But the great tribulation, on the other hand, is a mercy of God to TURN the distracted Christians to Christ from the world completely. You don't think Christians during that time, if left on the earth, will be distracted by worldly amusements or sinful living any longer do you?
No, and I do often think there are many people who NEED to go through tribulation to be shaken up enough to avidly pursue Christ (and unfortunately that could include me). So when I think of family and friends who would go through it I pray for courage and spiritual strength for them.
But in relation to the tribulation I'm thinking primarily of NONChristians, you seem to be thinking only of spiritually weak Christians. Do you think that those who do not now believe will not come to belief in the tribulation?
I don't think you can scare anyone into actual belief in anything. They'll either believe or they won't, and according to the scripture I'd guess that a great many are going to continue in unbelief.
There is no doubt that I'd have been Raptured if it had occurred in the early period of "first love." But over the years I lost that passion and enthusiasm and have found no way to recover it.
That may be partly because I never learned the kind of discipline you say you were taught as a new Christian, to spend regular specific time with the Lord daily.
Popular evangelical teaching interprets the multitude of Rev 7 as those martyred in the post-Rapture tribulation. It does seem to me to refer specifically to martyrs just because although there is always some degree of persecution attached to simply being a believer in the fallen world this passage specifically refers to GREAT tribulation. And I think the huge number of them can be accounted for if we interpret it in the light of Jesus' reference to the great tribulation where He says if God didn't cut it short no one would be left alive. We have seven billion people on the earth today, even a third of those would be pretty much "uncountable" if seen as one huge crowd. I do agree about the martyrs of Rev 6, not sure about your reference to the Manchild. But again, you could be right and I don't want to argue a lot about the interpretation of these things; Revelation is not an easy book to interpret.
I like your point about Methuselah's name reflecting God's patience with unbelievers. I've also heard that the names of all the patriarchs from Seth to Noah make a sentence referring to the coming Flood.
Well I was "high as a kite" in those early years, blissed out on loving God, daily experiencing some wonderful aura or beautiful scent of Holy Spirit presence. I could see it waning over the years as I got involved in such things as this debate, which you also mention as a cause. Jesus describes some believers as having become lukewarm whom He wants to vomit out, to put it in its literal meaning, and talks of those who have lost our first love. We have to recover it somehow Phat.
I really wish you wouldn't take what people say here so seriously, but all I can do is pray for you.
Thanks. No, I have lousy discipline. Maybe partly because I became a believer on my own by reading books and got in the habit of depending on external inspiration rather than personal discipline. Thanks though, that is good advice.
I got so enthused about the Rapture in the last few weeks the idea of missing it is too depressing to contemplate. What if it happens on this coming Rosh Hashana, just a few weeks away? All the signs are in place. Though it could be next year or the next I suppose. Well, all I can do is pull myself together and spend every day seeking Him harder than ever.
I know there are reasons to believe it won't be the entire Church that is raptured, but on the other hand when Paul tells the Thessalonians that "we" will meet Him in the air he's talking to ordinary Christian believers.
Been listening to a lot of talks on the end times recently, especially those focusing on the Rapture and the Great Tribulation. I consider Jonathan Cahn to be prophetically astute and I like his presentation of the seventy weeks of Daniel in this interview:
(In another talk by Cahn I heard recently he mentioned that the name Trump is no accident, referring to the Last Trump. I noticed that too when he became President. God uses all kinds of clues and signs to keep us hopping. Cahn is focused on Israel, and the fact that Trump acknowledged Jerusalem as its capital city on December 6th of last year has prophetic significance, which he also discusses in this interview.
All of this enlivens the possibility of this coming Rosh Hashana as the Rapture date. Why Rosh Hashana? Well, the Spring feasts of Israel, which are all tied to Harvest times: Passover, Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, have already been fulfilled in the coming of Christ and the establishment of His church. The Fall feasts which occur around September of every year and are also Harvest celebrations: Rosh Hashana or Jewish New Year, Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles, have not yet been fulfilled so they're next and would have to be fulfilled in order just as the first three were. You can find talks on this at You Tube also.
(No we won't know the date but as it gets close we are charged with knowing the seasons and the times and not missing it as so many of the Jews missed the coming of Jesus although they also had the Seventy Weeks prophecy to guide them.)
abe: Here's another interview of Cahn on a different prophetic subject. He finds prophetic significance in the unearthing and establishment in Berlin of the "seat of Satan" a temple originally in the city of Pergamum, the church at which is addressed by Jesus in the first chapters of Revelation, which Cahn connects with the rise of Hitler. Cahn has a nose for this sort of historical correspondence that nobody else has that I know of.
Jonathan Cahn, the Ghost Kingdom which is the Roman Empire
Good for Jonathan Cahn. Already three years ago he was saying what I just figured out recently, that the Roman Empire doesn't need to be revived in order to fulfill the prophecy of Daniel 2, it never left us.
As he puts it in the interview I link below, it's been spreading throughout the world since its official collapse. He refers to the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, to the titles based on the word "Caesar" as in "Kaiser" as I mentioned in Message 88 and even to the Roman Catholic Church as continuing it which I've also mentioned. He talks about the European nations that sent out explorers and established colonies all over the world.
He even mentions the fact that the US government buildings are based on Roman architecture, which I demonstrated earlier in this thread (Message 292). I hadn't been following Cahn for a few years but it makes me laugh: of course he would be the one to recognize all this with his amazing ability to see such historical and symbolic connections that most of us miss.
...here is another case of humans trying to insert themselves into God's business.
What an odd idea. We are told so many times in scripture to watch and be ready, to discern the times so we won't be surprised as by a thief in the night and so on, it would be sheer foolishness not to pay attention to the signs of what is coming. Jesus TOLD us to. And although we can't know the exact timing of events we are certainly to know the times and the seasons so we will be watching and praying as they approach. And it's also quite possible that those who live right at the time of a major prophesied event WILL know the exact time, at least when it is "at the door." Again Jesus chided the Jews who missed His coming. Why does God bother to give us prophecies if He doesn't want us to exert ourselves to understand them?
Matthew 24:32-33 writes:
Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.
Re: Jonathan Cahn, the Ghost Kingdom which is the Roman Empire
ringo writes:
Faith writes:
He refers to the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, to the titles based on the word "Caesar" as in "Kaiser" as I mentioned in Message 88 and even to the Roman Catholic Church as continuing it which I've also mentioned. He talks about the European nations that sent out explorers and established colonies all over the world.
That's old news. I've been hearing it regurgitated since the 1970s.
That's interesting. It's new to me. I find it quite compelling no matter how old it is.
Re: Jonathan Cahn, the Ghost Kingdom which is the Roman Empire
I find it compelling probably mostly because of how I see events shaping up in recent times with the European Union and its symbol of a goddess riding a beast. I was also very startled to find so much Roman symbolism in our government buildings, even the symbol of the "fasces" which became the symbol of fascism. What is that doing there? Why do we have gods and goddesses in the symbolism of a nation supposedly founded on Enlightenment principles of liberty? Why is our first President depicted as a god in the fresco in the Capitol dome when he rejected the role of king? What is going on here? How did these influences sneak into the symbolism of our nation? For me this answered the question people often ask these days: where is America in the scripture? Well, it's part of the worldwide Roman Empire that has been shaping up for centuries. It shouldn't be if we go by our founding philosophy but it is.
I think this is all a work in progress, the Roman Empire as a ghost empire just as Cahn sees it, that nobody has really recognized, that will take formidably real shape in the time of the Antichrist, when we will also have a worldwide religion that will call itself Christian just as the Antichrist will call himself Christian. It will be basically paganism.
Which describes the Roman Catholic Church with all its trappings that go back to the Roman Empire including the robes, and the tiara and the bishop's mitre that come from the old pagan religions that were included in the Roman pantheon, and the title Pontifex Maximus which is the title of the head of the Roman pagan religions. And all the other pagan trappings of the Roman church such as the rosary, the sign of the cross, the lighting of candles, the adoration of the saints which are just the old gods in new form, the image of the Madonna and child which goes back through many other pagan religions to Semiramus and Tammuz.
It's all of a piece with what I've learned about the Reformation views of the papacy as the Antichrist. Prophecy points to a time to come headed by a figure called the Antichrist who comes out of the Roman Empire, as the general Titus did. If the Roman Empire is now pretty much scattered around the world.
The Antichrist may be a Hitler figure but he will be backed by a Pope just as Hitler was backed by the Pope in his time, who arranged for the escape of many Nazi murderers to South American Catholic countries to avoid prosecution for war crimes. In any case the Reformers, all of them and many dissident Christians before them, identified the papacy as the Antichrist system. So whether a Pope IS the reigning Antichrist of the end days global system or the power behind a political figure who is the Antichrist, the papacy is certainly going to paly a big part in it.
Cahn did not identify the papacy as such a major player as I do, but at least he mentioned it as part of the Ghost Roman Empire that has existed all along. The fact that the Popes ruled over European kings for centuries is a big part of why I find this all compelling too, the fact that Hitler saw himjself as reviving the Holy Roman Empire as the Third Reich is important, as is the title "Kaiser" held by earlier German leader4s, an d "Czar" by Russian leaders. We don't have to have a literal replay of the old Roman Empire for all this to add up to its continuation into the present and suggest its fullblown manifestation in the near future.
I appreciate what you are saying and can practice those things. It isn't foreign to me, I've just needed the encouragement. You make it sound easy in a sense. In any case I can certainly be practicing it while you address the prophecies and I would like you do that.
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