cities.

There are those who, like Julius Caesars millennia ago, are working toward making themselves dictators perpetuo. But this ambition is not among true patriots who want to retain godly morality and values, and especially constitutional safeguards through law, not lawlessness like that championed by many of those whose political ideology supposedly won the 2020 elections.

The Ides of March this year especially seems to portend growing wickedness for the future. This means, for believers in Jesus Christ, that the blessed hope must be nearing the time of His revealing Himself to an increasingly rebellious world.  

It is good at this troubled time so near the end of the Age of Grace to claim the words of the Psalmist:

O love the Lord, all ye his saints: for the Lord preserved the faithful, and plentifully rewarded the proud doer. Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the Lord. (Psalms 31:23–24)