Scarcely a day goes by as of late that I don’t get at least one or two email messages predicting a particular date the rapture will occur. These are sometimes based upon personal heads-up the emailer claims the Lord gave to him or her. Sometimes these are predictions passed on to me by someone whose been sent a  newsletter that gives the date the Lord gave the newsletter’s sender. The rapture, if not predicted as to the precise hour, day, week, or month, is put within a time frame based upon convoluted massaging of special holy days involving Israel. Passover, Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, feasts of various sorts, etc., are manipulated to make them the likely rapture date.

Most recently, the date June 8 has been number crunched and calculated as being the time of Pentecost, and the focus of the predicted time of the rapture for some. Another date the rapture would supposedly occur was given as June 12 by a cult leader in Texas.

If you are reading this and millions of people haven’t just vanished, you know the predicted dates of June 8 and June 12, 2008 (calculated by some as the dates surrounding the anniversary of Pentecost this year) were not the time of Christ’s calling Church Age believers to be with Him as given in John 14:1-3, 1 Corinthians 15:51-55, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

The most recent proof of the grievously flawed rapture prediction process is, as pointed out above, the failure of the June 8, 2008 “Pentecost” date.

How does one explain without profound embarrassment at the very least, after claiming the Lord gave him or her such a date, that the millions of Christians never vanished? Did God change His omniscient mind? Or, could the date be the product of human error, whether deliberate misinformation or because of genuine but overzealous desire to see the event take us all home?

No matter how sincerely believed by the would-be prophets, their predictions were–are—wrong. They are “false prophecies.” They failed to come true, and this does disservice to the God of heaven, the One who, in many cases, was said by the ones doing the predicting to have given them the precise time of rapture.

Time to recalibrate, reconfigure, withdraw and think again, for those who feel for some reason they must try to tell us the precise time of the stupendous event that we have come to call the rapture of the Church. Better yet, I would gently, kindly, in Christian love, suggest that you just don’t do that anymore. Such prognostications are always wrong. If one of these predictions were correct  as to the precise day, hour, etc., Jesus himself would be made a liar. He said: “But of that day and hour knoweth no [man], no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36).

The Lord went on to reinforce the truth that man is not privileged to know the exact time: “Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44).

Such a declaration that we can’t know the exact day and hour will, I’m certain, bring protest that we are instructed to know the times and seasons that His return is near. No, I must disagree. Here’s what the Scriptures say about that often-misused claim: “And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power” (Act 1:7). And again: “But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:1-2).

These Scriptures tell us that we will not know the exact time Jesus comes in the rapture. It will happen like a sudden, unannounced break-in on unaware earth-dwellers.

It is true that Christians shouldn’t be surprised, thus the rapture of the Church shouldn’t overtake the believer. But the event will nonetheless be as dramatic and as unanticipated as a thief breaking into a home. Jesus said that a good husband and father would not allow his home to be broken into because he would be ready. He would be ready because he would be watchful for signals that the break-in could happen at any moment.

Thus, the Lord said the following to each Christian of the Church Age (Age of Grace): “What I say unto one, I say unto all, watch” (Mark 13:37).

It is absolutely true that Church Age believers are expected to be ready–be expectant for Christ’s any-moment return for them. This is entirely different than in the case of tribulation saints who can know the time of His return at the conclusion of Armageddon (Rev. 19:11).  Being “ready, for in an hour ye think not the son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44) is a far cry from trying to name the exact day and hour, or even time-frame based upon Jewish holy days or other past biblically reported event. These have always been wrong. Still, the date-setters insist on pinning down the exact time the Lord has determined to say “Come up hither!”

God’s Barometer
While we are not to know the exact time or season of Christ’s coming in the rapture,we are indeed commanded to be aware of the approach of His second coming back to earth. Jesus chided the pious Judaizers for wanting a precise sign rather than being spiritually attuned to conditions around them that proved the Messiah’s coming among them.

“The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.

And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” (Matt. 16:1-3).

God’s great eschatological clock is really more like a supernatural barometer that gives prophetic weather reports. Like in the case of the earthly barometers forewarning the approach of a massive hurricane by presenting predictive atmospheric pressures, God’s prophetic barometer presents the end-times issues and events that are the signs of the times for this late Church Age era. We know the birth pang-like times by the prophesied signs that press upon this generation. We know the rapture is near because the Great Tribulation storm approaches, and Christ will call His Church to be with Him before that storm begins (John 14:1-3; Rev. 4:1).

So, What Time Is It?
The signs of the times presented at this present hour are unmistakable to the Christian who is truly faithful to the Lord’s command, “What I say unto one, I say unto all, watch” (Mark 13:37). “When you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your head, for your redemption draweth near” (Lk. 21:28).

We who feel it our commission to study God’s prophetic Word as our life’s work, as well as Bible prophecy students in general who study from a premillennial, pretribulation rapture position, are constantly amazed at the issues and events that are gushing upon our world today. Such a flood of turbulence was prophesied by Daniel the prophet: ”And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined” (Dan. 9:26).

What a flood we are in these days!

Seas and Waves Roaring
No matter what network or channels we look to for weather, the meteorologists and news pundits time and time again use words like “worst ever,” “record-breaking,” “unprecedented,” “unbelievable,” and other phraseology to express astonishment at the weather-related matters they report.

Record numbers of tornadoes, floods, droughts, and fires have happened in record-breaking fury. They continue to occur simultaneously in America and around the world.

Nations in Distress with Perplexities
The economies of America and the world are in disarray while petroleum in the Middle East seems to be the catalyst pushing mankind toward the prophesied showdown at Armageddon. Meanwhile, prices per gallon for gasoline and the spin-off stresses that incubate conflicts within and between nations at every level continue to rise, and appear unstoppable.

Earthquakes, Famines, Pestilence
Most every day, earthquakes of increasing magnitudes are reported from all over the globe. The U.S. is suffering temblors from every section of the nation. Loss of life in the world’s major population centers mounts quickly with each new quake and aftershocks.

The United Nations has issued reports that project food shortages on a worldwide scale. That organization calls for immediate action that, if it does not come, might mean the death of entire nations for the most destitute peoples on the planet.

Plague-like diseases threaten to inundate these most afflicted regions because of lack of nutrition and safe water sources. It’s almost as if the third rider of the apocalypse is already galloping across earth’s surface upon his black horse.

God’s Timepiece
The hour of this Age of Grace is late. The child of God spiritually attuned to Christ’s exhortation to be watchful has a sure sign in these troubling though exciting times.

Israel is that supernatural timepiece by which we can know just what time it is on God’s prophetic timeline.

The tiny Jewish state has already become the “cup of trembling,” and the “burdensome stone” predicted by Zechariah 12:1-3. Most nations of the U.N. always look to blame Israel rather than its angry, blood-vowed enemy neighbors, whose concentric religion is Islam.

The analogy has been made that Israel is God’s prophetic clock, and Jerusalem is the minute hand.It is not much of a stretch to believe that the second hand of that prophetic clock might be the current Mid-East peace process.

Daniel’s end-of-days foretelling about a peace covenant that will be confirmed by the world’s last and most wicked tyrant, Antichrist, might well now be in view. The “Prince that shall come” who will confirm the seven-year peace covenant will set in motion the last seven years of human history immediately preceding the second advent of Jesus Christ. (Read Daniel 9:26-27.) Jesus said the following about that time: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24:21).

The “Roadmap to Peace” is on the table in the Middle East process of searching for how to avoid nuclear Armageddon. Few, even among Christianity, understand the profound importance of  this fact. The second hand of God’s prophetic clock is ticking.

What Time Is It?
It looks to be the closing seconds of this Church Age. The rapture can strike like a thief in the night with the next click of that second hand.

Producers of programming  for the major cable networks, like The History Channel, Discovery, and National Geographic air documentaries from time to time that are usually titled something like “The Perfect Storm.” The documentaries look at the several large storms in the northeast United States in 1991 that coalesced off the coast of New England in the Atlantic and swept on shore as one massive blow. The video shows then-President George Herbert Walker Bush’s home in Kennebunkport, Maine, being assaulted by the turbulent Atlantic.

The “perfect storm” was raging along the northeastern U.S. coast at the same time the Bush administration was involved in negotiating Israel’s future in Spain. Here we are, almost two decades later, and another Bush administration is  in the middle of Israel’s business, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice trying to get Israel to divide its land and the city of Jerusalem in order to create a Palestinian state along side the Jewish state. It seems another perfect storm is coalescing while this American interference in God’s plan is taking place. It is a storm that is part geophysical, part socioeconomic, and totally spiritual, in the view of many of us who analyze eschatological matters.

The Israel Miracle
Many see as a miracle Israel’s being back as a nation-state with its own language. Hebrew was once thought lost to the Jewish people as a common language following the last diaspora around 135 A.D., when the Roman emperor Hadrian put down the Jewish insurrection and scattered the Jewish people. Yet it is again Israel’s national language, just as foretold for the time near Christ’s return.

America has been at the forefront of Israel’s birth into modernity. There can be no doubt, upon looking into the history of Israel’s coming back into its God-given land, that the U.S. has been first the midwife at its birth, then its protector–in human terms—assuring its right to exist among the nations of the world.

America in God’s Plan
If I may again do a mini-commercial for my book coming out with Harvest House Publishers in February of 2009, titled The American Apocalypse: Is the United States in Prophecy? I must say that while preparing the manuscript my research brought home to me the stunning proof of America’s God-ordained destiny. No one can explain to any degree of satisfaction why America isn’t mentioned by name in the Bible. There are many speculations and postulations, but the answer to the question about whether the United States is mentioned in Bible prophecy continues to elude. The answer will have to await the unfolding of history. However, modern Israel is living proof that America was established for God’s great purposes. Those are:

1) the capability to preach the gospel message to the whole world; and

2) to bring Israel to birth on May 14, 1948, then to act as its protector as the Jewish state stood on its feet, as prophesied in Ezekiel, chapter 37.

America is living testimony to the absolute truth of God’s faithfulness to fulfill His prophetic Word. America is the most materially and spiritually blessed nations ever to exist. God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3 is thus 100 percent validated: “I will bless those who bless thee, and curse those who curse thee.”

The United States has been the recipient of the first part of that promise. Israel’s satanically driven enemies have been recipients of the second part of that promise, and lie strewn in abject desolation along the dark corridors of history.

The proof of America’s coming to birth with a foreordained destiny, planned by the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,  leaps from recent history in fashion that is thunderous. The United States has blessed Israel, and the result has been that this nation has brought mankind from the dark recesses of the past to the brightness invented by its illuminated genius. Since the time Benjamin Franklin was shocked by lightning while he experimented with a kite and a key, thus, I am convinced, infusing the soon-to-be founding father with special ideas directly from the finger of God, this nation has electrified –literally—the whole world.

America’s Failure
The flip side of America’s comportment as of late, however, is as frightening as its brilliant inventiveness and contribution to modern man has been electrifying.

This country, so key to bringing fulfillment of end-times prophecy into focus in human, earthly terms, by helping put Israel at stage center on the global scene, at present  is now key to setting in motion the time of tribulation–the last seven years of human history preceding Christ’s second advent. The “Roadmap to Peace,” the brain-child for the most part of geopolitical strategists in America and the European Union, is pushing forward the, perhaps, predecessor to what God calls “the covenant made with death and hell.”

As a result, God’s perfect prophetic storm of forewarning of wrath is blowing across this nation. Wrath and judgment could be just around the corner of the next crisis.

Perfect Prophetic Storm Has Arrived
The perfect prophetic storm is upon this last-time generation. To understand the darkly serious truth of America’s tinkering in the matter of forcing Israel to make human peace with its enemies, we must delve heavily into the relevant prophetic Scriptures. We begin by seeing that peace arrangement prophesied by the prophet Daniel: “And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the  overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate” (Dan. 9: 26-27).

Results of False Peace-Making
The great prophet Isaiah foretold the ramifications upon Israel, and by extension, the entire world:

“Wherefore hear the word of the LORD, ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem. Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves:

Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.

Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet: and the hail shall sweep away the refuge of lies, and the waters shall overflow the hiding place.

And your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it” (Isa. 28:14-18).

Unprecedented Trouble
Jesus himself prophesied Israel’s great trouble, which was previously given by Jeremiah the prophet as recorded in Jeremiah 30:7. Jesus forewarned the following:

“When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house: Neither let him which is in the field return back to take his clothes.

And woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days! But pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the sabbath day: For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be” (Matt. 24: 15-21).
Jesus foretold that there is coming the worst time in human history, and that time will be during the seven years immediately preceding His second advent–when He literally returns to the planet to put an end to Armageddon, then set up His millennial throne atop Zion at Jerusalem. Keep in mind that this time is after the holocaust of the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler. The “prince that shall come” –Antichrist—will perpetrate horrors upon the Jews far worse than the Fuehrer perpetrated!

God’s Forewarning
The question is this: Seeing as how the Lord of heaven always gave warning of pending judgments of the past, is it not logical that He would give even more pronounced forewarning in the times leading up to the era of His wrath and judgment, which Jesus, who is God himself, said will be the worst time of all human history? And, this brings us to the subject of this essay, “the perfect prophetic storm.”

To repeat the earlier assessment of what is going on in the world today –the strange, volatile times in which we of this generation find ourselves: It seems another perfect storm is coalescing while America’s interference in God’s plan for Israel is taking place. It is a storm that is part geophysical, part socioeconomic, and, to those of us who view Bible prophecy as literal, totally spiritual in the many fronts pulsing from its center.

Rampaging Nature
Nature on the rampage over the past several years coincides closely with America’s and the Quartet’s (U.S., E.U., U.N., and Russia) attempts to force the making of a Palestinian nation upon land that is Israel’s by divine right. The geophysical upheavals have been on the increase in intensity while America gets more deeply involved in formulating a peace agreement between Israel and her neighbors.

The “Roadmap to Peace” has metamorphosed into a process that now demands that Israel give up not only land she has won with each succeeding attack from her enemies, but that Israel divide Jerusalem, allowing the new Palestinian state, when instituted, to make eastern Jerusalem its capital.

As I’ve written before, the action is the same as poking the Almighty in the apple of His omnipotent eye. The action will not stand. I believe we are seeing not God’s judgment and wrath at this point, but His solemn warning of things to come. The perfect storm is thus brewing. It has been doing so for several years.

Hurricane Katrina boiled to the surface on August 23, 2005, just off the Horn of Africa, became a 175-mph hurricane on August 28 in the Gulf of Mexico, and slammed into New Orleans and coastlines surrounding that city. The storm claimed a total of 1,836 confirmed dead, with 705 missing. It was the most costly hurricane to date, at $8.96 billion.

At the time it was announced that Jerusalem was on the table for division, thus to allow the Palestinians to build a capital there, California’s northern coast exploded in fires from more than 1,000 lightning strikes, an unheard of occurrence in that area of the state. The fires raged south and westward, requiring billions of dollars to attempt containment.

Floods gushed through America’s heartland at the same time, claiming lives and huge portions of land, much of the prime farmland made useless by the flooding. The plains, Mississippi Valley, and much of the Ohio Valley and other areas of middle America suffered with tornado outbreaks that puts the year 2008 on track to be a record year for twisters.

Hurricane Gustav, followed on its heels by Hurricane Ike, brought further devastation, affecting petroleum supplies and uprooting people by the thousands.

The southeast United States suffered by droughts, in some regions several years long.

Global Economic Storm
While the American secretary of state continues to travel to Israel and other places, twisting the arms of Israeli leadership to divide Jerusalem and otherwise give land for peace, the perfect prophetic storm continues to coalesce in matters involving  the national and, by extension, the global economic markets.

Corporate giants once thought invincible against the blasts of deadly economic storms are in the headlines today. Todd Strandberg correctly assessed the extreme measures being taken to try to prevent the financial part of the perfect prophetic storm’s effects from wreaking  total economic collapse.

Todd wrote:

“September 2008 will easily go down as the darkest month in U.S. financial history. We have never seen so many large financial institutions falter in such a short period of time:

1. Mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the U.S. government.

2. Lehman Brothers Holdings succumbed to the subprime mortgage crisis. It is the biggest bankruptcy filing in history.

3. Merrill Lynch was saved from bankruptcy by a shot-gun merger with Bank of America.

4. The world’s largest Insurer American International Group was saved from certain collapse by a $85 billion federal loan…” (Todd Strandberg, raptureready.com, Nearing Midnight, Monday Sept. 22, 2008).

Tribulation Tempest Approaches
The perfect prophetic storm rages as likely precursor to the truly cataclysmic tempests that will come upon a wicked, rebellious world ripe for judgment. Jesus Christ is the only shelter to be found from that coming time of unprecedented turbulence upon Planet Earth.

The Lord promised those who accept His offer of salvation to be removed from that horrendous time (Revelation 3:10).

He said the following: “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).