We can either establish and sanctify the Lord in our hearts and make the knowledge of Him our singular pursuit and desire, or hyperventilate each time we hear some new conflict has escalated or some new mystery illness is making its way across the globe with an almost, but not quite 1% mortality rate.
But that already happened; we saw pestilence. But Jesus said
pestilences, not pestilence, and if you thought the test run was bad, just wait
until they tweak the next iteration. In modern parlance, it’s called
gain-of-function research; in reality, it’s finding new and inventive ways to
make largely innocuous pathogens deadlier and more transmissible. It’s little
weasely men in lab coats playing at being gods without the love and compassion
the one true God has for His creation.
While the God of the Bible so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son, these new gods, at least gods in their estimation, have
no such empathy. It’s all about omelets and eggs to them and being unable to
make one without breaking the other.
I actually heard a panel discussion between men of science
once, lamenting the short incubation window of Ebola because it made it so
difficult to spread. People just die too quickly from Ebola for it to spread
effectively. It takes as little as two days for symptoms to appear after
someone is exposed to it, and that’s not nearly enough time for them to travel
to international hubs or busy metropolitan cities. Imagine the horror they
could unleash on the world if they could push incubation to a couple of weeks
rather than a couple of days. As the adage goes, there’s dying, then there’s
dying of Ebola. I’ll spare you the details. It’s neither fun, painless, or
peaceful.
Pestilences, outbreaks of contagion such as the bubonic
plague, avian flu, leprosy, and smallpox, have occurred in the past, but they
affected far fewer individuals than the most recent iteration, and the next
iteration will be worse still, both in size, severity, and scope.
You can’t scare the world to a screeching halt with the
sniffles again, but bleeding from their orifices might give most folks a reason
for pause and reflection.
Nothing Jesus said regarding the last days is mundane. If
something was mentioned within the context of His revelation, then there will
be something special and unique about it when it is fulfilled. Whether all of
them are happening in unison, their frequency and intensity being
unprecedented, or the events spanning the globe rather than just specific
regions, something will make them stand out and be readily identified as the
things He spoke of.
To those insisting that everything Jesus spoke of during His
Olivet discourse has already come to pass, you’re unoriginal and wrong. It’s
okay to be wrong if you’re willing to acknowledge that you might be, but as far
as being unoriginal, you’re two thousand years too late to peddle that
particular whopper. Paul said as much and warned of those who would, by spirit,
by word, or by letter, attempt to trouble and shake in mind the household of
faith.
2 Thessalonians 2:1-2, “Now, brethren, concerning the coming
of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you, not to
be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter,
as if from us, as though the day of Christ had come.”
Jesus was referencing the declarative statement He made at
the beginning of the chapter while prophesying the temple's destruction and not
one stone being left upon another when He said this generation would not pass
away until all those things occurred. It didn’t. A generation is 40 years.
Thirty-seven years after Jesus spoke the words He did, the temple was
destroyed.
Those who remembered His words and saw Jerusalem surrounded
by armies fled and were spared. Those who ignored or otherwise waved off His
warnings were trampled underfoot.
Luke 21:20-22, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by
armies, then know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea
flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let no
those who are in the country enter her. For these are the days of vengeance,
that all things which are written may be fulfilled.”
It is an incontrovertible historical fact that the early
Christians fled Jerusalem for Pella before the Romans sacked it and the temple.
There are manuscripts that survived from the fourth century by two independent
sources that described their flight when they saw Jerusalem surrounded by
armies.
We’re taking two separate events separated by thousands of
years and attempting to throw them into the sloppy doctrine blender and give
them a whirl. It’s easier that way, isn’t it? It all happened, and we’re just
the fever dream within a fever dream of some spaceman with three mouths and six
eyes.
What Jesus said would happen to the temple happened within
the timeframe He said it would. The other things have yet to happen because He
said they would occur prior to His return and the end of the age. If,
perchance, a catastrophe on the scale of what Jesus spoke had occurred in 70
AD, it would be evident in the historical text since the temple's destruction
and the sacking of Jerusalem were so documented. We’re talking cataclysmic
events that would have been recorded, likely by more than one source, and
that’s not even getting into individuals throughout Jerusalem and Judea
mysteriously disappearing.
Some things, such as being persecuted and hated by those of
the world, are not exclusive to one era or another but a running theme
throughout both. While those of the early church were told to flee when they
saw these things begin to happen because it was not yet their time, we are told
that he who endures to the end shall be saved.
The difference between then and now is that we will have nowhere to run to. The whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. When the noose begins to tighten, and the children of God are persecuted even in places they deemed safe havens, all that will be left for them to do is endure.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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