It’s the End of the World as We Know It, But Do I Feel Fine?!? Part Four: Conclusion

Its time to close up the loose ends of this discussion on end times events. My premise of this was to ultimately look at current events and relate them to the prophecies. There is an inherent danger to this, however. If you try to interpret too much into the prophecies, you begin to look like you’re trying to set a date. Jesus himself said that no man knows when Jesus will return to Earth. The Second Coming, as it is known, corresponds with the end times. Once Jesus returns, it will be for good and there will be no more sin and death. Jesus says no man will know the "date", but there will be signs of the "times".

So I preface this blog as a review of the signs of the times, and NOT as a calendar to lead to a specific date. I do not know and do not claim to know when Jesus will return. It could be this afternoon and it could be in the year 3256. I don’t know. But I DO know that there are signs present in today’s society that reflect some of the prophecies written about the end times. I will offer my viewpoints about modern times, using Biblical passages as a guideline.

What does all of this mean and why should I care? That would be the first question out of the mouth of anyone wondering about these things. First of all, the Bible says that all people will have to give an account of their actions at some point. Study of end times prophecy reveals that there is a point in the future when existence as we know of it will cease. There will be a new existence after that, but there is a fixed point around which the two states of existence hinge. The point of the prophecies is to direct us to be aware of that point and its impending approach. Think of it as a destination, not in physical dimensions, but in time. We are familiar with this concept. We do it for personal occasions in our lives: our birthdays, holidays, graduations, retirements, and so on. Our lives change around these points and we sorta count down to them… 3 years until I graduate… 2 years until I graduate… and so on. While we experience these personal turning points, the Bible says there will a point where all existence will change… we call it the "end of time". I know everyone doesn’t believe in the Bible and in Jesus. But if we think about what the Bible says and we can see hints of these signs coming true in modern times, then we should question whether we are ready for that ultimate existential turning point. What does it all of this stuff mean? It means we are heading towards a point in time where all humanity, yea, the entire universe will be changed. Why should I care about all of this stuff? We should care because we must be prepared for a change in our existence.

I’m not here to proselytize to anyone. I’m trying to make a correlation of modern events and phenomena to Biblical prophecies and scripture. Take from it what you will.

I discussed the three main areas of life that is focused on in end times prophecy. It involves the global centralization of government, economics, and religion under the banner of one man who is referred to as the beast in Revelation and the man of lawlessness in II Thessalonians. The first three postings I put up discuss how these events could take place and how our current global situations are positioned for these things to happen. But what other things mentioned in the Bible refer to the end times? There are several cases of Old Testament prophecies discussing the end. But the most famous end times prophecy, other than Revelation, is the Olivet Discourse.

The Olivet Discourse is written in the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Jesus took his disciples upon the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and He began to teach them. They asked Him to tell them about the time of the end. Jesus tells them of various signs of distress: wars, earthquakes, roaring seas, and famines. He also says that the time right before the end will be like the days of Noah (Matt. 24:37-39). This passage is very important because unlike many prophecies, there is nothing left for interpretation. This is very direct. There will be wars and the threat of wars. There will be earthquakes and famines. And the world will be as it was during the time of Noah. Wars, earthquakes, and famines are easy to see. But how was Earth during the time of Noah? Genesis 6 describes that the people were violent and wicked. So wicked, in fact, that only Noah and his family found favor with God. So wicked that the hearts of mankind only contained wickedness. Galatians 5 gives an outline of what that wicked consisted of: "sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like" (Gal. 5:19-21). II Timothy 3 also outlines human behavior in the end "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power." (II Tim. 3:1-5). These two passages reveal how man will act and behave in the last days. Man will be wicked like those in the days of Noah, and that wickedness is described above in detail by Paul.

These signs Jesus lay out are not after His return, but before them. He even refers to them as "birth pains" (Matt. 24:8). These will be signs of life on Earth before the end arrives. That leads to the question: are these things, these behaviors present in today’s society? The answer is without a doubt, YES!

All you have to do is turn on the news or go to a news website to see these signs on full display. Yes, we know of wars and famines and earthquakes, but the wickedness upon the Earth is great. Some things are questionable depending on your standards of morality. Some people think homosexuality and abortion are evil and wicked… some do not. But putting those things aside, there is still wickedness that even staunch atheists would agree are wrong and needs to be dealt with. Let’s look at a few.

The Bible says drunkenness is a wickedness that will be prevalent in the end. I think everyone would agree that alcoholism is a cancer to any society. Lack of self control is also something that everyone could agree on as a problem with society.

There are also things that some things that reveal wickedness that many could not see before. Our current financial crisis stems from several wicked traits mentioned earlier: selfish ambition, lovers of themselves, lovers of money, lack of self control, treachery, conceit. The list keeps going. People gave in to greed and envy and now our entire economy is in shambles because of it. No one realizes that it wasn’t some weird or strange phenomenon that wrecked the economy… it was the wickedness of man. I read an article several months ago reporting that a teenager was arrested for hiring a hit on his own parents (disobedience to parents, if you’re keeping up). The reason: they would not buy him a Playstation 3! He wanted his parents killed over a video game system!!! Its complete lunacy. Just today, I read that a comedian was banned from an event because she made the statement that Republican VP candidate Palin would be "gang-raped" if she came to New York. Sounds like a great comedy act to me (I’m being sarcastic of course). It’s preposterous. The world is becoming more rancid by the minute due to the wickedness permeating society. It is getting more like the days of Noah every single day. And whether or not you believe in the Bible, you have to agree that SOMETHING needs to change. It’s the entire political platform of this election. People know something is wrong with something and they wanna make it right.

Let’s look at another way these prophecies correspond with modern times. Computer programmers have created programs known as spiders. Spiders are programs that search over vast amounts of data looking for things. Some spiders were created to look over investment and market data to look for trends to help investors or to spot possible problems in the market. Some spiders were created to help detect secret messages from enemy nations. The way these spiders work is they search over vast amount of written material looking for a variety of characters, words, or phrases that have commonalities. They compare this data with known resources to look for hidden messages. It’s like a giant cryptogram game. There is another theory about these spiders. Some folks believe they can go back in time with them and also predict the future using them. They assert that by looking at massive amounts of text from a society, they will have a sort of window to subconscious collective mind of society. They will scour our various types of material from news reports, advertisements, even blogs such as this. Again, they look for common characters, words, phrases, and other arrangements within a wide sampling of text material. The theory is that the subconscious collective feelings of a society will be expressed through individuals within that society through the writings of these individuals. They believe they can look into the past and gain an understanding of what that society was going through by the texts of that time period. For example, let’s say the people of 19th century France were concerned with impending war and economic problems. The theory says that written texts of that era will have those fears of economic hardship and war written within SUBCONSCIOUSLY, regardless of the nature and explicitness of the material. The theory suggests that all writing: love letters, business correspondence, advertisements, everything will subconsciously suggest the fears mentioned.

While looking into the past is a little easier (since we have some history), looking into the future is difficult. The theory suggests, however, that looking into various writings of the current era; these decoders will be able to pick up on subconscious ideas that are hidden within the text. Example: decoders will employ spiders to look at newspaper editorials of every newspaper in America over the past three years. The spiders will locate any number of specific patterns. Then by matching these patterns with various topics, such as economy, the spiders can then match that topic to the patterns. The idea is that people will have subconsciously left hints of how we felt about the economy by the style in which we wrote, the particular words we used, punctuation, grammar, everything.

Of course, this is very oversimplified, but you get the idea. A book was written a few years back called the Bible Code. It was about how a certain group of religious used this technology to peruse the Bible for hidden messages. Some things they found were simple, but some were very, VERY complex. It was claimed that the Bible produced information that was so specific; it narrowed down events to the date! They claim these codes predicted the World Wars and even predicted the assassination of JFK down the very date he was killed! They said that the Bible Code was so complex that it still could give up information about events hundreds even thousands of years in the future (kinda weird, because their were prophecies written in standard Hebrew and Greek language doing the exact same thing… IN PLAIN SIGHT… but you know how people can be).

Now I told you about spiders and stuff to make a point and it is this: society reveals its collective subconscious via its media sources, but not always explicitly. Why is this important? Because we can infer how society as a whole feels about things by simply reading or watching TV. Let’s look at some things. In the past 15 years, there has been a rise in the number of movies and TV shows involving spiritual beings interacting with humans: Touched by an Angel, Medium, Ghost Whisperer, Crossing Over, Bless the Child, The End of Days, The Ring, The Sixth Sense and the list goes on. There have been several movies about alien interaction with humans: The Forgotten, The Arrival, X-Files, Signs, and many others. There have been several movies about the annihilation of human civilization, either by external forces or by our own making: Armageddon, Deep Impact, I Am Legend, Independence Day, and many more. What does this mean? What impression do you get from this? I’m no expert, but it would indicate that people are aware of or at least thinking about two specific things: beings beyond human understanding and the destruction of civilization.

People are aware of, thinking about, or fascinated by the idea that there are beings outside of the realm of the life as we know it. Aliens, spirits, ghosts, angels, demons; society has these things on its collective mind. This would indicate, at least to me, that people are concerned that there is more to life than what we experience physically. It indicates a concern about existence after death: how we get there, what it is like, and what it means for our lives while we are still living.

People are also thinking about the demise of civilization at least on some level. Society is concerned with how to maintain its existence in a dangerous universe. People are concerned with the survival of civilization at a small level. We are worried about economic and social issues. Will we be able to keep up our way of life? People are also concerned with the survival of civilization on a larger scale. Will a catastrophic event wipe humanity from existence? Will aliens or asteroids kill us all and would we be able to survive it? What can we do to maintain our way of life and not completely destroy the environment?

Allow me to wrap this entire discussion up by saying that these are perilous times. The Bible contains prophecies that let us know what will happen at the end of time and signs with which we can recognize its arrival. There are pieces currently in place in this world that allow for governments, economies, and religions to unite under the banner of the beast mentioned in Revelation. Prophecies of Jesus tell of the condition of the world prior to the end. He says it will be a wicked place as in Noah’s day. We see rampant wickedness in all areas of our society. Luke 21:26 that the heart’s of men will faint with terror, apprehensive with what lies ahead. The collective subconscious of our society tells us that our hearts are failing. People are stressed about life after death, the environment, and whether we can maintain our civilization.
I said earlier that I do not know the day of the return of Jesus and I will never say that I do. But the signs are evident of His eminent return. He told his followers to watch for Him, looking at these signs as marker of His return. I personally feel that time is like one of those coin funnels at the mall. Our society is like the coin. At first, it is moving slowly toward the end, but as it gets closer, we spiral faster and faster towards the end. The necessary events of the end times have increased in frequency and quantity within the last 100 years. I feel we are racing towards that turning point faster than we really know and people, including many Christians are not prepared. My goal was to write down my thoughts and ideas in order to raise awareness and provoke thought about these issues. I hope you have enjoyed reading this. Please leave comments as I would glad to answer questions and look at other issues involving this as well.