Lately, there was an article within the New York Submit titled: “Nostradamus Predictions for 2023: An Antichrist Arrives, World Conflict III and the Monarchy Dies.” The writer, Reda Wigle, defined that Nostradamus’ reputation had endured the centuries since he wrote Les Prophéties in 1555. The ebook accommodates his predictions as far into the long run as AD 3797.
Wigle sarcastically notes that nobody appears to grip us “with grim fairly like Nostradamus.” His prophecies foretell wars, pestilence, pure disasters, civil unrest, political assassinations, and different sunny stuffs. The seer has been “credited with foretelling the Nice Hearth of London, Hitler’s rise to energy, the September 11, 2001 assaults, and the COVID-19 pandemic, to call a number of.” So, individuals are naturally curious, says Wigle, “what fury and hellfire lay in retailer.”
There may be, nevertheless, one elementary distinction between the predictions of a clairvoyant like Nostradamus and a real prophet of God. The prophet of God all the time will get it proper. His prophecies all the time come to move as a result of he’s getting his data straight from the Lord. Wigle readily admits Nostradamus’ predictions, most of the time, “muddily miss the mark.”
In The New Proof that Calls for a Verdict, apologist Josh McDowell says:
“All through the New Testomony, the apostles appealed to 2 areas of the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth to ascertain his Messiahship. One was the resurrection, and the opposite was the achievement of messianic prophecy. The Outdated Testomony, written over a one-thousand-year interval, accommodates almost three-hundred references to the approaching Messiah. All of those had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ.”
The prophets who spoke of the approaching Messiah, the world’s Savior, acquired their data immediately from on excessive. The truth that every of their predictions regarding him was fulfilled establishes their credentials as true prophets of God.
In Revelation chapter 6, the apostle John, one other real prophet of God, who tells of the Second Coming of the Messiah, predicts the world will likely be overwhelmed with mass deception, battle, starvation, illness, Christian martyrdom, and colossal cataclysmic disturbances earlier than Christ establishes his earthly kingdom. John writes:
“I watched because the Lamb broke the sixth seal, and there was an excellent earthquake. The solar turned as darkish as black fabric, and the moon turned as crimson as blood. Then the celebs of the sky fell to the earth like inexperienced figs falling from a tree shaken by a robust wind. The sky was rolled up like a scroll, and the entire mountains and islands had been moved from their locations.
“Then everybody — the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the rich, the highly effective, and each slave and free individual — all hid themselves within the caves and among the many rocks of the mountains. And so they cried to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and conceal us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the nice day of their wrath has come, and who is ready to survive?’” (Revelation 6:12-17).
This time is one in every of common terror. In what has been known as The Olivet Discourse, Jesus instructed his disciples concerning this present day, saying:
“There will likely be larger anguish than at any time for the reason that world started. And it’ll by no means be so nice once more” (Matthew 24:21). Many Bible students have known as as of late “The Nice Tribulation.”
Thomas Ice, who has written extensively on The Finish Occasions, supplies a superb abstract of the Bible’s instructing on The Tribulation. He writes:
“The Tribulation in Bible prophecy is the time frame that begins with the signing of a covenant between Israel and the Antichrist [this is the rider on the white horse] and ends seven years later on the second coming of Jesus Christ. Essentially the most intensive biblical feedback on the Tribulation are discovered within the writings of John, particularly in Revelation 6-19. In these chapters, John supplies an in depth exposition of the Tribulation days.
“Daniel’s ‘70 weeks,’ prophesied in Daniel 9:24-27, are the framework inside which the Tribulation or the seventieth week happens. The seven-year interval of Daniel’s seventieth week supplies the time span with which an entire host of descriptives are related. A few of these descriptive phrases embrace Tribulation, Nice Tribulation, Day of the Lord, Day of Wrath, Day of Misery, Day of Bother, Time of Jacob’s hassle, Day of Darkness and Gloom, and the Wrath of the Lamb.”
Some Christians keep these passages are to not be taken actually and solely apply to a time shortly after Jesus’ demise and resurrection. Extra particularly, the sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD.
Nonetheless, this view appears critically weakened by Jesus’ assertion, which says the difficulty of this era will likely be not like “any time for the reason that world started. And it’ll by no means be so nice once more” (Matthew 24:21).
The autumn of Jerusalem was certainly a horrible time. Unquestionably, Jesus’ phrases foreshadowed the destruction of that holy metropolis, and figuratively talking, what occurred in some methods matches Jesus’ prophecy in Matthew 24:1-25. Besides, since Jerusalem’s devastation, a lot worse issues have occurred.
The time described seems to be a future stage that’s world in impression. John says there will likely be an incredible earthquake, a darkening of the solar and moon, the moon turns as crimson as blood, the celebs fall, the heavens roll up like a scroll, and great geological actions and disruptions happen.
Different passages of the Bible corroborate these similar predictions. (Amos 8:8; Ezekiel 38:19; Joel 2:10; Haggai 2:6; Amos 8:9; Isaiah 13:10; 50:3; Ezekiel 32:7; Joel 2:31; Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24; Luke 23:45; Isaiah 13:13; 34:4; Jeremiah 4:24; Nahum 1:5).
These passages describe an impending age of unprecedented trepidation and horror. It’s so terrifying; Jesus stated folks’s hearts would fail them for concern (Luke 21:26).
There are a number of believable methods these occasions would possibly happen. Some biblical writers and academics motive a full nuclear change may create a lot of what’s expressed. The falling of the celebs is likely to be a meteor bathe.
John Phillips, in Exploring Revelation, accurately contends there isn’t a motive to not take the Revelation file actually. “Drastic modifications within the heavens may end in earthquakes and drastic modifications within the topography of the planet,” he says.
Nonetheless, Phillips additionally insists, “It’s simply as potential that what we’ve right here is symbolic and depicts a complete collapse of the institution. The earthquake means that every thing steady in society will likely be shaken. The disasters of the solar, the moon, and the celebs recommend the downfall or the plunging into confusion of all governing our bodies. The shifting of the islands and the mountains signifies great modifications in constituted authorities.”
In Lectures on the Revelation, H.A. Ironside says that the celebs falling from heaven point out “the downfall and apostasy of nice spiritual leaders, the brilliant lights within the ecclesiastical heavens.”
He says the celebs within the first a part of Revelation signified the messengers, the pastors of the church buildings. And,
“[s]o it might appear clear that we’re to know the image in the identical sense right here. After the true Church is caught as much as meet the Lord within the air [the Rapture], there will likely be an enormous host of unconverted ecclesiastics left behind,” says Ironside. “1000’s of church dignitaries, Protestant and Romanist, who, although seemed upon as guides in issues religious, shall be manifested as totally bereft of divine life – skilled clergymen, who regardless of their pretensions and exalted calling, are merely pure males intruding into religious issues … These are the celebs who will likely be hurled from their locations of energy and eminence in that terrible day of the wrath of the Lamb, and who, apostatizing from the final vestiges of Christianity, will quickly turn into leaders within the worship of Antichrist.”
One thing of this nature has already occurred, and it’ll occur once more however in a extra important manner.
Richard Wurmbrand, who for 14 years suffered in a communist jail for his trustworthy management as a pastor in communist Romania, gave a chilling account of what church leaders did when the communists got here to energy:
“The communist convened a congress of all Christian our bodies in our parliament. There have been 4,000 monks, pastors, and ministers of all denominations. 4,000 monks and pastors selected Joseph Stalin because the honorary president of this congress. On the similar time, he was president of the World Motion of the Godless and a mass assassin of Christians. One after one other, bishops and pastors arose in our parliament constructing and declared that communism and Christianity are essentially the identical and will coexist. One minister after one other stated phrases of reward for communism and warranted the brand new authorities of the loyalty of the Church” (From the ebook, Tortured for Christ by Wurmbrand).
John concludes that, in the end, nobody is exempt from the judgment of the Almighty. It doesn’t matter if one is exceedingly wealthy and highly effective or terribly poor and with out affect; each life outdoors of religion in Jesus Christ will likely be weighed within the stability. The entire unsaved will likely be discovered wanting and see God’s face of righteous fury. On that day, regardless of the place folks nonetheless dwelling in sin select to run and conceal, they won’t escape him.
All these prophecies regarding Christ’s return will come to move, and never even one will fail. The Psalmist instructs on find out how to put together:
“Undergo God’s royal son, or he’ll turn into offended, and you can be destroyed within the midst of all of your actions — for his anger flares up immediately. However what pleasure for all who take refuge in him!” (Psalm 2:12).
Rev. Mark H. Creech is Govt Director of the Christian Motion League of North Carolina, Inc. He was a pastor for twenty years earlier than taking this place, having served 5 completely different Southern Baptist church buildings in North Carolina and one Impartial Baptist in upstate New York.
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