26 December 2022
A blessed Boxing Day to you.
A reader has asked me to explain what I meant in my previous post about "End Times":
That tribulation is just getting started; it's going to get very rough. At times you will wonder if this is the End Times.
It should be obvious that was just an off-hand reference to the common mythology about the Great Tribulation as depicted by Dispensationalists. Boomers would be familiar with the Jack T. Chick tracts or Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey, and younger generations might have heard of the Left Behind series of books. Most of that is nonsense based largely on taking literally stuff in Revelation that was meant symbolically.
It's not as if nothing in the Book of Revelation is literal, but that the literal meaning misses the point in the Hebrew mind, and John was a very Hebrew man. His Revelation is meant to portray how God acts under certain circumstances. It's about God, not some future event in human history, and it shows the kind of reaction God has to human sin. Even if you understand that John was simply sharing a vision of things God showed him, then you should also understand that God Himself rarely communicates literally. All of the symbols in Revelation have established meanings in the Old Testament. It's not that hard to pick them out, and John's audience would have done so.
Jesus was consistent with His Father's ways when He taught in parables. The language of parables should first provoke your convictions, so that your convictions can inform your mind what you need to do to keep peace with Him. It's not information; it's moral truth. That's what the Book of Revelation is. Like the parables of Jesus, it means nothing to a mind lacking the dominance of the heart. It's all consistent with the Ancient Near Eastern cultural background when trying to talk about something outside of our human realm of experience. John's Revelation is parable, not a literal description of future events.
Along with others, I have addressed the necessary ingredients for the Return of Christ. In sum, it's that human governments must align together for the expressed purpose of attacking faith in Christ. This is more than mere religious persecution; that oppresses religious activity. That's what humans do because that's all they can perceive in their fleshly natures. When Satan is set free to truly terrify the Covenant children of God, we will see a direct attack on faith itself. That's a different quality of oppression.
In our current context, the closest anyone comes to moving in that direction is the transhumanist movement, trying to meld man and computer. It's not that such a union is inherently evil, but that it opens the door to direct control of human thinking. It would serve to block your convictions from your conscious awareness. Thus, the "Mark of the Beast" symbolizes that it's not just your behavior (mark in the hand), but your very conscious awareness (mark in the head) that is under the Devil's control through his servants.
But more than this, it requires human governments to openly profess their devotion to Satan as Satan. Having an evil secular state is not going to fulfill this requirement. And a cabal that meets in secret to swear allegiance to the Devil also won't do it. There will have to be some truly miraculous powers that Satan will be allowed to manifest through his human minions in his name. Of course, they'll try to associate him with other names having established religious meaning; don't be surprised when they refer to him as "Jesus". However they approach it, we would certainly see the kind of miracles that would tend to fool believers.
For now, we are nowhere close to having the kind of technology that successfully links human minds with computer hardware. And if ever do, a genuine solar micro-nova will fry the hardware. It simply doesn't seem possible for all of that to happen in just twenty years or so. I'm pretty sure the kind of evil we are looking for with the End Times will have to wait for another round of civilization building after solar catastrophes. I'd be looking for someone to blame Covenant people for the disasters when they try to rebuild.
Folks, this is just my take on things. Don't buy my answers. I hope my comments provoke you to pray and seek the Lord through His Word for your own answers.
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