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).
